Sometimes, the best ideas are those we didn’t even know we had. A stroke of luck can lead to the purest and most profound genius. An accidental uncovering of a new food, invention, idea, or product can become a world-changing moment. Even if it’s one we didn’t realize at the time!
So many great things have been invented after painstaking research, development, trial, and error. But so many more great things have been created entirely by mistake! In this list, we’ll take a look at ten tales of the latter. These ten things were produced in error if you can believe it. It was only after the mistake was realized and observed by their creators that they knew they’d stumbled upon something pretty good. May we all have this kind of good serendipitous fortune!
Related: Ten Offbeat “Hit-or-Miss” Inventions
10 Cheeseburgers
We all love cheeseburgers, don’t we? That juicy beef patty, those tasty buns, the deliciously fresh toppings, and, of course, the cheese that melts onto the meat as it sits there, making your mouth water. Well, you can thank the mistake of a lifetime for that cheese! As the story goes, a young man named Lionel Clark Sternberger invented the cheeseburger in Pasadena, California.
Sweet, young Lionel was working at his dad’s restaurant in the California city as a short-order cook one day in 1924. He was flipping burgers for a customer’s order one afternoon when he accidentally left one on the grill too long. The patty became burnt. But Lionel, not wanting to waste an otherwise perfectly good slab of beef, opted to throw a slice of cheese on top to conceal the burn. And it worked!
The customer loved the new concoction so much that he begged Lionel to keep making it. Eventually, the restaurant put it on the menu. They even had a funny name for it, terming the concoction the “Aristocratic Burger: the Original Hamburger with Cheese.” Lionel was just 16 years old at the time, but he was quickly recognized as the inventor of the cheeseburger. Of course, it would become an American staple food in the decades after that. And it all started after a grill error![1]
9 Jason’s Hockey Mask
Jason Voorhees’s hockey mask in Friday the 13th is so iconic that it has transcended the movie series. By now, it has become a much larger part of horror movie culture, Halloween culture, and just general Americana. But the whole thing almost never happened! In fact, putting the actor Richard Brooker in a hockey mask in the first place was entirely an off-the-cuff idea that was done simply to save money!
While the production team was filming Friday the 13th Part 3, director Steve Miner needed to do a lighting check on Brooker in a certain spot before filming a scene. The only problem was that nobody on set wanted to do all the work of putting together Brooker’s face prosthesis and grotesque makeup just for a quick two-second lighting check. So, instead, the crew opted to take the easy way out and make Brooker wear a hockey mask for the lighting check.
The film’s 3-D supervisor just so happened to have one and offered it to the production for use. They put it on Brooker, he stood for the lighting check, and Miner absolutely loved how it came across on camera. And thus, totally by accident, the hockey mask horror icon was created! The world would have never seen it had it not been for some lazy film crew members dragging their feet during the production. So it seems that sometimes, laziness really can pay off! You hear that, Mom?[2]
8 Nachos
It may stun you to learn that nachos were entirely discovered by mistake. After an improvisation came up with this new Mexican food, the whole thing quickly blew up. And now, we have nachos everywhere! And for good reason—they are tasty as hell!
So in the early 20th century, there was a man named Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya. He was the maitre d’ at a restaurant called the Victory Club in the border town of Piedras Negras, Mexico. There, military members at nearby Fort Duncan Army Base often crossed the border with their wives and families to enjoy meals in Mexico. One day, a group of nearly a dozen military wives crossed the border without their husbands. They knew Nacho was a talented and capable manager at the Victory Club, and they wanted to push him a little bit. So they asked him to come up with a new dish that they hadn’t yet tried.
Nacho was stumped for a minute—until he decided to make up a plate of tostadas and cover them with grated cheese. Then, he passed it through a broiling unit to heat the whole thing to a crisp. When that was done, he topped it with jalapenos to give the women a little bit of a spicy kick. And just like that, nachos were born! And yes, they took their name after Anaya’s nickname. That part is only fitting. Gotta give the man some credit for creating one of the tastiest foods out there![3]
7 Luca Brasi
While The Godfather was being filmed, director Francis Ford Coppola ran into a bit of a problem. One scene called for a character named Luca Brasi to show up. Brasi was to be a mob enforcer working for the legendary Don Corleone. And Coppola needed a really, really intimidating guy to play Brasi. But what ended up happening wasn’t on anybody’s radar—because the real mob enforcer they got to play Brasi ended up bumbling his lines for a totally unforeseen reason!
To play Luca Brasi on screen, Coppola hired a man named Lenny Montana. Now, Lenny was a real-life mob enforcer. He was as tough as they come and had seen and done some, uh, less than above-board things during his life in the mafia. But when it came time to appear on screen alongside Marlon Brando, Lenny fumbled all his lines. Now, you might assume that he stumbled over his lines because the script called for his character to be intimidated by Brando’s Don Corleone. But that’s not the case!
In reality, Lenny was absolutely starstruck that he was in the same room as a legend like Brando. The real-life, tough-guy mob enforcer was so overcome with the power of Brando’s celebrity that he nearly couldn’t remember any of his lines. He stumbled and faltered as the scene was being filmed simply because he was such a fan of Brando. But when Coppola went back to look at the tape, the stumble worked! The line flubs and mistakes turned out to be the perfect thing at the perfect time for the movie. Now THAT is true serendipity![4]
6 Ms. Pac-Man
In 1982, two MIT students decided to create a fun and interactive game called Crazy Otto. But instead of building out the whole thing from scratch, they went the easy route: they hacked into a Pac-Man machine and modified it. Once inside the machine and tinkering around with its inner workings, they began to perfect their Crazy Otto creation. And it was a hit! Well, at least among their close friends, who all enjoyed playing the game on a small level. But the duo didn’t think to commercialize the thing, knowing they’d pilfered Pac-Man’s intellectual property to make Crazy Otto in the first place.
Then, a stroke of luck followed their stroke of genius. It wasn’t long before Midway Games learned that the two students had hacked into Pac-Man and changed the game. And instead of going forth with a lawsuit or asking the pair to knock it off, they bought them out! Midway liked the hacked creation so much that they bought it from the college kids. In turn, they replaced Otto with a female Pac-Man and gave her a bow to wear. And thus, thanks to the unforeseen decision by two young men to hack a Pac-Man machine, Ms. Pac-Man was created. How lucky![5]
5 Star Trek’s Transporters
The transporters that popped up in Star Trek are such a cool idea. And one that we hope would one day be possible (far, far) into the future! But they didn’t come around on the television show for any real reason other than, well, they were cheap to film! Initially, producers wanted their characters to take shuttles to various places where they were going. Or alternatively, they could land their ship at whatever location it called for in the script. But that would have meant lots of expensive filming of various scenes in various places. And a ton of hassle in assembling actors and props for very short shots.
So, instead, the transporters came into being! It was an accidental thought the production team was having one day when they decided that a simple transporter making a human disappear in one spot and reappear in another would solve all their problems! Obviously, there would be no budget issues from that move. And they could produce the whole thing on camera with very little need for special effects. Then, when they started doing it, the transporter move became a huge success with fans! That was sort of an unintended consequence, too, but producers were certainly happy about it.[6]
4 I’m Walking Here!
In the legendary movie Midnight Cowboy, actor Jon Voight plays Joe Buck—a small-town Texas native who goes to New York City. While in the Big Apple, he then gets scammed by Ratso, who was a disabled con man played so memorably by Dustin Hoffman. Much of the movie is about the chaos and uncertainty of life in New York City. But since the filmmakers didn’t have permits to shoot out on the streets of the massive metropolis, they had to improvise. And that’s how they got one of the best lines in movie history—totally by accident!
The line, of course, is “I’m walking here!” Hoffman was the one who yelled it out after a taxi cab nearly ran them over. And since the filmmakers didn’t have permits, and the scene had to be shot on a hidden camera, that was a real taxi cab—not an actor driving a car on a set!
What really happened was that Hoffman was walking across the street just to get a general shot of him moving for a scene. But unexpectedly, a cab crossed his path as he had the walk signal. The car almost ran him over. So, completely off the cuff and without going to the script, Hoffman ad-libbed the line. The producers loved it so much that they kept it in the final cut of the movie. And now it’s legendary![7]
3 The Incredible Hulk
The Incredible Hulk was originally supposed to be gray. When he first popped up in a May 1962 comic, the character was intended to be a pretty basic shade of gray. That was on purpose so that his color wouldn’t offend any one particular ethnic group. But the Marvel printers were acting up when it came time to print out that first comic book because the Incredible Hulk turned into a strange and different shade of gray on every single page! Printers hated how he changed color on each page, and the Marvel folks weren’t that thrilled, either. But there was nothing to do!
Until the next issue was released, that is. In the second issue detailing the Hulk’s activities, Marvel designers changed his color from the original gray to a deep, pleasing green. Thankfully, the printer was able to handle the green. And nobody really noticed that the Hulk had been gray in the first issue. They just took the story in stride with his green skin and let it be. Until now, that is as people have looked back to see how the Hulk didn’t originally begin as the green hero we know him as today. But to think the iconic green only ever came around due to a printing error! Could you imagine him now had he stayed gray this whole time?[8]
2 Corn Flakes
The popular breakfast cereal Corn Flakes was created from a wheat-based dough that had been accidentally left out for an extended period of time. Will Kellogg, who was working on a health resort and lifestyle project (more on that in a minute) at the time, figured out that the fermenting done by the dough had caused it to become somewhat moldy. In a stroke of genius, while trying to salvage whatever food he could from that mishap, he rolled the moldy dough into thin sheets. Then, he baked the sheets. The fermentation and the high baking temperatures combined to create the first-ever batch of thin, crispy Corn Flakes that so many millions of people love to eat today. Crazy, right? What a fortunate mistake!
And yet, that’s only half the story, if you can believe it. As we mentioned, Kellogg was working on an entire lifestyle program as part of a retreat he was running at the time. One of his specific goals with the retreat was that he wanted people to masturbate less. Yes, you read that sentence correctly. Kellogg was a dietitian by trade, but he was very notably an anti-masturbation activist in his life. So he wanted to develop bland foods that would not “excite the passions,” as he was fond of saying. Thus, when the mistake that created Corn Flakes popped up, he made the most of it. And now, whenever you eat Corn Flakes from here on out, you can think of Will Kellogg’s dislike of self-pleasure.[9]
1 Chocolate Chip Cookies
The chocolate chip cookie was invented by accident nearly 100 years ago. Ruth Wakefield was a New England woman who owned a place called the Tollhouse Inn. She loved baking cookies for weary travelers staying at her cozy little hotel. The only problem was that one day, she found out she was out of baker’s chocolate when it came time to throw a batch into the oven. Undaunted, she decided to substitute sweetened chocolate in its place to see what would happen. She broke the chocolate into small chunks, added it to the cookie dough, and put it all into the oven to bake.
Naturally, she expected the chocolate to melt and create the mainstay chocolate cookies for which she was already so regionally famous. But that’s not what happened! The sweetened chocolate kept its form within the cookies. The surprising result was a huge hit with travelers who came through the inn that day—and for many days after. Eventually, sweet old Mrs. Wakefield sold the accidental recipe (and the Tollhouse brand name, which became Toll House) to Nestle for just $1. Oh, and they also gave her a lifetime supply of chocolate. That’s nice![10]