Brilliant But Lazy / Western Animation

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• Jake the Dog in Adventure Time has shades of this. He wields incredible shape-shifting powers and could easily defeat most enemies that appear in the show if he applied himself, but he'd much rather be at a party or eating a sandwich. That, and Finn has so much fun battling things.
• Amphibia: Anne Boonchuy. While her friends Sasha and Marcy had the issue of applying themselves in the wrong areas, Anne struggled with applying herself at all prior to landing in Amphibia, acting as an Extreme Doormat who simply followed others thanks to just wanting to take the easy route (as well as due to a host of self-esteem issues). As she becomes more confident and learns to love herself, she proves to be a very resourceful person; she's a natural athlete, good at performance art and puppetry, a skilled cook, and is fantastic at coming up with plans in the heat of the moment. The last of which allows her to even outsmart the Big Bad by pointing out a flaw in its logic, delaying its attempt on her life and giving her extra time to strike back.
• It's occasionally hinted that the the titular protagonist of The Amazing World of Gumball is this. As despite generally being portrayed as a idiot (granted how much of an idiot varies depending on the episode, anywhere from being Too Dumb to Live to just being Book Dumb and impulsive, but still having some sense), a wimp, and a Loser Protagonist in general, Gumball is also shown to have enough wit to often serve as a Deadpan Snarker, can think of elaborate schemes (which admittedly always backfire in some form for one reason or another, but still), can occasionally be pretty clever while having to think on his feet (like saving himself and Penny from hitting an oncoming truck by taking advantage of her emotion based powers in "The Shell"), can be decent at manipulating others at times (He pulls an impressive fast one on his mother, Nicole, in the beginning of "The Question"), and can occasionally pull off pretty impressive feats of athleticism on par with his mother when he's both sufficiently determined and not trying to show off despite being presented as out of shape, and occasionally shows a surprising degree of skill in unexpected things, like cooking and archery. Probably best demonstrated in "The Grades", where Gumball is sent back to kindergarten and has to take a test that neither he (apparently having never opened at text book in his life) or his teacher think he can pass legitimately to get back to his original grade. So they try repeatedly to cheat, but it doesn't work out, so he ultimately decides to take the test legitimately even if he fails... except it turns out that writing down cheat sheets was all the practice he needed to ace the test.
• Spud from American Dragon: Jake Long is a genius, but refuses to apply himself on the grounds that focusing on books all the time is boring and, more importantly, experiences in his early childhood quickly showed him that embracing his genius status would mean being faced with high and stressful expectations. As such, he doesn't just not use his intellect but deliberately hides it. However, a season two episode has him learn that indulging too much in laziness is also unhealthy, and that he does enjoy challenging himself.
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Master Shake is known for his less than cleverly thought out schemes of either getting rich or becoming famous, and as usual demands either Frylock cook or someone else give him food out of a refusal to cook. He's shown in some episodes to have aptitude in cooking, yet never uses these skills to feed himself or his roommates. When he baked a lasagna, he only wanted to use it to mess with Carl, not even considering eating it himself as he tossed it in the garbage and only fished it out to keep using it to torment his neighbor. He doesn't even think of using these skills to make money despite complaining how poor he is, such as just selling the lasagna to Carl for whatever price he sees fit.
• The titular character from Archer certainly counts. While on the surface, Sterling Archer is a brainless egotist, the show makes it clear he genuinely is the world's most dangerous spy. Archer boasts unparalleled skills in almost every field needed to be a secret agent, incredible and in-depth knowledge about a wide variety of topics (some quite obscure), and some outright savant-like genius abilities. He's even able to count the number of shots being fired from multiple guns being used simultaneously in a fire-fight and keep track of exactly how many bullets each shooter has left. Unfortunately he's also a selfish hedonist who's concern isn't whatever mission he's supposed to be handling but rather his own comfort and (short-sighted) entertainment. His main motivation for being a secret agent seems to mostly be so he can travel the world getting drunk and bedding women.
  • Archer himself lampshades this after someone threatens his daughter.
    Archer: So here's the thing, Farooq. I don't know about any stories, but whatever badass shit that you heard I did? You really need some context, because pretty much my whole life, pretty much right up until this minute, my default setting has been half-assed. (cracks knuckles) But that was before I had a child. A child you threatened to harm. A child, I just realized, who's probably on her way up to the roof so Aunt Pam can swat at biplanes! So imagine, as I literally beat you to death — Hang on… Yeah, literally — that a giant hand has turned my dial from half-assed to quadruple-assed!
• Buster from Arthur — in one episode he admits to having never read a book. His friends unsuccessfully try getting him to read increasingly simple books ("The sky is blue. The ocean is blue..."). The next day Buster shows up at school with Arthur's several-hundred-page book about Robin Hood saying he's almost done with it - because it was the only one he actually found interesting.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Aang is capable of picking up waterbending much faster than Katara. However, she quickly surpasses him in waterbending skills because he would rather play around than focus, with one character directly noting that hard work is better than talent alone when comparing the two. The lazy aspect later becomes an issue when he's learning earthbending because as an airbender his instincts go entirely against what he's learning, leaving him unable to make any progress. He quickly becomes discouraged and it's not until Sokka's life is in danger that he can finally work through his mental block and learn to stand his ground against a problem instead of just dodging it as an airbender would.
  • This seems to be the case with Admiral Zhao. During his fight with Aang he unleashes some truly impressive firebending but is too easily goaded into anger to use his skills effectively. His old teacher even states that Zhao was too impatient to learn the discipline involved in properly controlling his powers.
  • Aang's successor Korra from The Legend of Korra has a similar problem to him as well; she's incredibly Hot-Blooded and excels in the more fast-paced aspects of her position (fighting being the best example), but the slower-paced parts (such as diplomacy and spiritual meditation) don't hold her interest for very long and she ends up getting herself into far more trouble than she can handle at times.
• The Cluemaster from The Batman was a dangerous example. A child genius, he lost a game show for such children and refused to admit he lost because he got the answer wrong. He became a recluse, doing nothing for decades but plotting revenge against everyone involved. Batman calls him out on this, telling him that he could have accomplished so much in his life (like his intended victims did) if he hadn't let his pride bring him to ruin.
• The titular protagonist of Ben 10 is a Book Dumb and headstrong slacker, who often runs into situations without thinking things through. But it's hinted several times that Ben is smarter than his attitude would suggest; he has an almost photographic memory, shows a surprising degree resourcefulness when the Omnitrix gives him the wrong alien or times out while he's in a precarious situation, is shown to be pretty creative in how he uses the powers of his alien forms in general, and can get an extremely good grade when he is working seriously at school. Khyber even admitted at one point he was a "smart kid". By his teenage years in the sequel series, Ben's mostly grown out of the "lazy" part, but it's still there.
• Bob's Burgers:
  • Louise Belcher has a level of intelligence, manipulation and ingenuity far above her age, but she's also not one for patience or doing things the right way. There was an episode where she tried to break into the locked up ceramics room to get out of making her grandparents a gift for the rest of her life by stealing pottery that's already there. She does so with an elaborate plan of breaking into the room with tools that, as Tina puts it, took more effort than making said pottery themselves.
  • Gene Belcher wants to be a musician. He certainly has some skill and managed to make his own music for his own musical despite not knowing what keys are D, E or anything else. However, he refuses to practice and doesn't put any real effort in learning anything. Her prefers to put his efforts into making random and gross sounds into tunes due to his sense of humor.
• The title character of Dan Vs. is hardly lazy when it comes to seeking revenge, but he would rather watch TV and attend conventions than do pretty much anything with his life. And considering some of the things he does in the process of getting revenge, he probably would be quite successful if he was actually willing to work for it.
• Daria's title character, who easily gets good grades but is too apathetic to do any of the other activities people try to rope her into (until she is either forced or bribed, anyway). Her best friend Jane is similar, but in her case, it's not so much brilliance as common sense and artistic talent.
• Wally from Dilbert hides a surprising level of brilliance beneath a very thick layer of filth and laziness, once being an openly gifted and hard-working engineer before being crushed by the thankless soulless company they work for. He's still capable of amazing feats of intelligence when sufficiently motivated, like get-rich-quick schemes that tend to only fail due to bad luck or a simple oversight, and in one episode runs a very successful underground gambling ring. It's best summed up when Dilbert hears a scheme of Wally's to steal money from credit card companies:
  Dilbert: You would have made an amazing evil mastermind.
  Wally: Nah. The hours are too long.
• DuckTales (2017): Louie Duck is clever, but he's largely unmotivated, preferring to mooch off people. One of the three intertwining plots of The Great Dime Chase! has Scrooge trying to teach him the value of hard and honest work. By the second season, Louie discovers his true talent; playing all the angles to achieve the best possible outcome. The problem though is that Louie would be perfectly happy gaining the biggest reward with the least possible effort, so it doesn't come into play often. And he learns the hard way he cannot see every angle, and others will often see those before he does.
• Eddy from Ed, Edd n Eddy is implied to be this. He's cunning enough to think up scams that can actually be rather brilliant at times, though he often heaps the heavy-lifting parts of building his scams off to Ed and Double D and struggles academically, though he'll occasionally make a comment or reference to people or events that imply he's smarter than he seems. Overall, he is clever, but apparently bored easily to the point of avoiding any sort of studying and notes from his teachers imply he may have an ADD or ADHD-type disorder. It's also shown that Eddy may have dyslexia, which would hinder his academics if untreated.
• Futurama seems to have a whole race like this with the Omicronians. Their technology is far more advanced than Earth's, so much that they can threaten the Earth on a regular basis and get whatever demands they want without fear of retribution. Despite this, they seem to spend most of their time watching television. (Of course, since they see that as Serious Business, it's not lazy by their definition.)
• The title character of Generator Rex is a lot smarter than he looks, and is actually quite the math prodigy. One episode outright shows the mental math he uses whenever utilizing one of his bio-mechanical weapons, all of which are implied to have been consciously designed. It eventually turns out that that his birth family were (or, in the case of his older brother, are) genius scientists to even greater degrees, so it's only logical that he has some brains. Rex's knowledge also extends beyond engineering into strategy, as he's also managed to play a game of Batman Gambit Speed Chess. Very well, too.
• Hey Arnold!:
  • Helga G. Pataki is shown to possess an intellect well beyond that of the typical fourth grader. She's a talented poet with an impressive vocabulary and gets an impressive score on her aptitude test. Unfortunately, being neglected by her parents in favor of her older sister Olga has squandered her confidence and most of the time she doesn't even try to do well in school.
  • Similarly, Harold is shown to be this when his and Helga's aptitude tests get swapped — Harold is told he had the highest score since Olga Pataki, while Helga is told she's an idiot due to Harold having drawn an H on the bubble sheet, causing her to become a stereotypical hillbilly and Harold to become a genius until the reality comes to light.
• Brendan Small of Home Movies is definitely smarter than your average 4th grader. He talks like a miniature adult, and able to grasp concepts like complex storytelling and video editing, but he performs terribly in school, has zero motivation to do better, and would rather spend his time making movies with his friends.
• Tallest Red of Invader Zim is implied to be this. In "Backseat Drivers from Beyond the Stars", he's shown to manually control the entire planet-sized ship and repair its hacked programs single-handedly. He'd still rather be screwing around and eating doughnuts with his best friend/co-ruler Purple, though.
• In Jackie Chan Adventures, Jade is highly intelligent. Jackie's niece is able to constantly keep tabs on his location, identify loopholes in his regular "stay here" orders, is the only character who constantly thinks of actually USING the Talismans in fights, is capable of using chi spells, and routinely fools the forces of evil. She's just not the type to sit still in school and do homework.
• The eponymous character in Kick Buttowski sometimes shows signs of this. Although he spends most of his time doing mindless stunts, he puts a lot of technical effort into all of them, which requires high levels of precision, building and planning in order to safely accomplish. He often manages to figure out how to drive a wide variety of vehicles in his pursuit of daredevil action. He also managed to finish an entire months' worth of homework (mostly physics) twice in one day... the latter one in under 10 minutes. Also, in "Breaking the Grade" his dad happily informed Kick that his grades have been going up significantly... even though at the beginning of the episode we saw that he wasn't even trying.
• Kim Possible: Applies to the two main sidekicks:
  • Shego is all over this trope. She is clearly much more competent than Drakken at everything except the aspects of being a mad scientist, and could definitely be an effective villain on her own if she so chose. The one time she actually applied herself, she took over the world... and even then, she had to be motivated and given the tools to do so by her future self. But for the most part, she would rather be on the beach, filing her gloves (don't ask), or lazing about reading "Villains' Magazine" than actually working, though she does enjoy her fights with Kim.
  • The same goes for plucky sidekick Ron Stoppable, who is actually more skilled and capable than at first appearance, but (in addition to generally being unaware of his own capabilities) rather enjoys chilling and gliding through life. Up until the Grand Finale, at least.
• Children's program Lazy Lucy is 52 episodes of this trope — trying hard to find the lazier way to do stuff.
• Experiment 625 in Lilo & Stitch: The Series is every bit as powerful and intelligent as Stitch... but he has no interest in using his abilities, and would rather make sandwiches. He does get to work to help Lilo a few times, though. In the Grand Finale movie, Leroy & Stitch, in addition to finally getting his own name, Reuben, he quickly proves his advanced intellect by repairing Gantu's crashed ship within a single afternoon, something Gantu had been unable to do all series.
• Coop from Megas XLR can retrofit a giant robot from over a thousand years in the future with game controllers, new weapons, and a linkup to his car. However, he's fat, lives with his mom, and doesn't have a job. He has no intention of changing any of this.
• Metalocalypse: All the members of Dethklok could qualify, since they are insanely talented musicians who have built their band into an economy to rival over 200 nations. However, getting them to actually record new material, play shows or... anything, really, takes serious prodding. And even among the band members, Toki Wartooth and William Murderface stand out. Neither participates in the band's songwriting process, and it's been established that Toki doesn't even bother to practice. Murderface, meanwhile, just really, really doesn't feel like making an effort for any reason. But when forced, they managed to record an entire album — and apparently a good one — by themselves. And Toki is the second-fastest guitarist in the world and Murderface can play bass with his genitals.
• Jim from Mission Hill. So much so that he basically gets paid by an advertising company for doing absolutely nothing just because he's "the young guy who knows computers" and has incredible knowledge of what appeals to the "cool" crowd.
• Mr. Lazy from The Mr. Men Show would rather build a fully working contraption to do something as simple as put a peanut in his mouth than do it himself.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Rainbow Dash, the fastest flier in Ponyville, is seen slacking off quite a bit — including in her first appearance — but repeatedly proves herself to be extremely competent. Amongst her many dramatic heroics, that same debut scene where she's been putting off work that ends with her clearing a cloud-filled sky in literally "ten seconds flat." In "Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3", she has absolutely no interest in any of the teaching techniques her friends try to use to teach her the History of the Wonderbolts, which she needs to pass a test to get into the famous team but didn't think she needed to worry about, leading to her neglecting it. However late in the episode, she demonstrates an ability to pick up any and every detail she sees while flying, which leads to Twilight's "Eureka!" Moment on how to get the history into her head.
• Buttercup from The Powerpuff Girls (1998). As seen in Hidden Depths, she is street-smart and quick-witted. Unfortunately, she doesn't dedicate the effort she puts in attacking villains the way into her schoolwork. This extends to the 2016 series, where despite being uninterested in academics, she's smart enough to be in advanced math classes with minimal effort.
• T.J. Detweiler from Recess is the Badass Adorable leader of the main six, who often comes up with their elaborate schemes...but with everything else, he's pretty lazy.
• Mordecai and Rigby from Regular Show are quite lazy much of the time, but when they actually get around to working, they're pretty efficient. Rigby especially, who always thinks he can talk his way out of everything — until he actually screws up, that is, at which point he panics. Mordecai is the only one who can motivate Rigby to work, and Rigby being there is the main thing that motivates Mordecai to work (other than Benson's rage). Benson knows this, which is part of the reason why he could never fire Rigby on his own and hire someone else. By the end of the series, they kick this habit: Rigby spends an entire season going back to high school to finish his degree, while the show's "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue shows Mordecai leaving his job to focus on painting, which he stopped doing after dropping out of college, and becoming a successful painter as a result.
• Rick and Morty
  • Rick Sanchez could revolutionize human civilization overnight with his genius intellect, if only he cared enough to do it. Quite a few plotlines are started by him being faced with a problem he finds inconsequential and whipping up a quick and easy solution in response that tends to have disastrous side-effects attached to it.
    • In "Something Ricked This Way Comes" he creates a robot with artificial intelligence for the sole purpose of getting him butter when he's eating.
    • In the same episode he opens a very successful business called "Curse Purge Plus" that removes the "suck" aspect of Blessed with Suck Cursed items to leave them as granting amazing powers cost-free, and he does this to cursed items presumably created by the Devil. He does this purely out of spite, and once the Devil admits defeat and backs down he quickly grows bored, torches the place, and leaves.
    • In the Season 3 finale "The Rickchurian Mortydate" he negotiates peace between Israel and Palestine, again purely out of spite, just to screw with the President.
    • A very brief list of his inventions includes cybernetic prosthetic limbs, teleportation, interdimensional travel, faster-than-light space travel, a device that freezes time, shrinking technology, advanced cloning technology, and memory manipulation. He hoards all of these technologies in his garage for his own use.
  • Implied. Summer Smith mentioned at one point she intentionally gets C grades and it's shown that Summer possesses superior intelligence. This gets played for laughs in "Night Family", where Summer finally manages to break out of her Laborious Laziness and achieve Honor Roll—because she's having her "Night Person" do her studying for her.
• Twister in Rocket Power, while certainly a Book Dumb Cloudcuckoolander Ditz, can be a surprisingly effective captain for his friends, coming up with brilliant plays and training techniques. However, in the end, he gives the team captain slot back to Otto because he doesn't like the pressure.
• Tommy’s father Stu Pickles from Rugrats is very smart when it comes to building things and making advanced toys and machines that work very well. Otherwise he spends most of his time lounging around the house watching television and unintentionally forgetting to look after Tommy and the other babies.
• The Simpsons:
  • Bart Simpson is a good example. He can be pretty cunning, deductive, and intelligent when he puts his mind to it, particularly when up against his nemesis Sideshow Bob, but in school, he'd rather do the bare minimum (if that). He mastered two languages (Spanish and French) in a relatively short time. Only to 'forget' French and literally have Spanish knocked out of him. And Japanese along with Homer after a short while in jail. This also shown mixed with his short attention span where he's willing to do algebraic equations as a distraction from the ten-page book report he was assigned. When an aptitude test shows that he's not useless and is suited to be a police officer, he unleashes that potential. For a while.
    • This also overlaps with Book Dumb, as when he actually does try in one episode, he technically still fails the test. He only manages to pass because he related his experience to something he read in his studies, which got him extra credit for "applied knowledge". A Flash Forward shows that he will be a Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, made even more impressive in that in a not-as-far flash forward, he went to night school for his law degree. Then again, in almost all the others, he's a bum, or at least hardly works. However, it is all presented in chronological order: he spends his early adulthood in a troubled state and as a bum before getting a job in demolition to work out his anger (while also going to night school) and eventually becomes a Chief Justice in his older adult years. This is all in spite of the Simpsons Gene, which leads to Simpsons men becoming losers as adults.
  • Homer Simpson also qualifies (maybe it's genetic?), frequently displaying a surprising amount of intelligence for whatever this week's obsession is. Across various episodes he's become a top employee for Globex, started a very successful home security business, and was able to trick Mr. Burns into making him CEO of the power plant, which he did in revenge for his rather comprehensive safety report being ignored. Also like Bart, he displays Book Dumb tendencies, rarely reading books while also retaining an amazing breadth of knowledge, including at least some awareness of the works of Walt Whitman, how to brew several varieties of beer, and at least some knowledge of the laws of thermodynamics, despite not knowing who Isaac Newton is. It's just that, much like Bart, he's only willing to put in the minimum effort.
  • Another example on the show is Barney Gumble, Homer's barfly of a friend, who has proven to have a lot of talents when he isn't drinking. In fact, a flashback showed that he was Harvard-bound as a teenager until Homer introduced him to beer on the night before they had to take the SATs. Probably the biggest example was the poignant and touching movie he directed and starred in about his alcoholism. (The only really bad thing about the otherwise excellent film was the title, Pukahontas).
    Barney: Hi, Homer. Since they made me stop drinking, I've regained my balance and diction! Observe: [does backflips] "I am the very model of a modern major general, I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral".
  • Krusty is almost emblematic of hacky comedians, but several episodes suggest he has a lot of potential. The biggest is probably "The Last Temptation of Krust", where he decides to try out stand-up and finds some success as a George Carlin Expy. However, Krusty sticks with stolen Steve Martin bits and poorly-timed vaudeville slapstick because he believes firmly that kids are the most profitable demographic, and kids will watch anything.
  • Jeff Albertson, the Comic Book Guy is probably the biggest example on the show. He's actually a member of Mensa, and does tend to talk like a "book smart" (though snobbish and egotistical) type, and he once did write and self-publish a comic book called Everyman that was a brief success (and cancelled it later when he condoned the movie it was made into, even if it meant dismissing the chance for more money and potential for another film closer to the source material) but usually all he does with his smarts is profiteering (Maybe it makes sense at first that he can justify charging $150 for a photo of Sean Connery that was signed by Roger Moore, as he did in one episode, but when you think about it for a few minutes...). And he's definitely lazy, being a morbidly obese couch potato who doesn't give a damn about his health, in one episode buying a hundred tacos for a Doctor Who marathon. In another episode he admitted to being a 45-year-old virgin who still lives with his mother, until he married a Japanese manga artist in the later seasons.
• The Smurfs (1981); Slouchy Smurf. He rarely makes much effort to do anything, but unlike Lazy Smurf — who's simply lazy — he has a lot of good ideas — in his debut episode in the cartoon he invented the paper airplane and the saxophone just by idly messing about. He became a lot less lazy after being de-aged to a Smurfling. (Maybe because kids have more energy?)
• Sonic the Hedgehog has Sonic invoke this in some way or another:
  • In Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Tails berates Sonic for slacking off while Tails is washing the dishes. Sonic then uses his Super-Speed to dry them in a second. It ain't the speed, it's the deep, keed!.
  • This character trait also invokes a lot of Princess Sally's nitpicking towards him in Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM).
• Eric Cartman from South Park has repeatedly shown his aptitude for manipulating others and pulling off elaborate schemes for his own petty benefit, but would never go to such lengths for anything productive or meaningful in the long term. At one point he starts a thorough investigation on Tolkein Black because he failed his math test despite cheating off his classmate. Tolkien even points out that if Cartman put that amount of effort studying for the test then he wouldn't need to copy off him.
• Squidward Tentacles from SpongeBob SquarePants is already one of the smartest characters on the show and would be extremely competent if not for his extreme apathy to everything. In Opposite Day he rebuilt SpongeBob's entire house all by himself, something that, due to him hating his neighbor and wanting nothing to do with him, he didn't bother to do in Home Sweet Pineapple. In A Breath of Fresh Squidward his personality is inverted so that he's incredibly enthusiastic and cheerful about everything, and as a result, manages to beat SpongeBob's Employee of the Month winning streak.
• Star Butterfly from Star vs. the Forces of Evil is a magical prodigy, described as being far beyond the skill level of her mother Queen Moon and on par with Eclipsa (the most notorious magic user in Mewni's history, who created magic so dangerous that her chapter of the royal spellbook is sealed). She's able to "dip down" and use magic solely from her own power (normally the assistance of a Magic Wand is required) at the age of 14 (something her mother never managed until she was 19), and constantly invents new spells off the top her head (which are often more powerful than she intended them to be). But Star is incapable of using the most basic magic because she found it too boring to bother learning. Which in turn leads to Star having poor control over her magic, with her spells sometimes failing to work, being more powerful than intended and causing collateral damage, or going completely wrong and having an effect completely unrelated to what she intended.
• Control Freak from Teen Titans. He has invented things that border on Applied Phlebotinum, but he tends to use them for very trivial goals. In other words, he's good at building things, but not too good at finding useful ways to use them.
• Michelangelo of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He is said to be the most naturally gifted athlete of the four, to say nothing of wielding the most complicated weapon (nunchaku), but his lack of focus and laziness hold him back from being the best fighter.
  • This role is switched in Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles where it's Leonardo in this situation. Due to a general lack of training and Raphael being the leader, he's more laid-back and enjoying being a teen. His character arc throughout the series is about him growing out of this to become a better fighter and eventually take the leadership position.
• Exaggerated in ThunderCats (2011). Rascally Rabbit the Drifter is so lazy he can barely be bothered to move under his own power, instead preferring to drift on windcurrents when not loafing about. Though he repeatedly insists he does not care what happens to people around him, he reveals that he can use this power and observation of his opponents to perform Wuxia-level Nonchalant Dodges and play Warrior Therapist. His laziness is deconstructed when he persists in showing up as an Aloof Ally until he admits that his supposedly carefree attitude disguises passive-aggressive attempts to teach others to avoid mistakes that led to his Despair Event Horizon. Once an Ultimate Blacksmith, he lost his finest sword in a duel with a Master Swordsman who preys on the prideful and unskilled.
• Total Drama
  • In Total Drama Island, Noah is an Insufferable Genius (and according to his bio, a former Child Prodigy), but does as little as possible while snarking at everyone else. This costs him, as his refusal to help in a challenge makes him the first Screaming Gopher to be voted out. He seems to have learned his lesson, however, actively participating in later seasons.
    • In a Fridge Brilliance example of this, Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race establishes that he spends the next several years participating in various reality TV shows. So he's a genius who could probably go to university and get a good job, but is willing to humiliate himself for the world in the hopes of winning big and getting to retire early. He also quips that his new girlfriend, Emma, will probably be rich enough that he won't need to work.
  • Played straight in the first season, where Heather was a great strategist, but mostly made others do the dirty work for her. Averted in later seasons like World Tour where she was more willing to win challenges herself and almost reached Action Girl levels. Compare her in Island (where she refused to jump off of a cliff because "her hair would get wet"), and World Tour and All-Stars (where she did that very thing with no issues once in both seasons).
  Heather: The guys think they're so stealthy, building their own little alliances. It's kind of cute, really. But why work on your own bike when you can get someone else to do it for you?
• In The Venture Bros., Rusty Venture and Pete White are both brilliant scientists who tend to be incredibly halfhearted in their endeavors, and it shows. Rusty in particular, though he is capable of creating numerous death-dealing devices and created a process to cheat death through cloning and computer memory back-up, would rather sit on his ass and leech off his dead father's reputation than earn respect and admiration through his own inventions. Rusty is a tragic example in the sense that he has plenty of issues due to how being a boy adventurer would actually be as well as the hell his father and his friends put him through. It is implied that if he did overcome the vast neuroses and psychological issues, he could surpass his father, whom everyone regards as the best super scientist.
• Xiaolin Showdown:
  • Of the four main characters, Raimundo fits especially. He's more interested in daydreaming and goofing off, it it is strongly implied on multiple occasions that he's the most talented of the bunch. In the 5th episode in particular, he completely tanked a battle because he failed to pay attention to Omi's lecture, but then spent the rest of the next day studying hard and absolutely trounced the same enemy.
  • The ancient hero Chi Master Dashi is shown to be this; after saving the world once, he'd rather sit back, let his dragon do the cleanup work, and avoid people he doesn't know that are trying to look for him. Once he finds out a problem is serious, however, he agrees to help.
• Master Yo from Yin Yang Yo! is a master of Woo Foo, having complete control over both Might and Magic. However, after a long and successful career of heroism, he believes he's earned the right to lounge around and do nothing. He's only training Yin and Yang because the Woo Foo Spirits wouldn't leave him alone until he did. In terms of how capable he was, he was stronger and more skilled than Yin and Yang combined even when he was three years old (as shown in an episode where he is de-aged).

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