History Main / KnowNothingKnowItAll

A Know-Nothing Know-It-All is a character who insists they know everything, is always right, that [[GladIThoughtOfIt they were the ''actual'' original creator of an idea]], and who generally has an extremely high opinion of themselves and their abilities, when nothing could be further from the truth.

* In ''Fanfic/{{Cheshire|MiraculousLadybug}}'', Max questions how Cheshire could fix the city from the damage of Akuma fights if her power is Destruction... despite the fact Cheshire has repeatedly accomplished just that several times.
* ''Fanfic/MarinetteDupainChengsSpitePlaylist'': Lila has a bad tendency to not actually ''research'' any of her claims, such as casually declaring herself to be the direct descendant of somebody who didn't have any children.

* ''Fanfic/EscapeFromTheMoon'': In the sequel ''The Mare From the Moon'', Spliced mentions having had to deal with a few of these in her classes as a younger pony, including one student who, after failing a history exam, still insisted he was right and the textbook was wrong. Then there was the one who went as far as trying to change the historical records to match up with what he claimed was right, but was caught almost immediately.

* ''Fanfic/TheDemonSpiral'': Ino brags about her supposedly incredible understanding of how politics and other aspects of their society work; however, she also believes that Sasuke would ''obviously'' pick her as his wife due to her clan's high status, and that her father would prioritize cementing a connection with the Uchiha by arranging for her to be on his team rather than maintaining the Ino-Shika-Chou tradition. Sasuke points out that he'd prefer marrying a clanless girl so that his wife's clan wouldn't supercede the Uchiha.
* ''Fanfic/{{What You Knead|Naruto}}'': Despite being Konoha's self-proclaimed spymaster, Jiraiya has a [[FatalFlaw bad habit]] of making assumptions and acting impulsively based on faulty, outdated or outright wrong information. For instance, his EstablishingCharacterMoment has him paying Kakashi a visit two years after he retired from active service, having assumed he'd been killed when his face stopped appearing in Bingo Books. He then attempts to lecture and shame Kakashi for ''daring'' to retire, despite not knowing anything about ''why'' he did so, and is shocked at having his [[{{Hypocrite}} hypocrisies]] thrown back in his face. He further assumes that Kakashi hasn't done anything to address Naruto's situation, only to learn that he's reached out to him and become his BigBrotherMentor.

* ''Fanfic/KnightOfSalem'': Salem is supremely confident in her wealth of knowledge, while remaining stubbornly set in her ways. For instance, she believes that water mills are the height of technology, that illnesses are caused by imbalanced humors, and that vehicles are just odd-looking beasts of burden.

* ''Fanfic/ToughLove'': Bella believes that she's incredibly smart. So smart, in fact, that she's rejected all of the help her teachers have offered in the form of tutoring, counseling and extensions on assignments that she's completely blown off, which has naturally led to her grades tanking. She also assumes that nobody around her is capable of figuring out the ways she's "manipulating" them in order to get what she wants. Such as the fact that she was StealingFromTheTill at work and artificially inflating her hours, or that she's only interested in stringing Edward along until he [[ImmortalitySeeker makes her a vampire]].

'''Wanda''': Oh, right! To call you stupid would be [[InsultToRocks an insult to]] ''[[InsultToRocks stupid people!]]'' I've known sheep that could outwit you. I've worn dresses with higher [[UsefulNotes/IQTesting IQs]]. But you think you're an intellectual, don't you, ape?\\

* ''Literature/ArlyHanks'': Brother Verber recites Bible phrases at the drop of a hat. As he's the inept product of a fly-by-night correspondence-course seminary, he constantly misquotes them, mistakes their verse numbers, and/or takes them so far out of context as to be irrelevant.

** Downplayed with Greg. He is shown to be quite GenreSavvy, have plenty of intellectual outlooks on how middle school works, displays artistic and grammatical expertise in his writing, and has quite a long and detailed memory shown in his diaries. This makes him conclude that he is brilliant overall. However, he is seriously lacking in common sense as many instances of his ineptitude can prove.

** Sergeant Colon from the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' series is a mild version of this. He does consider himself well informed, but the only person he tries to impress this on is Nobby Nobbs, who he's aware may be winding him up. Such as when Colon identifies hieroglyphs as a type of mollusk, and is asked if they go lower they'll find loweroglyphs, and decides to go for broke - everyone knows you don't get loweroglyphs in these waters. It is said he had a broad education; he went to the school of 'my dad always said', the college of 'it stands to reason', and is now a post-graduate student at the university of 'what some bloke told me in the pub'.

* In the short story "Literature/EverydayUse", Mama's daughter Dee is trying to immerse herself in her family's African culture, but repeatedly fails to understand its true meaning, or what it means to her family. She changes her name to "Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo" to protest the oppression and cultural whitewashing of black Americans, ignoring Mama's protest that the name "Dee" is just as important to their family if not more, having been passed down through many generations. The title of the story comes from Dee/Wangero's reaction to Mama not giving her a particular handmade quilt to hang up, saying that it should go to her and not her sister Maggie because the latter would "probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use". Dee/Wangero only views the quilt as a kind of trophy, something to be used to display pride in her heritage, while Maggie learned to make quilts from their mother and even sewed some of her own quilts, showing a more in-depth understanding of their family's traditions that she doesn't flaunt or take unnecessary pride in.

** Lucy Van Pelt thinks that snow falls up, fir trees have fur on them, and that a chain line is so that climbers can all fall of mountains and die together instead of it having the exact opposite purpose (so that the climber falling doesn't fall to his death because the others are holding him up).

* ''ComicBook/HeroesInCrisis'' takes this to a disturbing degree in regards to Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. The Trinity take it upon themselves to create Sanctuary, a place for heroes to receive therapy in private for the things they endure. The trouble is, there are absolutely no doctors or any licensed professionals working at the place. Sanctuary's run by an AI supposedly programmed with the best respective qualities of the Trinity, expecting this would be enough to act as a counselor for those who need it. It's steadily shown the AI has been emotionally and mentally abusing its patients, making them relive their most traumatic memories while asking them inane questions or berating them for caring. The AI also does nothing for those who are suicidal or trying to commit self harm, such as Lagoon Boy who reexperiences the Titans East massacre over 300 times. [[spoiler:At no point is it ever acknowledged how harmful Sanctuary was or the culpability of the Trinity for the emotional torture they inflicted, as the ensuing deaths caused by Wally West's breakdown after spending weeks suffering in Sanctuary were retconned in ''ComicBook/FlashInfiniteFrontier'' as a result of evil speedster Savitar escaping the Speed Force in a burst of energy that killed everyone near Wally.]]

* Theodore from ''[[VideoGame/{{Persona3}} Persona 3 Portable]]'' claims to know all about the human world, but it's fairly evident that he's clueless about [[NoSocialSkills human interaction in general]].

* ''Series/TheThreeStooges'': While Moe is the smartest of the Stooges, [[DamnedByFaintPraise that only translates to his intelligence being below-average as opposed to nonexistent.]] Yet he's convinced he's a genius. In most shorts, the entire reason for the Stooges getting themselves in trouble is because Moe roped them into some sort of harebrained scheme to make a quick buck.

* The Institute of ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' are all scientific knowledge, with zero ''practical'' knowledge of how to apply it. They seclude themselves underground, spending nearly two centuries going nowhere with boondoggle after boondoggle experiment, use their most impressive inventions [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots (the Synths)]] as slave labor and people snatchers, and waste time trying to crack experiments (the Forced Evolutionary Virus, intelligent machines, the use of teleportation) that previous game characters and factions already did better.

** Dale is much the same way, although not to as much of an extreme. It stems more from being a {{Cloudcuckoolander}} who believes his own lies about himself and his own competence. One of the most base jokes about his character is that even though he's convinced he's on the verge of uncovering various government conspiracies, he's too dim to realize his wife has been having a very public and obvious affair for more than ten years (although some episodes portray it more like full-blown denial).

* Stan from ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'' especially in The Most Adequate Christmas Ever, where he gets killed and fights his way up to God Himself in order to get brought back to life to save his family. As God points out, there's no better metaphor for "I know everything" than pointing a gun to God's head and insisting He's wrong.

* Brian from ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' especially in the later seasons when he insists he's right about everything and pushes his beliefs to get everyone to take his side, and takes credit for ideas that weren't his in the first place and other times using them as an excuse in order to get into a woman's pants. , which was one of the things Quagmire called him out on in his TheReasonYouSuckSpeech:

** Though Lisa is very smart and knows stuff people don't already know, Homer and Lisa's argument at the dinner table in "Lisa the Vegetarian" has Homer calling his daughter a "barbecue-wrecking, [[TropeNamers/TheSimpsons know-nothing, know-it-all]]". She does have a moment of this in "[=MoneyBART=]". When Lisa becomes the manager of Bart's baseball team, she claims that there have been several women managers and lists some off like Terry Francona and Connie Mack. Nelson tells her that all of her examples are men, much to Lisa's shock.
** Homer also proves to know less than he boasts, particularly in the episode "Homer Goes to College," where he interrupts a professor's lecture on a proton accelerator; the teacher finally asks him to demonstrate because he ''must'' know so well how it works ...only for Homer to somehow cause a nuclear meltdown.

* Patrick Star of ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' once claimed that Wumbo is a real word. He also sagely details the symptoms of Mad Snail Disease. He also once insists that [=SpongeBob=] is a zombie. [[spoiler:Needless to say, it's all a load of barnacles.]] [[note]]Incidentally, as part of a BrickJoke, it turns out [[StrangeMindsThinkAlike Wumbo might have been a real word]] in Bikini Bottom, but one which fell into such disuse, only an old man like Mermaid Man can remember it (how Patrick knows about it is never explained.) Then again, MM is senile.[[/note]]

** Her brother, Wizard Boy, is also this. Nobody likes him because he acts like he's hot stuff and insists on bossing the other low-ranking adventurers around, despite being a magic school dropout and the only one without field experience. [[spoiler: He tries to usurp command from Priestess (who is Obsidian-rank and has a decent amount of field experience after being an adventurer for a year) leading a practice rookie mission twice, the second time leading the group into a troll's nest and putting everyone in danger]].

* Sakura Haruno is a practical {{Deconstruction}} of this trope from ''Manga/{{Naruto}}''. While she was one of the top students of the Academy (second only to Ino who'd become Kunoichi of the Year), she considered herself a lot stronger than the 'Dead-Last' Naruto Uzumaki since she equated 'knowing more about textbook things translates to real life'. During her first ''real'' mission in the Land of Waves, she realized Naruto was not only stronger than her but had pulled far ahead and during the Chunin Exams, she sacrificed the long hair she had grown meticulously so Sasuke would notice her in an attempt to save her teammates who were unconscious from the battle with Orochimaru. Sakura eventually becomes [[LadyOfWar Tsunade]]'s apprentice, TakesALevelInBadass in the first arc of Part II...and then has no truly memorable fights afterwards and is TheMedic on the sidelines at best. However, during the last stage of the WarArc [[spoiler: she can keep up with KCM Naruto ''and'' a Complete Susano'o EMS Sasuke...until she gets OvershadowedByAwesome rather quickly, and after realizing that she just CantCatchUp, she ultimately has to rely on her two teammates yet again.]]

** Misty is a {{Downplayed}} case. On the surface, she's more experienced than Ash on account of her being an actual Gym Leader, and she can certainly back up her skills when she needs to, but every now and then, the show reminds the audience that Misty is no less knowledgable or mature as the very boy she mocks for those same traits, as her easily-riled temper or lack of experience against more powerful Water Type Pokémon Trainers results in a crushing defeat. Like Ash, she does mature beyond this and is able to start backing up her knowhow.
** [[AnnoyingYoungerSibling Max]] from ''Anime/PokemonTheSeriesRubyAndSapphire'' is a {{downplayed}} example -- he's BookSmart and can recite Pokémon facts and statistics from memory, but he has no practical experience to back up his boasting. For example, he chastises Ash for losing in a high-level battle tournament and claims that he could've done a better job, but later episodes demonstrate that Max's battle tactics suck -- such as the time he nearly loses a battle despite his Pokémon having a type advantage that he never bothers to take advantage of due to rather focussing on only using status moves.

* In ''Film/ITonya'', Tonya Harding's bodyguard Shawn Eckardt gives a television interview at the height of the Nancy Kerrigan scandal, where he claims to be a counterterrorism expert who works internationally and has been consulted for a "travel magazine during the Gulf War." His character is so outlandishly delusional that it probably took some audiences out of the story a little...which is probably why the filmmakers added footage over the credits of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV8gyTEKG3A&t=68s the actual Shawn Eckardt]] [[FreakierThanFiction making that actual claim]].

* ''Series/TheAndyGriffithShow'': Barney Fife is Andy's overly-officious deputy, who once locked up the Mayor of Mayberry for being a vagrant. When he tries to make improvements or "modernize" law enforcement in Mayberry, HilarityEnsues.

* A recurring bit on ''Series/{{Leverage}}'' as a mark loves to brag about their "expertise" on a subject but actually knows little about it (which the gang can use for their con).
** The [[Series/LeverageRedemption sequel series]] has one mark considering herself an art expert and tastemaker because of a single year she spent at the Royal College of Art. It quickly becomes clear she couldn't tell a Rembrandt from a Monet if you put labels on them.

* Rick from ''Series/TheYoungOnes'' is convinced he's an anarchist when really he's a misinformed StrawmanPolitical.

''I like when they talk real loud, try to tell you what they know.''\\

* In [[Recap/CriminalCaseTheConspiracyCase38PainInTheNeck Case 38]] of ''VideoGame/CriminalCaseTheConspiracy'', you investigate the murder of economics professor René Narcisse. The man has written two economics textbooks and is so secure in his knowledge of economics that he yelled at his wife if she spent more than $100 on groceries. Yet despite his knowledge and arrogance, [[spoiler:he managed to lose all of his and his wife's retirement savings in the stock market. This, alongside his extremely condescending refusal to apologize for such a screwup, led his wife to murder him in a rage.]]

* ''Webcomic/{{Housepets}}'': Falstaff, one half of a raccoon ThoseTwoGuys pair with Truck, considers himself the intellectual of the two as indicated by his Shakesperean reference name. While marginally smarter than FatIdiot Truck, that doesn't say much for his own tendency to come up with half-thought out schemes and his love of 'defining' words with definitions that are blatantly wrong.

** In "Jeffy's Homework!", When it comes to math, Jeffy thinks 2+2=2 because it makes a baby 2, 8-4=8 because the four is taken away, and 0+0=2 because there are two zeroes who don't love each other. It even causes him to go into a swearing fit and suddenly become more eloquent and curse his diaper, helmet, and pencil, as well as several scientists while claiming that his answers are right. [[spoiler:By the end of the video, Mr. Goodman reveals that he believes in his subtraction reasoning, and it is even named "Jeffy's Law of Subtraction", leading the whole world into believing Jeffy as well.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButthead'': Butt-head has an answer for everything Beavis asks him and acts like he knows everything. In reality, he's the dumbest character in the series next to Beavis and is hilariously unqualified to speak on just about any topic despite having a high level of self-confidence that doesn't match up to his actual intelligence level.

* In the penultimate episode of ''WesternAnimation/InfinityTrain'' Book 3, [[spoiler:a flashback reveals that Grace Monroe had no idea what the numbers of the train were supposed to do when she first met Simon. But instead of admitting she didn't have any idea (as her number was a 142 and Simon had 55) she decides to bluff and boast, "I ''totally'' know how the Train works!" Unfortunately this stubborness and refusal to admit she was wrong would eventually create the Apex...]]

** WesternAnimation/DaffyDuck at certain [[DependingOnTheWriter times]], however, he is the case of the SmallNameBigEgo variant.

* Downplayed in ''Oz Kids'' with Scarecrow Jr. While he can be dismissive of his teammates' opinions, he sometimes has been known to analyze a situation carefully.

* ''WesternAnimation/RenAndStimpy'': Despite Ren being the self-proclaimed smart one in the group, it has been shown in many cases that Ren himself is an idiot.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/RockosModernLife'' episode "Dear John", it's revealed that Bucky, the host of a popular do-it-yourself show actually doesn't do the work himself, but delegates it to [[ActuallyThatsMyAssistant his assistant]], [[GenderBlenderName Al]]. Bucky is apparently more of [[ExactWords "a visionary and a dreamer"]] than a doer. (Plus, he looks great in a plaid shirt.) Also, he only seems to know how to create [[ToiletHumor bathrooms]].

* Patrick Star of ''WesternAnimation/SpongebobSquarepants'' once claimed that Wumbo is a real word. He also sagely details the symptoms of Mad Snail Disease. He also once insists that Spongebob is a zombie. [[spoiler:Needless to say, it's all a load of barnacles.]] [[note]]Incidentally, as part of a BrickJoke, it turns out [[StrangeMindsThinkAlike Wumbo might have been a real word]] in Bikini Bottom, but one which fell into such disuse, only an old man like Mermaid Man can remember it (how Patrick knows about it is never explained.) Then again, MM is senile.[[/note]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'', this is one manifestation of Dermott Fictel's SmallNameBigEgo. He claims that Certs mints can be used to make napalm. He claims he can play the guitar, but always finds an excuse not to. He claims [[AssShove inserting a lighter into your rectum]] is the best defense against aliens -- and he actually does it. In most cases, he doesn't seem [[IgnorantOfTheirOwnIgnorance Ignorant of His Own Ignorance]]; he's just desperate to impress.

[[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Has nothing to do]] with [[UsefulNotes/MillardFillmore a know-it-all]] from the 18th-century American [[AtrociousAlias the Know-Nothing party]].