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In any story that takes place in [[One Million BC]], you're going to see someone invent the wheel. Common fodder for [[It Will Never Catch On]]. Often the wheel is some shape other than round.
{{examples}}
== Advertising ==
* Used in a beer commercial once where they're going to be late to a party, then someone shows them their new invention, the wheel. Subverted in that the wheel makes things more difficult because they just use it as a tray to carry to beer on. To quote the cavemen: "Wheel Suck!"
* Similarly, in a Volvic mineral water commercial, it looks like a [[Did Not Do the Research|Neanderthal]] just invented the wheel, but it turns out he invented [http://vicclap.hu/static/video/200505/EvolutionofManfunny.wmv something else].
* There are a few [[Promotional Consideration]] spots for [http://www.inventhelp.com/ some patent company] which shows ''B.C.'' caveman "accidentally" inventing the wheel, a unicycle, wheelbarrow...
== Comics ==
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== Film ==
* [[Transformers (
== Literature ==
* The prehistoric-earth sequence in ''[[The
** In the television adaptation, the wheel that the Golgafrinchans invent is multicoloured and octagonal.
** There's also a brief remark about a race with dozens of arms, who invented aerosol deodorant before the wheel.
* Averted in ''[[Discworld|Eric]]'':
{{quote|
* A ''Murderous Maths'' book featured an inventing-a-triangular-wheel joke.
* David Macaulay's ''The Way Things Work'', strangely enough, does not tell the story of how the wheel was invented. However, various wheel-based machines are described, many of them powered by woolly mammoths.
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== Machinima ==
* The World of Motion ride that used to be at Epcot had a scene with three attempts at creating the wheel, one of which was the right one.
== Music ==
* One verse of [[Allan Sherman]]'s song [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzp4gnxgWxc "Good Advice"] claims that the singer advised the inventor of the wheel just what he had on his hands:
{{quote|<poem>''Ooka Magook was a Neanderthal man,
''A very poorly educated soul
''He had a great big square thing made of solid stone,
''And in the middle of it was a hole
''One day he had to go from his cave in Natchez
''To his uncle's cave in Mobile
''I said, "Round off those corners
''And buy a set of tires,
''And Ooky baby, that's a wheel!"''</poem>}}
== Newspaper Comics ==
* In the original ''[[The Moomins]]'' comics, the family get sent back in time and set to work as slaves in a quarry. Moominpappa invents the wheel and tells the other slaves it'll help them carry rocks... but since he doesn't explain ''how'', they try to carry the wheel ''and'' the rocks at the same time.
{{quote|
* Thor invented the wheel in an early ''[[BC]]''. Unfortunately, he couldn't work out what it was ''for''. Eventually the girls saw him looking dejected, and decided to [[We Have Those, Too|cycle over and see what was wrong]]...
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== Puppet Shows ==
* In one episode of [[Fraggle Rock]], the Fraggles plan to use a flat, round object as a cover for a bucket of water. Wembley explains that the object is an invention of his: "I call it the wheel. It doesn't work, though -- it just keeps rolling away!"
* In the first episode of [[Dinosaurs]], a caveman triumphantly holds his new invention, a stone circle, over his head. Presumably it's the
* "Caveman Grover" invents the wheel in a [[Sesame Street]] skit about shapes. He and Biff are trying to get a heavy rock to the top of a hill. First he tries affixing square wheels, then triangular ones. He finally gets the shape right, and gets the rock to the top of the
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== Toys ==
* It was something of an underlying theme in the original ''[[Bionicle]]'' saga that the characters knew what a wheel was (since they used clockwork-mechanisms and round disks on a ''grand'' scale), but they never thought they could fix it onto a cart or
== Video Games ==
* Done quite literally in [[Age of Empires
** And [[
* In ''[[Star Control]] II'', the short history of the Zoq-Fot-Pik includes the story of how their distant ancestors discovered the wheel, fire, and religion simultaneously: a Zoq was run over by a round, flat stone that had been knocked off a mountain and super-heated by a lightning strike, and the Fot and Pik assumed he had gone on to a better place, "presumably one without lethal flaming wheels".
== Webcomics ==
* In the rarely seen Caveman Arc of ''[[Arthur, King of Time and Space]]'', Gawain invented the wheel ... sorry, I mean "invented a round stone he could wallop Pellinore over the head with".
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** '''Ur-Peter:''' Everybody excited about trapezoid.
* Played with in ''[[Futurama]]''; instead of being in the past, it was so far in the future that people had forgotten about the wheel (everything hovered). Not only was it the wrong shape, but they also needed somebody to pull it, which turned out to be Fry, of course. Also they used a whip.
* ''[[
* The "Leonardo da Vinci and His Fightin' Genius Time Commandos!" episode of [[The Tick (animation)]] included the "cavewoman who invented the wheel and whose name has been forgotten by history..."
{{quote|
CAVEWOMAN: Wheel! }}
* Done by ''[[Donald Duck]]'' (or one of his ancestors) in the Disney educational short Donald and the Wheel.
* There were some hilarious, albeit ridiculous bad, attempts of inventing technology in a prehistoric episode of the [[Dennis the Menace UK|British Dennis the Menance]] cartoon. Not only was there a very much non-round wheel, there were also about two attempts at what were supposed to be tanks... with the very much caveman notion of just pushing them off a cliff at the enemy, complete with loud smash as it hit the floor.
* Played with in the ''[[
* Played with in a ''[[
* On ''[[
* On the TV series of ''[[Super Mario World (
== Real Life ==
* We have them, so someone evidently did. However, there WERE cultures that never invented the
** Perhaps in those locations The Wheel was invented but turned out to be not very useful, as Mesoamerica seems to mostly consist of mountain and jungle.
*** Actually, the Aztecs did have them...but only on toys. Perhaps they literally thought the wheel would [[It Will Never Catch On|never catch on]].
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Hollywood History]]
[[Category:Inventing
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