Ping-Pong Naivete: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

A character who, due to previous experiences, should know better but doesn't. But later, he displays that he does. But then he doesn't, and so on, and so forth.

This is extensively used either for quick, cheap momentary jokes and [[Gag Series|gags]], or to hold the plot of the particular episode together. It also helps [[Status Quo Is God|maintain the status quo]]. Expect to find it in a series with inconsistent character development and [[Negative Continuity]].

 

{{examples}}

 

== Anime and Manga ==

 

* Nao Kanzaki from ''[[Liar Game]]'', to an annoying extent. While at first she was thrown into a world of lies and tricks, despite being "honest," she doesn't seem to understand the point of the Liar Game. First tricked into giving 100 million yen to a "trustworthy" teacher, then almost screwed [[The Chessmaster|Chessmaster Akiyama's plan]] by making a part of the team the most unreliable person, Mr. X, in the round and then trusting said unreliable person, after she had learned of Mr. X's true nature. Between her mistakes, she shows some bits of understanding her situation, but she ''forgets'' them when it's important. If it weren't for Akiyama, she'd be screwed by now.

** In the drama series this is very much true. However, in the manga series it becomes less as time passes. In the current round, she managed to {{spoiler|see through Yokoya's so-called psychic powers by putting something other than money in her suitcase (a teddybear) which he obviously couldn't know about}}. Also, when the team threatens to fall apart she convinces everyone to keep working together.

*** Currently, [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|she pissed off Yokoya]] [["The Reason You Suck" Speech|by telling him that he's such a wimp since he cannot stick with his own philosophy of being "dominator"]]. AND that after [[Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids|he cornered Akiyama's idealism]] by [[Hannibal Lecture|telling him that he can't stick with idealism]] of making LGT the enemy.

* Atsushi Arisawa from ''[[Kusatta Kyoushino Houteishiki]]'' is a [[Genius Ditz]] who consistently gets some of the best grades ''in the country'', was invited to an elite highschool in Tokyo ''without'' an entrance exam and who sometimes has enough insight on other people's relationships to identify core problems and underlying psychologies that no one else sees. Unfortunately he has no idea that he's actually that smart, goes to a highschool for delinquents, doesn't see why he was invited to an elite highschool in the first place, completely misses the [[Oblivious to Love|most obvious aspects of most people's relationships]], and has the surface mentality and naivety of a small child on a sugar high! Yes, this is very frustrating!

 

== Comic Books ==

 

* Besides his famous [[Sherlock Holmes]] stories, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a series of humorous adventure stories about [[Large Ham]] Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard. While in some stories, Gerard is rather clever and appears competent despite his inflated opinion of himself. On the other hand, he is a dolt in others and very much an [[Unreliable Narrator]].

 

== Live Action TV ==

* Vala Mal Doran's knowledge of popular culture in ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' is inconsistent in the first few episodes of season 10.

* Summer Roberts from ''[[The OC]]'' swings wildly back and forth between being a clueless, uniformed airhead and a savvy student who aced her SAT scores and got into Brown.

** A particularly severe example is the episode when, very late in the show's run, and after hundreds of scenes in restaurants, the aliens finally figure out what "tipping" is.

*** This is worked into the plot, however, as Mary is horrified to find out that Dick hasn't been tipping the waiters when they've been going out. Suddenly all the rudeness on their return visits makes sense to her.

** And it even happens to House himself. He's deeply cynical about the state of things most of the time but when it comes to dealing with a [[Stockholm Syndrome|hostage-taker with a gun]], [[Screw the Rules, I Have Money|Vogler]], [[Disproportionate Retribution|Tritter]], [[New Old Flame|Stacy]] and sometimes problems with [[Ho Yay|Wilson]] and [[Slap Slap Kiss|Cuddy]], he's naive and mainly likes to keep his head stuck in denial-land.

* In another alien example: [[Mork and Mindy|Mork]]. One moment he mentions he still doesn't know where babies come from, the next he's making subtle sexual innuendos. This is probably the result of [[Robin Williams]] sticking to the script half the time and [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]] for the other half. It got particularly bad in the second season when [[Executive Meddling|ABC wanted Mork to become more "hip"]].

* ''[[Bones]]'' demonstrates this perfectly. She is baffled by standard cultural references that everybody else (Booth, Cam, etc) understands while constantly not understanding human motivations, yet she is a best selling author with believable characters in her books who supposedly comprehend those same cultural references and have those same motivations that she doesn't understand in her real life.

*** Perhaps justified in that, especially by his Eleventh incarnation, the Doctor has a fantastic quantity of knowledge about the universe and just like is often the case with even normal humans, the more you know in general the harder it is to at least immediately recall specific pieces of information.

* The titular character from ''[[Sherlock]]''. In one episode he's so oblivious John has to explain to him what a date is, while in another he is able to successfully manipulate another character by appealing to her romantic feelings for him. And then in another episode he correctly deduces that this same character is in love with someone, but is very surprised to find out that it's him.

 

== Professional Wrestling ==

 

 

== Video Games ==

 

** That's because case 5 was tacked on for an [[Updated Rerelease]].

* Natalia from ''[[Tales of the Abyss]]''. She's a bit spoiled, but otherwise elegant and conscious of her responsibilities as a princess. This doesn't stop her from believing every single tall tale that Anise tells her, including the ones about Van's eyebrow powers. Yeah. Eyebrow beams.

 

== Webcomics ==

** Maybe she's just really bad at Sense Motive, and thus easily fooled by Bluff checks. She's pretty smart otherwise, with the minor exception that she's not real clear on the differences between humans and sprites.

*** [[Fish Out of Water]] is the explanation that is invoked with her. It works better than you might think; she looks extra-foolish from our point of view since we know what she's getting wrong, but that's from ''our'' point of view. Of course, this is not to say it doesn't get done in an exaggerated way as well.

*** Elan does this pretty often; he usually isn't competent at much besides [[Pungeon Master|punning]] and tends to [[Idiot Hero|miss obvious things for the sake of humor]], but he occasionally [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0816.html picks up on things that flew over the heads of his smarter friends] for no apparent reason.

* The cast of ''[[Homestuck]]'' are all thirteen years old or about that age. Sometimes they act in extremely adult ways, but other times they remind you that they are children. John watches R-rated action movies and has a huge crush on Liv Tyler (and arguably [[Nicolas Cage]]) but when Karkat implies Vriska likes him, he freaks out and says he's never felt that way about anyone before.

 

 

== Web Original ==

** This also happens to most of the reviewers that take part in the anniversary events. Part of it is for [[Rule of Funny]] and the plot, but a lot is because Doug and Rob Walker write the script and unfortunately aren't able to incorporate the character traits and continuities of all of the actors.

 

== Western Animation ==

* In ''[[The Simpsons]]'', due to being a 10-year-old boy, Bart fits the trope when it comes to things like sex, but that doesn't stop him from constantly making crude jokes and innuendo. In one episode, Homer sat him down and they had [[The Talk]], yet in a later episode, this exchange occurred:

'''Darcy''': Wow, you really are 10. }}

** Also,

** While this trope often applies to Bart, it should be noted that the episode where Homer gives him "the talk" takes place two years in the future. It wouldn't affect his knowledge of sex in the current day.

** Likewise, Lisa switches between world-weary cynicism and childlike naivete as the plot demands. In one instance, within seconds - she hurls a bucket of red paint at Krusty (who's wearing a coat made from some kind of animal skins), screams "Fur is murder!" then follows it with "When's the Krusty movie coming out?"

** And of course, there's Homer, whose borderline retardation is seasoned with odd [[Author Filibuster]] moments of uncharacteristic eloquence.

** To "simulate" the gas buildup in his lab, he used a ''balloon'' to represent himself. In other episodes/shorts, he didn't know what the "strange protrusions" all over his body were (he had the chicken pox) and tried to do a search through the entire animal kingdom for the "species" known as... the ''girl''.

* Stewie of ''[[Family Guy]]'' has always varied between someone that apparently had an adult's knowledge of the world, frequently showing knowledge of popular culture and sex (he once knew how his parent were going to make another child and understood exactly how the biological function was), and being fairly erudite but possessing little knowledge that a baby wouldn't (he didn't understand his birth even after his first birthday).

** Not particularly well, but hey.

*** Zoidberg's lack of medical knowledge was [[Hand Wave|Scotch Taped]] recently. Apparently his doctorate is in [[Not That Kind of Doctor|art history]].

** Hilariously played with in one episode with a blatant example of [[Obfuscating Stupidity]]:

'''Starfire''': "Your Earth ways are strange to me. Please, what is this 'so-fa' of which you speak?" }}

** "What's to understand? You get a boner, slap her titties around, stick it inside her and pee."

** In "Marjorine" the boys thought the girls' paper fortune teller could actually predict the future, yet they were able to build and operate hi-tech machinery to study it with.

* Almost the entire second season of ''[[Drawn Together]]'' was dedicated to doing this with half-retarded [[Ensemble Darkhorse]] Captain Hero. The sheltered Princess Clara is an equally big offender.

* XR from ''[[Buzz Lightyear of Star Command]]'' is savvy enough to sneak into a large casino and cheat it out of a substantial amount of money, yet he willingly hands over all his petty cash to a street hustler.

* [[King of the Hill|Hank Hill]] has this about certain issues. In one episode he mentions a bank teller who is "in between genders" indicating some sort of awareness of the issue, in another when Peggy tells him that her new friend Carolyn is really a man (drag queen though as opposed to transgendered) Hank is genuinely baffled by the very concept, reacting with "Now wait a minute, that doesn't make any sense!" and continues to think of Carolyn as a woman for the rest of the episode, even going so far as to believe that, without her female clothes, she must be "Carolyn's boyfriend."

** Perhaps he knows, but he's in denial?

* Ickis of ''[[Aaahh Real Monsters]]''.

* Otto and Twister from [[Rocket Power]], with Twister being more the naive one. One particular episode [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] this in effect; the gang convince Eddie (Prince of The Netherworld) to skate in his empty pool as long as they keep it to themselves and leave before his parents get home. Twister, for his part, keeps quiet, even when his brother Lars comes to make mischief. Otto on the other hand, kept bragging about it to strangers like it was a party, even to Lars. Reggie's [[What the Hell, Hero?]] one liner sums it up perfectly.

* ''[[Animaniacs]]'' has Skippy Squirrel, who switches between an innocent [[Foil]] to his Aunt Slappy and a companion to her shenanigans whenever the episode calls for one or the other.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Contrived Stupidity Tropes]]

[[Category:Stupidity Tropes]]