History Main / FeigningIntelligence

* Simmons from ''Machinima/RedVsBlue'' is zigzagging with this trope. While he is the [[SmartGuy Unofficial Science Officer]] of the series and good with computers, he's also been stated to be less intelligent than he thinks he is and will abuse the fact that the people around him are either too lazy, stupid or insane to call him out on making stuff up.

* ''Manga/SchoolZone'': Yokoe, a certifiable moron, holds out both of her fists and tells friend-of-a-friend Tsubaki that if she picks the correct one, she'll win a prize. The meek Tsubaki reluctantly picks one. Yokoe then opens both hands, revealing they're both empty. Yokoe declares sagely, "In life there are no right answers!" Tsubaki just looks like she's about to cry.

* Sadly a reasonably common trait among Politicians the world over. After all, words are cheap and thus spent freely, and SesquipedalianLoquaciousness is fairly common in politic speech, as it's used to mask intentions behind flowery language.

* Sadly a reasonably common trait among Politicians the world over. After all, words are cheap and thus spent freely, and SesquipedalianLocquaciousness is fairly common in politic speech, as it's used to mask intentions behind flowery language.

* ''Webcomic/{{Misfile}}''. Debate continues on whether Rumisiel is genuinely admitting Feigning Intelligence or displaying ObfuscatingStupidity to maintain his [[TheStoner image]] in [[http://www.misfile.com/?date=2008-05-16 this strip.]]

The opposite of ObfuscatingStupidity: A stupid character pretends (or tries to pretend) he or she is really smart or otherwise good at something. The stupid characters will either enlist a smart character to feed them lines, or bluff their way through with [[SeeminglyProfoundFool seemingly profound statements]] ([[Series/SavedByTheBell "What is art? Are we Art? Is Art Art?"]]) and TechnoBabble.

* In ''VisualNovel/GrisaiaNoRakuen'' Thanatos gives all the girls instructions to follow, some of them more obvious or helpful than others based on their abilities. Michiru, who has no abilities in particular, is told to meet up with a shady contract in a restaurant. Fittingly, she hides her ditziness with a more dignified front and goes through a long ChainOfDeals from buying 1000 yen worth of discarded cellphones and reselling the rare metals inside to multiple flights around the world throughout the day until she's completely lost. Throughout the entire thing she pretends to be clever and knowledgeable while following instructions from her phone, but by the time she gets to Indonesia she thinks she's in India and more or less gives up.

** He also bought an encyclopedia but could only afford the letter 'V' and. He started a conversation about Vietnam, but was quickly lost when the topic morphed to the current situation with North Korea.

* ''Manga/NininGaShinobuden'' has Onsokumaru, who pretends to be an expert ninja, despite obviously being one of the stupidest characters on the show.

* There are known garbage texts that can pass as "scientific" in nonsense-rich environments and really made it to the respective journals or conferences... Including automatically generated ones. If you want to hunt impostor "scientists" in comfort using a robot decoy-duck--go ahead, it works.
** ''Social Text'' published ''Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity'' article (It claimed to be about using quantum theories of gravity to stick it to The Man) which turned out to be a parody made of statements specifically designed to be a solipsist nonsense and logically disconnected claims. [[note]]They even managed to insult themselves further by rejecting an explanation text as not meeting their intellectual standards after publishing this mockery (it apparently didn't "Transgress the Boundaries" enough).[[/note]] [[http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/ Papers by Alan Sokal]] has a full story, papers and a simple recipe how to bake such a cake at will.

* Any agenda-based statistics study. I.e. if they're paid to prove a causal link exists instead of determine if one does, they will use this.

* The Dunning-Kruger Effect is when "people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it", or as Cracked.com phrases it: "a short cut in the brain that makes people suck at figuring out they suck." To test the Dunning-Kruger effect, two men named David Dunning and Justin Kruger ran a series of experiments and published the results in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in December 1999. What they found was that [[UsefulNotes/CharlesDarwin “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”]] Specifically they concluded: (1) Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill. (2) Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others. (3) Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy. (4) If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* Played straight for most of the remake of ''Film/ThePinkPanther2006''... mostly. As an example, after hearing a murder victim's last words were "Oh, it's you!", Clouseau orders all people in the city with the name "Yu" to be detained for interrogation. Naturally, he's saddled up with a Chinese woman rattling off in Chinese. After the interrogation, his partner asks if he can even understand Chinese. Clouseau acts all offended and replies something along the lines of "Do you think I would do all this if I didn't understand Chinese?" [[spoiler:Seeing as he's been FeigningIntelligence for most of the movie, his partner (and the audience) look unconvinced... until a flashback at the end of the movie reveals that not only did Clouseau actually understand what the woman was saying, she had also given them a vital clue.]] Clouseau doesn't pretend to be intelligent, he actually believes he's this massively skilled badass, though granted, when his beliefs betray him [[IMeantToDoThat he will try to play it off as on purpose.]] In the [[Franchise/ThePinkPanther original film series]], Creator/PeterSellers [[WordOfGod often commented]] that he played Clouseau as an extremely arrogant man who was nevertheless ''just'' clever enough to realize what a complete imbecile he really was.

* In ''Series/DoctorWho'', [[TheNthDoctor the Tenth Doctor stated to his younger incarnation]] that he wore his glasses not because he needed them, but because it made him look clever. Of course, the Doctor is very smart to begin with, but still. It has also been theorized that the Tenth Doctor, who frequently claims himself to be clever, is double-FeigningIntelligence-ObfuscatingStupidity, or something. (See the Poirot example above.) The Doctor has been getting into trouble by pretending to be more knowledgeable than he actually is since "The Aztecs" in 1964.

* ''Webcomic/{{Misfile}}''. Debate continues on whether Rumisiel is genuinely admitting FeigningIntelligence or displaying ObfuscatingStupidity to maintain his [[TheStoner image]] in [[http://www.misfile.com/?date=2008-05-16 this strip.]]

* ''Series/DrakeAndJosh'': Drake gets Josh to help him cheat on an academic game show to impress an [[NerdsAreSexy attractive genius]]. HilarityEnsues, leading to the good ol' BeYourself [[AnAesop Aesop]]... which, in this case, would mean, "[[FamilyUnfriendlyAesop I don't care about what's inside. I like you because you're cute]]."

* Wheatley in ''Fanfic/BlueSky,'' reprising his role of desperately attempting to seem intelligent without actually being so. His success rate is...debatable, but has at the very least not improved much from ''Portal2.''

* 'WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'': In the episode "The Long Bomb," [[spoiler:arena football player Johnny Concussion fakes his own death and hatches a plot to steal his jersey back from the owner of the Bazooka Sharks after he was kicked from the team due to his numerous head injuries. He disguises himself as a goateed criminal mastermind who speaks eloquently, even though Johnny's normal speech has been noticeably slowed by his concussions.]]

* 'WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'': In the episode "The Long Bomb," [[spoiler:arena football player Johnny Concussion fakes his own death and hatches a plot to steal his jersey back from the owner of the Bazooka Sharks after he was kicked from the team due to his numerous head injuries. He disguises himself as a goateed criminal mastermind who speaks eloquently, even though Johnny's normal speech has been noticeably slowed by his concussions.]]

* One Tabletop session that went OffTheRails had an example of this. The kingdom's Archmage was really just a bard with a maxed-out bluff skill and he was in way over his head.

* In ''Film/MrMom'', Michael Keaton's character is renovating the house and pretending to know what he's doing to impress his wife's boss. Her boss asks him if he was going to do the new addition in "two-twenty," (referring to a standard voltage). Keaton hesitates a moment and says, "Yeah, two-twenty... two-twenty-one. Whatever it takes!" This is, of course, a meaningless answer.

* ''Literature/TheHungerGames'': Effie Trinket is probably dumber than a jar of mayonnaise, but she certainly doesn't see it that way. At one point, Effie claims to be something of an expert in architecture. Portia only acknowledges this because the silence was getting too long.
-->'''Effie:''' Everyone has their reservations, naturally. You being from the coal district. But I said, and this was very clever of me, I said, "[[CriticalResearchFailure Well, if you put enough pressure on coal it turns to pearls]]!"
:: Gets a {{callback}} in ''Catching Fire'' by an amused Peeta when he actually finds a pearl.

* [[http://xkcd.com/451/ This]] ''Webcomic/{{xkcd}}'' comic indicates that there are some topics where you can get away with it.

* [[http://www.xkcdb.com/?5414 This]] ''WebComic/{{xkcd}}'' quote demonstrating what a politician trying to get away with knowing little outside of rehearsed "hot topics" can run into.