A __Rube Goldberg machine__, named after American cartoonist Rube Goldberg, is a machine intentionally designed to perform a simple task in an indirect and overly complicated way.
- Dark world of Rube Goldberg machines - theverge 
Usually, these machines consist of a series of simple unrelated devices; the action of each triggers the initiation of the next, eventually resulting in achieving a stated goal.
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In the United Kingdom, a similar contrivance is referred to as a "Heath Robinson contraption" after cartoons by the illustrator W. Heath Robinson - wikipedia
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Rube Goldberg's "Self-Operating Napkin" - wikimedia
The design of such a "machine" is often presented on paper and would be impossible to implement in actuality. More recently, such machines are being fully constructed for entertainment (for example, a breakfast scene in Peewee's Big Adventure) and in Rube Goldberg machine#Competitions.
YOUTUBE VdSSOAtIrYU The Fortune Telling Machine (2015)
Over the years, the expression has expanded to mean any confusing or overly complicated system. For example, news headlines include "Is Rep. Bill Thomas the Rube Goldberg of Legislative Reform?" and "Retirement 'insurance' as a Rube Goldberg machine".
# Origin
The expression is named after the American cartoonist Rube Goldberg, whose cartoons often depicted devices that performed simple tasks in indirect convoluted ways - wikipedia
HTML5 ogg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Something_for_nothing_%281940%29.ogv Something for Nothing (1940), short film featuring Goldberg.
The cartoon above is Goldberg's ''Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin'', which was later reprinted in a few book collections, including the postcard book ''Rube Goldberg's Inventions!'' and the hardcover ''Rube Goldberg: Inventions'', both compiled by Maynard Frank Wolfe from the Rube Goldberg Archives.
Many of Goldberg's ideas were utilized in films and TV shows for the comedic effect of creating such rigmarole for such a simple task, such as the front gate mechanism in ''The Goonies'' and the breakfast machine shown in ''Pee-wee's Big Adventure''. In ''Ernest Goes to Jail'', Ernest P. Worrell uses his invention simply to turn his TV on. Wallace from ''Wallace and Gromit'' creates and uses many such machines for numerous tasks, though the inspiration is the British cartoonist W. Heath Robinson (see below) Other films such as ''Chitty Chitty Bang Bang'', ''Diving into the Money Pit'', and ''Back To The Future'' have featured Rube Goldberg–style devices as well.
# See also