Dumb Muscle / Literature

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• After Dark, My Sweet: Most people assume Collie is this, as he's a rather awkward former boxer prone to going off on rambling tangents and tends to come off as naive and gullible in casual conversation. In reality, his apparent stupidity is actually the result of a mental illness Collie suffers from, and he's actually quite cunning and astute. He does do his best to try to correct people, but he's just as prone to exploiting this to his own benefit.
• Boxer from Animal Farm is probably stronger than all the other animals on the farm combined, but it's noted that he's pretty Book Dumb. Nevertheless, he is a very hard worker who steadfastly believes in his leader. Unfortunately, as time goes on, he ages and loses the muscle, so the pigs sell him to the knacker.
• The Hork-Bajirs in Animorphs are very strong and resistant creatures. They are also peaceful and meek. But with few exceptions, they are not very clever.
• Apparently, Disillusioned Adventurers Will Save the World: Karan is uneducated: one of the consequences of coming from a culture that only cares about pure combat power. Her betrayal at the hands of her first party rubbed her nose in just how dangerous it is to let others do all the thinking for her while she charges in blindly. Since joining the Survivors she's been struggling to fix this, with her new teammates helping by teaching her tactics, mathematics, and various other useful things she hasn't had the chance to learn before.
• Justified in Area 7. Goliath has a steel plate in his head. The other Giant Mooks in later books are about as smart.
• In the third Artemis Fowl book, Mulch is taken away by two of these, Pex and Chips. They were not hired for their brains, and are not allowed out of Chicago, "as this could involve map reading." When they're taking Mulch away, their conversation is them figuring out the other's nicknames-after much discussion, they figure out that one has huge chest muscles, and the other eats-oh, never mind.
• Ascendance of a Bookworm: People getting their mandatory education at the Royal Academy can do one of four paths: leadership (reserved for the heirs to duchies and their back-up siblings), scholar, knight or attendant. While several smart knights have been introduced, the path seems to be a magnet for people who consider themselves to be dumb or hate doing work that requires them to use their head. The Royal Academy's library is also further away from the knight building than it is from the scholar and attendant buildings, which says a lot about how often some people in the far past expected knights to want to read.
• Bazil Broketail: Thrembode is big, strong and not very bright, being at the bottom of the list of dragon trainees when it comes to tactical skills and lore.
• The independent, overmuscled thug known as Tony Donuts in "Callahan's Lady," by Spider Robinson. Tony is actually so stupid that he's difficult to con; against him, a character warns, a plan has to be not just foolproof, but moron-proof. This comes to a head when he demands his counterfeit money back and a con artist tries to give him real bills; the trouble is that all of Tony's bogus bills have the same serial number — it was too much trouble to change the plates — so that he instantly recognized he was being tricked.
• Chrysalis (RinoZ):
  • Not only does Tiny the Lightning Fist Ape play this completely straight, he actually becomes less intelligent every time he evolves, in exchange for extraordinarily high bonuses to physical strength. Anthony affectionately refers to him with such terms as "thicker than a concrete milkshake" and "the Cunning of brick forged out of smaller bricks that were themselves made of the distilled energy of pure stupid," but Tiny still serves a very valuable role in dishing out damage to both individuals and groups; even the thick hides of Garralosh's children can't entirely stop his fists.
    Anthony: I'm actually impressed, Tiny. You may be thick as three bricks fused into one, but you know what you like and you've stuck with it.
  • The Rhinosergradon is covered all over in armour so tough and so all-encompassing that even a Coup de Grâce can't work, and can build up so much momentum when charging forward that it's considered to be an unstoppable force. However, it has so little brainpower that that unstoppable charge is the only strategy it knows how to use.
  • When designing shadow monster pets, the Core Shaper ants deliberately reduce their Cunning so as to have more energy available for physical enhancements. Since the pets are meant to be entirely controlled and directed by their ant handlers, they don't need to be independently smart.
• Subverted by Conan the Barbarian. It is often suggested that Conan is in fact one of the most brilliant men of his age. Not only does he have a brilliant tactical mind and sharp wit to go with that ripped physique, but he also spoke multiple languages (including dead ones) and is implied to be the author of the Song of Belit. He's no scholar, but he's not an idiot either.
  Conan: "I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom's realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer's Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content."
• Discworld examples abound, though they are usually at least partly subverted. Here are a few:
  • Banjo, from Hogfather.
  • Paul Perks, Polly's brother from Monstrous Regiment.
  • Detritus the Troll, more-so in his earlier appearances. Most Discworld trolls are Dumb Muscle, depending on the weather. Trolls have silicon-based brains, much like computers. In warm climes, their brains overheat, and they become stupid. It's been said that while smart trolls come down from their cold, cold mountains, dumb trolls arrive on the warm, warm plains. Detritus got his intelligence upgrade when a friend figured this out and built a fan into his helmet.
  • Mr. Tulip, from The Truth.
  • Terry Pratchett often subverts this trope by putting clever or profound statements in the mouths of Dumb Muscle characters, often with the smug addendum, "I may be slow, but I ain't stupid."
    William de Worde: William de Worde. Ankh-Morpork Times.
    Detritus: I don't read dat.
    De Worde: We'll put out a large print edition.
    Detritus: Ho, ho, dat very funny. But fick as I am, I'm still the one saying you can't go past.
    - The Truth
  • The Nac Mac Feegle are all superhumanly strong, but tend to be impulsive and belligerent rather than outright stupid. Then there's Daft Wullie who, as the name implies, isn't the sharpest sword in the armory.
• Subverted in the Dragonlance series with Caramon Majere. Although at first glance he seems like a Dumb Bruiser, content to just hit stuff and let Raistlin or Tanis do the thinking, he is quite insightful and the authorial annotations remark that although he may not be smart, he has always been very wise and capable of making good decisions if he thinks things through.
• In the Dred Chronicles, one of the gang bosses on the lawless Prison Ship Perdition is noted for actively preferring things this way. He favours this kind of prisoner to recruit into his gang, and really, is a pretty big example of it himself. He doesn't get subtlety, and tends to kill people who try to explain it to him.
• Adus, The Brute in The Elenium, is a barely literate thug who struggles to say any word with more than one syllable, eats raw meat, spurs his horses to death on a regular basis, and communicates with his Mooks through kicks, slaps, and grunts. He is something of a savant when it comes to small unit tactics, ably deploying his Zemochs in pairs and trios to fend off the Church Knights despite his lack of communication skills, but in the words of the author is, in "most other respects profoundly, even frighteningly stupid."
  • From a magical standpoint, Azash’s high priest Otha is feared across the world as one of the most powerful sorcerers alive... but Sephrenia realizes his incredible laziness and stupidity has the world shaking in their boots over an imbecile.
• In Firebird (Lackey), all of Ivan's sons, save for Ilya, are Dumb Muscle to varying degrees. Piotr however is the most cunning... not smart, but cunning. The Katschei's demons are even worse.
• FKA USA by Reed King has Tiny Tim. The protagonist, Truckee declares Tiny Tim to be by far the largest man he'd ever seen, with fists bigger than Truckee's head. Tiny Tim is even stronger than he looks, capable of punching down a door. The key to his size, strength and later stupidity came from working for a Texas oil billionaire in a dystopian fractured future USA. The decadent old bastard wanted to hire Tim to be his bull for bull-riding, so he had Tim undergo various bioengineering treatments to turn him more into a Big Scary Black Man. After months of working and not getting paid, Tim stole some cash from the guy but got caught. So he was sentenced to become a Straw Man or spend decades in prison, he opted for the first and the state then surgically lobotomized him.
• Menelaos in Greek Ninja sometimes appears dumb, although he's more of a goofball rather than actually dumb.
• Harry Potter:
  • Crabbe and Goyle are thicker than trolls and built about the same way — they spend most of their time flanking Draco Malfoy and hardly even speak.
  • On the Muggle side, Dudley Dursley (Harry's cousin and childhood bully) is mostly "dumb blubber", though his sheer size is enough to intimidate most kids his age. He gets worse after taking up boxing, though Harry himself is used to things much scarier than Dudley by then.
  • Also trolls themselves, as well as giants (typified by Hagrid's half-brother Grawp).
  • Hagrid himself is the friendliest half-giant man you'll ever meet, able to resist tremendous amounts of damage, even his friends and colleagues know he's just not very clever. Examples include hatching dragons, crossbreeding manticores and fire crabs (in a wooden house), trying to teach Grawp to speak English, and hosting a "Support Harry Potter" party at his house during a Death Eater Reign of Terror.
• Tiny (Wolfgang Creutzfeldt) from the WW2 novels by Sven Hassel.
• The Honorverse has the Scrags (formally, Sacred Brotherhood), a old group of Super Soldiers that, as of the present, are rarely used as much else. The Amazons (Scrags who didn't care for the whole "women are slaves to do with as men please" thing of Masadan theology) attached to Thandi Palane, in Crown of Slaves, though, were put through schooling to correct their educational deficit, though socially they're still not quite up to speed on "subhuman" social skills.
• In terms of the Achaian warriors of the Trojan War, Ajax Telamon is this. He is the largest and strongest fighter in the war, and the Achaian's second best fighter after Achilles. He is also noted for being less cunning and eloquent than the other big name heroes. His downfall comes when Odysseus defeats him in a debate on who should get Achilles' armor. The stories differ, but all agree that he ultimately kills himself in shame.
• James Bond
  • Caber from Licence Renewed, at least Dr. Murik thinks of him that way. He is glad that Bond (under the guise of a mercenary) is offering his services, since he has a need for "intelligent muscle".
  • Nicknamed "The Idiot", Kauffburger from COLD is a typical example; big, strong, but barely enough brains to even speak properly.
  • Bond's ally Mathis Never Dream of Dying comes across a mook of this caliber, and is able to deal with him quickly.
• Subversion: This is how most characters in L.A. Confidential perceive Bud White. Dudley Smith ostensibly drafted him into his enterprise based on his scary looks and propensity for violence. Turns out, however, that he is both smarter and more noble than anyone (himself included) gives him credit for.
• Almost always averted for human beings in The Laundry Files; you have stupid zombies, demons, etc. but even the random human guard or mook is actually smart. The OCCULUS team, which is The Cavalry (a Badass Normal elite military unit specialized in dealing with occult threats), are both expert fighters, well-organised soldiers and very intelligent people in their own right. Justified, because the books make it very clear that people involved in occult intelligence or in sorcerous schemes to take over the world just can't be dumb if they expect to survive a few weeks of work, whatever their level of badass.
• In Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Monster Men, the created men.
  Your greatest error was in striving at first for such physical perfection. You have overdone it, with the result that the court of mystery is peopled by a dozen brutes of awful muscularity, and scarcely enough brain among the dozen to equip three properly.
• Narnia: Giants may be good or evil, but they're never clever. The "Gentle Giants" of the northern wastes try to be deceptive, but they're no good at it.
• Of Mice and Men: Lennie is an archetypal example. Deconstructed in that being a mentally retarded individual with huge strength brings him and those around him nothing but misery, and ultimately leads to the infamously tragic ending where Curley's wife stupidly flirts with him, then his dim-witted fixation with petting her hair makes her panic; he's so dumb he can't realise that she's scared and so, when she screams in fear, he tries to make her be quiet only to smother her in the attempt, forcing George to shoot him to keep him out of the brutal hands of a lynch mob.
• Orphans of the Sky: Bobo, a mutant with dwarfism and microcephaly, is very simple-minded and doesn't concern himself with concepts that don't involve fighting, eating, or comfort. He is also exceptionally strong and very fast, which combined with his absolute loyalty to Joe-Jim makes him the primary bruiser and physical fighter for the main cast.
• Shota from Paladin of Shadows. He has difficulty counting to five, but wears ridiculous amounts of armour and carries a rocket launcher like the other Keldara carry rifles.
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians shows us one of the few, female examples. Clarisse, the daughter of Ares, is a warriorness who should not be underestimated. She is also, for a girl, very strong and muscular. But intelligence is not her forte.
• Hoppy Uniatz, regular companion of The Saint.
• Nicko Heap in Septimus Heap is described as being unusually strong but also often as careless.
• In Smaller & Smaller Circles, the police and the NBI rank-and-file could count as this on an institutional scale. They may have the authority to arrest, detain and kill suspected criminals, but they're not very strategic in their thinking, and if not for the Director's foresight to call on outside expertise in the form of the priests, their collective power would still prove useless against a smart Serial Killer, at least partly because both agencies can't be bothered to solve what they perceive to be non-essential, "nobody cases" (i.e., the victims were nobodies).
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Hodor, the retarded giant, and Small Paul, the simple-minded soldier. Even those big and strong characters who aren't exactly stupid, such as Gregor Clegane and Victarion Greyjoy, tend to scorn complexity and subtlety. The race of actual Giants in the series is noticeably low-tech. On the flip side, the series's smartest characters, Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish and Tyrion the Imp, are quite short.
• Gamorreans in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, especially Jabba the Hutt's Gamorrean Guards, who include such powerhouses as Thok, the incredibly appropriately named Thug ("When you need muscle for a job, a Gamorrean makes a good choice"), and Gartogg, who was dim even by Gamorrean standards, having Hulk Speak while others do not.
• Strike the Zither: Lotus is an excellent fighter, but she can't read and never quite understands any of Zephyr's elaborate plans.
• Br'er Bear in the Uncle Remus' stories.
• The zombies/goblins in the Monster Mash neo-noir Wolfman Confidential serve as the foot soldiers of the two most powerful mafias in the city. Ogres also serve this purpose in general, but we only see the one doorman.

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