Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Difference between revisions

[[File:know-nothing_hobbes_6207nothing hobbes 6207.jpg|link=Calvin and Hobbes|rightframe]]

A [['''Know-Nothing Know-It-All]]''' is a character who insists he or she knows everything; is always right; that they were the ''actual'' original creator of an idea; and who generally has an extremely high opinion of themselves and their abilities.

Can sometimes intersect with the [[Jerkass]]. Is a frequent cause of [[Mansplaining]]. Compare [[Feigning Intelligence]]. Contrast [[Insufferable Genius]], who has the same arrogant attitude but is ''not'' incompetent. Actually listening to one may result in [[The Blind Leading the Blind]]. Compare [[Small Name, Big Ego]], who both wantwants to be recognized and appreciated, but taketakes different paths to it. For a more "physical" version, see [[Boisterous Weakling]].

{{See also: '''[[|The Internet]]'''.}}

== Anime &and Manga ==

* Autor from ''[[Princess Tutu]]'' fits this trope to a T... at least at first. He's an insufferable know-it-all who believes that he's a descendant of Drosselmeyer and also the absolute expert on the subject of his powers. He puts another character who wants to learn about his powers through a series of ridiculous 'training' exercises, including standing in the middle of a room for three days without eating or sleeping and only using "blue and black ink in a seven-to-three ratio". Eventually he's [[Break the Haughty|humiliated]] when the character he's training proves to have much more power than him... if he ever had any power at all. In the end it's slightly subverted, however -- thehowever—the character he "trained" is forced to go back to him for help because he actually ''is'' one of the best experts on Drosselmeyer.

* One episode of ''[[Lupin III]]'' featured Sherlock Holmes III among a group of detectives hired to outsmart Lupin. In the original version, he was a cultured gentleman. The Geneon [[Gag Dub]] turned him into a total nitwit who is always either stating the obvious or completely ignorant of the obvious -- forobvious—for instance, upon noticing an opulent dining fork, he proclaims it "a dining implement of some kind; a bit showy, whatever it is." Granted, the Holmes seen for most of the episode is actually Lupin in disguise, and when the man himself gets a chance to talk he seems pretty on the ball.

* [[Jack Chick]]. Beyond his tin foil hat theories about the Jesuits founding communism as part of a centuries-long plot to get Russian gold, he even manages to get very basic facts wrong. Like claiming that Kaiser Wilhelm II was Catholic.<ref>Wilhelm and the Hohenzollerns had been Protestant - first Lutherans, then Calvinists, then ''Altpreussische Union'' (an amalgamation of the two) - for ca. 400 years.</ref>

* Friend Owl from the Disney's ''[[Bambi (Disney film)|Bambi]]''. The 'advice' he gives Bambi and his friends is actually terrible advice to give to young animals. Fortunately, it mostly gets ignored once "twitterpation" sets in.

* Jasper in ''[[101 Dalmatians|One Hundred and One Dalmatians]]''. His shtick with Horace is that Horace hits upon what's really going on and then Jasper emphatically calls him an idiot for getting such a stupid idea.

{{quote| '''Wanda''': To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people! I've known sheep that could outwit you. I've worn dresses with higher [[You Fail the IQ Test|IQs]]. But you think you're an intellectual, don't you, ape?<br />

'''Otto''': Apes don't read philosophy.<br />

* Paul, the "pseudo-intellectual" in the recent [[Woody Allen]] film ''[[Midnight in Paris]]'' acts like an expert on general Parisian art and culture, but is proven wrong several times. It doesn't stop him though.

* ''[[Gran Torino]]'': Invoked and played straight: Just after Walt accuses Father Janovich of being this after hearing his wife's funeral speech, Father Janovitch asks him what Walt knows. Walt realizes that he knows plenty about ''death'', but not a lot about ''life.''

{{quote| '''WALT:''' '' [[Meaningless Meaningful Words|'Death is bittersweet? Bitter in the pain, sweet in the salvation.’ ]]'' [["The Reason You Suck" Speech|That’s what you know of life and death? Good God, it’s pathetic.]]<br />

'''FATHER JANOVICH''': [[Let's See You Do Better|What do you know, Mr. Kowalski?]]<br />

'''WALT:''' ''Plenty. [[The Korean War|I lived with death for three years in Korea.]] [[War Is Hell|We shot people, we stabbed them with bayonets,]] [[Moral Event Horizon|we hacked seventeen-year-old kids to death with shovels, for Christ’s sake]]. [[Shell Shocked Senior|I did things that won’t leave me till the day I die, horrible things, things I have to live with.]]''<br />

'''FATHER JANOVICH''': ''And what about life?''<br />

'''WALT:''' [[Beat|has to think for a second. He struggles with his answer:]] ''Well... I survived the war... got married... and raised a family''.<br />

'''FATHER JANOVICH:''' ''[["The Reason You Suck" Speech|Sounds like you know more about death than you do living.]]''<br />

* Mary from ''[[Pride and Prejudice]]'' can be read as one. The book implies that while she studies hard, she doesn't take in much and can learn the mechanics but not the soul of what she studies. It's shown most during the brief times she's allowed to talk, where she almost always moralizes about obvious things with all the arrogance and pride of someone making a great discovery.

{{quote| ''Well ya see, Norm, it's like this. A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, [[You Fail Biology Forever|regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine]]. That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers.''}}

*:* As a trivia note, Cliff was not part of the original ''Cheers'' concept. He was added when [[John Ratzenberger]] convinced the producers that they needed a typical bar know-it-all. His improvised performance at an audition sealed the deal.

*:* From time to time, he did actually get things right, and on other some other occasions he was cut off before he actually spewed anything that was incorrect.

*:* Diane Chambers and Frasier Crane, in contrast, were the [[Insufferable Genius]] foil to Cliff.

*:* John Ratzenberger, who played Cliff, said that Cliff, according to Cliff, was "the wing nut that held civilization together." According to Ratzenberger, Cliff is just a winged nut.

* In a slight departure, [[Stephen Colbert]] of ''[[The Colbert Report]]'' portrays himself as an extremely far-right Republican [[Know-Nothing Know-It-All]].

* Kathleen from ''[[Degrassi Junior High]]'' is a borderline case. She really does know more than the rest of the cast, but she's such a [[Control Freak]] that this knowledge is rarely relevant to anything. She drives a science fair judge crazy by reciting every stack of facts she knows, never giving her partner a chance to talk, and is shocked when that doesn't earn her first prize. A [[Running Gag]] on the show is that when Caitlin (the overachieving [[School Newspaper Newshound]]) needs to come down to earth a bit, it always happens by Kathleen doing something better than her -- whichher—which is the most humiliating thing possible.

* In ''[[The Muppet Show]]'', Sam the Eagle claimsis toa value culturesnobbish, butarrogant infellow who dislikes the show’s “low-brow” nature and strives for more “cultured” entertainment with more “dignity and class”. In reality, he's a complete ignoramus with the arts. For instance, he didn't recognize the world famous ballet dancer, Rudolph Nureyev, in street clothes (and thought beforehand that Nureyev was an opera singer), thought [[William Shakespeare]] was a composer who wrote ''[[The Sound of Music]]'' and that [[Beethoven]] was a playwright. He has no idea who [[Elton John]] is, criticizing the way Sir Elton dresses, and when Kermit tells him that [[Mozart]] wore a wig, high heels, and silk stockings, Sam swears that [[The Bet|if Kermit can prove it, he’ll eat his hat]]. Sam loses that bet when Scooter produces a painting of Mozart that, ironically, Elton John had just given him.

{{quote| '''Charlie:''' This bar runs on trash. It's totally green now.<br />

'''Dennis:''' How is burning trash green?<br />

'''Charlie:''' I could stick it in a landfill, where it's gonna stay for millions of years, or I could burn it up and let it disappear into the sky where it turns into stars.<br />

{{quote| 'Yes, my friends, do you realize you can live to be a 127 years old... ''if'' you listen to Petrov?<br />

* This was one of Lucy's main traits in earlier ''[[Peanuts]]'' strips. LikeShe claimingthinks thethat windsnow wasfalls causedup, byfir trees sneezingliterally have fur on them, and that a chain line is so that climbers can all fall of mountains and die together instead of it having the exact opposite purpose (so that the climber falling doesn't fall to his death because the others are holding him up).

* ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'': Calvin's dad does this sometimes when Calvin asks him questions, but he's doing it on purpose. Like claiming the wind was caused by trees sneezing. Watterson's commentary says that he assumes it must be a great temptation for real parents not to abuse their power for pranks.

** Despite the picture above, Hobbes is not usually an example: [[Everybody Hates Math|math just isn't his strong suit]]. Why Calvin keeps asking him for help after all the bad grades he must get is something of a mystery. [[Fridge Brilliance|Possibly because he's in Calvin's head, and no smarter than Calvin at his best.]] [[Word of God]] states that one reality is Calvin's immature point of view, while the second is an adult point of view, and [[Shrug of God|the reader can decide which is true]].

* The character of Dottore in classic [[Commedia Dell'Arte]] is often played as smugly satisfied with his own learning, despite his ineffectiveness. In a script that cast him as a medical doctor, for example, he would speak perfect Latin, but his patients would all die.

{{quote| By the way, Rinnosuke's supposed vast storage of knowledge comes almost entirely out of thin air. Indeed, he doesn't know nearly as much as he thinks he does. If you read closely, you'll notice a lot of wild, meta ideas, but I think that's supposed to be the joke.}}

* King Steve from ''[[8-Bit Theater (Webcomic)|8-Bit Theater]]''. Completely insane, but how do you argue with someone who "invented inventing"?

{{quote| '''Judge:''' *translated from Spanish* <Innocent><br />

{{quote| That was precisely what I was going to say myself.}}

** On the surface Ruby may seem like this, but she does indeed seem to know exactly what to say, but hold it back to let whoever the other person is think it's their idea.

** Incidentally, as part of a [[Brick Joke]], turns out Wumbo might have been a real word in Bikini Bottom, but one which fell into such disuse, only a old man like Mermaid Man can remember it (How Patrick knew about it is never explained). Then again, he is senile.

{{quote| "You pretend you're some profound intellectual but you're not"}}

* Comment threads for any political blog or news story are littered with [[Know-Nothing Know-It-All|Know Nothing Know It Alls]] and [[Opinion Myopia]]. Expect to see plenty of copy-and-paste activism, long-disproved conspiracy theories, or repetition of whatever buzzword the major political parties are currently trying to spread.

* The controversy behind ''[[Mass Effect]]''. Despite [[Did Not Do the Research|never actually playing the game]], blogger Kevin McCullough made such statements such as "Mass Effect can be customized to sodomise whatever, whomever, however, the game player wishes," and "with its ‘over the net’ capabilities virtual orgasmic rape is just the push of a button away". He then hastily backtracked his position, admitting he never played the game, but still had the arrogance to claim his position [[Know-Nothing Know-It-All|still stands]]. Martha MacCullum then brought this "controversy" to Fox Network, and along with Cooper Lawrence, made false claims about the game being interactive porn and marketed towards children, again, despite [[Did Not Do the Research|never actually playing or seeing the game]].

* ''[[Night Trap]]'' was a game where you are working behind the scenes of a mansion's security trap system to capture a bunch of [[Our Vampires Are Different|ninja-looking vampires]] in hopes to get them before they get the [[Distressed Damsel in Distress|girls in the slumber party]]. You're protecting both them and one of the agents undercover in this party for the entirety of the game, switching through cameras every once in a while to catch the bad guys or listen to important clues. No problems, nothing terribly explicit. However, the game was pulled off the shelves until given a higher rating by radical feminist groups because apparently they said (more or less) it was a game where you're a criminal who hijacked the house, kidnapping and raping scantily-clad teenage girls using all the elaborate traps and sex toys for the ultimate fun in serial rapist technology (never mind that, again, you're supposed to trap the <s>ninjas</s> ''vampires'', '''not''' the ''girls''). And the best part? [[Did Not Do the Research|They all openly admitted that they hadn't played or researched the game beyond knowing its name and probably the vaguest sense of the story]]. These same people, however, still act as if they know more than even the ''actors''. Yeah, great...

* ''Very'' common amongst so-called (and often self-described) "experts" in sports journalism. Their analysis tends to be a mixture of opinion no more founded in factual evidence than any two morons arguing in a bar, and for all their alleged insider knowledge, the average fan tends to be [http://forums.footballnation.com/showthread.php/1225 at least as apt to correctly predict the outcome of a sporting event as someone who is paid to be an 'expert'].{{Dead link}}.