Improbably Low I.Q.

Goodvibes: I have Billy's IQ test right here. I'm afraid Billy only scored a negative 5.
Hoss: What's wrong with negative 5?
Goodvibes: Well, we gave the same test to a shovel and two candy bracelets, they each scored a positive 17.

— The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy

Your typical dunce (at least in fiction) has the intellect of a snail. But attaching numbers to everything is fun, so why not stick them with a lower IQ score to prove their stupidity?

Unlike the opposite end of the spectrum, it's much more rare to see one of these scores reach ridiculous levels that don't match up with real world IQ testing. Of course, when it does get ridiculous (to the point of giving negative scores), it's much more jarring. On the other hand, most really ridiculously low IQs - single digits, or negative numbers - are found in comedies, where the Rule of Funny can be blamed, or in-character hyperbole.

See Idiot Hero, The Ditz, and The Fool for character concepts that may invoke this. If the character isn't managed properly, this may be an Informed Flaw and result in fans calling Obfuscating Stupidity.

Contrast Improbably High I.Q..

For more information about IQ testing, go here. For numerical stats, see the analysis page.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In chapter 15 of Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, Kaguya has an Imagine Spot where Fujiwara says that her IQ is 3. This isn't her actual IQ (which Word of God says is over 130), Kaguya just has a very low opinion of her best friend.
• An episode of Lupin III: Part 5 features a safe that can only be opened by someone with perfect IQ of 0. This proves a particular problem for Lupin, since his IQ is 300.

Comic Books

• The French comic Les Blondes had a strip with a pretty but dim blonde discussing her employee evaluation results with her boss.
  Employee: "The test said I had an IQ of 27. I don't understand..."
  Boss: "With an IQ of 27 it is normal you don't understand."

Eastern Animation

• Anusiak of Polish adult cartoon series Włatcy móch has an IQ of 50. There is also a school bus driver, who is a Satanist - his IQ was estimated, naturally, 66.6.

Film

• Brick Tamland from Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy has an IQ of 48.
• Alien³ also averts this. Aaron, Superintendent Andrews' assistant, is commonly known by the nickname "85", which is his IQ. He demonstrates some noticeably stupid behavior, but manages to avoid lapsing into complete idiot territory.
• Idiocracy demonstrates this. The two intelligent people who never bred had a believable IQ of about 130, while the football player and the trailer park people had scores in seventies and eighties, which are believably low-average. However, five hundred years later, the average score was five. Granted these people were so stupid that their society was collapsing around them and most of them probably would qualify as retarded, but given how IQ is defined, it's impossible for the average IQ to be anything other than 100, since the norms are adjusted to ensure that average. Justified, as they may be too stupid to realize that, or it may be scaling to modern-day IQ as a Translation Convention - if they all truly had an IQ of 5 by the modern scale, these people would be unable to even talk or walk unassisted.
• In one of the spoof trailers for Tropic Thunder, the main character of Simple Jack is stated to have an IQ of five.
• From Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory:
  What do you get from a glut of TV?
  A pain in the neck and an IQ of 3

Literature

• In the Discworld novel Thud!, the rather drug addled troll named Brick is described at one point as having a possibly negative IQ for comedic effect. Sergeant Detritus is at least once jokingly commented to have a room temperature IQ, but in fact he is no fool and an excellent policeman, if not especially bright. Also subverted in that the comment can be taken literally, as Troll's brains in Discworld work faster in low temperatures, so his intelligence really is likely to be affected by the room temperature.
  • However, with trolls, there's an inverse relationship between temperature and intelligence. Detritus is brilliant when he's about to freeze to death in the Pork Futures Warehouse, and Mr. Shine is considerably sharper than the run-of-the-mill Discworldian even in "normal" temperatures, being composed of stuff that naturally refracts light instead of absorbing it. Detritus gets a cooling helmet in the later books, and is remarked on as being considerably sharper when Vimes and company relocate to the (high, cold) mountains of Uberwald in Fifth Elephant.
  • It has been theorized that if a troll would actually sit down in a chair and take an IQ test, it would score lower than the chair it was sitting in.
  • It is also noted that the trolls who leave the mountains to seek their fortune in the cities tend to be the brightest ones... but then they lose intelligence as they descend down into warmer climes.
  • The Tsumi wrestlers in "Interesting Times" are apparently chosen in part for their savage lack of intelligence; One Big River (a guard who is dim but functional) supposedly failed the application test when he didn't try to eat the table.
  • Note to American readers: the UK uses the Celsius scale, not Fahrenheit. "Room temperature" therefore means about 20, not 70.
• In The Westing Game, in Sandy's notes of the other heirs to Westing's will, a note on Otis Joseph Amber is that his I.Q. is 50 (Mild to moderate mental retardation, depending on the scale you're looking at). A person with this I.Q would have difficulties on their own, but it's stated that Amber is a delivery boy and even marries Berthe Erica Crowe after the contest ends. When he's around, he acts more nutty yet competent than mentally impaired. There is a reason for this.
  • Upon finding this out, Sandy McSouthers jokes (somewhat mean-spiritedly) that he always suspected that Otis had an IQ of -10.
• In Cyril M. Kornbluth's The Marching Morons, a character states that "the average IQ is now 45". As The Other Wiki (and our Useful Notes page) point out, this is nonsense.
  • Less so if it's interpreted as a shorthand way of saying "the average (contemporary for the speaker) person would, on a (contemporary for the protagonist) Stanford-Binet IQ test, score somewhere around the point at which the results become too low to be reliable, say 45." This still seems awfully low, though.
• The narrator of Stuck in Neutral has no conscious control of his muscles, and is typically assumed to be mindless, so his IQ was once measured at 3. From his narration, he seems to be of above-average intelligence—he's just completely uneducated.

Live-Action TV

• Hazel Wassername of 30 Rock has an IQ of 70 - which she seems to think is pretty high.
• Red Dwarf: Holly the computer, once said to have an IQ of 6000 (equivalent to that of 6000 P.E. teachers or 12000 car-park attendants), has succumbed to computer senility. While trying to prove he's not completely gone, he fabricates a back-up computer program called Queeg, who "takes over" Red Dwarf in the episode "Queeg". Queeg claims that Holly's IQ was actually 6. ("It's got a six in it, but it's not six thousand...") Holly points out that 6 would be "a bad IQ for a glass of water."
• On the Israeli sitcom Shemesh, the eponymous lead character asks Sasi, the cook in his restaurant, if he knows what ‘ICQ’ is.^note This was in an episode that aired in the early Noughties, when ICQ, the first modern instant messaging software, was invented in Israel and became popular; it was later bought by Microsoft and adapted, in a sense, into MSN Messenger. Sasi answers, ‘Of course I do, it’s what I have 12 of!’
• Monty Python's Flying Circus presents a documentary on penguins and a graph displaying the results of an IQ test taken by the penguins against two other demographic groups. The penguins were inferior to the bushmen of the Kalahari but fared better than BBC programme planners.
  Prof. Passeral: The BBC programme planners' surprisingly high total here can be explained away as being within the ordinary limits of statistical error. One particularly dim programme planner can cock the whole thing up.
  Title card: You can say that again!
• The Red Green Show: In one episode, Harold petitions for a Chapter of Mensa to be opened in the Possum Lake area and has the lodge members take IQ tests. While both Red and Harold turn out to fairly reasonable IQ levels, Harold does mention during the credits that most of the Lodge members will have to apply in pairs in order to meet the required level.

Music

• Zig-zagged in Lene Alexandra's "My Boobs Are OK", where the Dumb Blonde narrator says that "her cup size and IQ work in harmony". Depending on what measuring system you use, it could mean anything from a single-digit IQ to an above-average one, or that she somehow got a letter grade for an IQ. Maybe she doesn't even know how the system works.

Newspaper Comics

• Garfield once gave us this list of beings, in order of intelligence (from 0 to 1000): Amoeba - slug - dog - stone - ape - human - kitchen machine - cat. One has to wonder if he is being a wee bit biased.
  • Even further, a special anniversary edition printing of Garfield told us that Odie's IQ is so low, "you can't test it, you have to dig for it." Despite these claims, Odie actually HAS beaten Garfield on rare occasions.
• In the Dutch comic Dirkjan an extra has this to say about Marini: "You gotta keep an eye on that one. He has an IQ in negative numbers"
• One story arc in Zits involved Jeremy and Hector trying out an online IQ test, with Hector getting a score of 162, while Jeremy gets 32.
  Hector: Wait, is that your IQ or the outside temperature?
  • Subverted when Connie tells Jeremy to embrace any hint that the test may be inaccurate. Walt then comes in and says he got a score of 176, causing Jeremy to embrace him.

Video Games

• Averted in Tropico. Having certain hindrances puts El Presidente's IQ at "just below room temperature", which, if one measures temperature on the Fahrenheit scale, puts him near the cutoff for "profound retardation".
  • In a tropical banana republic, room temperature sans air conditioning could well be around 90 to 95, so the implied IQ of 85 to 90 is really just.. kind of dumb.
  • Played straight, if the country measures in Celsius, though (likely around 20-25).
• Awesomenauts has Derpl Zork, a character so dumb he scored lower than plankton on a galactic IQ test.
  • Possibly averted, as Plankton are incidentally a species of mildly intelligent aliens.
• Jagged Alliance: Marty "Kaboom" Moffat was a man whose career standing close to explosives left him a mite... strange. In the end, he was found unresponsive one morning, rushed to hospital, declared brain-dead and had his organs harvested as per his legally filled-out donor card. The hospital was promptly sued by Moffat's next of kin, who argued that he was alive and well, and simply not a morning person.
• One rather hilarious detail about Fallout: New Vegas is that if your intelligence is extremely low or rock-bottom, certain optional speech checks will appear where you're so stupid that you succeed either out of pity or pure dumb luck.

Webcomics

• When not under the effects of her "boost intelligence 12 fold" Applied Phlebotinum, the main character of Mind Mistress has an IQ of 66.
• Doctor Edward Bunnigus, of Schlock Mercenary had parents who were legally too stupid to procreate without intervention to boost the intelligence of any offspring. According to her, they had "maybe 110 uncontested IQ points" between them.

Web Original

• The animation "Tramps Just Wanna Have Fun" reveals "an IQ of 1".
• Suzaku from Code MENT scored negative on his IQ test and is surprised when Lelouch tells him that´s a bad thing.

Web Video

• In a parody of Iggy Azalea's song "Fancy" by Bart Baker, Iggy spells her name as Iccy, Iegi, and HRT5, because she "can't spell because her IQ is negative ten"
• In Jack Star Himself’s satirical add for the Flat Earth Society, said Society boasts about how they now have members in the double digit ranges (almost) and bars anybody with an IQ of 18 or higher from entering.
• In 1 For All, it turns out that Nixie's intelligence is 0. Going by standard D&D rules, 10 is considered average intelligence, and wild animals tend to have around 3. 0 indicates that the creature literally doesn't have a brain and is usually reserved for vehicles.

Western Animation

• Homer Simpson of The Simpsons has an IQ of 55 (taking a crayon out of his brain raised it 50 points to 105), but lives in a normal (not really, but within the show, yes) suburban home without any assistance. (The writers have claimed they started him as average, but he loses about 5 IQ points a year from radiation, and now he's basically "a dog who can talk".) Interestingly, his 105 IQ is portrayed as ungodly high—not just in comparison to his peers, but objectively, to the point where he devises a mathematical equation that flawlessly disproves the existence of God.
• Billy of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy has an IQ of -5.
  We gave the same test to a shovel and two candy bracelets... They scored a positive 17.
• Elmyra Duff of Tiny Toon Adventures has "no detectable IQ" (presumed to mean an IQ of 0). This in comparison with a jar of mayonnaise, which is stated to have an IQ of 1.
• As identified on the wiki, Scratch and Grounder of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog have IQs of 40 and 25, respectively.
• Peter Griffin of Family Guy has an IQ of 40. (The episode "Petarded" puts him on a graph below both normal people and the line for retarded, but above creationists.) The episode in which this is revealed blatantly said Peter was retarded, and he can't live without assistance, temporarily losing custody of his kids after Lois was injured. However, he still does a little more than he should be able to. While his job performance is very poor, he apparently is good enough to keep it. Also, he's legally allowed to drive and consent to major surgery, even though his "informed consent" to the latter is complete guesswork.
• Implied then subverted. Wile E. Coyote claims that Bugs Bunny, in contrast to his genius, can hardly pass the entrance exams to kindergarten. We all know how it all turned out, don't we?
• Buck Tuddrussel in Time Squad is shown to have an IQ of 78, in the episode "Kubla Khan't". Later in "Ladies and Gentlemen, Meet Monty Zuma", Larry mocks Tuddrussel in a round of Volleying Insults by telling him "I tried to measure your IQ, but numbers don't go that low!"

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