Inspector Oblivious
He's the man. The villain has been vanquished, the innocent protected, the world saved yet again, often at the very last moment. If it had been anyone else, it's the Big Damn Heroes moment. Only someone forgot to tell the Big Damn Hero.
Inspector Oblivious isn't aware he vanquished evil, protected the innocent or saved the world because he's in one of his own. He's doing his own thing not recognizing the screaming coming from the cat-stroking archvillain who waves one fist angrily at the monitor as yet another plan is foiled and yet more minions are carted off to jail (or the morgue). It wouldn't be so bad if it was intentional, if he was facing an adversary worthy of their battle, but the hero is a complete doofus who's proud because he thinks he foiled a scheme to illegally sell fake Girl Scout cookies, ignoring the orbital Death Ray satellite plunging into the villain's volcano headquarters that resulted from Inspector Oblivious's pratfalls, mistakes and cluelessness. And he does it again and again.
Some days an Evil Overlord just can't catch a break.
Often a Spanner in the Works. A subtrope of Invincible Incompetent, The Fool, and Defective Detective. See also Accidental Hero, Mistaken for Badass.
- Inspector Gadget, whom we honour for unintentionally saving the day.
- The original inspiration (and voice!) for Inspector Gadget, Maxwell Smart.
- Inspector Clouseau
- The James Bond parody in Casino Royale (1967 version).
- Sergeant Frank Drebin, Detective Lieutenant Police Squad. Yet another.
- He takes on this character type more in The Naked Gun series than in Police Squad!. If anything, in Police Squad! he is ridiculously competent and is a talented comedian, basketball player, brawler, agent, boxing coach, etc. (That list might have continued to grow if the show had not been canceled so soon.)
- Detective First Class Mihoshi Kuramitsu is all but the textbook example. Her more than distinguished record in the Galactic Police is much more due to her bumbling unraveling all and any evil plans and sheer blind luck than any actual competence.
- At least in some versions, she also has an unfocused sort of Hyper Awareness that results in her reports containing heaps of valuable information, most of which she never realised the significance of.
- The plot behind The Man Who Knew Too Little who belives he's in modern experimental play when in fact he's been mistaken for a spy and ends up disarming a bomb to Russian music in a middle of a embassy. Oh! While dancing, of course.
- Captain Justy Ueki Tylor - maybe.
- Deadpool: P.I. Wade is trying to solve a murder, and he's so oblivious that he forgot HE was the one who killed the guy in the first place.