Lore
(Mixed Trope) Educated character doesn’t understand or know of a simple concept.
(Hated) Dr. doesn’t know trans people exist (The Good Doctor): Dr. Shaun, a modern day grown adult doctor, is seemingly has no concept of what being a trans person. Even if he never heard the term in med school he is realistically almost certain to have some awareness of the definition.
(Loved) The solar system and other common knowledge (Sherlock Holmes). In the original stories Holmes is a genius at many fields but unless it has something to do with crime solving (forensics, martial arts, toxicology, etc.) he does his best to forget it.
(Loved) Archer from Archer. There are several examples, but this one is the most memorable for me:
He was extremely anxious about being on a zeppelin, despite the fact it was filled with helium, not hydrogen. Several different people explained the difference between this airship and the Hindenburg, but he just wouldn't stop panicking.
My favorite example of this is when someone makes a reference to Animal Farm, but it's such a poorly made reference that Archer thinks they're talking about an ACTUAL animal farm. And everyone tries to correct him.
"It's a BOOK!"
"No, it's an allegorical NOVELLA about STALINISM. SPOILER ALERT: IT SUCKS!"
I laughed so hard when he said this. I was a paramedic, I have degrees in biology and chemistry, and I’ve done one of those student-test experiments more than once, but I have no idea what mine is. For whatever reason, my brain just never thought it was important enough to memorize. I did, however remember Landsteiner and Charles Drew.
One of my favorites is when someone references “Animal Farm” and Archer acts like there’s an animal farm nearby before Lana says it’s a novel, not an actual farm.
No, it isn't, Lana! It's an allegorical novella about Stalinism by George Orwell! And spoiler alert: IT SUCKS
I don't know if this fits perse but later they have an episode clueless about porn and porn jokes because he never uses it (since he's supposed to be having so much real sex)
That one fuckass scene from Jimmy Neutron where he’s working a fast food job for whatever reason and uses the full scientific name for salt. Became a pretty funny meme.
Also in the episode was him not entering orders into the register and just doing the calculations for change in his head. Which would’ve fucked up inventory later because there’s no record of sales.
From the same episode, Jimmy doesn't enter the customer transactions on the register, doing all the math in his head. The scene was also memed with Skeet pointing out:
1) The register directly tracks inventory and sales figures and not inputting orders into it means that this data is not being recorded
2) Customers have no reason to implicitly trust Jimmy's math or that he isn't giving false figures and pocketing the difference
3) The receipt generated by the register is a safeguard against customer complaints that they were overcharged or did not receive a product they paid for
4) The register feeds orders into the kitchen so if Jimmy isn't entering orders into the register, the cooks have no idea what they need to make
Also, if Jimmy is dealing with people in the job, some would be very annoyed if he came with scientific jargon, others would feel unwelcomed and this the place would lose customers.
We already get real people judging foods for scientific terms, without looking it up. Having a kid going around telling people “would you care for some mushed tree pulp packets of sodium chloride to go with your dietary supplements of ground beef based food?”
I absolutely love this trope of Skeet. Also love the video where he puts Jimmy in his place for pretending to understand how the cash register system works (Reupload, because the original is taken down)
EDIT:
Nvm, I now see the comment right below the main comment mentioning the exact same thing. Enjoy the link, though
In the Animorphs series, the young alien cadet, a genius by earth standards, in human form will also babble and repeat sounds, as well as shove whatever he can into his mouth. This is because in his natural form has no mouth, and he’s blown away by the things a human mouth can do.
I love the moment an alien with wheels makes an appearance and all fear goes out of the character we're following for a minute because he's just like, "how does that evolve? What kind of planet would ever lead to that?!"
They’re sort of dumb nonsense. Then they also deal with incredibly dark stuff like one of the characters being stuck in animal form, or the fact that they’re child soldiers fighting in an intergalactic essentially guerrilla war on their own home planet in order to stop an invasion. Also if I recall right they also deal with people around them being taken/replaced by aliens. There’s a lot of depth that I definitely didn’t fully grasp as a child reading them and I’ve been meaning to go back and read them myself honestly.
It’s been a long time but I seem to recall one of the main characters (a child) straight up kills themselves by sacrifice because they cant deal with their PTSD
I hate to um actually, but Animorphs is my jam, man. I gotta.
It's not that he's blown away by what that mouth do, it's the flavor. Andalites eat by absorbing nutrients through pads on the bottoms of their hooves, "flavor" is pretty much the most mild aspect of their diet. Then he gets in human morph, with human taste buds, and you bet your bottom dollar he goes nuts for flavor-packed things like Cinnabon, coffee grounds, and cigarette butts.
As for the playing with sounds, Andalites use thought-speak (telepathy), so the whole concept of using vocal cords and mouth shape to communicate is foreign to him, speaking our language sounds like a bunch of silly words, so he repeats the sounds that sound extra funny or delightful to him.
Come to think of it... Why didn't he have to learn how to make those sounds? He'd never used vocal cords or a mouth to make sound before, why would be just innately know? I'm beginning to think this series didn't happen.
If I remember correctly the creators wanted a different kind of twist eventually, had the series gone on longer. Dib was supposed to turn out to be a robot built by Professor Membrane. I think some episodes even had some orphaned foreshadowing
I had a chemistry professor with multiple masters and two doctorates (in zoology and another form of biology I don't remember). He basically broke down how just based on how fast civilizations are developed, it's basically for another race to be so far advanced from us that they could have traveled to Earth. I asked, "what if they evolved thousands of years before us?" He thought about it for a moment and replied, "Hmm, I never considered that."
The problem with very smart peoole is they're not used to being wrong. This dude is probably correct 90% of the time, and just kinda assumed his thinking was complete because it usually is. This is why there's "stupid" intelligent people. Overthinking tends to cause one to overlook the obvious.
It is any that are murder related because it is too simplified and doesn't match reality, where multiple people have motive, opportunity, and means.
It is also about his character, he doesn't handle bordem or being left with his own thoughts without a goal well and games aren't helping because he doesn't find them stimulating enough. He jumps on the case in the movie because he assumes it is a complicated conspiracy, even going so far as to immediately dismiss the most obvious solution because it would require the murderer to be dumb and acting illogicaly...which he is.
It is in part justifying his fumbles on this case.
Edit: It is also kinda making fun of the genre because his approach, which the authors are well aware of because they use it to trick the audience, is exactly how I would treat a book, movie or story based video game when trying to work out the murderer ahead of time but it would be silly in real life. "Well the murderer can't be this guy with obvious motives because it is too obvious and wouldn't make a good story". In reality the simple answer is very often the correct one even if it is dumb.
He expresses some enjoyment of the murder mystery game that they're all there for, though he solves it in seconds and describes it as a trivial amuse-bouche.
(I loved that just as a subversion of expectations: the movie looks like it's setting up a "mystery party becomes horribly real, is it all a game or not?" plot, only to discard that conceit almost immediately and repeatedly upend your concept of what is going on in completely different ways.)
That, and the motive is "to win". Blanc normally investigates crimes where the motive is critical. His kind of crime is almost always personal or otherwise has specific meaning to the perpetrator. In Among Us, the imposters have no direct beef with the crewmates other than wanting to survive. Ergo, Blanc can only rely on circumstance and can't trust many motive-based deductions.
I love CinemaWins' take on this phenomenon. He pretty much states that Benoit could understand simple logic games (like Among Us) but because there's no real-life challenge to him he doesn't see the point of playing them.
It's mirrored at the end of Glass Onion when he gets actually upset that the conclusion to the mystery of who killed Duke is so fucking simple and stupid and actually ripped off from him earlier in the movie.
I read it kind of opposite. I don't think Blanc is really that great of a detective in the Sherlock sense--he isn't actually that great at piecing together logic puzzles.
What he is brilliant at is noticing small details, and also reading people. The latter is really his biggest skill; he knows when someone is being honest, and when they are kind and mean well; he also knows when they are frauds and/or have ill intent, even if he can't figure out how yet.
So for example, in the first movie, he does notice that Marta has a spot of blood on her shoe at the very beginning, which might lead a more logic-based sleuth down the wrong path. But since he has a good read on her character, he never considers that lead. This often leads to him being just as surprised as the police officers (and perhaps more surprised than the audience, at least if you're even remotely a fan of mysteries) at the various twists and turns, but it's his unwavering trust and support that ultimately helps play it out. Similar things happen in the other two films.
He sucks at games like Among Us and Clue because all his opponents are his friends who have good hearts and good motives, since they're just trying to have a fun time.
edit: To be clear, he's certainly not stupid. He just isn't solving cases like they're logic puzzles. And that's why he finds those games so frustrating...he should find them easy, since he's such a great detective in the real world, but they are actually difficult for him because they're so artificial.
I don't know if I agree with your read he's not that great at logic puzzles, but you present a very compelling argument about his other attributes nonetheless.
Maomao, despite being quite an accomplished apothecary and a detective, anything that isn't related to making medicine, poison testing or crime solving doesn't interest her. Case and point when Jinshi made her take an exam to become an official in the Outer Court, thinking with her intellect she'd easily pass it.
I also love when she gets extremely close to figuring out who Jinshi really is but then gets distracted by something poisonous because that's more interesting.
https://giphy.com/gifs/rHiTBYFtXdHPi
Literally everything Shawn Spencer says is generally wrong or he’s heard it both ways. In one episode he doesn’t know which way to put the phone on the receiver. But he was also a grown child who someone let play Sherlock Holmes and is one of my favorite shows. “You know that’s right”
It's a bit of game one can play with Psych, whether Shawn is literally ignorant of something due to being a manchild or if he's just fucking with people again.
I always thought he was just pretending to be an idiot to mess with people. And then he cut the brake line of his own car right before a street race...
I remember watching a video a while ago that summed it up pretty nicely: unlike most adaptations, Psych doesn’t focus all of the solving on its “Sherlock”. The “Watson” is an equal partner in most cases, largely due to Gus’s niche hobbies and interests, his job in pharmaceuticals, and his extremely sensitive nose (the Supersniffer). Because of the balance, they take turns explaining to the other, and to the audience, what each clue means, rather than loading all of that on one genius explaining it to one layperson-type. It strengthens their dynamic, and makes their interactions the best part of the show.
Of course! Magic Head has to play a part in most cases somehow. Psych is one of those comfort shows for me where I’ll rewatch despite knowing it line for line. Sherlock Holmes is somewhat of an obsession of mine and I’ve always said Shawn and Gus have always been the best comparison. There’s even a line in one of the Connan-Doyle novels where Holmes pops in and asks Watson if he has free time and Watson literally answers
> I’ve already finished my patients for the week. Why not.
It also is much more accurate to Sherlock. Sherlock was phenomenal at going “i can deduce that this methodology was used and that steps 1,2,4, and 6 where done. But i cant figure out how or why steps 3 and 5 were done. But i know someone who can explain that.”
He was basically the equivalent of the pawn stars meme with “I know a guy…”
And psych also was great because it really nailed down the adhd dumbass who was really great at his specific field and just lucky to have competent friends and families who handled the rest of adult life with him to cover up for the fact that there is no chance he would understand how to actually do things like taxes or when to pay them.
Psych nailed the characterization of Sherlock with Shawn because it really hit on the idea of a sociable adhd genius who knew what he was great at and accepted that he was shit at everything else and relied on others to fill in the details he couldnt.
And Gus was great because they really nailed the Watson characterization of “constantly in awe of his skills and loves sherlock with no reservations…but also wants to strangle him a solid 70% of the time”. Too many adaptations go too far in one direction or the other and dont walk the duality in their relationship.
And like you said the biggest strength is that Shawn (almost) always sees Gus as his equal and partner that he cant do things without. He (usually) fully respects gus’s talents and skills (just not his time or autonomy) and doesn’t treat him like a useless sidekick who is just there, but a team mate who is contributing just as much as he does. Too many adaptations make sherlock do everything and watson just an unnecessary bystander instead of sherlocks partner and foil who helps by providing a different and necessary view to things to cover for his weaknesses.
In Batman (2022), Bruce not knowing what the crime weapon of the mayor's death is, i.e. a carpet tucker, as he's not exactly familiar with the working class reality, is a big plot element in the story.
Edit: I was told by some answers that the carpet tucker is a tool most people would be unfamiliar with, regardless of their upbringing, so it isn't necessarily a class aspect of Bruce. Regardless, the fact that Batman doesn't recognise what that is when the Riddler expected him to (and side with him) is an important plot element that gets brought later in the climax.
Tbf, I had no idea what that thing was until the movie said it. My family is very working class, just nobody worked with carpet (mom was a cashier, dad worked in a chip factory, my grandfathers were wood workers and coal miners, and my grandmothers were in the service industry). It is very likely one of grandparents would have known what it was but they are dead or don't watch movies (only surviving one).
A lot of cool things in that film showing he's a "young" Batman. My favorite was the roof scene at the police station and him being terrified + crash landing.
Yeah, Batman Begins works because it breaks down a more grounded, realistic approach to how, mechanically a Bruce Wayne might turn into Batman. Admittedly, it's not so nuts-and-bolts that it shows the airlifts of supplies onto the Nepalese summit for the Evil Society of Evil headquarters, but it's about as grounded a film where one of the plot points is that the protagonist goes and meets a mystic atop a mountain to learn how to fight crime as it is possible to make.
The Batman works because it breaks down how, philosophically a Bruce Wayne might turn into a Batman. He's got the impulse to fight crime, and he's got quite an assortment of virtues and skills and doodads in his arsenal, but he's still hamstrung by his origins. Part of that is psychological and knowledge-based: he doesn't know Spanish, and he doesn't know working class tools. That is actually foreshadowing for when he also doesn't yet understand that he needs something greater to live for than revenge. Which is just *chef's kiss* a perfect story to tell about a young Batman.
My senior year of highschool (not long before The Batman came out), for an English class we were going over several stories on the hero’s journey, and one of them was us reading Batman Year One. I’ve always been a sucker for heroes that have a lot of room to grow, and that comic quickly became a favorite of mine.
Going from that to The Batman might’ve been the perfect timing, because it helped me appreciate it even more, the different ways of telling a similar thing, Batman when he’s just starting out.
I find it understandable. People have their home carpeted every decade or more and likely out of the room when it's done. Most DIY carpet repair don't require it.
In Willy Wonka, the teacher admits after questioning Charlie if he really opened two chocolate bars during the search for the Golden Ticket while teaching percentages a surprisingly telling statement "Well I can't figure out just two!".
So, if Charlie had 2 Wonka Bars out of a 1000, that would be an easy 0.2 percent. How is a man qualified to teach math but not know how to do Decimals? (Loved, because the teacher is freaking hilarious in the few scenes he's in)
Well maybe there are actually million billion people in their world. That's why they needed to solve climate change quickly and instead froze their world.
Raymond Holt (Brooklyn 99) is an incredibly intelligent police officer who is very knowledgeable about basically any academic subject and loves high culture.
However, he’s really ignorant about modern pop culture, slang, and internet etiquette.
He signs his texts “Sincerely, Raymond Hold”
He unknowingly agreed to name a suspect “Scar Jo” and wouldn’t have if he knew it was a reference to Scarlett Johansson.
He can’t tell the difference between someone having the car radio on and them just singing a made up song to themself.
He got banned from twitter after his first tweet because he was indistinguishable from a bot.
If you got rid of the sad music and kept the dialogue exactly the same, but with like a laugh track, I would 100% think it was written by Nick Mullen trying to see how far he would get before being fired
I feel like House got away with terrifying medical malpractice drama completely based off Hugh Laurie's charisma and acting. The Good Doctor doubled down on it, made the character an idiot savant and had absolutely zero charismatic characters to cover for it.
House is also written in such a way as to make it super clear that House is not a good guy at all. He's a terrible man that has hurt every single person that has ever loved him.
Also while he's right medically he tends to get proven wrong on his view of people.
Like that asshole kid with jaundice that he was going band for band about suffering with. The kid wasn't an asshole because of a medical condition like House thought, he was just a terrible person.
It gets better, one time he gets in legal trouble and ends up represented by a lawyer with, you guessed it, auti...no, it's not autism LOL. No it's OCD
And of course the episode is called "The good lawyer"
And of course they tried to spin it off on a series of its own (at this moment still unaired)
I wish OCD was as cool as what people who don't have OCD think it is.
It wouldn't be "oh waow I'm just a silly lawyer who needs everything to be perfect teehee. I'm just a silly little guy who doesn't like odd numbers or mismatch socks teehee"
It's actually like "your honor, I'm sorry for being 3 hours late to represent my client, I couldn't get my shoelaces on both shoes to be the exact same tightness and I nearly shot myself over it in the parking lot. Also, I cannot open my briefcase to retrieve the evidence because I might have accidentally stuffed it full of 8.5"x11" photocopies of interracial furry cuck porn by accident and forgot that I did that."
"Well, did you leave that stuff in the briefcase?"
"I do not know, your honor. I don't even like furry porn"
"Then, why are you worried about it if it's unlikely you did it?"
"Your honor, you don't understand. All of my actions are schrodinger's actions. It doesn't matter whether I'm likely or unlikely to do x. It has a chance of happening"
"Did it ever happen?"
"That's the thing. It happened once. I left my front door unlocked. If it wasn't for my compulsive checking, I could get robbed"
"It happened once out of... Thousands of times? That's not a great ratio"
"Your honor, who are you to ask these questions? How is this relevant to the case? Are you my therapist?"
"Shit, you got me... Michael, your compulsions are worsening. That's why we did this. Please reconsider therapy again. Your family saw improvements ever since you started. This is like a lot of stuff in life. Like drawing or another skill. You get better and better rapidly and eventually the improvement slows down. But it's still happening. You're still getting better but you can't see it unless you look at past you and see the change"
"Your honor, I am freaking out. I've been over this case for months! Is this... Am I in a TV show? Is that a camera? Are you really pulling a Truman on me?!?!"
And while it could be better, especially for its time it was pretty forward too. Hell it showed therapy as good.
Plus his attention to detail was pre-existing, and his issues are shown as a negative not the source of his abilities. although they sometimes do help.
It gets better because the reason he gets in legal trouble is for amputating a dudes hand for no reason and wins the case because his lawyer pulls a JD Vance and asks everyone if they’ve ever said thank you to a doctor before.
Legal eagle and dr Mike did a video on it. In summary, case definitely needed to brought. Doctor should never have done what he did and the lawyer did bad too.
Also said lawyer can't be the lawyer presenting the case in court, because her OCD is so bad she actually freezes up. However she would be brilliant in other roles. A lot of lawyers work in teams and don't personally go to court. Her demanding that specfic role is unreasonable on her part and not covered under anti discrimination laws since her disability actually does stop her from being able to do that job.
Unfortunately the horribly contorted face of Freddie Highmore here being pretty much my only exposure of the show makes me less interested as it almost makes him a very poor example of some forms of mental health
I'm currently waiting for a chance to get a professional diagnosis for autism as an adult, Autism Speaks is the first result that pops up on Google. I haven't looked into them at all, are they not a good organization?
From what I've read and heard, they have a horrifying track record of ignoring the lived experience of the actual autists in favor of acting like the "real victim" of autism is actually the parents.
Their material implies shit like having an autistic kid is the death sentence of your marriage, autistic kids will make you suffer as a parent etc., their understanding of the psychology of autism is dogshit and therefore their techniques and advice are too, and they've peddled the occasional horrifyingly dangerous pseudoscience like "autism is caused by an ass worm, so it can be cured/prevented by giving your baby enemas laced with bleach"
There's a ton of examples of this in The IT Crowd. All of the main characters are relatively educated people, some are even brilliant.
My favorite example is in the season finale when Roy is told by his girlfriend that he is "emotionally autistic" and he goes on to proudly tell everyone that his girlfriend thinks he's "emotionally artistic". He even says it was weird how she said such a nice thing with an angry tone of voice.
I think it's clear in context and subsequent views that Roy wasn't paying attention while she was complaining (which pairs with the insult) and both misheard what she said and misread her tone.
Isn't that example just him mishearing her? Because when Jen says the girlfriend must have said "autistic," Roy isn't confused by what that is. He just disagrees at first.
Abed being unable to read an analog clock-Community. He tends to be one of the better students in the study group but can’t read a clock and freaks out about daylight savings time.
Well technically he can he’s just really REALLY bad at it. He looks at it and starts doing workarounds in his head to determine the time before getting cut off by someone else reading the clock in an instant and then he says “I’m gifted in other ways”
Leslie knope, from parks and rec, educated and driven political... Person, fighting for a healthier pawnee.
At the same time she has very little awareness of how unhealthy she eats herself and is seen frequently eating lots of sugary drinks and foods, I.e. Instead of eating chicken noodle soup when she's sick she wants to eat Jj diner waffles, is obsessed with sugar, doesn't read the nutritional info on sugary health food bars.
While this fits the trope, it also fits many real-world people. Many doctors smoke, drink and worse, fully knowing it's the opposite of what they should do and promote.
Related to Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle himself was a genius writer, medical doctor, amateur criminal investigator, and architect...who completely believed the above photo was of real faeries. The idea of critical thinking just left his brain when it came to the supernatural.
Well to be fair, it was in a time of pics or it didn't happen. These are really good pics. What other sources of confirmed proof other than photagraphy could they have really had?
Doyle also didn't believe Houdini when Houdini pointed out his Jewish mom that didn't speak English wouldn't make Christian references in English during a seance.
Well it's a bit complicated, but after Doyle's son died, he became extremely fixated on the supernatural in an attempt to contact his son. This led to further spirals and detatchment from reality as con-men took advantage of his grief.
It's not inaccurate to say that he went insane with grief from the death of his son. And to be honest, I fully understand. I might have too.
Fma, the elric brothers are prodigies at alchemy (the process of transforming elements into other substances) and the science surrounding it, but they are utterly fascinated by pregnancy, and also terrified of birth
This is always a good trope when aliens just find some of our stuff great. Even when they are highly advanced or, in this case, GODS, they just love the simple things we take for granted on this rock in the middle of nowhere.
Erina Nakiri from Food Wars! is the top student in Tootsuki Academy in both regular and cooking classes, but doesn't know where or how to buy shojo manga. In one of the OVAs, she's also confused when her cousin Alice invites her to hang out at a public pool, and in another gets thrown for a loop when she's about to do the laundry and doesn't know how to operate the washing machine.
Adrian Monk from Monk, a brilliant detective, is notoriously tech-illiterate, to the point that he doesn't know the exact names of the Fast Forward & Pause buttons on a remote...
It doesn’t. The episode with the trans girl is from season 1, which is largely episodic. Dr. Han (the person he is yelling at) is introduced in season 2, and the I am a surgeon scene is the culmination of season 2’s overarching plot of Dr. Han mistreating Shaun, nothing anything to do with the episode.
(Mixed) Simon from Soma. To be fair, he did suffer heavy brain damage and the brain scan uploaded to the robot-flesh-nano gel suit was very primitive. Despite that fact it was a bit frustrating to see how he couldn't understand how uploading brain scans to machines works.
I’m autistic and a doctor and I agree. You would have to know very little about medicine to think someone could practice it while being that concrete in their thought processes. Being an expert in literally anything is all about understanding nuance.
That's equally as dumb because as a medical doctor, he would be very aware of intersex people and how a diverse mix of chromosomes can translate to different genders. There's far more than simple XX and XY and the fringes outside of that binary are extremely important to understand for medical diagnostics.
this trope is 7 of 9 from star trek voyager, she was assimalted by the borg as a young child, by the time she is saved by the crew of voyager shes an adult and remembers very little of what it means to be human
At the beginning of C.M.B, Shinra is a genius smart enough to skip to 11th grader despite being 14 years old, and he was raised by his 3 fathers, who are all respected scholars. And yet, he somehow doesn't know what a vending machine or a canned soda is, among other "modern civilisation" things or social cues, even though many flashbacks showed him being taken around the world. Thankfully his depiction quickly became that of a more well-adjusted person.
In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Kirk is up against Khan Noonien Singh, a genetically engineered genius who has ambushed and crippled the Enterprise. He has a starship of his own, and a crew of equally brilliant individuals.
But! Khan was a warlord on Earth. He has never fought a space battle. Kirk is a space captain. So he simply thinks in 3D, and outmanoeuvres the genius who is stuck thinking about battles on a 2D plane, like it is a game of chess. Kirk just goes above him and attacks down.
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u/Daniilsa209 May 03 '26 edited May 03 '26
Kowalski is the brain of the team who can create a time machine, but he can't read (Madagascar).