Cloudcuckoolander

The inner machinations of her mind are an enigma.

"My mind is a puzzle to many."

— raocow

A character with their head in the clouds. They are very cheerful and strangely oblivious to things that everyone else takes for granted. They may have an argument with themselves for fun, make points in an argument with no basis in logic or reality, or tell rambling stories that have nothing to do with the point they're trying to make. They make totally unintentional double entendres, and are great for Getting Crap Past the Radar. Sometimes also called "Space Case" or "Space Cadet", or plain old "Strange", a cuckoo clock chime is used as an indicator of one.

Cloudcuckoolanders are rarely malicious. They are far more likely to be the Plucky Comic Relief because of how much of a goofball they are. Maybe he's one of Those Two Guys or the crazy member of the Comic Trio. They lapse into non sequitur a lot, and while they aren't totally insane, they act it much more than some other crazier characters. They also talk like they're nuts as well by a speech pattern.

One mark of a Cloudcuckoolander is when, 90% of the time, you think the character is just plain nuts, but 10% of the time, you suspect that the character is in fact the Only Sane Man on the show. In other words, a Cloudcuckoolander has massive knowledge and understanding of the workings of the universe, but a poor way of communicating that to everyone else. Unfortunately, when they are smart, nobody else is, and when they are not, everybody else is. In any event, they can be oddly endearing.

They often come off as naïve, innocent and Sarcasm-Blind, so when they suddenly come up with snarky quips and witticisms, it may be one of the first indications that they are much more insightful than they seem (or even deliberately pretend) to be.

Another notable mark is that often there is nothing actually wrong with what they do, but it is most assuredly not something a normal person would do. Sit down with a Cloudcuckoolander and try to explain to them that normal people don't wear the clothes of a dead man. They will never understand what your problem is. It's not like the dead guy cares, is it? Likewise, they would fail to understand the reason for wearing shoes in a public place (it's warm and cozy, so why not go barefoot?) or using the pronoun "I" when referring to yourself (you use other people's names when speaking about them, so why not use your own name when you speak about yourself?)

Frequently clips entire stacks of Weirdness Coupons from the paper. Certainly, many of them get away with a good deal no one else would be allowed. And has a weakness for falling into a Wiki Walk.

It should be noted that, though they may overlap with The Ditz, The Fool, or the Kindhearted Simpleton, a Cloudcuckoolander, by definition, isn't necessarily stupid. Many Cloudcuckoolanders can be highly intelligent, very insightful or even geniuses, it's just the things they sometimes say and do may come off as weird, awkward, clumsy, over-the-top, buffoonish, illogical and questionable, outright eccentric, goofy, etc. — and because imagination often runs wild, they tend to be Easily Impressed.

This character is a mainstay of Surreal Humor, Dada Comics, Quirky Work, and Word-Salad Humor. Even in a series with a little more structure overall, the Cloudcuckoolander's wacky and bizarre antics will often be used for an easy gag, particularly when paired with a straight foil to drive insane. This is probably why there are so many Webcomics examples. This character will often be a Granola Girl or New-Age Retro Hippie.

When their weirdness delves into a disturbing territory, they have taken a job as a Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant.

On rare occasions, a Cloudcuckoolander may become Bored with Insanity and become more normal. If this happens, sometimes it sticks, and sometimes a "we want our Cloudcuckoolander back" movement, subsequently getting bored with sanity too, or some other means of inducing insanity will make them a Cloudcuckoolander again (since, after all, Status Quo Is God).

Their native land is Cloudcuckooland.

If a Cloudcuckoolander is dangerous, then that is the answer to Beware the Silly Ones and/or Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass. If they fight for a random rather than heroic reason, see Classical Anti-Hero or Nominal Hero. Because of the humor value in doing so, they're more likely than most characters to be a Spanner in the Works that stops a seemingly unstoppable plan, leaving viewers wondering if they were aware of what they were doing. For that reason, when it's time for a show to get serious, these characters are likely to be killed or detained so the viewers know they won't be responsible for yet another Deus ex Machina.

The name of the trope comes from the city built on air above the Greek plain in Aristophanes' play The Birds, 414 B.C., whose ruler had quite a large mental gap between the dreamy, wide-eyed, idealistic Utopia that he imagined his city to be and the brutal totalitarian regime that he had actually imposed on it. He also came up with brilliant ideas like keeping people out of his city — a city you could only reach through the flight — by building a really, really tall wall around it. (We'll give you a minute to figure out why that wouldn't have worked so well.)

For various variants and overlapping tropes see:

• Ax-Crazy: Insane and violent.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Eccentric, but has legitimate talents that make them worth the trouble.
• Chaotic Stupid: Being eccentric when resulting from impulsive behavior or being utterly loony.
• Cloudcuckoolanguage: Eccentricity manifesting itself in speech mannerisms, such as strange Verbal Tics, referring to oneself in the third person, making up nonexistent words, etc.
• Cuckoosnarker: When this trope meets the Deadpan Snarker.
• The Fool: Not too bright, but good enough of heart that luck's always on their side.
• King of All Cosmos: A flighty interpretation of the Powers That Be.
• Loon with a Heart of Gold: A quirky character who is much kinder than "normal" people.
• The Loonie: A Tabletop RPG player who plays mostly for the fun of doing silly things within the game.
• The Mad Hatter: Aware that they are insane, and proud of it.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: "Wacky" love interest to a "normal" person.
• Oddball Doppelgänger: Quirky character strongly resembling one of the "normal" ones.
• The Ophelia: Insane young woman, likely traumatized into her madness.
• Rambling Old Man Monologue: Senile rather than just crazy.
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: When a Cloudcuckoolander is paired with the Straight Man.
• The Wonka: Authority figure whose eccentricity is the catalyst for their success.

If written badly or subjected to Flanderization, a character who was supposed to be merely weird may become The Ditz or a full-time Talkative Loon.

See also Cloudcuckoolander's Minder for the person who — with or against their will — often accompanies the Cloudcuckoolander(s) and tries to prevent things from getting out of hand. This is usually an impossible task. See also Cuckoolander Commentator, when the Cloudcuckoolander is put in charge of commentary for an event. Also, if Only One Finds It Fun, expect the one to be a Cloudcuckoolander.

Lastly, when dealing with Cloudcuckoolanders, always remember that sometimes their ramblings aren't just ramblings. That's The Cuckoolander Was Right.

No Real Life Examples, Please!. There are several mental conditions that can result in this type of behavior but as mental illness is Serious Business in real life, providing examples would just be insensitive at best.

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Examples subpages:

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

Other examples:

Arts

• The Englishman Mister "Pief" (Peeve?) from a story by Wilhelm Busch who walks around while always looking through a telescope.

Asian Animation

• Dreamkix features DeSanctis, a chicken who's the team's second striker with a bad short term memory problem. Thus, he's prone to forgetting his teammates, forgetting that he's part of a team, staring into space, and getting into arguments with his own reflection.

Audio Plays

• Exit Tunes Presents ACTORS has Itto Takatenjin, the swim club's only first-year member - no one really knows if his love for swimming is directly proportional to his skill yet, but what they do know is that he tends to get distracted by flying butterflies, and will chase after them more often than not.

Comedy

• Steven Wright, whose deadpan delivery belies his spacey behavior and storytelling.
• Mitch Hedberg: Think Steven Wright but actually really laid back.
• Emo Phillips, known for his high-pitched voice, oddly dark humor and bizarre sense of fashion and physicality.
• Ellen DeGeneres, queen of the non-sequitur.
• Bill Bailey.
  "I [asked for a Kinder Surprise in third person] the other day and it answered me back, and he said to me: "No, I am Bill Bailey. You are not Bill Bailey, you are just a mere doppelgänger. I am the true Bill Bailey, in Another Dimension." And I went, "Oh, I hadn't planned on that." Then I thought the only way to solve this, I have to run at my doppelgänger, then we will be fused forever. So I ran full-tilt at it, and just before I got there I realised it was the highly polished side of the cheese counter."
• Norm Macdonald has a bizarre way of mining laughs out of the unfunny.
• Noel Fielding His hat's made out of skin! his paper is made out of skin! everything is made out of skin! So I got freaked out and ran home, and it took me an hour, and when I got there some bracken had put my window through
• Demitri Martin
  "I have less focus than squirrels!"
• Stephen Colbert, at least far as his on-air persona goes.
• Milton Jones
  (The answer is "15") "Is it... how many magic biscuits are there in the magic biscuit tree?"
  • Then Dara O'Briain (the show's host) corrects him by telling him that there are in fact 19 magic biscuits on the magic biscuit tree.
• Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer. Especially Vic Reeves. Notoriously difficult to interview since they hardly ever give a straight answer to any question put to them, instead usually saying something surreal or non sequitur.

Comic Strips

• Raoul the werewolf in The Bojeffries Saga is somewhat out of touch with reality, for example giving a black workmate white supremacist propaganda because he thought it was too silly to be taken seriously, and failing to notice that all his relatives moved out of their house for years.
• Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes possesses such a runaway imagination — he truly lives in Cloudcuckooland. The very fact that he sees Hobbes as real and everyone else doesn't (which often makes them suspect that Calvin is insane) also establishes him a place in this trope. The very fact that Hobbes thinks Calvin is crazy would fit him into this trope if that didn't. There's also the time where he comes into his class dressed as his superhero alter-ego, Stupendous Man. His classmates' facial expressions are the natural reaction anyone would have toward a Cloudcuckoolander.
  Ms. Wormwood: Calvin, pay attention!! Now, what state do you live in?
  Calvin: Denial.
  Ms. Wormwood: [sighing] Well, I suppose I can't argue with that...
  
  Calvin: [during the pledge of allegiance on the first day of school] I pledge allegiance to Queen Fragg and her mighty state of Hysteria.
  
  Calvin: You know why birds don't write their memoirs? Because birds don't lead epic lives, that's why! Who'd want to read what a bird does? Nobody, that's who! [beat] This is changing the subject, but have you ever noticed how somebody can say something totally loony and not be aware of it? What are you supposed to do, just let it slide??
• Most of the kids in CulDeSac: Alice, Petey, Ernesto, Dill, all in their own unique way too.
• In Curtis, Gunk exhibits various odd behaviors and abilities (explained by the fact that he's from some place called "Flyspeck Island"), as required by the plot.
• The entire Dick Tracy comic, since Max Allan Collins left. Bad guys getting squashed by steamrollers or having their eyes gouged out; businessmen (both good and bad) who dress like playing cards; characters being incinerated in giant fireballs; hillbillies defending themselves with bear traps; and every once in a while, something that seems to make sense. Rarely.
• Jon Arbuckle from Garfield, since the late nineties, has gone from a slightly-dim, arrogant loser to a full-fledged Cloudcuckoolander in some strips, with lines of pure insanity like "I think my feet are jealous of my hands because they get to point at things." This without even getting into the surrealistic brilliance of Garfield Minus Garfield and other projects to improve the strip.
  • Garfield himself had his moments in the strips (before he got Flanderized into a full-time Deadpan Snarker). Remember when he became Banana Man? Or Amoeba Man?
  • The animated special Garfield's Feline Fantasies was all about his mind wandering off into fantastic stories.
• Gaston Lagaffe: Gaston, who is a clumsy dreamer who is always seen either dozing off or inventing stuff without any regard for the people in his vicinity. Seriously, who would set the entire floor of his apartment underwater just to make his goldfish feel more at home?
• Get Fuzzy: Both Bucky and Satchel occasionally display these tendencies, and many of Bucky's feline visitors really do.
• A few characters from the Ink Pen comic strip is this, the main example being Captain Victorious. Here, for instance. Or here.
• InSecurity has Sedine, a Genki Girl who sees stuff in a not exactly normal light, much to the exasperation of her husband Sam.
• Jommeke: Professor Gobelijn, an Absent-Minded Professor, who is often doing stuff that either brings him or his town in danger, but he always realizes this when its already too late.
• Krazy Kat. S/he thinks that getting bricks thrown at her/his head is a sign of affection.
• Nero: Abraham Tuizentfloot, an insane dwarf who dresses himself up as a 17th century pirate and attacks everybody with his sabre. Despite that he can't even swim! The comic strip in itself is also full of eccentric and insane characters.
• Sally from Peanuts has her moments:
  Sally: Wake up, Santa Claus came last night and he didn't leave you anything! * Pause* April fool!
  • Her friend Eudora even more so:
  Eudora: This is my literature report. The book I chose to read was the TV guide.
  • Lucy in the earlier strips. Notably the Trope Namer for Little Known Facts—she thought, for instance, that birds flew to the moon.
  • Snoopy.
  Charlie Brown: Why can't I have a normal dog like everybody else?
  • Peppermint Patty. To name but one example of her weirdness, she thought that Snoopy was an odd-looking little kid for years.
• Ming in Safe Havens, who especially in her high school and college days tended to do some kooky stuff (like, say, do an interpretive dance at her graduation). Fittingly, she majored in film studies. Ironically, she's not even the weirdest member of the cast, considering there's animals turned humans, a mermaid, and two time travelers among them.
• Hillary's classmate Nona from Sally Forth. Tends to take Hillary and Faye's idle Zany Schemeing and run with the idea into surrealism. All in the same tone of voice one would normally use when discussing lunch.
• Suske en Wiske: Lambik is often seen doing stupid and crazy things he didn't actually thought through. In De Stalen Bloempot, for instance, he tries climbing out of a castle by rope. His rope then breaks and he plummits down. Lambik tries to solve this problem philosophically by letting the rope go, thinking this will make him stop falling. This, of course, doesn't work.
  • A real cloud cuckoolander is Vader Van Zwollem, a man who is literally insane, and protected and taking care of by his daughter Anne-Marie Van Zwollem.
• Tom Poes: Wammes Waggel, a naïve goose who is so optimistic and carefree that he never realizes any real danger and thinks everything is a joke.
• Transformers: Wings of Honor: Vortex and Metalhawk get this way when sprayed with chemicals which mess with their processors. Sprocket is revealed to be this way after some feedback when he integrated into a ship. Now he believes that non-sentient machines talk to him, and speaks to imaginary friends. It's gotten to the point where in the final issue, he doesn't even know his brother died, and continues to talk to him as if he was still there.
• Urbanus: Everybody in this comic strip is pretty daft, especially Urbanus and César. They often engage in zany schemes that others just go along with.
• Meanwhile, U.S. Acres had Bo Sheep, who showed more tendencies of this in the comics than the Garfield and Friends animated series.
• Pierce from Zits seems to be always doing his own thing, on impulse, with little regard for consequences.
• Essentially all the kids from One Big Happy qualify. Central character Ruthie is pretty obvious, but she has even weirder friends, like vacuum cleaner fetishist Earl.

Eastern European Animation

• Pat and Mat is a Czech Stop Motion series about two of those doing home "improvement" and fixing their car. Examples include tying a ladder to a bike in order to transport bigger loads or making a fish pond. In their living room.

Films — Animation

• Belle from the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast is believed to be this, since she's bored of living in a small town and finds escape in the books she reads. The townspeople find her strange because of this. In fact, one line in her intro song (sung by the barber) goes: "Her head's up on some cloud." We end up finding out that's she's really a strong young lady who doesn't hesitate to stand up to the Beast.
• Agnes from Despicable Me, but in an adorable way. She lives in the real world well enough, but she sees things the way she wishes they were, not the way they really are. And she doesn't yet know how to filter her thoughts, so what she says sometimes comes out sounding a little odd. Justified, considering that she's five years old in the first movie and turns six in the second movie.
  Agnes: I like him. He's nice.
  Edith: But scary.
  Agnes: (smiles) Like Santa.
• Kronk from The Emperor's New Groove frequently misunderstands his evil boss Yzma and has frequent conversations with his shoulder angel and devil.
  Yzma: (after she thinks Kronk has poisoned Kuzco) Good work, Kronk.
  Kronk: (indicating his spinach puffs) Oh, they're so easy to make; I'll get you the recipe.
• Queen Tara comes across this way in her introductory scene in Epic (2013), though it's possibly unintentional. She accuses Ronin of being too serious, but she just comes across as not taking the Boggan threat seriously.
• Dory, the blue tang from Finding Nemo, fits this trope to a tee, thanks to her short-term memory loss. Among other things, she uses a deadly jellyfish as a trampoline, frequently misremembers the name of the title character, and believes she can speak the language of whales (this one turns out to be true, though). She even mumbles non-sequiturs in her sleep:
  Dory: Careful with that hammer... sea monkeys got my money... yes, I'm a natural blue...
• Forrest from The Good Dinosaur, a Styracosaurus who is desperate enough for company that he keeps a small menagerie of critters around (including a small lizard named "Fury", a tusked gopher named "Dream-Crusher", and a cardinal named "Debbie") just to have someone to talk to.
• Katie, the yellow baby yak from Horton Hears a Who!, in spite of having only one line: "In my world, everyone is a pony that eats rainbows and poops butterflies." The rest of the time she'll inexplicably: make a gonk face like she's choking, sit with her back to Horton (he's a kind of Baloo the Bear "teacher" in this adaptation), and finally float off into space... in spite of being a hoofed mammal with no wings. Fittingly, while the other young animals have parents Katie appears to be completely unique.
• Every Ice Age film has one of these.
  • Ice Age has the Dodos, a species that plans to survive the Ice Age which even they themselves say will last for billions of years, with a stockpile of 3 watermelons. Possibly Fridge Brilliance though, because historically they survived much longer than mammoths and sabre-tooth tigers.
  • Ice Age: The Meltdown has Ellie, a mammoth who thinks she's a possum, despite the obvious size difference between her and her "brothers." She got better.
  • Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs has Buck, a hyperactive and paranoid one-eyed weasel who most likely lost part of his brain when he lost his eye.
• The Incredibles: KARI... THE BAAAAYBEEEESITTEEEER! *Eye Twitch*. Then again, after what she had to put up with in babysitting Jack-Jack, most people would be a tad deranged.
• The LEGO Movie's Uni-Kitty. What makes this example so fitting is that the World that she originates from and rules over is actually named Cloud-Cuckoo Land, making her a LITERAL Cloud Cuckoo Lander.
• Lilo & Stitch: Lilo is a very strange girl. She feeds a specific fish peanut butter sandwiches because she believes that it controls the weather, enjoys taking and collecting photographs of tourists and makes voodoo dolls of her so-called "friends" out of spoons to get revenge on them for bullying her ("My friends need to be punished"). And of course, she is far more interested in adopting a blue alien posing as a dog than a regular one.
  • It's then shown that the reason for her strange behaviour is because her parents died in a car crash when she was young, therefore her quirks are coping mechanisms.
• The Little Mermaid (1989):
  • The real cloudcuckoolander of the Disney Princesses is probably Ariel. She's a mild example by the standards of the trope, but compared to the other princesses she is positively wacky.
  • A bigger example would be Scuttle, who tries to identify human artifacts for Ariel. Too bad his identifications are made up entirely of nonsense.
• All of the lemurs in Madagascar seem crazy to some degree, but King Julien XIII is definitely the weirdest. He uses a skeletal hand as a scepter. In the 2nd movie he goes through four different crowns. He clearly comprehends all that goes on around him (which may be why he's King)...
  Melman: Hey! The bozos have the people!
  Julien: They're up there. [points to some human skeletons hanging from parachutes snagged on the branches of a large tree] Don't you love the people? Not a very lively bunch though.
  Alex: Oh. So, do you have any... LIVE people?
  Julien: Uh, no. Only dead ones.
  • He also has a worrying tendency towards conversations with himself...
    Julien: Shush! We are hiding! Be quiet everyone, including me. Shhh! Who's making that noise?! Oh, it's me again.
  • At one point in Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa he argues with himself to explain the concept of sacrifice to the other animals...
    Julien: The friendly Gods eat up the sacrifice...
    (as god) Mmm very nice, thank you for that sacrifice...
    (as Julien) Please have another sacrifice!
    (as god) No No I've had enough for today...
    (as Julien) Look I will be very insulted if you don't have another sacrifice!
    (as god) I DON'T WANT ANOTHER SACRIFICE OK?!
    (as Julien) Look at you, you look skinny!
    (as god) No, I said I've had enough, now clear off!
• Monsters University: Art, who is full of expressiveness, gives Mike and Sulley notebooks with unicorns and glitter, and is distracted by butterflies during hide-and-seek.
• Hammy from Over the Hedge. For instance, his first idea when the characters wonder what the eponymous hedge is called is to call it Steve, on account of "it's a pretty name."
• In Ralph Breaks the Internet, all the Princesses come across as this. Being used to only having each other for company, they consider having magic powers, having been cursed or kidnapped at least once in your life, or having a Missing Mom to be perfectly ordinary qualifications for being a princess, and they also treat Vanellope's casual clothing as something new and amazing.
• Spider-Punk from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse acts like a British Deadpool, which makes him all the better at Obfuscating Stupidity. He tends to be a Motor Mouth who goes on off-topic rants about many different tangents, while also playing up his Commander Contrarian side to its illogical extreme. This combined with his British slang makes him hard to understand or be taken seriously.

Music

• "My World" by Avril Lavigne is about her living in her own world.
  Can't help if I space in a daze
  My eyes tune out the other way
  I may switch off and go in a daydream
• Emilie Autumn's "How Strange" says, "I'm not living in an ordinary world."
• "Imaginary" by Evanescence is a rather depressive version. The narrator builds her own world in her head, her "sleeping refuge," to escape the horror of reality.
  In my field of paper flowers
  And candy clouds of lullaby (paper flowers)
  I lie inside myself for hours
  And watch my purple sky fly over me (paper flowers)
• "Prezes" by Grupa Operacyjna has the titular character who tends to very weird things, like selling one dollar at a bureau de change or messaging the police with his pizza order.
• Two of Gym Class Heroes' albums, The Papercut Chronicles and The Papercut Chronicles II, have a... rather strange electronic voice doing opening and closing narrations, which mostly consist of it rambling monotonously about whatever seems to cross its mind, much of which doesn't make any sense.
  Hey, have you ever wondered if a seahorse could win in a game of backgammon against an invisible wizard. I think the invisible wizard would win because the seahorse does not have hands. Hey, have you ever seen an invisible wizard. Probably not. Because it's invisible. Hey, remember that time when we were on that spaceship and there were talking dinosaurs and then one of the dinosaurs said, “I cannot talk,” and I said, “You just did,” and the dinosaur didn't say anything else because he couldn't talk. Hey, are you listening to me. Remember that stick of broccoli that used to play the banjo at the annual platypus convention. He owes me money. Hey, I'm cool. Hey, goodnight.
• "Sharada" by Skye Sweetnam is about a girl who acts out-of-the-norm and constantly has her head in the clouds:
  And when they'd told her she's delirious
  She didn't care
  She's just oblivious
  She likes to make everyone curious
  One day she's gonna be famous
• Vocaloid: Many of the voicebanks have characters attached to them. However most of the time they have no canon personality at all. Yet, looking at Nico Nico Concerts, it seems this trope is often given to Gakupo. He's often seen appearing at random moments on stage, portraying questionable behavior, such as putting on weird costumes (alternatively: wearing no clothes at all), forgetting the dance routine, or trying to hug one of the girls mid-concert. He's also the most likely one to break the fourth wall, if it were to happen at all. The fact that for the longest time this guy was best known for his troll songs, didn't help in bettering his image. Hell, to this day his best known songs is arguably Dancing Samurai. It is hard to describe what's going on in that video clip, but it includes horse masks, naked people, SM whips and kiddie pools, so believe me when I tell you it's weird.
• Nick Lutsko (or more accurately, the fictionalized version of himself depicted in his songs) is a deranged and egotistical conspiracy theorist who frequently makes outlandish claims about various celebrities^note Such as the time he claimed that Joe Biden was trying to steal his meat, has a bizarre obsession with Dan Bongino, attends school board meetings so he can make absurd demands or rant about his conspiracy theories despite mot having kids or even not having ever attended the school, and will only fall asleep when he watches Fight Club.

Myths & Religion

• The Bible: John 8:1-11 has an interesting story about when Jesus saved a women from being stoned to death. When a group of pharisees along with a crowd of people brought an adulteress to Jesus, telling him the woman should be stoned for committing the sin of adultery and demanded Jesus answer on what they should do to her, he responded by drawing a line in the sand. Confused, the pharisees demanded an answer for Jesus's response, which he responded by saying that anyone who had never sinned could step up to the line in the sand, and begin stoning the woman to death. The pharisees realized Jesus had caught them in their own trap which was designed to discredit Jesus. If he had allowed the crowd to stone the woman, it would look like Jesus had ordered the woman's death, and thus make him look like a villain to his followers. But if he refused, he would deny Jewish law, thus inciting the wrath of the Jewish people nearby. However, by giving Jesus the power to decide the woman's fate, they allowed him to add his own conditions to the case, thus exposing a loophole the pharisees unwittingly gave him. Now anyone who tried to stone the woman would be declaring themselves sinless, which was also against Jewish law, causing the mob to disperse in humiliation and sparing the life of the woman. The story is treated by Christians and non-Christians alike to this day as one of the oldest written cases of Take a Third Option, and thus a subversion of this trope, something which would end up being a defining feature of Jesus's life when dealing with the pharisees who plotted his downfall time and time again.
• This trope dates back as far as Brother Juniper, a 13th-century friar and one of Saint Francis of Assisi's companions. According to legend, Brother Juniper was once caring for a sick man and learned that the sick man had a craving for pig's feet. So Brother Juniper found a herd of pigs, cut a foot off of one of them, and carried it back to the sick man. When the pigs' owner confronted Brother Juniper about the incident, the friar couldn't understand why anyone would object to such a charitable act. He patiently explained his reason for cutting off the pig's foot, although this only seemed to make the pig owner angrier. Finally, he hugged the pig owner, who had a change of heart and donated all his pigs to the friars. Upon receiving the donation, St. Francis praised Brother Juniper, saying, "Would to God, my brethren, that I had a forest of such Junipers!"
• Zen calls for its followers to be this. "What is Buddha?" "Three pounds of flax."

Podcasts

• Penny and Sophie from Binary Break are both happy to let their freak flags fly. Penny's a bit of a conspiracy theorist and loves telling people about the secret worlds he thinks are out there. Sophie loves fairies - she wears fairy wings to school, draws pictures of them in class, and chased after Birdbastic with the others because she thought it was a fairy.
• Roc from the Firefly game of Cool Kids Table is a little odd, such as when he spends most of his time changing his wardrobe to different ridiculous outfits, hanging his hat on the head of one of Todd's mercenaries to keep it out of the way, and wearing two pairs of sunglasses at once.
  • Sid from Sequinox has a habit of going off on strange and often creepy tangents, and jumping to precisely the wrong conclusion when presented with any situation. She did roll in dirt and fake blood for her werewolf halloween costume, and demanded to hide in a doghouse to transform despite the team already being hidden from public eye.

Pro Wrestling

• Dusty Rhodes had this reputation among other wrestlers and figures in the business in general. When a horrified Jim Cornette learned that Dusty was going to be booking him in matches in spite of Cornette's minimal training, Jimmy Hart told him to just "roll around" and he'd be good.
• The Ultimate Warrior. He was noted for rambling, incoherent speeches involving tortured metaphors, delivered at earsplitting volumes, often involving claiming to be from outer space or to be carrying the hopes of fallen warriors or things like that. He had a four-issue comic book published that...it seems to be about him trying to become the Platonic ideal of a warrior, or something, but its paragraph upon paragraph of rambling pseudo-philosophical nonsense earned it three episodes of The Spoony Experiment/Atop the Fourth Wall crossover and many other takedowns across the internet. He also invented the word "destrucity". It is to this day unclear how much of this was acting and how much of it was James Hellwig getting caught in-character.
  NORMAL PEOPLE! THE PEOPLE THAT WALK THE STREETS EVERY DAY! WE CANNOT UNDERSTAND THEM!
• WWE wrestler Al Snow became most famous as a Cloudcuckoolander who has "HELP ME!" inexplicably written backwards across his head and gets advice from a mannequin head (appropriately named "Head"). One particularly memorable storyline had him thinking that Head betrayed him and stole the Hardcore Championship from him, so he started using Pierre, a taxidermied deer head, to substitute for Head. Another had Al winning the European Championship, and deciding that, in order to better represent "the citizens of Europea", he would dress in the traditional garb (and come out to the national anthem of) a different country each week (including, inexplicably, a '50s style greaser outfit for Greece). And then there was his tag team with Steve Blackman, WWE's resident comically serious martial-arts tough guy, in which he insisted that Blackman wear a hat shaped like a wedge of cheese so they could call themselves "Head Cheese", and that they make their entrance surrounded by midgets holding sparklers... and his infamous hardcore match with himself... yeah, Al Snow was one weird dude.
  • The explicability is obvious! Where else would greasers come from?
• Jeff Hardy, full stop. Doubly so because it's not just his TV character. His TV character is in fact considerably more normal than he is in real life. His closest friends claim that one of his favorite activities outside of wrestling is "digging holes and filling them back in." His sculpting material of choice is aluminum foil. Also, there's his alter-ego Itchweeed. Sadly, much of this seems to stem from his personal habits
• Chavo Guerrero Jr.'s head was anchored in the clouds during his WCW run, as a result of him snapping under "uncle Eddie's" care. Be very quiet, he's now hunting Eddies.
• Haaghiuaheydtrihaoivuhyarwehtoiuhadvhaiherr—Delirious. Other wrestlers might strip off clothing when they get fired up. Delirious might constanly strip and redress himself as much as allowed. Some wrestlers may eat food on the way to the ring. Delirious will eat any food left around the ring, and try to eat some things that aren't food at all. He has a pre match ritual of sitting on the lower turn buckle and then running and rolling in random directions flailing about when the bell rings. Then it was amplified in CHIKARA, who decided to pair him up with Hallowicked and Frightmare, a team which would be dubbed "Incoherence", as no one could understand or predict them. Even so, you could at least pull words out of what Delirious said, but then, Wicked is an undead pumpkin demon and Frightmare was supposed to be a creation of Wicked's mind, meaning neither guy is technically human.
• The Great Sasuke, Ninja with no concept of stealth or pain, who is your savior of the sun of nothingness and a regular at Michinoku Pro Wrestling.
• Brian Kendrick's move to TNA gave him a gimmick that seems to be the Karate Kid on acid. His tag team partner Paul London has always been seemingly spaced out on acid (but is actually straight edge, imagine that).
• Raven. Genius-level IQ + years of hardcore wrestling and drug use = very odd, hyper personality. Just watch his vlogs.
• While Goldust's Gorgeous George tendencies are apparently just mind games, the fact that he's so into criticizing movies that he dresses like a giant academy award cements him in this territory. Oh, and then he became the Artist formerly known as Goldust and interrupted Monday Night Raw to read children's poetry...His younger brother Stardust would go on to outdo Goldust in confusing behavior, speaking of Cosmic Keys and bloodsport on the stars of Orion. He's so loopy that Goldust himself is utterly baffled by him at times.
• Ace Steel, Colt Cabana and Lucy, or to put it in other words, all the Second City Saints, excepting CM Punk and Traci Brooks, and even Miss Brooks had her moments. Oh, and Lucy was worse before getting with Punk, believing herself to be Satan or some equivalent there of.
• LuFisto, is not a merely a woman who responds to voices no one else can hear but an anime. An anime about a cute woman in a cute skirt who plays with fire, glass, thumbtacks, barbed wire and folding chairs.
• Jon Moxley thinks he is a lot bigger and stronger than he really is, but this (mostly) is not because of an inflated ego, dude is just not there. Oh you can see him and he's looking back at you but he's not. He rarely talks sense on anything that isn't hitting someone else and often not even then.
• R-Truth following his heel turn in 2011. He turned face a few months later, but still maintain this trait.
• Big E. Langston demanding the referee to count to five instead of three and having an entrance that involves making a big cloud of chalk might not seem too odd for a professional wrestler. But then he does stuff like run off people interviewing Dolph Ziggler so he can play the backstage announcer roll himself, making you realize how eccentric Langston really is.
• Then there is A.J. Lee, who started off pretty inline with everyone else actually. But then she was driven mad by the psychological abuse of Daniel Bryan and became the happy, skipping shrieking, seemingly bipolar monster he could no longer control. Even the aforementioned Big E Langston tends to just stand silently in the face of antics.
• As of 2013, the The Wyatt Family, especially Bray Wyatt, is like this. We all know Bray has some kind of agenda, but exactly what it is and if it has remained constant are questions yet to be answered, despite Bray's many attempts to.
• Tenille Tayla has always been a little eccentric but it has yet to be revealed what happened in Florida to turn her into the bubble headed dancer we call Emma.
• George "The Animal" Steele, oh yeah. Once at the start of a match with Kamala, commentator Gorilla Monsoon said, "I don't know what goes on in the head of George 'The Animal' Steele, but, then again, neither does George." Gorilla would usually describe someone who qualified for this as "doesn't have both oars in the water."
• Archibald Peck. During his match with UltraMantis Black at CHIKARA Small But Mighty, October 7, 2011, Leonard F. Chikarason said, "I don't want to cover Archibald Peck's psychiatrist bills. There's a lot going on there."
  • The resolution of Peck's Stable Time Loop storyline turned out to be a case of The Cuckoolander Was Right.
• ECW's John Kronus. Once during an Eliminators-The Gangstas (New Jack and Mustafa)-The Dudley Boys brawl, an umbrella turned up among the weapons and Kronus ran around with it open over his head. Indoors.
  JOEY STYLES: "Well, it's not raining in here, but, who knows what's going on inside Kronus' head."
  • As The Eliminators were walking to the ring for the opening match, against ECW World Tag Team Champions The Dudley Boys, at ECW Barely Legal, April 13, 1997, Kronus turned to the camera and introduced himself to the PPV audience by randomly saying, "Ass, baby, ass! Hoo hoo!"
• British wrestler Cara Noir, whose gimmick is based on the black swan character from Swan Lake, is...a little out there. He never speaks (it appears that if he trusts someone enough he'll whisper in their ear, but that's it), wrestles barefoot and always wears his signature swan-like facepaint. He also occasionally spits raw egg into his opponent's mouth. Make of that what you will.
• "Macho Man" Randy Savage delivered promos that had some rather unusual phrases in them and often made little sense. However, this did not stop said promos from being awesome.

Puppet Shows

• Most of the Muppet characters on Sesame Street would qualify. Yes, even Straight Man Bert, who has an unusual obsession with bottle caps and paper clips. Being a nerd doesn't mean you're sane.
  • Sometime around 1988-92 was Ruby, a furry yellow monster who would often do things like wear a blindfold to see what it would be like to be blind or pretending she's a kangaroo after having her hair done up in a ponytail. She really makes Big Bird look sane.
• Most of The Muppet Show cast would qualify, but Gonzo is the Poster Boy for this trope. Very much so. The word "Muppet", as used in Ireland, means what "Cloudcuckoolander" does here. It can be used as an insult, or a term of endearment, or both at once.
• The entire cast of the highly surreal Norwegian puppet show Reparatørene Kommer (The Repairmen are Coming), later renamed Pompel & Pilt after the two main characters. If Cloud Cuckooland is an actual land, this show takes place in it. Pompel & Pilt is Norwegian television's most beloved terrifying children's series.

Radio

• The Goon Show has several, perhaps the entire cast at times.
  • Eccles is the most obvious through:
    Eccles: Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up, Eccles!! Shut up, Eccles!! Oh, that's me!
  • The SCRIPT. Characters like Grytpype Thynne and Moriarty exemplify the latter. Other Goons such as Bluebottle are more like a Chew Toy.
  • Ned Seagoon and Henery Crun are full-bore Cloudcuckoolanders too. Bluebottle and Minnie Bannister aren't quite full Cloudcuckoolanders, but are fairly close (and don't try to say Bluebottle is sane, he was found at one point singing a map.) He also pronounces all his stage directions (All of them. Including "Thinks." And "Unthinks.")
• Private-Eye Harlow Doyle from Adventures in Odyssey. If anything, he's worse than his spiritual predecessor, the bumbling Officer David Harley, who hadn't gone over well.
  • As a member of the main cast, Wooton Bassett seems to be required to spend a little more time on Earth, but he still has his moments. Oh, does he have his moments.
• Mister Phillips in The Navy Lark, his navigation manual is "Sinbad the Sailor's Big Book of the Sea''.
• Tenor Boy Dennis Day on The Jack Benny Program.
  Jack: Dennis, I didn't know you had relatives in New York.
  Dennis: No, my family lives in Jersey. I had to drive under the Hudson River to visit them, and gee was it damp! Boy, did I get wet!
  Jack: Was there a leak in the tunnel?
  Dennis: Ohhhhh, tunnel!
• Lonesome Cowboy Dave, whenever he gets free rein on the Church of the SubGenius Hour Of Slack. His influence tends to rub off on Wei R. Doe.
• Cabin Pressure:
  • Arthur, principally. He's nice enough, age-inappropriate childishness aside, but he has absolutely no grasp of basic logic whatsoever, mixed with an atrocious attention span. His solutions to problems can be quiet strange, but the odd part is when they actually work.
  • Douglas, though it's hidden beneath the air of professionalism and unbelievable amounts of sarcasm. Note that many of the strange games he and Martin play while in the air are his devising.

Tabletop Games

• Foxbat from the Champions setting is completely convinced that he is a great, powerful comic book supervillain.
• Some of the Malkavians from Vampire: The Masquerade can get this way. They tend to be really scary at the same time if they're played well. Others just end up as "fishmalks".
• House Criamon of Ars Magica. They view the physical world as a series of metaphors and symbols and spend their entire lives trying to interpret everything around them the way literary scholars interpret novels, so getting a Criamon to express her thoughts on anything is a little bit like communicating across a language barrier via Babelfish translations.
• Magic: The Gathering: the Ravnica block gives us the Izzet. Red/blue, it turns out, isn't quite right in the head, considering their hobbies include routing magic through the heads of goblins with an interesting variety of psychological conditions. (The goblins, that is, not the magic. Until the magic has gone through the goblin, that is.)
• The Mystara D&D setting is home to the d'Ambreville family of wizards, who seem susceptible to an hereditary strain of this trope. As any d'Ambreville who isn't a Cloudcuckoolander is usually a freakin' trigger-happy psycho, siding with the loony ones is usually the best bet.
• Jenna "Nobilis" Moran's forum persona, and her narrator voice within Nobilis third edition.
  "It is quite all right. I have received harsher criticism from my dearest friends and on one memorable occasion from my breakfast cereal."
• Warhammer 40,000: Orks psykers, "Madboyz", live apart from the rest of Ork society, can be easily identified by the assortment of knick-knacks they carry around, and sometimes can be heard to mutter odd nonsense like "rolls" and "the metagame". Unpredictable even by Ork standards, Madboyz may do anything from stand around and pick their noses while under heavy fire, to foiling a night ambush with a sudden shouting contest, to tearing enemies limb from limb with their bare hands.

Theatre

• Rosencrantz from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is an excellent example, though he's also more canny than he lets on. Probably. (Guildenstern also has his moments.)
  • For that matter, Hamlet himself is frequently considered to only be pretending at insanity; that he is "not in madness/ but mad in craft", i.e. not insane, but angry.
• Harper the Valium-addicted Mormon housewife from Angels in America, who has various interesting hallucinations, several of which include her imaginary travel agent, Mr. Lies.
• Quite a few of William Shakespeare's characters qualify.
  • The Fool in King Lear says things that on the surface seem like nothing more than silly puns or outright gibberish, though it's exactly his perceived ridiculousness that allows him to be the only one to (attempt) to speak the truth to Lear.
  • Launce from Two Gentlemen of Verona. He describes his departure from home thus:
    I think Crab, my dog, be the sourest-natured dog that lives. My mother weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat wringing her hands, and all our house in a great perplexity, yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed one tear. He is a stone, a very pebble stone, and has no more pity in him than a dog...Nay, I'll show you the manner of it. This shoe is my father. No, this left shoe is my father. No, no, this left shoe is my mother. Nay, that cannot be so neither. Yes, it is so, it is so—it hath the worser sole. This shoe with the hole in it is my mother, and this my father. A vengeance on't! There 'tis. Now, sir, this staff is my sister, for, look you, she is as white as a lily and as small as a wand. This hat is Nan, our maid. I am the dog. No, the dog is himself, and I am the dog—O, the dog is me, and I am myself. Ay, so, so.
  • Launcelot Gobbo, while a less severe case, nonetheless thinks it's perfectly acceptable to argue with his conscience and "the fiend" out loud and run around in the middle of the night pretending to be going hunting. Some productions have played him as a stoner or a schizophrenic to explain his behavior.
  • Nick Bottom starts out by expressing his desire to play all the characters in the same play. Later, when fairies show up out of nowhere and begin waiting on him, he hardly seems surprised.
  • Hamlet can resemble this, for instance in the dialogue where he conflates Polonius with a 'fishmonger' and discusses the sun breeding maggots in a dead dog. The other characters certainly take him for something very much like this. The jury is still out on whether he was feigning madness, was mad, or was merely speaking on a level too subtle for the other characters to understand. Nonetheless, most other characters find him difficult to relate to.
• Much of Blue Man Group's unique comedy revolves around the fact that the Blue Men are apparently not of this world, and frequently express amazement and surprise over such things as cell phones, watches, and eating Twinkies with utensils.
• Pokémon: The Mew-sical has Professor Oak and Giovanni. Oak asks everyone if they're a boy or a girl, thinks he's a Pokemon, and overall is both excitable and not very smart. Giovanni is more competent, but he's in denial about his Pikachu's death from when he was a child and is convinced Ash's Pikachu is his, to the point of dancing in joy when they're "re"united.
• Most of the spellers in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee have their moments, but Leaf and Olive are the most obvious examples.
  • Olive's parents haven't made it to the Bee, so she gets a song about it, where she pretends her parents are there in the "I Love You Song". Lampshaded and made even better/worse when the word she's spelling is defined as "removed from reality".
  • Leaf, meanwhile, goes into a trance every time he spells a word, and during his "I Am" Song he goes hilariously off-topic and forgets the word.
    Leaf: How could a flea such as me think he'd be good at spelling?/How?/I don't know
    [beat]
    Leaf: I like my hair!/Really, it is pleasant to the touch!/I toss my hair a bit too much/It doesn't move, it simply sits/I make a part, I'm not that smart
    Leaf: [several bars of nonsense syllables to the melody, ending with an impossibly low note]
    Leaf: [beat] I forgot the word
    Panch: Acouchi
    Leaf: Oh yeah, the rodent resembling the other rodent, what was it [goes into a trance] A-C-O-U-C-H-I! [beat] acouchi.
• Ruddigore has Mad Margaret, who in the first act is a pitiable madwoman whose madness is implied to stem from lost love.
• Marat/Sade: The work is largely framed as a play-within-a-play where inmates at the insane asylum of Charenton are the main actors. Naturally, the actor's mental disorders are occasionally an obstacle that gets in the way of the overall production. Particularly, Monsieur Dupere is played by one of the asylum's most dangerous sex maniacs and repeatedly breaks character and tries to attack the actress playing Charlotte Corday.
• Fat Ham: Tio, whom is admittedly on drugs for most of the play. He openly and loudly watches porns, fantasizes about being a porn star, and goes off on a long diatribe about hallucinating getting a fellatio from a gingerbread man.
• Shucked: Peanut's comments and responses to questions show that he's not generally thinking the same way as pretty much anybody else.
  I just passed a huge squirrel... which is odd because I don't remember eating one.

Toys

• BIONICLE has Vezon, who became this since the serials due to Flanderization. In the Voya Nui saga, he is introduced as a dangerous co-Big Bad, being a disturbing and genuine threat to both the Toa Inika and the Piraka. With his rise in popularity, his insane quirks were brought to the forefront and completely took over whatever other character traits he had. As a result, he not only ended up being completely unthreatening, but is also widely regarded in-universe as the absolute worst Scrappy. Being so insane and obnoxious, it’s no wonder why even the sole mention of his name makes everybody want to kill him.

Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney:
  • Justice for All has Regina Berry, who demonstrates that a Cloudcuckoolander can be the cause of tragic circumstances in a (mostly) realistic setting. Due to being raised in a circus, she has a fairly substantial disconnection from reality. She doesn't understand, for example, how her putting pepper on Bat's scarf led to him being bitten by a lion... or that he may never recover from the resulting coma. Bat's brother, Acro, was so infuriated by her lack of remorse that he tried to kill her.
  • The whole series is chock full of less tragic 'landers, including Maya Fey's laughably bad grasp of technology, Ema Skye's utterly bizarre "scientific theories", and Trucy Wright (who had a rather... interesting exchange about how 'Revolver' and 'Wonder Bar' sound the same).
  • The Judge, whose grasp on reality is just firm enough to give the right verdict every time — but no firmer.
  • True to her role as a lawyer-sidekick-girl in this series, Kay Faraday is often putting Edgeworth's nerves to the test. Interestingly, she's also the only side-kick girl among the four (Maya, Trucy, Ema, Kay) who's actually incompetent at her "occupation of choice", information-theft, probably in order to make up for Edgeworth's hyper-competence.
  • Ini Miney in case 2-2 slept through a murder, and testifies that when her dead sister walked into the room, she had a rather dull surprise to her being there. She's actually Obfuscating Stupidity.
  • It's safe to say almost anyone who is not the player character will have some degree of the trope.
• K from A Nightmare's Trip is really out there. Not only does she wear coats under an extremely hot summer weather and doesn't even realize why it's a problem, she's also quite the kleptomaniac. Not because she needs something and doesn't have the money, or because she can't help herself, but because she thinks being pursued by police is fun.
• Moe in Da Capo has issues. Apart from sleepwalking to school while playing the xylophone (yes), being obsessed with hot pot and being very disconnected in general from life around her, she is apparently convinced kisses are supposed to taste like lemons, so she eats a lemon drop right before kissing Junichi in her route.
• Moe Mortelli from Daughter for Dessert is a positive guy, a good cop, and a loyal friend to the protagonist, but he lets slip details a little too easily, doesn’t understand why racist humor and raunchy jokes are so offensive to some people, and has a very loose definition of the word “secret.” And he takes the theft of a toaster a little too seriously.
• Clear from DRAM Atical Murder. And given his origin, it's reasonably justified.
• In The Eden of Grisaia Sachi at one point plans an escape attempt that involves blasting through a wall with explosives, sailing a boat through the gap in the wall and then exploding the roof under the prison cell so that their target falls into the boat and then just sailing back out with no fuss. When pointed out that any shockwave big enough to destroy the floor of the cell like that would also kill Yuuji, she amends the plan so that his entire room will be flooded first.
• In Hatoful Boyfriend, we get Oko San, a bird absolutely obsessed with finding the "perfect pudding", and Anghel Higure, a bird who believes himself to be a fallen angel and the heroine to be his reincarnated lover Edel Blau. Anghel's madness is actually justified later on when it's discovered that he secretes hallucinogenic pheromones. And in Holiday Star, where he may be a Reality Warper.
• Yukari in Kara no Shoujo worries about koi drowning, has a great love for bugs and uses them nonchalantly in cooking.
• Katawa Shoujo:
  • Rin rivals Osaka for sheer out-of-touch-with-reality-or-possibly-just-on-a-different-plane-of-it-ness. "The problem must be in your pants!" Unlike Osaka though, Rin is fully aware of the fact her mindset is seen as out-of-touch, she just doesn't let it stop her. The ending scene for her Act 1 route is even titled "Clouds In My Head."
    Rin: ...So that's why I'm trying to figure out if there is something I need to figure out and then figure that out before it's too late and all hope is lost.
  • Utterly demolished in her route. Later scenes show that her eccentricity isn't always funny or cute, and Rin herself proves to be frustrated and discouraged with how people can't understand her thoughts, whether through words or through her art. Hisao often struggles to keep up with her train of thoughts, and sometimes gets extremely angry at her.
  • Kenji, Hisao's Conspiracy Theorist dorm neighbor, though his paranoid ramblings about the world in general and the so-called feminist conspiracy in specific are less "harmlessly insane" and more "holy crap, this guy's going to snap and kill somebody one of these days."
• Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors has Junpei, arguably. Some of his thoughts and responses can be REALLY out there ("Apologize to funyarinpa!"). June sometimes has some weird moments, too. You could say she has the excuse of being a walking supernatural phenomena. Actually, when you consider that they can still find the time to make lame puns in the midst of a dire situation under a strict time limit, the entire main cast probably counts.
• Riko in A Profile hates being serious. She gives pretty good advice, but she's also prone to telling her step son to be careful not to impregnate his stepsister out of nowhere though she supports the relationship entirely.
• Kaoru Hazuki from Spirit Hunter: NG. Both Akira and Seiji call her crazy for her intense interest in the supernatural, and she's called Akira everything from a lab experiment to an ESPer to an urban legend. Despite her eccentricities, she is knowledgeable about the occult and proves to be useful in the investigation of spirits.
  Akira: What scares me is the thought that she might actually be serious about everything...
• Arcueid from Tsukihime has a mild case of this. This only applies to her game character, however, since her anime counterpart lacks this and is therefore far less lovable. In the Carnival Phantasm anime, where she's more like her game self, she is the only character not subject to Character Exaggeration or Flanderization. She is quite accustomed to crazy things happening around her.

Web Videos

• The Nerd from The Angry Video Game Nerd can also be this at times. While The Nerd is mostly a Jerkass nerd who is the Only Sane Man and a Sir Swears-a-Lot in a world of countless Cloudcuckoolanders, (though he still has his lovable dorky moments here and there), he can have some non sequiturs before reverting back to normal. "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Revisited (NES)" video is one example. He's also had his moments where he can literally show his sheer eccentricities in spite of his usual sanity, like these:
  • His Comical Overreacting, his countless acts of Unstoppable Rage, and/or comical breakdowns that sometimes ensue. For example, when he was emphasizing his crazed (if structured) opinions about how we didn't understand the appeal of something like football games in the "Atari Sports (Atari 2600)" video. In that same video, he went completely nuts for a camera damaging joke after saying touchdown when playing an harmless Atari game.
  • Or his usual behavior of being prone to anger that makes him start doing hilariously foolish things. One big example is the "Ecco the Dolphin (Sega Genesis)" video. When he was told to rescue three more dolphins into the next level 'The Lagoon', The Nerd got an empty container of Rolling Rocker from earlier in the video, filled up some pool/watery area with countless beer bottles and cans of Rolling Rocker, then went underwater and started yelling in the liquid while drinking the beer can at the same time, all for the sole purpose of comedy.
• Boogie (along with Francis to a larger extent) from boogie2988 is a character played by Steven Jay Williams who is always acting dumb by acting bizarrely when raging a lot on camera in rather harmless and trivial ways. Although, when Boogie was in a story arc collab with McJuggerNuggets in the "psycho" perspective in post-2016 videos; he was also portrayed to be ranging from being a fun-loving & normal gamer, and slowly changing into being this Loony Fan who's an Ax-Crazy Psychopathic Manchild that seems a lot more domineering, insanely crazy enough to be somewhat out-of-his-mind both mentally and sexually, seeming even more strange than usual or beforehand, and gets even more temper-prone as that short series continued to a dramatic if crazed degree in The Boogie Series. Especially when it was implied that he was on medications in the fourth episode.
  • Francis is a Fat Slob gamer who can be a Fat Bastard or the Only Sane Man around others on occasion such as McJuggerNuggets in a collab. But his overly hammy characteristics that sometimes rival past Boogie's eccentric behavior that usually shows an childish and excitable demeanor in him would easily make him seem odd in either comically irrational or just abrasive ways.
• Caddy's review persona from Caddicarus provides this because of his inspiration for JonTron where he is also a Deadpan Snarker that always has a wacky and zany persona in new videos purely for comic effect as you see above, he usually does this in many, many ways to an comedic degree as he often makes those random cutaways, non sequiturs, has tons of shouting, mispronunciation of words in an utterly charming manner, unconventional and/or humorously random references of media/etc, and other countless zany moments of himself, all delivered at a speedy pace.
  • Discussed in his video for Crash Twinsanity (during a more sane part of the video), with how he feels how you also have to stay consistent and balanced in your own kind of insanity and/or irrationality, where he points out how cliched and uncreative making a evil twin version of Crash was and when that appeared out of nowhere by how much the game throws at you:
    Caddy: "Okay my god Twinsanity, I understand, I get it you're supposed to be a little bit crazy and a bit 'oh I'm so random! You'll love me when you get to know me! I'm absolutely HILARIOUS!', but you need to slow down a little bit."
• Chad's character from Chadtronic lives this while a mature but massive Manchild and Keet, he is quite the Fun Personified one when being eccentric like JonTron in a more mild, playful way like the way Caddicarus acts eccentrically in his videos for pure comedy, but Chad seems to be literally Fun Personified at that. Also, his Man Child-like mannerisms easily give off vibes of this trope in countless videos.
• Marmalade of Cole and Marmalade has "never been normal", and likes to attack random objects, meow at nothing, and get into strange places where he shouldn't be.
• Suzaku from Code MENT lived being this from his universally remembered and memetic moment of being at the Soup Store buying clothes while most of the characters usually act stupid.
• Cream Heroes:
  • Chuchu has shown some odd behaviour, such as trying to eat food on her own schedule and randomly rolling around on the floor. When Claire takes her and Lulu to see a nutritionist to deal with their opposing eating habits, she admits Chuchu seems to live in her own world.
  • Dodo has shown some pretty bizarre behavior too; randomly wriggling across the carpet, doing barrel rolls to chase a laser, eating soil despite expressing disgust over it earlier, and jumping on top of the kitchen cabinets despite Claire having blocked them off. It's little wonder Claire sometimes refers to him as the Mad Catter.
• Dream SMP:
  • Karl has made some comments that are highly unusual both in and out of context, such as making the national animal of Rutabagville the bagel when trying to introduce it to the Badlands. In the spin-off Tales From the SMP, he also comes off as this in the episode "The Wild West", with his tendency to stand still and stare off into the distance for minutes at a time, and claiming that "72% of his brain" decided on having Crops participate in a duel against one of the bandits.
  • Ponk was known for his bizarre cat experiments (before the Cerebus Syndrome hit him as well), tends to work on his own agenda, and often refuses to elaborate about his strange actions when questioned.
  • Quackity has a tendency to act extremely strangely, such as speaking in silly accents, trying to sell 'drugs' to people, adopting one of his many weird alternate personalities, and stripping down to his underwear any chance he gets. His idea of couple's therapy is essentially a divorce court where he decides whether the couple should stay together or break up. Ironically, he ends up playing Cloudcuckoolander's Minder to KSI during his non-canonical visit to the SMP while relearning Minecraft, and Slimecicle, who was very naïve about about human society and accidentally got himself addicted to gambling.
    Tommy: (laughing) Sorry, someone just said in all caps, "THIS MAN IS INSANE, DO NOT LISTEN TO HIM".
  • Tubbo sometimes acts like this in between plot-heavy/high-tension episodes, such as looking up whilst crouching and moving in an odd manner whilst Tommy shows Ninja the SMP and Manburg after the election.
    Tommy: WHY ARE YOU PRETENDING TO BE A FUCKING FISH, TUBBO?!
  • In Tales From the SMP, Ron "Michael" Ronson from "The Wild West" has a chicken as his "wife", sets off fireworks at random intervals, wears a salmon on his head as a hat, and eats Japanese lanterns. Meanwhile, Cletus' first instinct upon meeting Ranbob in "The Lost City of Mizu" is to start sniffing him, earning him a Dope Slap from Isaac.
• Empires SMP Season 2:
  • Scott is an eccentric builder who constructs his starter house from both types of Nether wood and considers llamas his best friends. He seems quite proud of his status as a bit of an oddball. Of course, he still pales in comparison to Owen, who he ends up playing Cloudcuckoolander's Minder to.
  • As a llama who was transformed into a quasi-human, Owen's thought processes often align more with that of a llama than a human. This includes being lured by Delicious Distractions; not understanding the concepts of opening doors, reflections, replanting seeds after harvest, and crafting items; and spitting at others (which is apparently a cultural thing).
• While no one (other than Philza) is really at a normal level of sanity in The Funniest Minecraft Videos Ever, Quackity's persona is absolutely insane even by the standards of the series. He switches personalities faster than he can switch between lovers, owns a borderline illegal website called "unsatisfiedwives.com", is willing to sleep with a dragon 5 times his size, attempts to seduce Philza and then accuses him of sleeping with the villagers, and after being separated from the group for 10 minutes, he starts incoherently rambling about Pitbull and fast food restaurants.
• Everyone in Highcraft tends to be one, though it's justified given the intoxication of everyone involved. Cooper, Alex, or Joko sometimes end up filling the role of the Only Sane Man, but they're just as prone to cuckoolander tendencies as the rest of the cast.
• Jon from JonTron can be quite the intentional and trollish version of this, that really can be eccentric to a hilarious, surreal degree. Almost every episode he made will have you wondering if Jon went cuckoo by the way his videos are written in pretty clever, sharp, developed, and witty ways.
• Caleb's persona he plays from oompaville is portrayed as a fairly sane yet very wacky & sometimes random jokester in a lot of videos whose eccentricities are expressed through a memetic, hammy, exaggerated, or surreal sense of humor.
• Pirates SMP: The NPC Jeffery has once stated his intent to purchase a ring made of apple juice, and thinks his fiancée Water bringing ointment with her to farm bees is a method of appeasement so they wouldn't sting her.
• Rats SMP: At his best, this is how Tubbo comes off as.
  Bek: Who are you? Who are you?
  Shelby: (jumping under the dining table) Hello!
  Tubbo: […] I am the rat that yearns for the cheese! (runs off)
  (Bek and Shelby glance at each other)
  Shelby: He's a maniac, is what he is.
• The Teleporting Fat Guy from Smosh literally lives being this and seems to be the Fat Comic Relief that is a time traveler who time travels with his power-glove and in fact, sings about what he is doing to a pretty goofy degree while being able to teleport when doing this, a part of his lyrics mentioned how aware he was with being dippy:
  Teleporting Fat Guy: "Teleporting Fat Guy! He's teleporting and he's so dippy, yeah I am!"
• SMPEarth:
  • Tubbo's main goal is to build a plastic volcano, for whatever reason. He also goes out of his way to help set up a date for Kara Corvus and Wisp, making food for them to eat in McDonald's.
  • Fruitberries has a faction named "Funnydog", and has built multiple fast food restaurants for seemingly no reason.
  • Charlie Soot forms a faction themed around and named after K-Pop, and even builds an airport named the "BTS International Airport", after the K-Pop boy band.
  • BedheadBernie created an entire faction based on Hazbin Hotel, making a giant map art of Angel Dust. When the map is messed with, he declares those who messed with it to be "Hazbin Haters" and enemies of the faction.
• Travis from SMPLive is known for often saying and doing things that make no sense to everyone else on the server, including roleplaying a roller coaster with Cooper's chat, random singing, making strange noises, and saying things with nonsensical grammar.
  Ted: The words you say... Don't mean anything. Travis, you know that, right?

noreallife

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