History Main / SouthernFriedGenius

* Ellis from ''Left4Dead'' seems to be a lot smarter than he lets on. Even if he did think the Mona Lisa was a sculpture.

* WhateleyAcademy has Loophole.... a southern belle with an accent as thick as creamed corn, who also happens to be an inventor and gadgeteer who built her own ersatz, space-worthy Iron Man suit... and who got her code name by knowing the rulebook (which rulebook, you ask? ALL OF THEM) inside and out and exploiting them ruthlessly.

* Colonel Harland David Sanders may very well be ''the'' Southern Fried Genius. Along with his "secret recipe", his use of pressure frying chicken to cook it more quickly as opposed to pan frying it are one of the reasons why his KFC restaurant chain was so successful.

* Colonel Sanders may very well be ''the'' Southern Fried Genius. Along with his "secret recipe", his use of pressure frying chicken to cook it more quickly as opposed to pan frying it are one of the reasons why his KFC restaurant chain was so successful.

* The main character of the MorganvilleVampiresSeries, and how.

* WhatelyAcademy has Loophole.... a southern belle with an accent as thick as creamed corn, who also happens to be an inventor and gadgeteer who built her own ersatz, space-worthy Iron Man suit... and who got her code name by knowing the rulebook (which rulebook, you ask? ALL OF THEM) inside and out and exploiting them ruthlessly.

[[quoteright:146:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/engineer.png]]
[[caption-width-right:146:[[TeamFortress2 He solves practical problems.]]]]

* Alton Brown from ''GoodEats'' is from Georgia

* [[StarTrekEnterprise Trip Tucker]].

* In one of ''{{Family Guy}}'''s ubiquitous cutscenes, there's a parody of Paris Hilton's reality show ''The Simple Life''. A toothless redneck in overalls is standing in front of a chalkboard covered in equations.

--> '''Paris''': [{{beat}}] OMG You are so dumb!

This character may have the same down-home sensibilities or otherwise act like a good ol' southerner, but are [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin very, very smart]]. Maybe they exhibit SesquipedalianLoquaciousness alongside their accents, maybe they have a teleporter in their garage, [[TeamFortress2 maybe they have 11 Ph.Ds,]] who knows.

The SimpleCountryLawyer exemplifies this trope; he uses his intelligence and accent as a weapon, talking in simple allegories and colloquialisms in order to make people [[ObfuscatingStupidity think he's a moron]], then [[BunnyEarsLawyer brutalizing them with his superior wit.]]

[[AC:Anime and Manga]]
* Due to AccentAdaptation, Bill tends to display this in the translation of PokemonSpecial as a substitute for the original's [[KansaiRegionalAccent Kansai-ben]] - which was, much like this trope, presumably intended as a subversion of TheIdiotFromOsaka.

[[AC:Comic Books]]
* One issue of TheTick had the characters run into this, when a town full of hillbillies got their hands on the monument from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

[[AC:Film]]

* In the RobinWilliams movie ''RV'', the family spends a good chunk of the movie thinking that the RV full of friendly Southern people were redneck hick stalkers. They were two for three ([[ItMakesSenseInContext It's a long story.]]) Point is, near the end of the movie, the kids witness the redneck's kids doing home-school work out of an advanced Calculus book. Cue the daughter asking in complete astonishment, "Wait. You're '''smart?!'''"

[[AC:Literature]]

[[AC:Live Action Television]]

** And earlier in the series, [[StarTrekTheOriginalSeries "Bones" McCoy]] was from Mississippi (although his accent wasn't quite so noticeable as Trip's).
*** Well, he did his undergraduate studies there, his birthplace is only defined as "somewhere in the South." Common {{fanon}} puts it in Georgia like [[DeForestKelley his actor]].

* {{Supernatural}}'s Ash, from season 2. And in season [[spoiler: 5, he's able to hack ''Heaven'' itself, easily, and for shits and giggles.]]

* Lindsey MacDonald from ''{{Angel}}''.

[[AC: Real Life]]
* Google for "redneck geeks", you'll get quite a list.

[[AC: Western Animation]]
* One episode of ''JackieChanAdventures'' had Jackie and Co. meet an entire family of these, including two brothers who were a nuclear physicist and an archeologist, respectively.
* In one of {{Family Guy}}'s ubiquitous cutscenes, there's a parody of Paris Hilton's reality show ''The Simple Life''. A toothless redneck in overalls is standing in front of a chalkboard covered in equations.
--> '''Hick''': ...aaaand that's about all there is to know about quantum mechanics.
--> '''Paris''': [{{beat}}] OMG You are so dumb!
* Bulkhead from ''TransformersAnimated'' - really. He's lost the accent by the time the series starts, and he's not the sharpest tool in the shed most of the time, but he ''was'' raised on a farm and he's an expert in space bridge technology.

[[AC: Video Games]]

* Calvin Whitlock from Pournelle's CoDominium.
* Augustus Sinclair from BioShock 2. He's a cunning businessman, clever manipulator and by some accounts a great scientist.

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** Abbie Carmichael, of the ''LawAndOrder'' Mother Ship, was a Southern Fried Legal Genius, with a dash of BlondeRepublicanSexKitten and a bucket of HelloAttorney.

The SimpleCountryLawyer exemplifies this trope; he uses his intelligence and accent as a weapon, [[ObfuscatingStupidity talking in simple allegories and colloquialisms in order to make people think he's a moron]], then [[BunnyEarsLawyer brutalizing them with his superior wit.]]