"Kurt Kelly, quarterback. He is the smartest guy on the football team. Which is kind of like being the tallest dwarf."
— Veronica, Heathers: The Musical
In a group of stupid people, it is generally the responsibility of one or more smart people to keep them from getting themselves in too much trouble and to guide them. However, sometimes there isn't an actual smart person around, and the group has to settle for someone who is simply not as stupid. This person may be of average or below average intelligence, but compared to the stupider people around them, they can come off as reasonably intelligent, but compared to smart, and sometimes even average people, they come off as idiots. Another potential reason for this is that the person who comes off as "The Smart Guy" in the group knows that they are only smart by comparison, but is too full of self-doubt and perhaps even a degree of laziness to try to improve themselves further going up against others who they know will be smarter yet. They'd rather surround themselves with dullards to appear smart than to put in the actual work to be smart.
How this manifests can vary. If the main character is an Idiot Hero, then they might be the hero because no one else has enough brains to actually save the day, but the hero is otherwise an idiot. In a society of stupid people, people with even slightly more common sense than usual might be a genius in their own society, but be an idiot in any other society. In a group of people who are Too Dumb to Live, the smartest one in the group will be smart enough to avoid dying and be able to keep others out of danger, but will otherwise be incompetent in navigating society. If a group of people has No Social Skills, a person may be The Social Expert in comparison by virtue of merely having passable or low social skills.
See also Only Sane by Comparison, for when this is when an eccentric person comes off as sane compared to the loonier people around them. Compare Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond. A World of Dumbass might have characters who are like this. Someone who is Surrounded by Idiots might be this if they are frustrated by the greater stupidity of those around them. Among villains and criminals, the leader of a group of Stupid Crooks, a Goldfish Poop Gang, or a Terrible Trio might be this. A Manipulative Bastard can be this if the only people they can manipulate are stupider than them. These characters are more likely to benefit from being Smarter Than You Look and Dumbass Has a Point than their stupider peers.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Attack on Titan: Abnormal Titans are this compared to other Pure Titans, as while the latter only chase and grab whatever humans come near, and possess zero planning ability, Abnormal Titans are slightly smarter in that they can wait in ambush and prioritize targets. However, Abnormal Titans are still mainly driven by instinct compared to Titan Shifters, who possess outright human intelligence due to being fully controlled by a human.
- The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords (2004): Although Vio is nominally The Smart Guy of the four Links, this is only really expressed through his being more openly studious and open to book reading than his more emotion-driven counterparts: the one time he tries a plan of his own, a Fake Defector scam, it nearly costs him his life. Even before that, during the boat ride to Death Mountain, Vio has a Delayed Reaction to the fact that the boat is moving downstream, and thus away from the mountain.
Comic Books
- Runaways:
- Much of Alex Wilder's vaunted tactical brilliance is in comparison to his teammates, all of whom are young and sheltered teenagers. When he tries to take on the Gibborim - three impossibly old and powerful angels - they immediately burn him to ash. His fortunes have been even worse since being returned from the dead, as his various failed attempts at teenage supervillainy mean that there is no teenager dumb enough to trust him, and since he's still in a teenage body, no adult supervillains are willing to take him seriously.
- Gert Yorkes was the second-smartest member of the original team, and has much the same problem as Alex, that her intelligence is relative to the rest of her teammates. This became readily apparent when she tried to bluff Geoffrey Wilder, and ended up with a knife in her chest for her troubles. Post-resurrection, she doesn't even have her relative brilliance anymore, as her teammates have all gotten more life experience in the years since her death, while she's been out of school for so long that when she tries to re-enroll in order to catch up, she is flabbergasted by the concept of shelter-in-place drills.
- The Walking Dead: Governor Phillip, real name Brian Blake, is the Ax-Crazy and Stupid Evil leader of Woodbury, which is populated largely by Gullible Lemmings and unintuitive henchman (with even Martinez messing up the plan to infiltrate the prison by being Too Clever by Half). The Governor is at least able to manage the day-to-day affairs of Woodbury in his more lucid moments and is able to point out the Awesome, but Impractical elements of the tank his community captured.
- Y: The Last Man: Victoria is the Wicked Pretentious leader of the Daughters of the Amazons, and dies when she takes too long gloating over Yorick's impeding execution and gets an axe to the head for her trouble. But as thick as Victoria is, her underlings are worse, since the group falls apart without her telling everyone what to do. Especially noteworthy is that Yorick's paramedic sister Hero regressed to a brainwashed shell of her former self after joining Victoria and falling under her sway, and has to unlearn being controlled by Victoria after her death.
Fan Works
- A Sit Down with a Therapist: While Brian himself has better self-preservation skills than Peter, understanding the importance of saving food and money when Lois cuts ties to the family and getting a job to keep himself a afloat, chapter 13 shows that he's capable of being an idiot on his own initiative. After he moves into Lois's mansion, he quits his job in order to mooch off of her, and when Lois refuses to give him money because he'd blow it, he concocts a hair-brained scheme to rape Chudley's pet dog Momo in order to Baby Trap the family into keeping him. This results in him becoming homeless and jobless after the family becomes appalled and they kick him out.
- Danny Phantom: Stranded: Colette Bevier is a Zig-Zagged example of this compared to the other A-Listers, who consist of Brainless Beauties and Dumb Jocks. On one hand, Colette is smarter than them when it comes to schoolwork, as unlike the others who rely on their Homework Slaves to keep their grades up, Colette is smart enough to do her own schoolwork, plus when it comes to bullying her schemes are a lot craftier than the other A-Listers' simple high school tactics. On the other hand, Colette is ultimately Too Clever by Half, as her schemes often result in her getting herself in trouble with her parents, getting herself hurt, and/or humiliating herself in some fashion, and in Blackmailed, her criminal actions, while incredibly insidious, are undone by various amateur mistakes and result in her being arrested and thrown in juvie, while the A-Listers at worst merely got in trouble at school, showing that in some ways she's actually dumber than them.
- Dungeon Keeper Ami: In "Catastrophic Failure, Part 2", a God of Evil calls Ami's plan "CLEVER. FOR MORTALS.” when it fails.
- Fusion Falls: Take Two: Some of the "smarter" characters who come from a World of Dumbass or settings where Adults Are Useless are only smart by the standards of their world, as they discover the hard way when their reality is merged with others and smarter people are able to easily outwit them.
- Vicky in The Fairly OddParents! is a Babysitter from Hell who is able to get away with outright abusing and enslaving children because the adults and authorities are too stupid to see even blatant evidence of her evil. In the new reality, she gets arrested because the adults aren't as stupid as the ones she's used to dealing with.
- Characters who relied on Paper Thin Disguises in their own reality got away with it because most people were too stupid to see through them. In the new reality, most people can see right through them because they aren't stupid.
- Sword Art Online Abridged: Kayaba considers himself Surrounded by Idiots, given that his video game of death is filled with vapid and overconfident players, with thousands getting themselves killed shortly after they are trapped inside. However, Kayaba himself, despite on paper being a VR prodigy, has only a beginner's understanding of game design and function, causing a range of in-game issues, not least of which are constant glitches.
Kirito: All this time I assumed [Kayaba] was some Machiavellian schemer. But in the end, he was just as big a fuck-up as the rest of us.
Films — Animated
- The Lion King: Scar is the brains compared to the hyenas, who are morons who probably would have starved to death without his guidance, and is smart enough to think of a plan to assassinate Mufasa and Simba to become king. However, despite claiming to be smarter than Mufasa, the Pride Lands become a wasteland under his rule because he is too incompetent and lazy to actually manage the place, and he probably would have starved both himself and the other animals if Simba hadn't come back to set things right.
Film — Live-Action
- Animal House: Hoover is the President of Delta Tau Ch and has the highest GPA out of everyone in the frat. Said GPA is 1.6, four C's and one F.
- Billy Madison: The titular character is a dimwitted rich slacker who needs to go Back to School, starting from first grade, in order inherit his father's fortune. He points out the flaws of a picture book on his first day of kindergarten, making him smarter than his classmates.
- Dumb and Dumber: Harry is slightly less catastrophically stupid than Lloyd, which occasionally lands him in the role of voice of reason — though he's still fully capable of making disastrous decisions on his own.
- Home Alone: Both Harry and Marv are dimwits, but Harry is somewhat less so, as while he makes a ton of stupid mistakes out of a combination of greed, rage, and stubbornness, he's smarter than Marv, whose actions in the first two movies are the main contributor to them getting arrested both times. In addition, while Marv wants the duo to become infamous criminals by flooding houses they robbed as a Calling Card, Harry was smart enough to try to be inconspicuous, and Marv's act of flooding houses only helped the police track them down easier.
- Idiocracy: Joe and Rita are totally average people whose IQ is a flat 100, meaning they aren't especially intelligent or stupid. However, by the standards of the Stupid Future People that now populate the planet, they are geniuses, with Joe being able to answer every problem on the Extremely Easy Exam that a child from the present could solve. Said IQ test reveals Joe to be the smartest person on Earth, which is why the White House recruited him to solve their crop shortage which was the result of replacing water with a sports drink. Joe is able to fix their problem by pointing out the basic fact that plants need water to grow.
- The Jerk: Love interest Marie is an airhead by any standard measure, but she's got more going on upstairs than main character Navin, who's practically cartoon character-level dumb in comparison.
- The Rebel Set: Mr. Tucker's Establishing Character Moment is crushing someone at chess in a short amount of time, making him look brilliant to others present. When asked about it by his lackey, he reveals his secret is only playing against people who can't outsmart him — the same approach he takes to roping people into his criminal schemes.
Sidney: Don't you ever lose one of them set-oos?
Tucker: Rarely, if ever.
Sidney: Then you must be a virtuous-oso, as they say.
Tucker: Yes and no, I merely make sure my antagonists are bad chess players. - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows: Bebop and Rocksteady are both idiots, but Rocksteady is slightly dumber than Bebop, so Bebop serves as the straight man between the two of them at a couple parts, like when they're on guard duty.
Bebop: We gotta keep our eyes out for intruders.
Rocksteady: Well, what do intruders look like?
Bebop: [annoyed] Anybody that's not a big pig or a big rhino!
Rocksteady: Ahh.
Literature
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: In the book No Brainer, the Book Dumb Greg ends up transferring schools when it seems like his old school will close, and ends up coming off as a genius to the kids at the new school due to that school having more poorly educated students.
- Dragonlance: Gully Dwarves are, by and large, not particularly intelligent, generally having as much understanding and know-how as an average human child. Bupu, a Gully Dwarf the Heroes of the Lance found in Xak Tsaroth who would later serve as something of a Morality Chain to Raistlin Majere, is intelligent in comparison to the rest of them because she managed to count past two and invent the term "a whole bunch". There have also been multiple short stories about clans of Gully Dwarves in which the leaders, generally called the High Bulp, tend to be the ones who simply take charge rather than the ones who are actually capable of leading. The High Bulp is usually smart enough to put on the airs of a real leader, and bully and badger the rest of the clan into following them, but they're almost always still as dimwitted as the average Gully Dwarf.
- Of Mice and Men: While George is at times cunning and intelligent, by his own admission he's Book Dumb and only considers himself smart compared to Lennie.
- The Rising of the Shield Hero:
- Malty is an incredibly Stupid Evil Brainless Beauty who is not nearly as smart as she thinks she is, and her reckless actions often result in her getting humiliated, endangered, and killed in some mediums. While not the master manipulator she thinks she is, she's perfectly capable of manipulating people even dumber than her, such as Motoyasu, who is a skirt-chaser who believes anything a pretty woman tells him, Lesty, who honestly sees Malty as a close friend, and Tact, a Heroic Wannabe who is easily fooled by people telling him what he wants to hear.
- Compared to Motoyasu and Itsuki, who tend to blindly believe any sort of slander against Naofumi, Ren is at the very least willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and notice flaws in the arguments used against him. His stupidity mainly manifests in his lone wolf attitude despite teamwork being necessary to defeat the increasingly dangerous threats, and the fact that he does sometimes go along with others' stupidity due to mob mentality rather than genuine gullibility.
- Winnie-the-Pooh: Most of the characters are naive and dopey, so in comparison, Rabbit, Owl, and Christopher Robin seem smart. However, they're not that smart — Rabbit is of average intelligence, Owl is Book Smart but rather scatter-brained, and Christopher Robin is a little boy, so he has a child's level of intelligence.
Live-Action TV
- Boy Meets World: Shawn is a poor student who barely passes his classes. However, his extended family considers him The Smart Guy with Shawn's Uncle Mike praising his intelligence in front of Mr. Turner when he stops by Mike's motorcycle repair shop.
- It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Dennis Reynolds is more sensible-thinking and smarter than his fellow friends and in usual instances, Dennis debunks the Gang’s idiotic ideas and interests but in some cases will also look very stupid and immature in front of normal everyday people. His bio from Season 1 sums this up: “Probably the smartest of the gang (which ain't saying much)”
- Pair of Kings: In "Pair of Geniuses", Boomer and Brady travel to the island of Sununu, where a curse has made everyone stupid. Boomer and Brady are rather dumb themselves, but the people of Sununu are so dumb that they think the brothers are geniuses.
- Son of a Critch: In "Forever Young", Mark learns that he's the class valedictorian. Before his ego can get away from him, Sister Rose points out that his class has two of the Fox siblings in it, so it's not a particularly high-achieving class to begin with.
- The Sopranos: While Tony Soprano is fairly intelligent, he tends to overestimate his own cleverness and has a tendency to make stupid decisions out of selfishness, ego, rage, and short-sightedness, and almost never learns from his mistakes. Many of his therapy sessions with Dr. Melfi and interactions with people outside of the mob quickly remind the viewers that he's actually very Book Dumb since he never took his education seriously. However, he's still much smarter than his underlings, who are even more selfish, egotistical, rage-filled, and short-sighted than himself. Tony is constantly at his wits' end trying to rein in their stupidity.
- The Suite Life of Zack & Cody: In "Summer of Our Discontent", Zack is sent to summer school. Despite being Book Dumb, he's the only one in the class who puts in effort and understands the rather simple lessons, making him seem like a nerdy teacher's pet to the other students.
Tabletop Games
- BattleTech: This hit the Clans when they invaded the Inner Sphere in 3050. The Clans had spent the last two centuries or so fighting in a highly ritualized form of combat, which left them unprepared for the realities of waging a large, long-term campaign against a foe who didn't fight war like it was a game. "Genius" Clan commanders turned out to in many cases be quite gullible against the deviousness that Inner Sphere forces considered basic. The Clans still mostly won thanks to their superior equipment and training regimes, but with the exception of Ulric Kerensky of Clan Wolf, Clan leadership was still generally significantly inferior to that of the Inner Sphere.
- Dungeons & Dragons: Goblins are typically led by the strongest and most devious members of a group. This isn't saying much, as goblins are not very strong or clever and thus find themselves easily bossed around by hobgoblins, orcs, dark elves, or most any other non-goblin who cares to do so.
- Warhammer 40,000:
- Ogryns as a whole are a Human Subspecies of Dumb Muscle who are mostly useful as shock troops due to their lack of intelligence making them incapable of following more complex orders. However, some Ogryns, known as Bone'eads, are given augmented intelligence that allows them to act as leaders within Ogryn squads. Bone'eads are smarter than other Ogryns, being capable of remembering their own names, counting, and following somewhat more complex orders, but they are still less intelligent than the average human.
- Nork Deggog, who may or may not be a Bone'ead, is a genius by Ogryn standards, being able to write the first letter of his own name, count to four, and talk in full sentences.
- While Orks can be intelligent, in terms of strategy, they mostly prefer simple and straightforward "tactics" like rushing blindly to attack or spraying and praying rather than aiming their guns. The Blood Axe Klan is unique in that they prefer to fight smart by using things like camouflage, retreating rather than fighting to the last man, and planning ahead in advance. However, their tactics only make them smart by Ork standards and are woefully amateurish compared to those of other species; for example, while most races understand that camouflage involves blending into the environment to be effective, Blood Axes will simply paint random colors onto their bodies and assumes it makes them invisible, and the only reason it can reliably work is because of the Orks' Psychic Powers making it true because they believe it is. Still, their use of tactics can trip up enemies who believe that Orks are incapable of any tactics whatsoever.
Theatre
- Heathers: Discussed by Veronica in "Beautiful"; she calls Kurt Kelly the smartest guy on the football team, only to add that this "is kind of like being the tallest dwarf".
Video Games
- Dead Rising 3: The special zombies are this to the regular zombies, who are typical shamblers that just walk towards humans and try to eat them. The special zombies, while mostly mindless, possess some of the knowledge from when they were alive, such as Cop Zombies knowing how to fire a gun (albeit inaccurately), firefighter zombies knowing how to swing an axe, and football player zombies being able to run and charge at people.
Visual Novels
- Class of '09: While Nicole is a Street Smart teenager who, in some routes can scheme and manipulate people into doing her bidding and acting as she wants them to, part of the reason why it works is because most people she deals with are idiots who Nicole can easily dupe with sexual and/or platonic charm or by appealing to their egos. However, at the end of the day she's still an arrogant teenager who thinks she's smart enough to always avoid any consequences, and certain routes can lead to her attitude getting herself expelled, arrested, or even killed.
Web Animation
- Red vs. Blue: Simmons is seen as The Smart Guy of the original Blood Gulch Crew. And by most reasonable metrics, he is very intelligent. However, the bar isn't that high when everyone else is some flavor of idiot. He is not immune to the eccentricities of his crew and also has some dumb moments. Lampshaded in Season 12 when Dr. Emily Gray is asking for escorts for a mission to study an alien tower:
Dr. Emily Grey: ...I'll require an escort. How about you, Simmons? You've always seen intelligent.
Simmons: Oh, thank you.
Dr. Emily Grey: ...well, compared to your friends.
Simmons: [sadly] Wh-Why did you feel the need to add that?
Web Original
- Fluffy Pony: Because almost all fluffies are complete idiots, the smartest fluffy and leader of a feral herd is usually any fluffy with an ounce of intelligence or common sense, like being able to count to ten or cross a street without getting hit by a car.
Western Animation
- 2 Stupid Dogs: While both of the titular dogs are idiots, Big Dog is somewhat less so, as most of the time Little Dog is the one who comes up with the hair-brained schemes that Big Dog passively goes along with. In addition, he's also capable of occasionally delivering words of wisdom about topics such as anger and love.
- The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: Downplayed; in "Jimmy Goes to College", Jimmy's still smarter than his college-aged peers but the difference in intellect compared to his friends and former schoolmates has drastically shortened as the jetpack he invented is considered mundane to the point where they have a dedicated coatrack for the other students' jetpacks.
- Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog: While both Robotnik and Coconuts are more competent than Scratch and Grounder, usually coming closer to capturing and killing Sonic than those two could, they aren't exactly smart themselves, as while Scratch and Grounder would always fall for Sonic's tricks and poor disguises, Robotnik and Coconuts only sometimes saw through them. In addition, they were also perfectly capable of bumbling their own plans even without Scratch and Grounder screwing up.
- Beavis and Butt-Head has Smart Beavis and Smart Butt-Head, two alternate universe counterparts to the duo who first made their appearance in Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe. In B&B's world, they're intelligent on a cosmic scale compared to most people and come from an advanced civilization that far surpasses the normal Earth. But by the standards of their own world, they're still pretty incompetent and not too smart, as evidenced by how they can't properly pilot their ship and get easily fooled by scammers into buying "beachfront property" on the moon. By the time of "Abduction", it's fully shown that the two are so incompetent in their own world that their Supreme Leaders want to put them to death for their stupidity, and even when they're trying to get their sentence commuted by experimenting on Tom Anderson, they still end up bungling things up, with Smart Butt-Head shooting Smart Beavis on accident, both of them needing the less advanced Anderson to fix their machine, both of them accidentally wiping their own memories instead of Anderson's, and Smart Beavis getting trapped in the anal probing device, which allows Anderson to simply walk away.
- Ben 10: Omniverse: Blukic and Driba are Galvans, which makes them technologically savvy enough to get by as Bungling Inventors on Earth, but by standards of their own planet they're complete idiots.
- The Boondocks: While Riley is normally an arrogant moron whose antics often get him, and sometimes other people, in trouble, when he hangs out with Ed Wuncler III and Gin Rummy, he's the Straight Man due to the latter two being bigger idiots than him, despite Riley being a literal child while Ed and Gin are adults. In "Let's Nab Oprah", their plan to kidnap Orpah Winfrey goes wrong because of Ed and Gin's screwups, such as going in the wrong store or kidnapping the wrong people, with Riley having to keep them on track. In "Shinin'", Riley hires Ed to kidnap a boy who stole his chain, but Ed nabs the wrong kid despite Riley providing him with a picture.
- Daria: In Is It Fall Yet? Quinn is provided a tutor by her parents, a young man named David. Eventually all of the members of the Fashion Club take tutoring lessons from David, and he drops each of the other members after one session with each of them as it becomes readily apparent that they're not interested in learning or improving. Only Quinn advances, and in the meanwhile develops a crush on David. She even tells him that she likes him, but he turns her down, saying he prefers girls with a bit more depth. He points out she only wanted to get her grade up to get into a party school.
David: Talk about a lack of self-esteem.
Quinn: I have tons of self-esteem! I esteem myself more than anybody!
David: [stands] When it comes to appearance, but not in any areas that count. Look at the losers you hang out with. No chance of feeling stupid around them. - The Fairly OddParents!: Wanda is fairly average, but is more intelligent and sensible than her Too Dumb to Live husband, Cosmo, and her impulsive 10-year-old godson, Timmy, making her smart only in comparison. Exaggerated in both the very early and late seasons, where Wanda is more of a ditz and only moderately more intelligent; after all, she and Cosmo were originally envisioned as "two halves of a whole idiot".
- Family Guy: Brian Griffin is smarter and more cultured than the rest of the Griffin family (except Stewie) and Peter's circle of friends, who are all crass idiots. However, he is shown to be thoroughly mediocre and lacking in talent when it comes to actual intellectual undertakings; any time he encounters a genuinely smart person or attempts to pursue writing at a professional level, he is humiliated.
- Futurama:
- The episode "The Duh-Vinci Code" reveals Leonardo Da Vinci was a Human Alien from a planet of supergeniuses who moved to Earth because he was the stupidest person on his own planet.
- Philip J. Fry plays this role in "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid". Although he's usually the show's main Ditz, when earth is invaded by the Brain Spawn, Fry's lack of a Delta Brainwave makes him the only person on the planet who is immune to their powers, which turn everyone else into brainless morons. Although he's still very much an Idiot Hero, he's the only person who can save the day by default. It's best demonstrated when he yells at the people of New New York to stop acting so stupid through the wrong end of a megaphone.
- In the Gravity Falls episode "Scary-oke", Soos is turned into a zombie, but it turns out that since he was already a Cloudcuckoolander, he actually retains his intelligence and merely changes loyalties. This presents a problem when he uses his handyman skills to dismantle the Pines twins' barricades.
Zombie Soos: By the way, I taught the zombies how to get into the fuse box. Among these guys, I'm like a genius, heh!
- Hercules: The Animated Series: Discussed In "Hercules and the Arabian Night"; Hades thinks this of Aladdin, dismissing Jafar's warnings of Aladdin's cleverness by assuming that he's clever for a mortal. Once Aladdin manages to outsmart one of his schemes, he eventually takes it back.
- The Lion Guard: Janja is the leader of his hyena clan and is capable of coming up with decent plans. However, as shown in "Janja's New Crew", Janja is only smart compared to his regular idiot lackeys, Cheezi and Chungu. Janja at the beginning of the episode makes a poorly thought out plan to kill some antelopes, blames Cheezi and Chungu for it going wrong, and decides to fire and replace them with Nne and Tano. The latter two prove to be much more intelligent than Janja himself, making a plan that Janja has a hard time following and almost screws up. Nne and Tano eventually get tired of Janja and try to have him killed, and would have succeeded in their plan to distract the Lion Guard if Janja didn't tip them off.
- The Powerpuff Girls:
- All three of the Amoeba Boys are Stupid Crooks whose idea of "crimes" consist mainly of harmless misdemeanors, but Bossman acts as the leader by virtue of being the least stupid of the bunch, being the only one to actually come up with plans while Slim, being dumber than the others screws them up, and Junior mainly just parrots what Slim says and doesn't come up with any ideas of his own.
- The Rowdyruff Boys are all Dumb Muscle in general, but Brick is The Leader and somewhat smarter than the other two, having enough Street Smarts to coordinate attacks, set traps, and fight dirty.
- ReBoot: In "Enzo the Smart", Enzo tries to make himself smart by messing with Mainframe's system clock, but instead it makes everyone else dumber than him.
- Sonic Boom: "Beyond the Valley of the Cubots" emphasizes that even if Cubot is a total moron, he's still one who is able to learn from his screwups, such as being able to put out fires he accidentally starts. When Cubot meets his prototypes who don't learn from their mistakes (such as repeatedly pressing their self-destruct buttons out of sheer curiosity), even Cubot himself becomes exasperated by their level of stupidity. Orbot himself compares Cubot being the smartest of his species of robot to being the healthiest item at Meh Burger. When Dr. Eggman attacks the prototype Cubots, Cubot tells them to run away but they just stand there.
Cubot: When I told you to follow me you all ran off! Now, I tell you to run and you just stand there!? What's wrong with you guys!?
- South Park: While Eric Cartman is a Manipulative Bastard who is capable of some impressive schemes, part of the reason why he's so successful is because most of the adults are gullible morons and the only kid he routinely fools is Butters, who is more naive than most of the other kids. However, Cartman also makes plenty of boneheaded mistakes via his shortsighted behaviors and actions, and this often leads him to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and throwing away a long-term rewards in favor of immediate gratification.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: Whenever SpongeBob and Patrick are paired up, despite them both being seen as idiots, SpongeBob is usually seen as smarter than the Book Dumb Patrick. It helps that in the pre-movie seasons, SpongeBob was merely naive and gullible rather than outright stupid, and he can be Book Smart while having many Hidden Depths. This is also why Squidward, who despises SpongeBob with a burning passion, usually prefers him over Patrick.
- Teen Titans Go!: In the episode "Brain Food", Beast Boy uses a spell from Raven's book to make the other Titans dumber than him, and they begin to worship him for being smart. Deconstructed later when they're in danger of being hit by a meteor they need to destroy, and none of the Titans are smart enough to fix it.