Basic Trope: The Ditz is really smart, at least in some area(s).
- Straight: Clueless Alice is really clueless about most things, but she's brilliant at her chosen profession of biophysics.
- Exaggerated: Clueless Alice looks stupid in all areas, but manages to be competent at everything not requiring giving a straightforward answer.
- Downplayed: Though easily distracted and a bit silly, Alice is able to handle her college classes fine.
- Justified: Alice has a very narrow field of interests.
- Inverted:
- Subverted:
- Alice appears to be a genius at biophysics, but in fact just memorized a book about it on a whim.
- What at first seems to be a fluke is actually foreshadowing that Alice is using Obfuscating Stupidity.
- Double Subverted:
- Her real specializaton is quantum physics.
- After Alice shows a few unexpected signs of intelligence, those around her begin to suspect she's using Obfuscating Stupidity, and treat her as a font of wisdom. She isn't.
- Parodied: When the characters are at a loss in a particularly esoteric subject, all eyes turn to Clueless Alice, who nails it except when that wouldn't be funny.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice has expert knowledge in some parts of some fields, an average level of knowledge about others, and none in others.
- Averted: Alice is just The Ditz straight up. Or she's just The Smart Guy.
- Enforced:
- Truth in Television
- Alice was originally written as a simple ditz but got one field of competence to make her character deeper.
- Lampshaded: "And how exactly is it that you learned biophysics?"
- Invoked: The team uses Alice to hustle money in biophysics quizzes.
- Exploited: The hustle victims then challenge Alice to another field of study, and Hilarity Ensues.
- Defied: Alice admits she's as dumb as a sack of hammers.
- Discussed: "Alice may seem stupid, but when it comes to biophysics, she makes everyone else look stupid!"
- Conversed: "Alice is literally one of the most brilliant biophysics doctoral students I've ever seen in my twenty-five years of teaching. Bit scattered is an understatement, her office usually looks like a bomb went off in it, but wow is that woman going to go places." "Quite possibly the morgue, along with half the building we live in. Yeah, she's my roommate - I don't doubt at all that she's a truly rare talent in her field, but this is the woman who has left the gas on THREE GODDAMN TIMES this month, and did I mention that she's a smoker and frequently smokes inside when she's toiling away at something late at night? Yeah. She probably will change the world if she doesn't accidentally kill herself first."
- Deconstructed: Alice is smart enough to catch on that other people see her as a ditz, and has self-esteem issues because of this.
- Reconstructed: But she won’t let that put her down, and therefore, enjoy the skills she has.
What?! You mean you can build an airplane out of scrap but you cannot create a link back to the main page? You could've told me ealier, Genius Ditz!
