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[[File:Barry_Flash_Origin_Recap_1287.jpg|link=The Flash|frame|[[Family-Unfriendly Aesop|Remember kids: if you douse yourself in chemicals in a lightning storm enough times, you too may become a superhero!]]]]
{{quote|''"Bitten by radioactive beebles in a freak algebra accident, young Ricky Robertson discovered he'd gained the ability to harness the awesome power of fractions!"''|''[[Magic:
An opportune, unplanned and unrepeatable (hence "Accident") event that gives a character their [[Superhero|superpowers]]. Similar to [[No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup]], only for people instead of machines and technologies. Opinions on this are extremely subjective, and this origin isn't used as much nowadays.
Common subtypes include:
* [[Playing
* [[I Love Nuclear Power|Being blasted by radiation, especially from weapon fallout]] (this is usually a [[Cold War]] thing)
* [[Imported Alien Phlebotinum|Aliens leaving their Phlebotinum around]]
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== [[Anime]] ==
* It is during one of her father's lab-experiments that Kurau in ''[[
* ''[[
== [[Comic Books]] ==
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** In ''[[Flashpoint (Comic Book)|Flashpoint]]'', Barry recreates the accident in an attempt to regain his powers. {{spoiler|It didn't work and Barry instead suffered the [[Real Life]] consequences of being struck by a bolt of lightning while being doused with dangerous chemicals. He has to fry himself ''two more times'' before it works.}}
** That origin was so good, DC recycled it exactly for Kid Flash.
* ''[[
** Marvel Comics in general (due to copious amounts of "[[Stan Lee]] Science") and Spider-Man in particular loves this trope. Many of Spidey's big foes (Doc Ock, Green Goblin, Lizard, Molten Man, etc) were created by some sort of lab accident or experiment gone wrong.
*** Retooled again and made more plausible in the modern re-imagining, ''[[Ultimate Spider-Man]]''. It was a genetically altered spider instead of a radioactive one.
* The initial origin-story for [[Swamp Thing]] followed this trope. Subverted when [[
* [[Man-Thing]] was also the result of a botched experiment, also [[Retcon|retconned]] by the series' most notable author, [[Steve Gerber]].
* This works for villains as well. In [[The Silver Age of Comic Books]], it was shown that [[Lex Luthor]] turned villainous after [[Superboy]]'s "interference" in a [[Freak Lab Accident]] resulted in his life being saved, his experiments being destroyed, and his hair loss. Furthermore, when Luthor tried to retaliate with grandiose tech projects to show up Superboy, they went wrong disastrously enough to force the superhero to intervene, embarrassing Luthor enough to hate him even more.
* This somewhat applies to the Joker of ''[[
** In a 1989 ''[[
** Mr. Freeze is a more conventional playing of his trope. In the current past of the character, the attempts of his heartless bosses to get rid of him and his work to save his cryogenically frozen wife caused his equipment to go haywire, drastically altering him.
* The post-''Zero Hour'' ''[[Legion of Super-Heroes (Comic Book)|Legion of Super-Heroes]]'' hangs a lampshade on the trope when Spark, in an effort to regain her super-power, attempts to recreate the circumstances of her freak origin -- and gets herself killed as a result. (However, the rest of the Legion [[Only Mostly Dead|manages to revive her]], and afterwards she does indeed have her powers back.)
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* Although it actually took place on a testing range, the original origin of the ''[[Incredible Hulk (Comic Book)|Incredible Hulk]]'' is for all practical purposes a Freak Lab Accident. Later versions -- most notably the TV series and the two motion-picture adaptations -- make it a more literal lab accident.
** A number of the classic Hulk's foes had [[Freak Lab Accident]] origins involving nuclear power and nuclear radiation (originally, anyway). One of them was a janitor exposed to nuclear waste.
* In ''[[Watchmen (
* One of the versions of [[Donald Duck]]'s superhero identity Paperinik (though not the one in [[Paperinik New Adventures]]) faces a parody of Spiderman villain Sandman called Sand''ham'' (as he's a pig, natch). Sandham was a janitor in an oatmeal porridge factory who gained his powers when he was accidentally exposed to a procedure to "remove those nasty lumps from oatmeal porridge". Donald ends up having to dissolve him with it, and finally [[Nightmare Fuel|tosses his head, the only thing left of him, into a vat of porridge]].
* Inverted with Superboy (Kon-El). He was being grown and programmed in a lab to be a replacement for Superman, but a freak lab accident interrupted his maturity leaving him as Superboy.
* Parodied in the [[The Simpsons (Comic Book)|Bongo Comics]] crossover, "When Bongos Collide!", when a nuclear plant meltdown (caused by Itchy and Scratchy) grants superpowers to nearly everyone in Springfield (and somehow automatically gives most of them costumes), whereupon everyone starts pummeling each other.
* [[Spider-Girl (Comic Book)|Spider-Girl]]'s foe Mr. Abnormal is both an [[Expy]] of [[Plastic Man]] and a parody of this. His origin is that "he had an improbable accident with a chemical at a toy factory that had a unique effect with his body chemistry", as quoted from [[New Warriors
== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[
* Less heroically, ''[[
* Quite a few [[B-Movie]] monsters, most notably ''[[
* ''[[Howard the Duck (
== [[Literature]] ==
* Parodied in [[Douglas Adams]]'s ''[[The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy (
* A variation appears in the [[Isaac Asimov]] short story "Lenny". A small child (lost on a guided tour) plays around on an unlocked keyboard in a robot factory. This results in a robot which has no superpowers -- indeed, it has roughly the intelligence of a human infant -- but is a scientific gold-mine, functioning without the Three Laws and having the ability to learn rather than simply be programmed.
** Lenny still has the Three Laws, it just doesn't have the knowledge to apply them properly. It acts on a Third Law imperative to protect itself due to a blow aimed at it (Not understanding that the blow aimed at it couldn't actually hurt it), and injures a human by accident in the process (Not understanding how relatively fragile a human is).
* Austin Grossman's ''[[Soon I Will Be Invincible]]'': CoreFire and Dr. Impossible got their respective superpowers in separate lab accidents, though both accidents involved Dr. Impossible's research.
** So did {{spoiler|1=Erica Lowenstein, the [[Lois Lane]]}} to CoreFire's [[
* [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[The Tommyknockers]]'': a ''town'' of people is slowly turning into new versions of the aliens in a buried, crashed alien ship, including making such fun devices a telepathic typewriter and Lethal Lipstick Lasers. Let's not mention that they all turn into a telepathic hive-mind, unless you have some kind of metal in your body (one of the main characters has a metal plate in his head following a skiing accident).
* In ''Dream Park'' (by [[Larry Niven]] and Steven Barnes), a small girl who'd accidentally wandered into the theme park's R&D division managed to combine an anatomical model with pieces of model roller coaster, and the result so intrigued the staff that it spawned a "Mr. Digestion" themed attraction. The kid got a spanking and a college scholarship.
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== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* Peter Brady, (no, not [[The Brady Bunch
* Referenced jokingly in ''[[
** '''Leonard:''' "Penny, you don't want to get into it with Sheldon. The guy is one lab accident away from becoming a [[Super Villain]]."
** In another episode, a rat injected with radioactive isotopes bit a lab tech. Raj became incredibly disappointed to find that the lab tech didn't get superpowers.
* Subverted, along with [[No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup]] in the 1970s version of ''[[The Incredible Hulk (TV series)|The Incredible Hulk]].'' In principle, anyone could recreate the experiment that changed Dr. Banner, it's just that nobody has any reason to. One of the two-part episodes revolves entirely around a much earlier experiment in another part of the country that had turned another man into a Hulk, and the discovery of a cure, [[Failure Is the Only Option|which Dr. Banner cannot use]] {{spoiler|because the former Hulk has re-exposed himself, become a murderous Hulk, and there's not enough of the needed compounds for two treatments.}}
== Music ==
* ''[[
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* [[Zig Zagged Trope|Zig-zagged]] in [[
== [[Video Games]] ==
* Every other [[Hollywood Science|Science origin]] NPC or [[Player Character]] in ''[[
* [[Resident Evil]]
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* Parodied by [http://www.man-man.org/?comic=&date=20030710 Man-Man] who was bitten by a radioactive man, and so gains the powers of ... a man. Apart from a mutant head on top of his own, these "powers" merely make him invisible to women.
* In ''[[
* [http://www.terrorisland.net/strips/319.html Parodied] in ''[[Terror Island]]'', where Ned Sorcerer, DDS got his superpower (which is causing everyone around him to know he's a dentist) from a freak ''[[wikipedia:Epistemology|epistemological]]'' lab accident.
* In ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]],'' Molly the Peanut Butter Monster is described as a fuzzy pink lab accident.
* Parodied in ''[[Antihero for Hire]]'', where one character got super-powers in a freak ''skateboard'' accident.
* It's implied that ''some'' sort of lab accident caused Othar, of ''[[Girl Genius]]'', to come to his "Great Truth" that all Sparks have to die (or to become suicidally insane, as anyone else who knows about this "Truth" would consider it). The exact details are left as a [[Noodle Incident]] for the readers, but it may have involved the Great Wall of Oslo. (It's also all but stated by [[Word of God]] in the first adventure on Othar's Twitter that {{spoiler|Othar was always just one freak accident away from becoming a suicidal maniac ''anyways'' -- every single version of himself had realized this "truth" through various accidents. One involved waffles.}} It's unknown right now, however, how canon the Twitter is.) The man is also surprisingly resilient, even for a Spark; this may be a side-effect of the accident.
** The world of ''[[
* Heather Brown in ''[[
** The reader is even led to believe that she'd obtained her powers from a spider-bite, just like Spiderman. However, she only developed her [[Multi-Armed and Dangerous|extra limbs]] after falling into a vat of chemicals.
* [[Ruby's World
* In ''[[
== [[Web Original]] ==
* This is a common origin for both heroes and villains in the ''[[Global Guardians PBEM Universe]]''. Anole was bitten by a venomous snake that had been subjected to genetic experimentation, turning him into a reptile-man. Embrace was accidentally exposed to a mutagenic gas in a lab explosion. Koorogi was almost electrocuted when a gene sequencer shorted out while he was working with it. Polaris got caught in an overpoweringly powerful magnetic field when his lab equipment activated accidentally during an experiment. Aurora gained her powers when the experimental fusion reactor she was working on exploded. There are many more.
* Most of the supers in the [[
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* Parodied in ''[[
* ''[[The Spectacular Spider
** While doing repair work at a genetics lab, electrician Max Dillon is first electrocuted by machinery, then by bioelectric shock from [[Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke|genetically-modified]] eels swimming in extra-conductive [[Applied Phlebotinum]]. He becomes Electro, a [[Power Incontinence|Power Incontinent]] human generator of [[Psycho Electro|bioelectricity]], and subsequently [[Freak-Out|freaks out]] and goes [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity|on a rampage]].
** Thief and low-level [[The Brute|thug]] Flint Marko is recruited as an [[Super Soldier|experimental subject]] for a procedure designed to give him subdermal silicon [[Made of Iron|armor]], but the machinery overloads and bombards him with silicon particles until he [[Body Horror|explodes]]. He then rematerializes as the Sandman, a being of [[Blob Monster|living sand]], and is unusually happy with the results.
** When reluctant [[Punch Clock Villain]] Doctor Otto Octavius is [[He Knows Too Much|deliberately trapped]] in the chamber where his experiment is running, he suffers traumatic and massive [[Lightning Can Do Anything|electromagnetic]] shock. This fuses his [[Artificial Limbs|harness]] to his spine, triggers a [[Freak-Out]] and an accompanying [[Not So Harmless|extreme]] [[Mad Scientist|personality change]], creating Doctor Octopus.
* ''[[
** Danny got his powers from an ectoplasmic form of [[I Love Nuclear Power|the radiation blast]] which [[Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke|altered his DNA]].
** Likewise, [[Big Bad|Vlad Plasmius]] got his powers from a college accident involving an early version of the Ghost Portal, by being ''blasted in the face''.
* ''[[Darkwing Duck (
** Incidentally, many members of Darkwing's [[Rogues Gallery]] had their origins in a [[Freak Lab Accident]]; Megavolt, Bushroot, and the Liquidator are the most notable instances.
* ''[[
** Dexter spends an episode trying to gain superpowers through experimentation, and runs into the same it-doesn't-work-if-you-do-it-on-purpose problem. In the end, he gives up in frustration. Then Dee Dee waltzes into the lab, spills chemicals on herself, and gains super powers.
** Subverted by Monkey; Dexter deliberately experimented on him, which gave Monkey his superpowers. The subversion comes from Dexter never figuring out that he succeeded.
* The whole premise of ''[[
** Hilariously [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] when, in an attempt to create a fourth Powerpuff Girl, the sisters re-create the circumstances of their origin by ''elaborately pretending'' that they're adding the Chemical X to the pot by sheer accident.
* Meltdown in ''[[
* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in an episode of ''[[
* In ''[[Spider-Man:
{{quote| '''Spider-Man:''' You better stay still, another swim in that chemical soup and your hair might turn green!}}
* Parodied on ''[[
** He just made the same mistake as [[Darkwing Duck (
* The origin of Dr. Two Brains in ''[[
* ''[[The Simpsons (
{{quote| '''Martin:''' I would've thought that being hit by an atomic bomb would've killed him.<br />
'''Bart:''' Now you know better. }}
** In the Bongo comic series a pre-nuclear [[The Golden Age of Comic Books|Golden Age]] version of Radioactive Man, 'Radio Man' is hinted at, who looks a bit like Golden Age [[The Flash|Flash]]. God knows what his origin is.
* Stinkor, one of Skeletor's henchmen in ''[[He
* Brain of ''[[
* On ''[[
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