Patience is often said to be a virtue, but it's also, in some cases, common sense. Conversely, impatience is not only considered a vice, it's also in some cases a form of stupidity, with people often being guilty of it even in cases in which patience would be a better idea. Some characters with this attitude only act impatient when it comes to performing lengthy tasks or waiting for long periods of time, but some will lack patience even when forced to wait for short periods of time.
Impatience may lead to short-term gains, such as getting things done quickly, but it often has long-term consequences. In professions where safety, quality, or careful consideration is important, rushing through tasks can result in more frequent errors or accidents that require costly corrections down the line. For instance, in the culinary industry, rushing through storage checks might lead to spoiled food and potential health hazards, which can hurt a business’s reputation or lead to legal consequences. Similarly, neglecting safety protocols might lead to accidents that could have been avoided with just a few more moments of patience.
Impatience doesn't always refer to someone who rushes jobs and cuts corners, it's someone who also actively refuses to be patient with others. Impatience often disrupts communication, as the individual might rush others, dismiss their concerns, or fail to explain instructions properly due to a desire to move quickly. Teams work best when there is clear, calm, and open communication. Impatience can hinder this dynamic, creating misunderstandings, tension, or resentment among colleagues. People tend to feel more valued and respected when their time and efforts are acknowledged, rather than when they’re pressured to work faster than needed.
Super-Trope to Leeroy Jenkins. See also A Tragedy of Impulsiveness and Boredom Makes You Dumb. See Oven Logic when impatience causes a character to cook a meal at higher temperatures to complete it faster. Compare Unfinished, Untested, Used Anyway, where impatience causes someone to use a tool or weapon before it's had a chance to be tested; and Obvious Beta, where impatience causes a product to be released before it's actually ready. Overlaps with Greed Makes You Dumb if someone's impatient in regards to making money or Cutting the Knot if someone's quick solution to a problem ends up backfiring on them. Someone who has impatience as a Fatal Flaw might be guilty of this. Contrast with The Ditherer, in which being too indecisive is portrayed in a bad light.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Advertising
- Dumb Ways to Die: Bonehead is too impatient to wait at a level crossing, so he drives around the gate, gets hit by the train, and dies.
Anime & Manga
- Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Muzan Kibitsuji started out as a sickly human in the Heian Period who was desperate for a cure to his terminal illness. When a kindly doctor started treating him with an experimental elixir, he warned him there was a chance the elixir might not work. When the treatment didn't seem to be making any progress, Muzan killed the doctor in a fit of rage. Muzan soon realized the elixir was working, not only curing his illness, but giving him a nigh-immortal body and transforming him into the first demon. However, because the treatment wasn't properly finished, Muzan was left with crippling inability to withstand sunlight and he couldn't recreate the elixir without its key ingredient, the Blue Spider Lily, a flower that only the doctor knew where to find. So Muzan perpetuates the cycle of creating demons and having them feed on people so he can find the means to overcome his weakness, whether it's by finding the Blue Spider Lily or creating a demon that overcomes the sun and absorb that demon to gain the immunity for himself.
- Dragon Ball Super: Frieza's downfall in the "Resurrection F" arc ultimately comes down to his impatience; after being resurrected from the dead, he decides to train for four months to increase his strength. Said training results in Frieza not only becoming more powerful, but also gaining a new Golden Frieza transformation that makes him even more powerful but drains his stamina. Vegeta surmises that Frieza could have fixed the stamina problem if he mastered the form rather than come to Earth as soon as he unlocked it. Vegeta's theory is proven true when Frieza later returns having mastered his Golden Form and no longer suffering from stamina problems.
- Final Fantasy: Unlimited: Earl Tyrant is an Emotion Eater who has the potential to become all-powerful by pulling a Fusion Dance with Omega and the other two avatars of Chaos besides himself. However, he doesn't limit his actions against the people of Wonderland to feed on their emotions. He's not above sending his own elite minions into danger just to get a short-term boost from their fear and despair. Moreover, the other two Chaos avatars are Ai and Yu, who are repeatedly hunted by his forces as a source of emotions, and while the threshold for killing them is uncertain, the Earl is seemingly unconcerned about possibly losing such keystones to his plan.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Phantom Blood: Despite already being an adopted member of the Joestars and having the option to simply wait until his adoptive father George died to get an inheritance, Dio decides to poison him to speed things up. Worse, he uses the same poison he fed his own biological father, allowing Jonathan to connect the dots.
- Golden Wind: The main villain Diavolo commissions Giorno and his crew to find his daughter Trish and bring her safely to him. Unbeknownst to them, he actually plans to kill Trish himself on the remote chance she could reveal his identity. However, when Trish is finally brought to the specified building, Diavolo can't help himself but attack directly with King Crimson, uniting Giorno, his friends, and Trish against him.
- The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Duology (2001): In the adaptation of Oracle of Ages, Veran is determined to speed up construction of the Black Tower to hasten Ganon's revival, even when an underling points out that working the conscripts until they drop won't make the task any easier. After conceding she can't kill Link himself, she has his ancestor Raven captured and plans to kill him to subject the hero to a Ret-Gone, but fails to secure Link himself and thereby allows him to sabotage the execution.
- Pokémon the Series:
- Lieutenant Surge's philosophy when it comes to evolving Pokémon is that one should evolve them as soon as they are caught, which is why he evolved his Pikachu into a Raichu right away. While this made Raichu more powerful, this has the downside of preventing Raichu from learning the speed-based abilities it could only learn as a Pikachu, which Ash and his Pikachu exploit to win in Surge and Ash's second match.
- Ash's rival in Sinnoh, Paul, prefers to put his Pokémon through Training from Hell to get them stronger in stark contrast to Ash's methods. Among Paul's Pokémon is a Chimchar with a powerful Blaze ability that he tries to bring out through his methods with no success. The abuse that he puts Chimchar through is so intense that Ash and his friends are appalled by it, and a Nurse Joy even calls out Paul for being too impatient with Chimchar and not giving him time to rest. Paul eventually gives up on Chimchar and releases him, with Ash taking Chimchar in and succeeding where Paul had failed.
Fan Works
- Cain (MHA): Katsuki wants to prove to All Might that he can be a better hero than Izuku, so he goes to the beach where All Might is having Izuku pick up and carry away trash to physically train his body. Instead of picking up the trash, he blows up a mound of it with his explosion Quirk. All Might points out that he didn't get rid of the trash; now it's just smaller and spread out into more pieces, and the burnt and melted plastic may release toxic fumes.
- Defused (MHA): During a training drill, Katsuki doesn't wait for his teammates, charges ahead, and blows up the villain bot. This causes an automatic failure because his explosion caused a pile of rubble to fall on a civilian dummy, which "killed" it.
Best Jeanist: Your arrogance just cost a life and the mission.
Katsuki: It’s just a useless simulation!
Best Jeanist: Our habits in practice reflect what we do on the field. This scenario was meant to reflect a true situation we face – and you failed spectacularly yet again. - To the New World: Eira’s Fatal Flaw is her tendency to leap without looking when she’s strongly invested in something, which causes her to make mistakes she otherwise wouldn’t have. For instance, her closest brushes with death are actually against ordinary Mooks, because she doesn’t take the time to observe them like she would a known threat and then gets surprised when they do something unexpected
Films — Animated
- The Aristocats: Edgar the butler is upset when his employer Madame Bonfamille leaves her fortune to her four cats first and him second, as long as he takes care of the cats for the rest of their lives. He could just wait for her to die, take care of the cats, and inherit the fortune, but he thinks each one has nine lives and they will live much longer than him, so he hatches a plan to get rid of them.
Edgar: (talking to himself) Cats inherit first! And I come after the cats. I, me, after— No. It's not fair! I mean, oh, each cat will live about 12 years. I can't wait. And each cat has nine lives. That's four times twelve...multiplied by nine times...no, it's less than that. Anyway, it's much longer than I'd ever live. I'll be gone. No. Oh, no. They'll be gone. I'll think of a way. Why, there are a million reasons why I should! All of them dollars. Millions. ...Those cats have got to go!
- Fantasia: In the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" segment, Mickey is tasked by his master Yen Sid with carrying buckets of water from a fountain to a well. When Yen Sid isn't looking, Mickey puts on his magic hat and enchants a broom to come alive and start doing the task for him. Then Mickey takes a nap, and when he wakes up, he realizes he never told the broom to stop, and it kept bringing and pouring water until the castle was flooded. He tries destroying the broom with an axe, but that just makes even more brooms who are all now carrying even more water.
- Kung Fu Panda: In Mantis' story during Secrets of the Furious Five, his biggest flaw is that he's way too impatient because he moves so fast and perceives everyone else as moving too slow. A sheep asks him to go after some crocodile bandits who stole all her village's wool coats, and he takes off before she can warn him they're famous for setting traps. He tries to invade their hideout and promptly falls into one.
Mantis: (gets caught in a cage) A trap?! Why didn't anyone warn me?!?
Films — Live-Action
- The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Harry Osborn is stricken with a terminal illness he inherited from his father and is desperate to cure it through any means necessary. He believes the spider venom that gave Spider-Man his powers to be the solution and wants to transfuse his blood into himself, but Peter fears that a similar cross-species incident with The Lizard will occur and tries to warn Harry of the possible consequences. Harry stubbornly refuses to listen and demands Peter find Spider-Man and convince him to give him his blood. When Spider-Man refuses to give him his blood and offers to find another solution, Harry throws a tantrum and wallows in self-pity, being too dead-set on the venom, which leads him to take matters into his own hands by breaking into OsCorp and hastily injecting the venom into himself without bothering to test and see if it's safe, transforming him into the Green Goblin and causing him to seek revenge of Spider-Man for supposedly leaving him to die and forcing him to resort to it.
- Deadpool & Wolverine: The plot is kicked off by Paradox, a rogue TVA agent, wanting to destroy the X-Men cinematic universe so that he won't have to spend the rest of his life watching over it as it slowly collapses from the death of Wolverine. As it happens, Deadpool is impatient to join the Sacred Timeline of Earth-616 and thinks that working for the TVA will accomplish this, and thus signs up with Paradox, not realizing that he has ulterior motives.
Literature
- The Baby-Sitters Club: In "Mary Anne's Bad Luck Mystery," Mallory is babysitting her seven younger siblings, and Claudia is there to help. They're making something called "Daddy Stew" for dinner, but Byron tries to make it cook faster by turning the stove on higher, which burns the whole thing to a crisp. They have to make tuna sandwiches instead.
- A Dance with Dragons: Exploited by Tyrion Lannister in both a game of cyvasse and Westerosi geopolitics. "Young Griff", aka. Aegon VI Targaryen, is being groomed to reclaim his throne and has the Golden Company on his side. Tyrion gets the measure of Aegon over a game of cyvasse, including goading him into making bad moves purely because he wanted to win the game quickly, all while feeding him bad advice that seemed plausible. Sensing this meant Aegon was easily impressionable, he suggested Aegon and the Golden Company invade now rather than wait until later. They do. Downplayed, however, as while the Golden Company aren't quite ready to invade, they are at least prepared in some way, and they make excellent gains early in their campaign but know they aren't able to face a full-strength Westerosi army in a pitched battle.
Live-Action TV
- The Brittas Empire: In "The Last Day", Laura discovers that Carole expanded the cupboard behind reception into a full playroom. When asked if she told Brittas about it, Carole admits that she didn't, as it meant that she would have had to waste time drawing up architectural drawings and planning permissions to satisfy him. The result is that the entrance to the playroom, held up by hardwood, buckles under the pressure of a filling water tank several floors up, causing it to crash through the leisure centre, injure several people using the centre, and which would have killed Carole had Brittas not sacrificed his life to save her.
- The Flash (2014):
- Dr. Harrison Wells went ahead with his particle accelerator experiment even when warned by Hartley Rathaway that it had catastrophic flaws. It ended up exploding, killing some people and turning others, such as Hartley, into metahumans, besides making a recluse out of Wells. Subverted with the reveal that "Wells" is actually the Reverse-Flash, who knew full well that the accelerator would go wrong.
- Zoom, obsessed with speed, took to injecting himself with Velocity serums to make himself faster. He learned too late that doing so caused cellular degeneration and would kill him if he didn't find natural connections to the Speed Force.
- Red Dwarf: In "Officer Rimmer", Rimmer tries to use a bio-printer to print several macho clones of him to serve as bouncers. However, Kryten warns him that the printer needs time to recalibrate. Refusing to heed this, Rimmer starts to hit the printer to make it go faster. The result is that the printer suffers a paper jam, spitting out an amalgamated monstrosity of Rimmer clones determined to absorb every version of Rimmer, including the original, on board Red Dwarf.
- In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Booby Trap" the Enterprise is trapped in a region of space that's full of weapons that suck the energy from any ship in range. The Enterprise is practically paralyzed. Captain Picard is impatient to do something, so he decides to fire phasers in a direction where the draining field is weaker by all of point one percent. Predictably, it doesn't work and the ship has lost a big chunk of its remaining energy.
- Walking with Beasts: In "Whale Killer", the Basilosaurus tries hunting for Moeritherium in the tidal channels of a mangrove forest. A Moeritherium is able to escape her by crawling out onto a small islet, but finds itself stranded. The Basilosaurus only has to wait until the rising tide covers the sandbar and allows her to reach the Moeritherium. However, driven by extreme hunger, she attempts an attack before the water is deep enough and ends up beaching herself. By the time she's managed to free herself, the Moeritherium has escaped.
- The Wire:
- Thomas "Herc" Hauk exemplifies this the most on the police side. Herc is fond of the "Western District style" of policing of "busting heads and taking names" and doesn't understand the value of long-term surveillance, necessity of paperwork, or how to use leverage in interrogation. He almost killed the Major Crimes Unit's case by getting Carver and Pryzbylwski to join him in an impromptu raid at the projects, which ends in a riot after Prez pistol-whips a kid in the eye. In season two, Herc has the idea to spy on a drug corner that Nick Sobotka supplies using a hidden microphone, but both doesn't get a warrant to do so, and using Carver's credit card, only pays to lend a microphone with plans to return it until it gets destroyed after the tennis ball it was hidden in gets thrown into traffic. Herc and Carver then have to fake an informant to pass the information they gathered from the illegal device called "Fuzzy Dunlop". In season four, Fuzzy Dunlop makes a return when Herc again skips procedure to plant a camera near Marlo Stanfield's hangout spot, and Marlo having found out about this the night of the camera being planted makes a suspicious sounding phonecall that leads Herc to detail Marlo and an innocent woman at a train station, and when demanded to know what informaion he was acting on, Herc is extra screwed when he both didn't have a permit for the camera, and the camera itself is stolen by Marlo's goons. Herc also screws up majorly when now-ex police Prez who is working as a teacher relays that one of his students, Randy, has knowledge of a murder commited by Marlo's crew, but rather than building off what Randy can tell him, decides that he can have Randy act as an eyeball witness to the murder, and lets slip in an interrogation with Little Kevin that someone else knew about the murder set up, which Kevin immediately knows is Randy, leading to Randy's name getting put out on the street as a snitch with tragic consequences. Herc's last screw up in the police is to stop and rough up a black Minister based on a vindictive false tip from junkie and frequent snitch Bubbles who is mad Herc promised to help him with a nemesis, and while Mayor Carcetti can't fire him for the traffic stop without pissing off the police rank and file, commissioner Burrell is able to pin the missing camera and shady Fuzzy Dunlop testimonies on Herc.
- In season three, partly to show the decline of the Barksdale organization under Stringer Bell's new management, has started to employ less disciplined people and slacking on security. At one attempt at taking a corner, Cutty and Slim Charles lay out a plan of attack and specifically tell the goons not to drive up too soon and be careful not to have the driver be in the line of fire. Unfortunately, the driver just thinks he's been denied a chance to be badass, and drives in too soon and is shot almost immediately, causing the car to crash, and the two other passengers to also get shot, with Cutty and Charles never even getting to start their attack. Elsewhere, Bernard and his girlfriend Squeak are tasked with buying disposable cell phones a couple at a time from different stores down a highway every few weeks. After Squeak notices the guy they deliver the phones to throws away the receipts without ever looking at them, she convinces Bernard they can save time by buying more at one location, which Major Crimes is able to find security camera footage of the buyers, and exploiting this need to save time, set the pair up to buy a bundle of clean cell phones, and phony receipts from an old "con man" played by Detective Lester Freamon, and the phones are in fact, all pre-tapped letting the MCU hear the entire internal communications of the Barksdale organization.
Tabletop Games
- BattleTech: This was a major weakness in the Clans that the Inner Sphere forces were able to exploit to win several key battles:
- The most notable was probably the Battle of Wolcot, where the Draconis Combine forces defending the planet when the Smoke Jaguars invaded refused to engage, leading to the Jaguars becoming frustrated and engraged and foolishly pursuing a force of Combine hovercraft into a heavy swamp where they became bogged down in the thick muck and were decimated by long-range missile fire and slashing attacks by light units that had maps showing them the safe routes through the swamps. After several hours of enduring this, the Jaguar forces admitted defeat.
- Another major example of this was used against the Steel Vipers in the Battle of Tukayyid, when again the Comstar forces pitted against the Vipers refused to engage and hurled insults at the Vipers until they became so impatient to fight that they charged head first into the Devil's Bath, a region of volcanic hot springs known for having numerous steam geysers and boiling mud pits tens of meters deep. Rather than just trying to hole the Comstar forces in the Bath or simply bypassing them to strike at their real objective, the Vipers allowed themselves to get suckered into entering the deadly region only to walk into multiple ambushes and lose many warriors to the mud pits where their mechs simply sank out of sight. The result was the single most humiliating defeat that any Clan suffered on Tukayyid and the Vipers retreated off the planet first and with the fewest casualties.
- Warhammer 40,000: For all his greatness and power, the Emperor of Mankind was not without faults. Aside from his notable self-righteous arrogance and lack of empathy, the Emperor's other notable flaw was his desire for an easier and quicker solution. Despite his farsightedness, if the method would give the Emperor the solution he wanted now then he was willing to use it. Notably, during the Great Crusade, the Emperor was willingly to allow clearly dangerous and unstable individuals such as Perturabo, Angron, and Konrad Curze to have control over Space Marine legions, foster an atmosphere of blind, fanatical devotion towards himself, and insisted on total capitulation or annihilation for those who aren't aligned with him, thus destroying many potential allies, simply because it was the quickest option for getting results. The final few novels in the Horus Heresy even show that the Emperor would have ascended to become the fifth God of Chaos, if not for the intervention of Ollanius, because he saw it as the most expedient way to defeat the other four.
Video Games
- Crash Bandicoot (1996): The entire Crash Bandicoot franchise was kicked off by Dr. Cortex's impatience; as part of his plan to Take Over the World with an army of mutated animals, he decides to use the Cortex Vortex to brainwash Crash into being his loyal general. Even after Dr. N.Brio warns Cortex that the Vortex isn't ready and the results are unpredictable, Cortex insists on using it on Crash anyway. As a result, Crash not only isn't brainwashed, he also becomes the biggest obstacle to Cortex's world domination plans.
- God of War Ragnarök:
- Odin is the chief deity of the Norse pantheon, and he's defined by two major flaws: wrath and impatience. When Atreus assembles the mask, Odin eagerly tries to take the mask from him but after Atreus escapes from an attack by Thor, Odin rushes to assume the identity of Tyr. As Tyr, Odin barely conceals his lust for the mask and poorly makes up a lie about having a secret entrance to Asgard, something he never brought up before, and immediately causes Brok to cast doubt. When Odin rushes to get his things, Brok keeps blocking him and Odin furiously stabs him, exposing his identity to everyone and incentivising everyone to rally against him.
- Heimdall's major flaw is his refusal to think through his actions and or foresee the potential consequences of his actions. When Atreus arrives in Asgard, Heimdall sees in his visions that Atreus will destroy Asgard. Although he was told that Atreus was personally invited by Odin, Heimdall sets up an ambush and tries to kill him. Forcing Thor and Odin to intervene and lambast him for his treatment of the all-father's guest.
- Metroid Prime 4: Beyond has a case of this that serves as the linchpin of a character's backstory. At some point in the past, the Galactic Federation launched an assault on a Space Pirate superweapon to keep them from deploying it; given how intensely the Pirates were protecting it, IGF Command orders a squad leader to hold his position until Samus arrives, so they could team up and take it out together, but the instant the comms are off, the leader orders his troops to engage anyway. Predictably, the Pirates activate the weapon and fry countless IGF soldiers, the squad leader only surviving by diving into a ditch before the shockwave could reach him. Despite Samus' team showing up and taking out the weapon, the squad leader was consumed by rage over all his work being for nothing, and he - Sylux - held a grudge against them all that lasts to this day.
- Pokémon Legends: Arceus: During the story’s climax, after the space-time rift above Mount Coronet hits a boiling point, Commander Kamado banishes the player from Jubilife Village, his paranoia leading him to believe the player and rift are connected. It doesn’t take long before reports of a Pokèmon (Dialga/Palkia) beyond the rift emerge, thus exonerating the player, but rather then wait for the player’s investigation to finish, Kamado rushes off to face the Pokémon and rift on Mount Coronet himself, despite the fact that the player has the solution for it through the Red Chain. If the player hadn’t caught up to him in time and talked sense into him, he would have likely gotten himself killed at best, and made the situation worse at worst.
- Pokémon Sword and Shield: The main antagonist of the game, Chairman Rose decides to use Eternatus to try and solve an energy crisis that's implied to be a thousand years away from being an issue. He felt that the best time to resolve this crisis was in the middle of a grand tournament with all the top trainers in Galar in attendance, instead of a time or place where they could mitigate the damage Eternatus could cause. As a result, Rose nearly endangers the world due to impatience, especially since Leon asked him for just one more day before he could focus all his attention on Eternatus.
- Sonic Lost World:
- The entire plot of the game kicks into high gear because Sonic decides the best thing to do is to attack Eggman and knock out the Cacophonic Conch from his hands before Tails can analyze the situation. This allows the Deadly Six to take control of everything and become the villains of the story.
- Sonic would do it again by charging a suspicious capsule out in the middle of the woods, before Tails could make sense of its placement. The fox would shove his hedgehog her out of the way and get caught in the trap instead; Sonic felt that mistake as soon as the consequences ran their course.
- Spider-Man (Insomniac): Otto Gunther Octavius is Peter's boss and the founder of Octavius Industries. The lab accident that caused brain damage was caused by Otto's refusal to wait and check for any potential issues with the neurolink before connecting it to his brain.
- Yakuza: Like a Dragon: Impulsiveness turns out to be the fatal flaw of Ryo Aoki/Masato Arakawa.
- As a young man, he was so desperate to cure his hypothermia-induced paralysis that he got a black-market stimulant from America. He carelessly used it one night to walk, only for it to fail at the last second, forcing him to kill an assailant in self-defense. He's later able to cure the condition by simply undergoing transplant surgery.
- Later, Ichiban Kasuga runs a political campaign against Aoki's minion Kume. Although knowing that Ichiban would need a miracle to win because of his criminal record, Aoki still orders a hit on Ichiban's benefactor Hoshino, furthering Ichiban's determination to take him down.
- In the end, Ichiban and his friends later play dead right in front of Aoki, who furiously orders his men to get rid of the bodies and kill anyone else who could have compromised his true identity and actions. Cue everyone getting up and revealing that Aoki was on tape the whole time.
Visual Novel
- In Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Wocky Kitaki and his family's gang plot to attack a rival gang. Rather than waiting for the plan to be set in motion, Wocky decides to attack early by himself. This gets him shot in the chest by a gang member and he nearly dies from it. The bullet had stopped just millimeters from his heart, but because how close it is to the major arteries, his family doctor just patches him up instead of removing the bullet, fearing that Wocky would die from the surgery and getting killed by the boy's family. This in turn puts Wocky on a death sentence since the bullet is slowly moving towards his heart and he would eventually die, giving him several months to live (though his father eventually finds a doctor who can perform the life saving surgery). Had Wocky simply stayed put and moved in when told, he wouldn't have gotten shot.
Web Animation
- Derpy's Cutie Mark: Derpy tries a variety of activities in an attempt to get her cutie mark, including gardening. She plants a seed and shakes some plant food onto it. That only produces a little sprout, so she shakes a large amount of plant food onto it, which causes it to grow into a huge, menacing Piranha Plant from Super Mario Bros. about to eat her.
Webcomics
- When Winter Comes, So Does Karma: The abusive breeder wants more foals from Rex's grandparents to sell, but the stallion doesn't want to hurt his "special friend." Instead of naturally letting them have "special huggies" together, the breeder injects him with a second shot of fluffy Viagra to make him so horny that he gives in to his urge to rape her, and the dosage gives him a fatal heart attack. It's All for Nothing, as the resulting litter consists of four stillborns and two bratty foals that get kicked to the streets when they can't be sold.
Western Animation
- Action Pack: Watts, the electric member and the most impatient of the titular team, rushes ahead to the first key with his Super-Speed in Gaming the System, but does not realise that he is coming up on a Splat that appeared out of nowhere. The creature promptly kills him and sends his soul to a cage, where he remains trapped until Clay brings in the keys that they and the other prisoners use to bust out of the cage.
- BoJack Horseman: In life, Joseph Sugarman's solution to all of his problems is to take the fastest solutions available to him without thinking through the long-lasting consequences. He gives his wife a lobotomy to "cure" her of her hysteria (i.e. she was struck with grief over the death of her son) and his solution to his crying child was to burn all of her possessions and threaten to give her a lobotomy as well for crying about it.
- Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: In the episode "Clone Rangers", Emperor Zurg's evil plan of the episode is to create evil clones of the heroes to Kill and Replace them and destroy Star Command from within. Unfortunately, due to his impatience, he ends up releasing the clones early, which results in him creating Physically Younger Clones rather than exact copies.
- Camp Lazlo: The plot of one episode starts with Lumpus jumping the line at Nurse Leslie’s office and getting read Lazlo’s medical information to him. This leads him and Slinkman to think that he’s extremely underweight and needs to put on weight before it’s too late.
- Codename: Kids Next Door: In "Operation: P.I.A.N.O.", Sector V's mission is to destroy a shipment of "Type-P torture devices" (pianos that force children to play them over and over). Their method involves air-lifting the pianos one by one out of the moving truck and feeding them into a grinder. Numbuh 4 decides to speed things up by opening the back doors while the truck is still driving, and promptly gets crushed by dozens of pianos sliding out. The next time we see him, he's in a body cast and wheelchair.
- The Dragon Prince: Karim refusing to accept that it will take time and help from humanity for the Sunfire Elves to regain their prosperity causes him to invoke a long outlawed challenge for a duel to try and seize power from Janai, only to be defeated and banished.
- DuckTales (2017): In his attempt to gain superpowers (thus overshadowing Gizmoduck), Mark Beaks hires Gandra Dee to create a super serum that can be activated by Fenton saying his heroic catchphrase ("Blathering Blatherskite!") She warns him not to drink more than one vial of the serum. However, while waiting for her to collect enough voice samples, Beaks gets impatient and drinks at least a dozen vials out of boredom. This leads to him becoming a Hulk-esque rampaging monster...who's still obsessed with Internet fame.
Gandra Dee: Wait. Did you drink more than one vial?Beaks: Yes! I told you, I was bored!
- Miraculous Ladybug: In "Simpleman", Marinette's grandfather Rolland is Akumatized because he can't figure out how to work a DVD player and is too stubborn to just ask for help, and thus becomes Simpleman, with the power to release waves that drop-kick everyone else's intelligence into the toilet. In short, Rolland's impatience ends up making almost everyone dumb, even Hawk Moth.
- Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (2023): In "Run the Rink," Lunella is put in charge of the family's roller rink for a night but gets bored and tries to speed up the maintenance work by automating everything, which creates a mess when the fusion generator that powers all the machines puts out too much juice. She spends the rest of the episode struggling to fix everything. As it happens, the rink also becomes besieged by a trio of villains who all happen to have similar problems with patience.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: The Cutie Mark Crusaders often try to earn their cutie marks through a variety of odd jobs instead of waiting for them to appear naturally, which may result in some kind of humiliation for them. In "The Cutie Pox", Apple Bloom is so desperate to gain her cutie mark early that she makes a concoction that gives her one but she ends up sprouting more all over her body, and she is unable to stop doing every single new talent at once.
- The Owl House: In “Adventures with the Elements”, Luz Noceda’s impatience with Eda’s teaching methods leads her to steal Amity’s training wand to attempt a fire spell, drawing the wrath of a Slitherbeast in the process.
- SpongeBob SquarePants:
- In the episode "Chum Fricassee", Squidward Tentacles shares his grandmother's Chum Fricassee recipe, which requires the chum to be cooked for exactly 24 hours, with Plankton. As a result, the Chum Bucket becomes a huge hit, even putting the Krusty Krab out of business. Squidward soon lets the fame go to his head when he forces Plankton to undercook the chum to serve it quicker. As a result, Squidward's grandmother shows up and explains that the chum causes severe stomach issues if not cooked properly, which causes the customers to become enraged and burn down the Chum Bucket.
- In "Survival of the Idiots", SpongeBob and Patrick find themselves trapped in Sandy's treedome during winter, and are forced to resort to stealing her fur to avoid freezing to death. This is complicated by the fact that Sandy has bulked up to hibernate and does not like being woken up, something SpongeBob and Patrick have already learned the hard way. SpongeBob is understandably cautious, but Patrick decides he's taking too long and starts ripping off huge clumps of Sandy's fur with a roll of tape... though in a subversion, this doesn't actually wake Sandy up (though she does roar in pain each time he does it).