Bunny-Ears Lawyer

Some people enjoy their job. Moliere really digs his.

"Well, obviously, Lionel Tribbey is a brilliant lawyer whom we cannot live without, or there would be very little reason not to put him in prison."

— President Bartlet, The West Wing

Some characters have pervasive or extremely noticeable personality quirks, but remain steadily employed because they are just that good at what they do. Coworkers, superiors, and friends find themselves willing to overlook these informalities (e.g., a hypothetical highly successful lawyer who happens to wear fuzzy pink bunny ears during all his cases) so long as the job gets done. This is a cost/benefit ordeal: if they weren't so good at their job or their quirks were too obstructive, no employer would consider them a necessary sacrifice for sanity. In larger numbers, you'd have a case for a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits.

Much like the Ditzy Genius, it is a strange mixture of brilliant and bizarre. Their quirks don't seem to be intrinsic to success, a la Success Through Insanity, and the unexpected quirks only tend to bother new characters who don't know them well. Compare the Insufferable Genius, whose quirk is more often just being a Jerkass. The Insufferable Genius might insist everyone address him as "sir" or "Dr. Smith"; the Bunny-Ears Lawyer might not answer unless addressed as "Grand Duchess Abigail Chester Wilson Snapdragon Lemmywinks Brian Brain McFisticuffs the Negative 10 to the Fifth Power".

There are lots of Bunny-Ears Lawyers out there (we had to make subpages because of how many), mainly because having the character be an expert allows the writers to plausibly put them in any situation they want while the quirks make the characters interesting and unique. It is also a form of Wish-Fulfillment, especially in professional settings or societies that place a high value on conformity and "going by the book." There is some Truth in Television to this trope. Authorities in educational or professional environments will sometimes ignore quirks, especially if they don't have any relevance to the degree or job at hand. Although you're unlikely to see something as extreme as an actual bunny ears-wearing lawyer, you will find plenty of examples of people who remain employed despite their personal peculiarities.

A form of Ultimate Job Security. For situations where the strange guy is the one in charge (and uses their strange behavior to run their business) see The Wonka. Uniformed examples may overlap with the Military Maverick. If they're a machine of some kind, see Eccentric A.I.. Not to be confused with the Ambulance Chaser, though they may overlap in some cases. Compare the Indispensable Scoundrel, who is extremely competent but is shady and disliked as opposed to quirky. Contrast Consummate Professional, who will care about his behavior and appearance as much as his work discipline and skill.

Luckily, they're rarely Ax-Crazy. (Not never.) For an ultra manly-man who pulls off some girly hobby and nobody minds, take a refresher in the fact that Real Men Wear Pink.

Remember: In order for a character to qualify he must keep his job through sheer unquestionable competence. Sometimes you have incompetent characters that happen to be quirky and keep their jobs through means that have nothing to do with their competence. That is not this trope. If they are actually competent yet are seen as "renegade" due to their unusual behavior or philosophy and often are at risk of being fired (if they could find a legitimate way to get rid of you), you are looking at The Last DJ.^note The characteristics of a Last DJ that rub his colleagues the wrong way are usually more related to elements related to work ethic, such as integrity, authenticity, and avoiding the bureaucracy, politics, or social cliques of the workplace in question, not mere self indulgent quirks and eccentricities that may be widespread anyway amongst the workplace. Also, in order to qualify, the character should have an unusual quirk or eccentricity, not just be slightly more informal than his colleagues. Finally, these quirks and eccentricities should, ideally, be a deliberate indulgence confidently relished by the the person in question, not merely due to Social Awkwardness, some unspecified mental disorder, or Single-Issue Psychology.

Not to be confused with Kangaroo Court. See also the Exotic Detective. A Quirky Doctor might qualify if they are also competent. Can be apart of a Crazy Workplace if most others are just as wacky as them.

noreallife

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Examples subpages:

• Anime & Manga
• Comic Books
• Fan Works
• Films — Live-Action
• Literature
• Live-Action TV
• Tabletop Games
• Video Games
• Web Comics
• Web Original
• Western Animation

Other examples:

Advertising

• Zach, the LEGO Maniac! He's nuts about LEGO — literally — but he's a genius with LEGO. (Or so the commercial suggests.)

Films — Animation

• Georges Hautecourt from The Aristocats. He takes "you're only as old as you feel" to heart despite being genuinely really old, yet Madame loves that about him and has kept him as her lawyer for decades.
• Most of the main cast of Atlantis: The Lost Empire fall under this one way or another, but Gaetan "Mole" Molière is the standout example. He's an utter wackadoo who acts like his namesake to the point where he sleeps in holes he digs himself, but he is brilliant when it comes to geology, dirt in particular, and has developed or invented 62 independent mining and excavation vehicles, tools, or related equipment.
• Despicable Me: Vector as a villain: he likes to wear gaudy tracksuits and use mostly ineffective guns that shoot out some form of aquatic life to do his villainy, as well as getting help from another source. Yet he manages to steal the Pyramid of Giza and prevent Gru from getting into his fortress without outside help.
• Geri's Game establishes Geri as an eccentric old man who plays chess by himself. Toy Story 2 shows that he takes his job as a repairman very seriously, however.
• Bobby Zimmeruski is shown in A Goofy Movie to be skilled at rigging A/V equipment and in the sequel to be excellent at extreme sports. He's also completely ridiculous, doing such things as randomly obsessing over spray cheese, sticking spoons and straws all over his body to "impress" the Gammas, and nonchalantly wearing Goofy's afro that Max pointedly threw away.
• The Incredibles: Kari McKeen, the babysitter who watches Jack-Jack while the Parrs are off on their adventure. Her first scene shows her as somewhat ditzy, but Jack-Jack Attack shows that she really does know what she's doing, despite most certainly not having signed on for babysitting a superpowered infant.
• In Kung Fu Panda, Po starts out as a humorous bumbling glutton prone to extremely awkward moments. By the end of the first movie, he becomes a kung fu master capable of plowing through hordes of mooks with ease and going toe-to-toe with other masters... and who is still a humorous bumbling glutton prone to extremely awkward moments. This is further shown in the sequels and animated series, where Po is still disobedient, undisciplined, gluttonous, and accident-prone, but can learn highly advanced techniques after seeing them one time and can even master techniques from reading about them that Master Shifu is unable to perform. He even masters one that blinds anyone who sees it performed... which he not once, but repeatedly after learning it, forgets to close his eyes so he doesn't blind himself.
• Subverted in Ratatouille. Linguini and his eccentric behaviour is tolerated by the staff of Gusteau's because his cooking skills are top-notch. In truth Linguini is neither insane nor a cooking genius, he's just a dork with a very talented rat controlling him under his chef toque. The rat knows how to cook, he just knows how to appear human.
• Titan A.E. tackles this one head-on in the character of Gune.
  I'll tell you a secret: This guy's nuts!
  I'll tell you another one. He is never wrong.
• In Turning Red, Mr. Gao is a community elder, an experienced shaman, and the one able to lead the ritual to seal the red panda spirit away. Also fun-loving and loves Tony Bennett songs.
• Benjamin Clawhauser from Zootopia. He has a really bad attention span, is a huge Fan Boy of pop star Gazelle, and is extremely flamboyant. He's also a dedicated, reliably helpful front desk officer, who gives friendly service with a smile, delivers consistently accurate information in a reasonably timely manner, and is quick to apologize for any perceived transgressions or failures. His tough-as-nails boss, for whom capability is the number one priority, is perfectly willing to let his idiosyncrasies slide.

Podcasts

• Klein from Find Us Alive, the intrepid site director who carries around a flare gun, participates in office chair races, gets really into the sitewide Capture the Flag game, and constantly advocates for flagrant disregard of protocol in favor of the site's survival.
• Solar:
  • Jamal Davis is a Motor Mouth prone to going on philosophical tangents, yet he's a very competent pilot.
  • Commander Alex Tawley. He's a goofy, eccentric Wide-Eyed Idealist who is nonetheless a very caring and responsible leader who cares deeply for his crew.
• In The Thrilling Adventure Hour, Frank & Sadie Doyle's constant drunkenness and general apathy to anything that is not either booze or each other masks a truly masterful knowledge of the occult and an ability to confront supernatural baddies at every turn.
• Wooden Overcoats: Antigone is a weird, morbid, Shrinking Violet who works at a second-rate funeral home with her brother. Her lack of people skills and Nightmare Fetishist tendencies put people off, and she rarely has enough confidence to assert herself and her ideas (especially in the earlier episodes). However, multiple episodes show that, when given proper time and resources and allowed to run with her ideas, she's actually a very good funeral director, and can put together a truly stunning service. Of course, she rarely gets the chance to prove it.

Professional Wrestling

• Eugene, WWE's resident "special" wrestler, started out as a Professional Wrestling Idiot Savant who, despite his mental handicaps, was an excellent ring technician with a Ditto Fighter (type: Tsungxpert) tendency to hit famous finishers like the Rock Bottom and Hogan Leg Drop. Faces lined up to be his friend thanks to his simple, childlike demeanor and his kicking a lot of ass, and heels lined up to manipulate him to their own ends, thanks to... his simple, childlike demeanor and his kicking a lot of ass. Unfortunately, he eventually got Flanderized and became a jobber, and towards the end of his run served mostly as a way for heels to Kick the Dog.
• Jeff Hardy has been portrayed like this as well. He gyrates and dances his way to the ring, covers his arms and face in fluorescent paint, makes abstract paintings backstage, openly refers to his fans as freaks and misfits (in a good way, indicating that he's just as much one as them), and throws his body into his every attack with reckless abandon... and is a 1x WWE Champion, a 2x WWE World Heavyweight Champion and six-time WWE World Tag Team Champion. Even better? He fits this trope in Real Life as well, as his real behavior is even more bizarre, and yet he was respected enough and loved by the fans enough during his WWE run that he was given all those title reigns.
  • Amy "Lita" Dumas wrote in her book how someone once told her that Jeff had bought a Bobcat, her first reaction was that he had acquired an actual wild animal as a pet; as opposed to the skid loader/earth moving equipment that he actually purchased. Even among his close friends he's 'off' enough that both were perfectly logical assumptions.
• Dalton Castle, (or Ashley Remington to you CHIKARA fans). A former Radio DJ, he's a Large Ham party boy who coos and poses like a peacock but he's also an amateur wrestling champion who can dead lift a 300 pound man into a German suplex and he held the World Heavyweight Title of the International Wrestling Cartel for over a year.
• Randy Savage had a crazy, boisterous personality (which was mostly how he really was) but when it came to his actual matches, he was a perfectionist who mapped out every single detail of his bigger matches and practiced them with his opponent until they were perfect. It was his idea at Wrestlemania VII for Ultimate Warrior to calmly walk to the ring for their match rather than run like usual, and take a slower deliberate pace in the ring while Savage projected being completely thrown off and baffled by the change in style. Many believe this was Ultimate Warrior's greatest match of his entire career, owed entirely to Savage's painstaking ability to work around Warrior's in-ring limitations while also making Warrior's more deliberate behavior make sense within the context of the match.
• British Wrestler Les Kellett, whose shtick was to bumble about the ring in a daze appearing to be confused about what was actually going on, and suffered selective deafness (that always worked to hs advantage) - and then would suddenly explode into action and trash an opponent twice his size without breaking sweat.
• Doink the Clown (at least during his heel run) dressed like a stereotypical clown and played pranks (not all innocent ones either) on fellow wrestlers, yet his technical wrestling skills were always put over by the announcers.
• For all of Delirious' incoherent ramblings and bizarre behavior, he is a really good wrestler.

Puppet Shows

• Pili Fantasy: War of Dragons: Yin Shih-jen is usually the comic relief of the series, good for little other than gofering and delivering messages. He is actually a skilled poisoner, courtesy of having worked for a now dead villain, along with his ability to teleport through the Earth.

Radio

• Cabin Pressure:
  • Douglas is a fountain of nigh-endless sarcasm, highly skilled at pretty much anything he bothers to do (not try, he's never needed to bother with that), and has a knack for manipulating everyone around him. There is a reason MJN Air is the only airline that will employ him anymore.
  • Counterbalancing him is Martin, who is brilliant at the technical applications of piloting, but in practice starts off as a total neurotic mess who, like Douglas, is only at MJN because they're they only people who will take him. He's terrible in a crisis and desperate to assert his authority at all times.
• Jessie's mother Miyamoto in Pokémon: The Birth of Mewtwo seems like a goofy Woman Child at first glance, with her being an energetic Third-Person Person, but she's one of the top members of Team Rocket.

Roleplay

• Most Primaris Psykers in Embers in the Dusk. Since they only get their position after proving they're competent, and almost all psykers have some kind of quirk, Primaris Psykers tend to have various oddities that get tolerated because their usefulness is more than enough to compensate for it. For example, Tamia can be ditzy or absent-minded, while Aria is a bit OCD. Perfectly normal individuals like Xavier are the exception.

Theatre

• In The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Azdak the judge is a maverick pursuer of poetic justice and a hero to poor underdogs, in whose favour he usually rules. He is also drunken, horny, rude, violent and so completely in contempt of his own court that he is nearly hanged at one point.
• Hamilton: Alexander Hamilton himself. An overeager, obnoxious Glory Hound with a chronic inability to shut up, but a certifiable financial genius who stabilized the fledgling United States' economy and founded the National Bank.

Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney: Everyone in the Japanese/Californian legal system is some degree of crazy, but very effective at their jobs.
  • Phoenix Wright is one of the least weird lawyers in the game, which says more about all of the other nutcases he works with than he himself. This is the man whose courtroom strategy is best summed up as 'fake it 'till you make it', gets most of his decisive evidence by stealing it from crime scenes, and who is willing to cross-examine everything from parrots to channeled ghosts to get his 'not guilty' verdict. It all tends to work out quite well for him and he's only really ever lost one case because he was trying to lose (plus one that was declared a mistrial).
  • Miles Edgeworth would like to pretend he's a composed professional, but fate just loves rubbing all the ways he isn't one in his face in court. He's a closet fanboy of the Steel Samurai series, has No Social Skills, and has a deep-seated phobia of earthquakes and a more minor fear of elevators.
  • Manfred von Karma is considered one of the best prosecutors around with a 40-year-long win streak. He also acts as the prosecutorial fashion police, once announced his ATM number to the entire court to make a point, and outright murders the one defense attorney who caused him to receive a penalty- Miles Edgeworth's father Gregory.
  • Franziska von Karma is a prodigy who managed to pass the bar aged thirteen and is quite good at her job, but never can quite hide that she's still a teenager trying to act mature. She actually carries a whip around for the purpose of assaulting people who annoy her, repeatedly calls people "foolish fools", emulates her dad's extreme perfectionism, and always uses peoples' full names (but gets mad if you do it to her).
  • Godot may not be as temperamental as Franziska, but he still uses the name of a theater character ( His real name is Diego Armando) in court, often launches into incomprehensible coffee metaphors, and limits himself to 17 cups of coffee per investigation- most of which he drinks, but some of which he throws at the defense. He also wears a distinctive mask everywhere, but there's a good reason for it; He's blind due to nerve damage from poison and the mask helps him see.
  • Apollo Justice stays up until 5 in the morning doing voice training so that he can yell OBJECTION more impressively, carefully gels his hair every day in a way that makes it look like insect antennae (or rabbit ears, making him something close to a literal Bunny Ears Lawyer), and gets the truth out of witnesses by using a bracelet that enables him to mentally zoom in on them and point out their nervous habits.
  • Klavier Gavin is both a prosecutor and renowned rock musician, who peppers his speech with random German words and performs air guitar in the middle of trials. Despite his lax attitude, he still manages to be the most competent and on-the-ball prosecutor to ever face the Wright Anything Agency.
  • Simon Blackquill is a convicted murderer currently serving time who is still allowed to work as a prosecutor because he's just that good, and because Edgeworth was pretty sure he was actually innocent, thinks of himself as a samurai (despite, in the localized version, being British) and keeps a pet hawk which he uses to attack other people and get takeout.
  • Athena Cykes is a capable junior lawyer...who stops every other case dead in its tracks for an impromptu therapy session using a highly advanced computer system she keeps in her necklace.
  • The Judge, who is famously reliable in passing fair judgments in spite of being a Cloudcuckoolander who will misunderstand basically anything, to the point of Franziska's plan of showing him an illegally-taken photo as vital evidence to make her case (evidence which could just as easily have been turned to Wright's favor) fails — because he just doesn't get the point she's coming across with. At all. Until the next year, when Phoenix successfully uses it in a related case.
  • Spark Brushel is also worth a mention, being an investigative journalist who seems genuinely knowledgeable despite seemingly never listening to anything anyone tells him, eating far too many breath mints, and indulging in overly-complicated metaphors.
  • Investigations has Shi-Long Lang, an Interpol officer who is really damn good at his job despite having an odd fascination with acting like a wolf, to the point of howling when upset.
  • One case in Justice For All has the Berry Big Circus, which is a circus of bunny-ears performers. There's the campy and effeminate magician Maximillion Galactica. We also have the ridiculously innocent animal tamer Regina. Then there's Moe the Clown who has a Motor Mouth and keeps laughing at his own (bad) jokes (and who ends up being the new ringmaster of the circus). But ventriloquist Benjamin Woodman probably takes the cake, his puppet Trilo Quist had his very own personality who keeps badmouthing Ben himself. When said puppet was taken away, he couldn't even form a single word.
  • The theme music played while talking to people without their own theme, from Justice for All onward, is actually called "Eccentric".
  • Tateyuki Shigaraki (Ray Shields in the fan translation) from Ace Attorney Investigations 2 as an adult is not only an actual defense lawyer, but is deeply sarcastic and wise-cracking, asks nearly everyone he meets (specifically the women) for hugs shortly after meeting them, his theme is actually called "Joking Motive" and he uses finger quotes/air quotes when speaking. As a teenager and trainee attorney under Gregory Edgeworth, he ate paper in order to remember what he jotted down on it and is a huge fanboy of a children's cooking programme, actually singing the show's theme with its two actors when he met them (individually, it should be noted did he meet them)... and yet he's on par with Phoenix in terms of determination, loyalty, and talent, and when he gets serious, his personality does an about-face.
• CLANNAD:
  • Kotomi may be a little crazy, but she's also effortlessly among the top ten students for the entire country.
  • Sanae (Nagisa's mom) might be rather overemotional, childlike, and airheaded, but she is nonetheless a brilliant cook (except when it comes to bread) and a successful teacher.
• In Danganronpa, you get into Hope's Peak by having an extreme level of skill in some field, which can be anything from neurology to dancing. There are no other requirements, and it soon becomes very clear that they are most definitely not checking for sanity.
  • Weirdos from the first game include Yasuhiro Hagakure (a Cloud Cuckoo Lander and probable con artist who got in as 'Ultimate Clairvoyant') Hifumi Yamada (a goofy-looking neurotic fanboy whose doujin work still sells thousands of copies, and who can whip up a passable robot cosplay in a single night), Toko Fukawa (bestselling romance author with severe emotional issues), Celestia Ludenberg (the Ultimate Gambler who's basically living a LARP as a gothic romance character), and Junko Enoshima (a beautiful and highly intelligent model who gets bored so easily she'll change her entire personality on a dime and is utterly dedicated to plunging the world into despair).
  • Oddballs of the second game include Nekomaru Nidai (a Hot-Blooded muscular man obsessed with defecation who's a very competent coach), Ibuki Mioda (Cloud Cuckoo Lander extraordinaire and the Ultimate Musician), Teruteru Hanamura (shameless pervert and Supreme Chef), Nagito Komaeda (highly intelligent and extremely lucky, and also obsessed with hope), Gundham Tanaka (a Large Ham who acts like a Card-Carrying Villain despite actually being a fairly normal pet breeder, and carries hamsters in his scarf), and Kazuichi Soda (Ultimate Mechanic and a socially awkward Butt-Monkey).
  • Nutcases of the third game include Kaito Momota (an out-of-place shonen protagonist who managed to pass the test to become an astronaut despite being a high schooler who bluffed his way past the 'college degree' requirement), Gonta Gokuhara (a Gentle Giant Raised by Wolves who's the Ultimate Entomologist), Kokichi Oma (claims to be the leader of an evil organization and is obsessed with lying), Korekiyo Shinguji (Ultimate Anthropologist and also a creepy weirdo and insane serial killer), Himiko Yumeno (a talented magician who's seriously lazy and incompetent at anything that isn't magic), Tenko Chabashira (Aikido master and Super Gullible girl who hates men), Angie Yonaga (Ultimate Artist and a fanatic of her god Atua), and Miu Iruma (lewd and potty-mouthed Ultimate Inventor who has a weird set of priorities, but can also hijack control of Exisal mechas and build a virtual reality).
• Dina from Gender Bender DNA Twister Extreme is quite a competent scientist, for all her obsession with giving everyone giant boobs, the fact that she turned herself into a Cat Girl, and her general tendency to completely ignore laboratory safety.
• Grisaia Series:
  • Ichigaya, a clandestine paramilitary spy organization, keeps the code name "I-9029" in reserve for agents that fit this description. Every 9029 has been extremely good at their job... and has had an insubordinate streak a mile wide that makes their handlers want to tear their hair out on a regular basis. We mostly see this in Yuuji, the current 9029, but later entries reveal his mentor and the previous 9029, Asako, was just as bad, if not worse (where do you think Yuuji learned it?) In Makina's ending, she joins Yuuji as his support agent, and is included as agent "V-9029", and naturally inherits the attitude.
  • Robert Wallson/James Okada in The Labyrinth of Grisaia and The Eden of Grisaia is a genius communications officer and computer programmer, but he's also a freckled, nerdy otaku with a much poorer grasp on the Japanese language than he believes. Despite that, he's also brave enough to reconnect the Thanatos system to Kazuki's memories even when he knows the price for discovery would be death. He also manages to marry a CIA agent.
• Hatoful Boyfriend:
  • Kazuaki Nanaki, the quail teacher, is a scatterbrained narcoleptic who falls asleep mid-sentence while introducing himself to his students on the first day of class (and repeatedly throughout the game). He's also a world-renowned mathematician, and no slouch in physics and chemistry, either.
  • Oko San's obsession with pudding doesn't seem to interfere with his athletic performance any. He also seems to be able to pass classes at one of the most demanding private high schools in the world, despite being unable to speak in anything but subtitled coos, most of which are pop culture references and complaints about pudding quality.
  • The player character can qualify, being a Hot-Blooded modern barbarian at the same high-standards high school who occasionally offers political insights in surprisingly erudite terminology... but is late to class the first day because she had to go hunting for breakfast, and didn't finish the summer reading assignment.
• Katawa Shoujo has Rin Tezuka, a brilliant armless painter who gets away with smoking and multiple (lighter) violations of school rules. Notably, this example is NOT played for laughs, and while she starts out seeming like an amusingly quirky Manic Pixie Dream Girl following her route quickly reveals that she is a supremely screwed up person, exhibiting many real-life symptoms of schizophrenia which are presented as exactly as terrifying as they would be in real life, and it's implied that in her Bad End she'll end up killing herself.
• Songs and Flowers' protagonist Jazz idolizes friend characters in dating sims and enjoys phrases like "fucksy-daisy-oopsy-maisie", but she's genuinely quite good at collecting information and putting pieces together. So good, in fact, she figures out who killed her mother by the end of the game, leading to their arrest.
• Ban from Spirit Hunter: NG has a terrible gambling problem and squanders most of his money as a result, but he always makes sure his recklessness doesn't bleed over into his work, where he's instead effective at gathering information.

Web Animation

• If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device has entire organizations of those.
  • The Ultramarines are an entire army of Parody Sues who speak in Purple Prose and can't shut up about their grandiose, but when something has to be done, they will do it, even if it violates all the rules of physics and common sense.
  • The Custodians are an immortal Badass Army... and also Macho Camp exhibitionists.
  • Salamanders are one of the most successful Chapters despite taking their love of fire to the point of fetish.
  • Kaldor Draigo is a literally insane from spending thousands of years in the Warp, speaking bizarre gibberish and going on wild rants and generally seeming only partially aware of what's going on. He is also the best daemon-slayer in the entire galaxy, defeating Magnus the Red with a single punch, destroying an entire star to save a group of Imperial soldiers, and terrifying the Deceiver himself.
• Red vs. Blue: Honestly, all of the Blood Gulchers fit into this trope in one way or another. Keep in mind that they were selected from the worst of the worst soldiers so that Project Freelancer could test their Super Soldiers.
  • Sarge is a General Ripper and The Neidermeyer who constantly comes up with dumb and bizarre ideas to beat the Blues. He's also skilled enough to make robots and turn people into cyborgs, deadly in a fight, and managed to outsmart and defeat Agent Washington. It's later mentioned that he was once an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper.
  • Grif is generally known for his uncleanliness, laziness and cowardice. But when he's called to action, he leaps into action without a second thought. (When fighting against the Meta in the Season 8 finale, the Meta's been beating the Reds and Tucker to hell and back with his weapon. Grif uses his weight to his advantage, and leaps atop the Meta, stealing his weapon and giving his allies a chance.)
  • Simmons seems like a Professional Butt-Kisser, and a bit of a nerd, but put him in command, and assuming it doesn't go to his head, he's quite tactical. Plus, he usually wields the Rocket Launcher with lethal efficiency.
  • Donut may come across as Ambiguously Gay, but his (grenade) tossing abilities are not to be underestimated. Seriously, he threw a sticky grenade halfway across Blood Gulch into Tex's lap, and she was operating the Blue's tank.
  • Caboose is the resident ditz of the group, with a very loose grasp on reality, but if you know how to order him about, he's a force to be reckoned with. And don't even get started when he goes into Unstoppable Rage mode...
  • Tucker is a Lovable Sex Maniac, always looking to score in some fashion. But when he grabbed the Great Weapon, and after some time using it, this guy officially became the best warrior out of all the above examples.
• RWBY:
  • Professor Peter Port's idea of teaching a lesson involves regaling the students with a story of the time he captured a live Grimm, making bad jokes, and hitting on the pretty female students (to Yang's disgust). But he is an excellent teacher and mentor. How excellent? After one conversation with him, Weiss stops treating Ruby like crap, stops demanding to be made the team leader, to making Ruby coffee so she can keep studying. She's been the perfect team-mate ever since.
  • By extension, Professor Bartholomew Oobleck, the fast talking history teacher, who seems to be on a permanent caffeine high, is a very good warrior, capable of fighting off a few large mechas, all while on top of a speeding train.
  • Qrow, the uncle of Ruby and Yang, spends most of his screentime drunk and/or drinking. His first appearance has him so drunk he can't even stand up straight. But soon as he gets into a fight (still drunk), he's a match to the second in command of the Atlesian Army. He's also the right arm of the Big Good, being the closest thing, together with James, to a Big Good once Ozpin is out of the picture. He has the respect as a Huntsman and as a spy of the most powerful characters in the show.

Web Video

• Bon Appétit: Brad comes across as this very often. Brad has a tendency to go off on very weird tangents in conversation, is obsessed with Tom Berenger in general and the movie Sniper in particular, and often bursts out into what sounds like Simlish when his mouth can't keep up with his brain. That said, he is a skilled cook, a veritable gold mine of information about his specialty (fermentation and microbial cultures) and good enough with his hands and tools to bash together specialty kitchen appliances for Claire out of odds and ends lying around the kitchen.
• Dream Machine: Leah Lucchesi may be “self-centered, fake, shallow, and allergic to showers”... but she’s a damn good writer and storyteller.
• Screen Rant Pitch Meetings: Screenwriter Guy is an obviously deranged man who has a creepy obsession with human-animal mating and keeps countless dangerous weapons in his car for unclear reasons, but he's also the mind behind many of the greatest movies ever made.
• Sword Art Online Abridged: Kirito is an unbearable asshole that everyone stuck within SAO views as "The Crown Prince of Douchebags", with a reputation for simply laughing at the misery of other players. The game's own Psychiatrist AI classified Kirito as one of the two "most broken, sociopathic players [they] ever laid eyes on" (with the other one being his wife). But at the same time, these same people are also quick to admit that Kirito's one of the best players in the entire game and has the skills to back up his attitude. Kirito's skills are such that even Kayaba, the game's designer, admitted that if Kirito had applied himself from the beginning and started his own guild, he "could have been leading armies, clearing floor-after-floor as The Great Savior of Aincrad."

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