Too Clever by Half: Difference between revisions

 

This is a character archetype. These characters:

# Are extremely smart and/or good at whatever it is they do.

# Know it, and are probably [[Insufferable Genius|pretty arrogant]] (in fact, they tend to think they're even better than they are).

 

Usually this character is the hero (though generally not [[The Hero]]); they're often a [[Foil]] to [[Too Dumb to Fool]]. If they have [[Blue Blood]], they could be an [[Upper Class Wit]].

{{examples}}

* Kiyomaro Takamine in ''[[Konjiki no Gash Bell]]''.

* Kisuke Urahara and Sousuke Aizen from ''[[Bleach]]''.

* Taikobo from Hoshin Engi. He's a brilliant strategist who once managed to save an entire village by getting them drunk so they couldn't fight an army that came to capture them and then killed the leader, causing the army to scatter. He's famous for manipulating most of the cast with ease...but the first time he met Dakki, he ended up being enslaved and forced to watch members of his clan get thrown in a pit filled with crocs and snakes, one of them calling him pathetic. His ego went down in size after surviving that.

 

* ''[[Megamind]]''. Megamind's intelligence is hyper-advanced compared to Earth standards, he's a genius inventor, and his hobby is creating grandiose revenge schemes against the kid who bullied him in elementary school. Worth mentioning that these schemes don't just fail, they ''fail''.

* Katharine Parker in ''[[Working Girl]]'', a high-ranking business woman that speaks fluent German and views herself as a trailblazer for women in the business world, with [[Insufferable Genius|a giant head to match.]] When it's discovered that she stole a brilliant idea from her equally intelligent secretary, she's promptly (and satisfyingly) fired and disgraced.

 

== Literature ==

{{quote|"My game plan all my life has been to demand acceptance of this," a vague wave down the length, or shortness, of his body, "because I was a smart-ass little bastard who could think rings around the opposition, and prove it time after time."}}

* ''[[Discworld]]'':

** There's a phrase that appears in Discworld novels fairly often (though it's considerably older) that actually describes this: "So sharp he kept cutting himself, as my grandmother used to say."

** Ponder Stibbons as well; his impediments are the rest of the staff.

** The {{spoiler|Klatchian}} mastermind behind the international incident in ''Jingo'' may qualify as this; he is certainly clever, and his plan would have worked very well, apart from one small problem: {{spoiler|his opponent is [[Magnificent Bastard|Vetinari]].}} As a result of this little oversight, his failure is truly monumental and extremely humiliating.

** The cleverness of these characters actually provides a good contrast with Vetinari, who is indisputably Discworld's premiere [[Magnificent Bastard]]. On the ''very'' rare occasions when he does make a mistake, Vetinari always recovers and learns from them. Also, he knows better than to push his luck, (his family motto is translated as "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"), and has thus {{spoiler|so far}} avoided any spectacular cock-ups.

* The eponymous character from ''[[Artemis Fowl]]''.

* Locke from ''[[Gentleman Bastard Sequence|The Lies of Locke Lamora]]'' and its sequel by Scott Lynch. He spends his life running elaborate (and usually successful) cons on nobles while posing as a petty thief. The end of the second book covers {{spoiler|a massive failure; he's spent the entire book on a plot to rob a casino, and it goes off flawlessly -- except that the paintings he steals are fakes, put out for the express purpose of being stolen.}}

* Kendra in ''[[Beastly]]''. She has a history of using her magic to punish rotten people like Kyle, but it bites her in the ass when it attracts too much attention and gets her in trouble with other witches. While her grand plan to improve Kyle via the curse she puts on him ''does'' work perfectly (it's designed so that he really can't break it without improving himself), it's also what convinces the other witches to banish her from ever going home. {{spoiler|Leastwise, until Kyle accidentally puts a loophole into the spell that lets her go home after he breaks the curse.}} In the book ''Bewitched'', Kendra apparently had a knack for this even before she had a lot of experience as a witch.

* Themistocles Papadapoulos in the bridge book series ''[[Bridge in The Menagerie]]''. He delights in deception plays, which frequently confuse opponents into making the one play that can defeat his contracts or ensure theirs when he's defending. One chapter of the second book has an entire section on him called "Too Clever By Half."

 

== Live-Action TV ==

** Russell Hantz, for example, has some savviness as to the mechanics of the game, finding Immunity Idols before receiving ''any'' clues to their location for example - but lost, three times, for being completely insufferable, not grasping that you have to avoid getting on the other players' bad sides. (The third time he played, his tribe was aware of his previous two times and made a point to throw him out fast so they wouldn't have to deal with him.)

** "Boston" Rob, on both this show and ''[[The Amazing Race]]'' is another great example. He definitely has a talent for this stuff, but... well, on ''Race'' he decided to screw with other players by making them think there was an earlier flight. While he gloated about sending them into a panicked search for a nonexistent flight, ''[[Accidental Truth|they found one]]''.

 

== Theatre ==

* The eponymous character in Marlowe's ''[[Doctor Faustus]]'' is one of the best examples of this trope. His own brilliance in all things academic (and belief that he can do even more than he has) lead him to explore [[Things Man Was Not Meant to Know]]. The results are predictable.

 

== Video Games ==

* ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'' has Mr. Robert Edwin House, President, CEO and Sole Proprietor of New Vegas. He's a [[Properly Paranoid]] genius owner of a [[Mega Corp]] who firmly believes [[Democracy Is Bad]] (not entirely untrue, considering the circumstances) and defended Las Vegas from nuclear attack to rebuild it to a point of glory, but is incredibly arrogant and refuses to believe that he could be wrong. He also thinks there's no question that he should be the sole [[Insistent Terminology|autocrat]] of New Vegas.

* [[Mass Effect 2]] introduces Miranda Lawson: as she and her sister were [[Designer Babies]] engineered by their megalomaniacal [[Truly Single Parent]] to be [[Born Winner]]s, [[Instant Expert]] [[TV Genius]] barely ''begins'' to describe her capabilities. Lawson drops in on Shepard's resurrection without any knowledge of the process and becomes the project's leader through sheer ability in less than a ''week''. Of course, being unfamiliar with failure, she never sees her mistakes coming: her statement that "any [[Mind Over Matter|Biotic]] could be a [[Barrier Warrior]]" turns out to be completely in error - it takes a [[Psycho Prototype]] or a [[Cool Old Lady]] to do it - she gets an ally killed if her advice is followed. She is actually cursed with being ''aware'' of this trope, resulting in an ''inferiority'' complex - she attributes all her successes to her father's design, and only takes credit for her failures.

 

== Web Comics ==

* Suspiria, [[Insufferable Genius]] mage prodigy from ''[[Flipside]]''. She really is a phenomenally powerful mage, but given her youth, she lacks both the experience and stamina of other mages of her rank, making her a much less formidable opponent than she should be. This has bitten her in the ass twice, in-story (the first with tragic consequences, the second costing her the other main characters' good will and respect and any sympathy the former granted her).

* In ''[[Sinfest]]'', [https://web.archive.org/web/20140209192340/http://sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2198 Satan goes angel hunting. So the angels go Satan fishing.]

 

== Web Original ==

* Many [[Mad Scientist|devisors and gadgeteers]] in the ''[[Whateley Universe]]'' get this, but the biggest of all must be Jobe Wilkins, Prince of Karedonia. A literal child prodigy even before he started breaking the laws of reality—and a first-class [[Jerkass]]—he sets about making a nanotech formula to transform anyone into his ideal wife. And then he [[Oh Crap|injects]] [[Epic Fail|himself]] [[Gender Bender|with]] [[Gone Horribly Right|it.]]

 

== Western Animation ==

* The title character of ''[[Invader Zim]]'' is an [[Evil Genius]], smarter than all the other invaders, but his [[Insufferable Genius|massive ego]] and faulty programming prevent him from taking over Earth.

* ''[[Young Justice (animation)|Young Justice]]'': Nobody could say Amanda Waller is an incompetent warden... but at the end of "Terrors", [[The Alcatraz]] falls under the control of the Light, there was an almost succesful [[Great Escape]], and she is replaced with Dr. Hugo Strange, one of their agents.

 

== Real Life ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Characters As Device]]

[[Category:Character Flaw Index]]