Basic Trope: A character has multiple PhDs to tell the audience that they're a super-genius, even though this would be unrealistic in real life.
- Straight: Devon, the team's polymath and "science guy", is in his early twenties and has PhDs in geology, biochemistry, and particle physics.
- Exaggerated:
- Devon is a Teen Genius who achieved six doctorates by the age of sixteen.
- Try to Fit That on a Business Card
- Downplayed: Devon is in his fifties with one "real" doctorate and one honorary one. He's now working on his second.
- Justified:
- Devon's dissertation was so brilliant and all-encompassing that three departments awarded him PhDs at the same time. He only went through grad school once.
- Devon is a 500-year-old immortal who completes a PhD every once in a while to keep his mind sharp.
- Devon really, really likes to impress people and went through the large amount of years to earn those PhDs for no purpose other than to be admired.
- Devon's field of interest has geology, biochemistry and particle physics as Required Secondary PhDs.
- Inverted: Devon is the smartest of the team by a mile, and yet is the only one without a PhD. Everyone else has two, but seems to be of average intelligence.
- Subverted: The team decides to bring on Devon after hearing he's got three PhDs. He turns out to not be the super-genius they were hoping for, but instead a bumbling perpetual student with no career advancement in sight.
- Double Subverted: The team decides to bring on Devon after hearing he's got three PhDs. He turns out to not be the super-genius they were hoping for, but instead a bumbling perpetual student with no career advancement in sight... until they get into a sticky situation that Devon manages to MacGyver his way out of using his expertise.
- Parodied: Devon claims to have multiple PhDs and uses that knowledge to distract a security guard that the heroes need to sneak past. He does this by... walking up to her and seducing her. Turns out "PhD" means something else
to Devon. - Zig-Zagged: Devon has a multi-field PhD. (Essentially multiple PhDs in one.)
- Averted: Nobody has more than one PhD.
- Lampshaded: "...How much time did you spend in grad school, exactly?"
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: After Devon finishes his PhD, his friends ask him when he'll get his next one, because the geniuses in their comics have plenty. Devon incredulously tells them that he's not going through grad school again, but instead going to do some varied postdoctoral research.
- Discussed: "Why has Bob got more letters after his name than I've got in mine?"
- Conversed: ???
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