Basic Trope: The smartest kid in a class has few or no friends.
- Straight: Jen is the smartest kid in her class, and doesn't have any friends.
- Exaggerated: Jen is among the .00001% most intelligent people in the world, and no one wants to have anything to do with her.
- Downplayed:
- Jen is among the smartest students in her class, and has a few friends.
- Jen is among the smartest students in her class. She has no problem interacting with her peers, but she doesn't have any True Companions or anyone she considers an intellectual equal.
- Justified:
- Jen is an Insufferable Genius or a Nerdy Bully.
- Jen is the smartest kid in the class, and also the quiet kid in the corner that's too shy to make friends. Most people assume she's too busy studying or that she thinks she's better than them, so they don't try to break the ice either.
- Kids Are Cruel and like to harass smart targets, especially if they're physically unimposing.
- Jen skipped multiple grades, so she has no same-age peers who are easier to relate to.
- Jen is surrounded by Luddites who think she's a Mad Scientist of some kind.
- Jen is a Mad Scientist, and is a bit too fond of using other students as her test subjects, so people generally tend to avoid her.
- Inverted:
- Jen is the dumbest and most popular kid in her class.
- Jen is a genius...and it drives the guys crazy!
- Most people don't want anything to do with Jen because she's an idiot.
- Jen is the class's Alpha Bitch and is the smartest kid in the school.
- Subverted:
- Jen seems to be an intelligent loner who is always Eating Lunch Alone, but when the school prom rolls around, she has several guys invite her as her date, proving that she is actually quite popular.
- Jen seems to be unpopular due to her intelligence, but it turns out she's such a Shrinking Violet who's just awkward.
- Jen is the most popular, beloved kid in her class possibly because she's also the smartest.
- Jen claims to be the smartest kid in her class, but we see that she's not exactly such, making poor desisions constantly and thus driving everyone away.
- Double Subverted:
- ...Except it was all an Imagine Spot.
- ...and that's thanks to her being either a TV Genius or Idiot Savant with some kind of mental disorder of which high IQ is a side effect.
- …during the "glory days" montage that takes place during the opening credits. Once the film actually begins, Janice arrives and establishes a regime running on Anti-Intellectualism.
- …but Jen has an Odd Friendship with Willoughby, who is the school's mathlete and a straight victim of this trope. Because of said odd friendship, Jen is his Only Friend.
- Parodied: Jen is an average but popular student, the one time she gets an actually good grade in school everyone starts bullying her.
- Zig Zagged: Jen is the smartest kid in the classroom, and also the loneliest. The Hero befriends her and soon she becomes part of their clique. After that, because everyone spend their time heroing or escaping from monsters, no one has their homework done, and she starts teaching everyone in the class how to study correctly. Jen becomes the most popular kid in school, and then summer vacation starts, and not a single of her classmates ever goes visit her, calls her, or even friends her on Facebook.
- Averted: Jen is neither intelligent nor socially isolated.
- Enforced: "Jen can't look better than the hero! Let's make her friendless!"
- Lampshaded: "Jen is obviously the smartest one in the class. How much you wanna bet she has no friends?"
- Invoked: Jen is found as a genius...and is immediately sent away to be given private tutoring or to study by herself with no interruption from anyone else to distract her from her studies.
- Exploited: The Big Bad knows that Jen, who can easily outwit the hero, wants friends, but is rejected by her classmates. The Big Bad uses Jen's loneliness as a way to get close to her, and, after gaining her trust, he somehow manipulates her into helping him.
- In a similar vein, the Big Bad realizes that Jen's work could create devastating weapons. The Big Bad is aware of Jen's isolation and befriends her so that she would work for him and build a Doomsday Device for her only friend.
- Defied: Robin befriends Jen, knowing full well that she is the most intelligent person in the class, and thinking she could use a friend.
- Discussed: "Why is it that the most intelligent people tend to be the ones people ignore or bully, anyway?"
- Conversed: "Have you noticed that every time there's a smart kid in the classroom, they always end up alone in the back of the room?"
- Implied: Jen is shown to be a Teen Genius but her social life and friends are never mentioned.
- Deconstructed:
- The isolation that Jen's intelligence brings drives her to suicide.
- Social behavior never evolved because of Natural bias against intelligent creatures
- The reason nobody wants to do anything to do with Jen is that she is an Insufferable Genius, viewing herself as the Only Sane Man and Surrounded by Idiots.
- Reconstructed:
- The isolation that Jen's intelligence brings gets her into a depression. Soon after, she decides that she's better off in her own, becomes a hermit, and makes great discoveries in several scientific fields, all of which are understood a few decades after her passing, leading to new technologies.
- In a setting where most of Jen's society is composed of bigoted jerks, Jen deduces that being on good terms with said people isn't worth it, eventually learning how to enjoy her time alone.
- Jen's opinion and views on society are nevertheless accurate.
Maybe you'll find someone who will appreciate your intelligence back at Intelligence Equals Isolation.
