Darwin fails to help out.
A type of Montage, and the approximate inverse of a Hard-Work Montage, shows a character or series of characters trying and failing to achieve specific tasks such as building something, finding a job, finding romance, or performing a skill. The intent is to show either that the characters are hopelessly inept or clumsy (in which case it will probably include moments of Epic Fail or How Is That Even Possible?) or that the task is challenging. A scene showing the characters despairing about their lack of progress is usually thrown in.
If the attempters are protagonists, they'll usually succeed in the last shot; this may lead to a Training Montage, in which the attempter does gradually better each time, giving the whole scene a chiastic composition. Alternatively, the scene will cut out after the first success, implying that the character mastered the skill offscreen.
This often occurs when someone gains a new superpower; see How Do I Shot Web?. It is also frequent in a When You Snatch the Pebble situation.
Compare Humiliation Conga, where the failures happen one after the other in real time, and Springtime for Hitler, where the failures end up failing so spectacularly they cause a success. Writer's Block Montage, Travelling Salesman Montage, and Terrible Interviewees Montage are Sub Tropes. Hilarious Outtakes are somewhere between this trope and the real world. Contrast Gradual Weardown, where tasks are completed but take a physical or mental toll.
Examples
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Advertising
- A commercial for Dairy Queen's Fudge Brownie Waffle Bowl sundae has the Dairy Queen Lips trying (and failing each time) to introduce the sundae to the viewer; because the sundae is so tempting, he devours it in one bite the first and second times, and the third time shows him tied shut to be prevented from eating it again.
- M&M's: In this commercial for the Fudge Brownie M&Ms variety
, there is a montage of Yellow trying to put a fudge brownie inside an M&M candy. He is shown descending into Laughing Mad territory and even crying in a fetal position at one point.
Yellow: WHY WON'T YOU GO IN?! - In a commercial for Burger King, a production crew is trying to get Homer Simpson to properly eat an Ultimate Double Whopper. The first take shown in the commercial is take #75, and for the most part, Homer does something really gross (talking with his mouth full, dropping the Whopper on the floor and eating the patty, drooling on it, and being naked).
Homer: What? I get sweaty when I eat.
Anime and Manga
- Dr. STONE: Chapter 215 has one where the Kingdom of Science's efforts to launch a rocket keep ending in either it flying off course or exploding. Though Senku and Xeno's smiles show they aren't too bothered by the streams of failed launches as they improve the rocket.
- When the Admiral rearranges the fleets in Kantai Collection, the newly-formed Mobile Unit Five is a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits that can't get along and can't decide on a flagship. The girls decide to take turns as flagships on training missions. Each time, an enormous explosion at sea - followed by the dejected girls recuperating in the Repair Spa - tells us all we need to know about their degree of success.
- Kizuna no Allele: In episode 4, since Miracle is too bad at Free Talk, she tries other stream ideas that involve talking, which similarly don't work out.
- A flashback episode of Last Exile shows how the protagonists became messengers after being orphaned. Their biggest hurdle in doing the job was retrieving the messages, which were on a ring at the end of a long pole, which had to be grabbed via flyby in an aircraft, similar to a train seizing a mailbag. They miss many times and eventually have to practice on the ground, then at slow speed, before they can do it for real.
- One Piece: The creation of Water 7's sea train is depicted in a montage including shots of the multiple failed prototypes that preceded the final Puffing Tom. This demonstrates just how difficult it was to perfect even one requirement for the final sea train, let alone all of them.
- Plastic Memories: Isla's attempts at retrieving Nina, a Giftia, or android, are nearing the end of her service life. Chizu slams the door in each of her attempts for several days.
- Pokémon Journeys: The Series: After a disastrous first battle against Gym Leader Bea, Ash submits his Riolu to fight foes with tentacles to better counter her Grapploct. Cue loss after loss that only drives Ash further into the Corner of Woe (though he gets better by the end of the episode).
- Happens in the one-shot manga Section 459, when the boss tests Mugen to see if he is worthy to be a demon.
- Tamagotchi Friends: In Tamagotchi! Yume Kira Dream episode 46, after Nandetchi's first two attempts to snap pictures of Yumemitchi and Kiraritchi transforming fail, there is a montage of three examples of him failing again. First, he pretends to be a baseball player with stomach problems; then, he pretends to be a delivery person whose truck has run out of fuel; and finally, he pretends to be a fish who has made it onto land.
- Chapter five of Torako, Anmari Kowashicha Dame da yo largely centers on Aiko Torasawa trying to join various clubs. Popping the ball and tearing the net in half during Volleyball tryouts is a foreseeable-if-unfortunate consequence of her poorly controlled Super-Strength. Knocking over multiple bookshelves at the Literature club, however, is just plain sad. Stomping holes into the track while making distinctly below-average time when trying out for the Track club crosses into the realm of Epic Fail.
- Urusei Yatsura. Aratu is trying to win the game of tag against Lum, notably his attempt to get past her flying ability. Each attempt results in him being carried off heavily bandaged on a stretcher.
- Weathering with You: Hodaka attempts to find a job in Tokyo, but over the course of a rapid montage, ends up being rejected by everyone he approaches, which causes him to take up Keisuke's job offer. Later on, while on the run from the police who are seeking to take them into custody, Hodaka, Hina, and Nagi are looking for a hotel to stay the night in, but as with the last montage, they get rejected by almost every hotel they enter until they finally get into a rather luxurious one.
Asian Animation
- BoBoiBoy: Gopal received superpowers, but they have yet to emerge, so he asks for BoBoiBoy's help to unlock them. They try seeing if he can catch things in the dark note , has nerves of steel, or Eye Beams, but none of them work. Gopal ends up missing the ball or getting hit by it while blindfolded, and attempting to shoot lasers at the falling ball causes it to bounce off his face. A pair of birds crow at Gopal's failure at one point as if they're laughing at him.
- The Founder of Diabolism Q, the chibi Spin-Off of the Animated Adaptation of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi, is a series of short gag episodes and so has multiple montages of characters comically failing even the most mundane tasks.
- Episode 11 has Wei Wuxian and the Jiang siblings attempting to resolve the Jiang parents' quarrel by giving the mother gifts and pretending they're from the father. Cue montage of each gift backfiring in some way (such as a bouquet attracting a swarm of bees, which gets everyone stung) — by the time the father returns from his trip, the mother is angrier at him than before.
- A flashback in episode 19 shows a montage of Jin Zixuan trying to court his crush and former fiancée Jiang Yanli by growing a flower, carving a bell, and cooking soup all for her. Thanks to his incompetence, however, each gift was ruined in some way, such as the soup being so sour that he passed out from tasting it. Jiang Yanli appreciated the gesture and, in the end, returned his affection, showing that his efforts weren't in vain.
- Episode 21 mainly comprises a montage of Wei Wuxian's failed attempts to escape the Cloud Recesses. The first two attempts have him purposely breaking the rules in hopes of being kicked out, but Lan Wangji stops him by casting a freezing spell on him. The last attempt has Wei Wuxian tricking him into drinking alcohol (which is against the rules) so that he can blackmail him into letting himself leave, and Lan Wangji just drunkenly ties him up.
- Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Episode 3 begins with a montage of Wolffy's attempts to use a vaulting pole to get past the Goat Village gate, with his three attempts falling flat - first, he crashes offscreen; then, he hits a beehive and gets chased by bees; and finally, he flies into the gate rather than above it.
Comic Books
- "Audition (1954)": Ethel has desired to be in Phil Vitale's All-Girl Orchestra for years. She gets rejected for unclear, unsatisfying reasons, so her follow-up plan is to stalk Phil Vitale, showing up wherever he goes and getting a firm "NO!" to her request each time.
- Bruce Wayne: Not Super:
- After Bruce decides to make a costume based on a scary animal, the next couple of pages show him in unthreatening and/or impractical animal costumes (like a cobra with no arm holes).
- A montage of Bruce testing the original bat gadgets shows him tasering himself or almost being hit by the first batarang that comes back at him.
- Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith. The Mask of Momin is a helmet that once belonged to the Sith Mad Artist Lord Momin. It's imbued with his personality, which possesses anyone who wears it. Darth Vader uses Lord Momin to construct a castle that can focus the Dark Side of the Force, only to execute him when the first design fails, take the helmet, and put it on one of his stormtroopers. Cue a series of panels where Momin assures Vader that this design will work, whereupon the design collapses into a puddle of lava or blows up. The next panel shows the Mask on a completely different mook (and, in one case, a lava flea) who is assuring Vader of the same thing.
Fan Works
- Let's just say Italy experienced one in Gankona, Unnachgiebig, Unità as he tried to seek advice as to who he should choose. Let's just say he didn't get any help until he visited Austria who tells him to choose both Germany ''and'' Japan.
- Naru-Hina Chronicles: When Naruto asks Sai to think about the similarities between all the girls he dated, it leads to a panel showing eight girls (one of them being Ino) slapping Sai on his face in the same way.
- Oni Ga Shiku Series: After Izuku declares to the entire school that he's going to win in the upcoming Sports Festival, he decides that he needs to train. However, since none of the people he usually trains with are around, he instead chooses to find a job in Kamurocho, saying, "How hard can it be?" Cue literally everyone he knows telling him they have nothing lined up.
- The Ultimate Hope is a long conga line of every single murder motive Monokuma can think up, either failing to have any effect or making the students even better friends than they were before.
Films — Animation
- In An American Tail: Fievel Goes West there is a montage of Tiger training under Wiley Burp, bumbling through each exercise until he finally gets things right.
- The Brave Little Toaster has a montage of the appliances' failed attempts at finding ways of travelling out of the cabin.
- Cars 3 has a montage of Cruz trying and failing to keep up with Lightning on Fireball Beach as she learns to drive on the wet sand.
- Chicken Run starts with a montage of Ginger's plans to break out of the farm, each one ending with her being stuck in solitary confinement as punishment.
- This happens with Gru in Despicable Me 1 when he tries to barge into Vector's house for stealing his Shrink Ray. Immediately, every time Vector sees Gru trying to break in, he uses mechanisms in his house (e.g., boxing gloves, a shark, missiles) to get rid of him.
- The Emoji Movie: Gane is struggling to find the correct password to get past the firewall, and keeps getting blasted with explosions.
- Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation has a montage of Ericka ignoring Abraham Van Helsing's plans and going to great lengths to kill Drac herself as he dances around the dock of the Legacy while remaining blissfully unaware of her presence, but her attempts are ruined by unwanted interference from Blobby:
- The first time, she aims a flare gun at Drac and fires, but Blobby walks in front of Drac and he gets hit instead, zooming into the sky and exploding into bits of goo.
- The second time, she dangles a boat on a rope above Drac, intending to knock him off the ship into the ocean; once she cuts the rope though, Drac has escaped and the boat knocks Blobby off instead.
- The third time, she operates a crane with a heavy crate and swings it at Drac, but he unknowingly steps out of the way to see some dolphins, and Blobby is the one who gets hit, sinks underwater through the ship's engine, launches into the sky, and lands back on the deck.
- Kung Fu Panda 1: Po's many unsuccessful attempts to get into the audience that gathered to see the selection of the Dragon Warrior are compiled into a montage up until his fireworks idea.
- The Lion King 1 ½: During the "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" sequence, Timon and Pumbaa are shown trying to stop Simba and Nala's romance in various ways so they don't lose Simba as their friend. All their attempts fail spectacularly and only make it even more romantic.
- The Man Called Flintstone: Two songs during the movie feature these:
- An antagonistic example occurs in "The Happy Sounds of Pareé". While the Flintstones and Rubbles tour Paris, Ali and Bobo keep attempting to take out Fred with increasingly complex plots, only for them to backfire on themselves.
- "Pensate Amore" takes place in a Fantasy Sequence with Fred and Wilma in a medieval setting. All of Fred's attempts to reach Wilma on the balcony of a tower fail. When it looks like Wilma has given up on him, Fred walks away sad, but Wilma sends little angels who carry Fred to her.
- Mulan's "I'll Make a Man Out of You" opens with a montage of all the soldiers trying and failing to retrieve Shang's arrow from the top of a pole.
- Quest for Camelot starts with the young heroine's father telling her the story of Excalibur, with a brief montage of men trying and failing to pull it from the stone before the future King Arthur succeeds.
- Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Dunk for Future: The Training Montage that precedes the big game starts as one, with everything from Paddi ripping his pants to Sparky thinking it would be a good idea to play his Nintendo Switch while exercising. It gets better, and everyone can actually master the techniques.
- Secret Magic Control Agency: After their initial attempt to access the SMCA base through the hair salon due to being transformed into children, there's a montage of Hansel and Gretel trying various other methods of sneaking inside... and each time, they get kicked out.
- The Super Mario Bros. Movie: To prove himself skilled enough to go on a quest with Princess Peach, Mario is made to complete an obstacle course (which Peach easily gets through in one try to demonstrate). Cue Mario failing, rather painfully, dozens of times attempting the obstacle course all the way from sunset until sunrise. He never gets it (even with a super mushroom), but his Determinator attitude impresses Peach enough to let him come along anyway.
- Tangled has one of Rapunzel trying to shove the unconscious Flynn into her wardrobe. Even when she finally succeeds, his fingers are still sticking out.
- Winnie the Pooh (2011): Christopher Robin issues a contest to see who can find the perfect replacement for Eeyore's tail. Pooh is up first, suggesting his Pooh-coo clock, but it doesn't go well; Piglet then suggests the red balloon that follows the gang, but that doesn't work either. This leads the narrator to say they tried a great many things, all of which failed hilariously, until they ran out of things to try.
- Zootopia (2016): The beginning has Judy trying to make it through a series of obstacle courses based on Zootopia's regions. She is buried in sand in the desert one, slips down a wall of ice in the tundra one, falls off the monkey bars in the jungle course, and falls into a (bear-sized) toilet when she tries to use the bathroom. With the coach shouting "you're dead!" every time she falls.
Films — Live-Action
- In A Knight's Tale, William's attempt to become a master jouster is at first fraught with failure, as he tries repeatedly to grab a ring with his lance or hit the shield of a practice dummy, to his friends' increasing dismay and frustration. At one point, they comment that he actually seems to be getting worse, and even one of his victories leads to him being put in danger of drowning. After he finally succeeds in his training, the film jumps to his first tournament, where he barely scrapes by with a win.
- Ace Ventura: Pet Detective has one showing Ace struggling to see which member of the 1984 Miami Dolphins team likely abducted the Dolphins' team mascot, Snowflake.
- The Amazing Spider-Man 2: After an encounter with Electro overloads his web shooters, Peter is shown trying to find a way to keep that from happening, resulting in him repeatedly making batteries explode and nearly starting a fire.
- In Beach Party, Sutwell attempts Awesomeness by Analysis by doing calculations in the sand before his first attempt at surfing, but forgets to carry the two, resulting in a montage of him repeatedly falling off his surfboard.
- In Hulu's original movie Boss Level, there's a compilation showcasing Roy meeting his demise in various absurd ways, all due to his own foolishness.
- Seong-geun's Robinsonade in Castaway on the Moon starts as this, as he first attempts to hunt and catch food on the island. He tries to rig up a spear to catch fish, using a stick and a fork, but spears his own foot. Later, he gets much better at it.
- Cool Runnings:
- The first Training Montage consists of shots of the team learning push starts. Nearly all of their attempts end in crashes, face plants, or people running after the sled.
- A variation occurs when they're trying to find someone to sponsor their team, which leads to a montage of various company representatives all laughing at them.
- Eddie the Eagle has two:
- It starts with young Eddie trying out different sports in preparation for his Olympic career and failing miserably at each, eventually filling a box with pairs of glasses he's broken in the process.
- Later, there's one of his attempts on the ski jump with crash after crash after crash.
- Combined with Death Montage for Black Comedy in Edge of Tomorrow. Cage is a New Meat soldier stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop in which he's killed in battle only to wake up alive the previous day. He finds a legendary Action Girl who was once in the same situation and asks her to train him to survive the battlefield. Cue crippling injuries from the training robots, whereupon she shoots him in the head to reset everything to start. Wake up, get trained, get injured, Boom, Headshot!, wake up, get trained, make it to the battlefield, Yet Another Stupid Death, wake up, get trained, get injured, Boom, Headshot!, wake up, Boom, Headshot!, wake up...
- Early on in Enola Holmes 2, there is a sequence of Enola's potential clients rejecting her due to being a child, a woman, or just preferring her more accomplished brother.
- In Get a Job, Will has one while trying to find money after LA Weekly laid him off: first, he takes up a job as a motel manager but stupidly let prostitutes and their pimp rent a room which got him fired (he wasn't thinking straight really, all he cared about was "When's my first paycheck?" and overlooked just whom he rented a room to); then, he asks his dad for money but it turns out by some hugely bad coincidence that his dad was recently laid off; then, he tries to make a sexy video of Jillian and put it on the Internet.
- Great Balls of Fire! (1989) has one which chronicles the decline of Jerry Lee Lewis's career after his marriage to his underage cousin was revealed.
- Groundhog Day has several of these. There's one for Phil's failed attempts at wooing Rita (with repeated slaps in the face), another for his attempts to save the old hobo's life, and a particularly morbid one of him repeatedly committing suicide to try and escape the time loop.note
- In another case of a "Groundhog Day" Loop, Happy Death Day has Tree investigating who might be the assassin. Who is always there to kill her once someone is crossed off the suspect list (and not only the deaths are comedic, but the montage is scored by a pop song about empowerment). The sequel has Tree helping the guys who are trying to close the loop, them failing, and then her indulging in hilarious suicides to restart the day.
- Holiday Inn: Used to depict Jim discovering the hard way that a farmer's life isn't for him, either. His attempts to haul firewood, milk cows, and herd pigs all end in embarrassment and pain.
- Hysteria (2011): Dr. Granville's search for a new private practice employer after getting fired from several hospitals doesn't go very well. It takes him several tries before he finally finds someone desperate enough to hire him (Dr. Dalrymple).
- In La La Land, Mia has a series of failed auditions by presenting a montage of her.
- In The Legend of Johnny Lingo, after seeing Tama ride a sailing canoe with relative ease, Johnny Lingo tries to do the same, but he does it with much less ease, and he falls into the water more.
- Lights, Camera, Action! Moviemaking Mania: With only 48 hours to go before "The Best Movie Ever!" airs on television, our main characters work around the clock trying to make sure the film is finished on time before then. Despite the high-energy music playing throughout the montage, most of the footage is less about our characters working on the film and more about them doing martial arts, cartwheels, solving Rubik's cubes, or reading books on the toilet, among other things.
- Mannequin: After being fired from his initial stockboy job, he goes through a series of other short-lived jobs, which he is also bad at due to his artistic side.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Iron Man (2008) has a montage of Tony Stark working on parts to the Iron Man suit and having spectacular failure after spectacular failure.
- Early in Iron Man 2, Tony has to clear a Senate subcommittee hearing, as the U.S. government is nervous about his singular control of the Iron Man technology and the possibility that it might get into unscrupulous hands, especially now that other countries are making their own efforts to create their versions of Tony's suits. To demonstrate how far behind in the race the others are, Tony takes control of their screens and shows what those attempts have amounted to: sheer property damage and/or severe injury to the test pilot.
Tony: Wow. Yeah, I'd say, uh, most countries: five-ten years away. Hammer Industries: twenty.
- Avengers: Age of Ultron has the Avengers (except Natasha) try to lift Thor's hammer as a party game. Banner fakes Hulking Out, Rogers manages to budge it a littlenote- spoilers!, and Stark... Stark tries it barehanded, with his gloves' retrorockets, and even has Rhodes join in.
- The Muppets Take Manhattan has the "You Can't Take No For An Answer" number, a song about how you need to keep trying no matter what, set to a montage of Kermit's group being rejected by every Broadway producer and, in some cases, forcibly thrown out.
- Now You See It... (2005): Each of the magicians Allison considers before Danny is shown bungling their tricks in a montage.
- In October Sky there's a long sequence of experimental rockets exploding on the launchpad before the protagonists are shown figuring out what the problem is.
- On Any Sunday has an entire scene that consists of a montage of spectacular high-speed motorcycle crashes.
- Our Lips Are Sealed: The FBI's constant relocating of the Parkers (and all because the twins can't keep their mouths shut about their family being in the Witness Protection Program) is presented as this.
- The Right Stuff: A rather spectacular one of rocket after rocket exploding in the run-up to actually launching anything into space.
- RoboCop 2 demonstrates early on why the hero is the only one of his kind: repeated attempts to make another Robo Cop result in cyborgs that immediately self-destruct with the realization of what they have become, kill the scientists that made them, or both. Eventually, an executive realizes they need someone with a powerful survival instinct who can be coerced into taking orders.
- Secretariat: When Penny and her crew are trying to get commitments to breeding rights for Secretariat, with phone call after phone call, sending Ron to talk to other owners, and ending with a paper with the "No" column filled, because no one is willing to invest $100,000 in an as-of-yet unproven horse.
- Singin' in the Rain has a sequence, during the filming of The Dueling Cavalier as a talkie, in which the studio technicians experiment with ways of wiring Lina for sound. Numerous takes are ruined by the microphone not clearly picking up Lina's voice or picking up other sounds (at one point, her heartbeat comes through loud and clear), and then the wire picks up Lina and upends her with a careless pull.
- Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 1. Peter has a How Do I Shot Web? montage where he tries to figure out how to, well, shoot web.
- Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines opens with a comedic montage of Red Skelton and other people trying flying machines through the ages, which all fail.
- In the short film called Time Freak, Stillman, embarrassed about how he freaked out when he went to the dry cleaners and found his shirt wasn't ready, decides to use his machine to travel back in time and be nicer to the proprietor. But he keeps losing his cool, leading to a montage of several trips to the dry cleaner's, where Stillman keeps freaking out. Later, he keeps trying to be cool and witty and impress Debbie, but he keeps failing, leading to another montage. (On one occasion, he has exchanged his usually rumpled clothes for a nice suit.)
- Tommy Boy: Before Tommy manages to find his groove, we are shown a montage of him and Richard being repeatedly rejected while attempting to sell Callahan brake pads to various auto part dealers.
- In Violent Night, Santa's second scene is a montage of his deliveries showing how far Christmas has fallen and just why he's lost the spirit. Highlights include a Christmas tree with nothing but unwrapped Amazon boxes under it, stockings filled with money, and a man who drank himself to sleep right next to his child's crib (Santa gave the kid a present, then stole the dad's beer and left some coal in exchange).
- Waitress! (1981) has a montage of Andrea being rejected from various jobs, acting and otherwise, ending with her and her belongings being thrown out of a theater door. A man yells, "Hey! Lady! Can't you take a hint? The answer is..." The Freelance Shame Squad yells "No!" We then get a brief montage of different people telling her "No," ending with the gathered crowd again.
- WarGames. After David Lightman learns of the possibility of a back door into the system, he wants to hack into it. There's a long montage of him trying various methods to discover the password needed to open the back door. In a later scene, after he sees a video of Professor Falken and his deceased son, he realizes that the password is the son's name: Joshua. And it works.
Literature
- Demon Lord 2099: Veltol repeatedly dies in the first area of a Souls-like RPG and blames his sudden lack of familiarity with the controller.
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Big Shot: Greg's not excited about trying out for the basketball team, based on his previous experiences with school Field Days. Cue three consecutive illustrations of him on his 32nd strike in baseball, accidentally falling off the diving block on a swim team, and failing to block a puck in hockey. He says that he's been trying to block out these memories.
- In Moonflowers, this is Played for Drama. The cast is preparing to rescue seven unknown victims from The Wild Hunt, and the Irish Army sends a hundred infantry to match up with the Wild Hunt's hundred cavalry riders. They're quite pleased to find out that the Wild Hunt is now down by a third... only for Rickard to say that they should have sent at least double the soldiers to a hundred cavalry, especially since modern soldiers haven't even FOUGHT cavalry. The cast soon calls up whichever civilian riders, mounted police, and reenactors can get to Mary's Cape by morning, and when said riders find out that the Wild Hunt's leader jumped his horse over a speeding car, while another rider jumped OFF his horse onto that car, half of them know they're outclassed and bow out right there. The other half has to suffer through this trope, since few civilian horses will put up with this level of stunt-riding, and none of them are getting shot at or intentionally harmed.
- Ready Player One: Among the data that Wade steals from IOI are numerous videos of the Sixers trying and failing to open the Crystal Gate. It is stated that the Sixers have spent the past several days performing increasingly absurd actions in hopes that doing them while reciting the words above the Gate will work.
Live-Action TV
- Used frequently on The Amazing Race with some of the harder tasks. After establishing the difficulty the team or teams are having with the task, they will show the teams failing the task multiple times in quick succession, with a counter on screen showing the number of attempts the teams are making to complete the task.
- The Good Place: In episode 2 of the second season, there's a lengthy montage of Michael's 803 attempts to make his "convince four humans that they're in the Good Place while subtly torturing them" plan work with him being unable to keep Eleanor from figuring out the truth every single time no matter what he does. Except for the time it was Jason.
Michael: [aghast] Jason figured it out? [Jason grins] Jason? This is a real low point. Yeah, this one hurts. Ow.
- When the MythBusters tested the claim that dental floss can cut through prison bars, Grant initially tried to build a floss-bot out of things a prisoner could plausibly get his hands on. Cue one Failure Montage, complete with bleeped-out swearing and frustrated throwing of robot parts.
- Russian Roulette: There are two official, aired montages of contestants dropping through the stage after giving an incorrect answer and losing the ensuing game of Russian Roulette.note
- Side Hustle: "Wreck-It Rex" has a montage of Lex constantly falling off the ladder at a carnival game at Shady Pete's Carnival when trying to win a new toy truck for Rex.
- Played with in Takeshi's Castle. A common way to advance the show past a straightforward non-group challenge is to combine footage of several people failing it with one or two succeeding.
- Taskmaster: A few occasions, most notably:
- Nish Kumar's attempt to chip a football through a basketball hoop is initially shown as though he had done it the first time, leading to wild cheering. Alex then casually reveals an extended montage of Nish's comically numerous failures before that.
- In "The 75th Question," the live task to guess a guest's first name with yes-or-no questions goes badly off the rails (hence the title), and they have to resort to a Failure Montage to pare it down enough for broadcast, a first for a live task.
- Tetangga Masa Gitu?: In the episode with Ruly Ernando, Ruly challenges Adi to a ping-pong match. Once Ruly decides to stop holding back, we get a montage of Adi failing to return Ruly's smashes.
- One episode of The Tomorrow People (2013) has Stephen attempting to access "Limbo" by trying to learn to stop time whilst teleporting. We get a nice montage of him and John trying to work that out before concluding that they need a new approach.
Podcasts
- Episode two of Mystery Show features Starlee calling at least four different bookstores looking for a copy of her client's book. It's just as impossible as her client had told her.
Professional Wrestling
- Jay Briscoe got one before Supercard Of Honor VII in 2013, showcasing every last one of his failures to win a singles title in Ring of Honor since the promotion started.
Theatre
- Played for Drama in Jasper in Deadland; the opening scene is a montage of almost everyone in Jasper's life demanding an explanation for his various failures.
Theme Parks
- A brief one is shown in Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem at Universal Studios when Gru plays clips of his earlier attempts at making the "Minion Gun" work, all of which end up turning the volunteers into distorted-looking Minions.
Video Games
- Super Meat Boy has this as a feature. After you complete a level, it gives you a simultaneous replay of every attempt.
Web Animation
- Brawl of the Objects: In "Unprepared to be Scared", there is a montage of Party Hat (who is a ghost) trying to scare Baguette out of the haunted house they were in as part of the challenge. Party Hat tries to trap Baguette in a foot snare, but fails. Party Hat tries to set up a Jump Scare by hiding in a Spooky Painting, but fails again. Then he succeeds when he jumps out and says "Boo" grouchily.
- The Demented Cartoon Movie! has the ten-part montage "DiScOverIng thE meAninG oF THE ZEEKY WORDS!", a mission to Mars that fails at a different stage each time.
- Derpy's Cutie Mark: Derpy tries doing many things to get her cutie mark, including baking, window cleaning, gardening, painting, and cello playing.
- Homestar Runner:
- The welcome speech is this. A production crew tries to get Homestar to introduce the viewer to the website, but, being Homestar, he keeps messing up his lines, wording his lines like he's a sea captain and saying them in Spanish at some points, and when he messes up his lines at the 126th take, Strong Bad hits his Rage Breaking Point and shoves him out of the way and introduces the viewer to the site himself, saying that "he's the real reason the viewer was on the site"
- The short "Fluffy Puff Marshmallows" is similar, again having Homestar mess up his lines while starring in a commercial for the eponymous brand. It takes at least 854 takes for him to get his lines right.
- Red vs. Blue:
- When Wyoming, York, and Maine are squaring off against the new Freelancer, their repeated failures are presented rapidly, showing just how comically outmatched they are by Tex.
- In season 12, the main cast is trying to get Felix as part of a training exercise. None of the attempts even comes close.
- In season 14 episode "The Triplets", interspersed with the top-ranking agents of Project Freelancer training, we also have a montage of the worst agents of Freelancer failing to get anything right in their sessions as a counterpoint.
Webcomics
- The opening of Blood Stain has Elliot trying and failing to either get or hold down various jobs, ultimately driving her to take the job offer of one Dr. Stein.
- In Champions of Far'aus, story chapter #4, Daryl's attempts to catch a troublesome kappa are shown as a montage.
- One strip from Darwin Carmichael is Going to Hell (as seen in the page image) is a montage of Darwin's various attempts to improve his karma via community service. Still, all his efforts to improve the world end in failure and are appreciated by no one.
- In the El Goonish Shive story "Question Mark", after Sarah discovers that she has a magic mark, there is a brief montage of her trying and failing to do various things with magic.
- In a Latchkey Kingdom chapter parodying Dark Souls I, there's a montage of Jane and Willa respawning after failed attempts to defeat the Capra Demon, showing Jane's cheery resolve turn into sobbing despair.
- Sailor Ranko: A Training Montage of Ranma training Akane to fight their way to the portal is followed by them spending several weeks trying and failing to reach the portal.
- Dank from Sneaky Goblins fails spectacularly at killing a wild boar for breakfast.
- Twisted Tropes: The strip shows Starscream trying to poison, shoot, and Vorpal Pillow Megatron and comically missing every time.
- What, Were You Raised By Wolves?: When the wild girl grows up, she leaves her adoptive family's home and tries to find work as a grocery store worker, a waitress, and a mail carrier, all of which she gets fired from after assaulting or scaring various people. With every new job, she looks more and more downcast. She decides she doesn't belong in human society and decides to return to the wild.
Web Original
- The Angry Video Game Nerd regularly does this when a game is challenging, showing clips of the increasingly frustrated Nerd repeatedly failing a section.
- Dumb Ways to Die has a series of people failing to live.
- Jet Lag: The Game: Season 5 features Sam and Toby in two of these: the first in a task to kick a rugby ball through the equivalent of the goalposts, and the second, trying to throw a gumboot. Appropriately, it's set to "The Blue Danube". Adam and Ben also have one when trying to complete the handstand roadblock.
- j0rts: In his quest to find Moblins in Skyward Sword, there's a montage with quirky, awkward music as he repeatedly dies and gets hurt multiple times in the same world.
- Many Lets Players playing Nintendo Hard games, particularly, will often have a montage of deaths as they try to get past particularly aggravating segments.
Western Animation
- In the series premiere of 6teen called "Take This Job and Squeeze It", except for Jen, the others fail their job interviews by doing or saying something wrong. Unsurprisingly, they didn't get their jobs. Jen offers to give them her soon-to-be former job without hassle, but they laugh and leave, saying they still have some pride.
- Action League NOW! had a Clip Show involving the Action League standing before the council to see whether they should retain their hero status or be declared a danger to the public for their incompetence. Each of the Leaguers' flashbacks to their past exploits doesn't really help their case. Still, the icing on the cake is Flesh's recollections, presented as a montage showing how his clumsiness or carelessness only did more harm than good to the people he was trying to help.
- The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius:
- In "Sheen's Brain", Jimmy gives Sheen a series of multiplication questions, and Sheen keeps getting distracted, prompting Carl to shock him whenever his mind wanders.
- In the series premiere of Amphibia episode "Anne or Beast?", this happens in the scene where Sprig asks Hop Pop why he trusts Polly (who's still practically a baby) more, and we flashback to several disastrous acts of irresponsibility on his part.
Sprig: OK, so yesterday was a bad day...
- In the Arthur episode "D.W. on Ice", D.W. falls several times while trying to teach James ice skating.
- Ben 10: In "The Big Tick", Ben goes through most of his transformations while trying to stop The Great One, failing each time.
- Big City Greens:
- In the episode "Clubbed", Tilly and Andromeda's failed attempts to "cure" Gloria's "amnesia" at the nightclub.
- In another episode, "Chipwrecked", Chip Whistler goes through various schemes to sabotage the Green family like something out of a Road Runner and Coyote cartoon, the last one of which is a Painted Tunnel, Real Train, as shown in the flashbacks. And they all end with him getting crushed under a billboard.
- Bob's Burgers:
- In the episode "The Unnatural", Gene tries to play baseball and does everything wrong as we get to the montage.
- Also, another episode from season 8 called "Sleeping with the Frenemy has Tina's attempts to get a badge met with a montage of failures. First, she plants a flower in the middle of a soccer field during a game. Second, she tries picking up trash at the beach until she accidentally punctures the bag, and a receding tide pulls all the trash into the ocean. Finally, she tries to help Edith cross the street, only for Edith to shout that she wasn't crossing and yell for the police.
- By the next episode "The Hurt Soccer", we get a montage of the Blue Dragons scoring four more points on the Gold Dragons as the team does a terrible job at stopping Kayla and Mara doing a terrible job at guarding the goal.
- In the Boy Girl Dog Cat Mouse Cheese episode "Lights! Camera! Action!", one montage plays of Cat continuously screwing up her scene for the Aliens movie.
- In the episode from Captain Flamingo called "Door Stop in the Name of Love", Otto attempts to help Milo gain muscles to impress Ruth Ann. In contrast, Milo helps Otto try to impress Tabitha, who isn't sticking his fist up his nose. However, all of these attempts were unsuccessful: Otto painting a picture (Milo tells Otto to paint a tree, but he paints a thumbs-up instead), Milo running through a tire obstacle course (Milo accidentally slips on one of the tires, causing him to fall), and Otto is playing the drums (by using his hands instead of drumsticks, he causes the drums to break).
- Cat Burglar: After you lose your first life, Rowdy will chastise you for being careless with his lives before showing you why you’re only getting three lives instead of a cartoon cat's usual nine. His previous lives were lost, respectively, by being blown up by a TNT detonator, having a wall collapse on him, throwing a brick at a store window only for it to bounce back at him, be subjected to a Backwards-Firing Gun gag while holding up a bank, get attacked by a Killer Gorilla in an old lady's purse, and being executed via electric chair.
Rowdy: "Well, there's a reason they don't call me 'lucky cat'..."
- In the first episode of Netflix's animated show Centaurworld, called "Hello Rainbow Road", one montage occurs when Horse tries (and repeatedly fails) to get through the magical dome over the valley.
- Chowder: In "The Flibber Flabber Diet", Mung attempts to make the titular food more palatable, which makes Truffles spit out of Mung's face, which does not taste like anything better for her diet, leading to the montage of him trying assorted recipes...without much success, and a lot of Flibber Flabber in his face.
- The Cuphead Show!: In "Sweater Luck Next Time", the Devil keeps appearing in every place where he intends to steal Cuphead's soul, only to get constantly zapped by the protective invisible sweater each time.
- In the first episode from season 2 called "Jailbroken", Cuphead and Mugman try to escape the prison in various ways, but they always fail when caught.
- In DC Super Hero Girls (2019) episode "#ScrambledEggs", right after the assignment is given, several pairs of students immediately fail it:
- Diana and Karen fail to notice their egg rolling off Diana's desk.
- Leslie pulls a sleight of hand that causes her egg to be crushed when Tatsu goes in for a handshake, on purpose.
- Jessica looks forward to the assignment, so Pamela eats her own egg out of spite.
- Barry assumes that Carter, being a bird-man, can literally sit on the egg to keep it safe, and puts it on his seat. The egg gets smashed when Carter shifts slightly.
- In the Dexter's Laboratory episode called "Don't Be a Hero", Dexter tries out superpowers that test his abilities. Still, it backfires on him or screwed up the abilities that have been experimented with by showing a montage of him.
- In the Donkey Kong Country (1996) cartoon episode "The Legend of the Crystal Coconut", Klump and Krusha's attempts to return the Crystal Coconut play out over one of these. It takes them a total of 19 tries, most of them unseen, before Cranky takes the Coconut back.
- In Dora the Explorer episode "¡Rápido, Tico!", after Dora, Boots, and Tico cross the crocodile lake, Swiper tries to use items (a pole vault, a trampoline, and a jet ski) across the lake to avoid crocodiles from getting harm. Still, he failed as a result, and he fell into the mud, except for the last one, which worked properly to get across right away to catch Boots' fire engine toy on top of the Snowy Mountain.
- DuckTales (2017): In "Whatever Happened to Donald Duck?!", Donald and Penumbra stumble upon Lunaris' secret war room and view a tape of Lunaris testing out potential rockets for his planned invasion of Earth. His first two blew up when he tried to launch them (getting himself injured in the process), and the third rocket launched perfectly, but the robot dummy inside couldn't survive the trip, which was why he stole Della's Spear of Selene blueprints for his fleet.
- The Fairly OddParents!: In the episode "Deja Vu", Timmy decides to prank Francis with a water balloon as payback for what he did the other day; however, Timmy's aim is constantly off, and he keeps missing and hitting several other unsuspecting victims and trying again thanks to Cosmo as a reset watch. He misses a total of four times before finally nailing Francis.
- Gravity Falls:
- "The Land Before Swine" has a brief flashback montage of Soos messing up at various chores as evidence to why Dipper would want to exclude the handyman from the mission to rescue Waddles.
- In "Soos and the Real Girl", there's a montage of Soos trying (and failing) to flirt with women (and an androgynous goth hanging around outside "Edgy on Purpose") at the Gravity Falls Mall.
- The Great North: "Keep Beef-lievin' Adventure": when Wolf and Honeybee take Jerry to experience their Alaskan lifestyle, he's having a difficult time trying them out.
- In the second episode of I ♡ Arlo called "A Memory of Pizza," it opens with Arlo completely messing up his line during Tony's video, which doubles as Hilarious Outtakes.
- In the Inside Job (2021) episode "Project Reboot", in a flashback, we see a series of J.R. and Rand's failed inventions, the dog-walking bot and therapy robot require Disposing of a Body. At the same time, the weather-control missile blows up the only electric car factory.
- Invincible Fight Girl: In the episode "The Rusty Rumble", the gang's attempt to find Andy a decent opponent quickly turns into this.
- There are two episodes from Johnny Test in season 4:
- From the episode "Dark Johnny":
- Dark Vegan gets two, one showing him struggling to hold down a job and another showing him failing to kill Johnny.
- Johnny, Dukey, and Dark Vegan all have one in their attempts to take Susan and Mary’s spaceship for the latter to return to his home planet with his family.
- In the episode called "Johnny Double Coupons", Johnny tries to test all 132 of his sisters’ experiments, all of which inevitably end in him getting injured.
- From the episode "Dark Johnny":
- In the eighth episode of Justice League Action called "Galaxy Jest", The Joker tells one lame joke after another and gets no laughs whatsoever as per the montage, until Mongol's patience is finally exhausted.
- Kaeloo:
- In Episode 80, a montage is shown of Stumpy losing at beach volleyball. The final scene in the montage makes it look like he's going to hit the ball finally, but he fails that, too, in an Epic Fail.
- In Episode 233, Kaeloo gets turned into a giant non-sapient frog, and Mr. Cat and Quack-Quack must capture her to return her to her normal form. A montage ensues of them trying various methods devised by Mr. Cat, all of which fail horribly and end with Mr. Cat getting injured.
- The Kim Possible episode "Blush" begins with several quick scenes of Dr. Drakken gloating at Kim that she is about to witness his ultimate victory, followed by Kim derailing his plan as usual. Each defeat required less and less effort on Kim's part, elevating Drakken's humiliation alongside.
- Combined with Travel Montage in The Legend of Korra, as Team Avatar travels the Earth Kingdom trying to recruit the newly-awakened Airbenders, and showing Tenzin's utter lack of salesmanship as he unsuccessfully tries to convince each one to learn the Air Nomads ways. True to Tenzin's usual form, each sales pitch he gives is (technically) accurate, but framed in the worst possible way for each specific candidate. He tells the overweight glutton about their vegetarian diet, the overly fashionable one about their uniform robes, the materialistic one about their ascetic lifestyle, and the parents of a child about their tradition of tattoos.
- Looney Tunes: The Roadrunner and Coyote short "To Beep or Not to Beep" ends with the Coyote getting a catapult with which he intends to flatten his nemesis... somehow, that is, if he can get it to work right, since it keeps landing on him. No matter where he stands, the boulder (or another part) lands on him, until he finally hides underground, at which point the thing doesn't do anything at all.
- The Loud House: The Lynn's Table commercial in "Cooked!" begins with a montage of Lincoln being denied a reservation at various restaurants, complete with him frowning at the camera with a "REJECTED!" sign being stamped across the screen.
- Martha Speaks: In "Maestro Martha", the instruments Martha fails to play are set to a montage.
- Molly of Denali: In the episode "Snowboarding Qyah Style," Molly gets a brief one while trying repeatedly to learn how to snowboard.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic seems to like this one a lot.
- "The Show Stoppers" has a montage early on featuring the Cutie Mark Crusaders trying and failing at various tasks in attempts to get their Cutie Marks.
- "The Cutie Pox" has one where the CMC try to cheer up Apple Bloom after another failed cutie mark venture. Her response for each is "No, it won't!".
- The Mane Cast during the "What My Cutie Mark is Telling Me" song in "Magical Mystery Cure." All of them, save Twilight Sparkle, are shown trying, and failing, to do one another's jobs.
- The Cutie Mark Crusaders, yet again, in the "Hearts as Strong as Horses" song in "Flight to the Finish." In this case, the Failure Montage leads up to eventual success through teamwork.
- "Pinkie Pride" has Pinkie Pie, feeling overshadowed as resident Party Planner Pony, trying out other jobs, including operating room nurse, mailmare, and construction worker.
- Nickelodeon Animated Shorts Program:
- In "Buck 'n Lou and the Night Crew", the titular duo characters try various methods to impress or fit in with the group of loiterers named Crusty Punks, including wearing punk clothes by sewing and attempting "crusty art" by spray-painting on the brick wall (the police, offscreen, thinks it's a graffiti, much of Buck and Lou's shock as they looked at them and run away with police and hiding in the alley), which also fails to win the group over by showing off a montage of them.
- In "Off the Shelf", a quick montage of Max getting fired from various occupations without Ashley's help after he accidentally destroys the library thanks to the Bookshelf Dominoes from earlier, is followed by Max being sent to prison in the next scene.
- In "Buck 'n Lou and the Night Crew
- The Owl House: In the season 3 premiere "Thanks to Them", Willow, Gus, Amity, and Vee look around Gravesfield to try to get more information about the mysterious map they found. They eventually find what they're looking for at the Gravesfield Historical Society, but before that, they visit three other places without success.
- At the costume shop, the shopkeeper runs them out of the store when Gus and Willow play around with the outfits and cause a scene, and she looks at them in confusion when Willow tries to pay her with a gold coin from the Boiling Isles.
- When they go to the library, Amity—who works in a library on the Boiling Isles with living filing cabinets that require bribery or gestures of respect to be persuaded to open—is confused when they don't respond to anything she does. When a little girl walks up and opens one, her shock and subsequent embarrassment cause everyone there to stare at her.
- They reluctantly try visiting the giraffes at the zoo, but it barely acknowledges their presence. They're about to leave, but Willow takes a picture of it first, prompting it to reveal its "freaky" insect-like insides and roar at them and making all four of them scream.
- The Patrick Star Show: In "Fun & Done!", SpongeBob and Patrick show Andy a bunch of fun stuff like action figures, television, and kazoos to find something that'll unleash his imagination. None of it works.
- In The Powerpuff Girls (1998) episode "Bubblevision", Bubbles lost her eyesight, so she needs to get glasses to be clear. Before this happens, a montage of Professor Utonium gives various tests for Bubbles' eyesight. But her eyes are so poor that she can't even see what Utonium's doing.
- Razzberry Jazzberry Jam: “Calling All Jazzberries” contains a Wile E. Coyote-esque montage of Louis’s various outlandish attempts to meet Salinger face-to-face (jetpacks and hot air balloons were involved, among other things), and Salinger’s equally outlandish methods of thwarting him.
- Regular Show had several failure montages for Mordecai and Rigby in different characters, some prominent examples being:
- Their training montage with the God of Basketball is so full of failures that he declares them to be the worst Basketball players in history ("Slam Dunk").
- Trying to clean up the park's abandoned ballroom, while ghosts undo everything they do ("T.G.I. Tuesday").
- In the Saving Me episode "The Shoes Make the Man", Young Bennett plays Boot Ball when Old Bennett forces the younger self to play sports at his school. Since the boots are magnetic, Young Bennett struggles with them, which keep magnetizing around him, making it hard for him to play a sports game.
- In The Simpsons episode "Homer the Smithers", Homer is Mr. Burns's assistant instead of Smithers, who's on vacation, and Homer's making Burns breakfast. Every single meal he's trying to make ends up catching fire, even when he pours milk on cereals.
- There are several scenes in the show showing Homer industriously at work in his workshop, resulting in a sorry tangle of lumber and nails.
- In the Sitting Ducks episode "Ducks for Hire", one montage shows Ed, Oly, and Waddle screwing up the various jobs they try to take on.
- SpongeBob SquarePants has done this all the time:
- In "Pickles", SpongeBob has trouble doing things right, and there's a montage of him trying to figure out how to get into bed.
- In "Missing Identity", SpongeBob tries to retrace his steps to find his missing name tag by repeating everything he did that morning, from tripping down the stairs to tasting Gary's food to saying hi to Patrick. Unfortunately, Patrick keeps flubbing his lines, meaning that they have to go through the whole thing over and over.
- In "Skill Crane", there is one of Squidward trying but failing miserably to win a prize from the crane.
- In "I Heart Dancing", Squidward forces SpongeBob to copy a three-step performance and not stop until he gets it exactly right, in an attempt to ruin his dance audition out of jealousy. SpongeBob begins practicing, but he cannot do the third step correctly and keeps messing it up; he continues into the night and into the next morning, finally making it... But Squidward wants him to do it again. It is to the point SpongeBob is overworked and finally falls asleep, and cannot wake up in time for the audition.
- In season 9 episode called "Tutor Sauce", as the montage shows, SpongeBob repeatedly failed practice driving with Mr. Krabs by crashing into the Krusty Krab every single time, including a driving simulator that somehow crashes into the Krusty Krab. And yet, the Krusty Krab is instantly rebuilt for no explanatory reasons since, well...
- The season 10 episode "Plankton Retires" begins with a montage of Plankton, who tried to steal the Krabby Patty secret formula, making various failed attempts that caused Krabs to catch or foil him, and retrieve or save it from Plankton's plans, which always end with him suffering Amusing Injuries and Krabs said "Gotcha!"
- In the season 12 episode "Broken Alarm," after SpongeBob accidentally destroys his foghorn alarm clock, which is out of production and beyond repair, he tries out new alarm clocks from the alarm clock store to make sure that he's on time to work at the Krusty Krab. None of these new alarm clocks can wake up SpongeBob, making him always late for work, especially with injury results.
- In "Friendiversary", Squidward is forced to spend the day with an amnesiac SpongeBob to help him regain his memory of Squidward and the combination to Mr. Krabs' safe. What follows is a montage of him reenacting various things they did from past episodes; SpongeBob shrugs and shakes his head at each and every one.
- Star Trek: Lower Decks: "The Spy Humongous": As they continue "Anomaly Consolidation Day", Mariner gets thorns shot into her face from a flower when she tries to smell it, accidentally electrocutes herself from holding an alien artifact improperly, and gets encased in slime on the ceiling from Tendi accidentally spilling a liquid substance out of its container.
- Star Trek: Prodigy: In "Kobayashi", Dal discovers the Kobayashi Maru simulation and decides to take it for a spin. In his attempts to win the simulation, we're constantly shown him getting blown up in various ways. One of those incidents has Dal and Jankom Pog huddled behind the tactical consoles, forcing the hologram simulations of Uhura, Spock, Dr. Crusher, and Odo to hide with them.
Spock: It appears he's lost the capacity for rational decision.
- An amusing cavalcade of failures is demonstrated in Transformers: Animated after Megatron returns from his supposed death in the pilot three-parter, whereupon he promptly executes Starscream. Starscream, in turn, gets an Allspark fragment stuck in his head and is brought back to life as well as an immortal zombie of sorts. Starscream, being Starscream, attempts to assassinate Megatron and fails repeatedly over several minutes (implied to be several hours). Each time Megatron thinks he's rid of Starscream, Starscream returns unfazed to try again, much to Megatron's obvious and increasing annoyance. Starscream can't actually overthrow or assassinate Megatron, and Megatron can't actually get rid of Starscream despite his best efforts and firepower, making this a two-fer montage.
- The The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse episode "Once Upon An Apple" has the Evil Queen Grimhilde trying to eliminate Mickey Mouse for interfering with her plan to murder Snow White (as well as replacing Snow White as the new fairest in the land), with every attempt backfiring on her while he remains blissfully unaware the whole time:
- Grimhilde tries to push Mickey off a bridge, but he unknowingly dodges her (while painting the railing), and she falls.
- She plays a game of bobbing for grenade apples with him. Mickey grabs a pineapple instead while Grimhilde grabs one of the grenade apples, which explodes in her face.
- She throws an axe at him, but he ducks down while watering some flowers. The axe instead hits the tree in front of Mickey, and it gets chopped down, falling onto the Evil Queen.
- Last, but not least, Grimhilde chases Mickey on scooters, with her wielding a spiked flail. Mickey stops at a soup kitchen, while Grimhilde continues down the road. As she turns around, she gets hit by a streetcar.
- WordGirl:
- In the second episode segment called "Two-Brain Highway", one montage of WordGirl failing to stop Dr. Two-Brains from robbing a variety of cheese-related events.
- In season 8 episode "Pineapple of My Eye", one montage of WordGirl and Captain HuggyFace failing to stop Chuck from stealing pineapples in an ice cream parlour, a stopped train, and a pineapple field.
- Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum has three of them in season 2:
- In the second episode of that season, called "I Am Dorothy", Xavier attempts at skateboarding in a hilarious montage. The keyword being attempts.
- In "I Am Norval Morrisseau", Yadina and Xavier try and fail to get the other people's attention about recycling and helping out animals.
- And in "We Are Siegel and Shuster", a montage of Siegel and Shuster creating comics and their ideas getting rejected by the press is seen.
- Young Justice (2010): In "Og Htrof Dna Reuqnoc!", Klarion hops the bus through time and space trying to find Zatanna, but has trouble figuring out the when and where, both metaphorically and almost literally running into the wrong heroes. He finally gets it right by the end of the episode.