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Lethally Stupid

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"Once again, Captain, your stupidity has killed us."
Marco, Sealab 2021

Whatever you do, don't ever stay around this nitwit. Anywhere they go, havoc will go, property will be destroyed, accidents will happen, people will die if they go near them. No matter how bad it gets, they won’t notice how dangerous they are.

This character accidentally causes a disaster because of a) a stupid idea, b) not thinking of the consequences or c) because he/she made a terrible mistake. It is often Played for Laughs, because of the Slapstick and Black Comedy it may involve.

This trope is close to Lethal Klutz, though a Lethally Stupid character doesn't have to be clumsy to cause disasters. Not to Be Confused with Too Dumb to Live, when the character's stupidity causes their own death. Also, this may not always cause death, but they can make you want to kill them!

May also overlap with I Just Shot Marvin in the Face, when the stupidity involves firearms, and Explosive Stupidity, when it involves explosives. Compare Lethal Negligence, where the danger is due to laziness rather than stupidity.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Ayakashi Triangle: Though Rochka looks like a human child, she's actually an ice ayakashi with a lot of power and dangerously little understanding of human biology. She once suggested treating Matsuri's cold by freezing his intestines and thought he'd enjoy a supercooled bath, even as he's keeled over covered in ice.
  • Chaka from Black Lagoon is a very rare non-comedic example, but his psychopathic idiocy, complete and utter lack of care, and nonexistent impulse control all combine to make him dangerous less because of his own deliberate efforts (as he is way too stupid and incompetent to reliably carry out his ill-reasoned schemes to anything resembling completion) and more because of the way that his schemes typically decay.
  • The Dirty Pair are not completely dumb, but they are a bit air-headed (in the sense of "boy-crazy" and "fashion-conscious") and have a crappy luck that manifests in apocalyptic levels of collateral damage (sometimes because they didn't notice that teeny-tiny detail in their flightiness that said luck decided to turn into the trigger for said cataclysms).
  • Arale from Doctor Slump is a destructive force of nature, mostly due to the fact that she Does Not Know Her Own Strength, along with her reckless, childlike behavior and lack of common sense.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • Vegeta's overwhelming pride always manages to cause trouble for the universe. In this order, he goaded Frieza into transforming, let Cell absorb 18 and reach his Perfect form for the sake of a better challenge, and deliberately became one of Babidi's Majins to fight Goku despite full knowledge that it would resurrect Majin Buu. In all three cases, a planet ends up exploding,note  and in the case of Frieza and Buu, Vegeta got himself killed.
    • Goku tends to care more about having a fair and challenging fight than anything else. He allows his most dangerous opponents to power up their maximum level even when the entire planet's at stake, and gives Cell a Senzu Bean right before he was about to engage in a fight to the death with his son. He also has the habit of giving his enemies a Last-Second Chance when he really should just kill them and be done with it, (although this only causes trouble with Raditz and Frieza, since everyone else Goku spares turned good eventually). This comes to a head in Resurrection 'F', where he gives Frieza the opportunity to walk away again despite how badly it backfired for him the last time; not only does Goku get near-fatally shot for the trouble, but when Frieza was subsequently defeated by Vegeta, he flipped out and blew up the Earth.
    • Goten and Trunks aren't that bad on their own, but when they fuse into Gotenks, all bets are off. Thanks to the rash decisions he makes in an attempt to make himself look cool, Gotenks unwittingly caused himself and Piccolo to get trapped in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, Super Buu to eat his friends and loved ones, and allowed Super Buu to eventually absorb his power and give him an edge against Gohan. For this reason, in Super, Goku and Vegeta automatically decide that Gotenks is too unpredictable, thickheaded, and irresponsible to be trusted with anything to do with the Tournament of Power and refuse to let him or his components participate.
    • From before this, Pilaf releasing King Piccolo in hopes of mooching off his conquest. Also a case of Too Dumb to Live overlapping with Evil Is Not a Toy. And he does it again in Resurrection 'F', helping Frieza's men find the Dragon Balls and revive himnote .
  • Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters: Haruo survives the events of the first film, but his selfish and severely ill-advised actions and choices to bring the fight to Godzilla instead of leaving well enough alone lead to the deaths of every single member of the landing party which amounted to hundreds, if not thousands of people. Aside from Metphies, he is possibly the only one to survive.
  • Many characters in Ranma ½ let Revenge Before Reason, Honor Before Reason, Greed Before Reason or even Laziness Before Reason lead them to commit stupid acts that they refuse to stop doing or acknowledge it's their fault even when people are screaming at them or literally are trying to beat some sense into them (to provide a couple of examples (because they are the cause of most disasters): Happosai and Genma Saotome). It's a miracle nobody dies onscreen.

    Comic Books 
  • Vic the Veep, the Vice President of the United States in The Boys and a literal useful idiot being manipulated by Vought as part of their plan to get superheroes into the military. Late in the story he ends up killing the president himself by complete accident by letting a vicious wolverine out of its cage, much to the chagrin of the Corrupt Corporate Executive who spent millions trying to get assassins close to him. It's also revealed that he was indirectly responsible for their version of 9/11 as he (under Vought's instructions) knocked out the President and gave the order to the Air Force to stand down in order to allow the Seven to save the day, with disastrous results.
  • Gaston Lagaffe. It is the whole point of his stories. In French, "La gaffe" even means "the blunder".
  • Minor Popeye character Oscar veers into this trope sometimes. During the Eighth Sea arc, when Popeye's crew mutinies, Oscar's big idea is to sink the ship, thereby drowning the mutineers, and actually goes to it until Popeye tells him to knock it off and plug the holes. And later on, when the ship starts to sink because of a storm, he puts life preservers on the gold because "gold's harder to find than women". And in the Search for Pappy arc, when a man has fainted and needs water, Oscar just throws him into the sea.
  • In Tintin, whenever Captain Haddock gets drunk, he will do something stupid and dangerous, such as lighting a fire in the small boat he and Tintin are riding in. Especially in the album of his introduction, where he gets Tintin into lots of trouble.
    • In the movie, Haddock can be this while sober. He accidentally hits a dam with a bazooka, causing a massive flood in a town.
    • Professor Calculus can be this to Haddock, who often gets Amusing Injuries from the former's clumsiness or inventions, or simply gets irritated by the deaf scientist who never hears what the Captain yells to him.
  • In The Walking Dead, Patricia frees a Serial Killer out of mercy, while he had already murdered two kids. It’s a miracle he didn’t get to kill anyone.

    Fan Works 
  • In the Death Note fanfic Misa And The Bear, the task force is too busy watching daytime TV to notice a murder occurring across the street.
  • The Infinite Loops: This is the only reason Billy is considered an MLE – he's so stupid that he's a danger to himself, other Loopers, and Yggdrasil as a whole. He managed to kill several near-omnipotent Loopers, cause another potential insane person to go temporarily sane and shoot him, and crash three safe-mode punishment loops through his sheer idiocy.Note
  • Nui borders on this, according to this RP blog, as she seems to think white phosphorous is something you put in food as a flavorer and burned down an entire town.
  • Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness Act VI has an example in Arial Kuyumaya. Due to her obsession with Dark Kuyumaya, and her blatant refusal to see that he doesn't love her like that, she causes a shit-ton of unnecessary trouble for Moka and the gang, escaping Heaven through a rift into a Death World and nearly getting killed by the monsters inside, nearly killing Mizore in a jealous rage, and ultimately driving Dark to a nervous breakdown that causes him to get near-fatally hit by a car; it isn't until said injury that Arial finally listens to reason and accepts that her role is as Dark's guardian angel/mother figure and nothing more.
  • From Apartment Gensokyo, we get Baka, who, true to his name, isn't known for being very bright, and as such, comes up with some pretty questionable ideas, one of which was trying to get an air conditioner and a sofa up to his apartment through a window using a rope. Unsurprisingly, this goes as well as one would expect as, while Yukari doesn't die, the incident does land her with a very damaged spine.
  • In Imperial Servant, Gosunkugi: turns out that when he read a book on how to summon demons he skipped the first few chapters under the impression they were for aspiring exorcists, when they were in fact on how to make a banishing anchor - that is the basic safety in case the demon went out of control, as destroying the anchor would immediately banish the demon. This is one of the reasons he gets blacklisted from summoning by the succubus he summoned, as she doesn't want him to summon the really dangerous horrors.

    Films — Animated 
  • In Finding Nemo, Darla killed her last pet fish because she shook the bag too much. Did she learn from it? Nope, she does the same with Nemo. Meanwhile, her uncle keeps giving her new pet fish, despite, you know, her habit of killing them.
  • Ice Age:
    • Scrat caused the ice age, a volcano explosion, and the continental drift simply by planting an acorn. He also destroyed an Atlantis-esque civilization because of his compulsive need to grab an acorn.
    • Sid brings more problems than help to his friends. He is at his worst in the third movie, where he steals three dinosaur eggs, which did not please their mommy.
  • The Iron Giant: Kent Mansley's paranoia and obsession with destroying the titular colossal cyborg ultimately does him in when he orders a nuke launched at the Giant—standing about 5 feet away from him and in the center of town. Thus, the missile will vaporize not only the Giant, but also everyone in town—including Mansley himself. When the General calls him out, even Mansley can't believe how idiotic that move was. He then immediately attempts to flee and save himself and leave the town to their fates. He doesn't get very far.
    Rogard: That missile is targeted to the Giant's current position!! WHERE'S THE GIANT, MANSLEY?!
    [Mansley looks over his shoulder to see the Giant standing right behind him]
    Mansley: Ohhh... we can duck and cover! There's a fallout shelter right there, if we-
    Rogard: There's no way to survive this, you idiot!
    Mansley: You mean, we're all going to...
    Rogard: ...to die, Mansley. For our country.
    Mansley: Screw our country! I WANNA LIVE! (shoves a soldier out of a jeep and starts to drive away...but the Giant blocks the jeep with his hand, preventing Mansley's escape. Soldiers point their rifles at Mansley)
    Rogard: Hold him, men. Make sure he stays here, like a good soldier.
  • Megamind: Played for Drama. Hal's lovable goofball persona masks an incredibly selfish and immature person who only thinks about his self-centered desires. When he gains superpowers, these flaws make him a horrible threat to public safety, because he doesn't care about who he hurts to get what he wants.
  • Memories: In Stink Bomb, Nobuo is this to a degree that turns him into a Person of Mass Destruction. Starting with taking a pill that he assumes is an experimental flu medicine but was actually a bio-weapon (a co-worker explicitly told him what color they were and he misremembered) and continuing with him trying to follow the orders of his boss (to take his company's secret documents to Tokyo) like a good little Salaryman come hell or high water (and by which we mean "the JSDF tossing everything and the kitchen sink at him doesn't deter him") without bothering to think why the hell the government would be so absurdly determined to stop him or why every human he approaches that doesn't run like hell just keels over dead. The short ends with him killing all of the government and military officials inside of a secret bunker implied to be somewhere under Tokyo (and which means he may wipe out Tokyo, too, once he leaves) when he takes off the Powered Armor he somehow managed to get into because he thinks the officials aren't hearing him well.
  • Minions: The reason that the Minions have trouble keeping a master is because they frequently end up accidentally killing him. They mean well, though. In the film proper, when trying to apologize to Scarlet, they end up nearly killing her with a falling chandelier. She is not amused.
  • In two films of Winnie the Pooh, Christopher Robin goes to school and leaves a message to tell his friends that he'll come back soon. Both times, Owl misreads the note and makes the others believe the boy has been kidnapped by a monster, sending them on a completely useless and dangerous quest.

    Films — Live-Action 

By Creator

  • Jerry Lewis always portrayed a character like this. Though, most of the time, he manages to look fairly likable.
    • Chris Farley played the same type of character in his sadly short career, a walking disaster area who nonetheless was sympathetic and likable.
  • Laurel and Hardy. Especially Laurel! God, it’s a miracle Hardy stays alive around him. And in one movie… he doesn’tnote .

By Film

  • Avengers: Infinity War provides one of the more infamous examples of this. At the climax of the film the group on Titan nearly manages to subdue Thanos when Star-Lord loses control on hearing that Thanos killed Gamora and attacks him, throwing the plan off and causing Thanos to regain control and beat the group, which leads to half of all life in the universe being wiped out.
  • Captain Hugh "Bullshot" Crummond in the film and stage play Bullshot. Seriously, he's a walking disaster to exceed even Clouseau!
  • In Die Hard, the cops (excepting Al Powell) are so stupid and gullible they become threats to McClane. Especially in the first and fourth movies.
  • In Dinner for Schmucks, Barry's astonishing capacity for well-meant chaos takes up most of the plot.
  • Dumb and Dumber: Lloyd and Harry perform such things as accidentally killing a man (a prank gone bad because of an ulcer... and then they accidentally fed the man rat poison instead of his ulcer pills, although in their defense, the man had the pills in his pocket because he was going to poison them) and an endangered owl (they popped a champagne cork and it hit the owl) among other acts of chaos that they are too dumb to even notice they created. Lloyd is especially bad because he is both perfectly willing and able to cause malicious acts in revenge for slights (but is too dumb to think of how bad things can get as a result) and has even less common sense than Harry.
  • Due Date: Ethan spends the whole movie making Peter's life hell out of sheer stupidity.
  • The Hangover: Alan. He is responsible for the events of both movies, but it is worse in the second since he uses the drugs again, not learning from his past misadventures.
  • Juan of the Dead: Lázaro. He manages to accidentally kill non-zombified people like Yiya, and Preacher Jones, just before he reveals his plan to deal with the zombies.
  • MonsterVerse:
    • Godzilla (2014): When Godzilla arrives in San Francisco at the Golden Gate Bridge, the military start firing on him in an attempt to slow him down even though there are still hundreds of mid-evacuation civilians on the bridge caught in the direct crossfire. Not only that, but it's only after the military's fire hits Godzilla's vulnerable gills that Godzilla becomes provoked into self-defense, smashing through the bridge when there were likely still civilians on it.
    • Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): The military, as usual. At the beginning of the film, they're implicitly supporting the government's plan to attempt indiscriminately killing all the hibernating Titans regardless of their moral alignment, in ignorance of Monarch's findings that such a course of action indicating that killing all the Titans, if successful, could lead humanity to perish in an extinction-level ecological collapse. Midway through the film, the military rashly fire the prototype Oxygen Destroyer at Ghidorah in an attempt to kill him and Rodan, and Godzilla is caught in the blast and crippled: with Godzilla unable to keep Ghidorah in check, the three-headed Titan usurps dominance of the Earth's other Titans and forcibly awakens them to begin enacting a severe extinction event. It can be argued that the military are directly responsible for things going From Bad to Worse and for the deaths of millions around the world which could have been avoided had they not fired the Oxygen Destroyer and let Godzilla finish Ghidorah off.
    • Godzilla vs. Kong: Apex Cybernetics are so blinded by hubris that they legitimately thought they'd have no problem using King Ghidorah's remains' lingering telepathic consciousness as the damned nervous system of Mechagodzilla, a Humongous Mecha which Apex deesigned specifically to be unstoppable even to Titans. This leads to Ghidorah's consciousness remnants hijacking the Mecha the moment it gains a lasting power supply, slaughtering Apex, and then going on to level half of Hong Kong with the implication that Mechagodzilla would pick right up where Ghidorah left off with bringing an extinction event if it won.
  • The Pink Panther's Inspector Clouseau will either destroy your property, his own, make you insane, or cause your death. All this out of pure clumsiness.
    Dreyfus: Compared to Clouseau, this doomsday machine is just a water pistol.
  • In Planet Terror, during a zombie attack, a cop kills an old lady, thinking she was a zombie.
  • Predators: Edwin is not really useful even with his medical knowledge and gets himself killed when he decides to target his allies because of his sociopathic tendencies.
  • Despite being scientists, the characters in Prometheus repeatedly do stupid things that jeopardize their own mission. Two scientists get lost in a cave despite having maps with them (and one of them built the droids that made the map in the first place), one of the scientists removes his helmet to breathe the planet's air that could easily be contaminated, the scientists recover an alien head and then promptly cause it to explode, the main character informs nobody that she has given birth to an alien, which is now aboard the ship: the list goes on.
    • David is somewhat exempt from this trope, as he sabotages some of the scientists and does rash things while exploring the planet because he's under orders to do so.
  • In Pulp Fiction, Vincent can be dangerous even by accident.
  • In Scary Movie, many deaths are due to some characters being Lethally Stupid. In the fourth, the father keeps almost killing his daughter accidentally.
  • Shaun of the Dead: David ends up putting the entire group in mortal peril and indirectly causing the death and reanimation of Ed when he frantically tries to leave the pub after failing to kill Shaun.
  • The IOA in Stargate: The Ark of Truth nearly dooms two entire galaxies in an inept attempt to stop the Ori. The main cast is on a dangerous mission to enter Ori space in a ship with an advanced cloaking device. But the IOA has an agent on the ship who uses its advanced alien computer to create a Replicator- an extremely dangerous mechanical insect species able to infect and assimilate any technology they come across. His use of the computer core to create the Replicator exposes the ship to the Ori. And he modifies the Replicator so that it's immune to the best weapon the team has to destroy it, which he does not mention until after they drop the shields around the thing so they can shoot it- meaning the Replicator immediately escapes and infects the ship. And the Replicator's infestation of the ship cripples its systems, meaning the cast is helpless when four Ori ships arrive to take turns pounding away at it. It's rather hard to sympathize with the guy when the Replicators wind up killing him and driving his corpse around.
  • Team America: World Police: they save the world by blowing up everything in their path.
  • Wherever The Three Stooges go, disasters are in the air. Just compare the setting and characters looked like before and after these three showed up. Hell, in real life, they'd be accidental mass murderers and most likely dead a dozen times over.

    Literature 
  • Harry Potter: Do you remember how often Hagrid put his pupils in danger by showing them creatures WAY too dangerous to study for kids? Or when he sent Harry and Ron to get help from Aragog? He doesn’t even seem to understand how cruel hostile the creatures are.
  • Adults in general in A Series of Unfortunate Events are so stupid and oblivious that they leave the Baudelaires, other children, and themselves open to danger. Olaf, of all people, lampshades this in the movie, showing how many problems they would solve by just listening to the heroes. This goes double for Poe.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire tends to underline how lethal just normal degrees of lackadaisical thinking can get in the wrong time or place, not just the full glory of the Stupid alignment spectrum. Yet, it still has its stand-outs.
    • Any time the thirteen-year-old Joffrey Baratheon tries putting a secret, cunning plan together... people suffer; including his own family, not just the intended target and unrelated collateral damage. He's Book Dumb, fairly oblivious, extremely short-sighted and mostly happy to be Stupid Evil, but even when he's genuinely not being a dick For the Evulz, his ideas still tend to lead to gore-soaked political backfires because he's just not all that bright. It makes him a walking Spanner in the Works, which eventually gets him killed. Mind you, he occasionally does handle the Smart Ball (thus illustrating that most of the problem is an awful education combined with youth and having Cersei as a mother), but he never really knows what to do with it when he does get it.
    • Historically, King Aegon IV "the Unworthy" is a character who also played hopscotch between this trope and Stupid Evil. Take his wooden siege engines built specifically in the shape of dragons as a prime example. Not actually Evil (this time). Designed to dispense wildfire in the manner of flamethrowers? Not exactly clever, no. Fully constructed leagues away from the intended battleground? Ummm. Deployed over very uneven, off-road, forested terrain while fully stocked with the notoriously temperamental Greek Fire... in a dry summer? One BBQ'd army, coming right up. The wrong army.
  • Of Mice and Men: Lenny kills his pets and a woman accidentally, because of his great strength and little mind. This is Played for Drama, as he is actually developmentally disabled and has the intellectual ability of a young child.
  • Space Voyages: Bob Sandals, and NASA in general. Seriously, who sends three teenagers on a space mission launching at "the same time, just a couple miles apart" from another identical spacecraft piloted by two astronauts who happen to be in the service of an evil alien emperor?
  • The driver in The Egg Hamburger Steak Knows arc of Tantei Team KZ Jiken Note started off doing Poke the Poodle just to let off steam, but then he switched to switching the meats in his truck, which ultimately caused the bankruptcy of his employer Sunahara Meat.

    Live-Action TV 
  • German comedian Didi Hallervorden likes to play this character type. No deaths involved, but still...for example, he causes a minor car crash (because he was absent-minded due to searching for the mid part of Dr. Schiwago) and subsequently gathers the first flashmob in history. In an inversion of Police Are Useless, an arriving traffic police officer solves the riddle and dissipates the flashmob. The rammed guy still sits on his wrecked car...and gets rammed again by Didi, who is eager to explain that he confused it with Love Story.
  • Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul: Tuco Salamanca is an Ax-Crazy example. His very first scene has him fatally beat up his assistant because he spoke out of line. The "fatally" part was entirely accidental, but he doesn't care anyway. The prequel series then goes on to show that he is an incredibly moronic boss with a knee-jerk drive to kill and the only reason he has thrived in the cartel business is that he has the backing of the reputation of the Salamanca family as the very definition of "The Dreaded".
  • Community has Dean Pelton and Senor Chang; the former is responsible for starting a school-wide Zombie Apocalypse, the latter almost burnt down the whole school believing that fire couldn't go through doors because it's not a ghost.
  • Emergency!: According to Randolph Mantooth, who played paramedic Johnny Gage on the series, many of the rescues featured are based on real runs by real paramedic units. One has to hope that some cases were exaggerated for dramatic (or comedic) effect...
    • In one episode, Johnny and Roy get called to help a guy who was tossed and then gored by a bull while playing chicken with it on a motorbike. The two take in a Stokes litter to pick up the guy...and then the bull starts to charge. The two about-face, chuck the litter over the fence, and dive headfirst over. Eventually they bring the squad in to provide cover, and after they pull the guy out with him riding in the squad, the victim asks them to go back for the bike, since he worked all summer to pay for it.
      Johnny: You wanna go tell the bull that?
    • A homeowner goes up on his roof and starts cleaning his chimney using gasoline and sandpaper. The resulting explosion gives him some serious burns.
    • A Jerkass hot-dog stand owner chooses to ignore Roy's warning about how his gas heater is dangerously unsafe. Later that day, Station 51 gets a call to guess where?
    • A used-car dealer who loves to make weird ads tries to film one with a full-grown tiger in the car with him. Despite being warned "no food!" by the tiger's handler, the dealer has a packet of salted peanuts in his pocket. The tiger smells the food and attacks him.
    • A tragic example: In one incident, Station 51 is called to a movie set after a stunt with a car goes awry. The driver is trapped in the car, so a crewman grabs an acetylene torch and starts cutting open the wreck so the driver can get out. The gasoline leaking from the car's tank puts a quick end to that. The crewman survives, although with extensive burns. The driver doesn't.
    • In the episode "Peace Pipe", Station 51 responds to a small fire in a house's toilet. The firemen get a nasty surprise when water from a garden hose actually feeds the flames! After putting out the fire using tarps and the untainted water from the fire engine's own water tank, the paramedics trace the problem back to a street worksite, where gas monkeys are using municipal water lines to flush a high-pressure fuel line from a refinery.
      Roy: Did you ever hear of a clapper valve?
      Gas monkey: Yeah, it stops something from backin' up. Sure I have.
      Johnny: Then why aren't you using one?
      Gas monkey: No need. There's only 500 pounds pressure in this [gas] line.
      Roy: There's only 80 in the hydrant. What does that tell ya?note 
  • Steve Urkel in Family Matters. A boy genius who is still so clumsy and stupid, Carl is lucky to be alive and sane (most of the time).
  • Holmes & Yoyo: It's why Holmes wound up being paired with Yoyo. Ask any of his former partners, who wound up in the hospital.
  • On Justified, the Crowes are a whole clan of Stupid Crooks, but Dilly Crowe is particularly dimwitted. The family is running a profitable sugar smuggling operation which is low-key enough to keep them off the radar of any local or federal law enforcement. Even if caught, they will not be facing serious jail time for smuggling sugar. Dilly screws this up in a spectacular fashion. First, he loses the family's profits gambling on dog races. In an effort to get back the money, he takes money that is supposed to be used to pay off a crooked Coast Guard officer and loses half of it in a casino. When the Coast Guard officer gets upset over this and starts mocking Dilly, Dilly shoots him. He single-handily turned a low-key smuggling operation into the murder of a federal officer and brought the federal authorities right into their backyard. Now they are all looking at lengthy federal prison sentences. This is implied to be just one in a lengthy series of screw-ups that put the Crowe family in danger. Daryl Crowe manages to get the feds off their back, but it costs them their business and criminal connections. Fed up with Dilly constantly endangering the family, Daryl has Dilly murdered.
  • Kenan & Kel, and not only Kel. Few stories featuring these idiots end well.
  • Lab Rats brings us Adam Davenport. A sheer idiot with bionic strength and laser vision. Upon finding out that his adoptive father Donald Davenport is running out of fuel and losing control of the jetpack he is currently using, Adam successfully throws him a parachute. His brother congratulates him and says that the parachute is headed straight for Donald at which point Adam lifts the makeshift visor that is blocking his malfunctioning heat vision and cries "Let me see!" The laser cuts the wing off of the jetpack and sends Donald freefalling. Thankfully, he lands on Terry Cherry Perry.
  • The Legend of Xiao Chuo: Wuguli sneaks off to see Xi Yin after he's arrested for trying to assassinate the emperor and brings him a pass to help him escape. When Yansage catches them he sees the pass as evidence that Wuguli's father is in cahoots with Xi Yin, endangering Wuguli and her entire family.
  • M*A*S*H: Major Frank Burns is an officer who should not even be entrusted with a courtesy sidearm; every time he picks up any kind of weapon, he's a danger to himself and people around him; he has not got the hang of even elementary weapons safety. In one episode he accidentally shoots tentmate BJ Hunnicutt; in another, he gets into an unattended tank, thinking a short course in armoured vehicles makes him an expert driver. A thirty-ton tank that Burns discovers he can neither control nor stop then destroys several tents, breaks up a poker school, and crushes Colonel Potter's personal jeep.
  • The plot of Mob City is kicked off by Hecky Nash trying to blackmail Ben "Bugsy" Siegel with photographs that show Siegel killing a man. Hecky is so blinded by his hatred and contempt for the mobsters that he does not care that he is signing his own death warrant and that of everyone connected to the scheme. By the time the first season is over, almost everyone involved is dead — including Hecky and Siegel.
  • Mr. Bean. He never seriously hurts anyone, but still…
  • This is the point of 1000 Ways to Die: many idiots are responsible for killing other idiots.
  • Kate in Robin Hood, who has put herself in danger dozens of times, and gotten other people killed, because of her own stubbornness and stupidity.
  • Star Trek: Enterprise was supposed to be about humanity's first forays into exploration of space, which would necessarily involve them learning from their mistakes. Unfortunately, Captain Archer regularly makes mistakes even when the correct course of action is obvious or even explained to him.
    • In "Strange New World", the Enterprise manages to find a previously unknown Earthlike planet. T'Pol (the Vulcan representative and science officer) says that standard Vulcan policy for examining a new planet is to perform surveys from orbit for a week before flying down. Archer says that those are Vulcan protocols, not human. Human protocols, apparently, involve flying down to the planet right away and walking around without any safety gear. Predictably, this results in disaster. Furthermore, the technobabble explanation as to why the environment was bad for human biology is something that would have been picked up almost immediately, implying that absolutely no scanning at all was performed before they started breathing the air and drinking the water.
    • In "Breaking The Ice" Trip and Reed end up in danger when investigating a comet. The Enterprise cannot save them, but there is a more technologically advanced Vulcan ship nearby. Archers refusal to call them is not a "We must learn to not depend on the Vulcans" stance, but rather his refusal to ask for help from those goddamn Vulcans as a point of pride. Possibly justified, because the Vulcans are known to use any excuse they can to convince the top brass to scrub Enterprise's mission.
    • In "A Night in Sickbay" the Enterprise has run out of spare parts for their warp engine. They need to get a replacement which will both help the ship run smoother and ensure that they have enough spare parts to not get stranded in space. The Kreetassens have a spare part that is remarkably compatible with the Enterprise, however, after Archer's dog pees on their sacred trees, they kick them out and eventually demand a formal apology before diplomatic relations can continue. Archer is far more concerned that his dog caught a disease while on the planet. Even when T'Pol points out to him that he is acting far more concerned about the health of his pet than the safety of his ship (which his dog just so happens to live on) he still doesn't capitulate. While the Kreetassens are unreasonably uptight, they are also perfectly helpful once they are sincerely apologized to, providing an additional spare part beyond what they needed, making Archer look even more petulant by comparison.
    • In "Observer Effect", Trip and Hoshi are infected with a lethal disease when they go literally digging through garbage without so much as wearing rubber gloves, or even using tools. The episode later confirms that an environmentally sealed suit would have protected them when Doctor Phlox is able to examine them without apparent risk while wearing a hazmat suit.

    Music 
  • In her music video for "Clumsy", Fergie kills her love interest when she accidentally throws him out the airlock of her spaceship.
  • The music video for Green Day's "Walking Contradiction" shows the three members of the band going around causing all sorts of accidents through their own obliviousness.

    Video Games 
  • Dead Island: Jin is this, to the active detriment of herself and everyone around her. She hijacks the protagonists' armored truck and refuses to return control of it to them until they agree to get supplies to everyone still alive in the city, but their efforts to do so leads to the City Hall being overrun by zombies since the protagonists had to break the barricades in the sewers in order to get those supplies to the City Hall survivors. Her next stunt involves ignoring the blatant threats and warnings that the local prisoners themselves broadcast to "stay away from the police station", after those prisoners had killed all the police officers and bragged about it, but she (an unarmed young woman) goes to help them by herself. She gets one of the remaining church survivors killed and is gang-raped by the inmates for her trouble. Then on the island fortress, Jin loses the plot completely, angering Ryder White before releasing his clearly infected wife. The fan consensus was she wanted Suicide by Cop by this point.
  • Lindsay of Dead Rising is infamous in the Survival Horror genre for combining this with Too Dumb to Live. When Frank West first gets into Williamette Mall, he meets up with about a dozen other survivors by the main entrance, who have barricaded the doors to keep the zombies out, and things look like they can hold out for at least a bit. However, Lindsay sees her precious poodle (who has the tell-tale red eyes of a zombie) outside the mall, pulls apart the barricade, and lets the zombies in, getting herself killed immediately and the other survivors (besides Frank) soon to follow. Even in a New Game Plus, even if Frank is powered up, armed, and takes on the whole horde by himself to buy time, it's impossible to save the other survivors in this section, and Frank's only option is to make it to the safe room by himself.
  • Played for Drama in Devotion. The main character, Du Feng Yu, blindly accepts the advice of religious scam-artist Mentor Hueh, even when she tells him to lock his daughter Mei Shin in the bathroom in an alcohol-filled tub for a week. It's incredibly obviously a bad idea, but Feng Yu is so devoted to the Mentor he does it anyway... and kills Mei Shin.
  • Several of your Skills in Disco Elysium are this:
  • In Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, Lance Vance has gotten himself and his older brother Vic into so many predicaments that had nearly cost them their lives thanks to his stupidity. Ironically, Lance's own stupidity in 2002's original version of the video game leads to his own death at the end of the mission.
  • The world of Horizon Zero Dawn was created by an example of this that wound up having consequences far beyond the person responsible. Sure, Ted Faro, explicitly order your engineers not to install a backdoor in your company's self-replicating war robots that can refuel themselves in the field by consuming biomass, out of fear that rivals might use that backdoor to hack them. It's not like they could ever glitch out, go rogue, and devour all organic life on Earth, all while you are forced to sit and watch helplessly without an "off" switch that might have shut them all down in one go.
  • LEGO City Undercover: Oh dear god, Frank Honey. This man has mental faculties on par with a jar of mayonnaise, and the path of destruction and terror he leaves in his wake prove it a thousand times over. In one loading screen, he admits he's destroyed 65 places in a week.
  • Drill Man of Mega Man 4 isn't so bad in-game, but according to the guidebooks, he's remarkably thick and has the pattern recognition of a moldy potato, leading to incidents where he regularly does things like drill right through water mains and gas pipes without even realizing what he's doing until after something explodes on him.
  • After the United Federation suffers from a polio epidemic in Papers, Please, you are required to deny entrants who do not have a current polio vaccination. People who have an expired polio vaccination, have a certificate of vaccination that lacks a polio vaccination, or have no certificate of vaccination at all are considered this trope, and the Ministry of Health has required you to deny these people to keep polio out. Some of those who have no certificate state that they do not believe in vaccines.
  • Pokémon:
    • This trope is the entirety of Team Magma and Team Aqua's plans in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire. At no moment the game ever denies the fact their plans make no sense (and that they are going to bring anything but the supposedly beneficial effects their plans are meant to bring), but the fact these teams have the resources to pull off those plans are what makes them threats in the first place.
    • Generation VI (Pokémon X and Y and Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire) have Horde battles, where you deal with five Pokémon against only one of your own. Geodude in these hordes can pack two moves that target all adjacent Pokémon (Magnitude and Self-Destruct) depending on its level, thus potentially KOing all of its allies (and in the case of Self-Destruct, itself).
  • Wheatley of Portal 2 is this trope, and sometimes a Lethal Klutz as well. This becomes especially clear in Act III when he's put in charge of Aperture. He clearly has no clue how to run anything, and nearly blows up the whole complex as he doesn't know how to vent the nuclear reactor powering the place.
    "Okay, no, don't worry, don’t worry, I've got it, I've got it, this should slow it down! No, makes it go faster..."
  • Ben from The Walking Dead is indirectly responsible for:
    • The death of Doug/Carley, Duck, and Katjaa, in Episode 3, after the bandits force him to steal medicine for them. When Lee finds a bag of stolen medicine just outside the gate, he takes it to Lilly, meaning the Bandits don't get the bag and attack. While the whole group manages to escape, Lilly will either believe Carley to be the thief and shoot her or believe Ben to be the thief and accidentally shoot Doug as he stops Ben getting shot. Later, Katjaa reveals Duck was bitten by a walker during the bandit attack, and when he has to be put down, she commits suicide out of grief.
    • The death of Brie in Episode 4. While the group is trapped in an abandoned school due to hordes of Walkers outside, Kenny attempts to break through a door to a room believed to contain weapons. He sends Ben to find a tool to hack the door open, and he brings back a hatchet he found stuck in the handles of double doors leading outside. The hatchet was put there by Lee to stop the Walkers from getting in. Brie gets killed when the Walkers break in.
  • World of Warships: Inexperienced and careless players with access to torpedoes. Unlike most real-life fleet engagements, in World of Warships the vessels go dangerously close to one another, so a player that shoots its torpedoes without looking (especially in lower tiers) will end up sinking his own allies.
    • AI-controlled units in cooperative matches too. Sometimes they'll fill the vacant slots in your own team, and may shoot you to death if they suffer a particularly bad case of Artificial Stupidity. If your ship is next to them and between them and their target, they may not care and open fire anyway, blasting you instead of their target.

    Web Original 
  • Nappa from Dragon Ball Z Abridged has spread death and destruction all over due to his inability to tell right from wrong and lack of common sense. One notable example of Nappa's stupidity is his game of "fetch" with the giant Arlian Yetti, in which he rips off one of his fingers and obliterates him with a Bomber DX. All while being totally oblivious towards the fact that he was killing him.
  • Thanks to his total lack of control over his magic in the first season of Gays in Capes, Tanum is literally a ticking time bomb who causes far more harm to his allies than to his enemies. This varies from the relatively inane, like the growth of trees in the middle of a battlefield, to putting all his allies to sleep in the middle of an important battle.
  • Happy Tree Friends:
    • Lumpy has a higher kill count than Flippy, who has an Ax-Crazy Superpowered Evil Side!
    • Splendid tries to be a superhero, but is so inept that he always kills the people he's trying to save.
    • Pop's carelessness tends to be the reason for Cub's deaths.
    • Subverted with The Mole. As with the aforementioned characters, his mistakes are often responsible for mass deaths, but his lack of awareness is due to blindness rather than stupidity.
  • Rusty from Pokémon Rusty. How bad is his stupidity? Well...
    • He doesn't understand how HM moves work and tries Strength, Flash, Fly, and Surf to get around a tree that you use Cut on, but, predictably, none of them do the job. He finally refers to Red's twitter and, ignoring the obvious clue to use Cut, lights the tree on fire. This causes a massive wildfire that levels the forest and a nearby town.
    • He puts a Grimer into a bath and tries to wash it off in hopes of there being a legendary bird underneath. It gets Grimer washed down the drain and killed.
    • He plugs in a Tentacool, thinking its tentacles are wires and thus thinking it's an electric type. This gets the Tentacool electrocuted.
    • He stuffs sixteen Bidoofs in one Poké Ball simply because he "ran out." They die as a horrible mass of Bidoofs.
    • He tries to teach Zubat how to use Surf and doesn't realize that Surf and Zubat are incompatible. This leads to Zubat drowning.
    • Despite causing the Bidocalypse and being sent back in time to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, he opts to play out everything exactly the same way, enslavement to Peanut Butter and all.
  • Red vs. Blue: Private Michael J. Caboose is one of the stupidest people in the galaxy. He is also famous for getting the first kill in the entire series... on his own team leader. He has gone on to accidentally kill so many of his teammates that Command has installed a keyboard shortcut to report his teamkills.
    • We'll put it this way. How does the Blue Team convince Caboose to kill some enemies? By telling him that they are on his team and that he needs to help them.
  • Bowser Jr. from SuperMarioLogan has accidentally burned down his house and school by playing with fire, literally, for starters.
  • Bronco and Silo from the Whateley Universe. Vamp's first exposure to them is when she is nearly hit with several hundred pounds of packed snow that get launched from the other side of a small hill and land on the sidewalk near her. This would have killed most of the students at the school. They are constantly getting detention for doing dumb stuff like this just because they can.

    Webcomics 
  • Pictured above is the poster boy for this trope, Gordon Frohman from Concerned. Frohman wants to try his hardest to become an esteemed member of the Combine and be recognized as the biggest traitor to humanity... but unfortunately, he happens to be The Millstone who only ends up aiding the La Résistance by virtue of his actions only causing untold amounts of Overwatch and Civil Protection casualties and attaining victories for the opposing group. This makes one wonder why nobody within the Combine decide to send him to Nova Prospekt to become a Stalker for his failure due to his antics. Even outside of the Combine, he only succeeds in aiding the opposing team to win.

    Web Video 

    Western Animation 
  • Action League NOW!: The League's collective stupidity has caused perhaps more damage than the villains they fight, but special mention goes to The Flesh; Being a super-strong adonis with the brains of a kindergartener is not a good combination.
  • The Amazing World of Gumball:
    • Richard Watterson due to his Bumbling Dad personality; he can cause disasters by complete accident. In one episode, he almost dropped a solid block of concrete on his sons' heads because he wanted to prank them and didn't realize wet cement dries.
    • In one of the alternate timelines shown in "The Choices", when Nicole starts to choke on a butterfly, Mr. Small attempts to help her by hugging her. Cue the Funeral Cut.
  • American Dad!: Stan Smith veers to this with his self-serving ideas of what is right, and it doesn't help that he has access to dangerous CIA resources.
  • Animaniacs has Mindy. She has a tendency to wander off (usually while following something) into dangerous areas, with her dog Buttons tailing behind to save her. She always gets out unscathed, but Buttons is subject to all manner of brutal slapstick while trying to keep her safe. And lest you think Buttons is simply unlucky, there's an episode where Elmyra takes a turn looking after Mindy....
  • Aqua Teen Hunger Force:
    • Master Shake, such as provoking the Monster of the Week or abusing one of Frylock's inventions, although it usually leads to his own demise.
    • Meatwad, who's so childlike and idiotic that even though he (usually) means well, he tends to cause just as much destruction and mayhem as Master Shake, and isn't all that useful even when he's able to recognize what the right thing is.
  • Archer:
    • Sterling Archer is known as "the world's most dangerous spy" — and is equally dangerous whether you're with him or against him. May be more a case of Lethally Brilliant, but Lazy.
    • Cyril is often the smartest of the main cast but becomes this whenever he has a gun due to the fact that he never bothers to look where he's shooting.
  • Beavis and Butt-Head: Beavis and Butt-Head, so very much. Most of their misadventures result will result in massive collateral damage and often injuries to supporting characters and bystanders. This comes to a head in The Movie, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, where they unwittingly cause more chaos, bodily harm and destruction in one trip across the country than most terrorists do in a lifetime. It's never out of malice, but just because they're too stupid to fully comprehend the ramifications of, well, anything they're doing.
  • Brickleberry: Steve Williams, whose stupidity has caused countless deaths, billions of dollars worth of property damage, and major harm to others. Turns out his stupidity was also what killed Malloy's parents, turning Malloy into the Jerkass he is now.
  • As demonstrated in the Camp Lazlo episode "Waiting for Edward", this applies to Chip and Skip. At the beginning of the episode, their bumbling ends up injuring Slinkman, and Edward is on the receiving end of various Amusing Injuries looking after them.
  • Dog from CatDog. He wreaks so much havoc everywhere he goes any time he sees a garbage truck. Due to being his (much more level-headed) conjoined twin, Cat is always literally dragged along behind him.
  • Chowder: Chowder is incredibly ditzy, with most of the show's problems happening because he constantly ignores Mung's warnings and teachings about the potentially dangerous foods they deal with. It eventually reaches the point that Mung starts to blame himself for the trouble that Chowder causes because he should know better to expect Chowder to listen.
  • Dexter's Laboratory: The hyperactive Dee Dee usually sabotages Dexter's experiments and destroys his lab but she does so out of ignorant curiosity rather than malicious intent.
  • Ed of Ed, Edd n Eddy caused massive property damage and physical injury to the things and people around him through a mix of Literal Mindedness, mistaking reality for fiction, and just not knowing his own strength. Episodes like "Rent-A-Ed" and "The Day The Ed Stood Still" revolve around his dangerous idiocy.
    Eddy: Why do you always have to WRECK EVERYTHING?!
  • Cosmo from The Fairly OddParents!, not helped by the fact that he's magic. It takes a special kind of moron to sink Atlantis nine times.
  • Family Guy: Peter Griffin is so dangerously stupid that he even burned down a children's hospital, by accident!
  • In Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes, Johnny causes some of their problems by burning something, or messing with Reed's stuff, and ends up unleashing a giant inter-dimensional insect.
  • Zapp Brannigan in Futurama. Whenever he is called for help, he'll come to make things worse. And let's not forget that most of his exploits involve most of his men getting killed.
    • Zoidberg is also this by virtue of being a doctor on Earth with no clue how human anatomy works.
  • Generator Rex: Noah sets Rex up for a double date where Rex goes with Annie, is a Cute Clumsy Girl known as the "Blonde Widow" because all her previous dates ended up in the hospital "or worse." She always doing very stupid things that somehow manage to inflict the consequences of all her actions on everyone in the vicinity except her. Noah specifically chose Rex because he's the only one who could possibly survive a date with her.
  • Goofy is generally portrayed as way too clumsy, but it gets worse in Goof Troop, where his stupidity ends up putting Pete in dangerous situations extremely often, which was given special attention in "The Good, the Bad, and the Goofy", but in that episode, Goofy ends up saving Pete. However, Pete usually brings Goofy into his schemes willingly.
  • Billy of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. Everything he does will inevitably result in mass destruction and chaos, and if he gets his hands on magical weapons and artifacts such as Grim's scythe, you can bet he'll end up causing The End of the World as We Know It.
  • Inspector Gadget: Inspector Gadget causes a great deal of harm to his superior Chief Quimby by always tossing the exploding message back at him. There are also times he somehow takes out Claw's minions by his own stupidity when his gadgets get out of hand. Somehow, a promotion to Lieutenant makes him even worse.
  • Invader Zim:
    • Zim, due to being very Chaotic Stupid, such as accelerating the expansion of an explosion that had slowed down due to being in a time chamber. Even GIR points out how stupid that action was.
      GIR: But if it goes fast, won't it get all bad?
    • If it's not Dib's interference or Zim's own ineptitude that foils a plan, it'll be GIR in another moronic stunt.
  • Jackie Chan Adventures: Many episodes start when Jade causes trouble when toying with magic. She even accidentally shrank Jackie. And blew herself up... and duplicated herself... and knocked out Uncle one time. It's no wonder her older self recruits Uncle to produce the spells on her behalf. And once nearly ascended to the level of Demon...
  • Johnny Bravo: The titular character has frequently endangered people's lives because of his stupidity, with the episode "Bootman" even having his idiocy resulting in the apparent deaths of the superhero the Green Swoosh and the rest of the Astounding League of Super-People.
  • Metalocalypse: All the members of Dethklok are this. Every time they put on a show, it's likely to result in the violent deaths of their fans and other innocent victims, as the group tends to leave a trail of death and destruction anywhere they travel. Dethklok even requires fans who attend concerts to sign "pain waivers" that absolve the band of legal liability for these occurrences.
  • Mike Tyson Mysteries portrays Mike Tyson like this, having so far accidentally killed 15 people due to sheer stupidity. 13 of those are astronomers and astronauts he killed in car accidents alone.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • Lightning Dust certainly qualifies. She is a flyer like Rainbow Dash. However, unlike Rainbow Dash, she is very reckless with her flying, unintentionally causing harm to the other flyers and nearly killing five civilians in a hot air balloon. Although she doesn't mean to cause harm, she doesn't care about the well-being of others and only cares about being #1.
    • Rainbow Dash herself can be this at times. She's possibly the best flyer in Equestria, but her landings leave much to be desired, often smashing into things. Plus, there was that time she got it in her head it would be a good idea to kick a dragon in the face to get it to stop creating a smoke cloud over the country... and that was it. In "Tanks For The Memories," she even accidentally wreaked havoc in the weather factory because she didn't want Tank to hibernate.
    • Derpy also qualifies on a couple of occasions:
      • In "Feeling Pinkie Keen", she worked as part of a moving crew and it's implied that she accidentally dropped several heavy objects on an already injured Twilight Sparkle.
      • In "The Last Roundup", she causes unintentional damage to the town hall, which sets the whole plot in motion.
    • Starlight Glimmer after her Heel–Face Turn tends to make mistakes regarding her magic, which inconveniences the other ponies around her.
  • The Patrick Star Show: Pat-Tron, Captain Quasar's Robot Buddy, often singlehandedly gets them into trouble. He has burned Quasar with the spaceship's engines, sent him through the airlock, and foiled peace negotiations with another species, all out of his own stupidity. Quasar has threatened to scrap Pat-Tron and, in "The Patrick Show Cashes In", is literally begging people to take Pat-Tron away from him.
  • Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz of Phineas and Ferb. In Milo Murphy's Law, his "condition" is distinguished from the title character's as follows: Milo causes chaos by his mere presence, whereas Doofenshmirtz causes it with bad decisions.
  • The Powerpuff Girls (1998):
    • The Mayor is far too incompetent for a crime-stricken place like Townsville and can't do anything more useful than calling the girls. And whenever he does something else, it's stupid and troublesome. In one episode, he even sold his town to Princess for candy. In another, the Mayor goes drunk with power overzealously trying to fight crime, in minutes going from effective to Disproportionate Retribution to punishing imagined crimes to finally even outright destroying Townsville in an attempt to save it.
    • Big Billy is the least mean of the Gangreen Gang, but also the most destructive because his strength is as huge as his idiocy. In "Slave the Day," he tries to help the girls after they save him from an incoming train, only to ruin everything. Blossom eventually chews him out and says he actually does less damage as a member of the Gangreen Gang.
  • Regular Show: Rigby tends to instigate life-threatening anomalies from simple, mundane subjects. Like unleashing a destructive video game monster when he was warned not to cross the wires. Unlike most examples, he got some Character Development that raised his IQ ten points.
  • The Simpsons:
    • Homer Simpson is definitely not someone you'd want to see in a nuclear center. Depending on the Writer, Homer's stupidity can either cause mere property damage, or actually hurt people, and make them insane (poor Frank Grimes... and prior to burning out, he points out that ever since Homer took over as safety inspector, the plant's accidents and near-meltdowns have tripled). In the Halloween episodes, he is often seen killing others because of his idiocy.
    • Chief Wiggum often rats out his own undercover men by mistake, is bamboozled by criminals, and generally leaves the citizens he's supposed to protect worse off than before he got there.
  • Almost every adult in South Park is this, but Randy Marsh takes the cake. He even accidentally killed his daughter's boyfriend.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
    • Patrick Star. Whenever he shows up in newer episodes, it's almost guaranteed everything will go horribly wrong because of his idiocy.
    • SpongeBob himself, whose relentless stupidity has driven many people (mainly Squidward and Mrs. Puff) borderline, if not completely, insane. A shockingly implied example is in the episode "Sandy's Rocket", when there was a Noodle Incident involving him and Sandy's whirlybird that caused lots of deaths.
    • SpongeBob’s cousin Stanley is even worse. His stupidity was so terrible that it even drove SpongeBob himself insane.
  • Star Trek: Lower Decks features a ship that is not the creme de la creme of Starfleet, but the answer to the unspoken question "what would it take to get kicked off" is Ensign Fletcher. Initially appearing to be a Nice Guy who can defuse any argument, Fletcher ends up trying to enhance his intelligence by hooking up an isolinear core to his brain. When it turns into a tech-eating monster, he goes to extreme lengths to prevent Mariner and Boimler from getting help because it would get him in trouble. After they finally manage to get rid of it in a way that accidentally saves the ship, Mariner portrays him as a hero to get him transferred to a better ship—where he is fired within a week for throwing garbage into the warp core.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): Michelangelo has been gradually becoming this. He often makes the mistake of goading monsters and mutation freaks which doesn't end well; him screwing off near or with mutagen has resulted in several characters getting exposed to it, even himself at one point. And he still doesn't learn.
  • Elmyra Duff of Tiny Toon Adventures will often leave a path of destruction behind trying to catch a "cuddly wuddly", and she also nearly kills her "pets" several times due to her stupidity; a Halloween episode took this further with several past pets committing suicide rather than having to deal with her.
  • From Transformers: Prime Miko Nakadai, full stop. The girl has proven on multiple occasions that she simply cannot learn from her mistakes. Even after nearly getting herself killed (several times), nearly getting her friends killed (again, several times), and nearly getting some of the bots themselves killed (notice a pattern yet?). Miko still hasn't learned that she'd be of more help to the Autobots by not sneaking onto a battlefield and becoming a protective burden. After her recklessness nearly gets Bulkhead killed, she finally gets some much-needed Character Development that results in her stopping being quite so prone to Leeroy Jenkins style stupidity. She also found the Apex Armor around the same time, allowing her to actually contribute during fights.
  • T.U.F.F. Puppy: Dudley Puppy often accidentally inflicts Amusing Injuries on fellow agents, citizens, or bad guys. But especially Kitty Katswell. He also hurts himself.
  • Xavier: Renegade Angel. No problem is too small for him to escalate into a life-threatening emergency.

 
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Trouble-making clumsiness

In the following episode from the episode "Troublemaker" from Season 2, Yellow is stupid & well-meaning yet he causes disasters and misfortunes towards others because of his clumsiness and a lack of thought.

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Main / LethallyStupid

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