History Main / AsianandNerdy

** [[Characters/AmphibiaMarcyWu Marcy Wu]] is a dorky teenage girl who gets effortlessly good grades and is into all kinds of nerdy things, especially video games and [=RPGs=]. Within Newtopia, she becomes an invaluable inventor, practically revolutionizing the whole city and molding her into a formidable warrior. Despite being extremely smart however, she is rather scatterbrained, and [[DitzyGenius her incredible clumsiness and obliviousness to the world around her]] tends to get her into trouble.

** Averted with [[Characters/AmphibiaAnneBoonchuy Anne Boonchuy]], who is Thai and has terrible grades, being more of a people person.

* Averted in ''WesternAnimation/{{WITCH}}'' with Hay Lin, who is an artist and a bit of a scatterbrain. But also shown with [[TheSmartGuy nerd]] of the team being Taranee--who's technically half-Asian.

* Sharri Barrnett, the Filipino programmer in ''ComicBook/SteelgripStarkeyAndTheAllPurposePowerTool''.
* Ryan Choi, who takes up Ray Palmer's mantle as ComicBook/TheAtom, and also works at the same university.

* Franchise/MarvelUniverse:

* ''ComicBook/PowerGirl'': The Judd Winnick Run features Nicco Cho, an expert hacker and inventor who aids Power Girl.
* ''ComicBook/{{Giantkiller}}'': Dr. Steven Azuma is a Japanese-American scientist specializing in bioengineering. He is the one who created the titular Giantkiller by splicing human and {{Daikaiju}} DNA.

** Marcy Wu is a dorky teenage girl who gets effortlessly good grades and is into all kinds of nerdy things, especially video games and [=RPGs=]. Within Newtopia, she becomes an invaluable inventor, practically revolutionizing the whole city and molding her into a formidable warrior. Despite being extremely smart however, she is rather scatterbrained, and [[DitzyGenius her incredible clumsiness and obliviousness to the world around her]] tends to get her into trouble.
** Averted with Anne Boonchuy, who is Thai and has terrible grades, being more of a people person.

* ''My Hot Ass Neighbor'' lampshades and subverts this with main [[HeroesWantRedheads Wong]] who has all the physical traits expected of a stereotype from [[ShorterMeansSmarter his height making him the shortest character by a wide margin save for his grade-school sister despite being in high school,]] to his coke bottle glasses and buck teeth, which [[FieryRedhead Sharona]] points out as the reason she needs him as a tutor [[GiveGeeksAChance (and then some)]] then subverted as he has [[BiggerIsBetterInBed "something else"]] that gets the ladies going, too.

* Kelly Miyahara, a member of ''Series/{{Jeopardy}}'''s "Clue Crew", a set of assistants who present video clues at times. Also contestant Arthur Chu, an 11-day champion on the show who quickly became notorious for his unorthodox playing style, and James Holzhauer, a 32-day champion who held the sixteen highest one-day scores by the time he was defeated.[[note]] Holzhauer's grandmother was Japanese. [[/note]]

* Amadeus Cho of the Franchise/MarvelUniverse, who is one of the smartest people in the world.

* WesternAnimation/GravityFalls has Mabel's friend Candy Chiu, a dorky Korean girl who [[{{Meganekko}} wears glasses]] and, in the episode "Roadside Attraction", displays some AwesomenessByAnalysis when helping her friends escape from a monster.

Website/TheOtherWiki has an article on the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_minority "model minority"]] stereotype from which this trope is derived. Contrast AllAsiansKnowMartialArts, as most Asian and Nerdy characters lack the athletic ability for martial arts, though it's possible for these two tropes to [[GeniusBruiser overlap]]. For the South Asian subtrope, see BollywoodNerd. For related tropes, see JewishAndNerdy, and BlackAndNerdy.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* Frequently an EnforcedTrope (albeit unintentionally), as 80% of the scholarships for Asians are for those wishing to become doctors, lawyers, or scientists. The 20% of scholarships for ANY other field are taken so quickly that some people think ''all'' Asian scholarships are for those three fields.
* Because of this stereotype, discrimination against Asians is very prevalent in higher education as they are thought of as taking up enrollment slots since they are too smart for others to compete. Infamously, statistics have shown that Ivy League schools in the US have implicitly capped the percentage of Asian enrollment - the reverse of affirmative action practices for blacks and Hispanics. Maclean's magazine in Canada had their "Too Asian?" article which received major backlash across the country for reporting that Asians take away university culture from white students because they ''are overly focused on their studies''. This is part of a wider DoubleStandard in which a white person's success will be attributed to a strong work ethic while similar successes coming from an Asian person will be attributed to them being overworked in some way (e.g. the EducationMama, an oppressive state training regime, an "overachiever" personality).
** There are also less scholarships tailored specifically for Asians because of the belief that they'll go to college whether they have a scholarship or not.
* South Koreans, Japanese and more recently Chinese and Taiwanese are often assumed to be at least one step higher on the [[TournamentPlay competitive gaming]] ladder than any Western gamer. The common explanation is that they apply their traditional determination, dedication and competitive nature to videogames as well as (or in lieu of) RealLife. As with other generalizations, however, the truth of this belief varies from person to person.
** Many games that Eastern players dominate are Eastern-developed, and naturally are either released in Asian countries before anywhere else or [[NoExportForYou remain exclusive to those countries]], or are {{Mobile Phone Game}}s[[note]]Mobile phone gaming are ''very'' prevalent in Asia, especially Japan (where PC gaming wasn't popular before [[PopularityPolynomial its resurgence in late 2010s]]), China and Korea (where consoles are non-existant), due to high smartphone adoption in these countries[[/note]], resulting in a skill gap between Eastern and Western players and the stereotype that being Asian automatically makes one proficient at video games.
** On the flip side, the general social trends of Eastern cultures which emphasize the group over the individual tends to result in typically more successful groups. In the space of modern genres like the MMO, this attitude can prove fairly dominating.
* Dr. David Oh, flight director of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover, has to stay on Mars time (24h40min days) for the job. So his entire family went on Mars time and his son is keeping [[http://marstimr.tumblr.com/ a blog]] about it.
* One of the roots of East Asia's EducationMama culture was the Chinese [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_exam Imperial Examination]], an ''extremely'' difficult test to obtain a prestigious and well-paid government position. Only five percent of test-takers passed - those that did, though, pretty much lifted his entire family to the upper class.
* Japan tends to be extremely fond of the GameOfNerds. Individual people vary, of course, but as a whole the nation is surprisingly into the Western sport. The game is also very popular in South Korea and Taiwan. This is likely the reason that baseball is a popular subject for GamingAndSportsAnimeAndManga as well as many series having a BaseballEpisode.
* [[http://blog.angryasianman.com/2013/06/the-nerdiest-most-gangster-yearbook.html Jessica Lee]], whose yearbook quote was "Fluorine uranium carbon potassium bismuth technetium helium sulfur germanium thulium oxygen neon yttrium." Look up the chemical symbols for each of those to see [[{{Fun With Acronyms}} what she was trying to say]]. [[note]]FUCK [=BiTcHeS=] [=GeT=] [=mONeY=][[/note]]
* Asian cultures (East or South) place a higher importance on education than what most non-Asian Americans are used to seeing; American school culture can push individuality and creativity more than knowledge and intelligence at times. That is the essential difference which can blind side those unfamiliar of what Asian values are.
* {{Invoked|Trope}} by 2020 US Presidential hopeful UsefulNotes/AndrewYang, the American-born son of Taiwanese immigrants:
-->"I am the best candidate to beat UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump because I am his opposite, and the opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math!"
* Singapore Math is a math curriculum developed in the 1980s. The extraordinary results of these textbooks mean that they have been exported to other countries, especially homeschoolers.
* According to [[http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20210917000589 this report]], almost 70% of South Koreans are university-educated, moreso than anywhere else in the world.
[[/folder]]

* In ''Literature/TheHungerGames'', everyone in District 3 is implied to be Asian. While the books [[AmbiguouslyBrown don't specify the races of many characters]] (which is justified, as the setting is a dystopian America AfterTheEnd, so the racial definitions of modern society aren't the same), Beetee and Wiress from from District 3 are described as having black hair, ashen skin, and small builds, traits which are common for the rest of their District. (The ''[[Film/TheHungerGamesCatchingFire Catching Fire]]'' movie averted this by making the former [[BlackAndNerdy black]] and the latter white—Beetee even gets the black-sounding surname of Latier.)

** Amy Wong, though she's often shown to be dense and clumsy. She seems to be more of a GeniusDitz than a straight-up AsianAirhead, and she's introduced early on as a graduate student in applied physics and an intern working for Professor Farnsworth . now that she's finally got her doctorate degree. In "That Darn Katz!", her research even managed to both doom ''and'' save the Earth!

* Reversed, possibly consciously, in ''Manga/BlackLagoon'': the central team's techie is the only white member.

The [[StereotypeFlip polar opposite]] of this, becoming more common in recent years, is the AsianAirhead -- an almost AlwaysFemale character archetype centering on an Asian girl who is gorgeous, popular, and [[TheDitz dumb as a brick]].

* Downplayed with Trixie from ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddparents''. She is predominantly an AsianAirhead, but she's also been shown to be a comics and superhero fangirl in "The Boy That Would Be Queen".

%% * The Chang Triplets from ''WesternAnimation/TheProudFamily''.