History Main / IdiotHoudini

* [[TheSimpsons Homer Simpson]] at first showed reasonably poor judgment, but repeated encounters have gradually turned him into this trope. A good example is an episode 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 deconstructed 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.
*** 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 TheMovie, where his actions got the town domed in and everyone goes up to his house with TorchesAndPitchforks [[spoiler: and his family ''leave him'']].
* Nearly everyone in the Bluth family on ''ArrestedDevelopment'' falls into this trope. Gob, Lindsey, Buster and their mother all live high-class lifestyles despite the fact that none of them have any useful skills or even common sense. [[ItGotWorse It gets worse]]. We find out in the first episode that the family patriarch is similarly idiotic: The only thing he ever actually seemed to do effectively was break the law in order to steal company money, to the point that the viewer is genuinely surprised he wasn't arrested much sooner.
** 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.
* Ethan's devolution to this in ''CtrlAltDel'' is in large part why the comic has such a hatedom. In early strips, other characters put up with his stupidity only to the extent necessary to keep him as a character in the webcomic. By the time Winteenmas rolls around, the universe is bending over backward to turn all of his stupid ideas into outrageous successes.
* [[GregTheBunny Greg the Bunny.]] 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.
* Ashley Abbott on ''The Young and the Restless'' 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. [[WhatAnIdiot 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.
* Michael Scott on ''TheOffice'' has a habit of falling into this from time to time. Even though he has aspirations to being a highly successful businessman, for example, he doesn't seem to have a rudimentary grasp of economics. 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.
** To be fair though, the Michael Scott Paper Company example wasn't entirely his fault. Their ability to undercut their competition was really all that was keeping them in business, and Ryan had also given an okay on the prices, specifically saying that they would become profitable given enough sales(but having failed to figure required company growth into those projections).
* The PointyHairedBoss in ''{{Dilbert}}'' is this, but unlike most examples it's not a quirk of his personality. Rather, it's because the company's promotion protocols seem to be designed in such a way to ensure that a person of his intelligence level becomes a manager, and that said manager is impossible to fire.
* RealLife example: 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 "A Pickle For The Nowing Ones"--a travesty of literature--[[BileFascination it sold very well]].
* The two dumbass main characters from ''{{Bio-Dome}}'' live in relative luxury despite having no useful skills, and exhibit intelligence you'd expect from idiots who went on to get brain damage.
* ScoobyDoo. He has NO detective skills and in fact is a dumb coward but he * always* manages to catch the MonsterOfTheWeek by accident and gets congratulated by everyone at the end of each episode- in some of the spinoffs he's even famous for it!
** If you're a dog and you solve mysteries and ''talk'', you can be sure that's going to get some attention at least. And it doesn't matter if you solve them through hard work or by complete accident, if you solve the mystery, ''you've solved the mystery.''
* [[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 tendancies, though it is sometimes hard to define which trope he plays on occasion (being a PsychopathicManchild has that way).
* Inspector Clouseau from the PinkPanther movies shows crime-solving skills that make the Scooby gang look good.
--> Outraged Matron: That's a priceless Steinway!
--> Clouseau: Not anymore.

* ''SpongebobSquarepants'' leans more and more increasingly into this trope as seasons pass, frequently bothering or enflicting misery on the other residents of Bikini Bottom (usually his neighbour [[ButtMonkey Squidward]]) due to his well intentioned stupidity, and someone else facing the reprecussions for it. Combined with his friend Patrick's near equal IdiotHoudini tendancies the show becomes [[SadistShow disturbingly sociopathic]] for a kids cartoon at times.

* Deedee from [[DextersLaboratory Dexter's Laboratory]]. She normally means to be playful, but always destroys everything Dexter works hard for with nearly no comeuppance at all.
* The flock from ShaunTheSheep qualify. No matter how stupid of an act they do, they're saved by the end, it inconveniences the Farmer in some way.
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* [[FateStayNight Emiya.]] ''[[StupidityIsTheOnlyOption Fucking.]] '''[[IdiotHero Shirou.]]''''' Every time he does something intelligent [[TheManyDeathsOfYou he dies,]] and every time he does something pants-on-head retarded it helps him or gives him an opportunity for a CrowningMomentOfAwesome.
** Usually anyways. A rough estimate as to how many of the correct choices are mindblowing idiotic compared to reasonably intelligent would be about a 7 to 3 ratio.

** He's. A. ''Dog.'' Ever heard of Kanellos? If you're a dog and you solve mysteries and ''talk'', you can be sure that's going to get some attention at least. And it doesn't matter if you solve them through hard work or by complete accident, if you solve the mystery, ''you've solved the mystery.''

* Should we mention Deedee from [[DextersLaboratory Dexter's Laboratory]]? She normally means to be playful, but always destroys everything Dexter works hard for with nearly no comeuppance at all.

* [[TheSimpsons Homer Simpson]] at first showed reasonably poor judgment, but repeated encounters have gradually turned him into this trope. A good example is an episode 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 Simpson" 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, "I really pulled a Homer Simpson that time!" when he won the game on accident.

* Arguably, [[CodeGeass Kaname Ohgi]]. In a world where innocent mistakes or simple DiabolusExMachina can get you killed, Ohgi gets away with a truly ''astonishing'' number of bone-headed decisions.
** Not to mention Suzaku and Tamaki.

* Not to mention Suzaku and Tamaki.

* Arguably, [[CodeGeass Kaname Ohgi]]. In a world where innocent mistakes or simple DiabolusExMachina can get you killed, Ohgi gets away with a truly ''astonishing'' number of bone-headed decisions.

** 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.

* RealLife example: 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.

* Arguably, [[CodeGeass Kaname Ohgi]]. In a world where innocent mistakes or simple DiobolusExMachina can get you killed, Ohgi gets away with a truly ''astonishing'' number of bone-headed decisions.

* The two dumbass main characters from ''{{Biodome}}'' live in relative luxury despite having no useful skills, and exhibit intelligence you'd expect from idiots who went on to get brain damage.

** This aspect of his character was deconstructed in the ninth-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.

** Later we meet prosecutor Maggie Lizer, who's a successful lawyer in spite of the fact that she's spent several years doing a 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.