History Main / DisastrousDemonstration

* A common event in ''{{ComicStrip/Dilbert}}''.

May also apply to demonstrations intended to win a prize or a single sale, rather than to be produced en masse.

[[caption-width-right:Show and tell goes to hell.]]

* In ''MeetTheRobinsons'', Bowler Hat Guy tries to pass Lewis' invention as his own to a corporate board. As he doesn't know the first thing about how to operate it, the meeting is a complete debacle.

** A DarwinAward winner suffered a similar fate, while attempting to show off the sturdiness of the glass in his law firm's high-rise offices.

* In the original ''Amazing Franchise/{{Spider-Man}}'', Dr. Octavius has problems during his new invention's demonstration, which sets him on the path to become supervillain Doctor Octopus. The movie ''[[Film/SpiderManFilmTrilogy Spider-Man 2]]'' carried over this element of his origin-story.

[[AC:{{Comics}}]]
* In the original ''Amazing Spider-Man'', Dr. Octavius has problems during his new invention's demonstration, which sets him on the path to become supervillain Doctor Octopus. The movie ''Spider-Man 2'' carried over this element of his origin-story.

[[AC:{{Film}}]]

[[AC:LiveActionTV]]

[[AC: WesternAnimation]]

[[AC: Other]]
* The classic cliche is the door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman, who starts by dumping dirt (or worse) on someone's carpet to demonstrate the amazing cleaning power of his vacuum, only for something to go terribly wrong.

[[AC: RealLife]]

A subtrope of GoneHorriblyWrong.

* Used on ''Dark Matters: Twisted But True'', to dramatize setbacks in TruthInTelevision research, e.g. Dr. Horace Wells' use of nitrous oxide for anesthesia in dentistry.

* Used on ''Dark Matters: Twisted But True'', to dramatize setbacks in TruthInTelevision research, e.g. Dr. Horace Wells' use of nitrous oxide in dentistry.

* In ''{{Cars}} 2'', the Lemons exploit this trope, actively conspiring to discredit green fuels by engineering terrible wrecks during a worldwide racing demonstration by vehicles using the Allinol biofuel.

In RealLife, a product's design may be rejected because it's not cost-effective to make, because it infringes on someone else's patents, because the expected market for it has diminished, or many other dull-but-practical reasons. In fiction, that's not good enough: for a product to be abandoned, something must go disastrously wrong at a meeting of investors or shareholders, or even at a press conference announcing the product's debut. This ''always'' results in the product being cancelled, even if the catastrophe has nothing to do with the product's quality or lack thereof.

* A common event in ''{{Dilbert}}''.

[[AC: Comics]]

[[AC: Film]]

* Something always goes wrong when introducing [[KingKong Kong]] to the general public.

[[AC: LiveActionTelevision]]

* In a blackout sketch on ''TheBennyHillShow'' he plays a TV pitchman selling a new cleaning product; he tosses some liquid (juice?) on the wall and a man in a labcoat uses the product to clean up - except the product doesn't clean off the stain, it cleans the wall's decorative paint off while leaving the stain.
* In ''The IT Crowd'', Moss's prototype bra that he is trying to get investors for production has a bad habit of spontaneous combustion.

* In the ''{{Superman}}: The Animated Series'' pilot, the "Lexo-Skel Suit 5000" is stolen by Kaznian mercenaries during its demonstration. Turns out, however, that this disaster was part of a XanatosGambit by Lex Luthor.

* In ''Deal Of The Century'', when a prototype UAV is launched at a military aircraft demonstration, it malfunctions and destroys the expo. The design is justifiably scrapped when these technical difficulties are found to have resulted from the drone not being water-resistant.

Examples: