Crouching Moron Hidden Badass / Live-Action TV

• Ashes to Ashes (2008): WPC Shaz Granger is hardly a moron, she's just sweet and isn't as badass as the rest of CID. It's kind of hard when you're a plonk in your mid-twenties, trying to live up to the examples of Gene Hunt and Alex Drake. Even Ray and Chris are pretty badass, holding their own in gunfights and having multiple Big Damn Heroes moments — Shaz doesn't even carry a gun. Then 2.08 hits, where a bent copper is holding Chris hostage, about to shoot him. A gunshot sounds, and it's Shaz, holding a smoking gun and wearing her wedding dress. To cap it all off, she quips "How you doing, baby?" to Chris.
• Babylon 5:
  • Vir is introduced as a timid and shy comic relief, used to being pushed around by his boss Londo. However as the show goes on he gradually shows more and more backbone, first by not backing from a huge monster (a hologram, but he didn't know that) when sent to deliver a message to technomages, then by telling off an emissary of Eldritch Abominations in the most awesome way, and finally by retorting to an insult and a spying attempt by borrowing Londo's duel sword and trashing the offender's stall and forcing him to confess at swordpoint. There's also the time when he invented Abrahamo Lincolni and created an underground railroad to transport Narns to safety. This while his government was fighting an extermination war against the Narns. Considering how insane the emperor was, it's likely that Vir would have been killed if anyone had found out about it.
    Mr. Morden: What do you want?
    Vir Cotto: I'd like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up at your lifeless eyes and wave like this. [waggles fingers] Can you and your associates arrange this for me, Mr. Morden? [Two seasons later, Londo gives him exactly what he wants.]
  • Londo Mollari, Vir's boss, also has this trope in spades. Originally portrayed as a hammy Upper-Class Twit and unabashed hedonist who made no bones about considering Babylon 5 his own personal Antarctica, he is also a surprisingly deft politician and negotiator, master poisoner, decorated fighter pilot and perfectly capable duelist (whose dueling society nickname was "Fights Like A Madman", no less).
  • By the end of the series he becomes emperor of the entire Centauri Republic. And that 'he' is both of them!
  • Marcus has the personality of an all-around goofball and jokester, but as one of the first human Rangers you do not want to be in a fight against him. Unless you also happen to be a Ranger and a Warrior Caste Minbari.
• Battlestar Galactica (2003):
  • Brendan "Hot Dog" Costanza fits the trope quite well. Most of the time, he's just screwing around and too busy having random rashes. But in the cockpit, he's more than competent.
  • By the end of the series, most characters who weren't introduced as straight-up badasses (and are still alive) have turned out to fit this trope. Felix Gaeta's leading an armed mutiny, Laura Roslin's raging refusal to surrender when it appears that said mutiny has succeeded, Romo Lampkin's escaping from a marine who had a gun to his head by stabbing the guy's jugular with a pen, and Gaius Baltar going all Rambo on the enemy Cylons during the battle in the Series Finale.
• Boardwalk Empire has Eddie Kessler, Nucky's bumbling assistant who often messes up and is often treated as a Butt-Monkey. When an assassin comes after Nucky, he makes the assassin miss his shot, takes the assassin's gun away and then coldly shoots the guy in the back as he is trying to run away
  • While few people would consider Nucky to be a moron, he is a politician and talks like one so some opponents assume that he is just talk and can be easily pushed around. When three goons come after him in his own office, he dispatches all three of them by himself and then wages a bloody and ruthless Mob War against their boss.
  • Richard Harrow is a disfigured Shell-Shocked Veteran who has trouble talking due to his injuries and at first glance people might assume that he is brain damaged. However, he is probably the deadliest individual on the show and becomes a One-Man Army when needed.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Drusilla exhibits only the loosest connection to reality, and spends most of the time behaving like an idiot child (e.g. cooing over her pet bird, which died because she left it in the cage and forgot to feed it). But when she does fight, she's extremely dangerous, and capable of killing a Slayer with a slash of her fingernail.
  • Xander. Whether it was magic tuxedo, skill with a crane, or just a combination of borderline Too Dumb to Live and luck, Xander managed to be a useful and functional member of a team that included a slayer, a powerful witch, a werewolf, a vampire, a half-demon, and a high school librarian.
  • Whistler seemed like a pretty harmless 'spiritual advisor' type, but come Season Nine and he's showing off sufficient power to leave Nash and Pearl quivering in fear and punching holes through Angel.
  • On Angel & Faith #6 Clem actually beheads a bunch of vampires with his tentacled face.
• In the Mexican sitcom, El Chapulín Colorado the titular Chapulín is as clumsy and conceited as a superhero can be, but at the end of the episode he manages to subdue his adversaries either by outsmarting them, or by taking advantage of an opening and knocking them out.
• The titular protagonist in Columbo appears to be a hapless moron who somehow landed a detective job. His idiotic demeanor makes him seem harmless to criminals, but at the end of the day Columbo shows his brilliance when he arrests the suspect.
• Cobra Kai: Stingray is an unabashed NEET, Basement-Dweller and eighties Fanboy, and looks like an oblate spheroid with a neckbeard. However, in the Coyote Canyon exercise, he manages to pull a victory against the far more formidable Miguel by using camouflage, stealth and ambush and massaging the rules of the exercise. Even Kreese is impressed and offers a few complimentary words.
• Chang of Community is a Cloud Cuckoo Lander whose general plot role is just to be annoying. However, over the course of Season 3, he becomes completely insane, eventually taking over the school and installing himself as a Stalinesque dictator and nearly killing the entire student body.
• Criminal Minds has a few of these. It's to be expected from members of the team-they are FBI agents after all-but a lot of the Unsubs and quite a few would-be victims fall into this category. One example that springs to mind is the strung-out prostitute from "Legacy" who looks to be a disposable victim when the UnSub picks her up but manages to make her way through the killer's torture factory-including walking barefoot through a roomful of broken glass-and survives to see him taken down at the end of the episode.
• Cutie Honey: THE LIVE had Honey as a ditzy high school student who could take on entire swarms of mooks.
• Some people think that an interview on The Daily Show is just a bit of fluff, and Jon Stewart is just a harmless comic. The interview tends not to end well for those who think he won't catch them out on flip-flopping, weaselling, and outright lying. Yes, Stewart has read your damn book. He does know what you said three weeks ago on CNN, and what you said four years before that on NBC, and who was paying you to say it. And he probably has video clips of you yourself refuting every point you're going to try to make in the interview. Not to mention enough of a grasp of the subject to call you out on any lies you might try to slip past him. So answer the fucking question.
  Lawrence O'Donnell: Don't pick a fight with Jon Stewart. Do not do it. You cannot win.
• Penhale from Doc Martin, heavier on the moron than the badass admittedly, but he came across as a very professional and scary copper when he dealt with the evil loan sharks threatening Bert. And when his estranged wife shows up apparently unaware that they've been divorced for four years, he's clearly still desperately in love with her, but the first thing he does is ask her the date, confirming that she's not well.
• Doctor Who:
  • The Second Doctor was probably the most representative of this trope. While all incarnations of the Doctor are capable of deadly seriousness and incredible skill, and most were usually goofy, Patrick Troughton brings the apparent goofiness up to eleven. The vast majority of the time, the second Doctor pretended to be a bumbling idiot, constantly stressed out and panicking. However, when faced with the right danger, he drops the act and becomes dead serious and sometimes even diabolic. Or feigns the act of stupidity altogether to trick his enemies. This is especially pronounced whenever he encounters Daleks or Cybermen.
  • Professor Chronotis had been a genius, but due to being 20000 years and 12 regenerations old, his mind is starting to go, with things like the names of objects and tenses constantly slipping his mind. In lucid moments, he is clearly of significantly above average intelligence even for Time Lords, but these moments are few and far between and hampered by the fact that he just doesn't care about anything other than "reading books and making tea". However, he also happens to possess extremely powerful psychic abilities and an ancient TARDIS that he stole.
  • The scatterbrained Eighth Doctor was an odd duck who gushed over things as simple as shoes, got unbelievably distracted, turned into a chatterbox if you mentioned something that perused his interests, and oftentimes waxed on like a lemony romantic. However, he was one of the most emphatic Doctors and could be deeply affected with either love or hate. The love side would be fun, compassionate, joyful and clever, knowing how to cure others of the rain clouds floating atop their heads. On the hate side of the coin, he suffered a terrible amount of breaking and the end result a hardcore man who could seethe with white-knuckle rage, turn genuinely vicious if you pissed him off, or even tease borderline psychosis when something traumatized him badly enough.
  • The Ninth Doctor displayed shades of this. He had an imposing figure, could easily take control of a conflict, and be well beyond menacing if a situation called for it — or a Berserk Button got pushed. However, Nine could also be incredibly goofy and a bit inept on a slow day, such as screwing up landing the TARDIS 12 hours into the future and instead landing 12 months later, by which time his companion's mother feared she had been murdered. And instead of calmly explaining the situation or trying to go back in time and reverse this, he let things play by ear, minced his words in front of a hysterical parent, and got slapped for it.
  • Rose Tyler could qualify. She certainly has her fair share of ditzy moments; she has to get saved a lot, and sometimes, if she's feeling particularly helpful, she's shouting ineffectually at the villains. She does, however, absorb the power of time and become a demi-goddess at the end of series 1, sacrifices herself for the universe at the end of series 2, and blows things up like all-get-out at the end of series 4.
  • In "Aliens of London", after General Asquith accuses Acting Prime Minister Joseph Green and his aides, Margaret Blaine of MI5 and Oliver Charles, of doing nothing about the current crisis, the trio laugh and crack fart jokes. Then they begin to unzip their foreheads...
  • The Tenth Doctor. Say you're an alien invader. You capture this odd fellow in a suit and hi-tops; he appears to be batshit insane, jabbering on, often in rather inane ways. And just after he finishes talking, you realize he has just taken down your entire armada.
    • Case in point: the Family of Blood. The Doctor (using his human disguise/alias John Smith) stumbles into the Family's ship, trying to stop them from destroying the academy where he hid from them. While negotiating with them, the Doctor stumbles about pressing random buttons on the ship before turning over his fob watch (which holds his Time Lord powers). The Family tries to absorb said powers, but they are not there. The Doctor then drops the bumbling human act and reveals he's back to normal. And has just set their ship's reactor to overload. The kicker is that after the ship blows up, the Family realizes that the Doctor hid from them because of what he would do to them as punishment, not out of fear of the Family itself.
  • Mickey Smith was the "tin dog", by his own admission. Series 1 Mickey was a bumbling numbskull who the Doctor absolutely loved to bill "Mickey the Idiot". He did save the world with a big yellow truck, but later freaked out at a bunch of packaged lab rats prepped for dissection. Mid-Series 2, he decides to shape up into a badass and "Mickey the Idiot" becomes Mickey the defender of the Earth with a BFG.
  • Brilliant but baffled Professor Yana in "Utopia". He does a dramatic Face–Heel Turn as he remembers what a badass he is as the Master.
  • Partially the case for the Eleventh Doctor. He exhibits a really alien personality, makes wild gestures, is prone to be gawky, often trips over his own sentences, and has a generally uncoordinated air about him. This childishness is implied to be an act that falls when he either trusts someone enough or someone triggers his fury. Then, he can be dark, serious, brooding, severe, liable to send you to oblivion if you anger him in just the wrong way, raise an entire army to tear you down, punish you with a humiliating consequence, and hold his own on a planet against all his greatest enemies for 900 years.
  • Inverted by the no-nonsense War Doctor, who has a mostly serious and driven personality focused on the issues at hand rather than avoiding them out of guilt. But, if he has the chance to relax from battle, he gets a tad eccentric, confused, sarcastic, grumpy, and grandpa-like.
  • Companion Rory Pond is clumsy, awkward, initially useless in a fight, has a serious inferiority complex concerning the fact that his wife to be seems to love her imaginary friend more than him, and generally is mostly only on board the TARDIS for her. But he will not take crap if someone is in trouble and by the end of the 5th series has become a major mythical figure and badass fighter. Even after the timelines are reset he remembers living for 2000 years guarding his wife inside Pandora's box, and is an extremely competent fighter, able to face down an army of Cybermen if necessary. River had to get those genes from somewhere, I suppose...
    Amy Pond: [to her infant daughter, Melody, as both are being held prisoner by the Silence] I wish I could tell you that you'll be loved. That you'll be safe and cared for and protected. But this isn't the time for lies. What you are going to be, Melody, is very very brave. But not as brave as they [The Silence] all have to be. Because there's somebody coming. I don't know where he is, or what he's doing, but trust me. He's on his way. He's the last of his kind. He looks young but he's lived for hundreds and hundreds of years. And wherever they take you, Melody, however scared you are, I promise you, you will never be alone. Because this man is your father. He has a name, but the people of our world know him better... as the last Centurion.
  • Strax. The series goes out of its way to emphasize how useless he is, unable to adapt to any situation where the answer is not simply killing an enemy. Whenever the situation really does require killing an enemy however, he is the last person you want to go up against.
  • The Thirteenth Doctor is insanely cheerful and optimistic, easily excited, more than a little scatterbrained and occasionally forgets things like what gender she's supposed to be. However, threaten her or her friends and she'll drop this attitude in an instant in favor of ice cold, deadly calm rage. She also had no qualms about exposing the Master's treasonous behaviour to the Nazis he'd been working with, or stranding him in a different dimension with no hope of return.
• Mellie aka November from Dollhouse. She is a complete wallflower, with an annoying passive-aggressive crush on her neighbor Paul, to the point that she cooks him a pan of lasagna and passes it off as "making too much" when she lives alone. But when an overpowering intruder comes into her apartment and begins attacking her, she effortlessly takes him down with extreme prejudice. It turns out she is a Nikita-style sleeper doll, and was purposely put there by the Dollhouse.
• In the mid-70's TV revival of Ellery Queen, Jim Hutton portrayed the titular sleuth as an absent-minded klutz. Yet Queen remained a highly competent detective who kept stayed focused on the case. At the end of one mystery, he actually punched out a killer he had just outed!
• Steve Urkel of Family Matters fame is this trope played entirely for laughs. He's just so incompetent, inept, and prone to disaster that the amount of destruction he causes occasionally borders on the epic — never more so than in a nightmare sequence of Laura Winslow's. In the dream, Steve builds a fully-functioning nuclear weapon and inadvertently detonates it by uttering the code word "buttercup", blowing half of Chicago completely off the map and killing millions. As always, all Steve can say in light of his actions is "Did I do that?"
• Walter Sherman of The Finder seems a harmless, goofy man who's just two steps short of an institution. It's not until he's strung out from a bad Find and faced with three bad guys that we're reminded he was an Iraq veteran. He does so by killing two of them with their own guns before snapping the last one's neck.
• River from Firefly is a Crouching Crazy Hidden Badass. Most of the time, she tends to be a Cloudcuckoolander with some endearingly whimsical moments mixed in with seriously disturbing fits and a few Ax-Crazy moments. But mess with her brother Simon or her friend Kaylee, and she will take you down, whether by gunning down three men with her eyes closed or orchestrating an impressive Batman Gambit. And that's even before the Big Damn Movie.
• Game of Thrones universe:
  • Game of Thrones:
    • In spite of becoming a fat, lecherous, and drunken king, Robert is still no fool. He can still command obedience from his subordinates ("Stop this madness in the name of your king!"), knows a lot about war as shown by his summation of the Dothraki threat, and is acutely aware certain things that slip right past several otherwise intelligent characters, like how vulnerable Westeros really is due to the disunity plaguing his realm.
    • Podrick Payne is a bumbling and stammering squire, but he comes to Tyrion's rescue in battle none the less.
  • House of the Dragon: King Viserys Targaryen's conflict-avoidance personality makes him appear wussy and irresolute, but the few times he's moved to exert his royal authority, usually for the benefit of Rhaenyra, he shows he's a fine example of the regal might of the Targaryens and an unquestionable leader, even on his last legs.
• In Get Smart, Maxwell Smart may be a bumbling idiot most of the time, but when he realizes the situation is becoming make-or-break, then he buckles down and becomes nearly unstoppable.
• Elsebeth Tascioni is a recurring character on The Good Wife who comes off as an incredibly scatterbrained woman, going on wild tangents and more than once, characters openly ask if she has any idea what the hell is going on around her. Put her into the court, however, and she not only wins a case but in fantastic manner as her seemingly bizarre thinking leads her to moves no one else would consider.
  Will: I just realized. You're Rambo.
• Vince Teague, the mild-mannered small-town newspaper editor in Haven. When a menacing and muscular ex-con shows up in town and threatens Vince's little brother, you can see the until then goofy exterior slough off and his inner badass reveal itself. A couple seasons later it is revealed that Vince is the leader of the Guard, a badass organization of Troubled people who have protected other Troubled from persecution since Haven was founded.
• Hiro of Heroes is a Wrong Genre Savvy Otaku who spends most of each season suffering from his firm grasp on the Idiot Ball. But when he gets his act together and wades into the fight, he will own you. He has basically singlehandedly defeated Sylar (a couple of times), two seasonal Big Bads, and an entire government black ops agency. The only villain on the show who was ever any match for him was Arthur Petrelli, who had his same power (among many others).
• Highlander's Methos poses as a mild-mannered, sheltered scholar with the Watchers; even with his friends who know he's the oldest living Immortal, he'd rather lounge around drinking beer than accept a challenge. And he would just as soon not talk about how he used to be Death of the Four Horsemen.
  Methos: Just because I don't like to fight, doesn't mean that I can't.
• iCarly:
  • Gibby. If you are a friend, but betray his trust, or someone who dares kidnaps his friends, he won't think twice about beating the fudge out of you.
  • T-Bo, a background character who runs the Goovy Smoothy and is normally seen just putting random items on sticks to sell and being weird, reveals himself to be one in "iStill Psycho" when he helps Mrs. Benson rescue the iCarly gang from Nora and her equally insane family. Not only does he kick down the basement door so Carly can rescue Spenser, he singlehandedly takes down Nora's father.
• I Dream of Jeannie has Major Roger Healey, who is, well, many things. That being said - look at his astronaut insignia. It's the Army Astronaut Badge - the rarest badge issued by the U.S. Army.
• Bob Sweeney from Justified is an overweight, unpromotable constable whose cockiness has found him on the wrong side of a gun a couple of times. Push one of his berserk buttons or test his loyalty to Raylan, however, and you unleash a whole different beast. To date, he has taken down two attackers on separate occasions with a concealed knife, withstood a vicious beating and opened fire on a couple of guys with an AK-47 because they made fun of him. Raylan is always very respectful of Bob because he remembers that back in elementary school a bully started abusing Bob and when Bob had enough of it, he fought back so ruthlessly that the bully ended up in a coma. When Raylan is getting ready for a desperate Last Stand against a group of mob hitmen, he is quite happy to have Bob by his side.
  Raylan Givens: People underestimate Bob at their peril.
  • For bonus points, Bob is played by Patton Oswalt!
• Otoya Kurenai from Kamen Rider Kiva, who at first blush seems to be nothing more than a foolishly self-absorbed The Casanova who doesn't have a serious bone in his body. But then he starts pulling Batman Gambit after Batman Gambit, demonstrating an incredible degree of character judgement, and kicking monster butt with an experimental Powered Armor — typically stolen from its intended user as part of said Batman Gambit. It's no wonder that near the end of the series, the Fangire Queen, normally tasked with killing "race traitors" who fall in love with humans, has herself fallen for Otoya and would go on to bear their child, the show's protagonist Wataru.
  • Kagami Arata from Kamen Rider Kabuto. He's pretty much Good Is Dumb, especially compare to the show's protagonist Tendo Souji. Doesn't stop him from kicking ass, especially after becoming Gatack
• Love and Destiny:
  • Le Bo might be a fast-talking drunkard, but he used to be the Medicine King, many, many people owe him favors, and he's still got what it takes in a fight.
  • Yu Li is also a partial example, as she's on the surface a bubbly, brainless fairy... but she's also the current Medicine King's daughter, in charge of Medicine Hall and both a skilled doctor and adept at court intrigues.
• Married... with Children's Al Bundy. On occasion, for whatever reason, Al - schlubby loser Everyman Al - would take it upon himself to beat the living shit out of some poor bastard and he would do so with the psychotic glee you would expect from a man with often literally no other joy. Of all the things Al Bundy failed at - and Al Bundy failed at almost everything he put his hand to - he never once lost a fist fight (or was even mentioned to have lost a fistfight) in the show's entire history.
• Merlin may be bumbling, clumsy and at times, naive, but I dare you to get on his bad side. He can certainly kick anyone's butt with the use of his powerful and dangerous magic. Especially if you hurt his loved ones.
• Adrian Monk: Socially inept, obsessive-compulsive and afraid of everything. But he manages to solve the most baffling crimes and he can hold his own in a fight — he was a cop once, remember. And if you even so much as insult Trudy, he will hand you your ass. In the episode where the suspect was a marathon runner, who grabs the key piece of evidence and takes off on foot. Monk proves that he used to be a great runner in school by giving chase (especially in his new sneakers which he got from his idol).
• Mystery Science Theater 3000 has Gypsy, who in The Beatniks. beats down her creator Joel after he was being mean to the other robots by cheating at 'Rock, Paper, Scissors'.
• NCIS's Anthony "Tony" DiNozzo. He's a Chivalrous Pervert and, at times, a Manchild. An example usually comes up Once an Episode. His backstory is that he decided to go into the police force after he, a civilian out for a walk, saved a young boy from a house fire, and failed to save the boy's younger sister. He became the single best officer in the department before becoming Gibbs' right hand.
  • Example of the "Crouching Moron" part from Season 2's episode, "Bikini Wax". DiNozzo and Kate are going to a prison to interrogate the cellmate of their prime suspect. Tony lectures Kate on the way there about how they're supposed to keep their guards up, since prisoners have nothing to lose. A few minutes into the interrogation, Tony notices an Alpha Chi Delta tattoo, and...
  • Example of the "Hidden Badass" part...pretty much every time he's involved in an interrogation. Not only is he skilled at making the ones interrogated say more than they should by annoying them, he can make the ones interrogating him say more than they should. Prime example from "Aliyah": Eli David, head of Mossad, accidentally says too much to Tony while the former is interrogating the latter...and while Vance, Gibbs, and Ziva are watching.
  • Example of both at once: He's been captured by a terrorist in the Middle East while on a mission to find Ziva. He's been given truth serum, and is answering every question put to him about the team, completely honestly but with his usual frat-boy snark. Finally, toward the end, when his interrogator is ready to pull the trigger on him, Tony says, "You have 30 seconds to live, Saleem." The man is baffled and agitated and accuses him of lying. Tony's response? "I can't lie. And I never said I'd be the one who killed you. Remember when I told you that my boss was a Marine sniper?" Saleem has just enough time to process that before a bullet comes through the window and kills him.
• On NYPD Blue, Greg Medavoy is every stereotype of an ineffectual cop - short, paunchy, nebbish, allergic to everything, governed entirely by his neuroses, and afflicted by a stuttering problem that becomes 100 times worse around attractive women. Until someone he's responsible for is threatened, at which point he acts more decisively than anyone else on the police force, up to and including outdrawing a gunman or tackling suspects many times his size. In the 15th precinct, there is nothing more pathetic than being Greg and nothing more safe than being Greg's partner.
• Power Rangers:
  • R.J., Trickster Mentor of Power Rangers Jungle Fury, seems at first to be nothing more than an overly mellow pizza restauranteur. Then he steps out of the kitchen and reveals himself by taking down a squad of Mooks without breaking stride, and suddenly the guy who seemed like bumbling comic relief a few seconds ago takes on a whole new light. He barely changes at all, busting out the crazy martial arts skills while remaining as calm and carefree as ever.
  • Phineas from Power Rangers Mystic Force is an odd example of this. He's the Plucky Comic Relief of the series, but amidst his antics, he often—no, always gives the good guys a crucial helping hand whenever he appears. The apex is shown when he, Leelee, and Clare infiltrate the villains' lair in the fourth-to-last episode of the series, and he singlehandedly Curb-Stomps a group of Styxoids that come to stop them.
• Robot Wars:
  • Diotoir from original series was an obvious joke entry featuring a rather ineffective weapon and covered in highly flammable red polka dot fur. However, its predecessor Nemesis defeated a house robot, and Diotoir itself reached 2 Heat finals, the semis of the First World Championship and was one of the few robots to hand Tornado a defeat. Beware the beast in red dotted fur.
  • The rebooted series had Nuts 2, a robot armed with a pair of flails (usually considered a Joke Weapon in robot combat) and a team of pilots who freely admitted they have no idea what they're doing. In its first two series it was quickly eliminated, but in Series 10, a set of upgrades allowed it to breeze through its heat and finish 3rd in Grand Final, even handing the reigning champion Carbide its first defeat since Series 8.
• Rome:
  • Brutus. Doesn't seem to understand or care much for politics at the start and comes off as a bit of a ditz, yet when push comes to shove he can not only stick a knife in you but lead an army to battle.
  • Titus Pullo at the start of the series. In a show swarming with badasses he manages to be the second most badass of them all (only outdone by Vorenus) but he can be rather dense at times, tends to not think things through and has some utter ditz moments (see the quote below). As the series progresses though he becomes less and less the moron part, due to his Character Development.
    Cicero: I daresay, your work today will earn you immortality.
    Pullo: [very pleased] How's that?
    Cicero: I will be in all the history books. My killer's name no doubt will live on also.
    Pullo: Ah. My name. [laughs awkwardly] I thought you meant me.
• RuPaul's Drag Race has Shangela, who didn't even survive the first week of Season 2, come back Season 3 as an opening plot twist... and proceed to last through over half the season (notably winning a comedy-routine based challenge in the process!)
• Scrubs:
  • Todd "The Todd" Quinlan is an utter meathead, seemingly only capable of communicating through innuendo and That's What She Said jokes. But he is also a ridiculously talented surgeon, one of the best in the hospital.
  • Elliot is a pretty stereotypical spoiled rich girl, but she's still a surprisingly competent and dirty fighter.
    Carla: How did you learn to fight like that?
    Elliot: Well, when you grow up on an orchard, you don't have much choice...
    [Carla stares]
    Elliot: Apple thieves.
    Carla: Ah...
• Sharpe: Mentioned in passing, in reference to Tippoo, the Sultan of Mysore, against whose troops Sharpe cut his teeth as a fighting man.
  [His bodyguards] were all big bastards, and he were but a fat little bugger. But he died as hard as any six of them.
• Sledge Hammer!; his catchphrase, "Trust me, I know what I'm doing." is a blatant lie, but when the chips are down, his awesomeness kicks in.
• Slow Horses: Jackson Lamb, like his literary counterpart, is no slouch. Sure, he looks like an overweight, flatulent, chain-smoking alcoholic who's never eaten a vegetable or done a load of laundry in his life — and fair enough, that's because it's true — but he's also a veteran of the Cold War whose exploits were legendary, and when he can be roused from his self-imposed exile to Slough House, he's a frighteningly efficient intelligence officer.
• From Stargate SG-1: Colonel Jack O'Neill. Probably more a case of Obfuscating Stupidity, as you couldn't get to officer rank (much less Colonel) without being fairly smart; he's just a very "military" guy and would like to be told that yes, this alien/Ancient technology/doodad will do what he thinks it will, instead of listening to a lengthy technical explanation about why it will do what he thinks it will. He acts Book Dumb in everything remotely scientific. He never reads Carter's reports, he refuses to listen to Daniel explain some ancient piece of writing or technology, and acts as if nothing matters except The Simpsons. But when some dumb Goa'uld or other bad guy threatens his team or the Earth, he gets very serious, and reminds you just why he's leading this team. In the season 5 episode "Rite of Passage", Cassandra lampshades this, saying, "Jack likes to pretend he's not as smart as he really is."
  • A single conversation with Ba'al during a temporary alliance pretty much sums up why he floats between this and Obfuscating Stupidity.
    Ba'al: You cannot be serious.
    Jack: Oh I can! I just choose not to.
  • He also happens to be an amateur astronomer (a single comment about an accretion disc results in Daniel hitting a figurative brick wall while talking). When he's not using the telescope on his roof to spy on neighbors, that is.
    • He's only an amateur in the sense that he isn't paid for doing astronomy. It turns out he's got a Masters Degree in astronomy and really is that smart. He's also smart enough to know that he doesn't need to know everything his subordinates know, just that they know about whatever situation is at hand.
• The 1991 series Step by Step had Sasha Mitchell's Cody Lambert as the beach bum slacker nephew of Patrick Duffy's Frank Lambert. Though normally a clueless "Valley Dude", in one episode when braced by a group of bikers in a bar, Cody showed why he's played by the man who made two "Kickboxer" films. After clearing the bar of bikers, he reverted to goofy flake with the following dialog;
  Carol: Cody, I didn't know you knew karate!
  Cody: Cha, me neither! I'm gonna have to go back and re-read some of my old diaries!
• Stranger Things's fourth season introduces Agent Harmon, a minor character looking after the California crew who looks to be a out-of-shape middle-age man who sits around watching TV all the time. Then the house is attacked and he proceeds to go One-Man Army on the attackers in a absolutely amazing one-take fight, killing five goons. While mortally wounded, he does get his charges to safety and gives them a clue to Eleven's location, earning him the in-universe nickname of "Unknown Hero Agent Man".
• Played with in Disney's The Suite Life: Apparently London Tipton is quite the athlete (notably in volleyball), but only when she's mad.
• This is pretty much Castiel from Supernatural. Perpetual confused look, especially when it comes to humans but piss him off and he can kick your ass to hell and back.
  • Also Gabriel in a sense. This is an archangel who is pissing around messing with humanity.
  • To quote Dean: "Word to the wise: don't piss off the nerd angels."
  • Garth comes off as a scrawny dork and a ditz who doesn't seem to be able to take anything seriously (a seemingly really bad combo for a hunter). He also has a bad habit of getting knocked unconscious by the monster of the week when he's working a case with the Winchesters. However, he used to be a dentist before being a hunter, which means he got through college and dental school, he got into hunting as a dentist by killing a fairy^note Specifically the Tooth Fairy (something veteran hunter Dean only managed through dumb luck), and when Bobby dies, he takes over Bobby's job almost seamlessly.
• Super Sentai: Genta from Samurai Sentai Shinkenger, and by extension Antonio from Power Rangers Samurai, fit this to a tee: laid-back, goofy, and the definite Plucky Comic Relief characters of their respective shows, but when it comes time to throw down, they unleash the fury.
• In social game shows like Survivor and the American Big Brother, a good (albeit boring) strat is to make everyone think you're not a threat to them, so they won't target you for eliminations. Then, you start playing much harder and make them regret not taking you out in hindsight.
  • Perhaps the most triumphant example in Survivor was Fabio. His entire strategy was basically him flanderizing his himbo personality and flying under the radar while the alliances pick off at people perceived to be bigger targets. Then when he was the only target in between the easily beaten Dan, he finally started to win immunity, and then tricked Chase and Sash into telling Jane they were voting her out TO HER FACE! He then chain-won immunity all the way into the final three, making Chase and Sash both think "Oh, Crap!".
  • Attempted but failed with Brett and Ashley. Both Brett and Ashley just kept their mouths shut and hid behind numbers so they wouldn't be targeted. Then all of a sudden, they start competing well in challenges and force the dominant alliance to vote each other out first. Immediately the person in charge of the game thinks Oh, Crap! because this person they perceived to be a nothing is actually not bad at the game. Unfortunately; Brett & Ashley both failed to win the final immunity and were therefore the final member of the jury.
  • The first time Cirie Fields played Survivor, she was almost voted out very early in the game twice due to her lack of physical ability and general aversion to the great outdoors. However, Her motherly attitude and unassuming demeanor not only made her some powerful (and attention-deflecting) friends, but also hid a very shrewd strategist, and she managed to make it all the way to the final 4 with some truly brilliant gameplay, including One of the greatest power plays in Survivor history. Not bad for the self-declared couch potato.
  • Before either of those three, we had Lillian Morris. She was very emotional and would cry at the drop of a hat...and became Fairplay's personal Butt-Monkey. After a bit of Fridge Brilliance where he avoided elimination at the final four and had to face two people who weren't good competitors, Lil immediately takes to the final immunity challenge and doesn't move a muscle, while Fairplay starts trying to cut a deal, only for Lil to constantly shoot him down and taunt him to break down his spirit.
• Jackie Burkhart serves The Ditz with a Hair-Trigger Temper on That '70s Show.
  • Eric proves to be one of these when he beats up a guy who insults Red during a Packers-Bears football game.
• Jason Stackhouse spends most of True Blood constantly doing absolutely stupid shit, because he's dumb as a stump, and is often led about by just about anyone. Threaten his sister Sookie, however, and he will not just step up; he'll absolutely take you down and make the audience's jaws drop. But he's still dumb as a stump for the most part. This appears to be somehow related to Sookie being around. When she disappears for months, she returns to find him a full-fledged cop, having become much more responsible in the meantime and even running the police station, more or less, when the sheriff turns out to be a drug addict.
• True Lies (2023):
  • Harry claims that the old woman from next door they left watching their kids is actually a trained assassin. The same woman is shown calmly talking to their kids showing them pictures of cats. When called on though, she pulls a gun and leaps into readiness.
  • At first, no one can believe "The Wolf," a notorious contract killer, comes off as a nerdy guy geeking out over everyone. Then he gets in the field and transforms into a stone-cold assassin whose ruthlessness horrifies even veteran agents.
• Agent Bill Hoyt of Undercovers. He's usually the nerdy, sycophantic tech guy for the Blooms; but in the episode "Xerxes" he single-handedly takes down the villainess after learning that she had almost manipulated him into falling in love with her.
• Walker, Texas Ranger has had many minor characters, young and old, fall under this trope:
  • Trent Malloy's younger brother, Tommy. Several times, he and his best friend, Adam, have been beaten up at school during the events of "Sons of Thunder", but it's not until Trent opens his dojo and teaches the two boys a thing or two about self-defense does it eventually come in handy in future episodes.
  • The boys of the Ranger Teen Camp from Season 5's "Last Hope", Eddie Del Toro, Joey and Clifton, all fall under this, but of the boys, Eddie is the most notable who deserves this award. A much-bullied pre-teen, at school and at home at the hands of his mother's abusive live-in boyfriend, Eddie becomes the seventh kid to join the camp. The camp was originally composed of two boys and five girls, until one girl ended up pregnant, to which Eddie ended up filling in for her. While the three boys confront the drug dealers who attacked the camp as they threaten Trivette, Eddie was able to take out one of them by hitting them over the head with a frying pan. Needless to say, it earned Eddie praise from his classmates.

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