Unwanted Assistance in Comic Books.
- Archie Comics: Archie's clumsiness tends to turn minor problems into major disasters. One story shows that catastrophe is usually preceded by the words, "Let me help!"
- Batman:
- Betty Kane was so useless that even Beast Boy did not count on her, although later her uselessness dropped when she Took a Level in Badass.
- In Batman: War Games, Spoiler says she was just trying to help as limping and half dead after being shot and tortured for many hours after trying to make a contingency plan of Batman's work and accidentally causing a gang war instead.
- Red Robin: When Tim Drake breaks into a museum in Germany to borrow a display there as evidence, Ra's Al-Ghul secretly sends some assassins to help him. This means instead of sneaking away from security, Tim has to save their lives from his "helpers", and the whole affair ends with making his go-to alias an internationally wanted art thief. He is very annoyed.
- Villain Lynx is killed accidentally by one of her own men when he tries to assist her in a fight with Batgirl.
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe: Donald Duck's cousin Fethry genuinely wants to help everyone — particularly Donald, whom he considers his favorite cousin — but his "help" tends to create more problems than it solves. A Nice Guy for sure, but a Cloudcuckoolander Determinator and borderline klutz who never seems to learn when to leave well enough alone.
- Runaways: This is generally the response to Chase using fire-spewing gloves to fight a rock monster.Gert: Great job, genius! Now we have a flaming rock monster attacking us!
- The Simpsons:
- After getting caught in a police trap, Homer is nearly sentenced to community service, until the jury objects, citing Homer's previous attempts at it, such as using a flamethrower to dispose of highway garbage, or causing the OAPs at the retirement castle to riot.
- In one Radioactive Man issue, as the team's combat simulator is turned against them, Plasmo the Mystic tries moving Purple Badge of Courage to safety. Everything he tries gets the guy beaten up worse, until Plasmo himself gets beaten up, much to Purple's relief.
- Spider-Man attracts his share of wannabe heroes who are always looking to help him out. From the bumbling but earnest Frog-Man to portly wunderkind Spider-Boy (who disappeared for years before returning as the Badass Normal Steel Spider, having gotten into shape and learned how to fight in the interim period), for a time in the 1980s Spidey just couldn't get away from would-be sidekicks who screwed up everything that he tried to do. Reaches its zenith in The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #266 by Peter David, where Spidey's big crisis is The Toad, Frog-Man, and the Spectacular Spider-Kid all competing with each other for the privilege of being his sidekick.
- Supergirl:
- In Superman (1939) #123, Jimmy Olsen created a Supergirl construct when he wished Superman had a companion (since Kara Zor-El hadn't arrived on Earth yet). That Supergirl tried to assist Superman but kept screwing things up. For example, when she tried to put out a fire with Super-Breath, it was so powerful, it knocked the building over.
- During Amazons Attack! storyline, in where the Amazons went to war against the US, Supergirl and Wonder Girl try to end the war by kidnapping the President and bringing him to Queen Hippolyta to engage in peace talks with her. Predictably, their plan went awry. In her tie-in issue, Supergirl apologized to many people, saying that she had screwed everything up even though she just wanted to help.
- In The Other Side of Doomsday, Supergirl sees Flash and Atom fighting a criminal gang, so she quickly swoops down on them and delivers a curbstomp. Atom angrily tells her they were supposed to let one crook escape in order to track him right back to the remaining gangsters.
- X-Factor: Reverend James Maddox has noticed a consistent association between members of X-Factor trying to help him and his life being in danger.
