Basic Trope: A scientist which is always deep in thought about something, losing grasp with reality.
- Straight: Professor Troperson is a very skilled specialist, but he is very immersed in his work, so he always forgets or does not notice basic things.
- Exaggerated:
- The Professor is so obsessed with his work, that he knows very little about society out there, his grasp on reality is flimsy at best, and ultimately dies of inanition because he forgot to eat regularly.
- The professor is so absent minded he requires artificial ventilation and a feeding tube. He can only communicate via barely intelligible babble because he forgets how to properly enunciate, and has to have his babble recorded nonstop since he forgets his own ideas.
- The Professor is too obsessed with theories, he ended up being called a Stupid Scientist.
- The professor's house is filled with tons of science experiments (ie. Hacker Cave) that even he can't find his bed!
- Downplayed: The Professor tends to drift away sometimes, but otherwise he acts like a normal person.
- Justified:
- Professor Troperson has a lot of important experiments set, so he can't stop thinking about them.
- Professor Troperson is an insomniac, so even when he takes his coffee his brain is a bit hazy.
- He really forgot to eat his lunch and is now weak and thinks only about food.
- The Professor is autistic, or has ADHD, and so naturally tends towards type of behaviour.
- The professor underwent Bio-Augmentation or was a Designer Baby and had many of the parts of his brain responsible for short term memory, social skills, and basic motor functions rewired to focus purely on abstract problem solving.
- Inverted: Professor Troperson can't shut up at work, and because of that, his experiments often fail.
- Subverted: Enter Professor Troperson, with Messy Hair, unbuttoned labcoat and droopy eyes. He acts and talks normally: he just did not have enough sleep today.
- Professor Troperson seems scatterbrained and has trouble remembering what's asked of him, but only when it involves doing work.
- Double Subverted: Word by word, he starts talking only about his experiment and rushes away, losing a shoe and not returning to pick it up.
- Parodied:
- Professor Troperson goes adrift thinking about random things and mumbling some of them aloud.
- Anyone who obtains a master's degree in a scientific field instantly forgets all social skills they had before.
- Zig Zagged: The first scene, we see Professor with messy hair and deep in thought. Later, he combs his hair and regains his common sense, only to dive deep in thought after few sentences.
- Averted: Professor Troperson is a normal person, or is not a professor at all.
- Enforced: Mad Scientist archetype as a villain.
- The scientist in question is so smart the writers needed to add his absent mindedness as a weaksauce weakness.
- Lampshaded: "Does he even have friends?"
- Invoked: "Yes, I did sleep yesterday... three hours, at evening. This gel column was running very slowly..."
- Exploited: Professor is forced to sign a suspicious contract disguised as a normal bureaucratic paper, and he has nothing against: "Ah, sign it, yes, here we go. Anyway... Now, where was I?"
- Defied: Professor Troperson feels very lonely, so he tries to be more social.
- Discussed: "He is a good guy, just a little bit... off. Well, he has way too much work."
- Conversed: "If all scientists were like this, science would not be progressing."
- Implied: A character sees Professor Troperson's coat thrown on a table and guesses why did not he put it in the wardrobe.
- Deconstructed:
- Professor Troperson can't publish an article on his work, because he lacks resources and cannot normally communicate with other researchers asking them to help him.
- Professor Troperson's social life suffers, as he keeps forgetting himself in his work, and he ends up as The Cracker living in his Hacker Cave for a long time.
- Professor Troperson actually has Alzheimer's. He is still in early enough stages to do his work competently, but the disease has taken away his memory and ability to have a normal conversation. Everyone dismisses this as a quirky character trait, but he's really suffering.
- Professor Troperson's absentminded nature poses a safety hazard as he forgets about one experiment while conducting another. Cue Stuff Blowing Up or catching fire.
- Reconstructed:
- He changes his theme for a bit and later writes a monography.
- Professor Troperson has a Cloudcuckoolander's Minder who makes him socialize.
- Professor Troperson switches his efforts to finding a cure for Alzheimer's.
- Played For Laughs: Professor always calls other characters by any words other than their names.
- Played For Drama:
- "- Why don't you love me? Can you even love someone?! - Love, eh, yes, let's talk about this later, I've got work to do..."
- Professor Troperson knows he is absent-minded, knows that it irritates other people, and he does not finds it funny himself after the third or fourth time he had to go to the hospital because he forgot to eat or had to change his underwear, but no matter how hard he struggles his mind just wanders off and he is back on the same mess.
- Played For Horror:
- The origin of Professor Troperson's constant wandering thoughts is a Split Personality that will do anything to survive.
- The Professor's absent-mindedness kicked in and allowed an experiment to go horribly wrong, killing a hundred people. And those left behind? They're not going to take "I forgot" as an excuse. At all.
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