Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Difference between revisions

** {{spoiler|From what we hear about Harry's mother, she was just as dangerous as her son and father.}}

* From the ''[[Discworld]]'' series:

** A constant example given are the wizards; Seen one way, they are rather large, simple minded men who like big dinners and tend to argue with each other, with a tendency to regard the end of the world as a minor curiosity. In another light, they are an elite group of men who are given quite a bit of leeway in return for consistently and conscientiously refraining from causing the laws of causality and physics to metaphorically do handstands and jump through hoops. It's not difficult at all to refrain from turning people into small amphibians when you can't, but it's much much harder when you know exactly how easy it is. On top of that, the natural number of wizards is one, and the arguments they have are harmless ways of expressing that, rather than, as it was in the past, all out thaumonuclear war. There are places on the Disc where the wizards weren't quite so harmless and simple minded; grass may never grow there again and you're lucky to leave one the same shape as you went in.

* Lennie from ''[[Of Mice and Men]]'' may be a mentally impaired [[Gentle Giant]], but that doesn't mean you can just push him around. Curley finds out the hard way.

* Travis Touchdown, the main character of the ''[[No More Heroes]]'' series, is a very skilled swordsman, [[Made of Iron]], can move at superhuman speeds and transform into a ''tiger'', owns a [[Humongous Mecha]] the size of a large building and could probably cut an average human to pieces in the blink of an eye...if he's not too busy pleasuring himself to Moe Anime, playing video games, or clumsily hitting on his female opponents..

* The Vortigaunts in the ''[[Half Life]]'' series are an entire species of this trope. In ''Half-Life'' and its expansions they're a relatively weak mid-level enemy slaughtered by the dozens and used as manual labourers by the more powerful members of the Nihilanth's army. By ''Half-Life 2'' they are freed from their enforced servitude [[Heel Face Turn|and join Earth's]] [[La Résistance]] against the Combine, providing Gordon with cryptic statements and the occasional charge for his [[Powered Armor|HEV suit]]. At the beginning of ''Episode One'' however they render the nigh-unstoppable GMan ''[[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?|completely powerless]]'', saving Gordon and Alyx in the process, and when three of them are faced with an army of [[Big Creepy-Crawlies|Antlions]] in ''Episode Two'' they proceed to ''slaughter every last one'', then use what is essentially Antlion feces to {{spoiler|raise Alyx from the dead}}. Given that they were at the time also hunting and presumably killing the horrifically powerful Combine Advisors, hopefully they will return for the expected battle/s with them in ''Episode Three''.

* Dick Gumshoe in ''[[Ace Attorney]]''. He barely passes as a detective (and then he got Flanderised) and despite his woobiesh qualities, he deserves most of the punishment he gets for his screw ups. But when someone he cares about is in danger, like Edgeworth, Maggey or Maya, he gains a drastic burst in competence. {{spoiler|In 3-3, he's a surprisingly accurate source of information for Phoenix, gives the more important pieces of evidence to him and stands up to [[Yakuza|Tigre]] without even blinking, saving Wright and Maya from a possibly gruesome conclusion. All for his crush, Maggey.}}

** Gumshoe has fought of members of both a Yakuza crime boss and a group of Mafia thugs, showing up the next day completely uninjured.

* Zac of ''[[What the Fu (webcomic)|What the Fu]]'' obscurity may have a [[Idiot Hero|"negligible amount of clues"]], but he's a pretty competent fighter.

* Denver in ''[[Exiern]]'', usually a bumbling nerd, in fact he is a bumbling, lovable, nerd. Hurt someone he likes and he'll [http://www.exiern.com/?p=976 smash open giant solid oak doors] with his bare hands, or [http://www.exiern.com/?p=1422 rewrite the laws of magic] with a gesture.

** Though recently the creators seem to be pushing the idea that Grymm and the Masked T-Square aren't even the same person despite multiple past pages existing as proof.

* [[The Ditz|Donald]] from ''[[Dark Legacy Comics]]'' is shown to be [[Too Dumb to Live]] and is completely useless at fighting (and pretty much everything). However during a Raid Boss the group had been stuck at for three months, Nyte whispered something that caused Donald to lose it and slice his head off in a single strike.