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Ambitious, but Lazy
- 205 statements
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Although hard work doesn't necessarily guarantee success, it is generally accepted that if you want to achieve something, you have to work for it. After all, no matter how naturally talented someone is, they still have to put some effort into achieving their goals, something that most people agree with. Sadly, ambition and a strong work ethic don't necessarily go hand-in-hand. Some people have incredible ambitions but don't have the patience or desire to actually work for said ambitions. Maybe they're naturally talented and view the idea of actually trying at something as beneath them. They could be Spoiled Brats who are used to having everything handed to them. They might feel that their willingness to take shortcuts makes them smarter than the "sheeple" who insist on achieving their goals via hard work. Typical methods used by these characters include taking credit for others' work, manipulating others into doing the heavy lifting for them, or building/exploiting connections to people who can help them achieve their goals. Needless to say, characters who display this quality tend to end up all the worse for it; perhaps their efforts to avoid work result in them putting in more work, or they end up humiliated by someone willing to put in the work to achieve their goals. Sometimes these characters might undergo Character Development, and decide to work for their goals; other times they refuse to learn their lesson and insist on trying to take shortcuts no matter how much it bites them. On rare occasions, the character might actually achieve their goal, only to end up losing what they gained because of their laziness. Sub-Trope of Lazy Bum. Compare Cheaters Never Prosper, Evil Is Easy, Get-Rich-Quick Scheme, We Have Become Complacent, and His Own Worst Enemy. Contrast The Slacker, Professional Slacker, Determinator, Dismotivation. Examples |
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| Ambitious, but Lazy / int_24ffd341 | type |
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A large part of why The Gang's schemes on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia nearly always fail, even on the odd occasion where it was a decent idea in the first place, is because they start dialing it in almost immediately as soon as it looks like some real work might be required, will take any available shortcut, and will outright force a shortcut if none are available. | |
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| Ambitious, but Lazy / int_27831967 | type |
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Parks and Recreation: This epitomises Tom Haverford, who constantly has big dreams of expanding out from his mid-level local government post and breaking into the glamorous and highly paid worlds of media marketing, celebrity culture, and high-end style. However, despite possessing some legitimate talent and expertise in networking, PR, event planning, and style, Tom is at heart a lazy guy who prefers to goof off and focuses most of his efforts on finding ways to do the least work whilst still receiving the most credit. Thus his early business ventures and attempts fail (sometimes quite spectacularly i.e. his Entertainment 720 see's him blowing millions on flashy and pointless expenses, whilst only figuring out what the company actually could do right before they go bankrupt) due to his attempts at taking shortcuts, prioritising the exciting parts over the essential or getting distracted and simply not bothering to put the actual work in. His arc throughout the series sees him slowly outgrowing these tendencies and working towards a successful businessman, though it's not till near the end he fully succeeds in moving past his inherited instincts to slack off. | |
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In Yotsuya Kaidan, a major source of Iemon's problems is his attempts to rise in society through shortcuts rather than honest work. He became a ronin because he stole from his former master, he murders his way into a marriage to Oiwa, and then he tries to weasel his way out of the marriage by hiring a pimp to rape Oiwa so that he can claim she is Defiled Forever and divorce her, which instead results in her death, but not before she curses him and becomes a vengeful ghost. | |
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Chloe Bourgeois in the Miraculous Ladybug Webcomic Scarlet Lady combines this trope with Nominal Hero and Hates the Job, Loves the Limelight; after stealing the Ladybug Miraculous from Marinette, she sees it as an opportunity to become a famous superheroine. Being a Spoiled Brat who is used to having everything handed to her, she accomplishes this by sitting back and letting Chat Noir do all of the hard work of fighting the Akumas, before using her World-Healing Wave to heal the damage, getting most of the glory in the process, banking on the fact that the other heroes don't know her identity and can't take the Miraculous from her, and can't leave her out because she's the only one who can fix Akuma damage. | |
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Totally Spies!: Mandy in Season 6 is this, as she seeks fame without having to actually do anything to get famous. Stacy, the villain in "Evil Roommate", combines this trope with Genius Ditz and Laborious Laziness; she is a college student who is failing her courses, so rather than studying or getting tutoring, she invents a machine that can drain people's intelligence just to get better grades. |
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Jeff Winger from Community wants to be this trope, but every time he tries to get something without putting in a lot of effort he either falls flat on his face or ends up doing more work than he would have to put in honest effort. | |
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| Ambitious, but Lazy / int_3ac755dd | type |
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Gaston in Beauty and the Beast could be considered a romantic variant of this trope; despite desiring Belle because she is the one woman in the village who isn't interested in him, unlike The Beast, who puts genuine effort into changing himself for Belle's sake and actually tries to treat her as a person rather than a prize, Gaston would rather use his natural charm and charisma, or failing that Blackmail mixed with Murder the Hypotenuse to make her his wife. | |
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Total Drama: In Island, Noah believes he'll be able to get far into the competition with his smarts alone, using his teammates to coast by physical challenges. This ends up getting him eliminated early on, as he refused to participate in one challenge entirely. When he returns in World Tour, Noah now actively participates in challenges, having learned he needs to put in some effort to get anywhere, and he makes it much farther into the game as a result. | |
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This can also be seen with what happens whenever Hot Rod becomes Rodimus Prime: in The Transformers, at the beginning of the third season, he's excited and cheerful, basically acting like he did as Hot Rod. By the end of the seasons, he's not shy about moaning and groaning about how hard it is to actually be a leader, and when Optimus Prime is seemingly brought back from the dead he's all too eager to turn command back over to Optimus, despite numerous warning signs that something is off. His counterparts in The Transformers (Marvel) and The Transformers: Regeneration One are much more dour and serious, due to having actually grown into the role of commander. | |
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In Inuyasha, Tokajin was once a lazy apprentice sage searching for any way of becoming a full-blown sage so that he could get out of his apprenticeship. As chance would have it, one day he found one of the shards of the shikon jewel and, not understanding its power, threw it at a nearby tree. The tree happened to be Ninmenka, the demonic human-faced fruit tree, and the jewel shard granted it the ability to speak to Tokajin, promising him power if he ate its fruit. Lazy as he was, he ate the fruit and became Ninmenka's slave, compelled to gather others to feed it in exchange for the promise of immortality. | |
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Littlest Pet Shop (2012): In the episode "What Meme Worry?", Sunil becomes a viral sensation after a meme of his worried face is put online, and due to his, unwanted, fame Zoe becomes jealous, and aims to become even more famous, since as she states: "My dream has always been to become famous for doing very little work. Sunil has my dream, and he doesn't even care for it!" | |
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DuckTales (2017): Louie Duck has dreams of one day being as successful a businessman as his Uncle Scrooge and to forever live in indulgent wealth. The problem is that Louie hates working and tries to find any way to avoid it, something that annoys Scrooge who earned most of his money through his own labor. Much of Louie's development stems from being forced into situations where he has to finally put in the effort and stop lazing around, like losing Scrooge's #1 Dime or running a starter business that spirals out of control due to his poor management. Mark Beaks is essentially Louie if he were an adult and had fewer scruples: while he's already a rich and brilliant CEO, he would rather increase his wealth and fame through plagiarism and flashy, yet ineffective products than actually put in the work to make anything of quality, which has nearly gotten himself and others killed because of his negligence in testing or improving on the design flaws of the technology he steals. His laziness eventually bites him in the ass when he starts going out of business because people aren't going to buy products from a known plagiarist and Con Man. |
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Lieutenant Commander Steel in SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron wants to take his boss's job, but would rather obtain the position through trickery than work hard to earn a promotion. In his first appearance, he actually betrays Commander Feral by allowing Dark Kat to murder him (which fails). In his second appearance he manages to legally take over Feral's job when Feral is kidnapped by Madkat; during his short tenure as Commander, he just sits on his butt ignoring robbery complaints rather than actually doing the job. It's a miracle he never got fired or arrested for his behavior. | |
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Apple Texts. Dillon, unlike his hard-working brother Jack, avoids hard work on principle, viewing it as "beta male" behavior, and believes that an "Alpha Male" should get ahead by gaming the system. In practice, this means that he does things like pretending to be blind to manipulate people into giving him charity, trying to bully his brother into doing his work for him, and trying to sleep with his boss's daughter to easily climb the ranks (despite already being married). This comes back to bite him, as he not only has to pay alimony to his wife as a result of cheating but also gets fired as a result of slacking off on his work. | |
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The Powerpuff Girls (1998): Officer Mike Brickowski, aka "the worst cop on the force" from the episode "Cop Out" is this in spades. He is an especially lazy variation of this trope; most characters this trope describes are willing to put some effort into getting ahead in life, but Mike doesn't even do that. He literally just sits around and expects a promotion to just be handed to him. For some odd reason, he ends up getting fired for this. What makes this especially foolish on Mike's part was that later in the episode he almost kills the girls via a Death Trap and only fails because of their Super-Toughness; if he put half that effort into doing actual police work, he probably would have gotten a promotion in no time. Major Man from the episode "Major Competition" desires the fame and glory of being a superhero, but would rather gain popularity by setting up crimes and disasters in advance and then "save the day" than stop actual crimes and disasters. He manages to temporarily replace the Power Puff Girls, however, his tenure as Townsville's new hero is short-lived when the girls sic Fred (a friendly monster) on him to expose him as the cowardly fraud he is. |
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Pathfinder: Krune, the Runelord of Sloth, fits this trope to a tee; as a Runelord he spent most his time indulging in shiftless pleasures and leaving the actual work of ruling to servants and summoned outsiders. When he learned of Earthfall, rather than do anything to actually protect his kingdom, he simply sealed himself away in a sarcophagus and tasked his underlings to rebuild his kingdom and unseal him afterward. Droskar, the god of Cheating, is an extremely downplayed variation of this trope; while he and his followers are Workaholics, Droskar's doctrine teaches that cheating, exploiting others, and Cutting Corners are perfectly acceptable methods of getting ahead in life. It was this behavior that got him kicked out of the Dwarven pantheon; he was once a student of Torag, the god of craftsmanship, until it was discovered he had been taking credit from a demigod he had enslaved. |
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Refreshing Stories Fusei is a high school student who slacks off all the time but still manages to get good grades, which he claims to be a result of him being a natural genius, but he's actually had his dad, a CEO blackmail one of his workers (who looks just like Fusei) into doing his schoolwork and tests in Fusei's place. Fusei tries to use this trick in order to get into a good university, however on the day of the entrance exams, Hiroshi tricks him into going into the classroom while the lookalike is also there, exposing Fusei as a cheater. After he is exposed, Fusei literally states that, as the son of a powerful CEO, universities should beg to have someone like him attend and that he shouldn't have to work to get in. |
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Fall of Starfleet, Rebirth of Friendship Rhymey is this in contrast to the Ambitious, but Diligent Rainbow Dash in both training and romance; when it comes to training, Rainbow Dash is willing to push her limits, in contrast to the racial supremacist Rhymey, who prefers to coast by on his race's natural abilities. In addition, when it comes to winning over Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash prefers to get to know her as a person and make her happy via compromise which results in a Relationship Upgrade, Rhymey would rather use abuse, Gaslighting and Mind Control rather than get to know Fluttershy as a person or put effort into improving himself. Even the Final Battle between the two reflects this tendency, with Rhymey resorting to using The Wings of Lighting in order to achieve the same level of Super-Speed as Rainbow Dash, who gained her speed as a result of Training from Hell. Grand Ruler is a lot like Rhymey in the relationship department; rather than improve himself to win over Celestia, he resorts to using the Orb of Reality to rewrite reality into one in which she is his wife, with no personal growth necessary on his part. |
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Gristol Malik from Psychonauts 2 is the former prince of Grulovia whose family lost their position when they were forced to flee when the evil psychic Maligula they were using as an enforcer turned on them. Gristol wants to revive Maligula so that she can be his enforcer again and he can retake the throne. The 'lazy' part here is that while he's a brilliant schemer, he gives absolutely no thought to the outcome of his plan other than "I'll be able to laze around eating buckets of caviar again" and doesn't bother to do the most basic of research about who Maligula was and why she went on rampages. His plan is ultimately self-defeating because Maligula isn't really a person; she's a mental construct formed by a powerful psychic's mental breakdown over accidentally causing a massacre, and as such she's essentially a Generic Doomsday Villain and utterly unreasonable. | |
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Bob's Burgers: Gene has aspirations of being a great musician and has shown on multiple occasions that when he gets serious he does possess a phenomenal natural talent in this field. However, for all his ambitions at heart Gene is just a kid who prefers to mess around and have fun, thus not only does he rarely seriously put effort into his music, but he also flat-out refuses to actually practice, adapt to criticism or learn anything about the technical side of music. Despite it being made clear multiple times that being naturally talented isn't enough to carry him over, he never grasps it. | |
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Dimitri in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX wants to be a great duelist, but unlike every other character in the series who creates their own, unique decks and strategies, Dimitri simply copies the decks of great duelists, which does nothing to improve his skills. After being defeated by Judai/Jaden, Dimitri has to have it outright explained to him that great duelists have to be willing to create their own decks and strategies. | |
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In Hi-Fi RUSH, Kale Vandelay has wanted to be the CEO of Vandelay Technologies his whole life but was consistently passed over for promotion by the previous CEO, his mother Roxanne. Angered by this but too lazy to actually do anything to make himself worthy of the position, Kale creates SPECTRA a Mind Control program to force his way into the CEO seat by brainwashing Roxanne. But once he's actually the CEO, he doesn't want to do any of the work of predicting market trends or coming up with new products or directions for the company. So he plans to use SPECTRA to remove that part of the equation to make people buy Vandelay products. | |
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Sasuke in many Naruto fanfics is often portrayed as this, relying on his Sharingan to steal jutsu rather than train himself. In addition, in fanfics where Naruto becomes a God-Mode Sue, Sasuke often schemes to steal whatever source of power made Naruto so powerful. This is in contrast to how Sasuke is in Canon, as while he does receive a bunch of power-ups thanks to his Sharingan, he still trains himself, occasionally even to the point of it being detrimental (i.e. after he gets the Magenkyo Sharingan, he overuses it in training and winds up nearly blind). | |
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The Edge Chronicles: Thaw Daggerslash is a particularly dark version. Whilst a charming, capable, and dedicated Sky Pirate who possesses a variety of useful skills, with great ambitions to be captain of his own great sky ship and become a legend in his own right, he's never succeeded as he is unwilling to start at the bottom and work his way up to become Captain as is tradition. As such he masterminds a ruthless plan to murder Captain Wind Jackal, by impersonating his hated archenemy Turbolt Smeal and luring him and his crew into increasingly dangerous traps, all whilst he ingratiates himself to said crew, thus when Wind Jackal dies he can take over. When this gambit fails and the crew instead chooses Wind Jackal's son Quint, Thaw flat out aligns with the dreaded Leaguemasters to help them wipe out all the sky pirates, as long as they give him the ship after the crew's killed. | |
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The Transformers: Animated version of Bumblebee wants to become a member of the Elite Guard, but he's also a slacker who isn't interested in doing the hard work of slowly climbing his way up the ranks (and he isn't The Ace like Optimus Prime, who was fast-tracked to joining the Guard until an incident that essentially killed his career). The bio of his "Elite Guard Bumblebee" toy outright notes that Bumblebee adopts that look thinking that if he looks the part, he might get accepted into the group. | |
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Sponge Bob Squarepants: Squidward Tentacles is a downplayed version; when it comes to practicing the clarinet and painting, he is willing to put in the work (not that it does him any good), however, some episodes such as "Artist Unknownnote Where he tries to plagiarise Spongebob's art to get rich and famous" and "Professor Squidwardnote Where he pretends to be Squilliam in order to get a job at a music school" show that he has no qualms about taking shortcuts if the opportunity presents itself. Sheldon Plankton's insistence on stealing the Krabby Patty recipe rather than improving his own cooking skills can make him come off as this; it would probably take him MUCH less time and energy to get cooking lessons rather than constantly trying and failing to steal a burger recipe. In addition, in the episodes where Plankton does manage to produce food that is actually edible, the reason is always due to stumbling onto something or someone to improve his cooking for him rather than any real effort on his part. |
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Ambitious, but Lazy | |
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The My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Hate Fic Friendship is Failure puts a twist on this in that the audience is expected to sympathize with characters who display this trait alongside some form of Pride: Talon Ted combines this trope with Small Name, Big Ego; he dreams of being an actor, but scoffs at the idea of getting a degree, even though he kept getting turned down. Even after his sister forces him to get a degree in order to help him get an acting job, he refuses to do so because his pride was hurt. In addition while the narrative claims he is an amazing actor, his only acting skills consist of copying other actors' performances rather than trying to create his own style. Stone Heart mixes this trope with Can't Take Criticism; he is a writer who gets lousy reviews, but expects his audience and critics to accept his crappy writing rather than take the time to listen to his critics and improve his own skills. |
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Eddy from Ed, Edd n Eddy combines this trope with Cut Lex Luthor a Check and Greed. His Get Rich Quick Schemes could be legitimate business ventures if he didn't insist on scamming people. In addition, when it comes to preparing the scams, he typically makes Ed and Double D do the heavy lifting while he just sits back and bosses them around. | |
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Pokémon: The Series Ash was like this in the beginning; he always wanted to be a Pokèmon Master, but he was very lax on training and tended to win battles by relying on his Pokèmon's raw strength. This comes back to bite him during his match against Ritchie. Fortunately, Ash learns from this blunder, and begins taking his training more seriously. Damien, Charmander's first trainer, is an especially repugnant example of this trope; he abandons his Charmander for being weak rather than train it, having zero qualms over whether it dies or not. Once Ash and co. nurse Charmander to health, which gives it a major power boost, he decides to take it back. He flat out admits that he has no desire to train his Pokèmon. |
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Shark Tale: Oscar dreams of becoming a "somebody," but would rather rely on Get Rich Quick Schemes to instantly climb to the top than do anything that requires actual effort. Despite the fact that this behavior has landed him in debt to The Mafia, Oscar has the brilliant idea of gambling the money he owes on what he thinks is a rigged seahorse race (with the said assumption being based on a random conversation he happened to overhear that he had no way of verifying). | |
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Fire Emblem: Three Houses: Despite Linhardt being an extremely intelligent and knowledgeable student at the Garreg Mach Officers Academy, his work behavior is beyond lazy. From constantly sleeping to immediately tuning out any conversation that doesn't interest him, it's quite clear that Linhardt only works when it interests himself. | |
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Baldur's Gate: When the player meets Melicamp, he claims to be the student of the powerful wizard Thalantyr, but when they visit Thalantyr, he scoffs, saying that Melicamp only came to him hoping for quick results, and turned to thievery when he didn't get them. (Melicamp's shortcut to power got him more than he bargained for; the bracers in Thalantyr's safe were cursed, turning him into a chicken.) | |
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Transformers: Several Transformers have a version of this as a Fatal Flaw. Most famously, Starscream is the Trope Namer for The Starscream. He wants to be Decepticon leader, but in many series where he actually succeeds (e.g. the IDW Publishing comics), his leadership tends to be wanting due to apparently thinking that all he needs to do is become a leader and respect and awe will come in accordingly. Hot Rod: Hot Rod wants to be acknowledged as a great hero, but is generally portrayed as a Glory Hound due to thinking that's the quickest way of making a good name for himself. His incarnation in the Transformers: More than Meets the Eye goes on wacky adventures and drags his crew along, until eventually they get so sick of his aimless galivanting that they join The Mutiny against him. In comparison, his incarnation in the Ladybug books has done the hard work of actually earning the respect of his fellow Autobots by being a reliable friend and comrade, and so by the time of the Nebulos books, he's the Autobot commander. This can also be seen with what happens whenever Hot Rod becomes Rodimus Prime: in The Transformers, at the beginning of the third season, he's excited and cheerful, basically acting like he did as Hot Rod. By the end of the seasons, he's not shy about moaning and groaning about how hard it is to actually be a leader, and when Optimus Prime is seemingly brought back from the dead he's all too eager to turn command back over to Optimus, despite numerous warning signs that something is off. His counterparts in The Transformers (Marvel) and The Transformers: Regeneration One are much more dour and serious, due to having actually grown into the role of commander. Many iterations of Grimlock want to become Autobot leader in place of Optimus Prime. The problem is this is usually due to their belief that their raw power means they deserve to be leader, and so they can't be bothered with the other aspects of leadership like careful planning or concern for their subordinates. In The Transformers (Marvel), twice Grimlock is essentially handed his desired goal of becoming Autobot leader, and both times have ended in disaster note During the first stint he styled himself King Grimlock and spent more time hunting Autobot dissenters than fighting the Decepticons, and the second time he was so eager to prove himself he led the entire Autobot army into an ambush... that left only 5 survivors. Many versions of Grimlock do genuinely have the intelligence and skill to become good commanders, but the problem is most of them also think that leading a team like the Dinobots makes them qualified to lead the entire faction and they don't need to learn anything more. The Transformers: Animated version of Bumblebee wants to become a member of the Elite Guard, but he's also a slacker who isn't interested in doing the hard work of slowly climbing his way up the ranks (and he isn't The Ace like Optimus Prime, who was fast-tracked to joining the Guard until an incident that essentially killed his career). The bio of his "Elite Guard Bumblebee" toy outright notes that Bumblebee adopts that look thinking that if he looks the part, he might get accepted into the group. |
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Star Trek: The Next Generation: In an alternate timeline seen in "Tapestry", Jean-Luc Picard turned out this way due to never having been stabbed in the heart during a bar brawl when he was an Ensign, and thus never having learned the lesson that life is fleeting and you have to take risks to get anywhere in life. Forty years later, he has only advanced a single rank (to junior Lieutenant) and constantly talks about wanting to become a captain one day, but never takes concrete action to make that happen. | |
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Nathan from the Tales From The Cryptkeeper episode "Dead Men Don't Jump" is a high school basketball player who dreams of going pro, but is too impatient to actually work for it. In order to speed his way to his goal, he makes a bet with an entity via a game of basketball where if he wins, he will become a basketball star instantly but will lose his soul if he loses. After he wins (via help from his wiser younger brother) said entity turns out to have been a con artist; Nathan learns that if you want something you have to be willing to work for it. | |
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