Took a Level In Dumbass: Difference between revisions

May result in a typical [[Idiot Hero]] degenerating into [[Too Dumb to Live]]. Contrast [[Took a Level In Badass]] and [[Dumbass No More]].

== Anime and Manga ==

** The degradation arguably occurred before that, considering how Gourry's dumbass swordsman persona was apparently all an act in the original novels.

* ''[[Code Geass]]'': Ohgi, after falling for Villetta. It's so bad that thanks partly to him, {{spoiler|Lelouch finishes crossing the [[Despair Event Horizon]]}}, which causes {{spoiler|Lelouch}} to implement the {{spoiler|[[Thanatos Gambit|Zero Requiem]]}}.

* ''[[Ranma One Half]]'': Genma. At the beginning of the series, he's lazy, doesn't think things through, and isn't the brightest bulb on the circuit, but is for the most part a competent martial artist who, despite some (admittedly quite serious) blunders, has trained his son to be an incredibly skilled martial artist. As the manga goes on, he becomes increasingly stupid and incompetent, with only one bright spot during the Ryu arc.

* ''[[Death Note (Manga)|Death Note]]'':

** In fact, ''[[Idiot Ball|everyone]]'' on ''Heroes'' gets this, with nominal good guys Mohinder, Peter and especially Hiro getting the worst of it.

** The villains too. Adam Monroe goes from being a coldly calculating bad ass with mad samurai skillz to a guy who meekly allows powerless brainless thug Knox to take him to see Arthur Petrelli. Arthur himself goes from an [[Evil Overlord]] big on the "You have outlived our usefulness" who was genre savvy enough to take out everyone who could oppose him to being a dumb ass who stands around and does nothing while Sylar has a bullet aimed at him. The German in the graphic novels was a vicious amoral killer who knew how to use his powers in clever and brutal ways but in the show he's an idiot who just does nothing while Knox lumbers over to him and slams his fist through his chest. Candice goes from being a smart and sadistic villainess to being stupid enough to let her guard down around Sylar. Elle has the exact same thing happen to her.

* Kelly Bundy from ''[[Married With Children]]''. The more her intelligence decreased, the more the show's quality increased in direct proportion.

** Hilariously subverted in the episode "Hi, I.Q.," in which she accomplishes what Al couldn't--assembling his workshop bench. Which could just suggest she is simply [[Book Dumb]].

*** The character changes between series are all justified because it is a different Baldrick in each one.

* Matthew Brock from ''[[News Radio]]'' is another example; in the show's first season he seemed relatively normal and competent (he even secretly was {{spoiler|a registered dentist}}), but by the third or fourth season he came across as either mentally retarded or an eight-year old in a man's body. Jimmy James to an extent too, although that was more of Taking a Level in Craziness than Dumbness. Both characters were a lot funnier and more interesting due to these changes, of course, due to the quality of the writing & acting.

* Radar O'Reilly of ''[[MASH the Series|M*A*S*H]]'' could be regarded as a variation of this. He didn't get ''dumber'', per se, but more [[Man Child|childlike and naïve]] as the series progressed. There's an element of [[Ping Pong Naivete]] there too, however, as he was apparently still savvy enough to make deals for supplies with other units, keep all the paperwork straight, and otherwise serve as [[Hypercompetent Sidekick]] to Colonel Blake (and, later, Colonel Potter).

** Possibly justified. A recurring theme of the series was that people found odd and near-insane ways to cope with what they were experiencing. Radar's steady retreat towards childhood is actually one psychological response people have to stress in the real world.

** Radar's character regressed in a lot of ways. Early in the series, he was seen smoking cigars, drinking Henry's booze, and had several references to him peeping in the nurses' showers and enjoying developing their chest x-rays. As the show progressed, he got dumber, more naive, and less experienced to the point that even grape Nehi was a strong drink for him.

* Nate Archibald on ''[[Gossip Girl]]''. While he wasn't as intelligent as Chuck or Blair in season one he was still a guy of normal intelligence. By season four even his actor is complaining about what a moron he has become.

** In fairness, he's done so much pot in the last four seasons it actually does make sense that he's dumber.

== Newspaper Comics ==

* ''[[FoxTrot]]'': Roger, the father figure. In the earliest years of the strip, he was a competent enough patriarch, though a bit harried and somewhat of a [[Ted Baxter]]. As the strip went through [[Reverse Cerebus Syndrome]], his intelligence dropped severely and his occasional bouts of incompetence (he was a [[Walking Techbane]] from the first month onward) became exaggerated to match.

* ''[[Garfield]]'': Jon Arbuckle, Garfield's owner. He started as a perfectly ordinary young man. Come the early-2000's, and he's a total moron who finds interest in mundane activities, mistakes a sudoku for a crossword, and mistakes an upside down restaurant menu for French. It was around the same time he was [[Flanderization|Flanderized]] into being the [[Straw Loser]] to Garfield.

== Webcomics ==

* In ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' Sam "Da Man" Sein's intelligence has been plummeting ever since he became a vampire.

** Bikke the pirate was actually fairly ruthless and cunning when he first appeared (well, compared to Garland and the heroes, anyway). At this point, his intelligence is viewed as on par with [[The Ditz|Fighter's]]. In fact, he's probably worse since he's not even literate.

** D'rizzl actually ''inverted'' this trope, by taking levels in Smartass. Complete with a 50-point IQ hike.

* ''[[Homestar Runner]]'': Homestar himself. Which makes his [[Smart Ball|random moments of intelligence]] all the more hilarious. He once recited Coulomb's Law when asked "What is 2 plus 2?" (when Strong Sad reiterates the question, Homestar naturally gets it wrong), and actually outsmarted Strong Bad by getting him to say something stupid.

* The reviewers of [[That Guy With the Glasses]], whose characters are often not the smartest or most stable people anyhow, all seem to take stupid pills for the annual [[Massive Multiplayer Crossover]] anniversary films and forget about the intelligence, resources or super-powers they've displayed in their own series. This is more or less justified by being a kind of [[Recursive Canon]], where the characters have made their videos instead of living them, but are still those characters instead of the people who actually play them.

* ''[[King of the Hill]]''

** All of Hank Hill's friends seem to slowly lose their precious remaining IQ points over the course of the series -- resulting in dumber and more outrageous schemes that Hank must eventually fix.

*** Peggy was bad at Spanish at the beginning of the series, in fact, she actually got a little better as it went on. The rest here is spot on, though.

* This happened to Fry in ''[[Futurama (Animation)|Futurama]]''. In the earliest episodes, where he was supposed to be a [[Fish Out of Temporal Water]] and stories would mostly focus around him adapting to life in the 31st century, he was a fairly average guy with a dash of [[Cloudcuckoolander]] and a few moments of genuine cleverness. As the show progressed, he adapted to his surroundings much faster than the writers intended, and so he devolved into a gibbering manchild [[Ping Pong Naivete|unless the writers needed him to say something profound]].

* There was an episode of ''[[Re Boot]]'', where Enzo [[Exact Words|wished to be smarter than everyone else]]. So [[Literal Genie|the system]] underclocked everyone else, making them stupider so that Enzo would be the smartest person in Mainframe.

* In season one of ''[[Frisky Dingo]]'', the villain Killface is intelligent, educated and sophisticated, by contrast to the Idiot Hero Awesome X. A lot of the comedy from Killface stems from the contrast between their personae. Come season two, they're both complete morons.

{{quote| '''Fuzzy:''' Come back here an' git off mah proppity!!}}

* Daffy Duck for ''[[The Looney Tunes Show]]''. In the original shorts he was fairly intelligent and clever, but occasionally gullible and was often defeated due to his greed and selfishness. Here, he's a lazy idiot who can't do anything right and fails to answer even the simplest trivia questions correctly.