History Main / IdiotHoudini

This is what happens when a character who is known for making consistently poor judgments never has to answer for them. In fact, nearly the exact opposite happens: Whatever mind-numbingly stupid idea they've come up with this episode, it will work. If he sells the party's material possessions for some magic beans to give to [[FourOneNineScam a Nigerian prince he met over the Internet]], we can rest assured that at the end of the episode, a Nigerian prince will come solve the conflict with a DeusExMachina. The Idiot Houdini will be healthy, wealthy, and have an ample supply of TrueCompanions even though in RealLife, anyone acting the way he does would almost certainly have died ten episodes before the series began.

** Not to mention Suzaku and Tamaki. Though the former is deconstructed in that [[DeathSeeker he doesn't want it]], and yet bad things of other sorts happen to him. And Tamaki, despite [[LeeroyJenkins diving recklessly into combat and getting ejected out of combat in short order practically every time]], actually [[EnsembleDarkhorse became a fan favorite]] by virtue of [[{{Determinator}} sheer persistence]].

* In ''Series/FamilyMatters'', while Steve Urkel is not an idiot per se, he does several stupid and destructive things to the Winslows, mostly involving destroying their property and getting the family injured. This is largely laughed off as him being clumsy, but it got so bad that ''their insurance company decided to charge them more just for having him as a neighbor''. Every time the family (usually Carl) gets mad at him for being destructive, and tries to keep him away from the house, they're presented as being judgmental and "bad friends", even though Steve at best presents a very real and serious financial liability. He REALLY grated on some fans' nerves when he broke out his (in)famous catchphrase ''"Did I do that?"''

* ''Series/ThirtyRock'': In the final season, the incompetent quack Dr. Spaceman is finally taken away by government officials... to be ushered in as Surgeon General of the United States.

'''Frank:''' Everything! A dream house! Two cars! A beautiful wife! A son who owns a factory! Fancy clothes and ''(sniffs air)'' lobsters for dinner! And do you deserve any of it? No!

* Even after causing the cancellation of the ''Franchise/LupinIII'' "Red Jacket" series by stupidly distributing the first anime film outside of Japan, where the estate of Maurice [=LeBlanc=] (which at the time owned the copyright on the Arsène Lupin name) was more likely to notice an infringement on its copyright, Creator/{{Toho}} is still distributing new adaptations of Monkey Punch's manga in Japan. To their credit, though, they were much more careful afterwards as far as international distribution was concerned while the Lupin name was still in copyright elsewhere (i.e., they often forced international distributors to change Lupin's name), which is likely the only reason why Creator/TMSEntertainment (who produced the anime) didn't turn to a new distributor immediately after the lawsuit.
* In a similar example, Creator/StudioDeen took over adapting ''Manga/RurouniKenshin'' after the very popular Kyoto Arc and quickly ran the show's quality to the ground with poorly done filler, eventually leading to the show getting canceled before they could adapt the final story arc. Despite this, years later Creator/StudioDeen got to work on a new two-part Kenshin OVA which, to everyone's disappointment, turned out not be an adaptation of the story arc that concluded the manga but was instead a remake of the Kyoto Arc.

* Timothy Dexter, who became wealthy after marrying a wealthy widow, was persuaded by his friends to invest his wealth into all sorts of ridiculously dumb things. When Dexter sent mittens and warming plates to the West Indies, the mittens were bought and shipped to Siberia, and the warming plates were sold as ladles to the molasses industry. When Dexter shipped coal to Newcastle (the British capital for coal mining at the time), it arrived during a strike and was bought quickly for a great price. When he played the stock market by buying stocks at random, all of them went up. When he wrote a book called ''Literature/APickleForTheKnowingOnes'' -- a travesty of literature -- [[BileFascination it sold very well]]. To give an idea as to just ''how'' blindly lucky he was, he's the only example [[TheFool/RealLife for The Fool under Real Life.]] He actually made it into The Book of Lists for shipping coal to Newcastle (along with such others as selling oil products, specifically lighter fluid, which was too small a market to bother building a refinery locally to produce, to Saudi Arabia). Every one of the entries on the list was something that's generally used as an example of a stupid thing to ship to a particular place.

* ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'':

* Creator/TommyWiseau and ''Film/TheRoom''. ''Literature/TheDisasterArtist'' (a book later made into a film) details all of the bizarre decisions Tommy made as Writer/Director/Producer/Star, spending $6 milliion on a film that took SoBadItsGood to new heights, drawing in crowds to its showings and lifting him to stardom.

* In ''Series/FamilyMatters'', while Steve Urkel is not an idiot per se, he does several stupid and destructive things to the Winslows, mostly involving destroying their property and getting the family injured. This is largely laughed off as him being clumsy, but it got so bad that ''their insurance company decided to charge them more just for having him as a neighbor''. Every time the family (usually Carl) gets mad at him for being destructive, and tries to keep him away from the house, they're presented as being judgmental and "bad friends", even though Steve at best presents a very real and serious financial liability. He REALLY grated on some fans' nerves when he broke out his (in)famous CatchPhrase ''"Did I do that?"''

* ''Film/ForrestGump'': The lead character is cognitively disabled yet all his decisions lead to success, wealth and fame. He becomes a star footballer just by running across his high school's football field during practice. He survives an ambush and napalm strike in Vietnam, saving some of his fellow soldiers and emerges with nothing more than a stray bullet in the ass. He becomes a world table-tennis champion because he is bored while recovering from his bullet wound and wants to occupy himself. He makes millions as a shrimp boat captain despite having no skills, experience or success until a freak storm wipes out the local industry, leaving him miraculously unscathed. He inspires the creation of the smiley face by using a t-shirt to wipe mud off his face and the phrase "shit happens" after accidentally stepping in dog poop. He meets [[UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy three]] [[UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson different]] [[UsefulNotes/{{RichardNixon}} presidents]] ''and'' exposes the Watergate break-in by pure accident. He fumbles and stumbles through life pursuing on a whim whatever seems like a good idea at the time, yet nothing he ever does throughout the film leads to negative consequences for him.
** Of course this is played in that unlike most examples, Forrest is a good person at heart who's luck doesn't extend to those around him. His Medal of Honor came at the cost of his best friend, he lost his Mother to cancer, and his wife/childhood sweetheart to what is most likely Hepatitis C (which was unknown/undiagnosed at the time of the film's events).

* ''Film/ForrestGump'': The lead character is cognitively disabled yet all his decisions lead to success, wealth and fame. He becomes a star footballer just by running across his high school's football field during practice. He survives an ambush and napalm strike in Vietnam, saving some of his fellow soldiers and emerges with nothing more than a stray bullet in the ass. He becomes a world table-tennis champion because he is bored while recovering from his bullet wound and wants to occupy himself. He makes millions as a shrimp boat captain despite having no skills, experience or success until a freak storm wipes out the local industry, leaving him miraculously unscathed. He inspires the creation of the smiley face by using a t-shirt to wipe mud off his face and the phrase "shit happens" after accidentally stepping in dog poop. He meets [[UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy three]] [[UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson different]] UsefulNotes/{{RichardNixon presidents]] ''and'' exposes the Watergate break-in by pure accident. He fumbles and stumbles through life pursuing on a whim whatever seems like a good idea at the time, yet nothing he ever does throughout the film leads to negative consequences for him.

* ''Film/ForrestGump'': The lead character is cognitively disabled yet all his decisions lead to success, wealth and fame. He becomes a star footballer just by running into a stadium during a match. He survives an ambush and napalm strike in Vietnam, saving some of his fellow soldiers and emerges with nothing more than a stray bullet in the ass. He becomes a world table-tennis champion because he is bored while recovering from his bullet wound and wants to occupy himself. He makes millions as a shrimp boat captain despite having no skills, experience or success until a freak storm wipes out the local industry leaving him miraculously unscathed. He inspires the creation of the smiley face and the phrase "shit happens". He meets three different presidents ''and'' exposes the Watergate break-in by pure accident. He fumbles and stumbles through life pursuing on a whim whatever seems like a good idea at the time, yet nothing he ever does throughout the film leads to negative consequences for him.
** Of course this is played in that unlike most examples, Forrest is a good person at heart who's luck doesn't extend to those around him. His Medal of Honor came at the cost of his best friend, he lost his Mother to cancer, and his wife/childhood sweetheart to what is most likely AIDS.

* ''Series/GregTheBunny''. Greg: with no marketable skills and a large amount of '''[[AcceptableEthnicTargets anti-puppetism]]''' in-universe, he lucks into a regular cast position on the in-universe children's show. It gets worse, in the spinoff ''Warren the Ape'', Greg is revealed to have a massive mansion and live a high-class lifestyle. He acquired his riches by helping a Nigerian prince move some money out of the country. It actually worked.

[[folder:Western Animation]]
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* ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'':
** [[DeconstructedTrope Deconstructed]] in "The Finale", as the Wattersons are looking through their family photo album and reminiscing, the unhappy residents of Elmore come up to their house and remind them of the damages incurred throughout the series:
--->'''Richard''': Hey, Hector's mom, what brings you here?\\
'''Mrs. Jötunheim''': Do you remember the time when your kids wound up my boy and he went on a rampage?\\
'''Richard''': Oh yeah, I remember... [flashback transition, clips from "The Colossus" are shown, Hector is seen destroying the town. The flashback is interrupted by Mrs. Jötunheim.]\\
'''Mrs. Jötunheim''': Enough flashbacking! If you remember well, seventy-five percent of Elmore was destroyed and somebody has to pay for it!\\
'''Richard''': You mean it didn't all end well like it always does?\\
'''Mrs. Jötunheim''': [takes out a sheet of paper and hands it to Richard] Here's your half of the bill for the reconstruction work.\\
[Richard gasps as the sheet of paper unfolds, revealing a long list]\\
'''Mrs. Jötunheim''': Why are you looking so surprised? Did you really think we lived in some sort of fairy tale? 'Cuz wake up buddy, we don't.\\
[Mrs. Jötunheim gets on her broom, and flies away, then disappears. Someone clears their throat. Richard sees that Principal Brown has appeared.]\\
'''Richard''': [whispering] Weird, that lady gnome seems to think that things we've done in the past have consequences now.
** Principal Brown breaks the news that Gumball and Darwin have to go back to kindergarten because their disruptions tend to prevent the other students from receiving a decent education, followed by a phone call from the police department:
--->'''Richard''': Oh, hello officer. Really? I don't remember any reckless driving. [A quick montage of all of Richard's terrible driving is shown.] Right... well I think I just won't pay the fines and wait for this to all blow over. Bye. [hangs up]\\
'''Anais''': Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. If you don't pay, they could send you to jail.\\
'''Richard''': That's exactly what he said, but don't worry. I've been imprisoned heaps of times. They put you in then straight away you're just not in there anymore.\\
'''Nicole''': This bill is eight hundred thousand dollars. It says if we don't pay by tomorrow, then they can take our house away. What is going on today?\\
'''Anais''': It seems the results of all our reckless actions are finally catching up with us.\\
While in jail, the Wattersons start to devise a plan:\\
'''Anais''': I think Gumball was on to something. Up until now, every bad situation has gotten worse and worse until it somehow just fixed itself. There's only one solution left.\\
'''Richard''': What is it?\\
'''Anais''': [hands out papers containing charges against them] Everyone take a problem, part ways, and produce a problem more problematic than a problem of that proportion should probably be.\\
'''Gumball, Darwin, Nicole and Richard''': Huh?\\
'''Anais''': Just do what you do best. [evilly] Make things worse.
** Later, when the episode is about to conclude and the Wattersons are being confronted by an angry mob:
--->'''Richard''': [poking people with a broom] Somebody think of something, I can't hold 'em off forever!\\
'''Nicole''': No! This is it! It's all over! The end of the Wattersons!\\
'''Gumball''': The only thing that can save us is [[ResetButtonEnding reality being completely reset by some kind of magic device!]]\\
[The episode ends abruptly.]
* ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'' has Stan always making poor choices or having a lapse in judgment that usually results in someone getting hurt in some way while he doesn't get it until the last minute. Since Stan never retains anything he learned and karma's laser rarely strikes him, he goes back to making idiotic choices at the expense of others. One great example of this is when the town gets flooded from a hurricane and the whole house gets washed away. Stan makes several bad decisions in a row that results in Hayley being attacked by a shark, getting the house flipped upside down, and simply not evacuating the town just to prove that the hurricane isn't as bad as people made it to be. Stan eventually breaks down and grows too afraid to help his family after realizing what his bad choices resulted in, but Klaus encourages Stan to do better and help out. Stan attempts to do so, but things only get ''[[FromBadToWorse worse]]'' from there.
* The title characters of ''WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButtHead'' to an extent.
* Both Todd and Mr. Peanutbutter on ''WesternAnimation/BojackHorseman,'' although Todd's is more powerful: When Mr Peanutbutter is in a skiing contest, and relies on his luck to win, ''Todd'' wins instead, ''even though he wasn't in the race.'' They both seem to be completely aware of this, too, and follow whatever random thought crosses their minds in the explicit expectation that it will pay off later. It's most dramatic in the third season, where a string of bizarre business decisions over the course of the season ends up with them having the ''exact'' combination of resources and employees needed to save the day from an absurd disaster. Princess Carolyn calls Todds' status in this trope as "Failing Upwards", where he somehow always gets higher up the food chain in his schemes.
* ''WesternAnimation/CatDog'':
** Dog. His brainless antics frequently make his conjoined twin Cat's life unbearable. The show nearly always plants things in Dog's favor in the end. Granted [[CatsAreMean Cat isn't the soundest of people]], but not really to deserve what he suffers from his twin, especially since there are times this converts into a KarmaHoudini and Dog gets away with being a genuine {{Jerkass}} himself.
** Particularly bad in an early episode where all Cat wants to do is watch a TV event at home that he paid for (the jerkiest thing he did was not let a housemate watch too). Dog physically forces him to stay by a fire hydrant because another dog marked it. The end result is not only Cat missing his TV event, but ''his house and everything he owns in the world'' being burned to the ground leaving him only to laugh insanely that his life couldn't possibly get any worse. Then, to hammer Dog's side in even more, when their house is burning down and Cat calls the fire department, Dog refuses to let them use it to save their house, even when Cat begs him in tears that if he values Cat in any way he'll let them use the hydrant. He doesn't. The episode ends with Cat laughing in insanity and Dog laughing along, not actually knowing what's going on.
** In another episode where it's found that they are responsible for each other's teeth (Cat's good dental habits give Dog good teeth, while Dog's horrible habits give Cat a dentist's nightmare) Dog doesn't make any efforts to stop any of his bad habits for the sake of his brother, and even getting angry when he finds Cat tricked him into cleaning his mouth, yet takes offense when Cat starts giving as good as he gets. It ends with both of them escalating in tooth damage and getting false teeth, yet Dog doesn't really get punished for his clear lack of caring for his brother's wellbeing.
** Deconstructed in one episode where Dog gets an intelligence boost, but as a result of his huge brainwaves, starts draining Cat's own brain matter from him. Thus, still unintentionally causing misery for his brother, but no longer having the excuse of being too dumb to know any better. It is poetically this particular circumstance which reaches Cat's RageBreakingPoint and has him ''beat the living shit out of Dog'' until their [=IQs=] are evened out again.
* The ''WesternAnimation/DarkwingDuck'' episode "Inside Binkie's Brain" has Binkie Muddlefoot attempt to make St. Canard safe, only to cause havoc and even hinder Darkwing's efforts in stopping Megavolt. She doesn't get punished for her actions solely because she's too dumb to know that her actions are causing problems.
* Dee Dee from ''WesternAnimation/DextersLaboratory''. She normally means to be playful, but always destroys everything Dexter works hard for with nearly no comeuppance at all. Of course, this can be explained by Dexter not wanting to tell his parents she broke some stuff in his ''secret laboratory'', and that said laboratory, despite containing an arsenal of supposedly powerful weapons and tools, remains more or less defenseless against one (pre)pubescent child.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'':
** Cosmo, notably when he was the cause of Crocker losing his fairies, ''twice''. Once when his past self-revealed himself as a fairy godparent, and again when his present self and Timmy travel back to the 70's to prevent this from happening. While Timmy stopped Crocker's fairies from revealing themselves, present Cosmo [[WhatDoesThisButtonDo notices a switch that turns the microphones on]], and Crocker's secret is accidentally blurted out by Timmy out loud, thus making him the indirect cause. Timmy was punished by being forbidden to travel to March of 1972 ever again (though he's allowed to visit every other month of the year if he doesn't meddle with President [=McGovern=]'s elections), and yet '''nobody''' called Cosmo out on ''his'' actions.
** Timmy's parents, too. They almost always neglect him and, aside from Mr. Turner's occasional ButtMonkey moments, ''never'' receive any comeuppance for it.
* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'': Peter Griffin should not be able to ''survive'', much less thrive. The show occasionally lampshades this. At the end of "Tale of a Third-Grade Nothing", Peter actually goes to jail for blowing up a hospital earlier on. Naturally, he gets released just in time for next week's episode. Often combined with KarmaHoudini due to Peter's frequent high scale {{Jerkass}} tendencies, though it is sometimes hard to define which trope he plays on occasion (being a PsychopathicManchild has that way). Peter [[ExploitedTrope exploits this trope]] in "Petarded". After being declared "mentally retarded", Peter proceeds to do whatever he feels like because no-one will press charges against someone with a mental disability. This ends up biting him the ass when he hospitalizes Lois during one of his stunts and Child Services takes his kids away, since they don't have a guardian who's mentally fit. Meg actually lampshades it in "Seahorse Seashell Party," remarking that Peter ''should'' be in jail for most of the things he's done.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'':
** The entire Planet Express team tends to cause endless problems in their botched deliveries. Of course [[UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist many of them]] (especially [[VillainProtagonist Bender]]) fluctuate between this and an outright KarmaHoudini at times. Nibbler, the TeamPet, seems to undergo this trope due to being perceived as a mindless animal.
** If not for his ridiculous stream of good luck, [[GeneralFailure Zapp Brannigan]] would have died several times over but he always seems to survive by the skin of his teeth, just in time to get another commendation from the Democratic Order of Planets for doing nothing intelligent or strategic. In at least one case (when sitting in on a hearing to consider his reinstatement), Leela even reinforces it by agreeing to every single bald-faced lie he told just so he and Kif can be out of her hair.
* The entire premise of ''Grizzy & the Lemmings'' revolves around intellectually challenged lemmings ruining a bear's day when he's just minding his own business and often getting away with it.
* ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'': Zim was TheMillstone on his own planet but became this after being [[ReassignedToAntarctica Reassigned to Earth]]. If anyone suffers from Zim's plans, [[KafkaKomedy it's usually Dib]], the one person who knows ([[CrapsackWorld or cares]]) that Zim is an alien.
* ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill'':
** Peggy Hill is very much this. Smuggling cocaine into prison, check. Kidnapping a Mexican child, check. She even once kidnapped a bus full of people and either held them against their will for a day or dropped them off far enough away that the poll booths were closed by the time they got back.
** Doubled subverted in the episode she kidnapped the Mexican girl. Her [[KnowNothingKnowItAll highly overestimated grasp of the Spanish language]] made her make the situation that much worse. However, in the end the Mexican jury rules that's she's not guilty as they realize that Peggy has no idea what she was doing or what the Mexican girl (or anyone else speaking Spanish, for that matter) was saying and did not fit the Mens Rea part of the crime, i.e., she didn't intentionally commit a crime, she thought the Mexican girl was just another one of her students.
** Also played with for smuggling cocaine -- she was duped into doing it in the first place because the guy played to her ego (he wrote her a letter talking about how she inspired him when she was a substitute teacher for one of his classes, then later reveals he wrote the exact same letter to several dozen substitute teachers in the area - Peggy was the only one dumb and egotistical enough to believe it), then once the con is revealed she's coerced to keep doing it by the knowledge that the convict can turn her in for what she's already provided at any time, such as if he's about to get in trouble for it (or whenever he feels like). Also, while Peggy doesn't end up with any real consequences from it, and in true Peggy fashion [[NeverMyFault refuses to admit that it was her ego that got her in trouble]], she does spend a good portion of the episode [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness clearly on edge]].
* A variant is one of the core rules of the ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' and their various spin-offs, reimaginings and derivatives: a protagonist's ability to retaliate against an antagonist is directly connected to the antagonist's intelligence. A recurring plot point is a protagonist being forced to defend themselves against a character who causes them harm through either ignorance or naivety, and which thus prevents them from using the slapstick violence they normally freely dispense to anyone else who upsets them.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheMarvelousMisadventuresOfFlapjack'': The titular character is a rare example where the main protagonist himself is TheFool. Despite being good-natured or rather because of being extremely naive, he does cause a lot of disasters on the show such as playfully tricking two people into thinking a sea monster was attacking Stormalong and unwittingly getting them banished, keeping a filthy rat that went on to infect the whole harbor with a plague. It turns out that his guardian, Bubbie believes that Flapjack is an angel who can do no wrong and doesn't even bother with explaining to him when he does something wrong. K'nuckles meanwhile basically serves both as Flapjack's bad influence ''and'' whipping boy at the same time, getting all of the punishments for Flapjack's mishaps in addition to his ''own'' which by contrast he never manages to dodge.
* ''WesternAnimation/PennZeroPartTimeHero'' has [[NonIdleRich Principal Larry.]] Not only is he ditzy, [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} extremely weird,]] and [[BewareTheNiceOnes downright creepy sometimes,]] he doesn't seem to know much of anything. Whenever he's around, [[TalkativeLoon all he does is be extremely long-winded and tell stories he never finishes.]] What is Larry's life like?? [[RichInDollarsPoorInSense He won the lottery 32 times.]] [[BigFancyHouse He lives in a giant mansion.]] [[NestedOwnership His butler has a butler]]. [[Fiction500 He genetically modified an elephant to stay small and cute forever.]] And at the end of his ADayInTheLimelight episode, he wins the lottery again.
* ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls1998'':
** Bubbles in "Neighbor Hood", when she gets away with stealing money to donate to her favorite show.[[note]]Pretty weird considering that Blossom did something similar to that in "A Very Special Blossom" but did get her comeuppance.[[/note]]
** Bubbles again in "Him Diddle Riddle", wherein she scores the highest on a test out of her sisters ''by drawing on it.''
** Bubbles [[RuleOfThree for a third time]] in "Bubblevicious". She spends the whole time beating the shit out of people for minor stuff and gets away with it.
* The flock from ''WesternAnimation/ShaunTheSheep'' qualifies. No matter how stupid of an act they do, they're saved by the end, it inconveniences the Farmer in some way. Well, being a farmer, that flock ''is'' his livelihood, so he kinda has to keep them around. Though as he's oblivious to the wacky hijinks the animals on his farm get up to, he never realizes that they're the reason for his misery in the first place (except for the frequent times when it's caused by an error in judgment on his own part).
* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'':
** Homer Simpson at first showed reasonably poor judgment, but repeated encounters have gradually turned him into this trope. A good example is the episode "Homer Defined" that features Homer saving the nuclear power plant from a meltdown, and becoming a hero because of it; but in reality, he simply hit the override button by going "eeny-meeny-miney-mo." When this is discovered, the term "Homer" thus becomes a trope of its own in the episode, for whenever someone does something good on just plain dumb luck. Magic Johnson even said, "Looks like I pulled a Homer!" when he won the game by accident.
*** This aspect of his character was {{deconstruct|ion}}ed in the eighth season episode "Homer's Enemy" featuring Frank Grimes, an orphan who had to struggle and work hard all his life just to reach the lower middle class. He is perplexed and disturbed by how successful Homer is despite the fact that he's incompetent at nearly everything. Grimes finally snaps when, after tricking Homer into entering a future nuclear plant model contest for children, the crowd cheers and applauds Homer when he wins the competition by building a scale model with minor efficiency tweaks and stripes going down the towers, even though the previous entry by [[InsufferableGenius Martin]] was an actual fully functional miniature power plant that was powering the lighting in the room at the moment, which he also demonstrated.
** Bart Simpson pulled this to a lesser extent. Especially when he is in a rivalry with Lisa.
* Pick any adult on ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'', and chances are they'll have been this at one point or another.
* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' leans more and more increasingly into this trope as seasons pass, frequently bothering or inflicting misery on the other residents of Bikini Bottom (usually his neighbor [[ButtMonkey Squidward]]) due to his well-intentioned stupidity, and someone else facing the repercussions for it. Combined with his friend Patrick's near-equal Idiot Houdini tendencies the show becomes [[SadistShow disturbingly sociopathic]] for a kid's show at times.
* Wander of ''WesternAnimation/WanderOverYonder''. For example, in "The Pet," he attempts to train an alien monster that is heavily implied to have killed someone in the past, and it just barely fails to kill Wander too. Furthermore, Sylvia tries to get rid of the monster by activating self-destruct on the ship they're all on (when she thinks the monster devoured Wander when it was actually a teddy bear Wander gave him), and Wander doesn't try to evacuate (or even seem to notice) until Sylvia rescues him.
[[/folder]]

-->-- ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', "Homer's Enemy"

* ''Literature/{{BioshockRapture}}'' In the backstory to the Bioshock game, this trope ''drives'' Andrew Ryan, but it runs out shortly before the events of the game. He used to be a good little boy working in a Jewish enclave - until his family was brutally slaughtered in a Bolshevik revolution, [[TeachHimAnger convincing him that good guys die first]]. The instant he let the darkness into his heart, ''fate itself'' seemed to bow before him - he escaped multiple Soviet purges, made his way to America solo, struck oil after buying a random patch of land, became a multimillionaire despite his obvious Russian origins and lack of social tact, got away with starting a massive wildfire on his property, and built a giant underwater city without drowning. This string of borderline physics-defying luck warped his personality into a sociopathic workaholic who believed that people who work for themselves ''always'' get paid what they're deserved - which is the exact opposite of true. When his 'capitalist utopia' finally crumbled under its own arrogant weight and lack of social infrastructure, he couldn't comprehend the idea that his hard-working exploitation and lack of empathy was the cause, especially since he hadn't faced any negative consequences for his sheer number of reckless gambles that always went well for him, and he went full fascist trying to convince his few remaining loyalists to go back to work, destroying what was left of the city.

** Cameron is incredibly scatterbrained, often forgetting to bring his Pokémon to matches and almost not making it to the League. He even brings 5 Pokémon to a 6-on-6 match by accident, and still manages to defeat Ash. Averted when he gets eliminated in the next round anyway.

-->'''Richard''': Hey, Hector's mom, what brings you here?\\

* In ''Film/{{Go}}'', a sleazy strip-club owner [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech berates his useless son]] for this.
-->"You know what wakes me up in the middle of the night covered in a cold sweat? Knowing that you aren't any worse than anyone else in your whole screwed-up generation. In the old days, you know how you got to the top? Huh? By being better than the guy ahead of you. How do you people get to the top? By being so fucking incompetent, that the guy ahead of you can't do his job, so he falls on his ass and congratulations, you are now on top. And now the top is down here, it used to be up here... and you don't even know the fucking difference."

* ''Film/ForrestGump''. The lead character is cognitively disabled yet all his decisions lead to success, wealth and fame. He becomes a star footballer just by running into a stadium during a match. He survives an ambush and napalm strike in Vietnam, saving some of his fellow soldiers and emerges with nothing more than a stray bullet in the ass. He becomes a world table-tennis champion because he is bored while recovering from his bullet wound and wants to occupy himself. He makes millions as a shrimp boat captain despite having no skills, experience or success until a freak storm wipes out the local industry leaving him miraculously unscathed. He inspires the creation of the smiley face and the phrase "shit happens". He meets three different presidents ''and'' exposes the Watergate break-in by pure accident. He fumbles and stumbles through life pursuing on a whim whatever seems like a good idea at the time, yet nothing he ever does throughout the film leads to negative consequences for him.

* Creator/TommyWiseau and [[Film/TheRoom ''The Room'']]. ''Literature/TheDisasterArtist'' (a book later made into a film) details all of the bizarre decisions Tommy made as Writer/Director/Producer/Star, spending $6 milliion on a film that took SoBadItsGood to new heights, drawing in crowds to its showings and lifting him to stardom.

** Later we meet prosecutor Maggie Lizer, who's a successful lawyer in spite of the fact that she's spent several years doing a [[BlindMistake very, very poor imitation]] of a blind person. The only rational explanation for how she wasn't found out sooner is that she's never met anyone who had seen a real blind person before. And even when Michael tries to expose her she [[KarmaHoudini wriggles out of it]] because she had temporarily lost her sight, when she should have been disbarred.
* Ashley Abbott on ''Series/TheYoungAndTheRestless'' falls into this pattern chronically. Her characters arcs tends to follow a simple pattern. Make an extremely poor decision. Then, get mad at other characters when they point out why what she's doing is a bad idea. When she finally realizes how stupid she's been, she then gets mad at other characters for offering advice and decides to deal with her problems by going it alone. Rinse and repeat. This doesn't even get into her ability to screw up other people's plans simply by being involved in them. On one occasion, while speaking with Abbott arch-nemesis Victor Newman, she gets a phone call from her brother Jack about an important business deal. So, naturally, she excuses herself so she can talk about it without Victor over-hearing. Which room does she go to? The nursery. She left Victor in the living room with the baby monitor. It's hard to miss the fact that, in a show where many of the main characters are business executives, Ashley stands alone as the one whose business sense is clearly an InformedAbility.

** An episode where he meets his accountant shows that he spends a great deal of his money, not just on luxuries, but on objects that are almost completely useless to him: He has a fishing rod worth several hundred dollars even though he doesn't know how to fish. His best escape act, though, is when he bankrupts the Michael Scott Paper Company by not understanding that his prices are so low he can't recoup his costs. Dunder-Mifflin, not realizing this (in part because Jim sabotages Dwight's attempt to warn them), offers him a buy-out because on paper Michael's taken a lot of their customers.
** Another good straight example is when Michael was vying for a raise in "The Negotiation". The exec who was conducting the review to determine if he deserved one was Jan, who Michael was in a relationship with at the time. Despite Jan telling Michael not to try bringing up their relationship and Michael already having numerous legitimate reasons as to why he deserved a raise, Michael's relationship with Jan is the ''only'' card he ever tries to play, at one point even ''threatening to withhold sex from Jan if she didn't give him the raise.'' Not only is he somehow neither sued nor fired over this, he actually ''gets'' the raise.

* ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad''
** Stan always makes poor choices or has a lapse in judgment that usually results in someone getting hurt in some way while he doesn't get it until the last minute. Since Stan never retains anything he learned and karma's laser rarely strikes him, he goes back to making idiotic choices at the expense of others.
** When the town gets flooded from a hurricane and the whole house gets washed away. Stan makes several bad decisions in a row that results in Hayley being attacked by a shark, getting the house flipped upside down, and simply not evacuating the town just to prove that the hurricane isn't as bad as people made it to be. Stan eventually breaks down and grows too afraid to help his family after realizing what his bad choices resulted in, but Klaus encourages Stan to do better and help out. Stan attempts to do so, but the following happens:
*** Stan takes exposed wires and tries to dip them in the water to fry a [[ThreateningShark shark]], but he fries Roger instead.
*** Stan sees a {{bear|sAreBadNews}} floating down the street and he moves it into the house to fight the shark, only for the bear and the shark to attack the family as a team.
*** Despite Francine begging Stan to just stop helping, Stan keeps trying to help out as he takes a javelin and throws it at the bear, but winds up missing and hits Francine instead. [[EvenTheDogIsAshamed Even the bear looks to Stan and shakes his head as if to say "Dude, really?"]]
*** Hell, it got so bad that when Buckle (their neighbor) [[BigDamnHeroes busted into the house to save them]] by shooting the shark and bear with a tranquilizer gun, he shot Stan as well, noting afterwards that he couldn't tell which of the three was doing the most damage.
*** After this is all over, Stan even admits that all of these things were his fault, if they were ever put in a situation like that again his trying to help would only make things worse like it did this time, and he ''still'' says he won't do nothing the next time the situation comes along. He (and the show) fully acknowledges his idiocy and he's still steadfast in holding to it.
*** After the hurricane is over, Stan is held up at gunpoint by [[WesternAnimation/TheClevelandShow Cleveland]] and [[WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy Peter]] and winds up shooting Francine out of reflex.

** Particularly bad in an early episode where all Cat wants to do is watch a TV event at home that he paid for (the most jerky thing he did was not let a housemate watch too). Dog physically forces him to stay by a fire hydrant because another dog marked it. The end result is not only Cat missing his TV event, but ''his house and everything he owns in the world'' being burned to the ground leaving him only to laugh insanely that his life couldn't possibly get any worse. Then, to hammer Dog's side in even more, when their house is burning down and Cat calls the fire department, Dog refuses to let them use it to save their house, even when Cat begs him in tears that if he values Cat in any way he'll let them use the hydrant. He doesn't. The episode ends with Cat laughing in insanity and Dog laughing along, not actually knowing what's going on.

** Deconstructed in one episode where Dog gets an intelligence boost, but as a result of his huge brainwaves, starts draining Cat's own brain matter from him. Thus still unintentionally causing misery for his brother, but no longer having the excuse of being too dumb to know any better. It is poetically this particular circumstance which reaches Cat's RageBreakingPoint and has him ''beat the living shit out of Dog'' until their [=IQs=] are evened out again.

** Cosmo, notably when he was the cause of Crocker losing his fairies, ''twice''. Once when his past self revealed himself as a fairy godparent, and again when his present self and Timmy travel back to the 70's to prevent this from happening. While Timmy stopped Crocker's fairies from revealing themselves, present Cosmo [[WhatDoesThisButtonDo notices a switch that turns the microphones on]], and Crocker's secret is accidentally blurted out by Timmy out loud, thus making him the indirect cause. Timmy was punished by being forbidden to travel to March of 1972 ever again (though he's allowed to visit every other month of the year if he doesn't meddle with President [=McGovern=]'s elections), and yet '''nobody''' called Cosmo out on ''his'' actions.

* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'': Peter Griffin should not be able to ''survive'', much less thrive. The show occasionally lampshades this. At the end of "Tale of a Third-Grade Nothing", Peter actually goes to jail for blowing up a hospital earlier on. Naturally, he gets released just in time for next week's episode. Often combined with KarmaHoudini due to Peter's frequent high-scale {{Jerkass}} tendencies, though it is sometimes hard to define which trope he plays on occasion (being a PsychopathicManchild has that way). Peter [[ExploitedTrope exploits this trope]] in "Petarded". After being declared "mentally retarded", Peter proceeds to do whatever he feels like because no-one will press charges against someone with a mental disability. This ends up biting him the ass when he hospitalizes Lois during one of his stunts and Child Services takes his kids away, since they don't have a guardian who's mentally fit. Meg actually lampshades it in "Seahorse Seashell Party," remarking that Peter ''should'' be in jail for most of the things he's done.

** If not for his ridiculous stream of good luck, [[GeneralFailure Zapp Brannigan]] would have died several times over but he always seems to survive by the skin of his teeth, just in time to get another commendation from the Democratic Order Of Planets for doing nothing intelligent or strategic. In at least one case (when sitting in on a hearing to consider his reinstatement), Leela even reinforces it by agreeing to every single bald-faced lie he told just so he and Kif can be out of her hair.

* ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'': Zim was TheMillstone on his own planet, but became this after being [[ReassignedToAntarctica Reassigned to Earth]]. If anyone suffers from Zim's plans, [[KafkaKomedy it's usually Dib]], the one person who knows ([[CrapsackWorld or cares]]) that Zim is an alien.

** Doubled subverted in the episode she kidnapped the Mexican girl. Her [[KnowNothingKnowItAll highly-overestimated grasp of the Spanish language]] made her make the situation that much worse. However, in the end the Mexican jury rules that's she's not guilty as they realize that Peggy has no idea what she was doing or what the Mexican girl (or anyone else speaking Spanish, for that matter) was saying and did not fit the Mens Rea part of the crime, i.e. she didn't intentionally commit a crime, she thought the Mexican girl was just another one of her students.
** Also played with for smuggling cocaine -- she was duped into doing it in the first place because the guy played to her ego (he wrote her a letter talking about how she inspired him when she was a substitute teacher for one of his classes, then later reveals he wrote the exact same letter to several dozen substitute teachers in the area - Peggy was the only one dumb and egotistical enough to believe it), then once the con is revealed she's coerced to keep doing it by the knowledge that the convict can turn her in for what she's already provided at any time, such as if he's about to get in trouble for it (or whenever he feels like). Also, while Peggy doesn't end up with any real consequences from it, and in true Peggy fashion [[NeverMyFault refuses to admit that it was her ego that got her in trouble]], she does spend a good portion of the episode [[OoCIsSeriousBusiness clearly on edge]].

** Bubbles in "Neighbor Hood", when she gets away with stealing money to donate to her favorite show.[[note]]Pretty weird considering that Blossom did something similar to that in "A Very Special Blossom", but did get her comeuppance.[[/note]]

* Even after causing the cancellation of the ''Franchise/LupinIII'' "Red Jacket" series by stupidly distributing the first anime film outside of Japan, where the estate of Maurice [=LeBlanc=] (which at the time owned the copyright on the Arsène Lupin name) was more likely to notice an infringement on its copyright, Creator/{{Toho}} is still distributing new adaptations of Monkey Punch's manga in Japan. To their credit, though, they were much more careful afterwards as far as international distribution was concerned while the Lupin name was still in copyright elsewhere (i.e. they often forced international distributors to change Lupin's name), which is likely the only reason why Creator/TMSEntertainment (who produced the anime) didn't turn to a new distributor immediately after the lawsuit.

* ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'':
** Cameron is incredibly scatterbrained, often forgetting to bring his Pokémon to matches and almost not making it to the League. He even brings 5 Pokémon to a 6-on-6 match by accident, and still manages to defeat Ash. Averted when he gets eliminated in the next round anyway.
** Clemont's Chespin. Whenever he is ordered to work with Bunnelby, Chespin will always get all the credit even though it's Bunnelby who's the only one who did any actual work.
** Clemont's Dedenne in "Adventures In Running Errands". He was requested to help the other Pokémon keep the electricity on, but only slept the whole time, and yet he gets most of the credit.

* Vash the Stampede in ''Manga/{{Trigun}}'' [[ObfuscatingStupidity appears to be]] this from time to time:
-->'''Villager 1:''' (''as Vash is dancing along the street with headphones in'') He's dodging the bullets!\\
'''Villager 2:''' Dodging? That dumbass doesn't know he's being shot at!
* Easily Kamina of ''Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann'', [[spoiler:at least before his death, anyway]]. Almost everything he does is outrageously stupid (such as attempting to hijack an enemy mech with zero idea of how it works or any of its security codes), yet he gets away with it thanks to sheer RefugeInAudacity, RuleOfCool, and the efforts of his little bro Simon. He operates entirely off of {{Indy Ploy}}s, all of which succeed, and, in fact, the one time he actually tries to be smart and plan things beforehand, [[spoiler:he dies]], although it was more [[SpannerInTheWorks Simon's]] fault than his, though that also was due to a certain misunderstanding.
* The title protagonist of ''Anime/IrresponsibleCaptainTylor'' would be this if you buy into the [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation interpretation]] that he really is an incredibly lucky idiot and not merely ObfuscatingStupidity.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'': [[DeconstructedTrope Deconstructed]] in "The Finale", as the Wattersons are looking through their family photo album and reminiscing, the unhappy residents of Elmore come up to their house and remind them of the damages incurred throughout the series:

* ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'' has Stan always making poor choices or having a lapse in judgment that usually results in someone getting hurt in some way while he doesn't get it until the last minute. Since Stan never retains anything he learned and karma's laser rarely strikes him, he goes back to making idiotic choices at the expense of others.
** One great example of this is when the town gets flooded from a hurricane and the whole house gets washed away. Stan makes several bad decisions in a row that results in Hayley being attacked by a shark, getting the house flipped upside down, and simply not evacuating the town just to prove that the hurricane isn't as bad as people made it to be. Stan eventually breaks down and grows too afraid to help his family after realizing what his bad choices resulted in, but Klaus encourages Stan to do better and help out. Stan attempts to do so, but the following happens:

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'':
** Homer Simpson at first showed reasonably poor judgment, but repeated encounters have gradually turned him into this trope. A good example is the episode "Homer Defined" that features Homer saving the nuclear power plant from a meltdown, and becoming a hero because of it; but in reality he simply hit the override button by going "eeny-meeny-miney-mo." When this is discovered, the term "Homer" thus becomes a trope of its own in the episode, for whenever someone does something good on just plain dumb luck. Magic Johnson even said, "Looks like I pulled a Homer!" when he won the game by accident.
*** This aspect of his character was {{deconstruct|ion}}ed in the eighth season episode "Homer's Enemy" featuring Frank Grimes, an orphan who had to struggle and work hard all his life just to reach the lower middle class. He is perplexed and disturbed by how successful Homer is despite the fact that he's incompetent at nearly everything. Grimes finally snaps when, after tricking Homer into entering a future nuclear plant model contest for children, the crowd cheers and applauds Homer when he wins the competition by building a scale model with minor efficiency tweaks and stripes going down the towers, even though the previous entry by [[InsufferableGenius Martin]] was an actual fully functional miniature power plant that was powering the lighting in the room at the moment, which he also demonstrated.
*** Of course, it is worth noting that Homer is also one of the show's prime {{Butt Monkey}}s. He can get away with his stupidity, but only [[DependingOnTheWriter when the plot calls for it]], other times fate punishes him ''dearly'' such as in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsonsMovie'', where his actions got the town domed in and everyone goes up to his house with TorchesAndPitchforks and his family leave him, only for him to Idiot Houdini his way outta that one as well.
** Bart Simpson pull this to a lesser extent. Especially when he is in a rivalry with Lisa.

'''Richard''': [whispering] Weird, that lady gnome seems to think that things we've done in the past have consequences in the now.

* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'': Peter Griffin should not be able to ''survive'', much less thrive. The show occasionally lampshades this. At the end of "Tale of a Third-Grade Nothing", Peter actually goes to jail for blowing up a hospital earlier on. Naturally, he gets released just in time for next week's episode. Often combined with KarmaHoudini due to Peter's frequent high-scale {{Jerkass}} tendencies, though it is sometimes hard to define which trope he plays on occasion (being a PsychopathicManchild has that way). Peter [[ExploitedTrope exploits this trope]] in "Petarded". After being declared "mentally retarded", Peter proceeds to do whatever he feels like because no-one will press charges against someone with a mental disability. This ends up biting him the ass when he hospitalizes Lois during one of his stunts and Child Services takes his kids away, since they don't have a guardian who's mentally fit. Meg actually lampshades it in "Seahorse Seashell Party," remarking that Peter ''should'' be in jail for most of the things he's done.
* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' leans more and more increasingly into this trope as seasons pass, frequently bothering or inflicting misery on the other residents of Bikini Bottom (usually his neighbour [[ButtMonkey Squidward]]) due to his well-intentioned stupidity, and someone else facing the repercussions for it. Combined with his friend Patrick's near-equal Idiot Houdini tendencies the show becomes [[SadistShow disturbingly sociopathic]] for a kid's show at times.
* Cosmo from ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'', notably when he was the cause of Crocker losing his fairies, ''twice''. Once when his past self revealed himself as a fairy godparent, and again when his present self and Timmy travel back to the 70's to prevent this from happening. While Timmy stopped Crocker's fairies from revealing themselves, present Cosmo [[WhatDoesThisButtonDo notices a switch that turns the microphones on]], and Crocker's secret is accidentally blurted out by Timmy out loud, thus making him the indirect cause. Timmy was punished by being forbidden to travel to March of 1972 ever again (though he's allowed to visit every other month of the year if he doesn't meddle with President [=McGovern=]'s elections), and yet '''nobody''' called Cosmo out on ''his'' actions.
** Timmy's parents, too. They almost always neglect him and, aside from Mr. Turner's occasional ButtMonkey moments, ''never'' receive any comeuppance for it.
* The latter half of fellow Nicktoon ''WesternAnimation/CatDog'' is even worse; Dog's brainless antics frequently make his conjoined twin Cat's life unbearable. The show nearly always plants things in Dog's favor in the end. Granted [[CatsAreMean Cat isn't the soundest of people]], but not really to deserve what he suffers from his twin, especially since there are times this converts into a KarmaHoudini and Dog gets away with being a genuine {{Jerkass}} himself.
** Particularly bad in an early episode where all Cat wants to do is watch a TV event at home that he paid for (the most jerky thing he did was not let a housemate watch too). Dog physically forces him to stay by a fire hydrant because another dog marked it. The end result is not only Cat missing his TV event, but ''his house and everything he owns in the world'' being burned to the ground leaving him only to laugh insanely that his life couldn't possibly get any worse. Then, to hammer Dog's side in even more, when their house is burning down and Cat calls the fire department, Dog refuses to let them use it to save their house, even when Cat begs him in tears that if he values Cat in any way he'll let them use the hydrant. He doesn't. The episode ends with Cat laughing in insanity and Dog laughing along, not actually knowing what's going on.
** In another episode where it's found that they are responsible for each other's teeth (Cat's good dental habits give Dog good teeth, while Dog's horrible habits give Cat a dentist's nightmare) Dog doesn't make any efforts to stop any of his bad habits for the sake of his brother, and even getting angry when he finds Cat tricked him into cleaning his mouth, yet takes offense when Cat starts giving as good as he gets. It ends with both of them escalating in tooth damage and getting false teeth, yet Dog doesn't really get punished for his clear lack of caring for his brother's wellbeing.
** Deconstructed in one episode where Dog gets an intelligence boost, but as a result of his huge brainwaves, starts draining Cat's own brain matter from him. Thus still unintentionally causing misery for his brother, but no longer having the excuse of being too dumb to know any better. It is poetically this particular circumstance which reaches Cat's RageBreakingPoint and has him ''beat the living shit out of Dog'' until their [=IQs=] are evened out again.
* To an extent, the entire Planet Express team of ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' tend to cause endless problems in their botched deliveries. Of course [[UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist many of them]] (especially [[VillainProtagonist Bender]]) fluctuate between this and an outright KarmaHoudini at times. Nibbler, the TeamPet, seems to undergo this trope due to being perceived as a mindless animal.
** If not for his ridiculous stream of good luck, [[GeneralFailure Zapp Brannigan]] would have died several times over but he always seems to survive by the skin of his teeth, just in time to get another commendation from the Democratic Order Of Planets for doing nothing intelligent or strategic. In at least one case (when sitting in on a hearing to consider his reinstatement), Leela even reinforces it by agreeing to every single bald-faced lie he told just so he and Kif can be out of her hair.
* Dee Dee from ''WesternAnimation/DextersLaboratory''. She normally means to be playful, but always destroys everything Dexter works hard for with nearly no comeuppance at all. Of course, this can be explained by Dexter not wanting to tell his parents she broke some stuff in his ''secret laboratory'', and that said laboratory, despite containing an arsenal of supposedly powerful weapons and tools, remains more or less defenceless against one (pre)pubescent child.
* The flock from ''WesternAnimation/ShaunTheSheep'' qualify. No matter how stupid of an act they do, they're saved by the end, it inconveniences the Farmer in some way. Well, being a farmer, that flock ''is'' his livelihood, so he kinda has to keep them around. Though as he's oblivious to the wacky hi-jinx the animals on his farm get up to, he never realizes that they're the reason for his misery in the first place (except for the frequent times when it's caused by an error in judgement on his own part).
* ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'' has Stan always make poor choices or having a lapse in judgement that usually results in someone getting hurt in some way while he doesn't get it until the last minute. Since Stan never retains anything he learned and karma's laser rarely strikes him, he goes back to making idiotic choices at the expense of others.

* Name an adult in ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark.'' Any of them. Chances are they'll have been this at one point or another.
* ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'': Zim was TheMillstone on his own planet, but became this after being [[ReassignedToAntarctica Reassigned to Earth]]. If anyone suffers from Zim's plans, [[KafkaKomedy it's usually Dib]], the one person who knows ([[CrapsackWorld or cares]]) that Zim is an alien.
* Wander of ''WesternAnimation/WanderOverYonder''. For example, in "The Pet," he attempts to train an alien monster that is heavily implied to have killed someone in the past, and it just barely fails to kill Wander too. Furthermore, Sylvia tries to get rid of the monster by activating self-destruct on the ship they're all on (when she thinks the monster devoured Wander when it was actually a teddy bear Wander gave him), and Wander doesn't try to evacuate (or even seem to notice) until Sylvia rescues him.

* ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill'': Peggy Hill is very much this. Smuggling cocaine into prison, check. Kidnapping a Mexican child, check. She even once kidnapped a bus full of people and either held them against their will for a day or dropped them off far enough away that the poll booths were closed by the time they got back.
** Doubled subverted in the episode she kidnapped the Mexican girl. Her [[KnowNothingKnowItAll highly-overestimated grasp of the Spanish language]] made her make the situation that much worse. However, in the end the Mexican jury rules that's she's not guilty as they realize that Peggy has no idea what she was doing or what the Mexican girl (or anyone else speaking Spanish, for that matter) was saying and did not fit the Mens Rea part of the crime, i.e. she didn't intentionally commit a crime, she thought the Mexican girl was just another one of her students.
** Also played with for smuggling cocaine - she was duped into doing it in the first place because the guy played to her ego (he wrote her a letter talking about how she inspired him when she was a substitute teacher for one of his classes, then later reveals he wrote the exact same letter to several dozen substitute teachers in the area - Peggy was the only one dumb and egotistical enough to believe it), then once the con is revealed she's coerced to keep doing it by the knowledge that the convict can turn her in for what she's already provided at any time, such as if he's about to get in trouble for it (or whenever he feels like). Also, while Peggy doesn't end up with any real consequences from it, and in true Peggy fashion [[NeverMyFault refuses to admit that it was her ego that got her in trouble]], she does spend a good portion of the episode [[OoCIsSeriousBusiness clearly on edge]].
* ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls1998'':
** Bubbles in "Neighbor Hood", when she gets away with stealing money to donate to her favorite show.[[note]]Pretty weird considering that Blossom did something similar to that in "A Very Special Blossom", but did get her comeuppance.[[/note]]
** Bubbles again in "Him Diddle Riddle", wherein she scores the highest on a test out of her sisters ''by drawing on it.''
** Bubbles [[RuleOfThree for a third time]] in "Bubblevicious". She spends the whole time beating the shit out of people for minor stuff and gets away with it.
* ''WesternAnimation/PennZeroPartTimeHero'' has [[NonIdleRich Principal Larry.]] Not only is he ditzy, [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} extremely weird,]] and [[BewareTheNiceOnes downright creepy sometimes,]] he doesn't seem to know much of anything. Whenever he's around, [[TalkativeLoon all he does is be extremely long-winded and tell stories he never finishes.]] What is Larry's life like?? [[RichInDollarsPoorInSense He won the lottery 32 times.]] [[BigFancyHouse He lives in a giant mansion.]] [[NestedOwnership His butler has a butler]]. [[Fiction500 He genetically modified an elephant to stay small and cute forever.]] And at the end of his ADayInTheLimelight episode, he wins the lottery again.
* The entire premise of ''Grizzy & the Lemmings'' revolves around intellectually challenged lemmings ruining a bear's day when he's just minding his own business and often getting away with it.
* Both Todd and Mr. Peanutbutter on ''WesternAnimation/BojackHorseman,'' although Todd's is more powerful: When Mr Peanutbutter is in a skiing contest, and relies on his luck to win, ''Todd'' wins instead, ''even though he wasn't in the race.'' They both seem to be completely aware of this, too, and follow whatever random thought crosses their minds in the explicit expectation that it will pay off later. It's most dramatic in the third season, where a string of bizarre business decisions over the course of the season ends up with them having the ''exact'' combination of resources and employees needed to save the day from an absurd disaster. Princess Carolyn calls Todds' status as this trope as "Failing Upwards", where he somehow always gets higher up the food chain in his schemes.
* A variant is one of the core rules of the ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' and their various spin-offs, reimaginings and derivatives: a protagonist's ability to retaliate against an antagonist is directly connected to the antagonist's intelligence. A recurring plot point is a protagonist being forced to defend themselves against a character who causes them harm through either ignorance or naivety, and which thusly prevents them from using the slapstick violence they normally freely dispense to anyone else who upsets them.
** It bears mentioning that fans often don't actually like these episodes, for the same reason that the standard Idiot Houdini is disliked. In particular, the character Elmyra from ''WesternAnimation/TinyToonAdventures'', who is both an Idiot Houdini ''and'' a CreatorsPest, is resoundingly despised by all fans of the shows.