Depending Upon the Undependable

"Who is more foolish? The Fool, or the fool who follows him?"

— Obi-Wan Kenobi, A New Hope

This trope comes into play when someone is inexplicably and continually put in charge of sensitive tasks by people who are aware (or should be aware) that the character's so chronically inept, weirdly eccentric, and/or dangerously dense that disaster will inevitably result. Of course, this raises the question, "Who is the real idiot here?"

In Real Life, any person with a bit of common sense would know better than to keep hiring or promoting the bungling doofus which is why the Rule of Funny is often used to explain this trope. However, the hiring person may have ulterior motives behind the decision such as trying to deliberately undermine a project by putting an incompetent boob in charge. Other times, factors like Nepotism may make firing or not hiring the nitwit again out of the question so the character will be Kicked Upstairs and given the job where he or she can do the least amount of damage (which, unfortunately, can still be a lot). Also, sometimes the klutz will get the job simply because he or she's the only one available and the other people are actually far worse (plus, the character may work cheap).

Obviously the opposite of The Reliable One.

Compare and contrast with Just Eat Gilligan where the show would be over if just one obvious thing were done (e.g., Gilligan getting eaten rather than constantly foiling attempts to get off the island). Depending Upon the Undependable occurs when an incompetent guy is left in charge by people who know better. Also contrast with Bunny-Ears Lawyer, which is this trope except the individual is so good at their job anyway that they're kept on regardless.

Also compare with Ultimate Job Security.

No Real Life Examples, Please!, for obvious reasons.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Bungo Stray Dogs: When Fyodor infects the Port Mafia and ADA leaders with a virus that will kill both if one does not die first within two days, Chuuya is put in charge of the Port Mafia. This doesn't make much sense as Chuuya is a poor strategist who is easily manipulated, and there were better options such as the more level-headed Kouyou. Sure enough, Chuuya immediately plays into the enemy's hands by attacking the ADA, yet manages to fail despite having numerous advantages.

Comic Books

• One Bash Street Kids story had someone walk into class and trip over 'Erbert (whose joke is having terrible eyesight). They ask who assigned him as lookout, creating a second example when it turns out to be Smiffy.
• One Gaston Lagaffe strip sees him participating in a soccer match with the rest of the office as the goalkeeper, despite his elevating laziness to an art form. His team loses 15-1, in a sport where scoring four goals or more is considered exceptional.

Film — Animated

• In Batman and Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy has teamed up with the Floronic Man to work towards a dangerous plan to mutate all life on Earth into plant hybrids. Conventional tracking has proven unsuccessful, so Batman needs the help of someone who knows the villains better than he does. That someone... is Harley Quinn, the Cute and Psycho former sidekick to the Joker who is best friends with Ivy. Batman doesn't trust Harley for a second, calling her the definition of a loose cannon among other things. But really, there's no better alternative.

Film — Live-Action

• Laurel and Hardy: Neither of their characters is very smart in most of their filmography (though Ollie assumes he's the smarter). However, out of character, Hardy claimed that his character was the stupider because he kept expecting Stan to manage things no matter how often Stan got them into "another nice mess".
• Star Wars:
  • The Phantom Menace: After the native Gungans and the humans of Theed ally themselves to retake Naboo from the Trade Federation, Boss Nass makes Jar-Jar Binks a Bombad General, despite being ostracized and driven away from his home for being such a clumsy, clueless klutz. While he seems to take to the role fairly well at first^* "Steady... steady!", when the battle is lost he doesn't command the Gungan Army at all, and frequently gets himself into accidents that would be considered disasters were it not for the fact that they conveniently kill droids with no Gungan casualties.
  • Attack of the Clones: To authorize creating an army for the Republic, Chancellor Palpatine needs to be granted emergency powers by the Senate, and Padmé Amidala is a notable opponent against doing so. When she narrowly survives several assassination attempts, she leaves Coruscant for her own safety and appoints a temporary Senator in her stead. That replacement is Jar-Jar Binks, a clumsy and foolish klutz who has no political education and at best a handful of (terrible) military experience. Sure enough, Jar-Jar is easily duped by Palpatine into proposing the Senate to grant Palpatine emergency powers, paving the way for the army of the eventual Empire (to be fair the entire senate is duped too, but the focus on Jar-Jar is something viewers have pointed out a lot).
• Considering his obvious memory problems, anyone who would trust Uncle Billy in It's a Wonderful Life with any amount of money deserves to be declared mentally incompetent and put in a padded cell next to him.
• Ultraman Cosmos: The First Contact: For some unfathomable reason, the local military is led by Commander Shigemura, a Warhawk and borderline Manchild whose reaction to every single problem is to sic missiles at them until they go away. His contributions to the film involve confiscating an alien artifact (necessary for preventing the Baltanian invasion) for his own selfish purposes, launching drone attacks on peaceful, benevolent monsters causing them to go on a destructive rampage, and ultimately trying to drop a nuke on Ultraman Cosmos in the final battle, despite said battle taking place in the middle of the not-yet evacuated city. Somehow, Shigemura gets to be in charge of most of the local authorities despite being the biggest load of the movie and a shining example of Adults Are Useless.
• Alfrid Lickspittle in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies gets put in charge of simple tasks like being on the lookout, watching over Bilbo or escorting the women and children to safety during the battle, yet despite bungling each one through his severe laziness, jerkassery, incompetence and cowardice, characters who should know better act like Alfrid can be relied upon.
• Inverted in The Mummy Returns: When Rick and Ardeth Bey are taking Alex to the Ahm Shere oasis, Evy and Jonathan remain on the high ground to provide cover fire. Jonathan, who up to this point was the franchise's Plucky Comic Relief finally shows his competence in something:
  Evy: Jonathan?
  Jonathan: Yes?
  Evy: That's my husband and son down there. Make me proud!
  Jonathan: (Dramatic Gun Cock) Today's that day, Evy!

Folklore

• This is often considered an Alternate Aesop Interpretation of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf", that the villagers shouldn't have left a boy with a penchant for Crying Wolf on guard duty after the first incident or two.
• Many Spanish-speaking nations have a saying for making this kind of mistake: "Poner el perro/gato a cuidar las longanizas", meaning making a dog or cat guard the sausages (and then being surprised the metaphorical animal ate them).

Literature

• Animorphs: Marco is repeatedly put in charge of driving despite everyone being perfectly aware that he Drives Like Crazy (he's the only one with a morph that can drive, but car seats just aren't made for adult male gorillas). Highlights of the first time involved him killing a number of trash cans ("GET OFF THE SIDEWALK, YOU LUNATIC!"), the second pulling off Car Skiing with a farm truck full of cattle, and the third has him drive a tank into a house.
• The Saga of Darren Shan: Darren is a (physically) 12-year-old half-vampire. He's set to be executed for failing the nearly-impossible and dangerous Trials of Initiation. Only the Vampire Princes, absolute rulers of the clan, can be forgiven for failing. But Darren has exposed a treasonous plot, and is considered a hero for it. Do they pardon him? Change the law? Of course not. They choose to make Darren a Prince, giving him the power of absolute command over all vampires. It goes well, however since he has good mentors and, essentially, lets them make his decisions for him, and in the end, after he dies, Darren wishes he'd been more radical like his friend Kurda, who was executed for treason.
• People should really stop putting Bertie Wooster in charge of fragile aspects of their lives. They never learn not to, though, because Jeeves always saves the day behind the scenes.

Live-Action TV

• Our Miss Brooks:
  • Dumb Jock Stretch Snodgrass's ineptitude drives the plot of a few episodes. "The Auction" and "Madison Mascot" (each a Sound-to-Screen Adaptation) hinge on Snodgrass mixing up a couple of vital messages.
  • In "Public Speaker's Nightmare", Walter Denton requests Stretch fix a broken reel-to-reel recording; Stretch's efforts result in a mangled nonsensical recording.
  • Stretch's brother Bones is at fault in "Marinated Hearing (a Sound-to-Screen Adaptation of "Board of Education Day", where he is tasked to repair a torn speech of Mr. Conklin's praising the Board of Education. Instead, Bones puts together a hodgepodge that accidentally incorporates part of his biology theme on monkeys.
  • Walter Denton is sometimes to blame. In "Writing Magazine Articles", he is tasked with pretending to be both Mr. Conklin's imaginary idiot son and Miss Brooks' imaginary whiz kid son. Walter mixes it up.
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Anytime Holt has to be replaced, the new captain is always terrible, but CJ takes the cake for being the least qualified and competent. He spent several years at the academy when it's only a six-month program, accidentally gives away Jake and Holt by singing into the earpiece nonstop during a sting operation, loses crucial evidence, and is overall incredibly stupid with no idea what's going on.
• Fargo: In Season One, retiring Sheriff Thurman plans for Officer Molly Solverson to replace him, telling her his second-in-command Bill Oswalt is too naive and incompetent to be Sheriff. Unfortunately, after Thurman's murder Bill is promoted to Sheriff anyway, and immediately stonewalls Molly's investigation, allowing several more murders to happen because of his naivete.
• F Troop: The show explains in its theme song how an inept officer during the Civil War accidentally won a battle, got injured while being awarded his medal, and ended up in charge of a frontier fort. Luckily his command includes soldiers just as uh, talented, as he is.
• Laverne & Shirley: The title characters are a pair of klutzes, barely ever able to do a new job without botching it up. And yet, in "The Dentist", some people who know them well enough to be on a First-Name Basis with them, hire them to clean up
• This is Marcy's standard assessment of Al's screwups in Married... with Children whenever someone trusts him to do just about anything, including Marcy herself on occasion.
  Marcy: If you give a chimp a gun and it shoots someone, you don't blame the chimp!
  • Peg fits this even more. She can't even be trusted with the most basic task that involves going out of her way to help anyone, such as making food or picking up Al from work, yet it takes them until season 9 to finally wise up.
• Pretty much the premise of The Office (US) is that the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin is managed by the wildly unprofessional Michael Scott. He routinely engages in inappropriate behavior, makes offensive jokes, and constantly annoys his employees with his antics. It's implied he was promoted only for being an amazing salesman, with no actual regard for his qualifications.
  • While searching for a replacement for Michael, Dwight winds up temporarily holding the position and, true to character, goes on an insane power trip, much to the dismay of his coworkers. However, despite being an utter tyrant, he does boost productivity significantly.
  • After Dwight loses the position of acting manager, the position is given to Creed due to him holding seniority. Given that he's a senile Cloud Cuckoolander, this doesn't go well.
• Prince Sprocket from Power Rangers Zeo is utterly incompetent. His plans are constantly backfiring on him, often with him only surviving because his more competent subordinates Klank and Orbus bail him out (and then invariably get blamed for the failure instead of him). Yet he keeps getting put in charge of the Evil Plan of the week just because the Evil Overlord happens to be his dad.
• Red Dwarf began when Arnold Rimmer, who had failed to progress beyond a minor supervisor's role in fifteen years of service, was trusted with overseeing a critical engine repair. The result was the death of everyone on the ship (other than Dave Lister who was in stasis). In one episode, he was put on trial by an AI over this incident, and Kryten's defense entirely centers around the fact Rimmer is so obviously an idiot, anyone putting him in a position that might endanger the crew would be the true negligent. And the AI accepts this defense completely.
• On some early Sesame Street episodes, Mr. Hooper made some dubious choices in who he allowed to mind his store. These include Oscar the Grouch (who emptied out a garbage can or two and "decorated" the store with its contents), and Cookie Monster (who ate everything in the store, edible and otherwise, except for one loaded cookie jar that he promised not to touch).
• Smallville: The opinion of any character Locked Out of the Loop on Clark's secret. They trust him with something, he's a no-show because he's usually busy dealing with the Monster of the Week, and never gives a reasonable excuse for his actions. It gets so bad Lana Lang believes Lex Luthor is far more trustworthy than Clark.
• That Mitchell and Webb Look: The recurring sketch "Get Me Hennimore!", where an incompetent boss assigns his equally incompetent underling Hennimore to do something, often in a way that will inevitably spell disaster, even when he acknowledges Hennimore's a screw-up.
• Unhappily Ever After: Tiffany asks Ryan to take her painting to the basement to wrap it up. Once in the basement, Ryan breaks the fourth wall and asks the audience, "How can she not know what's going to happen?" Sure enough, he destroys it.

Radio

• Our Miss Brooks:
  • Dumb Jock Stretch Snodgrass's ineptitude drives the plot of a few episodes. "The Auction" and "Elephant Mascot" hinge on Snodgrass mixing up a couple of vital messages. In "Board of Education Day", where he is tasked to repair a torn speech of Mr. Conklin's praising the Board of Education. Instead, Stretch puts together a hodgepodge that accidentally incorporates part of his biology theme on monkeys.
  • Walter Denton is sometimes to blame. In "Writing Magazine Articles", he is tasked with pretending to be both Mr. Conklin's imaginary idiot son and Miss Brooks' imaginary whiz kid son. Walter mixes it up.
• That Mitchell and Webb Sound: The Boy Who Cried Wolf example is mocked when the boy's uncle is taken to court, and tries claiming the aesop of "don't tell a lie." The prosecution points out all the suspicious holes in the story, and retorts that this is not the moral of the story, rather it is "if you have reason to believe there is a vicious predator at loose, do not chose as your sole watchman someone you have resolutely chosen to ignore."

Video Games

• Mass Effect: Ambassador Udina is regarded as a diplomatic incident just waiting to happen, and a pain in the ass to everyone he meets, but according to Admiral Anderson he's good at the schmoozing side of politics if nothing else. In Mass Effect 3 he actually seems to improve dramatically... until he helps Cerberus launch an attempted coup.
• Mass Effect: Andromeda: Director of Colonial Affairs Foster Addison knows her immediate underling Spender is an over-ambitious screw-up who everyone hates, not least because his moronic actions actually endanger lives, but at the same time lets him take the hard jobs anyway. Eventually, when he's finally canned for good (imprisoned or exiled), she admits she was just looking the other way.
• In an official magazine based on Moshi Monsters, some people put Furi in charge of guarding a cake, despite knowing that he's a Big Eater.
• Comedy sidekick Frank Honey in LEGO City Undercover is assigned to pick up a new prison van for a show but even after Chase McCain helps him out when the Triad attack, Frank ends up plowing it right into the stage. Notably, the Mayor gets on the Chief's case for assigning a known incompetent to the task in the first place.

Web Animation

• OverSimplified: A wife named Thelma decides to go out protesting alcohol, so she leaves her husband, Mitch, to sew his ripped-up pants himself. Despite him warning her that he might burn down the house and get eaten by alligators by doing this himself, she leaves. Mitch ends up stabbing himself with a needle, burns the house down, and gets eaten by alligators.
  Mitch: Hey Thelma! Look who's stupid now! (drowns while in the mouth of an alligator).

Web Comics

• The Order of the Stick: In book 1, when Durkon goes missing, Roy tries calling Haley out for this. She turns it back on him by pointing out that between her, Elan and Belkar, the three of them are so irresponsible it would be absolutely stupid to expect anything of them, a point Roy concedes.

Western Animation

• 6teen: Jude is often entrusted with important tasks by the rest of the gang. Just one example is when Jonesy asked him to refrigerate some meat for him and just as Jude was about to plug in the refrigerator he got sidetracked by his girlfriend Starr showing up.
• Adventure Time:
  • In "Earth & Water", Princess Bubblegum entrusts the foolish Cinnamon Bun to watch over Flame Princess in her test chamber. The second she leaves, he gives into temptation, releasing FP.
  • While Peppermint Butler is normally a very dependable character, Bubblegum entrusts him with disposing of the Vampire King's incredibly dangerous vampire essence while he is temporarily blind. He ends up accidentally dropping it and releasing the Dark Cloud onto Ooo.
• Beavis and Butt-Head: Whenever the duo's overly-trusting elderly neighbor, Mr. Anderson, hires the dimwits to do chores, chaos inevitably ensues. Despite this, he keeps employing them (although the two occasionally resort to paper-thin disguises in order to fool him).
• In the Bob's Burgers episode "Best Burger", Bob tasks his easily distracted son Gene with getting the black garlic he needs for a burger cook-off. When Gene inevitably forgets to bring some, Linda suggests that Bob subconsciously wanted Gene to screw up so that it wouldn't be his fault if he ended up losing.
  Gene: I'm sorry I screwed up today! I'm sorry I screw up all the time!
  Bob: No, Gene. You didn't screw up. I screwed up by trusting you. Wait, that came out wrong.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: Many of the Eds' scams fall apart by having a component depend on Too Dumb to Live Ed.
  • In "Laugh Ed Laugh," Double D traps himself in a shed with Eddy, then gives Ed the key. The consequence for not holding onto it himself was Ed eating the key, and the three have to shovel their way out.
  • In "Tinker Ed," Eddy devises a scam that involves faking the existence of unicorns to appeal to Jimmy. However, by having Ed pilot the legs, the plan fails, as Ed stupidly pops out and declares his role.
  • Played with in "Brother, Can You Spare an Ed?". Sarah giving Ed money to buy her and Jimmy fudge certainly wasn't the smartest task to do, and there was nothing stopping her and Jimmy for walking to the candy store themselves. But Ed really was willing to do the favor and even refused to allow Eddy to hold on to the money, and the only reason he foolishly purchased the jawbreakers instead was because Eddy kept on goading him to do it.
• Lampshaded in one episode of Futurama: when Leela chews Fry and Bender over their last screw-up, they reply that by now she should know better than to ask them to do anything, and they go as far as saying that they're very disappointed in her.
• In She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Catra puts Scorpia in charge of an outpost while she is away, much to everyone's shock since Scorpia is known for being a terrible leader and strategist. As expected, she loses it to the Rebellion in only a few minutes.
  Adora: Catra's really not here and she left you in charge?
  Scorpia: Yes. Why do people keep acting surprised by that?
• The Simpsons: How many times has Homer Simpson been put in charge of something, despite his track record?
  • In "Bart Star", when Homer takes over as coach of Springfield's youth football team, he destroys the team's credibility by insisting that Bart plays as quarterback instead of Nelson. Nelson's a much better player, but Homer wants to play favorites with Bart because he thinks it's good parenting.
  • In "Guess Who's Coming To Criticize Dinner", Homer makes a dummy with a bucket for a head, brooms for arms, and a tape recorder playing his own voice to distract Mr. Burns from the fact that he's skiving off work. It gets promoted.
  • In "Homer the Smithers", Smithers made Homer his substitute as Mr. Burns's assistant and caretaker while he went on vacation, expecting him to screw up so badly that Mr. Burns would become more dependent on him. While Homer did indeed live up to expectations, this backfired on Smithers, as it caused Mr. Burns to become more independent out of necessity and he fires Smithers.
• In Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), Antoine is sent into missions more than any Freedom Fighter outside Sonic and Sally, despite the fact he is a brainless Dirty Coward that often only screws up plans.
• In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Pat No Pay", Mr. Krabs continuously has Patrick perform jobs around the Krusty Krab to pay off his bill. Despite screwing everything up so far, the episode ends with Mr. Krabs having Patrick throw trash away. He then throws a sack of money into the trash machine, and the Krusty Krab explodes.
• Total Drama:
  • Leshawna puts Big Eater Owen in charge of guarding a plate of ribs the Screaming Gophers need to win the cooking contest in "If You Can't Take the Heat...". He is left alone with the fine dish while the rest works on the presentation ceremony. Owen shows enough self-restraint to leave a tiny speck of meat for the judge.
  • In "Ice Ice Baby", Scott declares himself the captain while the snow fort challenge is on. He sends Lightning and Sam out to capture the enemy's flag. Sam points out that he's the poorest choice for a task that requires running, but is ignored. Scott's strategy is to sabotage his own team, so Sam seems to be selected on purpose, but Lightning is the best athlete on the team. It's possible but not made explicit that Scott's aim is to worsen the already strained teamwork between the two, in which case his plan works.

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