Rube Goldberg Machine - Examples in Media

Examples in Media

Where possible, works are arranged in a loose chronological order, so priority of invention and influences can be inferred.

• Our Gang (a.k.a. Little Rascals), "Hook and Ladder" (1932) - and various other Little Rascals Film Shorts contained various seemingly-functional examples of Rube Goldberg Machines.
• Betty Boop and Grampy (1935)- a cartoon featuring animated character Betty Boop. Betty Boop goes to a party where Grampy uses a variety of impractical machines, notably to play music. The cartoon itself is available on YouTube.
• Trap Happy Porky (1945) — a cartoon in which a cat fashions a complicated mouse trap to catch troublesome mice.
• Designs on Jerry (1953) — an episode of Tom and Jerry which featured a blueprint plan for an elaborate mousetrap, which magically comes to life.
• Hook, Line and Stinker (1958) — Looney Tunes cartoon character Wile E. Coyote builds a Rube Goldberg machine in attempt to catch Road Runner
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) — includes a sequence near the beginning of the film where breakfast is "made" by eccentric inventor Caractacus Potts.
• In the late 1960s and early 70s, educational shows like Sesame Street and The Electric Company routinely showed bits that involved Rube Goldberg devices, including the Rube Goldberg Alphabet Contraption, and the What Happens Next Machine.
• Back to the Future (1985) — shows Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) using a Rube Goldberg machine to start cooking his breakfast and feed his dog when the clock turns to a certain time in the morning. Doc Brown also creates a similar machine using 1885 technology in Back to the Future Part III (1990).
• The Goonies (1985) — has an early scene where 'Chunk' (actor Jeff Cohen) has to perform the 'truffle shuffle' to be allowed entry in the Goonies house. The door is opened through a Rube Goldberg device.
• Brazil (1985) — directed by Terry Gilliam and set in a dystopian totalitarian bureaucratic society, features many Rube Goldberg machines with specific household uses.
• Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985) utilized a Rube Goldberg Machine for the "Breakfast Machine" sequence. This scene is also parodied in the season 4 Family Guy episode "8 Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter".
• The Way Things Go (1987) — a short film by artists and sculptural collagists Peter Fischli & David Weiss; features an elaborate chain reaction made from old junk in an empty industrial space.
• Apoorva Sagodharargal (1989) — in this Tamil language film, Appu (Kamal Haasan) kills Francis Anbarasu (Delhi Ganesh) using a Rube Goldberg machine.
• Wallace and Gromit (1989?—2010) — a series of films featuring many contraptions that qualify as Rube Goldberg machines.
• The Thief and the Cobbler (1993)/(1995) — in the climax, the protagonist Tack causes the machine of the evil One-Eye to collapse by firing a tack at the machine which causes a Rube Goldberg-like destruction.
• Of Course, You Know This Means Warners / Up a Tree/ Wakko's Gizmo (1994) — in episode 57 of Animaniacs, Wakko builds a Rube Goldberg device which results in a whoopee cushion being set off.
• The Rock (1996) — FBI's top chemical weapons specialist, Dr. Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage) is presented when he wins $5 with Rube Goldberg contraption.
• Dexter's Lab — In the 2001 episode, "A Failed Experiment", Dexter is too impatient to hang around and watch his grandfather's Rube Goldberg contraption, missing exactly the kind of finish he'd been longing for.
• PythagoraSwitch (2002?) — a Japanese children's show which features contraptions several times in an episode and features both machines constructed by the show's staff and videos of machines created by viewers.
• Cog (2003) — a Honda television commercial featuring a complex Rube Goldberg machine made with Honda parts, utilising ideas from The Way Things Go; accused of plagiarism
• Dead Like Me (2003–2004) — in this Showtime series, many deaths occur through Rube Goldberg scenarios.
• An Honest Mistake (2005) — music video by the alternative rock band The Bravery
• Waiting... (2005) showed a Rube Goldberg machine in the end credits
• El Hormiguero (2006—present) — in this Spanish TV show, at least once a week in the segment El Efecto Mariposa (The Butterfly Effect), a Rube Goldberg machine is developed whose final part tends to show something related to that day's guest.
• "The New Cup" (2009) — this episode of Flight of the Conchords includes a Rube-Goldberg accident that destroys a mug.
• "This Too Shall Pass" (2010) — the promotional music video for OK Go's single features a giant Rube Goldberg machine working in sync with the song. Members of the band are bodily moved about and splattered with colored paint near the end of the video.
• Milan Furniture Fair (April 2012) Salone Internazionale del Mobile, Milan, Italy. Melvin the Machine — Melvin is smart: he geo-locates himself using GPS, documents his audience with his built-in smartphone camera, and talks about his “runs” on Facebook and Twitter. After each successful run, he spits out a stamped postcard that reads “wish you were here”.
• Ruffles Max Machine (May 2012) — a Ruffles internet commercial featuring a Rube Goldberg machine made by Wanda Digital Agency, produced by Kaporta Film. This project was made as a school project with 26 student of Plato College of Higher Education, Istanbul.

Undated and incomplete references:

• In the episode iDon't Wanna Fight of the Nickelodeon TV show iCarly, Carly's older brother Spencer builds a Rube Goldberg device to feed his goldfish.
• In an episode of the Cartoon Network show Ed, Edd n Eddy, Edd and Eddy constructed a giant Rube Goldberg machine disguised as the Statue of Liberty in order to destroy Ed's violin, but it failed because Edd purposely sabotaged it by luring Ed away from the target.
• On July 4, 2010, Google changed its logo into a Rube Goldberg machine in honor of Rube Goldberg's birthday.
• In the cartoon Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, Mystery Inc. often used a Rube Goldberg trap designed by Fred to capture the villain of the episode, for such things as throwing a net. Often, however, the said trap would fail, with the outcome usually being that Shaggy or Scooby-Doo would be captured instead, or the trap would miss.
• In the Suite Life on Deck episode "A London Carol", Zack constructs a Rube Goldberg machine to trick Mr. Moseby instead of waking up and getting to work on time.
• In the Cartoon Network TV series Adventure Time, Finn makes a Rube Goldberg-like machine to help everyone who needs to solve their problems.
• The 2010 Times Square SUV bomb was referred to as a "Rube Goldberg contraption" by James Cavanaugh, a former ATF agent working with New York City to investigate the attempted terrorist act.
• Rube Goldberg machines are featured repeatedly in the movies of Jean-Pierre Jeunet. They are a major topic of the black comedy film Delicatessen, most notably because of the contraptions with which Aurore Interligator unsuccessfully tries to kill herself. Much of The City of Lost Children is set in a Rube Goldberg-like laboratory, and it's a prominent theme of Micmacs.
• In a Halloween episode of Wishbone, one of the main characters presses a button, setting off a goldberg machine, revealing a clue. Wishbone comments "Well, that was kind of cool!"
• In the 23rd episode of the 6th season of Futurama, The tip top of Zoidberg where Bender, Lila, Fry and the others make a goldberg killing machine to prevent the professor turning into a yeti
• At the end of the episode "Revenge of the Ghostmaster" from The Real Ghostbusters, Ray, Egon and Slimer use a relatively simple Rube Goldberg Machine to trap the Ghostmaster from over forty feet away.
• Tigger constructs a flawed device to stop crows from stealing crops from Rabbit's garden in the episode "Owl's Well That Ends Well" of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Once he repairs the final part of the machine, it drops a bag of swill on Rabbit instead.
• MythBusters made a Rube Goldberg Machine in their 2006 Christmas Special that concludes in dumping the crash test dummy Buster on the floor.
• Final Destination (film series) In each Final Destination, a group of people die in a series of elaborate, invariably fatal and often gory scenarios that frequently resemble Rube Goldberg machines in their complexity.
• TV show X-Files, has an episode named "The Goldberg Variation", where one character escapes from the death through events that work like a Rube Goldberg machine. The same character also develops device like Rube Goldberg machine as a hobby.
• Unchained Reaction is an American TV series with competing teams to build a Rube Goldberg device to be judged by industry professionals from many varied fields. Hosted by Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman of Mythbusters.
• In an episode of iCarly, Spencer, older brother to the title character, invented an elaborate Goldberg like machine to feed the fish they had, only to have pointed out to him that he would then have to set the whole thing back up every day and that it would just be easier to remember to feed the fish, causing him to return the fish to the pet store.