Basic Trope: A character’s intelligence is shown by their ridiculously high IQ.
- Straight: Bob, The Smart Guy, is said to have an IQ of 250.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob has an IQ of 10000.
- Bob has an IQ of infinity, and is the smartest living organism anywhere.
- Downplayed: Bob has an IQ of 160 - attainable in real life, but very rare (approximately 1 in 31,574 people have it).
- Justified:
- Some procedure has been done to him that resulted in his extremely high intellect.
- Bob comes from a long, long lineage of other geniuses.
- Inverted: Improbably Low I.Q.
- Subverted:
- Bob claims his IQ is 250 so that he will sound smarter; however, an external source later reveals that his IQ is actually only a bit above normal.
- The IQ mentioned is stated to be a case of similar names for Interconnectivity Quotient which measures the connections in neurons. While interesting to observe the differences it doesn't state anything too strongly. There are many different arrangements that result in the same number. Trying to increase the number as an end in itself would be foolish.
- Bob's claim of infinite IQ comes from an overflow error in the IQ calculation routine used by the test that should have invalidated the result.
- when Bob's claimed his IQ to be "eighty fifty-five", he meant "eighty-point-fifty-five", not "eight-thousand-fifty-five".
- Double Subverted: However, he was just playing dumb so as not to sound arrogant - his IQ really is 250.
- Parodied:
- Bob’s head swells like a balloon to accommodate his extremely large, genius brain.
- Bob is The Ditz, and claims to have an IQ of "twenty-fivety".
- Bob takes an "IQ test" one of his friends shared on YouBook. He tries it repeatedly until a lucky run gets him 250 points, and is dumb enough to believe that's his real IQ.
- Bob scores 95 on an IQ test. He brags about it like mad because he believes 100 is the highest possible score.
- Bob's IQ score is an absurdly large number stretching past the trillions. When someone accuses him of having taken a poorly administrated test, Bob replies that only a man as smart as him can solve that one math test that the author of the story was completely unprepared for!
- Bob's IQ is high enough for him to realize how obscenely improbable it is for his IQ to be so high.
- Zig Zagged:
- Bob is stated to have an IQ of 90, which is perfectly normal... until we find out that he's at a prestigious primatology research laboratory, making it an Improbably Low I.Q.. But then we find out that he's a gorilla, so it is, in fact, an Improbably High I.Q..
- Bob's IQ varies wildly depending on what IQ test was used and whether he was Obfuscating Stupidity or cheating.
- Averted: Nobody has an IQ that is extreme in any regard.
- Enforced: “Okay, we need this character to be shown as extremely intelligent… let’s just slap a huge IQ on him and call it a day."
- Lampshaded: “A 250 IQ? That’s ridiculous - does anyone even have that?"
- Invoked:
- Bob tells everyone his IQ is much higher than it is, so that he sounds like a genius.
- Bob traveled back to the days of Erectus so that his 95 against the modern average, would measure as a 250 against the then-current average.
- Bob writes his IQ in quaternary in the hopes that people will misread 1133note as decimal instead of 95.
- Exploited: Alice makes a successful gamble that Bob's IQ test score will be off the chart.
- Defied: Alice speculates out loud to Bob that he must have an IQ of 250. Bob groans and says that IQ testing is unreliable and politicized at best, and claims he has no interest in ever taking a test.
- Discussed: “An IQ of 250? That seems kind of improbable - after all, extremely few people even reach 160."
- Conversed: “Why’d this author give Bob such a high IQ? I mean, we get it, he’s smart. You don’t have to rub it in."
- Implied: The result of Bob's IQ test is never shown, but it did leave the tester in awe.
- Deconstructed: Intelligence Equals Isolation
- Reconstructed: Being the most intelligent person in class, Bob easily earns many friends.
- Played For Drama: Bob is socially impaired or suffering from depression because no one else seems to be able to relate to him at all. The resulting mental health problems are enough to keep him from using any ostensible benefits of his smarts.
Back to Improbably High I.Q.
