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He said: "To hell with moisture detectors. I'm going to build a giant robot." So we built a giant robot. — Everything Two Podcast
It doesn't matter if she's 13 years old or 13,000, she's the greatest scientific genius in the universe and can prove it by building a 50,000-horsepower battle robot out of tin cans and an old transistor radio. Overnight. Sometimes her creations fail with entertaining explosions, but they always work for at least a little while. Confounding American stereotypes, the Gadgeteer Genius is usually female, and often still in grade school.
This character type was once rare outside of anime, but is starting to be seen more often in Western productions. In Western depictions the gadgeteer is usually male, and can be of any age.
A Wrench Wench is a slightly more realistic depiction. Expect her Battle Cry to be " For Science!"
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Examples
Anime & Manga
- Washuu from Tenchi Muyo! In the original OVA she actually isn't much of a gadgeteer — most of her time was spent in doing research so complex that the viewers were rarely let in what she was doing. The later TV-series increased her gadget-building role considerably.
- Rin-Rin from Sister Princess can build custom laptop computers overnight for pocket change, complete with her own hand-written operating system. She's also built an android duplicate of herself, but the poor thing can't speak and is still a bit klutzy at household chores.
- Li Kohran from Sakura Taisen.
- Skuld from Ah My Goddess: when she came into contact with an actual professor of robotics, he almost went mad at the sight of a little girl who could make functional battle robots when he was struggling to make a robot that could walk. Of course she is the goddess of the Future, so it's slightly excusable.
- Kaolla Suu from Love Hina.
- Nanoca Flanka from Aoi Umi no Tristia (Tristia of the Deep Blue Sea).
- Rika Domeki from Dai Guard.
- Satomi Hakase in Mahou Sensei Negima.
- This trope gets some Lamp Shade Hanging in Cowboy Bebop with the "Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky 4th", or plain "Ed", character. "Ed" is a 13-year-old girl (and also a Playful Hacker).
- Hayashida Heihachi in Samurai 7.
- Niea from NieA7 was shown to have built a functional UFO out of trash materials, and powered by a regular AC power outlet. Unfortunately, it exploded once it was unplugged.
- Irina Woods, one of Arika's friends and roommates from Mai-Otome, has taken a great interest in engineering. She even tried to build a giant house-cleaning machine to assist Arika with her punishment duty (which broke down almost immediately, but at least she tried).
- Nina Einstein from Code Geass. She invented a NUCLEAR WEAPON in the last episode of the first season using the contents of a HIGH SCHOOL SCIENCE LAB!! Granted, the weapon was only semi-functional and broke down before detonation and the said high school is a prestigious private one, but STILL. And not to mention, she later did build a functioning bomb... with disastrous results.
- And by the end of S2... she builds an anti-FLEIJA device. In a month. And it works, both for Lelouch and her fandom reputation (partially, in the latter's case)..
- Sonic X: Chis Thorndyke's aged up and smarted up version pretty much fills this role.
- Shari of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, who by the age of 17, had already created the Danger Room-like training grounds of Riot Force 6 and the Intelligent Devices of the rookies.
- Chie from Hyakko is still in high school, but is quickly advancing in the field of robotics. Her most notable achievement to date is Mecha-Torako.
- Dr. Agasa from Detective Conan.
- Toma is training to be a magical version of this in Doki Doki Densetsu Mahoujin Guru Guru
- Winry Rockbell from Fullmetal Alchemist.
- Rat from Free Collars Kingdom.
- Spanner and the future Giannini from Katekyo Hitman Reborn. They can do anything. Including building giant robots and motorcycles which are as quiet as mimes.
- Franky and Usopp of One Piece. Franky is much more advanced, able to build crazy machines and ship-enhancements, while Usopp has that original flavor, his best example being Nami's weapon, the Clima Tact.
Comics
- X-Men's Forge has the ability to intuitively determine how anything works, and by this point, after years of exposure to all manner of gadgetry, is able to whip up any manner of Applied Phlebotinum you can possibly imagine. We're talking Star Wars level.
- He is also a shaman. This fact isn't brought up so much, because combining the two aptitudes leads to questions of why he has not whooped most of evil's ass by now.
- Scalphunter, a member of the Marauders that regularly clash with the X-Men has these technical abilities too, being able to reform mechanical components into anything he can think of. Given that he's a murderous Psycho For Hire, he generally tends to create shotguns, grenade launchers, high-powered automatic rifles, and other lovely toys.
- The writers of X-Men Evolution decided that wasn't Bad Ass enough and gave him the ability to transform his arms into any imaginable tool to help him make his creations. Considering the tendency of his creations to get away from him, one must wonder if he's not as good as his comic and 1990s series counterpart or if he's simply a lot less responsible.
- Angie from the superhero comic PS238 by Aaron Williams (author of Nodwick) combines the ability to make just about anything out of old cars and other junk with having the mindset of the cast of Pimp My Ride. Bling-bling and Explosive Overclocking tends to riddle whatever she ends up building, which is just the way she likes it.
- And of the male (and not quite as explosive) type, the school also hosts Zodon and Herschel Clay, who both have significant gadget construction and tinkering skills in addition to (or due to) being prime examples of, respectively, the Evil Genius and the Mr Fixit.
- Brainiac 5. He's been described as a genius among a species of geniuses, the type of prodigy that comes along once in a millennium (which is how far the Legion is from the rest of the DCU). The solution and cause of a lot of the Legion's problems. Is currently working on rebuilding the economy of the United Planets and inventing a new way to break the speed of light.
- Iron Man.
- In Astro City, Beautie's origin is revealed: she was built by a girl Gadgeteer Genius, the still more brilliant daughter of another Gadgeteer Genius. (Her father's reaction leads to Bad Things for both Beautie and the daughter.)
- Not to mention the Junkman, who uses stuff that's been thrown out to create his devices (as he considers himself cast off by society because of his age). Despite the self-imposed handicap, he is one of the few villains in Astro City who actually win, as it is implied he gets away from his trial with the recognition he craved and all the loot he stole.
- Alpha Flight supporting cast member Madison Jeffries has the mutant power to physically alter machines, metals and related inorganic objects, which he initially used as a mechanic. (His brother Lionel had a similar power over living tissue, which had gruesome results when he went insane. Another more conventional genius was Box, a quadraplegic who used his tremendous scientific skills to build machines that overcame his disability.
- The original, pre-Crisis version of Lex Luthor was the archetype of all comic book Mad Scientists, but he most displayed his juryrigging skills with his trademark jailbreaks. Sometimes he would smuggle tools inside with him when he was carted off to jail — tiny tools hidden under a false patch of skin on his thumb for example — but he was perfectly capable of building an escape device without them.
- In Warren Ellis's newuniversal (based on The New Universe), this is the power provided by the Cipher Power Tattoo. Of the three known bearers, one was a prehistoric woman who invented electric lighting and energy weapons, but believed they were gifts from the gods; one was this world's version of Tony Stark; and the most recent is Humongous Mecha designer Dr Jennifer Swan.
- Too many MarvelComics characters to list, really. Reed Richards, Bruce Banner, Henry Pym, Tony Stark, and the Black Panther are some of the most prominent heroes, while Doctor Doom, the Wizard, the Terrible Tinkerer the Mad Thinker, and the Fixer are prominent villains.
- Gyro Gearloose can build literally anything. In one story he built a functional space rocket out of a couple of toasters and duct tape, overnight.
Films
Literature
- Tinker in Wen Spencer's Tinker novels.
- In the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett, a recurring character is the befuddled genius inventor Leonard of Quirm (an obvious parody of real-world Renaissance Italian inventor and painter Leonardo da Vinci).
- In Thief of Time, we encounter the gadgeteer Qu, an obvious parody of James Bond's Q.
- The Wild Cards series features quite a few gadgeteer characters, such as Jetman, but in a subversion, the gadgets they make don't actually work. Some of them actually have no means of operating. The gadgets are just tokens that serve as a crutch for their powers.
- Foaly from Artemis Fowl. He is stated to be the reason the People are still ahead of humans.
- Ashley Stalworth from Dragons In Our Midst.
- Tom Swift is the ur-example, making this trope Older Than Radio.
- Soledad O'Rourke of Those Who Walk In Darkness is a specialist, only designing Abnormal Ammo. However, she deserves to be on this list after creating BLAM bullets, which "lock in on molecular structures in a state of hyperkinetic motion," turning in midair to target foes who possess Super Speed.
- Tom Clancy's Net Force, based on the name alone, would be expected to have a lot of these. And it does. But no one can best Jay Gridley.
- In the novelization of Metropolis, Rotwang is one of these mixed with Mad Scientist Classic. He was Joh Fredersen's right-hand man in building the titular city, and in only a few years designed all its major technical achievements: the workers' underground city, all the machines, the reservoir, the subway, the road system, and the New Tower of Babel. (Even the soundproofing in Fredersen's office is named for him.) Even in his stagnant period following the loss of his wife Hel, he builds a mechanical replacement arm and a robot companion. Fredersen esentially imprisons him in the city to act as emergency technical advisor.
Live Action TV
- One of the most famous gadgeteers of TV was MacGyver, although he was more of a tinkerer. The series that spawned the term "MacGyvering". Usually worked alone, without a sidekick. Oddly enough, though, there was an episode of MacGyver where he teamed up with a classic Gadgeteer Genius girl — an ultra-intelligent schoolgirl who could match him move-for-move.
- Micah from Heroes is a ten-year-old boy whose mastery of machines allowed him to make his own circuitry for his computer. This is later explained to be his superpower, control and knowledge of machines.
- Magical Version: in Charmed, The Scrappy Billie managed to "MacGyver up" a magical potion from the contents of a hostage's purse, despite the show always stating that potion ingredients are quite specific.
- Basically every Chief Engineer from Star Trek is an engineering genius: Scotty, Geordi La Forge, Miles O'Brien, B'Elanna Torres, "Trip" Tucker.
- Starfleet Engineers in general seem to have a reputation for this. In the Deep Space Nine episode "Rocks and Shoals", a wounded Vorta says, of a broken transmitter system, "It needs repair, but I'm willing to bet that you've brought one of those famed Starfleet engineers who can turn rocks into replicators." Further, in the Expanded Universe there's an entire novel series called "Starfleet Corps of Engineers".
- Presumably, the dry dock engineers are geniuses too, since they manage to survive and repair all the alien tech that all homecoming vessels seem to be infested with.
- Spock was also sometimes expected to be a Gadgeteer Genius, even with only primitive materials to work with. In "City on the Edge of Forever", he expresses his frustration at having to do this with 1930's technology "I am endeavoring, ma'am, to create a mnemonic memory circuit, using stone knives... and bearskins."
- Justified with the Enterprises because, as capital ships, their officers are the best of the best from an organisation spanning hundreds of planets, or in the case of Enterprise, at least the whole of Earth.
- For DS 9, Miles was actually Chief Petty Officer on a Federation outpost, and they don't hand those positions out readily. For Voyager, the fact that Torres was a Wrench Wench was just part of the writer's general inability to make something as good as Battlestar Galactica.
- Lampshaded in the 2009 movie: Scotty is just a little too smart for his own good, having beamed "Admiral Archer's prize beagle" across the galaxy for a bet. To allow him time to wait for it to arrive, he's sent to the Starfleet equivalent of a remote Alaskan radar station.
- Seamus Zelazny Harper from the spaceship Andromeda is both an engineering genius (which by later seasons extends itself even to human cloning) and also a hyperactive archetypal Mr Fixit and tinkerer.
- Power Rangers has had several characters who could apparently create/repair Humongous Mecha in a matter of hours. The most egregious example is the Ass Pull of two fully-functional copies of a mecha introduced out of the blue. Cam's just that good.
- Then there's the fact that Billy Cranston, the first Blue Ranger, invented a collection of wristwatches that could be used both as personal communicators, and could remotely activate an alien teleportation grid. Villains aren't the only ones who could Cut Lex Luthor a Check.
- The most impressive part? He put the teleportation thing in by accident. He was just trying to connect to the alien communications network. The day after meeting the aliens for the first time.
- Supposedly, the Professor from Gilligans Island, though just how good he is remains something of a mystery as he can't patch a hole in a boat.
- Maritime engineering clearly just isn't his thing.
- The Doctor can build anything he has a need for at a given time, though he usually does so off-camera. He also has a knack for taking diabolical inventions cobbled up for some nefarious purpose and subverting their intended purpose, usually with disastrous results for the villain of the day.
- Also Professor Yana, the Master in disguise, who build a rocket "out of food and string and staples".
- Pixel and Robbie Rotten from Lazy Town.
- Pixel is able to build from hovering cameras to a control remote which control literally everything, from random electronic things he has in his room. In Secret Agent Zero, the Spy Episode, he played the role of Q. And he is 9 years old.
- Robbie Rotten can build anything out of anything he has in his lair. He even has a Microwave which do the inventions for him.
- Red Green of The Red Green Show aspires to this. Usually he doesn't make it and his inventions backfire horribly, but on rare occasions they actually work. A forklift built out of a K-car is truly a wonder to behold.
- It doesn't come up much, but it's implied that Joel Robinson, of MST 3 K, as well as a number of other characters on the show are this. In the theme, they even say that Joel used the "special parts for controlling where movies begin and end" to create the four seemingly-sentient robots, three of whom watch movies with him.
- Just about everyone in the town of Eureka at some point, on the television show Eureka, except for Sheriff Carter.
- In an episode of Torchwood, it's revealed that Toshiko Sato once built a working sonic screwdriver from incorrect blueprints.
- Scholar Mek of Spellbinder began the second series by designing and building a transdimensional boat... when he was supposed to be making a set of musical jewels for the Dragon Lord.
Tabletop Games
- Urza and Mishra, the Brother Artificers of Magic The Gathering, build enough weapons and doomsday devices in their lifetime to leave their world a nearly-blackened cinder by the end of their lives.
- From the first incarnation of the World of Darkness RPG:
- The Sons of Ether from Mage: the Ascension are Mad Scientist in the purest sense. The Virtual Adepts were technomantic computer hackers with Urban rebel Cyberpunk flair... imagine people who do in the real world what Neo did in The Matrix. And of course there was the Technocracy which had lots of gadgeteer genius engineers of their own, especially among the Iteration X.
- One tribe of werewolves, the Glasswalkers, in Werewolf: the Apocalypse had adapted to modern times and learned to use their spirit magic to talk to the spirits of machinery and urban landscapes.
- The Nockers from Changeling: the Dreaming are changelings whose fairy souls are drawn to technology, although their curse means every gadget they build will have some sort of hidden flaw, which sometimes results in explosions; the evil counterparts of the Nockers are called Gremlins
 , who in their Fairy self look nothing like the creatures in the movies of the same name but more like small pointy-eared people with green skin and sharp pointy teeth... and they grin a lot, especially when they've just planted a booby-trap somewhere or sabotaged a piece of technology.
- Nockers are also capable of scaring a piece of machinery into working temporarily by cussing at it.
- In the second incarnation of the World of Darkness:
- Werewolf: the Forsaken has the Iron Masters, who tend to stay close to humanity and urban habitats. They have an affinity for Technology Gifts that, at the highest level, allow them to make a technological device out of the base materials (that is, a circuitboard out of plastic and sand).
- Mage: the Awakening has the Free Council, modernist mages whose studies take them towards examining magic with a scientific lens — often resulting in SCIENCE!!!
- Changeling: the Lost has the Wizened, who were kept as caretakers, craftsmen, and busybodies for the True Fae. They have an affinity with Contracts that allow them to manipulate and construct (or deconstruct) machinery; the top level of one set
practically allows them to make a hovercraft out of a go-kart and an inflatable raft.
- And then there's the fanline Genius The Transgression, where most of the player characters are these, capable of making inventions that bend the laws of physics to the breaking point.
- The Mad Scientists in Deadlands are similar to the Wild Cards series example above; the devices they make barely work on their own, if at all. The power behind their science-breaking steampunkness is evil spirits the characters are unwittingly channeling. Well, not Hellstromme, he knows exactly what he's doing.
- The Artificer base class from the Eberron campaign setting of Dungeons And Dragons is a magical version of the Gadgeteer Genius.
- GURPS has two levels of this. Gageteers can build things that break the laws of physics if they have lots of funding. Quick Gageteers can do the same thing in half the time with rubberbands and cheese.
- In Warhammer fantasy the Skavens clan Skyre is a group of giant rats numbering hundreds of thousands if not millions of Gadgeteer Geniuses. The engineers of the empire follows this trope quite good as well. The dwarfs might at first appear like this but their constructions aren't that improbable and most are old engines based on experience and new inventions are rare.
- The D20 supers game "Godlike" likewise has gadgeteers turn out to actually have nonsensical gadgets that only work because their "inventors" believe they do, most likely as a way to prevent a Reed Richards Is Useless situation.
Video Games
- If a character in any Final Fantasy game is called Cid, two things are almost certain: 1. He's a Gadgeteer Genius and 2: His specialty will be Airships, for example:
- Never seen, but Cid of the Lufaine in Final Fantasy I (at least all it's remakes) was the inventor of the first airship.
- The very first Cid appears in Final Fantasy II, who offers taxi service with his airship to the heroes.
- Final Fantasy III gives us Cid Haze, skilled enough to convert a Cool Ship into a Cool Airship.
- Cid Pollendina of Final Fantasy IV was the first playable Cid, who refuses to let little things like riding a nuke into an enemy vessel and an Avalanche of millions of tons of rock and magma stop him from fixing up your airship. He's also a Cool Old Guy / Boisterous Bruiser which would become recurring Cid traits.
- Final Fantasy V's Cid Previa builds airships, surprise surprise, and makes Crystal Power Enhancing... Thingies.
- Cid Del Norte Marquez from Final Fantasy VI oddly enough doesn't work with Airships, but is no less of a Gadgeteer Genius seeing as he invented Magitek and designs Powered Armor, weapons, and even pseudo-genetic engineering.
- Cid Highwind of Final Fantasy VII fame is probably the most well known on this list. He does the same in the Kingdom Hearts games, except he doesn't fight. or smoke(he gets a toothpick). Or swear.
- Cid Kramer of Final Fantasy VIII doesn't really count, as the only gadget related thing he does is revealing to the player that Balamb Garden is capable of flight.
- Cid Fabool IX of Final Fantasy IX. His proficiency at designing airships has led Lindblum to become Gaia's prominent air power. He also spends some time as a frog after an argument with his wife.
- Final Fantasy X's Cid. He builds airships and he's loud and boisterous... So Yeah, he doesn't really bring anything new to the table.
- Final Fantasy XI's Cid is, fittingly enough, the most prominent engineer and inventor in Vana'diel.
- Cidolfus Demen Bunansa (Dr. Cid for short) is the first Cid to actually feature as a fully fledged Bad Guy, being the Mad Scientist responsible for most of the airships and weapons built for the Archadian Empire.
- Jennifer from Disgaea created super-robot Thursday at the age of 5.
- Billy Blaze, alias Commander Keen, from id Software's Commander Keen series. Commander Keen built a spaceship in his garden, made from old soup cans, a joystick, a car battery, a vacuum cleaner and a bottle of Everclear.
- Andy, from Heart of Darkness, is pretty much a clone of Billy Blaze above.
- Lucca in Chrono Trigger.
- Little Mad Scientist girl Penny Crygor from Wario Ware: Smooth Moves fits the trope to the letter. She's also totally adorable.
- Max from Dark Cloud 2 can make items out of pretty much anything he sees. He just needs to capture photos for inspiration.
- Lash from Advance Wars, who combines this trope with being an Enfante Terrible, much to the protagonists' dismay.
- Shinra from Final Fantasy X 2, although his entire race is exceptionally technologically advanced, the rest of the game world having been Luddites until shortly before the game's beginning.
- The Vances from Half Life 2—Eli built a robotic dog for his daughter, Alyx. Over the years, she upgraded Dog into a super-strong, semi-sentient Lightning Bruiser.
- Jeff Andonuts of EarthBound. He's capable of using laser guns, bombs and the like, and can turn various broken irons, antennas, harmonicas, and the like into powerful weapons and battle items overnight. And did we mention that he's only thirteen years old?
- Tron Bonne and Roll from Mega Man Legends.
- Ciel from Mega Man Zero. And the two above examples seem like amateurs compared to her. Her accomplishments? Creating a perfect replica of X (Cain certainly couldn't, partially why mavericks exist), she created an energy system to solve the energy crisis that is not only effective but just beautiful (take a look at the reactor of the Guardian airship from ZX!), and she made Biometals to match Master Albert's, but also added the dual Mega-Merge feature. And she created Copy-X when she was nine years old. Don't believe me? Read the MegaManZero Complete Works.
- Miles "Tails" Prower and Dr. Robotnik from the Sonic the Hedgehog games.
- Bentley and Penelope from the Sly Cooper series.
- The Engineer of Team Fortress 2 is capable of creating NASA-level sentry turrets and teleportation devices using nothing more than his wrench and scrap metal collected from weapons dropped by the recently dead.
- Don't forget his laws-of-thermodynamics-be-damned dispenser, and the fact that he can make one from scratch using the raw metal of a butterfly knife. Which he invented. In the 60s. Then again, he does have 11 PHDs, so it's a little justified.
- This trope is the defining characteristic of Gnomes in World of Warcraft. Gnomish tinkerers are famous for inventing just about anything, including (but not limited to) helicopters, robots, guns, and even some mechanized melee weapons. Players can take the "Engineering" profession, which allows them to embody this trope. The profession even allows the player to create Mad Scientist style goggles.
- Grubb from Septerra Core. He built several robots of different types out of rubbish thrown down from Terra 1.
- Deus Diablo in The Nameless Mod; he built an inanimate object with the powers of a board admin something Gamespy couldn't do, hence why he was kindaped.
- Edgar from Final Fantasy VI designed many of the machines used and exported by his kingdom, including the weapons he uses in battle, most infamously his giant chainsaw. His Job class is described as "Machinist" and, where everyone else is wielding swords, knives, or staffs, Edgar is the only one holding a huge gun.
- Purge from Space Channel 5 Part 2.
- Momo from Breath Of Fire III.
- Nono the airship mechanic from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Final Fantasy XII. In Final Fantasy Tactics A 2 Hurdy explained that Nono built his own airship called "Brilliante I".
- Bill from Pokemon, who invented the storage system, as well as his colleagues who helped him. In the manga, he also invented the Vs. Seeker.
Web Comics
- Agatha Heterodyne of Girl Genius, and the other Sparks (Mad Scientists). An example of Schizo Tech, because Sparks are literally able to screw with the laws of physics, and can build electrical lightning moats, cloning pods, Death Rays, giant airships, autonomous robots and Frankenstein monsters in a world that is otherwise at the tech-level of the 19th century.
- Kat from Gunnerkrigg Court builds an antigravity generator out of a thermos and coat hangers for the school science fair. She didn't see this as anything special, and built it simply in order to allowe her protein synthesis experiment to work properly. Much to her chagrin, nobody cared very much about proteins, but were fascinated by her anti-grav machine. Later, she converts it into a personal aircraft.
- Tedd from El Goonish Shive is a male version of this trope. Grace, the squirrel-girl girlfriend of Tedd, has her moments as well.
- Scarlett from Sequential Art is either this, or an Idiot Savant. Several strips indicate that if she didn't have the attention span of a mayfly with ADD, she'd be an engineering genius.
- Sean "Dark Smoke Puncher" McNinja, the brother of Dr. McNinja is shown to be particularly technologically adept and his own brother noted that his own Mecha Mooks are more dangerous than normal.
- Molly from The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob. An artificially (or rather, accidentally) generated creature, she is less than a year old and has the common sense of a little girl, but is quite capable of building a giant robot out of a milking machine, and an interstellar transmitter out of an umbrella and a Speak n' Spell.
- Thomas the Cat from Penny Arcade, as seen here and here.
- Dust Puppy in User Friendly wrote Erwin the Artificial Intelligence overnight, in Cobol, only 53 days after Dust Puppy himself was born.
- Sluggy Freelance's Riff has built several robots, a device for opening gates to other dimensions, the Omnitaser Supreme, and a staple remover with a 100 feet range.
- A more specific version, but Megatokyo's Largo can build a computer out of almost anything, including cereal boxes.
Web Original
- The various gadgeteers and devisors of the Whateley Universe have this as their mutant talent. Ironically, Word Of God has canonically stated that even they can't actually make a giant robot that works. Not that this keeps the relevant perpetual school project nicknamed "Tiny Tim" from having its own Crowning Moment Of Awesome during the Halloween battle...
- Makes-Things, Techno-Dann, and Liz O'Grady in Protectors of the Plot Continuum. Not to mention Nat Freidar, whose fascination with electronics and mechanics is such that she's taking lessons in how to build a lightsaber despite not being from the Star Wars universe. Technically, anyone who works for the Department of Sufficiently Advanced Technology can qualify.
- The Web Serial Novel The Descendants has a lot of these: Codex, Tink, and (at least in the backstory) Chaos all serve this role, as do many of the villains—most notably Maven.
Western Animation
- Gadget Hackwrench from Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers.
- Dexter's Laboratory has a gadgeteer for its main character.
- As does The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron.
- The Kids Next Door, sort of.
- Probably the character who lent this trope its name: Inspector Gadget... who even incorporated his gadgets into his body, making himself a sort of non-Cyberpunk low-tech cyborg.
- But Inspector Gadget didn't build himself — Professor Von Slickstein would qualify, though. The Inspector himself would be more of a Gadgeteer Moron.
- His niece and dog, Penny and Brain, are the more competent gadgeteers, though they are just as likely to become the Damsel In Distress (both of them are subject) or Wrongly Accused (Brain, while simultaneously being the Damsel sometimes) while Gadget plays the Spanner In The Works.
- In addition to commentary, Stone Cold Steve Austin provided this service in the original run of Celebrity Deathmatch. His technological expertise yielded a fully-functional cloning machine (used to combine DNA from dead celebrites into fighting mutants) and a rickety time machine (used to bring to life such matches as The Three Tenors vs. The Three Stooges).
- Zim, from Invader Zim.
- Gear from Static Shock, who initially thought his power was rather lame: "How am I supposed to fight supervillains, think them into submission? All I can be is your Mega-Mechanic." Which turns out to be a great way to fight supervillains.
- Sandy Cheeks from SpongeBob SquarePants, especially in the later seasons.
- Kani on Sushi Pack fits the bill, although others have tried to steal credit for her inventions on occasion.
- The Spectacular Spider Man has two. Adrian Toomes is the inventor of the Magnetic Air Transport System, a suit of flight-capable Powered Armor that he uses as the Supervillain Vulture to antagonize Norman Osborn for stealing his designs. Chameleon's henchman Mason (aka, the Tinkerer) is responsible for developing all the Shoe Phone technology the Chameleon needs for his work as a Master Of Disguise.
- Widget from Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!.
- Jack and Maddie Fenton in Danny Phantom seem to fit this trope, with their inventions being proven inoperable by a normal person, or even the show's MIBs , due to the quirks because of said "tin cans and an old transistor radio" method of construction.
- Professor Utonium from The Powerpuff Girls creates things like a supersuit or a giant robot or a car that can turn into a giant robot.
- Jérémie from Code Lyoko. His gadgeteering occurs more in the virtual world, however, as he is the primary programmer and the one who is most adept at using the Supercomputer. However, it is a confirmed fact that he can build robots, participating in a robot competition in Season 1. He also created an EMP bomb in episode "Ultimatum", which has efficiently stunned a XANAfied person at this occasion.
- Wade from Kim Possible is able to build more or less anything that the plot demands. And the Tweebs that were able to really pimp Kim's car. The three of them are 10 years old...
- Tanya from The Mighty Ducks is introduced as "She was so smart, she actually knew how to program a timer on a VCR!" As well as building the team's machines and blowing up those of the enemy, she used a wrist mounted chainsaw in battle. She also had a stutter due to her brain going so fast. (and trying to explain things in terms the others could understand)
- Ginger Snap from Strawberry Shortcake.
- Donatello from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
- Tinkerbell is one of these in her origin story movie. Or So I Heard.
- Grumpy from Adventures in Care-a-Lot straddles the line between this and Bungling Inventor. He apparently built an entire theme park at one point, not to mention a cloning device, among many others, but his inventions sometimes turn on him (i.e. the clone cloned itself and both clones kicked him out for not being "Grumpy" enough) or fail because of (unwanted) help from Oopsy.
- The Geek from Sam And Max Freelance Police fits the original mold perfectly, as a young genius girl who built a gigantic robot Max in her underground lair.
- Rattrap in Beast Machines was stripped of all weapons upon being reformatted, so compensated by developing all sorts of handy devices to stop the Vehicons.
- AJ from The Fairly Oddparents.
- Froggo from Histeria! was always asking for things because, as he put it, "You've got your inventions, and I've got mine."
- Velma Dinkley produces a number of remarkably sophisticated pieces of equipment in her spare time in What's New, Scooby-Doo? In the same series, Fred also makes a few minor modifications to the Mystery Machine, such as equipping it to transform into a submarine at the press of a button.
Real Life
- The book The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind is about a real-life example of this. William Kamkwamba, a fourteen-year-old Malawian boy, was forced to drop out of school because his family could no longer afford the tuition. Using some books from a foreign-aid funded library and parts from a scrapyard, he constructed a fully functional windmill to run appliances in his family's home, largely creating the design from scratch.
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