Basic Trope: An intellectual character of Asian descent.
- Straight: Sam Guan has the top grades in his class, and is on his way to work on math and science careers.
- Exaggerated:
- Sam already has a Ph.D or two, even though he is only 12.
- All Asians in the world are super-geniuses and learn college-level lessons during preschool.
- Downplayed: Sam is a decent student, but science is one of his stronger subjects.
- Justified:
- Sam just happens to be a very gifted student and a hard worker, character traits he'd have regardless of race.
- Sam is under pressure to please his family by working hard to achieve a good career.
- Inverted: Sam is Book Dumb (and not particularly street smart, either).
- Subverted: Sam seems brainy because he's quiet and wears glasses, but he's actually a C student whose best subject is P.E.
- Double Subverted: He gets Cs because he never bothers to study and constantly sleeps in his class. When he applies himself, he gets perfect scores in all his subjects.
- Parodied:
- Bob asks Sam for help with math, only to find out that Sam is just as bad at math as Bob is.
- Everyone has a talent by virtue of their race: the Asian guy is a math wiz, the black guy is good at basketball, etc.
- Sam gets an A- and falls apart.
- Bob acts like Sam's a math genius because he gave the correct sum of 4+4.
- Zig Zagged: Sam's intelligent but also airheaded, and how well he performs solving intellectual problems depends on when you catch him.
- Averted: Sam is an average student.
- Lampshaded: "So you thought because I'm Korean, I'm automatically a genius, genius?"
- Invoked: An Asian man was cast to play Sam because the writers felt that, on top of everything else, making him Asian would give off a genius vibe.
- Exploited: In high school, kids would have Sam do work for them because they couldn't be bothered actually putting effort into class.
- Defied: In Grade School Sam makes an effort to not be "nerdy" to avoid being singled out by bullies. He does this by pumping iron.
- Discussed: "Unlike what your favorite television program would have you believe, Asians are not always the Smart Guys."
- Conversed: "How come all the smart people in this show are always of Asian descent?"
- Deconstructed: Sam is only as smart as he is because his parents put so much pressure on him to be studious. Sam was built for and wanted to play American football but never got the chance.
- Reconstructed:
- After moving out, Sam uses whatever money he had working as a doctor or in computer science to get involved with sports culture, mainly becoming a sports trainer/doctor, and is able to find joy in being a Football Commentator.
- Sam is able to convince his parents that he can do both by being an Academic Athlete, attaining a full-ride scholarship to a school with good academics and using it to both attain his dream of being in the NFL and having a well-respected job afterwards with the degree he got as a second career after he's retired from the game in his mid-30's.
- Played For Drama: Sam is extremely intelligent because his parents force him to study intensively and severely punish him whenever he makes even a small mistake in his homework. All of this means that he has no free time, and no social life. While he is smart, he is also very unhappy.
- Played For Laughs: Sam finds that since he's so smart, he practically doesn't find any intellectual problem challenging anymore.
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