Producer: I thought Tyrion was the smart one.
Screenwriter: He used to be, but now I need things to happen really fast, so that's all over!
Screenwriter: He used to be, but now I need things to happen really fast, so that's all over!
— Game of Thrones Season 8 Pitch Meeting
A specific subtrope of Flanderization (and occasionally Jerkass also, even though that one already has its case). As a series progresses, characters sometimes become more and more stupid as time goes on. Usually the reason is related to the Badass Decay phenomenon, but with the character's level of intelligence rather than his ability to kick ass, following something along the following cycle: an episode in which the character acts like a total buffoon gets good ratings, so another one is made. It too gets good ratings. So they make another. And another. Eventually the character is so dumb that you wonder how he manages to walk across a room without injuring himself, and pretty soon everyone forgets that the character was ever anything other than a complete moron. For this very reason and the fact that it's easier to write comedy that involves dumb people, this trope is rather frequent in any comedy series.
Generally Played for Laughs. Sometimes used on the supporting characters to make the hero look more competent. Or sometimes, it's just that the show gets a pack of new writers and they turn the guy into a moron for kicks.
This has a high chance of being seen as Character Derailment, as unlike other character changes there's little that can justify a character becoming less smart so it oft goes unexplained. It should still be noted that this isn't always a bad thing. In some cases, viewers may find the over the top idiocy more entertaining than the original concept, or that giving them some idiotic traits make them more of a Rounded Character.
Book Dumb characters seem particularly prone to this; it is very easy for writers to go from 'savvy but unintellectual' to 'just stupid'.
May result in a typical Idiot Hero degenerating into Too Dumb to Live. Compare Idiot Ball for one-off moments of uncharacteristic idiocy, thought this can overlap if they grab it often enough. Contrast Took a Level in Badass and Dumbass No More. See also Sanity Slippage.
If this happens when one works gets adapted to another medium rather than occurring within the same work, see Adaptational Dumbass.
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Anime and Manga
- Sakura Kinomoto of Cardcaptor Sakura plays with this. In early episodes she was something of a Na?ve Everygirl, childlike but fairly normal in terms of her age's intelligence and demeanor. In later episodes she is something of a Genius Ditz, highly developed in her handling of her cards and even the odd bit wisdomic, but an exagerratively naive Kindhearted Simpleton in most other areas.
- Code Geass: Ohgi, after falling for Villetta. It's so bad that thanks partly to him, Lelouch finishes crossing the Despair Event Horizon, which causes Lelouch to implement the Zero Requiem. Assuming this still happens in the Compilation Movie, it may overlap with Dumbass Has a Point, Character Rerailment, or both when he actually attempts to give Lelouch a chance this time, and is simply ignored.
- Death Note's Light Yagami. He goes from erasing his own memory, trusting in the brilliance of his planning to ensure L's death while cementing his own complete innocence... to hiding the Death Note in storage and really hoping no one finds it while he's not looking.
The whole Mello and Near arc has Light nerfed down hard, making great mistakes apparently to balance the odds of the two kids-nemesis. He loses the note, he loses Sayu, he loses his father... and one of his "best" responses is to confirm to Near he's Kira by sending a mass of stupid people at the exact location (and only there) of Near's anti-Kira organisation with the great expectations that they'll lynch someone of L's level. An extended period of complacency between arcs with no intellectual rival, and belief in his own hype likely have something to do with it, as does the fact that Near and Mello have far more information to work with than L did. - Dragon Ball routinely shows that there's little that can damage your IQ more than becoming Drunk with Power:
- Before the Cell Games, Cell was The Chessmaster and a No-Nonsense Nemesis who constantly ran circles around the Z-Fighters and outsmarted them on more than one occasion. But come the Cell Games, he's an arrogant, egotistical jackass of a Smug Super who makes the exact same mistakes he had previously mocked Vegeta and Trunks for making. When Goku of all people is able to hit you with a Batman Gambit, you know you've latched onto the Idiot Ball.
- Speaking of Goku, he qualifies in Dragon Ball Super (relative to Dragon Ball Z), as, while he's always been an Idiot Hero, Super puts much more emphasis on the "Idiot" part. He's portrayed as more of a Manchild who doesn't care about much of anything aside from his desire to fight strong opponents and is willing to risk everyone else's well-being to do so which goes as far as the entire universe just to fight in the tournament. It really doesn't end there however: in the manga's Galactic Patrol Prisoner saga, despite Jaco's pleas to just Finish Him!, Goku gives Moro - a guy who has driven the Namekian race to near extinction and has been stated to have consumed numerous planets before this - a Senzu Bean, as well as the stupidest reason for doing so: he wants Moro to go back to prison (which has Goku - the protagonist we're supposed to be rooting for - verging on the point of Too Dumb to Live). Additionally in The Movie Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, Goku ridicules Vegeta for meditating and Whis lectures him that there's more to training than bulking up your body, but we’ve seen him practice meditation himself countless times before this.
- In the Namek Saga, Vegeta comes across as one of the smartest characters in the conflict: he's regularly shown manipulating his opponents, coming up with fairly good plans, and being pragmatic in how he operates. He would retreat from fights or avoid conflicts if it didn't seem like he could win them, had no problem abusing external or "unfair" sources of strengthening, and more than once teamed up with people in fights when he needed to—though he could be overcome by arrogance, more often than not he clearly understood the weight of the situations he was in and acted accordingly. During the Cell and Buu Sagas, however, this flies out the window, and Vegeta becomes seemingly incapable of considering the consequences of his actions or coming up with any plan more sophisticated than overpowering the opponent. Over the course of the two arcs, he treats the idea of quickly and pragmatically dealing with a lethal threat as cowardice, goes out of his way to strengthen his opponents if he thinks they can give him a good fight, and rejects the idea of fusing with Goku even in the face of insanely strong enemies.
- Merged Zamasu ends up being this compared to his fusees Goku Black and Future Zamasu. While Merged Zamasu's by far even more immensely powerful than either of them are, he lacks many of their pragmatist traits that made the two so dangerous to the heroes. Granted, they could be arrogant as well, but even Future Zamasu who abused his immortality for all its worth knew the value of fighting in tandem with Black and would even use himself as a shield to keep unnecessary harm from hitting his partner. Merged Zamasu, on the other hand, rather than finishing the Z-Fighters off at the first opportunity he chose to toy around with them and tends to use his techniques just to show off. He also kept underestimating his enemies and seemingly cannot accept that the "lowly mortals" somehow manages to even scratch him. This arrogance eventually lets them destroy his physical body. His Eldritch Abomination is this even more as his madness has practically consumed his mind to the point he's barely sentient anymore.
- Alphonse in Fullmetal Alchemist (2003). He starts off as an intelligent, insightful young boy who was the sensible one compared to Ed. Later on he makes many very poor, and arguably stupid choices like taking Barry the Chopper's mind games to heart, and distrusting people who he's known all his life. This happens in both the manga and anime, but in the manga, Al learns from this and doesn't do anything like it again. In the first anime it mainly takes effect in the later half, where he runs off every time he gets upset, even though the Homunculi and Dante are looking for and trying to kill them, going along with Shou Tucker's plans and not telling Ed (even though Tucker made his daughter into a chimaera, resulting in her death), and letting Sloth convince him that she's his mother, even though she is a Homunculi when Ed is trying to remind him that they're fighting for their lives, immediately running towards Envy disguised as Winry, right after Ed says it isn't her, and barely putting up a fight. He arguably became more impulsive than his brother, whereas earlier in the show it was the other way around. This could be interpreted as the writers having Al act more like how a real little boy would if they were put in such a situation, but he becomes more competent again in the finale. Other than that he basically becomes quite the load.
- K?mpfer: Natsuru but only in the anime. In the manga and light novels however...
- Naruto:
- Whenever the title character seems to start growing as a character in-canon, he immediately takes a level in dumbass in the anime Filler. Most notoriously when he doesn't realize anything is wrong during the attack on turtle island by Kabuto and zombie!Deidara. Despite the living island suddenly acting as if it were hit with a high-level earthquake.
- For a long while, Sasuke from the death of Itachi and throughout the succeeding arcs. Even after both Tobi and Itachi had both implored that the destruction of Uchiha clan wasn't the fault of the Leaf, he decides to screw everything and try to destroy the Hidden Leaf village and every single person living in it, despite Itachi's intentions and words told by the main antagonist of all people himself urging the very contrary. All the while, his chakra grows noticeably darker and colder through his hatred, implications seeming as if he's forcing himself to hate in order get more powerful. At one point, he impales Karin when held hostage with the Chidori, despite Danzo holding her in a position where his body and head is in clear sight of his lightning-fast attack and discards her for being "useless".
- Luffy of One Piece was never a genius by any account, but he seems to have gone from "not bothering to understand what people say" to "not able to understand what people say" in some cases. He also showed at least some insight at the start of the series, like realizing how he could make Coby join the Marines and calling Vivi out on how it's naive to hope that nobody will die in a war. These moments become rarer as the series goes on. However, it's noteworthy that when the crew was split up, and he was on his own, he did seem a bit more intelligent and thoughtful, but when he gathered some new allies who could do the thinking work for him, he returned to his usual ditzy self.
- Pokémon the Series:
- The Team Rocket trio. In the early appearances they are very competent, albeit very hammy, and have succeeded several times in stopping the heroes and capturing Pikachu only to be saved by a Big Damn Heroes moment or an Ass Pull of some sorts. Fast forward and their only real purpose now is to show up, provide comic relief, and blast off again, barring the episodes that focus on them being sympathetic to the point where they might as well not be villains if not for status quo getting in the way. In Unova, they did have a temporary increase in competency following training and stopped blasting off up until Ash left the region, whereupon the trope reasserted itself.
- Ash himself has zigzagged this trope and Dumbass No More throughout most of the seasons; since the anime is used as a Gateway Series for the games themselves, they often have to explain the mechanics again at the start of each arc for those just jumping on, as well as give the new-gen Pokemon spotlight. This results in each region Ash depositing his previous team to start over fresh, though he generally keeps to the level of a (maybe above) average trainer starting off, especially if he has a newbie traveling companion he would have to teach the basic ropes too. Pokémon the Series: Black & White is the worst example by far, however, and the one most people think of as being the standard for all regional anime starts, as in addition to replacing his team, Ash ends up losing the skills he was generally allowed to keep in most regions to go back to the same level of competence he had in Kanto to allow the writers a way to explain the game mechanics again.
- One of the worst offenses was during his battle with Electric Gym Leader Elesa, also in the aforementioned black and white series. He hoped to power through her entire team with just one Pokemon, he decided to bring just that. When it fails, he stalled the battle to retrieve another. Without a plan, it ends badly and causes him to panic and risk forfeiting his match. It took Pikachu to literally zap him to his senses and help win.
- Ranma ?: 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.
- Sailor Venus from Sailor Moon. See Flanderization. Actually worse in the English dub as they removed her character quirk of mixing her proverbs up in the first season and give her a voice actress with a leader style voice then Sailor Moon S came where Venus's ditzy personality had completely taken over and the English dub just so happened to give her a new voice actress that emphasized this personality.
- Gourry from Slayers degraded from Idiot Hero to The Ditz and then became even dumber. The degradation occurred before that, considering how Gourry's dumbass swordsman persona was apparently all an act in the original novels.
- Tenchi Muyo!: Mihoshi, especially in Tenchi Universe. Somewhat justified in the case of Tenchi Universe (and Tenchi in Tokyo) since those aren't actually the same Mihoshi, due to those being alternate continuities. Totally unjustified in the 3rd installment of the OVA series, though.
- In the original series Yatterman, Gan is somewhat naive, but not stupid. The remake makes him a bit more careless but still rather smart. The live-action movie, however, turns him into a total Idiot Hero.
Asian Animation
- Happy Friends: In Season 8 episode 4, Big M. uses a special powder that makes any affected targets dumber. He uses it on Sweet S. so that he can get the fire wand from her, but then he needs help from drowning in a big cauldron and all nearby sources of help, including Little M. and Huo Haha, completely fail to actually get him out of the cauldron since they drank water contaminated with the powder.
Comic Books
- Chlorophylle: Minimum started as a fairly competent sidekick to Chlorophylle, and showed skills such as acting talent in his first appearance. However, as time went on, he turned more and more into a bumbling Butt-Monkey sidekick.
- Like most of the characters in Justice League International, Booster Gold underwent a fair bit of Flanderization in the title. He started off as a fairly likable, competent hero in his own book, but got progressively stupider and more vain once he joined the Justice League. It's even Lampshaded in Formerly Known as the Justice League, where Blue Beetle points out that Booster used to be fairly intelligent, and accuses him of acting dumb and childish on purpose. Later on, it is confirmed to be (mostly) an act.
- Deadpool did not start off as stupid as he's famously depicted as being, and in fact was more of a standard mercenary in his first appearance in X-Force. The whole "dumbest guy on the planet" personality depends on the writer, but really came into effect with his second solo series written by Daniel Way.
- Disney Comics: Rock Sassi
, also known as Brick Boulder, is a policeman character created in 1997 by Italian Mickey Mouse comic book authors. In his first appearance he was intended to be the typical tough, pragmatic, no-nonsense Texan cop, but he quickly was reduced to a bumbling comic relief character and paired with Detective Casey, who was similarly characterized as a barely useful buffoon.
- Sabretooth suffers this, Depending on the Writer. His creator, Chris Claremont, intended for him to be the superior version of Wolverine. He is shown as cunning. He was very emotionally intelligent, and could read others well enough to hit all their weak spots, emotionally. He broke Boomer and had Rogue on the verge of tears when talking about her power. He also rattled Charles Xavier of all people, which contributed to him becoming Onslaught. He was sly enough to be a double agent in the Weapon X program without anyone suspecting it, and the Director himself mentioning that he underestimated Creed. He even hacked into the database to steal all of the mutant files. But some writers depict him as a complete oaf—usually whenever he's in team books. Greg Pak's Weapon X is the perfect example. In this run, he can't use a computer keyboard or hunt. And his stealth and infiltration skills are non-existent.
- Johnny Storm, AKA: The Human Torch, of the Fantastic Four, started out having at least average intelligence (a little cocky and reckless sometimes, obviously not a rocket scientist like his team leader, but not out and out stupid either), but as time went by and his characterization turned him more and more into a shallow, superficial, borderline selfish man-diva, Johnny became increasingly stupid to coincide with this more irresponsible characterization.
- Roy Harper suffered this pretty badly when Scott Lobdell started using him in Red Hood and the Outlaws. Roy was never exactly a genius in the past, but he was smart enough and competent enough to find work as a government agent and later a private detective while volunteering with several anti-drug programs. He also led the Titans and Outsiders on several different occasions, and even joined the Justice League as Red Arrow. Under Lobdell's pen, Roy was turned into an annoying, idiotic Manchild who was supposedly also a gifted inventor and child prodigy utilizing Obfuscating Stupidity. Roy instead came across as genuinely stupid and more of a stooge to Red Hood than an actual friend. Even after the beginning of DC Rebirth, Roy regained some of his brain cells but it wasn't enough to shake off his new reputation as a pathetic moron which manifested when he appeared in books outside of Red Hood and the Outlaws and Titans.
- After Terry Moore took over Runaways, most of the cast had their intelligence downgraded in order to help make the series Lighter and Softer. It was particularly pronounced in Molly and Klara, who went from being unusually mature for pre-teens to being so dumb that they wasted a night trying to build a fort to defend against aliens with far better firepower.
- Princess Leia in the comic adaptation of Star Wars novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye. In the novel itself she is a Shell-Shocked Veteran (leading to some Jerkass moments) but very smart and cosmopolitan. The comic cuts out a lot of these scenes leaving Luke to make essentially all the plans and guesswork, so Leia comes across as a little slow on the uptake.
- Superman's IQ seems to drop a few points whenever he's with the Justice League, or more specifically whenever he's around Batman. Then again, Batman seems to have the power of making other characters dumber just by being there. Other times Superman gets dumber to varying degrees to contrast his super-scientist arch enemy Lex Luthor. And still other times, writers can't agree if Superman is a scientist like his father, how strong those scientific tendencies go, and how prominent his super-intelligence is.
- In Superior Spider Man, as a result of the Plot Armor of the protagonist, all the supporting cast of Spider-Man suffers from this. The worst example is definitely Mary Jane that, despite having lived (or married before OMD) with him and his alter-ego for a long time, she does not have the slightest suspicion that "Peter" is actually an impostor.
- In Wonder Woman, Athena is meant to be the goddess of wisdom, and in Wonder Woman (1987) she was a chessmaster whose plots eventually saw her usurping Zeus as ruler of Olympus. In Wonder Woman (2006) she chooses to essentially die and request that Zeus take up her responsibilities and look after the Amazons, which causes millions of deaths as Zeus tries to slaughter every military and government on earth and the Amazons have to fight for their home and lifestyle as Zeus decides to replace them with men who cannot defy him. None of this is a surprise to anyone who knows anything about Zeus.
Comic Strips
- Dilbert: The defining character trait of Dilbert's boss was a result of this. In the earlier strips he was just a regular Bad Boss who was more likely to be shown performing evil experiments on his employees than losing at chess to a pineapple. And done deliberately in one strip where a new guy transitions from appearing to be smarter than everyone else in the team to having neanderthal-level intelligence over the course of a three-panel comic.
- 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 Small Name, Big Ego. 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 bachelor. 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 Flanderized into being the Straw Loser to Garfield. Nowadays, he might as well be dumber than Odie. His animated counterparts dial it back, but even they're pretty clueless.
- Peanuts: Sally Brown started out as reasonably na?ve and childish before devolving into a full-on ditz who made hilariously inaccurate school reports.
Fan Works
- Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): In this Godzilla MonsterVerse fanfiction, MaNi/Elder Brother (the result of an Expendable Clone of Ghidorah's right head merging with the Many) is much more prone to committing acts of Stupid Evil and forgetting about self-preservation altogether than he was when attached to Ghidorah. According to Word of God, this is due to a combination of: MaNi lacking Ghidorah's intelligent middle head to act as his Restraining Bolt, and Assimilation Backfire from the Many making him part-Skullcrawler.
- Twilight and her friends in My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic. When meeting Rhymey during his visit in Equestria, they all mistake him for a crossdressing Fluttershy. Bonus points go to Rarity, who outright states she has no problem that "she" completely transformed herself with magic into a male. The remake tries to address this by making them believe that she is disguised, which manages to make them look even dumber.
- Yang has a mild case of this in React Watch Believe Yikes. She's generally a bit slower on the uptake compared to the others and is less book-smart than in canon.
- Scarlet Lady: While it’s a stretch to call Chloé "smart" at any point, in earlier episodes, she shows a genuine talent at playing to the media and maintaining her good publicity as Scarlet Lady. As the series progresses however, she starts to devolve, becoming more prone to indulging her own laziness at the expense of her reputation and openly antagonizing individuals who have the clout to hurt her reputation.
- The Tale of a Cat Most Curious: It's noted that Yang Xiao-Long used to be a kind, thoughtful and emotionally-intelligent young woman during Team RWBY's time at Beacon Academy, but in the years inbetween then and the team's fall into the Ever After, she's become an unaware, self-absorbed and negligent meathead who only commits to paying real attention to her feelings for Blake.
Films — Animation
- Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil: Wolf goes from a Consummate Professional who took his job seriously to a Cowboy Cop who constantly jeopardizes his missions through sheer incompetence, such as trying to order pizza during a stakeout and using a single Paper-Thin Disguise that only consists of a hat and beard.
- Titan and Zartog in Space Chimps 2: Zartog Strikes Back. Titan was dumb before, but he reaches extreme levels of stupidity in this movie when he helps Zartog get into the base. Zartog does, too. It's clear that the humans don't understand him, but he just doesn't get the message.
- Both Ralph and Vanellope have changed in Ralph Breaks the Internet from the first movie. Ralph carelessly unleashes a virus is Slaughter Race despite knowing that viruses are bad news after dealing with one in the first movie. Vanellope rides that Ralph made during opening ours while someone is playing as her instead of waiting until after closing hours despite there being a rule in the first movie that the characters are not allowed to leave their games when the arcade is open.
- In Toy Story 4, Buzz Lightyear comes off as rather more na?ve and hapless than he did in the past two entries. Notably, he seems to lack a basic grasp of simple metaphors and starts relying on his own voice box to make decisions for him, in quite the contrast to his assertiveness in Toy Story 2.
Films — Live-Action
- Steve Stifler is considerably more clueless and socially inept in American Wedding than he is in the other American Pie films.
- Whereas he was reasonably competent in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939) and in The Hound of the Baskervilles, Dr. John Watson (Nigel Bruce) is a bumbling idiot in all of the The Baker Street Dozen Holmes films.
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 has Rocket portrayed as thinking a battle is the right time to play music, not knowing which eye to blink with, and not being able to tell when Peter is being sarcastic or insulting him by calling him Trash. Plus he steals from his employers and expects to get away with it.
- In Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, while Marv was never the brightest bulb, he is a lot dumber than in the first film, possibly thanks to the head injuries he sustained in the first film (and/or additional head injuries he might have sustained in prison).
- Idiocracy: This trope happening to the entire human race is basically the plot.
- The Mask has both a film-wise and adaptation wise example for Lt. Kellaway's partner, Det. Doyle. In his initial scene at the bank, Doyle seems to be quite intelligent. By the time we see him at the park, he's suddenly a ditz and by the film's end he's a certified idiot (though some of that may have been him being influenced by the Mask's power). The cartoon made him even dumber.
- National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie's Island Adventure makes Cousin Eddie even dumber than he was in the previous National Lampoon's Vacation movies. In his first scene, he's losing a game of Tic-Tac-Toe against a monkey.
- The NeverEnding Story III: Escape from Fantasia: Falkor, who is supposed to be a very smart character. He is a smart character in the first film and still somewhat smart in the second. In the third, however, he becomes a downright moron.
- Not to mention the Rock Biter...
- Not to mention the Rock Biter...
- Nutty Professor II: The Klumps: Played for Drama. Sherman, in a desperate attempt to remove Buddy's consciousness from his body, removes his DNA. But in the process, Sherman triggers a breakdown of his brain cells. Soon he can't articulate, teach his class, and acts like a bumbler. Facing memory loss, Sherman breaks up with his fiancée, not wanting to burden her. By the end of the movie, he is almost totally brain-dead, and would have stayed that way if not for being able to absorb Buddy's DNA.
- In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Marcus Brody was portrayed as a highly intelligent, very serious character. When he shows up again in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade he initially starts off the same but then becomes progressively dumber and more incompetent load who couldn't even initially tell that he was being kidnapped... even as Sallah was screaming at him that the bad guys were doing exactly that. One could chalk it up to him being a Fish out of Water when he's suddenly thrust into a globe-trotting adventure, if not for Indy explaining to Jones Sr. that Marcus is apparently such a doddering goofball that he once got lost in his own museum.
- Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau from The Pink Panther. In the first film, his lesser screentime doesn't make him look nearly as clumsy as he later turns out to be. It wasn't really until his second film, A Shot in the Dark, that he became the bumbling detective that we all know and love. Surprisingly, his animated counterpart gets things done right slightly more often, although he makes up for it by having a lower success rate for solving crimes and by getting way more blows along the way.
Literature
- Cersei in A Song of Ice and Fire. In book 1 she successfully engineers her husband's death and beats out Ned Stark in the power struggle that follows, and while she's ultimately bested by the Imp in book 2, she's not a pushover. In book 4, though, she surrounds herself with morons and alienates everybody useful as if she's doing it on purpose - Littlefinger aptly describes her as "stumbl[ing] from one idiocy to the next." One interpretation is that she's gotten stupid and arrogant from her success, which matches this trope. But it's also possible that she's no dumber than before, and has simply been promoted to the level of her incompetence, Peter Principle-style. The Seven Kingdoms are not an easy realm to run.
- Another interpretation is that while she started out reasonably smart, the events of the end of the third book (her son Joffery's murder, her brother Tyrion's escape before he can be executed for said murder, and her twin Jamie's reluctance to continue their incestuous affair) has unhinged her. It helps that everyone capable of overriding her bad decisions is dead or has left King's Landing by the fourth book. Alternately, she was never that smart in the first place: she beats Ned more through Ned's insistence on Honor Before Reason than her own cleverness, helped along by people like Littlefinger because she was a useful and predictable tool for conspirators who were already planning the next dynasty (or two) to succeed her. Until the readers start getting chapters from her perspective, she seems relatively competent (if petty and occasionally outmatched) in her scheming and politicking.
- A more prosaic explanation is that she has been steadily increasing her alcohol consumption over the course of the story, which is noted by several characters. By the time things really start falling apart in book 4 she drinks as much or more as her late husband did, while sharing his disdain for actual ruling. She also lacks his self-awareness of the problem or the support structure he relied on to compensate for it.
- Claudia from The Baby-Sitters Club started out as a C-student who had an above average I.Q. but just didn't care about doing well in school. By the end of the series, she was so dumb the reader sometimes wondered how she managed to put on her pants in the morning.
- In Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Rodrick Heffley started off as Book Dumb, playing pranks requiring a strong amount of intelligence on Greg but unwilling to apply himself otherwise. Later books have him nigh brain dead, and he seems to lack any knowledge of the world around him and has no common sense whatsoever.
- Kalten in The Elenium seems to get a case of this. In the beginning of the trilogy, he is a skilled knight although he is incapable of performing magic because he couldn't pronounce the Styric language. By the end of the second book, this has turned into him not knowing what a diagonal is. Subverted at the end of the Tamuli where he reveals that he is playing the Obfuscating Stupidity card, since he knows that if people don't take him seriously they will be off-guard around him.
- Septimus Heap in Septimus Heap, between Syren and Darke. In Syren he's the cautious one, in Darke his disregard for Jenna's warnings about the Darke Domaine doesn't match any of his past actions, and results in the Domaine being set loose.
- The Wheel of Time: In the first four books of the series Elaida is presented as a cunning member of the Red Ajah who is able to get Suian removed from power and still her. As soon as she gain powers her I.Q drops considerably, she pisses everyone in the tower off, she makes disastrous decisions that causes Aes Sedai to be captured, and she can't even decide that the Black Ajah exists or not even when it should be obvious after several sisters were murdered and Ter'angreal were stolen. The reason for the change is that she was briefly visited by Padan Fain, whose powers include the ability to corrupt people and drive them insane. His influence was only a 'brush' of his normal power, but it was enough to start a slow deterioration.
- Gods in the Fallen Gods trilogy can come Back from the Dead if people have enough faith in them. However, they will not be the same individual as before death. Hence Hseth's first incarnation is a Manipulative Bitch, who convinces the hearth god Hestra and King Arren to work with her in taking over Middren and the surrounding kingdoms. Her second incarnation is The Brute, and a Dumb Muscle, who merely walks around burning all in her path, cackling like a madwoman. At the end of the third book, Hseth walks into a trap set by the godkillers that is so obvious, main character Kissen is left shocked by how dumb she's gotten.
Video Games
- Ace Attorney:
- Detective Gumshoe started off as a scatterbrained but reliable ally to Phoenix Wright (defense attorney), even though he was usually under the thumb of Miles Edgeworth (prosecutor). As time went on, Gumshoe progressively grew ditzier and can't even solve simple logical problems, relying on Phoenix and the prosecutor of the week to solve everything. This may be because for all his flaws, Gumshoe is an honest man, and so any mistakes that are made in the investigation that Phoenix has to solve are due to his negligence or stupidity, rather than lying. He becomes a bit more competent in Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit, though.
- Maya Fey grew incredibly ditzy over the series as well. In the beginning, she did all she could to help Phoenix on his cases, even if she wasn't always right, and didn't have any useful skills apart from the ability to channel her dead sister's spirit (which, due to her incomplete training, wasn't always reliable). Afterwards, Maya uses off the walls logic to justify her reasoning (which usually didn't solve anything and annoyed Phoenix) and always goes on about food at inappropriate times, turning her into a Cloud Cuckoo Lander. She becomes a bit more mature and competent in the main story of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice, but lapses back into her old self in the DLC case.
- Pete Wheeler of Backyard Sports. He forgot how to ride a bike within a few months of being a pro.
- Batman: Arkham Series: Admittedly, Batman himself has suffered this trope due to a heavy case of Aesop Amnesia. In Origins, the dark knight learns that his I Work Alone attitude is not the way to go about his quest to end evil in Gotham City and eventually learns to form alliances with others in his life's mission. However, by City he absolutely refuses help from others such as Robin and Oracle, thinking that he can handle something small like an entire city-wide district of his entire rogues gallery all by himself in a single night. Then by Knight, Batman actually thinks that he can take care of the entire city being annexed by Scarecrow and the unpredictable Arkham Knight's forces on his own as well, while the rest of the Bat family stays on the sidelines and handle less important missions to help him. This gets taken to a high point hallway through the game when Bruce reveals that he's become infected by a disease turning him into the Joker and only has a few hours before his mind is consumed by it. When Robin offers to help him by handling crime for him while Batman remains locked up in a cell, he thrashes Robin and locks his sidekick up in the cell instead. Bruce informs his young ward that by keeping him trapped in a cell with supervillains running wild, this is the better option. Naturally, Robin gets captured by Scarecrow and used as leverage against the dark knight. Meaning that his loss to the Scarecrow resulted in his own poor thinking.
- Yasuhiro Hagakure of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc was never very bright, but over time his actions and dialogue become increasingly more erratic and idiotic. This is lampshaded in the following exchange between him and Aoi Asahina.
Hina: What the heck's happened to you...? You weren't like this from the beginning, you know.
Hiro: Well, back then my personality hadn't quite solidified yet...! - Final Fantasy: Rikku got significantly ditzier between Final Fantasy X and X-2.
- Yuna too, although to a much lesser degree as it mostly takes the form of her naivety growing up on a small isolated island sheltered from life by her peers. It is also implied in-game that her newfound idiocy is due to the fact she is trying to imitate Rikku.
- Perhaps it was just Kazushige Nojima's shaky writing (he admitted in an interview that he didn't do a lot of work on the first game and wasn't familiar with the plot/characters/cosmology of KH), but Sora went from often naive in Kingdom Hearts I to often ridiculously clueless in Kingdom Hearts II. He never really recovered, to the point where his inability to use technology resulted in him being completely unable to figure out how to use a touchscreen phone in Kingdom Hearts III, as opposed to both Ventus and Aqua, one of whom was in a coma for ten years and the other was trapped in the Realm of Darkness for that span, who were able to figure it out almost immediately.
- Councilor Udina in Mass Effect 3 went from being a harsh, but intelligent advisor who supported Shepard's battle strategies for the very first time into a traitor who actually thought that Cerberus was the organization that would save the galaxy. Keep in mind, Cerberus is also well-known for their catastrophic failed evil plans. It's partially justifiable in that he's noted to be increasingly desperate to save Earth, and the other alien races aren't offering help, so he's just accepting the help that is offered. Another possibility is that he's indoctrinated.
- Akihiko Sanada, one of your party members in Persona 3, began as a student who, while oblivious to other peoples' feelings, lacking in social skills, was perceptive, is established to get good grades in school(second only to Mitsuru), is a very caring Big Brother Mentor type, and can step in as a decent stand-in leader in certain situations. A major part of his character revolves around his unhealthy love of fighting and training, but it's clearly established that it stems from a feeling of weakness that came about when his sister died when he was a child. His Character Development involves him changing his purpose to fight from personal weakness to protecting those he cares about instead (and this is emphasized even more in the PSP remake, namely if you play as a female protagonist instead). Not only are the nuances of his development tossed out the window in Persona 4 Arena, but his love of fighting is back in full force, it's established that he dropped out of college to go Walking the Earth and train, and his obliviousness to everything is cranked up to eleven (the ridiculousness of his outfit and him being oblivious as to why it's ridiculous is a Running Gag between both Arena games). On top of those, his perceptiveness is toned down, he's somewhat more arrogant, and he grows a bizarre love of protein that wasn't even remotely there in Persona 3.
- It gets worse in the spinoff game Persona Q - protein is mentioned almost every other time he speaks (in the P4 route, he even establishes it as the main thing he likes!), and a scene in the P3 side presents us with the notion that he's unaware as to what constitutes as sexual harassment. It's all the more bizarre, as unlike Arena, Q is set during September of Persona 3.
- J. Jonah Jameson went through this in Spider-Man: Miles Morales. In the first game he was a principled Jerk with a Heart of Gold with often valid criticisms regarding Spider-Man. In Miles Morales however, he's a raving Butt-Monkey strawman frequently utilizing Insane Troll Logic to justify his vitriol, making his more progressive foil Danika Hart look better. This is best illustrated by their attitudes during the climax of the two games; in the first game Jameson does his best to reassure the people of New York as the state descended into chaos, and praised Spider-Man in the end for saving the day. In Morales, he completely falls for Roxxon's Villain with Good Publicity act in spite of the fact that they were guilty of a lot of the same reasons he disliked the Spider-Men, and in the end of the game he pins all the blame for their crimes on Miles and opens the phone to hear from his own supporters only to be ignored by the entirety of New York.
- Splatoon 2 plays this for laughs if you decide to play through Hero Mode a second time. In the first game, Callie was a bit less sarcastic and serious-minded than Marie, but still a perfectly competent agent of the New Squidbeak Splatoon. In the second game? The plot of New Game Plus boils down to Callie willingly putting DJ Octavio's hypnoshades back on after being rescued, even knowing full well what they do, because "they make her look cool."
- Super Mario Bros.: Bowser. Originally, just a straight up, Obviously Evil, Designated Villain. The lighthearted nature of the series, however, led to his portrayals as a dumb, immature bully, leading him down the path of this trope.
- Tomb Raider I has Larson Carraway, a hired henchman who has a redneck accent and wasn't too bright, but he wasn't a complete idiot either. By Tomb Raider Chronicles, his character is retconned to become even dumber (he tries to shoot Lara from a rooftop instead of letting her get the MacGuffin(s) so that their work is made easier) and his accent sounds like a redneck even more.
- The Avatar from the Ultima series suffers an extreme case of this in Ultima IX, where he seems to have forgotten everything about Britannia, since he keeps asking about things he should know about since previous games. The most famous of these questions seems to be "What's a paladin?"
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- Knuckles. He was never the sharpest tool in the shed but that was more due to naivete and lacking social skill, due to being an isolated guardian of the Master Emerald. In the Adventure games and to a lesser extent Sonic Heroes, Knuckles is portrayed as the oldest, most level-headed and patient of the cast — which makes sense for a character who meditates on a rock 80% of the time. Over time though, the character's lack of social intelligence was played up to the sacrifice of all of his other traits which led to this trope. note
- Tails and Eggman, despite having Improbably High I.Q., get occasional brain farts. Best illustrated with their conversation during the credits of Sonic Adventure 2:
Eggman: "Did [Gerald] really mean to destroy us?" noteTails: "I don't know. But what I do know is, we did it all together!"
Web Animation
- Homestar Runner: Homestar himself. Which makes his 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.
- Caboose from Red vs. Blue. This was explained in-universe as the result of the trauma of losing his girlfriend (Sheila the tank) having his mind controlled by O'Malley and not being too bright to start with.
- Oddly enough, starting from Recreation, Caboose actually seemed to regain some of his intelligence, upgrading from a complete idiot to merely The Ditz. This could be explained by the time Delta spent in Caboose's mind.
- Donut also seems to suffer from this to an extent, but he did take a sticky grenade to the head...
- Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse: While Teresa had her Ditzy moments from the start, they were generally more subtle and mostly consisted of silly lines, while in later episodes her ditziness gets much wackier, such as eating all the cupcakes she and Barbie made for a contest and spending an episode thinking she's a unicorn.
Webcomics
- 8-Bit Theater:
- 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 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.
- Fighter himself could also be considered a victim of this trope. Initially, he was simply The Fool with an intense sword obsession. For the past few hundred comics, he's essentially been a total idiot.
- Nick in Schlock Mercenary, who went from "stereotypical dim-bulb grunt" to an extreme ditz.
- In Sluggy Freelance Sam "Da Man" Sein's intelligence has been plummeting ever since he became a vampire.
Web Videos
- The reviewers of Channel Awesome, 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.
- Happened to both The Nostalgia Critic and The Nostalgia Chick. The Critic used to be of average intelligence before morphing into a ditz with almost no common sense but can very insightful when he wants, and the Chick used to be an Insufferable Genius before becoming a Know-Nothing Know-It-All who is oblivious to most things going on around her. Tropes Are Not Bad of course, their characters seen as much funnier now.
- While Lewis Brindley hasn't exactly gotten stupider per se, he has become considerably wackier than he used to be. For context, in the very early days of the Yogscast it was simply Lewis and Simon, with Lewis as the Straight Man and Simon as the wacky Cloudcuckoolander. Since then, the Yogscast has expanded significantly, with many more members of varying degrees of intelligence/sanity, meaning that Lewis' more silly moments became considerably easier to notice.
