History Main / IdiotHoudini

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* The flock from ''WesternAnimation/ShaunTheSheep'' qualify. No matter how stupid of an act they do, they're saved by the end, it inconveniences the Farmer in some way. Well, being a farmer, that flock ''is'' his livelihood, so he kinda has to keep them around.

* Both Todd and Mr Peanutbutter on ''WesternAnimation/BojackHorseman,'' although Todd's is more powerful: When Mr Peanutbutter is in a skiing contest, and relies on his luck to win, ''Todd'' wins instead, ''even though he wasn't in the race.'' They both seem to be completely aware of this, too, and follow whatever random thought crosses their minds in the explicit expectation that it will pay off later. It's most dramatic in the third season, where a string of bizarre business decisions over the course of the season ends up with them having the ''exact'' combination of resources and employees needed to save the day from an absurd disaster.

** Doubled Subverted in the episode she kidnapped the Mexican Girl. Her highly overestimated grasp of the Spanish Language made her make the situation that much worse. However in the end the Mexican jury rules that's she's not guilty as they realize that Peggy has no idea what she was doing and did not fit the Mens Rea part of the crime.

* ''WesternAnimation/PennZeroPartTimeHero'' has [[NonIdleRich Principal Larry.]] Not only is he ditzy, [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} extremely weird,]] and [[BewareTheNiceOnes downright creepy sometimes,]] he doesn't seem to know much of anything. Whenever he's around, [[TalkativeLoon all he does is be extremely long-winded and tell stories he never finishes.]] What is Larry's life like?? [[RichInDollarsPoorInSense He won the lottery 32 times.]] [[BigFancyHouse He lives in a giant mansion.]] His butler has a butler. [[Fiction500 He genetically modified an elephant to stay small and cute forever.]] And at the end of the [[ADayInTheLimelight Day in the Limelight]] episode, he wins the lottery again.

*** Hell, it got so bad that when Buckle (their neighbor) [[BigDamnHeroes busted into the house to save them]] he wound up having to shoot Stan (with a tranquilizer dart, mind you), stating ''he was being a bigger threat then the shark and bear combined."

-->'''Richard''': Hey Hector's mom, what brings you here?
-->'''Mrs. Jötunheim''': Do you remember the time when your kids wound up my boy and he went on a rampage?
-->'''Richard''': Oh yeah, I remember... [flashback transition, clips from "The Colossus" are shown, Hector is seen destroying the town. The flashback is interrupted by Mrs. Jötunheim.]
-->'''Mrs. Jötunheim''': Enough flashbacking! If you remember well, seventy-five percent of Elmore was destroyed and somebody has to pay for it!
-->'''Richard''': You mean it didn't all end well like it always does?
-->'''Mrs. Jötunheim''': [takes out a sheet of paper and hands it to Richard] Here's your half of the bill for the reconstruction work.
-->[Richard gasps as the sheet of paper unfolds, revealing a long list]
-->'''Mrs. Jötunheim''': Why are you looking so surprised? Did you really think we lived in some sort of fairy tale? 'Cuz wake up buddy, we don't.
-->[Mrs. Jötunheim gets on her broom, and flies away, then disappears. Someone clears their throat. Richard sees that Principal Brown has appeared.]
-->'''Richard''': [whispering] Weird, that lady gnome seems to think that things we've done in the past have consequences in the now.

-->'''Richard''': Oh, hello officer. Really? I don't remember any reckless driving. [A quick montage of all of Richard's terrible driving is shown.] Right... well I think I just won't pay the fines and wait for this to all blow over. Bye. [hangs up]
-->'''Anais''': Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. If you don't pay, they could send you to jail.
-->'''Richard''': That's exactly what he said, but don't worry. I've been imprisoned heaps of times. They put you in then straight away you're just not in there anymore.
-->'''Nicole''': This bill is eight hundred thousand dollars. It says if we don't pay by tomorrow, then they can take our house away. What is going on today?
-->'''Anais''': It seems the results of all our reckless actions are finally catching up with us.
--> While in jail, the Wattersons start to devise a plan:
-->'''Anais''': I think Gumball was on to something. Up until now, every bad situation has gotten worse and worse until it somehow just fixed itself. There's only one solution left.
-->'''Richard''': What is it?
-->'''Anais''': [hands out papers containing charges against them] Everyone take a problem, part ways, and produce a problem more problematic than a problem of that proportion should probably be.
-->'''Gumball, Darwin, Nicole and Richard''': Huh?
-->'''Anais''': Just do what you do best. [evilly] Make things worse.

-->'''Richard''': [poking people with a broom] Somebody think of something, I can't hold 'em off forever!
-->'''Nicole''': No! This is it! It's all over! The end of the Wattersons!
-->'''Gumball''': The only thing that can save us is [[ResetButtonEnding reality being completely reset by some kind of magic device!]]
-->[The episode ends abruptly.]

* The title characters of ''WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButthead'' to an extent.

* In ''Disney/{{Moana}}'', we have Heihei the rooster. There are several points throughout the film where he should've drowned, but he doesn't. It helps that the ocean [[GeniusLoci likes the protagonist.]]

'''Frank:''' Everything! A dream house! Two cars! A beautiful wife! A son who owns a factory! Fancy clothes and (sniffs air) lobsters for dinner! And do you deserve any of it? No!

*** This aspect of his character was {{deconstruct|ion}}ed 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.

* The PointyHairedBoss in ''ComicStrip/{{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. Scott Adams' book ''The Way of the Weasel'' offers a possible explanation to this phenomenon: that a company will naturally shift incompetent people to management because that is where they cause the least harm. Dilbert and the rest of the employees prove this by regularly finding way to circumvent the pointy-haired boss' idiotic requests and policies, getting their work done in spite of him.

* Dr. Silberman from ''Film/TheTerminator''. It's bad enough watching him get away with his ignorance in the first film, when he actually had an excuse for not believing Kyle Reese's [[CassandraTruth crazy-sounding story]], but when you see how he's made a career out of Sarah Connor's "insanity" for telling the same story in the [[Film/Terminator2JudgmentDay second movie]], it gets downright infuriating to see him get away with his stupidity. What, he's just going to ''walk out of the police station past the Terminator'' right before the guy shoots up the place, demonstrating that Kyle was right about everything? Yep: that's exactly what he's going to do. He doesn't get any presumed comeuppance at all until the [[Film/Terminator3RiseOfTheMachines third film]], and that's all off-screen after he's demonstrated he ''still'' doesn't believe in any of that Terminator crap. There is catharsis in seeing him in the loony bin in ''[[Series/TerminatorTheSarahConnorChronicles The Sarah Connor Chronicles]]''.

* Cosmo from ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'', notably when he was the cause of Crocker losing his fairies, ''twice''. Once when his past self revealed himself as a fairy godparent, and again when his present self and Timmy travel back to the 70's to prevent this from happening. While Timmy stopped Crocker's fairies from revealing themselves, present Cosmo [[WhatDoesThisButtonDo notices a switch that turns the microphones on]], and Crocker's secret is accidentally blurted out by Timmy out loud, thus making him the indirect cause. Timmy was punished by being forbidden to travel to this decade again, and yet ''nobody'' called Cosmo out on his actions.

[[folder:Anime & Manga]]

Overlaps significantly with BornLucky and TheFool. The character who provokes MinorInsultMeltdown is usually also this as other characters scold the meltdowner rather than the provocateur. Contrast TooDumbToLive, where a character does not escape the consequences of their stupidity, but instead pays the ultimate price. Compare and contrast KarmaHoudini, where the lack of consequences is for immorality rather than stupidity.

* ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo'':
** Scooby-Doo 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!
** Shaggy is probably even worse being the second most well-known character. He's basically Scooby only with all the cowardice and none of the unique talents of the dog (being able to track or occasionally talk to other animals).
** It should be pointed out that Shaggy and Scooby ''do'' (or did) have useful skills regarding sleuthing. Scooby, being a dog, has a keen sense of smell which was used many times to track down clues and/or suspects. Plus, being a dog, he would sometimes growl and bark at the MonsterOfTheWeek to scare them out of hiding. Shaggy, on the other hand, is rather nimble and fast (the series even once commented that he was in his school's gymnastics team) which is useful in avoiding dangerous criminals. He was also skilled at ventriloquism (which, again, could be useful in providing a distraction). The problem is that these useful traits were made almost non-existent by both characters being [[{{Flanderization}} reduced to the snack-happy simple-minded cowards they are today]].
* WesternAnimation/InspectorGadget is ''even worse'' at detective work than Scooby-Doo, yet no one ever seems to catch on to this fact; it helps that Penny and Brain (who do pretty much all the work) are either unwilling or (in the latter's case) unable to reveal the truth.

* Both Todd and Mr Peanutbutter on ''WesternAnimation/BojackHorseman,'' although Todd's is more powerful: When Mr Peanutbutter is in a skiing contest, and relies on his luck to win, ''Todd'' wins instead, ''even though he wasn't in the race.''

* ''WesternAnimation/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}} tendencies, though it is sometimes hard to define which trope he plays on occasion (being a PsychopathicManchild has that way). Peter [[ExploitedTrope exploits this trope]] in "Petarded". After being declared "mentally retarded", Peter proceeds to do whatever he feels like because no-one will press charges against someone with a mental disability. This ends up biting him the ass when he hospitalizes Lois during one of his stunts and Child Services takes his kids away, since they don't have a guardian who's mentally fit.

'''Frank:''' Everything! A dream house! Two cars! A beautiful wife! A son who owns a factory! Fancy clothes and (sniffs air) lobsters for dinner! And do you deserve any of it? No!\\
'''Homer:''' (''gasps'') What are you saying?\\
'''Frank:''' I'm saying you are what's wrong with America, Simpson. You coast through life, you do as little as possible, and you leech off of decent, hardworking people like me. Heh, if you lived in any other country in the world, you'd have starved to death long ago.\\
'''Bart:''' He's got you there, Dad.\\
'''Frank:''' You're a fraud. A-- a total fraud. (''walks out, pokes his head back round the doorway, and speaks to Marge and the kids'') It was nice meeting you.

* ''Anime/DragonBallZ'': The fat Majin Buu killed thousands of innocent people just for fun, both before and after [[EvilIsNotAToy turning on]] [[EvilSorcerer Babidi]], but is forgiven for his actions and allowed to live because [[ObliviouslyEvil he didn't understand that what he was doing was wrong]]. That being said, he ''does'' reap what he sows in other ways; being the weakest and least skilled Buu form, he gets his butt kicked mercilessly by his [[EnemyWithout evil counterparts]]. He gets turned into chocolate and eaten by Evil Buu, exactly what he did to many of his victims, and later he is overwhelmed and beaten to near death by Kid Buu, again just like he did to his victims.

* The title characters of ''WesternAnimaton/BeavisAndButthead'' to an extent.

* ''WesternAnimation/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}} tendencies, though it is sometimes hard to define which trope he plays on occasion (being a PsychopathicManchild has that way). Peter [[ExploitedTrope exploits this trope]] in "Petarded". After being declared "mentally retarded", Peter proceeds to do whatever he feels like because no-one will press charges against someone with a mental disability. This ends up biting him the ass when he hospitalizes Lois during one of his stunts and Child Services takes his kids away, since they don't have a guardian who's mentally fit.

* ''Anime/DragonBallZ'': The fat Majin Buu killed thousands of innocent people just for fun, both before and after turning on Babidi, but is forgiven for his actions and allowed to live because [[ObliviouslyEvil he didn't understand that what he was doing was wrong]].

* Wander of ''WesternAnimation/WanderOverYonder''. For example, in "The Pet," he attempts to train an alien monster that is heavily implied to have killed someone in the past, and it just barely fails to kill Wander too. Furthermore, Sylvia tries to get rid of the monster by activating self-destruct on the ship they're all on, and Wander doesn't try to evacuate (or even seem to notice) until Sylvia rescues him.