Beware The Silly Ones / Literature

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• Albert Campion, protagonist of most of Margery Allingham's books. He might act like a silly ass, natter on about his mouse's birthday, and compulsively make jokes, but you should never underestimate his mental or physical capabilities. Ever.
  • Also, Alastair Barber from "Mystery Mile" who appears to be an embarrassingly-talkative bore who has a penchant for throwing food at acquaintances, is actually the Big Bad who runs a criminal network that is feared across continents.
• Animorphs:
  • Sixth Ranger and resident alien Ax is frequently played up as a comedic character, his infatuation with taste and tendency to play with sounds used for easy laughs. But when push comes to shove, Ax is the most dangerous of the Animorphs, beating out even Rachel. His feats include killing a rogue crocodile in The Reaction (after it beat half the team), defeating Visser Three in single combat as early as The Decision and even killing a Tyrannosaurus Rex in In the Time of Dinosaurs. This is highlighted pretty effectively in The Separation, when even Mean Rachel doesn't want to tangle with him.
  • And of course, Marco. The team's resident clown (if somewhat of a sad one), he spends half of his time making bad jokes and the other half viciously picking apart every plan of his friends and his enemies. In terms of planning he is the most ruthless Animorph — he does what he has to do, up to the point of once pushing his own mother off of a cliff. (She's the host body to Visser One. And they both survived, anyway.)
• Mulch Diggums in Artemis Fowl is a Big Eater with little to no sense of occasion and a petty thief. He's also an Action Survivor, very dangerous in his own way, and really not someone you want to cross.
• Ascendance of a Bookworm: Sylvester personality is pretty much that of a gradeschool prankster stuck in a grown man's body, placed high enough in a status-based society that only his aging parental figures and childhood companions can get away with playing the Cloudcuckoolander's Minder role. He's also one of the story's strongest trained mages and can play a nasty game of politics when he puts his mind to it, so getting on Sylvester's bad side is quite high up on the list of things people who value their life shouldn't do.
• Isaac and Miria from Baccano! are mostly klutzy goofballs, but they aren't without a badass side of their own — Dallas Genoard learns this the hard way when the pair run him down with a car in retaliation for him beating them up earlier.
• The Belgariad: Belgarath wears rag-tag, dilapidated clothing whenever he can (it's much more comfortable than formal clothes, and deceptively well-made), enjoys his physical pleasures, and is a Large Ham storyteller, who often rides seemingly in a half-doze. One time, he got annoyed and threw a hammer away after he hit his thumb with it. Straight up. Other characters seriously speculate that it might still be in low orbit a few millennia later. Belgarath is also over seven thousand years old, and has spent almost all of that time mastering the Will and the Word and battling the forces of evil. When he gets serious, he will happily remind you that he is, essentially, a Physical God, has very little use for the word "impossible," and serves as The Dreaded for pretty much an entire continent. There is a very good reason for this. Just ask Zedar. Oh, wait. You can't.
• The Chronicles of Amber: In Knight of Shadows, when Merlin is pursued by a ghost construct of a Chaos Lord, he asks the ghost construct of Benedict to buy him time. Benedict stalls for time waving his sword seemingly with none of his usual precision, cutting off enemy's buttons and occasionally pinching the enemy's nose. He's that much better. Also of note is that Benedict, Merlin and some others often use fencing techniques with wild and deceptively crude swings.
• Chrysalis (RinoZ): Anthony is frequently a bit scatterbrained, tossing out puns that go over the audience's heads, and generally being the protagonist and comic relief at the same time. When facing Jim the earthworm, captured at last and being sentenced for his betrayal, Anthony goes full over-the-top Large Ham, decrying "wretched worms, with your hearts filled with wretched evil and wretchedness". That doesn't stop the situation from ending with Jim being taken away to be executed and fed to grubs. It also didn't stop him from killing a twenty-metre-long fire-breathing crocodile in a duel, or executing a squad of Abyssal Legionaries and leaving their beheaded bodies to Make an Example of Them in response to the Legion's invasion. He puns, he quips, and at the end of the day, he feasts on the entrails of his foes.
• The Cinder Spires: Master Ferus, Etherealist. Clear Cloudcuckoolander. Forgets to wear his clothes at home, sometimes. Can't function without an enormous collection of various clutter. Can't operate doorknobs. ^note "They're extremely complex technology!". And when his home is invaded, he draws enough 'etheric' energy through their gauntlets that it melts all of the copper wiring within them; this is then...forcibly returned. The resulting charred corpses are horrible enough to give his apprentice Nightmare Fuel without even looking.
  • It's also discussed in that series that while you should beware of the silly etherealists, it's the ones who aren't silly that you should be outright terrified of: All etherialists are at least a little crazy, and if their madness doesn't express itself in some relatively harmless and amusing quirks, it's likely to express itself in something far darker and more dangerous — like Madame Cavendish, whose obsession with propriety drove her to force a man who interrupted her during tea and insulted her to claw his own eyes out.
• A Court of Thorns and Roses: Mor is flighty and chipper, but also a terrifying war general.
• Discworld:
  • Nanny Ogg in Discworld is a prime example, looking like an amiably-wrinkled, sexual-innuendo-prone old woman, but with a mind like a razor. She's been Granny Weatherwax's friend since they were girls.
  • Otto von Chriek from The Truth speaks in HEAVILY accented Vampire Vords, throws in a blah here and then (blah), is addicted to flash photography (which is bordering on a suicidal hobby for a vampire), and towards the end of the book clears a room of armed guards before ending it with a kiss to the forehead of their employer.
  • Lampshaded in a later book when someone realizes that Otto does this deliberately to blend in.
    Little fussy Otto, in his red-lined black opera cloak with pockets for all his gear, his shiny black shoes, his carefully cut widow’s peak and, not least, his ridiculous accent that grew thicker or thinner depending on whom he was talking to, did not look like a threat. He looked funny, a joke, a music-hall vampire. It had never previously occurred to Vimes that, just possibly, the joke was on other people.
  • Pepe from Unseen Academicals seems like a goofy, Camp Gay fashion designer, but that's only when he's on the job. Off the clock, he's a hard-drinking, wise-cracking, street-smart fellow who's a veteran of the mean streets of Ankh-Morpork. What plants him firmly in this trope is a scene at the end of the book where Pepe corners street thug Andy Shank in a dark alley and carves out an eye as a warning to leave Trev Likely and his friends alone.
• Dragonlord Trilogy, set in the world of Mystara, focus on Daimond, who over the course of the whole story is consistently potrayed as an Invincible Hero, who goes from being one of the most powerful dragons in the world to Immortal patron of all lawful dragons. So when in final novel he challenged Jaggar Von Drachenfells - a character the source material potrayed as a glory-seeking buffoon - to a duel, no one expected Jaggar to put up much of a fight. And yet Jaggar not only won, he briefly wrestled Daimond's position in Dragon pantheon from him, before bargaining it back in exchange for a promise to be left to his own devices by draconic Immortals.
• The Dresden Files: Harry Dresden is perpetually sarcastic, spouting pop culture references at the drop of a hat and is generally quite friendly. He is also powerful and skilled enough to give the Senior Council pause, and terrifies pretty much every bad guy in the series. And just ask the Red Court about what happens when you mess with someone he loves, especially as of Changes. Oh, wait. You can't. There is no more Red Court.
  • Toot-Toot is a six-inch tall pixie with a severely limited attention span, some issues with understanding even basic metaphors and an obsession with, bordering on addiction to, pizza. Toot-Toot is also one of Harry's most capable allies, and has over the course of the series gathered several pieces of vital intelligence, and gone toe-to-toe with a Skin Walker (of the Eldritch Abomination variety). In Battle Ground Toot-Toot rallies all the Wyldfae in Chicago to the defense of the city (and its pizza) and sets a Black Court vampire's guts on fire from the inside. Badass is by this point something of an understatement.
• Durarara!!:
  • Played with in the case of Izaya Orihara; he's initially introduced as being one of the people Mikado is not to ever cross. He is known to be highly unstable and amoral, even doing horrifically unethical acts for the hell of it. However, he gives weird nicknames to people, skips around the city, watches children's anime and has walked down the street while pretending to ride a motorcycle. That said, he is still the cause of a fair amount of strife in the series.
  • Shinra as well, to a somewhat less obvious extent. He obsesses over Celty and as a result often receives jabs or punches, he is usually cheerful and brutally honest to the point where he blatantly asks to dissect Shizuo multiple times. He also has been known to randomly switch his 'I' pronouns while speaking, constantly wears a lab coat and makes bad jokes. However, he explicitly states he would commit genocide or become a complete villain in order to please Celty and nearly tries to kill Aoba with a scalpel after he threatens her.
  • Even Masaomi fills the trope. He makes crappy jokes, peppers his speech with random English words until Mikado asks him to speak normally and even tries pick-up lines on adult women. He is also the leader of a colour gang and is able to take on many people at once in a fight.
  • Chikage is a Chivalrous Pervert often followed by several girls at once, has his gang wear odd, white tiger-print clothing and once goes off on Masaomi for involving him in a plot before having it pointed out that he involved himself. He is a highly competent fighter who should, under no circumstances, be messed with unless your name happens to be Shizuo Heiwajima.
  • Walker and Erika. Extreme otakus who will torture you and set things on fire.
• Faction Paradox
  • The titular Faction, as a group, sometimes come across as the cosmic equivalent of cosmic edgelords trying too hard to be cool and radical. While this may be true in the sense that other cosmic factions are way beyond them, they are however still extremely dangerous to Muggles.
  • Godfather Auteur is introduced as a delusional Cloud Cuckoo Lander Mad Artist who babbles pun-laden Gratuitous French, and sits around in his prison cell writing nonsensical Real-Person Fic about the War in Heaven itself, insisting that what he writes is just as real as the physical world. Here is the wrinkle: he is ''right'' about that, even if he might not be quite as all-powerful as he makes it out. And a lot of his "eccentric madman" façade may be Obfuscating Insanity, to boot, judging by his demeanour after he dies.
• Harry Potter gives us Headmaster Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards. He's a Bunny-Ears Lawyer, and is often distinguished by his waist-long beard and hair, twinkling eyes, and colorful robes. He's eccentric, funny, has a passion for Muggle candy, and even his own staff sometimes have trouble taking him seriously. Dumbledore is also the most powerful wizard alive, famous for defeating one of the most powerful Dark Wizards ever, and the other contender for that title sees Dumbledore as The Dreaded.
• Oh, no. Hercule Poirot is investigating those murders I committed. But wait, he seems to be bumbling, he's very much the Funny Foreigner, and he's fallen for my Red Herrings. Maybe he's lost his touch with age. I think I'm safe. I—What the? How did he figure out... Damn! He got the goods on me for this murder and then tricked me into revealing what he hadn't known for sure.
• Wyatt Rendall of Heretical Edge. Looks like a security guard prone to hilarious overreactions like mistaking bumping into someone for an assassination attempt. Also appears paranoid. Actually an exceptionally skilled security magic specialist using that persona to conceal his skills, and is actually Properly Paranoid because his behaviour is a result of discovering a conspiracy targetting him. The most notable demonstration of his skill a spell he developed that uses the energy of the target's death to reveal everyone involved in killing them, which a galaxy spanning empire of magic specialists can't counter except by trying to keep him from recasting it.
• Issei Hyudo of High School D×D is a complete goof. A not exceptionally bright, extremely loud, and 110% perverted doofus (but still very kind-hearted). He's also the bearer of Ddraig, one of the two immensely powerful Heavenly Dragons. And when someone pisses him off, that perverted fool soon lays them out in extremely quick fashion.
• Pecora in I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level acts innocent and a little kooky but underneath that is an extremely devious mind who is one of the few people Azusa is genuinely wary of.
• The Lord of the Rings:
  • Tom Bombadil is some weird sort of forest-dwelling humanoid of mysterious origin. He happily skips along and sings wherever he goes, and is one of the most aloof, nonsensical people you could meet in Middle-earth. He also happens to be at least as old as Treebeard, has control of the huorns of the Old Forest and the barrow-wights of the Barrow-downs, and is so powerful that the One Ring itself has no hold over him.
  • Gandalf the Grey enjoys fireworks and a good pipe, occasionally makes jokes, and seems to enjoy acting like a harmless old man to fool the opposition. When he drops the facade...well, let's hope that you're on his good side.
• Similarly, Lord Peter Wimsey plays the idiot man about town to the hilt, including carrying the requisite cane and monocle, and babbling on at the drop of a hat. The cane and monocle are secretly tools. Lord Peter is unstoppable as a detective. And it is seldom mentioned, but he is a war hero.
• Curdle and Telorast, two ghosts possessing the skeletons of tiny dinosaurs in the Malazan Book of the Fallen, are presented as wacky comic relief for the first two books they appear in. Then Dust of Dreams hits and reveals them to be ancient dragons who almost succeeded in conquering the Throne of Shadow.
• The Mercy Thompson novel, "Iron Kissed", has Tim Milanovich. On the surface, he appears to be a goofy but friendly nerdy young man with an interest with medieval things and no luck with women. But in reality is an evil and cunning person who stole some fae artifacts and would murder his friends in a heartbeat. He is also very petty as he tricks Mercy into drinking from a fae goblet that puts her under a spell and then proceeds to take advantage and rape her.
• Isaac Asimov's "The Mule": Magnifico Giganticus appears first as a rather pathetic clown before being revealed as a mutant with Psychic Powers known as the Mule who conquers a significant portion of the galaxy and nearly destroys the titular Foundation forever.
• While Bast's lighthearted and, well, silly demeanor often provides some much-needed comic relief in The Name of the Wind, you really do not want to get on his bad side. As a Fae, he often cares only for his own whims and desires...and he will happily string a fiddle with your guts and make you play it while he dances, should you get in his way.
  • Master Namer Elodin is a Cloud Cuckoolander who once lit another master's robes on fire because they annoyed him. He is also a Master Namer, meaning that he has power over fire, air, stone, iron, wood, and almost certainly loads more. Essentially, he's the most dangerous human character, and not one to be trifled with. Fortunately for Kvothe, he's got a lot of patience.
• Mr. Croup in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere even lampshades that just because something is silly doesn't mean it can't be dangerous. Then he and his associate Mr. Vandemar crucify the person who found them funny. While arguing whether circumlocution is a grammatical technique or a body part. (The former, if you were wondering.)
• In Lois Lowry's novel Number the Stars, Annemarie (at her mother's directions) acts like a "silly, empty-headed girl", convincing the Nazi soldiers that's what she is, instead of someone carrying a package vital to the Resistance.
• Pandora's Actor in Overlord (2012) looks silly and acts so hammy that Momonga is somewhat ashamed of having created him. However, as a powerful doppelganger, he can replicate any member of Ainz Ooal Gown's army. While he can only use 80% of the originals' power, that makes him versatile enough to adapt to any situation and exploit any weakness.
• In Supernaturally, Jack seems to act like an immature teenager. He uses his Portal Door ability to appear in a girls' locker room and to appear in Evie's room to jump on her bed. However, he is secretly behind all the random paranormal encounters that Evie keeps having, because he wants to use her to get rid of the faeries. When she doesn't agree to do this, he banishes her into the Faerie Paths.
• Camp Gay Dandy Lord Akeldama in The Parasol Protectorate. He might dress outrageously and live in an overdecorated townhouse with a horde of Pretty Boy drones, but he's still a very old vampire. And those drones of his? He's trained them to be so effective at collecting gossip that he often knows more than the actual government.
• A Practical Guide to Evil has a few examples:
  • Kairos Theodosian, Tyrant of Helike. At first he just looks like some kind of insane Royal Brat in the mold of a Joffrey Baratheon. It takes him less than a chapter to show how he earned his name. And, he keeps his foot on the accelerator. Even then, he's clearly embracing old-fashioned Evil Is Hammy style of villainy, making bizarre decrees and laws (such as outlawing foul language). His cackling font of ostentatiously Classic Evil is quite deliberately hiding a metric tonne of meta-awareness under all that ham. For starters, he's actively using his appearance of being "just another nutso Tyrant" to hide the extent of what he's capable of not just from the Calamities, but the Wandering Bard as well. Every hard-core, very nasty trick he's pulled has been a shell game used to attain goals beyond the obvious ones, yet others have been slow to realize this thanks to the show he makes of juggling obvious villain balls.
  • Almorava of Symra, The Wandering Bard. An Ashuran hero who joins The Lone Swordsman's party before the rebellion begins in southern Callow. Ridiculously dressed, constantly throwing back enough alcohol to kill a herd of livestock and a less-than-competent musician and singer, The Bard at first appears to be little more than comic relief. The jury's still out on how much of her silliness is an act, but there's certainly more to Almorava of Symra than meets the eye. She has the Genre Savvy that is the hallmark of her profession, with an understanding of the workings of fate rivaled only by the Black Knight. She has a tendency to appear (literally) whenever anything particularly plot-relevant is going on; no matter how much violence is directed her way she always manages to escape just in time; she seems to know intimate details of events she should be far too young to have witnessed and if nothing else, her liver must be superhuman. The epilogue of Book 2 reveals that The Wandering Bard is actually some kind of body-hopping immortal entity that has lived since long before elves arrived on Calernia. The precise nature of this entity is still mysterious but it seems to always exist as a storytelling-based Name and although it switches bodies and identities it retains all of it's memories. It's also apparently scary enough to bully the Forever King. At the conclusion of Book 2 Almorava of Symra dies (apparently of alcohol poisoning) and the name passes on to a new host named Aoede of Nicae.
  • On The "heroic" side of things we have Robber. Constantly making jokes, puns, and extremely crass poems, he leads an all-goblin cohort of the XV legion, dedicated to reconnaissance, sabotage, assassination and all forms of irregular warfare. He also supposedly has a jar filled with eyeballs. Catherine is very grateful he's pointed at her enemies rather than her.
  • Many of the villains who historically existed within the setting were cackling and eccentric Card Carrying Villains with all sorts of bizarre quirks, particularly the Tyrants of Praes: Dread Empress Atrocious owned a pit of man-eating tapirs, Sanguinia II made "being taller than her" illegal, Traitorous kept starting secret cabals trying to overthrow himself just because he liked betraying them so much... regardless of all of these facts they were still, one and all, a bunch of ruthless and remorseless monsters responsible for a great deal of pain, death, and suffering.
• Reincarnated into a Time-Loop Dungeon as a LVL100 Catgirl Chef!: Floor 93 is home to a group of perky catgirl shopkeeper NPCs, each one Colour-Coded for Your Convenience, and a bit ditzy. They spend their days competing in marble races, leveling up their Kawaii stats, and playing with their friends on lower floors — speaking of which, they really want to visit again, so if you could just hand over the key that lets player characters cross floors, they'd be happy to release you from the spiked cage that they've built around your respawn point, holding you immobile no matter how many times you die and revive... You're giving it to them? Kthxbai!
• Quite a common theme in the works of Rick Riordan. The titular characters of Percy Jackson and the Olympians and Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard are Deadpan Snarkers extraordinaire, who enjoy exchanging Snark-to-Snark Combat with their friends and goofily lampshading the weirdness that is their lives. But they are also very, very dangerous-Percy especially is a Master Swordsman who's survived fighting no less than four Titans and too many other enemies to face-by the sequel series, even without the Curse of Achilles, he's still a One-Man Army.
  • Many of the gods and goddesses, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Norse, also apply-Poseidon enjoys Hawaiian shirts, Hermes, Apollo, and Thoth are Bunny Ears Lawyers, Bast teaches a course on cat-napping, Heimdall often acts like a Phoneaholic Teenager, Odin once spent several days in a blizzard to learn the secrets of the IPhone, Loki seems to like the Red Sox, and so on-but these beings have been around for millennia, battled all kinds of monsters, and each is, of course, a Physical God. Even as irreverent as Riordan's protagonists are, they still have a healthy fear of pissing off the gods.
• Six of Crows: Jesper likes to joke; in fact one of the first things he does is tell too many jokes during Kaz's meeting with Geels. He's the team's sharpshooter and useful in a fistfight as well.
• In Star Wars Legends, a stand-out example is Wes Janson. Happy-go-lucky prankster, Manchild extraordinaire, friendly with all of his squadmates...and able to shoot an enemy dead with one blaster pistol shot at a hundred paces. He's normally a Friendly Sniper, but when he's in a pinch, he's all business.
  • Another is Yoda, most prominently in Dark Rendezvous. Bit of a Cloudcuckoolander, to be sure, and absolutely a Bunny-Ears Lawyer who loves to gently tease his students and even fellow Jedi Masters. He has bizarre taste in food, and it's noted that even Jedi who would follow him to the gates of Hell would rather not even sit with him while he's eating, much less share his food. But he's also been a Jedi for almost a thousand years, during which he learned a lot, saw a lot, and went through dangers most people couldn't even dream of. He is the greatest master of the Force in the galaxy, excepting only Darth Sidious, and a Master Swordsman with almost no peers. You really do not want to make him angry.
• In the The Supervillainy Saga, Gary Karkofsky is an Idiot Hero or Guile Hero depending on his circumstances. He is a pop culture nerd, barely controls his powers, and has a Motor Mouth. However, he punches heavily above his weight class, often defeating gods or powerful archvillains.
• Treasure Island:
  • Ben Gunn has been marooned for three years and is somewhat addled, speaks of himself in the third person and has an unhealthy obsession with cheese. However, he was a full member of Jeremiah Flint's crew, alongside stone-cold killers like Blind Pew, Billy Bones and Long John Silver (though the story implies he was something of a Butt-Monkey), and proves his allegiance to the main characters by sneaking into the mutineers' camp and bludgeoning two of them to death without being noticed.
  • Similarly, Squire Trelawney is an Upper-Class Twit of the first water, a Horrible Judge of Character and given to pompousness, but after seeing him shoot the first time the other characters decide to spend their time reloading the muskets and let the squire do the shooting.
• Trinity Blood:
  • Rare heroic example: Abel Nightroad is portrayed as a complete and utter moron throughout the entirety of the series. But beware! Threatening ANYone he cares about is a really bad idea. "Nanomachine Crusnik 02, output 40% approved." <<< This phrase activates an utterly terrifying demon monster that eats vampires. Moron, indeed BEWARE!
  • Female lead Esther meets a goofy, scatterbrained, lost-without-his-butler English gentleman named Cain.
• In Waking Up As A Spaceship, all the Living Cores, even the protagonist Abyssal, are very goofy, but they're also all very dangerous. Even though Abyssal is a Pinball Protagonist, and is called an idiot so often she believes it, she's actually deceptively cunning, and the rest all fly powerful spaceships, except for Kuon who is Abyssal's first mate, but is still very dangerous when provoked.
• In Warrior Cats, Graystripe sometimes comes across as this. He's Firestar's fat, fluffy friend, a helicopter parent with a tendency to swoon over pretty she-cats and an inability to lie convincingly. He's also a loving father and a loyal warrior who will end you without a moment's hesitation if you cross him or anyone he cares about.
• Wayward Children: Sumi's time in a candy-themed Nonsense world left her a restive, chatterbox Cloudcuckoolander. Occasionally she reminds people that she's also the hero who overthrew that world's despot, such as when she grabs a baling hook and impales a Vampire Monarch through the neck.
• The Witch of Knightcharm: The rookie witch Starlyght Mornyngmyst is a thoroughly ridiculous person who showcases her ignorance almost whenever she speaks and is held in disdain by others. But she's also extremely powerful, to the point where she kills two other students during her final orientation run at her evil Wizarding School. Her kills were so impressive and showed so much magical ability that she's ranked as being in the top 5 students of her class even though her orientation time itself wasn't that great (both because she's not athletic and also because she stopped in the middle of the deadly obstacle course to meditate).
• Count Fosco in Wilkie Collins' classic sensation novel The Woman in White is the Victorian-era poster boy for this trope.

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