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Accidental Good Outcome

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There are no mistakes, just happy little accidents.

Most mistakes are an inconvenience at best, but these are, despite all odds, happy. Perhaps someone (maybe a Lethal Chef) dropped or burned some food, but the other character is an Extreme Omnivore and prefers the food that way, or maybe they flood a place, but the water ends up cleaning it. It might lead to the person pretending it was never an accident.

Super-trope to:

Compare Mistakes Are Not the End of the World, for when mistakes are okay, but still not beneficial. May cause a Surprisingly Happy Ending, Deus ex Machina, You Were Trying Too Hard, Moral Luck, or Unintentional Backup Plan. A character who benefits from this outcome may end up being an Idiot Houdini if they were directly responsible for the mistake. Sometimes overlaps with Crying a River (or Giant's Droplet, Human's Shower if it was a giant) if the tears come in useful (whether as Swiss-Army Tears or just because a lot of water was required), or with Creating Life Is Unforeseen if the artificial lifeform ends up liked or useful. Solid Gold Poop and Fantastic Medicinal Bodily Product could apply if the animal did not intend to secrete or excrete something beneficial, as could Surprise Pregnancy if the parents end up liking the baby, Freak Lab Accident if the powers are good, All Part of the Show, and Accidental Celebrity if they like being famous.


Examples that don't fit any subtropes:

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    Anime & Manga 

  • Akage No Anne: The Cuthberts own a ranch and sent a request to the orphanage for a farm boy to help run it. To Matthew's shock, they accidentally send a girl. While the Cuthberts are unsure if they want to keep her, when Anne tells them of her Dark and Troubled Past, they decide they'll roll with it.
  • Hello Kitty: In a cartoon that's a parody of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Kitty as Alice bawls Ocular Gushers after she's unable to reach the key to unlock the exit door. Her tears flood the room and the pressure of the water forces the door open, thus allowing her to get outside.

    Asian Animation 

    Comic Books 
  • Asterix: In "Asterix and the Magic Carpet", on a visit to India, Cacofonix (whose new-found ability to summon storms by singing is needed to trigger a monsoon) turns out to have lost his voice, and the doctors who examine him declare that he needs to spend all night soaking in a bath of elephant milk mixed with elephant dung and elephant hair, in order to clear his sinuses — which doesn't work. While he is sleeping in his tub, however, the villains capture him and dump him in a nearby Elephant Graveyard, figuring the elephants will trample him to death for intruding — but since Cacofonix now smells like an elephant, they instead accept him as one of their own.
  • Captain America: The precise combination of metals in Captain America's shield was a complete accident. At least, the initial combination of vibranium and steel was intended, but not the mysterious third component that somehow got into it when it was in a liquid state. Attempts to replicate it have all failed in comparison.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: In one comic, a cleaning product causes a lump of Gary's slime to turn into a slime man. While the citizens are at first angry that he gets slime everywhere, they become pleased once they realise it's beneficial in some ways (for instance, it fixes one fish's squeaky door and clears another one's skin).

    Comic Strips 

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animation 
  • In The Ballad of Nessie, Nessie cries due to being homeless but ends up making Loch Ness, ending on An Aesop about how It's Okay to Cry.
  • Horton Hears a Who! (2008): When Horton accidentally bumps the clover that carries the dust speck upon which Whoville is, it accidentally causes a condo to build itself.
  • Monsters, Inc.: Several times, Mike makes klutzy mistakes, but they end up making Boo, a toddler, laugh. Not only that but through this, the monsters discover that human laughter can make electricity (and in fact, it makes more electricity than their previous source, human screams).

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Avengers: Endgame: During the time heist, the team blew it and allowed Loki to escape with the Tesseract. This Loki variant ended up saving the entire multiverse.
  • Cats & Dogs: Mr. Tinkles is furious with Calico for buying a cork launcher instead of a gun. In his rage, he accidentally sets the place on fire with the cork launcher.
    Mr. Tinkles: I'm so clever.
  • Diary of a Wimpy Kid: In Rodrick Rules, Rodrick's band Löded Diper plays a song called "Exploded Diaper" and no one appears to be interested until Susan starts dancing in the background for the fun of it. The audience loves her moves and starts cheering, and the performance becomes a hit.
  • Little Shop of Horrors: Subverted — Seymour accidentally cuts his thumb on a rose, which attracts the plant Audrey II, which makes Seymour realises it feeds on blood. This saves Audrey II, but then later, it grows into a Man-Eating Plant, meaning that it would have been better had it died.
  • Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang: When McPhee uses magic to save Mr. Eidelweiss so that instead of exploding from eating the explosive putty, he just burps instead, his burp ends up harvesting the corn.

    Literature 
  • Andy Griffiths' Just Series: In the story "Kittens, Puppies, and Ponies" from "Just Shocking", Andy writes a story about the eponymous animals being killed by a bad man named Mr. White. He intended to write this as catharsis for losing a writing contest, but accidentally impresses Lisa, his crush.
  • Angela Nicely: In "Cupcake Wars", Angela and Tiffany both decide to make cupcake stands at the school fair, leading to a petty fight between them. When Angela tries to make rainbow-frosted cupcakes, the icing mixes together, leading to ugly-looking icing. At first, this accident is far from happy, but when someone tells her the cupcakes look like "blobby monsters", she decides to turn that into a marketing ploy by encouraging buyers to add monster decorations to them.
  • Anne of Green Gables: The sequence of events that led to Anne Shirley coming to Green Gables led to a proverbial game of telephone. Matthew and Marila never wanted a girl, they wanted a boy that could help on the farm. Instead they got Anne. For the longest time they refer to Anne's arrival as a mistake. It actually takes four years for Marila to admit that this was more than an accident, it was something akin to divine intervention.
  • In the Richard Scarry book The Best Mistake Ever! And Other Stories, Huckle is told to buy groceries, but he forgets to bring his shopping list, so he buys junk food instead. His mother is initially exasperated, but Auntie Rose is pleased at how delicious it is. Huckle's mother tells her son that this really was the best mistake ever.
  • Curious George: In "Curious George Goes to the Hospital", George gets up to his usual shenanigans at a hospital, which unintentionally cheers up a sad girl named Betsy.
  • Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules: Greg writes a story called Rory Screws Up. In it, a monkey named Rory accidentally rings the doorbell (though it's not specified how he did so). His owners think he's smart and give him bananas as a treat.
  • Dirty Bertie:
    • In "Fishy", Bertie tries to prank Nick with a maggot sandwich during a fishing trip. He fails but ends up catching a large carp that was attracted to the sandwich.
    • In "Mud", Bertie accidentally scores a goal in soccer/football, leading to a draw, which the school considers as good as a win since they were playing against a notoriously hard-to-beat team called Cropper Lane.
    • In "Snore", Bertie and his classmates are at sleepaway camp, but Nick has to bunk with Darren and Eugene (who hate him and vice versa) and Bertie has to bunk with Trevor (who he hates for being Nick's best friend) and Warren (who he finds annoying because Warren is Prone to Tears). Bertie, Darren, and Eugene try to carry a sleeping Nick into Trevor and Warren's room, but accidentally carry him into Miss Boot's room. However, Bertie, Darren, and Eugene then run away, so Miss Boot thinks Nick snuck into her room to cause trouble and puts him into Trevor and Warren's room and Bertie into Darren and Eugene's room, meaning all six boys got the bunkmates they wanted anyway.
    • In "Royal", Bertie hopes to meet the Queen at a party at Buckingham Palace. He does, but purely by accident, thinking she's just a random old lady.
  • In The Giant's Loo Roll, a giant accidentally drops a toilet roll, and some humans find the paper useful (one woman, for instance, makes underwear from it).
  • The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes: Beatrice attempts to juggle a water balloon, a pepper shaker, and Humbert the hamster, only for the latter to unleash an Ill-Timed Sneeze from the pepper. He pops the balloon with his claws and Beatrice ends up soaked from head to toe. The audience is shocked that someone as talented as her actually messed up for once, but they laugh anyway because of how hilarious it was, and Beatrice is just glad they had a positive response.
  • At the end of The Grouchy Ladybug, the two ladybugs eat some aphids off a leaf, intending to just have food. As it turns out, however, the plant was sentient and it says, "Thank you" to them.
  • Gus the Dinosaur Bus: Gus cries after he's no longer allowed to take the kids to school. His tears then fill an empty swimming pool, and he now has a new job; being a slide for all the kids.
  • Handas Surprise: The title character is carrying a basket of fruit to her friend Akaio, however, animals take all the fruit. However, as she walks past a tangerine tree, tangerines fall into the basket, and they happen to be his favourite fruit.
  • In The Midnight Story by Margaret Mahy, a griffin cries after the protagonist reads him a sad story, and his tears fill a pit, that ends up being made into a swimming pool.
  • In the Mog book "Mog's Bad Thing", Mog falls out of the attic window and lands in the tent of a "most unusual cat" competition. This makes her win since the judges note it's unusual for a cat to "fly".
  • In Naughty Ninja Takes a Bath, a man struggles to bathe his son Finn, who's pretending to be a ninja, and their soap-filled chase ends up inadvertently cleaning the house.
  • In Poo Dunnit, a bear poops near a mouse's den. While she initially doesn't like this, she and her friends eventually plant the seeds that were in the dung and use it to fertilise them, thereby growing flowers.
  • Rapunzel: In some versions of the story, the prince's eyes get ripped out, and then Rapunzel cries on him, inadvertently making the eyes grow back.
  • Thelma The Unicorn: Subverted — Thelma, a horse, wants to be a unicorn, so when she gets paint and glitter spilled on her and an ice cream cone on her head, she enjoys being mistaken for a unicorn... that is, until she becomes an Accidental Celebrity and finds herself missing her friend Otis, so she decides to go back to living as a horse.
  • Winnie the Pooh:
    • In "In Which Eeyore Has a Birthday and Gets Two Presents", Pooh tries to give honey to Eeyore for a birthday present, while Piglet tries to give him a balloon. However, the balloon pops and Pooh eats the honey. Despite this, however, Eeyore likes the burst balloon and the pot, since he enjoys putting the balloon in the pot and taking it out again over and over.
    • In "In Which a House is Built at Pooh Corner for Eeyore", Eeyore tries to build himself a house, but doesn't do a very good job, so Pooh and Piglet mistake it for a random pile of sticks. They use said sticks to build him another house, thinking he's still homeless, and this ends up being better than the original house since it's in a warmer part of the forest.
  • The Witch In The Cherry Tree: The little boy accidentally burns some cupcakes, but the eponymous witch prefers them burnt anyway, so he gives them to her.
  • Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories: Yertle forces all his fellow turtles to stand on each other's backs to form a tower so that he can have a bigger "throne" to sit on. At the very bottom, one named Mack belches loudly, causing everybody to lose their balance and collapse. This frees them from Yertle's tyranny, while the latter ends up becoming a laughingstock.

    Live-Action TV 

    Magazines 

    Mythology & Religion 
  • In the Book of Genesis, Joseph's brothers, out of jealousy for their father's clear favoritism, throw Joseph down a well and then sell him to Egyptian slavers. Joseph endures further trials in Egypt, including imprisonment after a False Rape Accusation—but this unexpectedly puts him in the position to interpret a prophetic dream from the Pharaoh himself. Impressed by Joseph's wisdom, Pharaoh promotes him to be his right-hand man, and Joseph's leadership helps save Egypt and its neighbors (including Joseph's old family) from a seven-year famine. When Joseph reunites with his brothers, and they fear that he holds a justified grudge against them, Joseph reassures them of his forgiveness by pointing out it was their misdeed that put him in the position to save an entire nation.

    Puppet Shows 
  • Bear in the Big Blue House: "Home is Where the Bear Is" reveals that Bear occasionally drops crumbs when he eats bread and cheese, which Tutter then enjoys eating.
  • Sesame Street:
    • In one "Bert and Ernie's Great Adventures" skit, an anthropomorphic rat named Big Bob phones the bakery Ernie and Bert are working at and asks for "chocolate surprise". When Ernie reveals they don't sell that, he asks for bread, pie, and chocolate cake. They end up making a huge mess due to spilled chocolate sauce, dough going everywhere from too much yeast, and pies flying everywhere from an Assembly Line Fast-Forward. However, when Big Bob arrives, he reveals that that's what "chocolate surprise" is.
    • In one episode, Abby tries to cast a spell to make Baby Bear no longer afraid of bees. It instead turns him and Gordon into bees, however, after temporarily living as a bee, he gets over his fear of his own accord.
    • In a "Hero Guy" skit, Baby Bear and Hero Guy enter a drawing of a boat, only to find no ocean. However, they end up so sad that their combined tears make an ocean, allowing them to sail after all.
    • In another "Bert and Ernie's Great Adventures" skit, Ernie accidentally attracts the missing herd of elephants back by blowing his nose, which they mistook for another elephant.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Mage: The Awakening: Fate magic can manufacture these; for example, it can make you slip on a banana peel so you'd dodge a bullet or make someone mistakenly leave the door into a secure building open for you.

    Video Games 
  • In Final Fantasy XIV, the Heavensward Goldsmith questline revolves around making a pair of gifts for a Happily Married couple. Said couple winds up accidentally ordering the same music box as a surprise gift for the other, leaving the Warrior and Marcel scrambling to find a way to make the gift meaningful without producing two identical music boxes. After learning about the mishap, the couple has a laugh about how they're so in tune with one another that they ordered the same gift. The couple is even more delighted to find that said music boxes play two different versions of the same song that sound even better together.
  • In Francine's Tough Day, a Licensed Game for Arthur, Francine is playing soccer badly due to her shoelaces repeatedly untying, and she only scores one goal, and that's due to standing up at the right time to accidentally head the ball. When her friends ask her how the game went, you can make her tell the truth, tell a "little lie" (i.e. state that she "scored a goal"), or tell a "big lie" (i.e. pretend the game went perfectly).
  • On a licensed game for Gordon The Garden Gnome, accidentally planting a seed in the wrong bed isn't happy for you, but it's happy for the slugs, who eat the resulting plant. Lampshaded when they say, "Oops! That looks tasty!".
  • Kid Icarus: Uprising: Pit is sent to destroy the Mirror of Truth to stop the Underworld Army from using it to multiply their forces. However, in the process of breaking it, Pit accidentally creates an evil copy of himself called Dark Pit, whom Palutena orders Pit to eliminate. Fortunately, the angel fails in this endeavor and Dark Pit is revealed to not actually be evil, later becoming an ally who even helps save Pit's life.
  • Ruphand: An Apothecary's Adventure: Brill accidentally falling into the Earth Cave at the start of the game sets her on the path to becoming a hero.
  • Rune Factory 4 Lin Fa's trait is she is a very absent-minded woman, but it always comes out right for her, she forgot a customer's order? the customer thanks her because they're on a diet, among other improbable good turns that baffles the main character.

    Web Animation 
  • Minilife TV: In "WORLD RECORD BREAKING!!!", Chris and Ian attempt to break the world record for the world's largest head tower. Ian forgets to contact the air marshal to make sure no airplanes accidentally knock over the tower, but the data is recorded in time and Chris and Ian celebrate with a midair high-five before attempting to break an additional world record for the longest midair high-five. As they do this, they end up breaking a third world record for the most head injuries caused in a minute as air traffic knocks over the head tower, which Ian does feel slightly guilty for causing.
  • Princess Lili: In this cartoon, Princess Lili is having a Potty Emergency, but due to not knowing how to use her potty yet, she just runs around frantically. However, she trips, lands on the potty, and pees into it accidentally.
  • Simon's Cat: In one video, there are fireworks outside, which both cats are afraid of. The kitten runs over to the easy-chair and accidentally pries two pieces off with his claws, but the pieces land in his ears, satisfying him since he can now no longer hear the fireworks. Then, he accidentally lies on the grown cat, satisfying him because the kitten is now covering his ears.

    Web Original 
  • One meme is claiming that one accidentally built a shelf.

    Western Animation 
  • Betty Boop: In "Betty Boop's Ker-choo", one of the many ways Betty wins the car race that she is competing in despite a cold is her inadvertently pushing her car along by sneezing.
  • Garfield Originals: In "Pumpkin Trouble", Garfield plants a pumpkin seed and becomes bored as he waits for it to grow. Odie passes by just then and pees on it, thus causing it to sprout into the size of a beanstalk.
  • Horrible Histories: In "The Savage Stone Age", Mo and Stitch find a dead animal and throw it away in disgust. However, a cavewoman catches it, and she likes the taste.
  • The Loud House:
    • In "Funny Business", Lincoln is trying to help Luan work as a party clown. However, the kids don't find him funny at all. That is, until he accidentally falls down, which they find hilarious.
    • In "Butterfly Effect", Lincoln unintentionally wrecks an experiment Lisa has made and fears that she will disown him, but to his surprise, she's actually glad he did, as it proved a hypothesis she had formulated.
    • In "The Whole Picture", a Flashback shows that on his seventh birthday, Lincoln accidentally careened down the bowling lane with a ball stuck on his hand, but that it made him get a strike.
  • My Friends Tigger & Pooh: In "Lumpy Mixes a Mystery", Lumpy wants to paint a birdhouse purple but has no purple paint. They don't realise that paint can mix together until Lumpy sneezes and knocks the paint cans over, leading to some red and yellow paint mixing together. Upon realising this, they discover the combination for purple and make purple paint.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • In "Bats!", the bats inadvertently fertilise the apple trees with their spit.
    • In "Baby Cakes", Pinkie Pie is trying to cheer up the Cake twins (month-old babies) by dancing and accidentally knocks over a sack of flour and spills it on herself. This cheers them up.
    • In "The Cutie Mark Chronicles", it's revealed that Rainbow Dash accidentally caused everyone in her friend group to get their cutie marks (those symbols on their thighs) by inadvertently making a "Sonic Rainboom" (a rainbow effect caused by breaking the sound barrier) and one thing leading to another. Fluttershy's cutie mark acquisition also happened after an accidental fall, and the rainboom also caused Twilight to accidentally hatch Spike.
  • Peg + Cat: In "The High Noon Problem", Cat accidentally gets rid of Bad Jack, a cowboy who annoys the populace of a town by tickling the citizens, by bumping into him, making him tickle himself with his own feather.
  • The Powerpuff Girls (1998):
    • The Girls themselves were created when Mojo Jojo shoved Professor Utonium into the bottle of Chemical X, causing it to drip into the concoction, which gave them their superpowers. Less beneficially, however, the explosion of Chemical X also gave Mojo his intellect and he became a genuine threat.
    • In "Oops, I Did It Again", Professor realizes that almost everything genuinely useful he has built was done by accident after he unintentionally makes sloppy joes through his own clumsiness. He feels ashamed of the fact that he rarely creates anything good on purpose, but he comes to terms with it by the end when he has an Opinion-Changing Dream about what would've happened if the creation of the Girls had gone according to plan; his life wouldn't have been as exciting.
  • The Real Ghostbusters: In the "Slimer" short "Sticky Fingers", Slimer tries to re-paper the walls, only to not be able to due to a series of mishaps. However, the Ghostbusters and Janine prefer the walls without wallpaper anyway.
  • The Simpsons: In "Flaming Moe's", Homer Simpson throws together an impossibly delicious cocktail out of leftover bits of liquor, plus cough syrup and a cigarette-ash flambĂ©, thanks to his and Patty's inattentiveness.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
    • In "Club SpongeBob", a nearby plane is about to fall, so it jettisons some food and other things... which land near SpongeBob, Patrick, and Squidward, who are lost in a jungle. And this was right after Squidward had said, "As if the solution to all their problems would fall right out of the sky!".
    • In "Stuck in the Wringer", SpongeBob is trapped in a wringer, and his plight has been made worse by Patrick squeezing permanent glue in it. Patrick Star ends up crying Tears of Remorse, which land on the wringer and free SpongeBob from it.
    • In "Ripped Pants", SpongeBob SquarePants tears his pants (hence the episode's title) in front of a bunch of people, including Sandy. He's initially embarrassed by it until he sees how much it's made them all laugh, and he decides to keep amusing them with more jokes about torn pants.
    • In "The Goobfather", SpongeBob is delivering an order to Bubble Bass when he trips on a loose nail. The food bounces off the table and splats into the ceiling fan, mixing it up into a smoothie-like substance. Bubble Bass likes it and Mr. Krabs decides to sell it as an official new food.
    • In "The Sponge Who Could Fly", SpongeBob's hair dryer gets in his pants while he's on the phone, causing them to inflate. He begins to float and he is overjoyed now that he's achieved his dream of flying.
    • In one episode, SpongeBob accidentally slips on grease, leading to Mr. Krabs emptying the grease tank outside the Chum Bucket, giving Plankton the idea of using the grease in his cooking.

    Real Life 
  • Many animals spread seeds from plants entirely by accident, whether by pooping them out, regurgitating them, or carrying them on their physical bodies.note 
  • Some animals' prey consists of pest species, so they eat the animals, intending just to have lunch, but unintentionally doing good by getting rid of a pest.
  • Animal pollination is accidental on behalf of the animal: they're just intending to eat the flower or collect nectar and/or pollen, but the pollen ends up on them, and then they spread it to another flower.

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