History Main / FeigningIntelligence

* Anya of "Manga/SpyXFamily" has been known to use her {{Telepathy}} for this by taking on an intellectual task, making sure that it can be seen by someone who knows the answer, reading their mind for it, and then implementing that answer herself. This was seen at the very start of the series when she does this with a crossword puzzle when Twilight comes to her orphanage and mentions that he needs an intelligent child for his purposes. While she is very clever and resourceful, she's also fairly BookDumb; it isn't long after Twilight adopts her that he starts to realize that she's not really as smart as the display made her look.

* "[[MemeticMutation You see]], I come from a highly educated university. So when I come out here and speak to these white trash, I gotta dumb myself down." That said, Wrestling/ScottSteiner does seem to be fairly educated and knowledgeable, demonstrating understanding of many scientific theories and the ability to complete complicated mathematical equations even if his constant [[ArtisticLicenseGeography geographical failures]] and {{logical fallac|y}}ies prove him nowhere near as intelligent as he make himself out to be.

* Wheatley in ''Fanfic/BlueSky'', reprising his role of desperately attempting to seem intelligent without actually being so. His success rate is...debatable, but has at the very least not improved much from ''VideoGame/Portal2''.

[[folder:Web Original]]
* The Idiot Nerd Girl meme, although she feigns "geek cred" more than intelligence.

Feigning intelligent behavior is often the main purpose of VideoGameAI, because PerfectPlayAI (a.k.a. actually intelligent and perfectly rational) is only [[RuleOfFun fun]] in very specific contexts. Compare with SmallNameBigEgo.

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* Wheatley in ''Fanfic/BlueSky,'' reprising his role of desperately attempting to seem intelligent without actually being so. His success rate is...debatable, but has at the very least not improved much from ''VideoGame/Portal2.''

* Liz Hurley's character in TheFilmOfTheSeries of ''Film/MyFavoriteMartian'' is a [[TheBrainlessBeauty glamorous hard-hitting reporter... who is also a complete airhead]]. She only sounds smart because a scriptwriter feeds her lines through a hidden earpiece.
* Played straight for most of the remake of ''Film/ThePinkPanther2006''... mostly. As an example, after hearing a murder victim's last words were "Oh, it's you!", Clouseau orders all people in the city with the name "Yu" to be detained for interrogation. Naturally, he's saddled up with a Chinese woman rattling off in Chinese. After the interrogation, his partner asks if he can even understand Chinese. Clouseau acts all offended and replies something along the lines of "Do you think I would do all this if I didn't understand Chinese?" [[spoiler:Seeing as he's been Feigning Intelligence for most of the movie, his partner (and the audience) look unconvinced... until a flashback at the end of the movie reveals that not only did Clouseau actually understand what the woman was saying, she had also given them a vital clue.]] Clouseau doesn't pretend to be intelligent, he actually believes he's this massively skilled badass, though granted, when his beliefs betray him [[IMeantToDoThat he will try to play it off as on purpose.]] In the [[Franchise/ThePinkPanther original film series]], Creator/PeterSellers [[WordOfGod often commented]] that he played Clouseau as an extremely arrogant man who was nevertheless ''just'' clever enough to realize what a complete imbecile he really was.

* An unintentional example in ''Film/Tremors2Aftershocks'', when the Graboids first mutate into Shriekers. For the first few scenes after they come into existence, they tear up several cars and the radio tower, convincing the protagonists that they achieved human-level intelligence and actually planned everything out to cut off their ability to travel and communicate with each other. Eventually, they find out that Shriekers navigate by infrared, and were simply biting anything they came across that was hot, [[TooDumbToLive whether it was actually food or not.]]

* Romy and Michele in ''Film/RomyAndMichelesHighSchoolReunion'', who attempt to pass themselves off as the inventors of Post-it notes. It doesn't work out so well.
* ''Film/DodgeballATrueUnderdogStory'' has Ben Stiller's character attempt to impress a woman... by pretending to read the dictionary.
* In ''Film/MrMom'', Michael Keaton's character is renovating the house and pretending to know what he's doing to impress his wife's boss. Her boss asks him if he was going to do the renovations in "two-twenty" (referring to a standard voltage for electrical wiring). Keaton hesitates a moment and says, "Yeah, two-twenty... two-twenty-one. Whatever it takes!" This is, of course, a meaningless answer.
* ''Film/CasinoRoyale1967''. Jimmy Bond is jealous of his uncle Sir James Bond. To show he's even better, Jimmy pretends to play some Debussy (a passionate pursuit of Sir James) on the piano, only it's a recording that he has to hastily turn off when the piano keeps playing without him.
* This is the plot of the 1994 romantic comedy ''[[Film/IQ1994 I.Q.]]''. It helps that the romantic lead has no less than UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein giving him advice on how to appear smarter.
* ''Film/KingsmanTheGoldenCircle'': Eggsy is quite intelligent on his own, but when he's called to [[MeetTheInLaws dinner with the in-laws]], the King and Queen of Sweden, he uses his [[GogglesDoSomethingUnusual augmented-reality glasses]] and a friend in MissionControl to inform his dinner conversation. Since the King only grills him on increasingly abstruse topics, from India's banking industry to Moorish revival architecture, without showing any expertise of his own, the King probably has it coming.

* ''Literature/WinnieThePooh'':
** Owl; when faced with a note that contains more than three words, none of which are his own name or "Thursday", he first tries to trick Rabbit into reading it for him, and then considers pushing Rabbit out of his tree rather than admit he's having problems.
** Rabbit is another example of this trope, to a lesser extent.

* [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] by Literature/HerculePoirot as his standard method of ObfuscatingStupidity - he is boastful in order to make his opponents think he is feigning intelligence, when in fact he really ''is'' that smart.
* The main character in ''Literature/TheDeathOfTheVazirMukhtar'' is [[MaliciousSlander sometimes accused]] of writing or at least editing the correspondence of General Ivan Paskevich, his in-law and sort-of superior in the Caucasus, so as to make him seem smarter. That is apparently untrue, although Paskevich might be considered a mild example of this trope nonetheless.
* Used by Thomas in ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'' to survive in his ''really'' messed-up family. While he plays ObfuscatingStupidity to the hilt for most of his relatives so they won't see him as a legitimate threat, his sister Lara saw through that. So he feigns intelligence ''only'' for her, making cryptic statements and hinting he has complex plans in motion, which holds her off while she tries to figure out what he's doing. Harry notes it's a good scheme, if there's enough paranoia. And in the White Court, paranoia comes '[[ParanoiaGambit bottled, on tap and in hot and cold running neuroses]]'.

* [[MasterOfDisguise Wayne]] pulls these on scientists in ''Literature/TheBandsOfMourning''. When on the site of [[spoiler:a crashed airplane]], technology that none of them has seen before, he disguises himself as a scientist and yells at the other scientists and guards that the whole thing will collapse using terms that he clearly made up. Since none of the other scientists want to admit that they don't know what he's talking about, they save face by agreeing and following his orders.

* Kelly Bundy from ''Series/MarriedWithChildren'' used the NerdGlasses/"profound" babble combo to impress a smart guy.
* As did Lisa Turtle in an episode of ''Series/SavedByTheBell'' (source of the "Art" quote). She is a bit smarter than most of the other characters in this trope, but still has a little too much air between the ears than is good for her.

* ''Series/TheSuiteLifeOfZackAndCody'': London hires Maddie to help her pull PlayingCyrano on a hot merit scholar, Trevor. The plan backfires when Maddie can't restrain herself from getting into a debate over politics with him, culminating in a SlapSlapKiss. Fortunately, London seems more confused than hurt.
* ''Series/DrakeAndJosh'': Drake gets Josh to help him cheat on an academic game show to impress an [[NerdsAreSexy attractive genius]]. HilarityEnsues, leading to the good ol' BeYourself [[AnAesop Aesop]]... which, in this case, would mean, "I don't care about what's inside. I like you because you're cute."
* "Aaaaaah, Bach!" In an early episode of ''Series/{{MASH}}'', Radar pursues an intellectually-inclined nurse with a handful of bluffs provided to him by Hawkeye and Trapper. Incidentally, the book ''[[http://www.ovalbooks.com/bluff/Music.html The Bluffer's Guide to Music]]'' recommends that exact phrase.
* In ''Series/DoctorWho'', [[TheNthDoctor the Tenth Doctor stated to his younger incarnation]] that he wore his glasses not because he needed them, but because it made him look clever. Of course, the Doctor is very smart to begin with, but still. It has also been theorized that the Tenth Doctor, who frequently claims himself to be clever, is double-Feigning Intelligence-ObfuscatingStupidity, or something. (See the Poirot example above.) The Doctor has been getting into trouble by pretending to be more knowledgeable than he actually is since "The Aztecs" in 1964.

* The borderline mentally disabled Randy in ''Series/MyNameIsEarl'' seems to be really good at this, once befriending a bunch of business men, getting a job and earning a lot of money in less than a day with just the help of a second-hand suit.
* ''Series/TheMaryTylerMooreShow'': Ted Baxter used to pull this one off with regularity -- one instance in particular stands out.
-->'''Ted's son:''' Mother, I ''abhor'' you!\\
'''Ted:''' Now son, I'll have none of that language in this house!

* Donnie Steven in ''Series/EvenStevens'' is normally an airheaded DumbMuscle jock, but in one episode he decides to act smarter to impress people, and watches a video to this end that recommends [[SmartPeopleWearGlasses wearing nonprescription glasses]], shoehorning [[DelusionsOfEloquence stock "big words" that he doesn't understand]] into conversations and [[StrokeTheBeard stroking his chin a lot]] to make it look like he's thinking hard. Towards the end of the episode he meets a TV producer that Ren is trying very hard to impress and sees that she's wearing the same glasses as him and using the same techniques mentioned in the video (including using the same "big words" vocabulary list gratuitously). Donnie realizes that they are both playing the same "pretending to be smart" game and goes to warn Ren that the producer isn't as smart as she claims to be.
* In ''Series/BlackBooks,'' Bernard attracts a girl by pretending to be a jazz pianist. Since he had Manny playing the chords [[MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext from inside the piano with spoons]], Fran gets back at him when she expands Bernard's lie to falsely out him as a genius:
-->'''Bernard''': What did you say to Kate? She thinks I'm UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance. She'll think I've lied! I have to go along with all this reclusive genius stuff -- ''she's going to be very upset when she finds out I'm a reclusive wanker.''
* ''Series/CoryInTheHouse'': Newt is forced to do this when he develops a crush on a new girl at school who is a childhood genius and starts to worry that she might not like him if he wasn't as smart as her.

* ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'': A RunningGag has Charlie trying to pass himself off as a legal expert by using academic-sounding phrases and random legal jargon he's apparently heard on television.
* Marcus Henderson on ''Series/SmartGuy'' will occasionally do this if he's trying to impress some artsy, intellectual girl, which usually results in his [[ChildProdigy gifted brother TJ]] PlayingCyrano for him. In one case, the girl in question was also Feigning Intelligence and turned out to be as shallow as Marcus (Marcus had earlier botched some of TJ's advice during a date at an art museum, but the girl took everything he said at face value because she was as out of her depth as he was), and when the two learn that they were both faking it, they drop the act and go out on a normal date together.
* ''Series/{{Deadwood}}'': The highly intelligent and eloquent Al Swearengen is somewhat BookDumb, at least in comparison to the erudite C.W. Merrick. When Merrick suggests advertising that the smallpox vaccine will be distributed ''gratis'', Al blusters. "I know what that word means. Prove that ''you'' do!"
* In the ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'' episode [[Recap/TheBigBangTheoryS3E10TheGorillaExperiment The Gorilla Experiment]], Penny wants to learn "a little physics" so she can talk to Leonard about work. Sheldon tries to teach her, but she doesn't quite get it. Later, she repeats what Sheldon taught her, word-for-word, as if from a script. After she finishes, she mentions that's all she knew, except that Fig Newton's were named after a town in Massachusetts, not Isaac Newton.
* ''Series/HomicideLifeOnTheStreet'': WickedPretentious white supremacist Gordon Pratt puts up the act of being an educated, intellectual genius. He frequently brings up obscure facts (which he gets wrong) and casually spurts out extremely racist statements while claiming they are backed up with scientific evidence. [[BreakTheHaughty Pembleton takes him down a peg by revealing that Pratt is actually a high school dropout who flunked every class, and gives him a]] TheReasonYouSuckSpeech [[BreakTheHaughty about what a pathetic failure he is.]]
* Some of the challenges and punishments in ''Series/ImpracticalJokers'' will have one or more Jokers pretending to be experts in a particular field. Since the Jokers don't know jack about these fields, their attempts to behave otherwise end up being ridiculous and embarrassing (which is, of course, the whole point).

'''Sarge:''' ''[towards Simmons]'' Is that right?\\

* [[http://www.mezzacotta.net/archive.php?date=2012-07-31 This]] page of ''Webcomic/{{mezzacotta}}'' -- yes, even pseudorandomly generated speech bubbles mock this pseudorandom garbage.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': Homer Simpson chooses to wear a pair of nerd glasses that were dropped in the toilet by Henry Kissinger. Unbeknownst to Homer, Mr. Burns then assumes he's an egghead and decides not to fire him during a round of job cuts.

* ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'': In the episode "The Long Bomb," [[spoiler:arena football player Johnny Concussion fakes his own death and hatches a plot to steal his jersey back from the owner of the Bazooka Sharks after he was kicked from the team due to his numerous head injuries. He disguises himself as a goateed criminal mastermind who speaks eloquently, even though Johnny's normal speech has been noticeably slowed by his concussions.]]

Tends to show up in characters who are so dumb, they don't even realize that DumbIsGood. Frequently involves the use of NerdGlasses. As with ObfuscatingStupidity, comedy frequently ensues from a stupid confusion or DoubleEntendre conversation. This often results in DelusionsOfEloquence. See also KnowNothingKnowItAll, for stupid characters who are absolutely convinced of their own genius. Often overlaps with DumberThanTheyLook.

* This is the plot of the 1994 romantic comedy ''I.Q.''. It helps that the romantic lead has no less than UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein giving him advice on how to appear smarter.

* Simmons from ''Machinima/RedVsBlue'' is zigzagging with this trope. While he is the [[TheSmartGuy Unofficial Science Officer]] of the series and good with computers, he's also been stated to be less intelligent than he thinks he is and will abuse the fact that the people around him are either too lazy, stupid or insane to call him out on making stuff up.

Tends to show up in characters who are so dumb, they don't even realize that DumbIsGood. Frequently involves the use of NerdGlasses. As with ObfuscatingStupidity, comedy frequently ensues from a stupid confusion or DoubleEntendre conversation. This often results in DelusionsOfEloquence. See also KnowNothingKnowItAll, for stupid characters who are absolutely convinced of their own genius.

* ''Literature/TheHungerGames'': Effie Trinket is probably dumber than a jar of mayonnaise, but she certainly doesn't see it that way. At one point, Effie claims to be something of an expert in architecture. Portia only acknowledges this because the silence was getting too long. At one point she claims, "Everyone has their reservations, naturally. You being from the coal district. But I said, and this was very clever of me, I said, "[[CriticalResearchFailure Well, if you put enough pressure on coal it turns to pearls]]!" This gets a {{callback}} in ''Catching Fire'' by an amused Peeta when he actually finds a pearl.

* "[[MemeticMutation You see]], I come from a highly educated university. So when I come out here and speak to these white trash, I gotta dumb myself down." That said, Wrestling/ScottSteiner does seem to be fairly educated and knowledgeable, demonstrating understanding of many scientific theories and the ability to complete complicated mathematical equations even if his constant [[ArtisticLicenseGeography geographical failures]] and {{logical fallac|y}}ies prove him nowhere near as intelligent as he make himself out to be.[[/folder]]

[[folder:Puppet Shows]]
* In ''Series/TheMuppetShow'', Sam the Eagle may constantly seek to bring some culture in the show, but considering he thinks [[Music/LudwigVanBeethoven Beethoven]] was a playwright, it's obvious he doesn't know the first thing about culture.

* At one point in ''VideoGame/{{Anachronox}}'', the party has to board a ship to a planet of scientists, and the passengers all have to prove they are up on the latest scientific discoveries. This is a problem for the very BookDumb Sly, who can't even spell the name of the planet the game is named after. He ends up having to fake speaking a made-up language so that his RobotBuddy (who downloaded a database on cutting edge research) can "translate" the correct answers for him.

* Done as part of a GambitRoulette in the 2007 ''Film/StTrinians''. It helps that they know some of the answers.

Tends to show up in characters who are so dumb, they don't even realize that DumbIsGood. Frequently involves the use of NerdGlasses. As with ObfuscatingStupidity, HilarityEnsues frequently from a stupid confusion or DoubleEntendre conversation. This often results in DelusionsOfEloquence. See also KnowNothingKnowItAll, for stupid characters who are absolutely convinced of their own genius.

* In the ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'' episode [[Recap/TheBigBangTheoryS3E10TheGorillaExperiment The Gorilla Experiment]], Penny wants to learn "a little physics" so she can talk to Leonard about work. Sheldon tries to teach her, but she doesn't quite get it. Later, she repeats what Sheldon taught her, word-for-word, as if from a script. After she finishes, she mentions that's all she knew, except that Fig Newton's were named after a town in Massachusetts, not Isaac Newton..