Just a silly comedy idea that came to mind, partly inspired by threads like this one.

Essentially, what if you had a guy who, through the Timey Wimey Ball, was unknowingly responsible for every disaster in history, all on account of an incident not too dissimilar to that time Arthur Dent's words went through that portal and caused an alien war.

And worse yet, some sort of Time Police types have figured this out and, predictably, end up causing it themselves.

Finally! I can now blame someone else for that painting accident!

... blagh, I can't think of it in any other way than an existentialist (anti-existentialist?) black comedy.

Yeah, the hardest part is all the disasters that would be a case of Dude, Not Funny!.

Depends on how you handle it. If he's just a side character in another story, you could have the main character encounter him, listen to him talk about all his guilt and such, and then totally ignore all of the big disasters of history to bitch at the guy for causing his personal problems.

Perhaps you can use it for Natural Disasters and avoid all human influenced terrorism and massacres, you know?

He's not aware of it. He literally has no idea this happened, and would probably think you're crazy if you brought it up.

That is a good point.

It has been done on a smaller scale. Arthur Dent, from Hitchhikers Guide, is responsible for the death of a person through every single one of their reincarnations, which ranges from a fly, to a rabbit, to a bowl of petunias

So, it's possible, you just need to make the world odd enough to allow it.

It can be worked out in a comedy concept as long as you know how to Cross the Line Twice and Refuge in Audacity.

I know! It can be Hitler!

I read somewhere once that Hitler almost drowned as a kid. Let the dude save some Austrian kid from drowning and be proud of finally doing some good. ;]

@Mr AHR: I mentioned that in my first post, actually.

Not nearly crazy enough. I'm talking about a grand, glorious cluster of insanity involving time warps, time loops, aliens, and who knows what else. Simply saving Hitler is far too mundane.

Is he P. Diddy?

sorry about that...

Now, it might make for some good black comedy on the nature of existence and the human tendency toward right or wrong.

That reminds me of a story idea I had, where a Mystery Magnet detective discovers that he/she has an unconscious psychic ability to set off people's inner psychos.