History Main / BunglingInventor

* Hiccup is portrayed as this at the beginning of ''WesternAnimation/HowToTrainYourDragon''. Though everything we see him invent through the 2 movies tends to be quite brilliant and work (most being adopted by the entire village). It's unclear if prior to the movie his inventions blew up causing the destruction he's "famous" for or if he was just a klutz. Either way, he got better.

* ''Series/TheBeatlesGetBack'' has a few moments where the band runs in with Alexis "Magic Alex" Madras, who had promised to design them a state-of-the-art 72-track computer assisted recording studio, which would have been pretty impressive in the days when the most advanced tape decks had 16 tracks. What they get however is a tangle of cables and tiny wall-mounted speakers that generates too much background noise to actually record anything on, and producer George Martin is forced to borrow a portable console from [=EMI=] for the sessions. Magic Alex also shows Music/JohnLennon his prototype of a new musical instrument that is a combination rhythm guitar and electric bass with a swiveling neck to switch between sets of strings; it has a few small design flaws such as being impossible to tune or play. [[note]]Outside the documentary, Magic Alex's other purported inventions included paint that changed the color of a car when you hit the brake, force fields to surround drum kits for audio separation, a telephone which only answers to its owner's voice, and wallpaper that doubled as speakers. None of them worked. His most successful invention? The "Nothing Box", a small plastic box with randomly blinking lights that John Lennon could watch in fascination while tripped out on [=LSD=].[[/note]]

* ''Film/TheBeatlesGetBack'' has a few moments where the band runs in with Alexis "Magic Alex" Madras, who had promised to design them a state-of-the-art 72-track computer assisted recording studio. The result however is a mish-mash of cables and tiny speakers that has too much background noise to actually record anything on, and producer George Martin is forced to borrow a console from [=EMI=] for the sessions. Magic Alex also shows John Lennon his prototype of a new musical instrument that is a combination rhythm guitar and electric bass with a swiveling neck to switch between sets of strings; it has a few small design flaws such as being impossible to tune or play. [[note]]Outside the documentary, Magic Alex's other purported inventions included paint that changed the color of a car when you hit the brake, force fields to surround drum kits for audio separation, a telephone which only answers to its owner's voice, and wallpaper that doubled as speakers. None of them worked. His most successful invention? The "Nothing Box", a small plastic box with randomly blinking lights that John Lennon could watch in fascination while tripped out on [=LSD=].[[/note]]

* [[TheSmartGuy Sherman]] and [[MadScientist Dr. Brainstorm]], from ''Fanfic/CalvinAndHobbesTheSeries'', seldom invent something that doesn't [[StuffBlowingUp explode]] or simply not work.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'': Dr. Thaddeus "Rusty" Venture is both a genius super-scientist and a miserable failure. While some of his inventions are pretty cool, many of them are behind the times at best or dangerously flawed at worst. His failures often result from cutting corners for quick cash to keep his late father's crumbling empire from collapsing completely. However, he also constantly grapples with the realization that [[InadequateInheritor he's just not as smart as his dad was]].

* Doc from ''Series/FraggleRock''.

* [[http://www.seanbaby.com/superfriends/bizarro.htm Seanbaby]] says Bizzaro from ''WesternAnimation/SuperFriends'' can build impressive Death Rays, irradiates the world's gold supply and could single-handedly defeat those infernal heroes. But since any attempts to tell people what any of his machines would actually do [[BizarroUniverse would just end up confusing them]], everyone ignores them as hunks of junk.

* ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'': Dr. Doofenshmirtz. Sure, most of his "-inators" actually do what he wants them to do, but his bungling nature frequently causes them to go haywire, break down, or self-destruct. (Or, in the case of one, he uses it as a planter but forgot to unplug it first.)

* ''Film/BackToTheFuture'': the 1955 Emmett "Doc" Brown. No doubt he gets better at inventing as time progresses, until he finally invents the time machine.

* Riff from ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance''. He's actually got quite a few inventions that work (or at least work well enough), but just as many of them have a huge flaw or backfire completely. Happens so often that saying "Let me check my notes" after an invention goes wrong became Riff's CatchPhrase.

* ''Film/{{Gremlins}}'': Rand Peltzer, whose inventions are often faulty. He tries to "improve" things at home by creating kitchen appliances such as an automatic egg cracker that are also faulty and do nothing but inconvenience his family.