* Homer Simpson, of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', has never been the brightest bulb in the box, but he actually started out a fairly normal person. The trend towards increassing dumbassery was so noticeable that more than once there have been in-show explanations for this, all contradictory. ConanOBrien said on a DVD commentary that Homer's IQ started out at 65 and dropped 5 points a year until it hit zero in Season 13.
-->'''Frank Grimes:''' I don't know anything, because I'm Homer Simpson!
** Ralph Wiggum has suffered from this trope more than any almost any other character mentioned. He was originally just another generic classmate of Lisa's before becoming the unbelievably dense collection of non-sequiturs we all know.
** WordOfGod says that Ralph was originally intended to be an eight year old version of Homer. When they realized that didn't really work, they just made him the most childlike character imaginable.
** Bart has become increasingly stupid in recent seasons, in earlier seasons he didn't do well in school mainly because he didn't care and he couldn't stay focused for long periods of time but he was brilliant in other fields as he could manage to pull off time consuming schemes and pranks in minutes, could master languages in relatively short time, and was a skilled detective, in recent seasons he's so stupid he can barely read or write, is easily entertained, and has trouble figuring out simple tasks.
* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'': Almost every single adult undergoes this to a degree, but Randy Marsh is possibly the greatest example of this trope ever. Through the 13 seasons of the show, he has taken more levels in dumbass than any other character, other than possibly Ralph Wiggum.
** Despite being the town's only scientist, no less.
* WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants has always been [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} a little loopy]]. But he has become actually dumber and dumber (not just loopier and loopier) as the series has progressed.
** Especially after "A Pal for Gary". You'll hate him by the end.
** This trope also applies to [=SpongeBob=]'s best friend, Patrick. Oh so much...
** Most of the stupidity in the post-movie episodes is due to Casey Alexander's writing, which is considered excremental by a lot of fans.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddparents'': Pretty much every character with the exception of Wanda. Timmy started off simply as a ten year old boy who usually made rash decisions without thinking his wishes through. The newer series makes it debatable how he hasn't destroyed the world already yet.
** Cosmo most definitely. His first appearance was of a suave, gentlemanly persona in the first episodes, who made sarcastic comments and wisecracks. Now he's a screeching, literally brainless fairy who would have already killed Timmy if not for his wife's constant surveillance.
* ''WesternAnimation/SpaceGhostCoastToCoast'': Done with several characters.
** Brak's case was actually justified; the cloud of space dust into which SpaceGhost threw him during an episode of the original series was apparently to blame.
* ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill''
** All of Hank Hill's friends seem to slowly lose their precious remaining IQ points over the course of the series -- resulting in dumber and more outrageous schemes that Hank must eventually fix.
** Luanne and Peggy also. Peggy has never been the CloserToEarth person between her and Hank, but she used to be at least a competent Spanish teacher -- now she's shown to have a tenuous grasp at best on the Spanish language, though it does lead to some [[CringeComedy admittedly hilarious moments]]. Luanne has had a similar path of regression. She was a bit of a WrenchWench during the first two seasons, but that was eventually abandoned and she became increasingly ditzy as the years went on (it should be noted that [[{{Misblamed}} this happened long before Lucky came along)]].
*** Peggy was bad at Spanish at the beginning of the series, in fact, she actually got a little better as it went on. The rest here is spot on, though.
*** Actually, Luanne could be seen fixing cars in later seasons, too.
** Joseph was a little kooky, being Dale's son and all (by nurture, of course) but when he hit puberty, he pretty much only begun to think with his hormones. This to the point where his dialog was replaced with HulkSpeak.
*** It got to extremes in one episode where Bobby accidentally sees Luanne without a shirt on and Joseph practically went beyond creepy levels when he kept asking Bobby to look at Luanne topless again so he can get the details on what her breasts look like.
* This happened to Fry in ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}''. In the earliest episodes, where he was supposed to be a FishOutOfTemporalWater and stories would mostly focus around him adapting to life in the 31st century, he was a fairly average guy with a dash of {{Cloudcuckoolander}} and a few moments of genuine cleverness. As the show progressed, he adapted to his surroundings much faster than the writers intended, and so he devolved into a gibbering manchild [[PingPongNaivete unless the writers needed him to say something profound]].
** It's somewhat justified in-universe with Fry's lack of a delta brain-wave, which effectively stunted his mental growth:
--->'''Professor Farnsworth:''' And, Fry, you've got that brain thing.
--->'''Fry:''' I already did!
*** Of course, the means in which he contracted it — as shown in the episode "Roswell That Ends Well" — would have meant [[spoiler:[[GrandfatherParadox he had this his whole life, including all prior episodes.]]]] Also of note is that, in "The Why of Fry", [[spoiler:the Niblonians reveal that they deliberately froze him so that his "superior, yet inferior" brain would be used to protect the universe in the 31st century. Later it is revealed that the Niblonian who blew Fry into the cryochamber was, in fact, not a time traveler, and that the Niblonians knew of this phenomenon at least a millennium before the Roswell time travel incident.]]
**** [[spoiler: It's possible the Nibblonians only knew about him a millenium in advance after he did the whole Roswell timeloop. Time travel is fun like that.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/JohnnyBravo'': Johnny.
** Averted when the series was temporarily revived, with Johnny instead trying to avoid his now-annoying neighbor, Suzie.
* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'': Peter Griffin was a dumbass to begin with, but it got worse with [[UnCancelled uncancellation]]. Now he's gotten even worse. He's legally retarded in-canon. You never would have seen that coming in the show's early seasons.
* ''WesternAnimation/BackToTheFuture'': Marty [=McFly=]. He went from BookDumb in the films to TheDitz in the series.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Chowder}}'': Chowder; compare the naive little boy of Season One to the completely TooDumbToLive of Season Two.
* ''WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButthead'' started out as just stereotypically lazy and not all that bright teenagers. As the show's popularity picked up the need for more outrageous material resulted in them becoming the TooDumbToLive types everyone knows them as. Beavis especially went from a generic dumb teenager to a bizarrely stupid boy with a split personality.
** Interestingly enough, it appears to be inverted during the duo's music video commentaries where they actually seem brighter than normal.
* There was an episode of ''WesternAnimation/ReBoot'', where Enzo [[ExactWords wished to be smarter than everyone else]]. So [[LiteralGenie the system]] underclocked everyone else, making them stupider so that Enzo would be the smartest person in Mainframe.
* In season one of ''WesternAnimation/FriskyDingo'', the villain Killface is intelligent, educated and sophisticated, by contrast to the IdiotHero Awesome X. A lot of the comedy from Killface stems from the contrast between their personae. Come season two, they're both complete morons.
* ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'': Fuzzy Lumpkins took this between the pilot and the series proper: in the pilot he was a reasonably calm [[BuffySpeak furry... thing]] with enough intelligence to build a gun that turns objects into meat; in the series he's a trigger happy hillbilly stereotype whose idea of a weapon is a rock (compared to, say, the ray guns of Mojo Jojo and Princess). Consider his line in "Fuzzy Logic" while chasing a squirrel from his home:
--->'''Fuzzy:''' Come back here an' git off mah proppity!!
** The Mayor was never the sharpest knife in the drawer but in the early seasons he seemed to be more naive rather than outright stupid. By the end of the series half the time he can't even structure proper sentences together.
* Daffy Duck for ''WesternAnimation/TheLooneyTunesShow''. In the original shorts he was fairly intelligent and clever, but occasionally gullible and was often defeated due to his greed and selfishness. Here, he's a lazy idiot who can't do anything right and fails to answer even the simplest trivia questions correctly.
** And lets not forget Lola. In ''Space Jam'', she was a ActionGirl that could kick the butt of any toon and hated being called [[BerserkButton doll]]. However in this show she gets a GirlinessUpgrade, gains a ValleyGirl speak, and is a complete {{Cloudcuckoolander}} that seems to solely exist to be Bugs' SatelliteLoveInterest.
* Penfold on ''WesternAnimation/DangerMouse'' was the token dumbass, but as the series wound down to its final two seasons, Colonel K was afflicted by a case of the dumbasses which could be chalked up to early senility.
* The ''WesternAnimation/{{Battletoads}}'' cartoon turned the three heroes into brain-dead teenage idiots. It even introduces Morgan "Zitz" Ziegler, a GeniusBruiser in the game canon, by having him cause a computer to explode just by trying to type something into it.
* Cleveland grew progressively dumber when he left ''Family Guy'' and starred in his own show, ''WesternAnimation/TheClevelandShow''. Cleveland used to be the voice of reason in Peter's group but once he moved away, he became nearly incompetent and childlike.
* T.J. from ''WesternAnimation/{{Recess}}'' started out relatively average in the first season. He became more BookDumb in season two, and by season four, he was TheDitz. Though to an extent, [[TropesAreNotBad this was for the better]], as he was a borderline MartyStu in the early episodes.
* Captain Hook, MemeticBadass and much-loved villain of ''Disney/PeterPan'' comes back to menace the kid heroes of the [[FakeInteractivity Dora-esque]] show ''WesternAnimation/JakeAndTheNeverlandPirates'', missing about half his brain cells and with a somewhat off-putting redesign. Granted, Hook has [[FridgeBrilliance always had trouble defeating children]], but in this case it is particularly glaring.
* Fred from the ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo'' franchise. He was originally the second smartest in the gang but has Taken a Level in Dumbass ever since Daphne started [[TookALevelInBadass becoming more competent]]. Essentially Daphne took a good portion of his leadership skills and intelligence. [[WesternAnimation/APupNamedScoobyDoo Some]] [[WesternAnimation/ScoobyDooMysteryIncorporated incarnations]] flanderize this even more.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Ben 10}}'': while Ben was immature and bratty in the original show, this was justified due to him being a 10-year old kid. When the sequel ''WesternAnimation/Ben10AlienForce'' turned him into a teenager, he TookALevelInBadass and became much more competent, smarter and responsible. Then the writers tried PanderingToTheFanbase, and he started acting more narcissic and cocky again by season 3, before zig-zagging with the trope in ''WesternAnimation/Ben10UltimateAlien''. Finally, ''WesternAnimation/Ben10Omniverse'' took the trope to {{Flanderization}} levels on both his teenage self ''and'' his 10-year old self, making them both much more bumbling, clumsy and immature while removing a large amont of his badassness from ''Alien Force''.
* In the Disney/{{Aladdin}} sequels and [[RecycledtheSeries series]], Genie seems to have lost brain cells as well as magic powers. He frequently [[ForgotAboutThePhlebotinum forgets about the phlebotinum]] and has IveHeardOfThatWhatIsIt moments about things he should have already encountered. The fact that he [[RunningGag keeps losing games against a rug]] doesn't help either.
----