Advice Backfire

I have some advice for you, so listen carefully. Never, ever give anyone advice. Doing so can only ever end badly for almost everyone involved. Instructions are just as bad. Invariably, one of the following will happen:

• You're giving advice to The Ditz or Cloudcuckoolander. Your advice may be perfectly sound, but they are ultimately incapable of acting on it in a logical manner. They may take a euphemism used in the explanation, or a sarcastic reply to one or more questions they raised before or after, literally; or they could take something more normal and make it something completely abstract.
• Perhaps they are capable of understanding, but you or they have overestimated their ability. At step 3 in your seven-step plan, they'll measure something incorrectly and won't catch it until the whole thing blows up in their face. Or, alternately, you may have been giving them advice on the proper method to moving heavy equipment, not realizing that all the method in the world won't make up for their physical weakness when the equipment falls on them. Or they could just be jinxed.
• A vital piece of information may be missing. You might have thought you heard the whole story when you hadn't and given advice based on that, which can result in flawed instructions or an unnecessarily hurtful tirade aimed at someone you assumed was a Jerkass. Alternately, something that went without saying for you or had been well-learned from your own experience might be conspicuously missing for them; this version in particular inspires some interesting anecdotes.
• Perhaps the person you were giving advice to is someone who you ought not have. Maybe they're the villain and you don't know it yet. Maybe you're the villain and you don't know it yet. Maybe your ultimate goals are simply mutually exclusive. Maybe you're in direct competition, and you figure they're no threat anyway so you might as well be a Friendly Enemy. In any event, the information you give them will, invariably, result in your defeat at their hands. It doesn't matter if the advice happens to be "it's Istanbul, not Constantinople", it will get you killed. Er, if potential death was ever a factor, at least.
• Or, maybe you're not the one originally giving the advice. Maybe you're relaying a message from another advice-giver. But, unfortunately, something has been lost in translation, or only fits in a certain context. You obviously can't clarify for the recipient, so if these differences change the message significantly, you're out of luck. On a related note, if you're sending such a message through someone else, you should take care that the deliverer is trustworthy, and preferably also that he doesn't know what the message is; if he acts on information intended for someone else entirely, that could throw things out of whack.

So don't just go telling someone whatever you think will solve their problems. It usually won't, at least not the way you want it to.

Examples of Advice Backfire include:

Anime and Manga

• A type 1 from Eyeshield 21. Jo Tetsuma is so literal that he takes everything WAY OVERBOARD. When told to 'keep hydrated' in preparation for a match, he went through twenty-something water-bottles in less than five minutes, resulting in the one time he ever deviated from his pass route—running off the field in the middle of a game to get to the bathroom after getting a stomach cramp.
• In My Wife Is a High School Girl a young store clerk is immediately smitten by the eponymous girl Asami, later he tells Kyosuke (oblivious that he is Asami's husband) that he has a crush on one girl, Kyosuke ignorant of the fact that he is talking about his wife advices to "never give up on her, no matter how many times you are rejected, fight for her". You can guess how that turns out.

Literature

• JRR Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring.

Gildor: Elves seldom give unguarded advice, for advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill.

• • As Frodo puts it, "Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes."
• Happens with the Guru and Aimee Thanatogenos in Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One. He tells her to kill herself, and she does.
• PG Wodehouse used this in any number of stories.

Live Action TV

• On Happy Days Richie takes over the college paper's advice column, and Postie & Ralph (who are sharing an apartment) write in for advice on how to get along. Richie jokingly suggests dividing the apartment in half and they actually do it.
• Inverted in The Big Bang Theory: When his friend Stuart is about to go on a date with Penny, Leonard deliberately gives Stuart what he thinks is bad advice about what to do on the date. Stuart follows the advice and ends up making out with Penny anyhow. Penny called out Leonard's name rather than Stuart's, though, and since the advice was exactly what Leonard had done himself, the implication is that Penny was simply trying to replace Leonard with someone very similar.
• On 30 Rock, Liz Lemon tried to advise Jenna on aging gracefully with this exchange:

"You can try to fight getting older. You can be like Madonna and cling to youth with your Gollum arms. Or you can be like Meryl Streep and embrace your age with elegance."
"So you're saying it's a choice? Between the dignity of middle age and the illusion of youth."
"Two paths: Meryl Streep...or Madonna."
"Very well. I will emulate my acting inspiration. A woman of profound poise, whose career is what we all aspire to."
"Okay, this build-up is making me nervous."
"A woman whose feminine grace and normal outfits are an inspiration."
"Just say who it is, and I'll feel better."
"Someone whose very name stands for enduring beauty and the wonder of womanhood!"
"Please don't say.."
"Madonna!"

• In one episode of The Drew Carey Show, set after the Browns returned to Cleveland, Drew and his three friends are behind a guy in line for tickets. The guy gets one ticket, but Drew stops him and tells him the return of the football team is a special time and should be shared with friends. He ends up getting five tickets, which happened to be the last five.
• From an episode of Friends: Joey is teaching an acting class. One of his students gets a part as a boxer on a soap - a part Joey wanted. He goes to Joey for advice - Joey tries to sabotage him by telling him to play the boxer gay. It totally works and the student gets offered the part.
• One episode of Brimstone features one of the 113 trying to get a handle on her hellspawned superpower (burning people with her mind) by going to therapy. When the therapist advises her to confront her anger issues head-on, she interprets this as license to embrace her evil side, and promptly goes on a rampage.
• Frequently occures in Home Improvement

Web Comics

• Basic Instructions has this as its premise.

Sports

• This story sounds apocryphal, but you be the judge: Golfer Sam Snead was playing a practice round with players much younger than himself when they faced a second shot with options. Option one was to go over the trees and make the third shot much shorter, and option two was to follow the fairway with a longer third shot. The young guys asked Snead which option to choose. Snead told them that he used to shoot over the trees. Predictably, none of the young guys could do it, and Snead chose that moment to add something to his previous advice: "Of course, in my day, those trees were thirty feet shorter."

Western Animation

• Moral Orel, Once an Episode (at least). One episode actually revolved around people trying to avoid giving him advice. It still didn't turn out well.
• On one episode of the Aladdin TV series, Aladdin and Jasmine travel to Odiferous to attend Prince Uncouthma's wedding. Unfortunately, the bride falls in love with Aladdin, and Uncouthma is very depressed about this. Jasmine advises him to "Fight to win her back!" Uncouthma, being a Proud Warrior Race Guy and all, ended up taking this advice...by having a duel to the death with Aladdin.
• An episode of King of the Hill has a double-backfire version. Hank and his friends sneak into the box seats at a Texas-Arkansas football game, only to discover it belongs to a famous Arkansas player. Late in the game the Arkansas coach calls the box to ask for advice and Hank, pretending to be the player, gives him a terrible suggestion...only for it to work perfectly, costing Texas the game.
• American Dad used this in a parody of The Dead Poets Society, where Roger was posing as a college professor. He advised his students to seize the day and not let anything get in the way of living life to its fullest. Unfortunately, one of his students decides that that means it's okay to kill his father, which Roger and Hayley learn after he invites them over to discuss philosophy.
• Happens to Daria constantly, with the added bonus that most of the time she's not even trying to give advice, people just misinterpret random things she says and run with it.
• In the ThunderCats (2011) episode "Song of the Petalars," young Prince Lion-O mistakenly views his friend Emrick's well-meant advice that It's the Journey That Counts through his Hot-Blooded Proud Warrior Race perspective, assuming that he and his Thundercats should live Like You Were Dying and rush to engage an army of Lizard Folk pursuers. They end up needing rescue by a Deus Ex Machina.