Ditzy Genius / Video Games

• Cyberpunk 2077: Johnny Silverhand can appear as either this trope or Genius Ditz depending upon what he does or is going to do when a person first meets him. On the genius side of the trope, one only needs to talk to him to know that he is well-read in a variety of topics including art history, political theory, cryptography, and computer science. On The Ditz side, however, he is someone who fully embraces the destructive nature of the Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll lifestyle without fear and then ups it by joining a terrorist group. In addition, he is seemingly incapable of interacting with the world without insults or violence, destroys long-term relationships for short-term gratification, and hates corporations so much that he allows Saburo Arasaka to punch him in the nose if it results in him getting a bruised knuckle. In short, he is the epitome of an Erudite Stoner who speaks in a Sophisticated as Hell manner, is impulsive, and has a short attention span as well as a shorter temper.
• Measurehead in Disco Elysium is a Genius Bruiser who works as The Dragon for the local Neighbourhood-Friendly Gangsters. A large Scary Black Man, who despite being eloquent and well-read, utilizes Insane Troll Logic to defend his Boomerang Bigot ideology based in anthropometric-based racism, to the point he has phrenology charts tattooed all over his body. He's also astute enough to be one of the only two characters in the game capable of convincing Harry that alcoholism is ruining his life and helping him quit, and also shares with him the only good piece of advice that he gets about his goal to return to the past — that he doesn't want to, and should embrace the freedom and opportunities of the modern world instead of retreating inwards in failure.
• Dragon Age II: Merrill is a brilliant mage and historian well noted for her talents. She's also extremely naïve, very socially awkward, has little in the way of common sense (for some time she considered muggings to be some form of greeting), and an absolutely abysmal sense of direction. This is both played for laughs and treated seriously.
• The Sophons of Endless Space, they're just as likely to run away screaming from a planetary anomaly or study it despite being irradiated. Endless Space 2 reveals their rapid advances (they were the first to use nuclear power, mine asteroids, and so on) came with similar amounts of catastrophic SCIENCE-induced cock-ups (they were also the first to crash their test rockets, set off artificial earthquakes on their homeworld, and accidentally blow up their own moon).
• In Final Fantasy XIV, the Warrior of Light is The Ace and an Instant Expert at nearly every craft they put their mind to, be it battling Physical Gods or becoming an artisan. But several of their dialogue options and journal entries make them come across as a Cloudcuckoolander. For instance, when looking for an object at the bottom of an ice-cold, murky pond, they can offer to try and drink the pond dry to get to the thing they're looking for. They can also be a Supreme Chef but completely fail to register that the "squishy" spices they just retrieved from a shipwreck are rancid and moldy.
• Morgan from Fire Emblem: Awakening is the player character's son/daughter and, much like their parent, is a Badass Bookworm with a love for tactics and Easy Amnesia. While it's clear from Morgan's thought processes that they're very intelligent, the issue is that, despite appearing to be anywhere from fifteen to their early twenties, Morgan spends a lot of time literally bashing their head against posts, asking bandits if their mother would be proud of them for their actions (it doesn't work), and other similar actions. It becomes obvious Morgan lacks a lot of common sense and is very naïve, and their amnesia probably doesn't help matters, either.
• Played for Horror in Five Nights at Freddy's with the Big Bad, William Afton. He was a Robot Master and Serial Killer who despite being brilliant was a low-functioning sociopath whose single-minded obsession with child murder and general lack of foresight led to him being Hoist by His Own Petard on several occasions. He decides to climb inside the springlock suit even when the condition it's in makes it highly likely to kill him, and even as Springtrap knows that the pizzeria in the sixth game isn't what it seems but can't resist the opportunity to kill more kids. Both of these examples lead to his death.
• Voridus in the Awakening the Nightmare DLC for Halo Wars 2, who is surprisingly adept with Forerunner technology and successfully experiments with Covenant technology. He's also a competent fighter. But he is so eager to prove himself to Atriox that he inevitably keeps failing him, and despite repeated warnings from both Atriox and his brother Pavium, he breaches the energy shield around the ruins of High Charity and releases the Flood, almost dooming the galaxy.
• In the Kingdom Hearts series, particularly high magic potential seems to be tied to intelligence, with characters like Zexion and Aqua showing high aptitude in magic. The character with the highest magical potential in the series? Donald Duck, who isn't just a mage, but also a powerful wizard. He's also, well, Donald Duck, with all his usual stubbornness and lack of common sense.
• Yukiko Amagi of Persona 4 has a bit of this. Intelligence-wise, she's very smart, as her best friend Chie remarks that Yukiko always ranks near the top of the school charts when it comes to exams, and she's also often the one to make important deductions about the murder case the group is working on (up until Naoto joins the group, anyway). On the other hand, she's capable of being very air-headed too, often displaying a remarkable ability to miss the entire point of a conversation (for instance, not knowing that a guy asking her to "go somewhere" with him was asking her out on a date, or thinking Yosuke is making a dirty remark when he suggests Yukiko give him some "private lessons" during a conversation about studying), and occasionally spaces out completely when others are talking to her.
• Ratchet & Clank: Downplayed with the titular character Clank. Compared with Ratchet, he is the more Book Smart of the duo, but unlike most robots depicted in media, he inverts the No Social Skills trope as he usually plays the Straight Man to Ratchet. However, he does have his ditzy moments with one example being the time he thought a Disguised in Drag Qwark was his sister at first.
• Kiel of Rune Factory 4 takes great joy in reading books and learning about all sorts of things. However, he apparently failed to grasp the basic concepts of secrecy, deceit, or even just being a prankster, because he takes everyone's words at face value and can't keep anything in confidence—not that he deliberately goes around telling people, mind you; he just tends to let things slip when he shouldn't. He's also naïve and inexperienced in the real world, despite his vast reading list.
• Sonic the Hedgehog: Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik is a genius who has an IQ of 300, capable of singlehandedly building entire fleets of airships and space stations as well as armies of killer robots. However, he usually dresses his machines in garish colors, tends to throw temper tantrums whenever he's on the losing side and has a tendency to paste his face on everything. In addition to almost always including an incredibly obvious weak point in all of his robots (which is not unusual or unexpected for video game villains), special mention must be made of the Egg Dealer — a slot machine robot that had a random chance of attacking himself or even giving Shadow immediate access to his ultimate technique. Got to wonder what he was thinking when he programmed those particular features in.
• Luigi, of Super Mario Bros.. When he's turned evil in Super Paper Mario, he manages to build a giant killer robot that takes over two hundred hits with an alien space laser to go down in a couple of hours, owns his own airship (that he's implied to have built himself), is a master at card games, is explicitly stated to be the brains of the brothers, when Mario has a job which already requires someone to be very smart, and, yet, acts extremely childish when he's on adventures.
• Super Robot Wars:
  • Lamia Loveless in Super Robot Wars Advance is a completely competent mecha pilot — calm, analytical and deadly in battle. During her normal life, however, she tends to act ditzy. This is justified since she is a Ridiculously Human Robot who was created mere years ago and had only recently discovered what it felt like to be human.
  • Yong Gebana of Super Robot Wars: Original Generation: Dark Prison has a seemingly serious personality when it counts and apparently operates "by the book" most of the time. She has a slight obsession with data, which is represented by how she acquires and utilizes data constantly when in actual combat (her debut chapter is called "Auditor Girl", referencing this). She has some slight "ditz" moments at times and we are usually shown her self monologues on which she usually "assorts" the current situation when she doesn't get something.
• Tales Series:
  • Harold from Tales of Destiny 2 is an eccentric, unpredictable, childish and sometimes downright psychotic young lady; yet, she is the genius behind the creation of the Swordians, and a magic expert. The writers of Vesperia seem to have taken a bit of her when making Rita; theory supported by a Harold mask usable by her (as an Attachment) and her Miska Doctoral Degree costume title, very reminiscent of Harold's garment.
  • Rita Mordio in Tales of Vesperia. A prodigy mage at the age of fifteen, but possessing absolutely no social skills. She's rude, direct, violently assaults those who bother her and cares nothing for other people. This can be chalked up to her young age and that she was raised (as an orphan) in a university town filled with self-absorbed scientists.
  • Pascal in Tales of Graces is a lot more sociable than Rita, but she's so energetic that she's nigh-incomprehensible when she gets excited, and she can't read social situations: she doesn't so much break the tension in a room as much as crash through it head-first. She also has no concept of personal space.
• Team Fortress 2:
  • Prolonged exposure to Australium can not only lead to Testosterone Poisoning of muscle growth, women growing facial hair, and men growing chest hair in the shape of a country or state connected to them, but also increases intelligence while lowering common sense leading to this trope. The Engineer's grandfather Radigan Conagher was once tasked by the U.S. government to work with it, which increased his intelligence to the point of being able to create a fully functional prosthetic limb but also lead him to saw off his own hand so that he could use it. Australia’s population as a result of working with the metal has led it to become the most technologically advanced nation, but it also uses the technology for the most ridiculous of reasons and they decide their king through kangaroo boxing.
  • The Medic may look like he has it fairly together on the field, but look a little closer and you'll find out otherwise. For example, he apparently believes that the best way to talk to a patient during surgery (the patient being his Heterosexual Life Partner, no less) is to regale him with the story of how he lost his medical license (it involved removing the entire skeleton from a man who lived to tell the tale). It's fairly obvious that the man is both socially inept and generally round the twist.
• Uncle Albert from Uncle Albert's Adventures is a skilled scientist and engineer, but according to the narrator, people would call Albert either a genius or a crazy man for doing "useless things" such as raising bugs, counting stars and building useless machines.

---