Genius Bruiser / Live-Action TV

Sports Agent: How many football players do you know who speak four languages, read philosophy, and run with the bulls at Pamplona?
Det. Lennie Briscoe: Guy sounds brilliant. Except for the part about the bulls.

— Law & Order, "Maritime"

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• Both Grizz and Dot Com from 30 Rock are very large (well over 6 feet tall and very well-built) Scary Black Men who serve as Tracy Jordan's intimidating entourage. They are also both very sensitive, educated, and intelligent men; Grizz went to Wesleyan, while Dot Com went to Cornell. Dot Com in particular is very smart; his need to be the smartest person in the room at all times is, in the words of Jack Donaghy, off-putting.
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Alphonse "Mack" Mackenzie is a capable engineer, one of the few members of Coulson's team who can understand Fitz when he starts talking about engineering, and even fabricated his own signature weapon, a combination shotgun/axe. He's also more than capable of throwing down in a fight.
  Fitz: You're an engineer, Mack. And a small tank.
• Angel:
  • Lindsey fits the bill. A lawyer who taught himself several magical and martial arts, he gives the title character a run for his money once or twice. Christian Kane plays a lot of Genius Bruisers.
  • Wesley went from an Obstructive Bureaucrat in Buffy the Vampire Slayer to this trope in Angel, being a demon linguist and expert in arcane arts who became an expert gunman who can go toe-to-toe with a powerful demon sorcerer.
  • Before Fred comes in and outshines everyone Gunn repeatedly struck on the one idea that cracks the case, amazingly perceptive and despite his smarts is a fan of the Mundane Solution. Then Wolfram & Hart toy with his brain and made him super intelligent.
  • The titular vampire himself whether as as Angel or Angelus is highly resourceful, exceptionally tactical and is not averse to using magic and gadgets to back up his supernatural strength. Angel is also multilingual having lived well over two centuries.
• Slade Wilson aka Deathstroke from Arrow. While his genius side isn't seen much in the flashbacks, it takes a certain kind of intelligence to engineer his entire plot in the present, and to constantly adapt to changing scenarios. The bruiser part is pretty much self-explanatory.
• B.A. Baracus of The A-Team may not seem intelligent at first blush, but he was part of a crack commando squad like the rest of the A-Team and is an incredibly skilled builder and fabricator. B.A.'s ability to design and build whatever weapon or equipment is needed from a pile of junk became a recurring trope throughout the entire series. B.A. is also large and muscular, and in combat, seems to favor throwing his opponents.
• Battlestar Galactica (2003): Lee "Apollo" Adama, one of the most famous Mr. Fanservices of the show, is very intelligent and is often put in situations wherein he has to use his brains rather than his muscles.
• Better Call Saul: Lalo is the most dangerous of the Salamanca clan because he is more than able to handle himself in combat, taking on a hit squad by himself and also has a devious cunning that makes him capable of mentally standing toe-to-toe with Gus Fring himself.
• The Boys has Homelander who besides being a nigh-unkillable Flying Brick Smug Super is also highly intelligent and calculating. Not only does he immediately deduce foul play when Translucent goes missing before even uncovering the guy’s body stuffed in a trunk, he also uncovers most of the identities of The Boys near the end of the season. Homelander also has a great grasp of the laws of physics, carefully explaining to Queen Maeve why he can’t just carry the falling aircraft since he needs leverage for his Super-Strength ^note though keep in mind he had no interest in saving the passengers anyway. Subverted at other times where Homelander has let his insecurities and Hair-Trigger Temper get the better of him and even people with no superpowers have outsmarted him on occasion.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Spike might not know all that science stuff and whatnot, but he's as smart and as analytical as he is strong.
  • Adam was smart enough to modify himself and create more like him; strong enough to tear off a vampire's head with his bare hands and put up a good fight against Buffy.
• Cobra Kai: Aisha is a smart girl with a love for chemistry and robotics, but she is also a martial arts prodigy with such an affinity for brutal, uncompromising violence that the hard-bitten sexist Johnny Lawrence opens Cobra Kai to female students based on her performance during her first training session alone.
  • Miguel is The Ace and Johnny's star pupil, who, four seasons in, has yet to lose a fair fight. He is also shown to be academically gifted and have a knack for graphic design, and designed Cobra Kai's web page from the ground up. He was the first one to poke holes in Kreese's story thanks to his Encyclopaedic Knowledge of African geography.
  • Robby is another great fighter,and while his genius credentials are less obvious, they're there. He is repeatedly shown to be charming and manipulative when he puts his mind to it, and he has either managed to maintain a near-perfect GPA in spite of his delinquency or forge a convincing high school transcript, neither of which is trivial.
• Derek Morgan from Criminal Minds. He's the designated muscle of the BAU and the most physical member of the team, e.g. he's often the one who leads a strike team, kicks down doors, beats up UnSubs, etc., but he's also a pretty skilled profiler and has a law degree, as well as being quarterback of his college football team.
• Downplayed in Doctor Who as the titular Doctor himself usually refrains from violence if he can help it and tends focuses on the “genius” part of this trope. However the Third Doctor played this straight happily kicking ass with martial arts as well as being scientific, following him the Fourth Doctor, War Doctor, Ninth Doctor and to a lesser extent Tenth Doctor are Genius Bruisers who will take physical action if there’s no freely available peaceful option to the situation.
• Dollhouse: Alpha. In addition to being a highly skilled hand-to-hand combatant, he is insanely tech-savvy, rivaling even Topher. Not only does he reconstruct and program imprinting equipment on his own, he even creates remote wipe and remote imprinting technology before anyone else.
• On Discovery Channel's Dual Survival, survival expert Cody Lundin used his physics knowledge to build a home that costs nothing to heat or cool, built a lean-to in Nova Scotia that trapped the radiation from the fire to keep him and fellow survivalist Dave Canterbury cozy at 72 degrees on a 20 degree night, was able to explain in plain English to Dave how it worked. And Cody looks like he could bench press the VW Bug they found in the Desert Breakdown episode with very little effort.
• K'a D'Argo of Farscape slowly develops into this over the course of the show: while not a scientist like Crichton or Scorpius, he's skilled enough to build the odd weapon or musical instrument out of the junk he finds aboard Moya. Plus, his Cool Star Ship Lo'La was little more than floating wreckage until D'Argo rescued and repaired it.
• Leo Knox of The Finder who is played by Michael Clarke Duncan, was shown in the pilot to be able to take down a hulking tough in one move (although usually he's a Gentle Giant) and is also a lawyer.
• River Tam from Firefly while already gifted from early age, after getting her brain spliced by Alliance in a attempt to make the perfect assassin River becomes this. In “War Stories” she memorizes the battlefield in one quick glance, then proceeds to take out three advancing soldiers with one shot each with her eyes closed and her head facing away from the men. The movie takes this even further as at point River after escaping from a locked room (and overpowering The Big Guy Jayne) and starts piloting the ship Serenity itself despite never once touching the controls before.
• The Flash: Eobard Thawne is an Evil Genius from the future, being one of the smartest characters in the whole franchise (except, possibly, for Clifford DeVoe, the aptly named Thinker). He's also an evil speedster, who is also pretty good in hand-to-hand combat and can slaughter an entire room full of trained cops in a split second. To a lesser degree, there's Zoom (he managed to develop the Velocity drug), Cisco (designs most of the S.T.A.R. Labs equipment and can kick ass as Vibe), and Caitlin (a brilliant bio-engineer, who can slaughter Nazis with the best of them as Killer Frost). Another evil version is Grodd, an evil psychic gorilla with a genius-level intellect.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Oberyn Martell is a fast and skilled warrior who also writes poetry and studied at the Citadel (where maesters are trained) until he got bored and left. In "Two Swords," he displays enough medical knowledge to describe why the man whose wrist he has pinned to the table will bleed to death if not attended quickly.
  • Ned Stark, which crosses over with him being an adaptational badass. Ned is not only a tactical genius, he's also skilled enough with a sword to go toe-to-toe with Jaime Lannister, the best swordsman in Westeros.
  • Jon Snow has proven that not only is he an excellent fighter, he is also quite an intelligent man. He is able to bring together different people for a common cause and he knows how to lead them. He is also one of the few people in the show who is able to get past petty grudges and set priorities to the real threat, The Army of the Dead.
  • Ramsay Bolton is a capable fighter and hunter. This is in addition to a keen understanding of human psychology, allowing him to take torture to a level that no one else in the series even comes close to matching.
  • Not only is Sandor Clegane one of the greatest fighters in the show, he also knows how to survive in a horrible place like Westeros. Almost everything he says, even if it's mean, is correct.
  • Euron Greyjoy is a brutal and amazing fighter, and he's also a smart and competent leader, who has accomplished far more than his relatives have managed to do.
• Kouga Saejima from GARO is both the inheritor of the Garo armor and thus an expertly trained fighter by default, but he also has a genuine appreciation for art and theater, and he bonds with Kaoru over her paintings. Somewhat downplayed in that he's less well versed in more mundane things like poker terminology.
• Hannibal Lecter in the 2013 Hannibal TV series is a cultured, well-educated psychiatrist who also gives Tobias the beating of his life. The fact that Hannibal has overpowered and murdered countless people also suggests that he is physically formidable.
• Paladin of Have Gun – Will Travel. While not particularly huge, Richard Boone is a good sized man, and Paladin's intelligence is a defining characteristic.
• Highlander: Duncan is very smart in addition to being muscular and generally a badass. He is qualified to teach college level history and speaks several languages as well as being resourceful and quick thinking most of the time. Not bad considering he didn’t even learn to read and write until after becoming immortal.
• Human Target Christopher Chance fits this to a "T." The character looks like the result of a transporter accident involving G.I. Joe and Malibu Ken, but in almost every episode demonstrates a wide range of knowledge (e.g., speaks Japanese, Russian, & Chinese, knows enough law to fake out working prosecutors, creates a sermon for a monastery full of priests on the fly) in addition to his more expected fighting, bodyguarding, and strategizing skills.
  • Guerrero is on the opposite spectrum. The guy doesn't look like much and calls everybody "dude", and the pilot shows two thugs threatening to rough him up, only for him to calmly tell them their names, as well as the names of their children, and what he plans to do with them in their sleep. His fighting skills are on par with Chance, and his name alone is enough to break prisoners without him having to start his "interrogation".
  • Pretty much every member of their former mercenary group is one thanks to extensive training and a rigorous selection process. One of their toughest enemies is Baptiste, another member of the group, who also fits the bill.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Takeshi Hongo/Kamen Rider 1 is the original Bare-Fisted Monk and undeniably the Trope Codifier for the franchise. He was also an bio-chemistry student with an I.Q. of 600 BEFORE he ever got converted into an cyborg.
  • The titular character of Kamen Rider Double qualifies through both halves of his body. Easily able to go up against the MANY Monsters of the Week one-on-one without any help, the right half of W has access to an literal library in his head that contains all the knowledge of the Earth and the left half is smart enough to in deductive reasoning and finding the right clues in any case that's presented to him with or without his partner. There's a good reason why this show's Central Theme is two is better than one.
  • Ryoma Sengoku from Kamen Rider Gaim is the creator of all the Kamen Rider suits and other technology used by the Yggdrasil corporation and fits the trope of Evil Genius perfectly. He can also transform into Kamen Rider Duke, who is among the strongest Riders of the show, being able to go toe to toe with monsters that are as powerful as the main hero is.
  • Sento Kiryu/Kamen Rider Build has repeatedly boasted his vast intellect to practically everyone who has ever met him and has backed it up without fail time and time again. Stated to have the highest IQ of all the Heisei Riders, Sento has advanced knowledge of physics, which he applies to combat whenever possible, is smart enough in engineering to have built the majority of his and Cross-Z's accessories, and can brilliantly bust out the Batman Gambit when the occasion arises. Please note that none of this stops him from being just as much as a One-Man Army as any other main Rider.
  • The Reiwa era would give us Ace Ukiyo/Kamen Rider Geats, champion of many Desire Grand Prix battles due to his constant planning. Having been reincarnated through several lives for over a thousand years, Ace always comes Crazy-Prepared and is a master combat strategist, using pragmatic approaches and manipulating others when it suits his interests. Of course, he has a titanic ego to go along with it, though hardly anyone is willing to complain about his combat prowess.
• Harmon Rabb in JAG is a lawyer that looks like a boxer and is, of course nicknamed 'Harm'. He's more liable to use the law to fight his battles than anything else, but failing that he's a trained Naval Aviator, crack shot, and has enough street-smarts to outmaneuver most enemies.
  • Sarah MacKenzie is also a top JAG lawyer, and is fluent in Farsi and Russian. She's also an expert marksman, can throw a mean punch, and isn't afraid to bawl out any enlisted or noncom who forgets she is a Marine who just happens to be a woman.
  • Admiral Chegwidden, the head of JAG, is a former Navy SEAL, ex-sniper, and brawler who intimidates mafiosos. But he also enjoys Shakespeare, is well-read and a student of military history. And, of course, is a lawyer.
• LazyTown: Downplayed, but still notable. Despite his pretensions to be the supreme emissary of laziness, Robbie is evidently very physically fit, and in some instances he proves to be almost as athletic as Sportacus himself (albeit not as spectacularly so).
• Legends of Tomorrow gives us Ray Palmer (AKA the Atom), who's a brilliant (ex-)billionaire inventor. While he does most of his fighting in his custom-built Powered Armor, he later learns to handle himself pretty well even without the suit.
• Eliot Spencer from Leverage hides it, but the guy is a tactical expert and a really good chef, among other skills. He can identify CIA agents by their stance, Ex Marines by their knife fighting style and Spetznaz operatives by their shoe prints in the snow. Complete with Catch Phrase "It's a very distinctive (impossibly small detail he can use to identify something or someone)." He can also pull out some Awesomeness by Analysis with a few observations and deductions and speaks multiple languages. Then again, playing Genius Bruisers is no surprise to anyone who's followed Christian Kane's career.
• Jacob Stone in The Librarians 2014 is the team's muscle. He also speaks or reads more than twenty languages and has honorary degrees at universities on four continents. Christian Kane plays a lot of Genius Bruisers. Interestingly, unlike his other well-known role, Stone isn't much of a fighter. Like a typical cowboy, he's a brawler but doesn't have much in terms of combat training. Baird tries to teach him how to fight better and direct his strength in more efficient ways. Later on, Stone goes to The Shangri-La and trains under the Monkey King himself, becoming a skilled martial artist in a matter of weeks.
• The Mandalorian has the titular character Din Djarin (portrayed by the guy who played the aforementioned Oberyn Martell), whom displays many Hidden Depths beyond bounty hunting throughout the series. Mando is a skilled pilot and mechanical expert being able to repair his ship the Razor Crest sufficiently enough to reach another planet even after it crashed on a ice planet and was further crushed by a Giant Spider. Mando is also shows spectacular tracking and hunting skills as well being fluent in multiple alien languages including being able to communicate with Tusken Raiders. He’s also a One-Man Army who has taken on imperial walkers, massive monsters, killer droids, and even Jedi.
• In NCIS: Los Angeles, Sam Hanna is a former Navy SEAL and Scary Black Man. He's also known to speak fluent Japanese and Arabic and has extensively studied the Qur'an and Islamic law. He's also a trained sommelier. Oh, and he was a mathlete in his youth.
  • Mauve Shirt Jemadar Thapa is a Gurkha. Not only does he kick ass in a fight while demonstrating that Kukris Are Kool, he also invented his own equations for plotting rifle ballistics.
• Downplayed by Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation. He's a hardcore individualist who's demonstrates skill in both fighting and hunting. He's also a highly skilled craftsman (of which he's pretty proud), but he hides the fact that he's a locally famous musician, and has built a large fortune through intelligent investment.
  Ben: I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to have weapons in this office.
  Ron: Everything's a weapon, son. That folder in my hands would be deadlier than this bow in yours.
  Ben: Well, that's... probably true.
• Person of Interest: Despite being "The Brawn" in the Brains and Brawn relationship with Finch, Reese himself is quite well-read, very cunning and has a extensive knowledge on fighting styles, guns, animals and military history.
• Power Rangers has at least one nerdy Ranger and another that's more meek and intellectual, who could take out supernatural threats on a weekly basis.
  • Averted, but later played straight with Tommy Oliver, the original Green Ranger of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. During his original tenure, he was more concerned with karate than getting high grades at school. He was even portrayed as clumsy and forgetful at times. When he returns in Power Rangers: Dino Thunder, he's a paleontologist and a highly intelligent scientist, having worked together with Anton Mercer to create the Biozords, fighting machines that merge technology with dinosaur DNA. By the time the series starts, he has taken on a job as teacher at Reefside High.
  • TJ in Power Rangers in Space. Not only was he one of the strongest members, but he was also a great combat planner. Not surprisingly, considering he was an ex-Red Ranger.
  • Kat Manx from Power Rangers S.P.D. is one of these, despite not being a Ranger. She is the one creating the team's arsenal, but can hold herself against Mooks. She does temporarily become a Ranger, but this lasts only for one episode.
• Alexander Mahone of Prison Break. While his major attribute is being a very intelligent detective, he's also quite possibly the best fighter in the series. Over the course of the series you can see him effortlessly take out mooks left and right, and he even bests Lincoln in combat despite a gunshot wound. Even T-Bag mentions he's the only one in Sona Prison who could beat Sammy, Lecheros Dragon.
• The Purge: Ryan is a muscular gunman who plans bold bank robberies every year. In the last two episodes, he tops himself by planning a way to steal $100,000,000, get several enemies killed, rescue a friend from being executed, and help Esme break into a broadcasting station to denounce the NFFA, all in one night.
• Ace Rimmer from Red Dwarf, superb pilot, and masterful at hand-to-hand combat, marksmanship, medicine, welding, spaceship engineering and he can teach the piano. Arnold Rimmer (the main Rimmer) is none of things, except in “Emohawk Polymorph II” where Rimmers gets all his negative qualities removed and becomes the cultured badass who he always had potential to be.
  • From the same series there was Hudzen-10 who appeared in “The Last Day”. An advanced Mechanoid who can write equations as well as split a brick with his robo-balls.
• Sanctuary:
  • The Big Guy is a sasquatch and also deeply philosophical, knows and makes vintage alcohol, and is almost on par with Henry, the designated techie, on mechanical matters.
  • One thing all HAPs have in common is that they like to tinker with mechanics, and are more often than not geniuses at it. They're just wired that way.
• Sliders: The sliders end up on a world, where intelligence is celebrated (i.e. nerds are cool). The most popular sport on this world is a mix between basketball, trivia, and reversi, requiring both knowledge and physical skills to play.
• Stargate SG-1 had O'Neill who, while not very friendly towards scientists and science in general, has an astronomical hobby and those who know him well realize he's much smarter than he wants people to think he is. Stargate Atlantis raised the ante with Sheppard who, despite being the resident military officer guy of the team, once solved a logic puzzle that left The Smart Guy baffled and revealed that said puzzle was in the MENSA test he took and passed years before — he turned down the offer to join but an alternate universe counterpart of his joined and became a smug Insufferable Genius even worse than McKay. It's telling that both O'Neill and Sheppard have the Ancient gene and a nearly intuitive understanding of how to control Ancient tech.
• Star Trek: Voyager: Captain Janeway's chief engineer is also a badass Klingon chick who can fix warp cores, deactivate bombs, or break your neck, depending on her mood.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has Lt. Commander Worf. When the Jem'Hadar figure all they can do to you is kill you, but not actually break you... He's a Starfleet Academy graduate, a Mok'bara instructor, a weapons designer, a capable love poet and Klingon Opera singer, has native-level understanding of Klingon language and culture (which wouldn't be surprising, excepting that he was raised on Earth), can manipulate and scheme at the highest levels of Klingon politics, keeps his wits about him under virtually any conditions (incomplete information, starvation, torture, extreme pain, maybe even Klingon rage) and can outsmart Captain Picard in ship combat exercises.
  • Lt. Commander Data is also this trope, having the processing power of a supercomputer alongside strength that would make some superheroes jealous. Justified as he is an android specifically constructed with near-infinite memory storage and (literally) the strength of ten men. During his quest to be "human", he learned how to paint, dance, perform Shakespeare, play the violin, and play poker well enough to fleece a bunch of card sharps when he got tossed back to 19th Century San Francisco. As for strength, he can effortlessly lift a person with one hand, instantly beat a Klingon in arm wrestling, go toe to toe with Borg drones, and pick up a large anvil with ease.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has Lt. Commander Jadzia Dax, a Trill whose symbiont has the wisdom and knowledge of eight lifetimes, and who is capable of fighting Klingons and winning.
  • Dr. Julian Bashir is absolutely brilliant in medicine, having graduated second in his class—because he intentionally got a question wrong on his exam. And after being revealed to be genetically enhanced, it’s said in one episode that he’s stronger than a Vulcan—who have, on average, triple the strength of a human.
• Star Trek: Enterprise: Malcolm Reed, the ship's armoury officer can build phase cannons from scratch, invent stable force fields and instruct a layman on how to diffuse a high-tech mine. He can also kill you using any one of a hundred weapons. Or, he may just beat you into a pulp and blow up your spaceship for good measure. It depends on his mood.
  • Reed's mirror universe counterpart also co-invented the Agony Booth.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has Ben Sisko. He helped design the USS Defiant, built an Ancient Bajoran Solar Sailor from scratch and flew it to Cardassia, discovered the Bajoran wormhole and a city lost for millennia. He's also personally responsible for punching Klingons, Jem'Hadar and even Q on their ass. In his downtime, he enjoys cooking (his father is a gourmet chef) and playing baseball in the holosuites.
• In Star Trek: The Original Series, Lt. Commander Spock is the ship's science officer, and quite a good one at that. Being a Vulcan, he is twice as strong as a human. A fact he demonstrated by kicking the ass of Captain Kirk and destroying a computer console with his bare hand on two separate occasions.
• Star Trek: Discovery gives us Michael Burnham, one of the smartest people aboard the titular ship, who is also proficient in the Vulcan martial art of Suus Mahna. There's also Saru, a Kelpien science officer-turned-XO-turned-captain. While not quite up to Burnham's level in science, he's a member of a physically stronger and faster species (they can run up to 80 kph). He's also a full head taller than anyone else, making for imposing look. And there's ship's captain Gabriel Lorca who is a genius military tactician that is deadly effective in battle and a badass in a fistfight and with personal weapons.
• Jim Hopper from Stranger Things, Government agents and Russian insurgents assume he’s just a chubby small town cop who is in way over his head. So they are quite surprised to discover he’s a Vietnam vet who's smart enough to outwit professional scientists and tough enough to go head to head with an Implacable Man and ultimately win.
• Supernatural:
  • Dean Winchester. Even though his family (including himself), the demons, and the angels think of Sam as the "smart one", Dean's actually been shown, repeatedly, to be a genius, too: building an EMF meter out of an old Walkman, rebuilding the Impala from scraps after it's been totaled, and building an EMP out of a car battery. Hand him some tools and duct tape, and he'll make something that is both insane and useful. He's also the tactical genius of the two brothers, coming up with crazy-yet-brilliant plans usually on the spur of the moment, and very good at both assessing and exploiting his opponents' weaknesses.
    • Sam calls him out on it in "Trial and Error" (S08 E14):
    Dean: I'm a grunt, Sam. You're not. You've always been the brains of this operation.
    [later]
    Dean: Sam, be smart.
    Sam: I am smart, and so are you. You're not a grunt, Dean, you're a genius—when it comes to lore, too—you're the best damn hunter I have ever seen. Better than me, better than Dad. I believe in you, Dean. So, please—please believe in me, too.
    • He's also got some chops in the book smarts department, too- in "The Monster at the End of this Book" (S04 E18), he references Vonnegut. Not even Sam knows that one.
    Chuck: It's very Vonnegut.
    Dean: Slaughterhouse-Five-Vonnegut, or Cat's Cradle-Vonnegut?
    Sam: ...What?
    Chuck: It's Kilgore Trout-Vonnegut. I wrote myself into it. I wrote myself, in my house, confronted by my characters.
  • Let's be honest, though, if Dean deserves to be here, Sam really does. He got himself into Stanford and was on a law-school track (with explicitly no encouragement at all from his family — more like discouragement — and no financial help, which implies he may have had a scholarship). He's usually the research arm of the brother's operation, tracking the news for potential cases all over the country and figuring out what they're looking for and how to take it down. We find him leading an entire network of hunters in early season 14. And physically, he's bigger and more muscular than his brother (certainly by later seasons), holds his own even early in the series when he's had less experience, and we're shown that when he's not holding back (when he's soulless), he's a scarily competent hunter even on his own.
• Super Sentai:
  • Daita Oiwa/Kirenger of Himitsu Sentai Gorenger. He's the muscle of the team and also an engineering expert.
  • All of the Choujuu Sentai Liveman qualify as this to some degree, given how they're all gifted university students, but Jou Ohara/Yellow Lion and Tetsuya Yano/Black Bison are the main heavy hitters on the team. On the Volt side we have Doctor Obular and Doctor Ashura, who Evil Geniuses like their fellow students but with modifications to their bodies that bolster their power. Ashura in particular was originally just Dumb Muscle before having his intelligence artificially enhanced.
  • Ken Hoshikawa/Five Blue and Remi Hoshikawa/Five Yellow of Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman are both skilled martial artists and intelligent teachers in their respective fields.
• Ultra Series:
  • The original Ultraman was a college professor on his own planet before he came to Earth to defend humanity against rampaging monsters and alien invaders.
  • Ultraman Taiga has Ultraman Titas, a Warrior Monk from Planet U40 titled "Sage of Power" who is well-versed in Earth culture and can deflect ranged attacks by flexing his muscles.
  • Darrgon from Ultraman Trigger: New Generation Tiga slowly develops from The Brute into this trope over the series' run, as he displays a surprising amount of introspective thought and pragmatism, being willing to reevaluate his initial belief that Humans Are Insects and recognising their true power. This makes him the sole voice of reason in his team, in contrast to his two Ax-Crazy teammates undergoing Sanity Slippage at the same time.
• The Witcher (2019) just like the books and games has Gerald of Rivia who apart from being a monster slaying Master Swordsman is highly well read showing his skill and knowledge of magic, alchemy, medicine, and creature study throughout the series.
• Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman helps out by solving complex theoretical scientific problems for Professor Warren in "The Pluto Files". In "Anschluss 77", she stops a tank cold with her bare hands.

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