Homemade Inventions: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|'''Marty''': Are you telling me that you built a ''time machine''... out of a [[Cool Car|DeLorean]]?

 

{{examples}}

* In ''[[Ah! My Goddess]]'', Skuld creates a de-bugger out of a rice cooker.

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* ''Flubber''

* The time machine in ''[[Primer]]''.

** Doubly so, as it was in fact a real, ''fully functional'' Jet Car built for the movie by enthusiasts who did that kind of thing as a hobby.

* Some of the equipment in the original ''[[Ghostbusters]]'' is supposed to have this feel. The boys certainly didn't have much of an operating budget.

** Its counterparts in the [[Ghostbusters (2016 film)|2016 reboot film]], on the other hand, seem far more polished, despite ''also'' being built in a small workshop by a single individual.

* ''[[The Astronaut Farmer]]'' builds a spacecraft on his farm, though he orders parts that aren't on hand, like fuel and a rocket.

* In ''[[Despicable Me]]'', Gru has to resort ot this to build his rocket after he fails to get funding from the Bank of Evil.

* [[Faster-Than-Light Travel]] is invented this way, according to ''[[Star Trek: First Contact]]''. Well, sort of. The main body of the ship is an old missile, which is pretty much beyond the realm of your average homemade invention, but Lily mentions that "it took me six months to scrounge up enough titanium just to build a four-meter cockpit."

 

== [[Literature]] ==

** Granted, he's supposed to be insanely klutzy. Enough so that its surprising that he, his family and his friends are even still alive after five minutes.

* In Victor Koman's ''Kings of the High Frontier'' a group of PhD students build a ''working spacecraft'' out of surplus parts in an abandoned warehouse.

* Isaac Asimov's short story "Robot AL-76 Goes Astray" is about a robot who accidentally arrives at a junkyard and builds a powerful mining tool from the junk, powered by 2 D-cell batteries. No one could figure out how it did it and it didn't know, because when the robot demonstrated his new tool, the top 2/3rds of a nearby mountain were atomized, causing the junkyard owner to panic and [["Three Laws"-Compliant|tell it to "forget what happened."]]

* In ''[[Captain Underpants]] and the Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman,'' the title villainess uses parts from common household appliances to builds robotic duplicates of the two elementary school-age protagonists. Not only can the robots [[Make My Monster Grow|expand to four times their original size]], they also have [[Super Strength]], can fly, have [[Rocket Punch|rocket-punching arms]], and wield [[It Makes Sense in Context|hidden starch sprayers.]]

* In [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[The Tommyknockers]]'', after exposed to the effect on an alien spacecraft, the people in the small town of Haven build all kinds of futuristic devices the are made out of household appliances and powered by batteries.