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alt title(s): Bunny Ears; Quirky But Competent 
Alan Shore knows how to win.
"Well, obviously, Lionel Tribbey is a brilliant lawyer whom we cannot live without, or there would be very little reason not to put him in prison."
"It seems you can't hire someone competent without them having an embarrassing hobby."
How is this guy trusted with anything?
Some characters have pervasive or extremely noticeable personality quirks, but somehow remain faithfully employed because they are just that good at what they do. Coworkers, superiors, and friends are willing to overlook certain informalities because of this (e.g., a hypothetical highly successful lawyer who happens to wear fuzzy pink bunny ears during all his cases) so long as they get the job done and cause a minimal amount of intentional problems. This is a cost/benefit ordeal: if they weren't so good at their job or their quirks were too obstructive an employeer would consider them a necessary sacrifice for sanity.
Much like the Genius Ditz it is a strange mixture of brilliant and bizzare, the unexpected quirks only tend to bother new characters who don't know them well. Their quirks don't seem to be intrinsic to his success, a la Crazy Awesome. Compare the Insufferable Genius, whose quirk is more often just being a Jerkass. The Insufferable Genius might insist everyone address him as "sir" or "Dr. Smith". The Bunny Ears Lawyer might not answer unless addressed as "Grand Duchess Abigail Chester Wilson Snapdragon Lemmywinks Brian Brain McFisticuffs the Negative 10th."
Of course, in the real world, such people are usually kept under far too much scrutiny to complete the programs that would get them into such a position, but fortunately, in TV Land There Are No Therapists to do that. Of course, the scrutinizers themselves sometimes ignore quirks that have no relevance to the completion of a program or degree, even in Real Life. While you are unlikely to see something as extreme as a Bunny Ears wearing lawyer, there is a truth that many employees survive because of this.
Luckily, they're never Ax Crazy. They usually have Ultimate Job Security. For a ultra manly-man who pulls off some girly hobby and nobody minds, take a refresher in the fact that Real Men Wear Pink. For a Bunny Ears Lawyer who has few physical quirks but often baffles his colleagues with his overexcited monologues and odd mannerisms, try The Wonka.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- The spaceship crews of Irresponsible Captain Tylor and Martian Successor Nadesico.
- Let's not forget their master: Yang Wen-Li, a social misfit with a big alcohol problem who almost flunked out of military academy. He sits on his flagship's instrument panel during important fights (when he is not simply sleeping) and claims to everyone that he hates working. No one, no one ever wonders how he became admiral in his 20's; his skills make it obvious to any character (ally or enemy) that he deserves to be at the top of the chain of command.
- Captain Harlock has the Arcadia's entire CREW is like this. Oddly, Captain Harlock and Kei Yuki are the only ones who remotely seem to be serious about the whole pirating thing.
- Sumeragi Lee Noriega from Gundam 00 is essentially a slightly better-adjusted version of Misato.
- Don't forget Graham Aker, who is pretty much what happens when a weeaboo gets into military... except this weeaboo is just about as Badass as he can get, to the point that he gets special permission to act as he wants.
- Mihara Ichirou from Kidou Tenshi Angelic Layer acts every inch the Mad Scientist (even wearing a lab coat everywhere he goes), torments his assistant, never gives out his plans to his co-workers, and pops up around a twelve-year-old girl and drags her around town to play a doll fighting game; however, he's also a genius in robotics and, in the anime, an innovative medical researcher.
- Ichihara Yuuko from xxxHoLic is a lazy, easily distracted, booze-loving flirt who loves nothing more than messing with Watanuki's head. Oh, and she's probably one of the most powerful witches in the entire CLAMP multiverse, and also a living library on the mechanics of fate and Japanese folklore.
- Paiway Underberg of Vandread... although it's hard to determine if she's any good at her job, since Duero supplants her as head doctor within the first three episodes.
- Every single member of the Galaxy Angel Brigade. Minus the competence part, in the anime.
- Andrew Waltfeld, the Desert Tiger, in Gundam SEED. He takes his coffee making very, very seriously, to the point of boiling it in an elaborate chemistry-set-looking contraption, talking about percentages of ingredients he's changed, and randomly mentioning it before or during serious combat situations. However, he's also a brilliant and decorated military commander and an ace mobile suit pilot, so his soldiers don't seem to do more than just blink in temporary confusion when he offers them the chance to try his latest brew.
- Mithril appears to employ a number of Bunny Ears Lawyers. There's Kurz Weber, a skilled AS pilot, top-grade sniper, and a complete Lovable Sex Maniac... and Teletha Testarossa, a sixteen-year-old dojikko with a bit of inferiority complex who's also the captain of the Tuatha de Danaan and the others' commanding officer. Sousuke, meanwhile, is a consummate professional when he's in a military setting... and a hopeless Raised By Wolves Fish Out Of Water in any non-military situation.
- L of Death Note is very reclusive and seems to be something close to Raised By Wolves... but if so, they're incredibly deductive wolves, as he's possibly the most brilliant criminal investigator on the planet. Not to mention he has a MAJOR sweettooth to the point of building a mountain of sugar cubes coming out of his teacup, licking the frosting off his doughnuts (before discarding the doughnut itself), etc.
- He's actually the THREE most brilliant criminal investigators on the planet. He uses at least two aliases.
- Mello and Near from the same world are also odd: Near does all of his best detective work when he's playing with toys, and Mello...loves chocolate. A lot.
- Maes Hughes of Fullmetal Alchemist.
- He's either this or he's just Obfuscating Stupidity.
- Nah, he really does love his wife and daughter to a crazy extent. I mean, would you draw a gun on children for wanting to play with your daughter?
- In the manga most of Mustang's men are portrayed as excellent military men (Breda graduated at the top of his class) who just act goofy.
- Armstrong also counts. He tends to be a tad... wacky, but it's not long before you realize its a good idea not to piss him off.
- Olivia as well.
- She's not amusing or quirky. Just scary.
- The Galley-La Company of One Piece is full of these kind of characters.
- As is Cipher Pol 9. And the Marines. And the World Government in general.
- And the Strawhat crew. And nearly every single group in the manga.
- Luffy, especially. Stupid and tends to attract a lot of trouble, but he's one of only a select few people who can bitch slap an Evangelian, so his friends put up with his incompetence.
- Haruhi Suzumiya is considered by most of her fellow students to be a Cloud Cuckoo Lander, but since she's also good at absolutely everything, they're willing to overlook that during events like sports and culture festivals when they need her help to do well. Bonus points for actually wearing bunny ears.
- She's not good at everything- she's a godawfully bad filmmaker (due to her phenomenally huge ego which makes her believe that anything she does is automatically Academy Award-worthy). She's pretty hopeless at video games too, due to being too Hot Blooded to believe in minor trivialities like "strategy".
- Well, she IS God, so she COULD be good at absolutely everything, she just subconsciously doesn't want to. Plus, she is still awesome.
- The movie was a success (due to pretty protagonist and Fanservice) and she did win the game in the end. The point is she is successful in everything she tries, in a way or another.
- Eiji Kikumaru from The Prince Of Tennis is child-like, happy, has a flashy playing style and is somewhat of a Cloud Cuckoo Lander as well... but he also has the sharpest vision in the whole team (only matched by Ryoma), is extremely flexible and capable of very high jumps, works as hard as the others to keep himself atop of his team, and is fiercely loyal to his doubles partner Oishi to the point that one of the OAV's and a whole match in the manga are fully dedicated to Eiji's struggle to show Oishi that he's not a burden to him *and* that he wants him back in the team
- The former captain Seigaku captain Yuudai Yamato acts and looks like a full-blooded Cloud Cuckoo Lander (and looks like a teenaged John Lennon), so much that even Ryuzaki-sensei sometimes can't understand him - but he has excellent insight into people's psyche and, if you're willing to listen to him, you can't get better advice from anyone.
- Yomiko Readman (and indeed, almost all Paper Masters) from the Read Or Die universe. Deadly with their weapon of choice, and bibliophiles to the extreme. The mangas take this to their logical conclusion, as Yomiko and Michelle sometimes get totally physically immersed in their work, allowing the paper from their books to contact their skin...with sexy results.
- Pretty much everybody in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, but Kamina probably qualifies the most. Of course, his particular insanity happens to work in this Universe, and spreads to just about everybody else over time.
- Dr. Nii Xianyi from Gensumaden Saiyuki/ Saiyuki: Journey to the West. He talks in sing-song to a stuffed rabbit that accompanies him everywhere. He is also proficient at doing genetic and other scientific experiments for Evil.
- Dr. Black Jack. The global medical community isn't quite sure how to feel about the greatest surgeon alive dressing like a vampire, chewing out half of his clients, and obstinately refusing to get a license because it limits the ridiculously high fees he charges. Nonetheless, most hospitals find themselves paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to sneak him in for an operation at least once.
- Kakashi Hatake from Naruto is chronically late, reads porn, and is a bit of a goofball, but threaten his students or anyone else under his care and he'll kick your backside all over
Japan Fire Country.
- Mr. Kishimoto seems to like these: Such as Gai and Lee who are Love Freaks and have Big Ol Eyebrows but they're very strong and noble. Tsunade, who likes to drink and gamble, hates paperwork and is a bit of a Vain Sorceress but also a competent leader as well as a kickass medic and fighter; Jiraiya, who's a pervert and porn writer but one of the strongest ninja in the world and who dies heroically. Anko (Stripperiffic and smartass kunoichi who was among the survivors of Orochimaru's experiments with Cursed Seals) and Shikamaru (genius strategist who is so lazy he'd rather hide his smarts than do paperwork) might also count.
- Princess Tutu has Professor Cat, the main characters' ballet instructor who is literally an anthropomorphic cat. He's shown to be a competent teacher and is greatly respected by other dancers, but he's obsessed with love and marriage, often threatening his young female students that if they don't keep up with their practice he will have them "MAAAAAARRY ME!" Often followed by him doing something cat-ish like falling to the floor to scratch his back, running into a paper bag, or scratching his claws against a wooden board.
- In Nerima Daikon Brothers there is a character named Ichigo who is the head host of a successful host club...who grows algae in a jar as a hobby and is in love with a panda.
- Belldandy of Ah My Goddess is extremely competent and powerful with goddess magic, but woefully ignorant of most everything else, to the chagrin of her Love Interest, Keiichi.
- Kogarashi in Kamen No Maid Guy - even though he's wearing a dress and frequently harassing Naeka and her friends, most of the time his plans work. Naeka and Fubuki do occasionally beat him up when he goes too far, but that can't stop him forever.
- Lloyd Asplund of Code Geass is a goofy, graceless social misfit who is bluntly honest and speaks of everyone (even the Emperor) in an almost mocking tone. He's also one of the most brilliant engineers in the world, being the creator of the Super Prototype Lancelot. Rakshata Chawla, a former classmate of Lloyd's who works for La Resistance, is equally brilliant and can usually be found lounging on a sofa (even on the bridge of their battleship!) with a pipe in her mouth and a teasing remark on her lips.
- Gwen Khan from Outlaw Star has a very eccentric personality, repeating himself, and having a speaking pattern that is basically him talking to himself. He's also the most brilliant mind in the universe having created both the Outlaw Star and Melfina.
- Eyeshield 21 has a host of eccentric but skilled football players:
- Yoichi Hiruma has a penchant for firearms of all kinds, and never hesitates to discharge them in the general direction of his teammates. He also enjoys heaping verbal and physical abuse upon them, to the point of kicking people he likes. And let's not get started on his use of blackmail to help his team. However, he is a highly skilled quarterback and tactician.
- Natsuhiko Taki is a boastful, good-looking idiot who likes to brag "My success rate is 100%!" to the point that it's his Catch Phrase. All the same, he makes a damn good tight end.
- Wide receiver Monta's resemblance to a monkey is not helped by his bad temper, his obsession with bananas, and his tendency to take his shoes off and grab things with his toes.
- Shin of the White Knights is one of the best linebackers in Japan because he trains almost nonstop, and in unorthodox ways (doing vertical push-ups with his thumbs at one point). He also has no grasp at all of how to use electronics, to the point that if it's electronic and he touches it, it's broken.
- Otawara, also of the White Knights, is extremely slow-witted and crude; Running gags involve him farting and his pants falling down. Oh, and, while he isn't the most powerful lineman around, he's close, and he's incredibly fast for someone his size.
- Jo Tetsuma of the Seibu Wild Gunmen almost never speaks unless Kid tells him to, and follows orders to the very syllable, even to illogical extents. In addition, he is only shown in two situations to take actions under his own initiative. However, his single-minded obedience to commands makes him one of the best four wide receivers in all of Kanto.
- Kengo Mizumachi of the Kyoshin Poseidons is a spastic, energetic, irrepressibly cheerful guy who is constantly making a fool of himself but tcouldn't care less. Also, the only reason he started playing football is because no other sport provided an adequate level of challenge for him.
- Muten Roshi of Dragon Ball. A 300-year old perverted man... who happened to be the creator of the Kamehameha, tutor of Goku and Krillin and be in early parts of the series the greatest martial artist on Earth.
- Mr. Takuma of Elf Princess Rane is a brilliant Jack-of-All-Trades who insists on speaking backwards. All the time. If you look closely at the subtitles, he says at one point, "If I talk backwards, people will think I'm smart!"
- Minako Aino, a.k.a. Sailor Venus, is the most battle experienced member of the Sailor Team. Which is hard to notice amidst all the ditzy moonstruck behavior she constantly exhibits. This is downplayed in the live action version, where she is more of a Littlest Cancer Patient.
- Captain Kyouraku from Bleach, who makes a point of acting like a direspectful, lazy drunkard most of the time. At the very least, it seems unlikely that anybody else could get away with "Yama-jii".
- Rangiku Matsumoto also counts. She's one of Kyouraku's drinking buddies, and acts like a valley girl whenever she's not in a serious situation. Also, she loves Orihime's cooking, which makes her full-on batshit crazy.
- Kisuke Urahara stands out as an eccentric store owner who often uses a fan to express his emotions. However, He is the creator of the Mod Souls, the Science and Research Development Centre within Soul Society, and the Hougoku, which even he himself couldn't get rid of until it fell into the hands of Big Bad Sosuke Aizen . Indeed, when he was first seen 100 years before the story he was a goofball... who just so happened to be captain of 12th Division. He anticipated Aizen's movements even from 100 years back, when he eventually betrayed his captain and several other Shinigami, created the Hogoku to save their lives, hid said object withing Rukia's body without her knowledge, and even managed to replace an entire town in anticipation of Aizen's next attack and allow high-ranking Shingami to pass through first. But since the beginning of Bleach, the story seemed to be about two Chessmasters of the BEL and/or Obfuscating Stupidity variety dueling each other, one on the side of good, the other on evil. Although Urahara (as shown in the Rukia example) has shown himself to be quite callous in his maneouvers.
- Nizuma Eiji, mangaka prodigy of Bakuman, can't work without making lots of loud sound effects and preferably turning up the stereo to battlefield volume. His way of blowing just about everybody off makes Topher look like a master of tact in the workplace. Altogether, the T.O. team seems to have branched out by making the Bunny Ears thoroughly obnoxious.
- You know how we said they're never Ax Crazy? We lied. Meet Baccano!'s Claire Stanfield, an assassin that is very good at tracking people down, extracting information, and killing things. The catch is that he has a huge list of quirks (constant name-changing, a tendency to attach himself to anything in a skirt, a habit of going way overboard, a complete disregard for contract confidentiality, a firmly sustained belief that he is God — the list goes on) that can make him more than a little annoying for his employers to deal with. Still, he is really, really good at what he does.
- Amae Koromo from Saki is a monster of a Mahjong player whose bandana looks exactly like bunny ears and her power(?) draws from the full-moon, fitting the bunny theme.
- Usami Akihiko of Junjou Romantica is a brilliant best-selling award-winning author of both literary and popular fiction... who sleeps with a teddy bear in a room full of toys.
- Soul Eater has a few: one of them is the scythe handpicked by Shinigami-sama himself, who is skirt-crazy (and has been quoted, when asked how he got somewhere so quickly, as saying "Nobody is faster than me when chasing a woman's ass") and obsessed with his daughter's safety, especially from boys. Another one is a Morally Ambiguous Doctorate who wants to dissect you For Science and has no issue making you feel awkward if it amuses him, but is the most powerful person his school has ever produced. Together, They Fight Crime under the biggest of them all: The Genki Boy, tea-party throwing, doting father that is The God of Death himself.
- Dr. Irabu in Trapeze is, save for profession, almost literally a Bunny Ears Lawyer—but considering his actual occupation the implications are worse; in the anime, he's a psychiatrist who does most of his therapy largely in a psychedelic fursuit (complete with tye-die mascot-esque bear head). The series only gets more insane from there.
- Everyone in Gintama.
- Xerxes Break, "The Mad Hatter" in Pandora Hearts. He talks to a little doll on his shoulder. It may be Obfuscating Stupidity, though.
Comic Books
Fan Fic
- In Tiberium Wars, GDI Commander Karrde finds Lieutenant Kirce James to be pretentious, self-important, and overly dramatic, which annoys him to no end. At the same time, she's able to whip up squadrons of Firehawks, an Ion Cannon, an entire division of GDI Marines, and a thousand Mammoth Tanks for him on short notice, so he doesn't complain at all when it comes to the results.
Film
- Kuryu, the main character of recent Japanese movie Hero is almost literally a Bunny Ears Lawyer. He constantly wears almost-aggressively casual clothes while his contemporaries wear suits, he indiscriminately buys random items from the shopping channel, and spends the whole movie trying to learn Spanish simply because he inadvertently ordered a book in that language. His quirks are overlooked however, partly because he is a cunning and successful lawyer, but mostly because his co-workers are all subtly quirky too.
- Glen Whitman, in Transformers is a brilliant computer hacker, who may have ADHD and exhibits extremely erratic, perhaps sociopathic behavior. Apart from a lack of basic manners and some sort of unspecified paranoia, his great passions in life appear to be video games and getting into places he does not belong.
- Which could honestly be said of 90% of computer hackers. Hacking is, after all, all about getting into places you don't belong.
- We can't forget Agent Seymour Simmons, who the TF Wiki describes as "just a smidge off his nut", but who is very good at what he does. In a bizarre subversion of this trope, his Bunny Ears-ness is implied in the novel The Veiled Threat to be the reason he isn't working for NEST.
- The title character of the two Ace Ventura Pet Detective films is downright certifiable, but because he is able to effortlessly solve cases involving animals, he is able to keep his employment.
- Elle Woods in Legally Blonde is a law student who literally wears a bunny outfit to a party. Her awesome knowledge of fashion helps her defend her clients.
- Dr Strangelove (in the eponymous film) is a brilliant former Nazi with a severe case of alien hand syndrome - his right hand gives the Seig Heil salute without his control, and takes extreme effort to force back into his lap, and occasionally attempts to strangle him.
- Martin Riggs from the Lethal Weapon series is suicidal in the first film, and then just plain crazy after he gets over it. He deliberately plays havoc with the department's psychiatrist (and starts to make her snap), for bonus points. His near unstoppability when dealing with thugs is likely the only reason he is left on the force.
Literature
- A very controversial example in the novel The Thirty-Nine Steps is a spy who, while very competent, believes in every anti-Semitic conspiracy theory under the sun. The character ends up assassinated, showing the problems which come from pursuing false conspiracies and overlooking real ones, but he is still treated with respect by his colleagues prior to that.
- Let's not forget the original Bunny Ears Lawyer: a certain violin-playing, drug-addicted, Book Dumb (but prone to dabbling), slovenly, self-aggrandizing detective named Sherlock Holmes.
- Nor should we forget Holmes' even more brilliant and eccentric older brother Mycroft, who lived down the street from his government office, frequented a social club where none of the members were allowed to take the least notice of each other, had an almost obsessive hatred of going anywhere besides his apartment, his work and his club, and functioned as a living database, archive, and computer for the British government.
- To be fair, back then, "computer" described a profession, not a machine.
- Butters from The Dresden Files. The best pathologist in the city...but he loves polka music more than is healthy and wears bunny slippers.
- To give Butters some credit, he had a close encounter with something that goes bump in the night... before that, he was just a big fan of polka.
- Harry himself can be considered a Bunny Ears Lawyer. The cops at Special Investigations put up with his proclamations that he's a wizard because he gets results. Although not quite fitting the trope, the Wardens hire him despite his problems with authority and history of the Dark Arts because he's one of the few really powerful wizards left.
- To give Harry some credit, he really is a wizard...
- Discworld: The Librarian of Unseen University is an orangutan.
- City Watch Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson, a 6'6" human raised by dwarves who is also (mayyyyybe) the long lost heir to Ankh-Morpork's throne. Having been raised by dwarves, he has no concept of irony and has become either a Genius Ditz or a master of Obfuscating Stupidity. He also has the stones to arrest anything, up to and including a dragon and all the soldiers in two opposing armies who are about to fight a battle, for Behavior likely to cause a breach of the peace.
- Also, Otto Chriek is a damn good photographer and a pretty nice guy, helpful to anyone who needs it... and a vampire who obsesses over photography. And regularly harmed or reduced to ashes (he gets better) by the flash, much to bystanders' consternation.
- Similarly, Jeremy Clockson, a too-sane clockmaker with no sense of fun.
- Leonard of Quirm, a parody of Leonardo Da Vinci. Despite a habit of stopping in mid-sentence to play with folded-paper gliders and doodle schematics for working instruments of destruction in the margins, Lord Vetinari still employs him, and finds uses for all his ideas.
- Pretty much any Waterhouse (see below re: mathematicians) or Shaftoe from Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon or The Baroque Cycle.
- In Cryptonomicon, Lawrence Waterhouse is a man who does something socially ept "once every two or three years" and enjoys three things in the world: cryptology, playing the pipe organ, and sex. (The third clears his mind, enabling the first.) Very few people understand much of what he says, and he's never very sure of what's going on around him, but since it's World War II, the whole cryptology thing works out well for him.
- Also, his grandson, Randy Waterhouse, who has a strange obsession with Capt. Crunch cereal, and tends to use computer, Dn D or Tolkien analogies to explain things. He's also one of, if not the, best network engineers in the world. And later on, he finds his grandfather's cryptology notes...
- And the Shaftoes have a tendency toward violence and a gift at ass-kicking. The extraordinary crazy that runs in the family is not something you want to bring up, because you really want them on your side. Unless you outrank them, in which case, feel free to keep telling Bobby Shaftoe to stop mentioning the giant lizard. (It won't do any good.) The same goes for his son and granddaughter,
- And in Quicksilver, we meet the Esphahnians, who apparently have no middle setting between declaring a blood feud against someone and adopting them into the family, and are so insane that even Jack Shaftoe (who, at this point, is being literally driven insane by syphilis) comments on it. They're also scarily competent business owners.
- Stephenson's version of William of Orange is Genre Savvy enough to recognize that the best people have the weirdest quirks, so he only employs Bunny Ears Lawyers, and he distrusts competent people who have no quirks.
- Also by Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash gives us Hiro Protagonist, who lives in a storage container and is neurotically insecure when it comes to women, but is at the same time, one of the best hackers in the world.
- And is globally accepted as the world's best swordsman to boot.
- Although that one is mostly because he wrote the sword-fighting code for the Metaverse. In reality, he seems to be competent, but the book doesn't make an enormous deal about how good he is with an actual sword.
- Dr. Hannibal Lecter is one of the most brilliant psychiatrists in the world and also a cannibalistic serial killer. Averted in that they actually do put him in prison as soon as his "quirk" is discovered, although he continues to write articles for psychiatric publications on a regular basis. The "About the Author" blurb must be a scream.
- Hlaine "Mad" Larkin of the Warhammer 40000: Gaunt's Ghosts novels is a slightly neurotic old man prone to fits who repeatedly has [maybe] hallucinated conversations with angels, statues, and dead squad-mates. He's also the best sniper in the regiment.
- Never mind being the best sniper in the regiment, he may be the best sniper in the Galaxy, beating even bionically augmented super-snipers who have been blessed by the Chaos Gods...
- Also, technically, no-one knows about the hallucinations except him, since he always has the good graces to have them in private. He's still a bit 'off' at the best of times though.
- Kurt Kusenberg's Eine Schulstunde is about a school seemingly full of Bunny Ears Lawyers. The teacher brought a living bear to class, the principal would teach Shakespeare only while disguised as The Bard, and one of the students would speak every A as an I for one month because he lost a bet.
- The Artificial Intelligence Personalities in Donna Andrews' Turing Hopper mysteries tend towards this as they develop more self-awareness.
- The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, in Life, The Universe, and Everything, has His High Judgmental Supremacy, Judiciary Pag, L.I.V.R. (the Learned, Impartial, and Very Relaxed). "He was clearly a bounder and a cad. He seemed to think because he was the possessor of the finest legal mind ever discovered that gave him the right to behave exactly as he liked, and unfortunately he appeared to be right."
- Albus Dumbledore. Aside from the frequent Xanatos Gambits that usually involved him appearing to do absolutely nothing (getting the school temporarily closed down and Hagrid sent to Azkaban in Chamber of Secrets; getting removed from power in Order of the Phoenix; getting killed in Half-Blood Prince...), there's this gem from Philosopher's Stone, when at the opening ceremony, he says he'd "like to say a few words":
Dumbledore: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!
Harry: Is he — a bit mad?
Percy: Mad? He's a genius! Best wizard in the world! But he is a bit mad, yes.
- Just look at his clothing. Every time it's described, it is more bizare and clashing. And the school song in Philosopher's Stone.
- You should read my High School Anthem. It was sang once so far - much to annoyance of the authors as it wasn't meant to be sang.
- Half of Hogwarts' other staff aren't precisely normal either. The History teacher is a ghost, the Charms teacher is a midget, and the Divination teacher... doesn't really count because most of the time she's talking out of her behind. The Potions teacher is overly dramatic and openly biased against certain students. The Gryffindor Head of House turns into a cat and doesn't consider her pastoral duties to extend to listening to clearly frantic members of her House. Oh, and Hagrid's love of terrifying creatures makes him quite suited for the Care of Magical Creatures class. Although most of them (with the exception of Hagrid) aren't particularly odd within wizard society.
- A slight subversion would be Professor Kettleburn, the Care of Magical Creatures teacher before Hagrid whose various hijinks got him put on probation no less than sixty-two times. He never actually got fired however, opting to retire to "enjoy time with his remaining limbs". According to notes in The Tales of Beedle the Bard, Kettleburn slowed down his antics by the time Dumbledore took over as headmaster, although some cynically believed that this was only because his various injuries were forcing him to be more careful.
- If you squint, Grand Admiral Thrawn. He's an obvious alien in an Empire that discriminates against them, and he picks some weird and unorthodox tactics that make his underlings furious and once caused the Emperor to hand his forces over to someone else - but, well, he's a Grand Admiral for a reason, and as it turns out he's a tactical genius.
- Additionally, he really likes art and spends a lot of time studying it. Villains Out Shopping? Who shops that often? No, he uses art to get a handle on the mindsets of the species and cultures and individuals of the people who create and buy it. He'll analyze copies of your favorite pieces and determine unsettling things about you.
- In the X Wing Series it seems that Nawara Venn was a Bunny Ears Lawyer who wasn't taken seriously. He's another obvious alien, one who served as a defense attorney in Imperial courts. Of course, being a nonhuman defending people who tended to have perceived or actual Rebel connections meant that he rarely won, so at some point he left to join the Rebellion as a fighter pilot. By the time he took up lawyering again, it was in a New Republic court, where he wasn't seen as strange because New Republic policies aren't blatantly xenophobic.
- Azdak the judge, in Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle, is a maverick pursuer of poetic justice and a hero to poor underdogs, in whose favour he usually rules. He is an analogue for King Solomon. He is also drunken, horny, rude, violent and so completely in contempt of his own court that he is nearly hanged at one point.
- Porfiry Petrovich from Crime and Punishment; while he may act like a buffoon, he could run intellectual rings around most of the people on this page. One of the book's longest chapters is dedicated soley to showing us how he nearly manages to get Raskolnikov to confess merely by talking him (and the reader) to death; it's easily one of the most amusing and gripping parts of the story.
- The Areas Of My Expertise describes this under "Indiosyncrasies of the Great Detectives", including:
- Miss Millicent McTeague, a Miss Marple parody who eats cats
- Juno Dix, a Nero Wolfe parody who solves mysteries without ever leaving the bathtub
- Inspector Franz Duvet-Perez, a Poirot parody who refuses to say exactly what country he is from, thus keeping everyone guessing
- Buddy Jimmy Smith, a Kid Detective who is the reincarnation of an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh
- Brother Metrigon, a tenth-century monk and Brother Cadfael parody who believes he is actually a ninth-century monk
- Sgt. Demonicus Rex, a Satanist
- Dr. Kathleen DiPietro, a forensic examiner who wears her victims skin, which is socially awkward at clubs and restaurants
- Lord Miles Overstreet, a Lord Peter Wimsey parody who does not realize that he is his own nemesis, the mad Dr. Craig Kittles.
- Lisbeth Salander, being a Dark Action Girl and an Escapist Character is a very dark version of this.
- Mark Mc Henry, the pilot from the Star Trek: New Frontier novels. He actively sleeps at his post, for one. But the best pilot there is. Backed up with alien super-powers of course.
Live Action TV
- Detective Charlie Crews of NBC's Life who turned to zen Buddhist philosophy after his wrongful imprisonment.
- Kuryu Kohei, the protagonist of the 2001-2002 Fuji Television series Hero is almost literally a Bunny Ears Lawyer. He constantly wears aggressively casual clothes (the entire office mistakes him a TV repairman on his first day on the job) while his colleagues wear suits, and he indiscriminately buys random items from the shopping channel. His quirks are overlooked however, partly because he is a cunning and successful prosecutor, but mostly because his co-workers are all subtly quirky too.
- In CSI at least half the cast is messed up in some way or another despite being generally competent at their job, but the title definitely goes to Hodges, who is so mentally unbalanced that not only would he never be allowed to work with law enforcement in any capacity in the real world, he probably wouldn't even be allowed outdoors without some kind of supervision.
- Before Hodges came about, Grissom held the title, avoiding his paperwork by the plague (even to the detriment of his underlings), yet he was kept in position because he is Made Of Awesome.
- Denny Crane from Boston Legal. Made explicit (in a less humorous way than your usual Lampshade Hanging) in Boston Legal's more serious parent series The Practice, in which someone who'd worked with Denny assured Alan that "the plaque comes off his brain" when he's in the courtroom, and he becomes... well, Denny Crane.
- Unfortunately, in Boston Legal, Flanderization has set in and except for one recent exception, the plaque on his brain has apparently replaced the competence for good.
- Flanderization: the new name for
Alzheimer's disease Mad Cow.
- In fact, nearly the entire main cast of Boston Legal, as well as LA Law.
- Alan Shore, as pictured at the top, has his moments too.
- Chloe O'Brian on 24. ("I was inappropriately blunt, wasn't I? I do that a lot.")
- The grubby-looking, abrasive, paranoid ex-spy Adam in Northern Exposure was a world-class gourmet chef.
- John "The Biscuit" Cage in Ally McBeal.
- In that particular case, Cage is so good at his job that he once sent an opposing lawyer into a panic because his shoes were squeaky. No, really. It also helps that he's one of the two senior partners in his law firm.
- He also has an awesome habit of dancing to Barry White music in the firm's unisex bathroom.
- This troper is astonished that John is not the trope namer. He was painfully shy, had facial and verbal tics (including shouting "BALLS!"), routinely hung upside-down in his office like a bat to collect his thoughts, had a secret room installed in the office (the only entry to which was in a bathroom stall, by remote control), and harbored a thousand other ecentricities. Yet when he walked into court, or sat down at a conference table, and took a sip of water, everyone present knew that he was about to utterly demolish his opponent.
- And the title character as well. She's prone to visualizations that, especially as the series progresses, verge on outright hallucination yet is also a highly competant lawyer.
- Adrian Monk's obsessive-compulsiveness sometimes throws off other characters, but it is essential to his investigative abilities (as shown on the Flowers For Algernon Syndrome episode).
- He's one example of a Bunny Ears Lawyer whose weird behaviour has caused him major troubles with employment: his condition became so severely excerbated after his wife was murdered that he's no longer allowed on the police force, and in one episode he does a compulsion that causes him to accidentally delete important police information, so the commissioner revokes the licence he needs to be a private consultant.
- The main cast of NCIS makes the casts of the various CSIs look normal. The most obvious case is Abby, the Perky Goth Lab Rat who talks to her lab machines and utterly ignores every dress code ever known to man, woman, or government bureaucracy, but the rest of the team is similarly offbeat: Tony covers his considerable talents as an investigator and a leader by acting like an immature Jerk Jock Handsome Lech; Ziva, the Israeli who consistently mangles her English idioms and Drives Like Crazy, is actually a spy and assassin on loan from Mossad; Ducky talks to the corpses he autopsies (not that uncommon in Real Life) and turns every conversation into rambling stories about his Glory Days; and Gibbs seems to make it a personal mission in life to piss off anyone in authority over him... come to think of it, McGee, best selling author, computer nerd and online gamer, is the most normal member of the team.
- Senior FBI agent and Gibbs's close friend Tobias Fornell sums it up neatly in the third season episode "Frame-Up."
Agent Sacks: "This guy is implicated in a homicide and he's making jokes!"
Agent Fornell: "You've never worked with NCIS before, have you, Agent Sacks?"
- Is The Doctor in the house?
- Especially in his days acting as UNIT's scientific advisor... and wearing an anachronistic velvet jacket and a cape.
- Or a scarf long enough to touch both sides of the English Channel.
- Or a... whatever this is supposed to be.
 ◊
- A clown suit. Hopefully. That must be the explanation. Please say that's the explanation.
- According to cadet canon sources, the array of colours in that coat cause pain to a race of bird-lizard warriors who only don't conquer the universe because the Doctor keeps appearing in their midsts like a technicolour bogeyman. So now we know.
- Now we know why we can't murder him for wearing such a god-awful costume
- Is the House even a doctor? Like Sherlock Holmes upon who he was modeled, Dr. House definitely qualifies as a Bunny Ears Lawyer. He uses comatose patients for cupholders, watches sports with clinic patients, avoids seeing his own patients as long as possible, refuses to wear a tie, plays with his gameboy/cane/ball while his patients code; and that not to mention his running commentary on Cuddy's mammaries. And is a Jerk Ass every chance he gets, apparently for his own entertainment. This apparently improves his thinking processes. Lampshaded by Cuddy and Wilson in the episode Let Them Eat Cake:
Cuddy: Other doctors actually use their offices for crazy stuff like seeing patients. Not throwing a ball against the wall and calling it work.
Wilson: It's his process. That ball saves lives.
- Admittedly, his coworkers tend to overlook his quirks partially because House is such a brilliant doctor, but also in large part because eccentricity is the least of his problems.
- Also Lampshaded in the episode Sex Kills (2x14), when guest star Greg Grunberg says, "I assume House is a great doctor. Because when you're that big a jerk, you're either great or unemployed," after settling their differences, albeit a bit aggressively. Granted, House had it coming for pulling a Manipulative Act on him.
- Lampshaded even earlier on when Cuddy says, word by word, He's the best damn doctor we've ever had.
- House himself has more or less admitted that he wants to be a Bunny Ears Doctor, having been inspired by a brilliant Japanese doctor whose family tree makes him a virtual outcast among his own staff members.
- Most of the cast News Radio fits this description: for all their quirks, Jimmy James is an excellent businessman, Bill and Catherine are great announcers, Dave is a great news director, Lisa is great reporter, Joe is a great handyman, and, despite her laziness, Beth is about as good a secretary as the insane people around her could expect. Only Matthew can be said to be legitimately incompetent at his job.
- Pick a Scrubs character. Any Scrubs character. And yet, they're all excellent doctors.
- The Todd probably takes the biggest slice of the cake, being his constant sexual comments and idiotic behavior but Dr. Wen once said that Todd's straight forward thought process makes him a talented surgeon.
- Star Trek The Next Generation had Reginald Barclay, played by Dwight Schultz, who was shy and insecure, had a tendency to stutter, was fearful of being transported, had a holo-addiction problem, and was a hypochondriac. He also saved some lives and the ship at least once. He returned as a recurring guest character in Star Trek Voyager: his brilliance and scientific insight led to Starfleet finding and establish transgalactic communications with Voyager, though he remained as hopelessly neurotic as ever (initially, the stress of the project and his sympathy for the stranded crew actually made him worse).
- H.M. "Howlin' Mad" Murdock from The A Team fits this trope to a T. Completely and totally mentally unbalanced, prone to assuming make-believe identities and over-personify objects and is just flat-out loony. Who happens to be a crack military pilot.
- Although there's a lot of hints that Murdock is engaged in Obfuscating Insanity when it comes to the authorities and annoying BA when with the team.
- And like Barclay, he's also played by Dwight Schultz. The man excels at this type of character...
- The fact that it is rumored he fakes it, and can be serious without a hint of insanity (see the first season finale as an example) makes it even more awesome.
- Captains Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John McIntyre on M*A*S*H are never in uniform, chase the nurses, drink to excess, gamble, and use medical equipment to prank others. On the TV series, the early years would be filled with episodes where Generals and Colonels would appear at the 4077 and be appalled at their behavior yet refused to charge them because they were the best doctors around.
- From Real Life: Battlefield surgeons were often able to get away with anything short of treason because if you brought them up on charges they would be taken out of the O.R., with no guarantee of a replacement. (It goes for other medical staff, too; I once served a year as a conscript private/medical clerk and got away with behaviour that would have gotten other soldiers confined to barracks, because who would take care of all that sensitive paperwork in my absence?)
- ...and even more so in the original movie—-which also doesn't shrink from showing that not only are they eccentric, they can be real jerks.
- Don Konkey of Dirt is a functioning schizophrenic with a tendency to skip his meds, but it doesn't stop him from being a very talented photographer, and might at times be seen as an asset, as it results in a reckless disregard for his own safety which makes him willing to go to frankly insane lengths in order to get a difficult shot. Would've gone Ax Crazy at the end of the first season if he had listened to his hallucinations.
- Biochemist Bob Melkinov of Canadian hard-scifi show Regenesis is socially awkward due to his Aspergers syndrome, but his off-the-charts IQ and wiki-like brain more than make up for it. An arc where he was considering leaving to work for a perfume company revealed that he also has an extremely well-honed sense of smell.
- The titular character of Eli Stone has the potential to be a partially (or even fully) literal Bunny Ears Lawyer, if the writers would stop making him the Butt Monkey of his own show.
- CSI Miami features Alexx, The Coroner who refers to all of her corpses as "baby". A minor quirk compared to most.
- John Amsterdam of New Amsterdam has lived for over 400 years, but no one on the police force he works with knows. Because, every so often, a case is solved because, say, Amsterdam knows a underground club because it was a speakeasy during Prohibition, everyone treats him like a Bunny Ears Lawyer who thinks he's 400 years old.
- Geoffrey Tennant from Slings And Arrows, who argues with his Spirit Advisor in public, stores chocolate in the skull of his predecessor, challenges one of his colleagues to a duel, habitually asks his secretary for black coffee with cream and sugar, and spends the better part of a season living in a storage closet. He's also a brilliant theatrical director.
- Neatly subverted on This Is Wonderland, where no quirk is harmless. One mild example, Elliot Sacks, started out with long hair and a mildly scruffy appearance, but later went through an identity crisis that had him coming to work dressed in a different style every day. Apparently the only person who could get away with that sort of behaviour was Judge Maxwell Frasier, who wore running shoes into court, loudly complained of boredom and hunger, sang while other people were talking, and would occasionally scream. —>It's just a little venting.
- Sam Tyler of Life On Mars frequently looks this way to his 1973 co-workers; the real bunny ears (in one episode, she's wearing a bunny outfit for an undercover job at a party), though, have to be awarded to Alex Drake of Ashes To Ashes, whose firm belief that she's actually trapped inside her own subconscious causes her to be, um, less than restrained in her behaviour- as, for example, openly referring to people as "imaginary constructs," to their faces.
- Dwight Schrute from The Office.
- Perhaps even moreso considering his position, Michael Scott — it's only his prodigious talent as a salesman that keeps him from being fired by Dunder Mifflin.
- Let's get it out of the way: it was stolen from his Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger counterpart, yes, but the thinking position of Power Rangers SPD's Bridge Carson (namely, standing on his head) is nice and quirky. "A-Bridged" is an episode all about Bridge using his quirkiness to solve the day's crime.
- That's the most normal thing Bridge does. Bridge sniffs people's dogs, wears high heels when a case calls for it, enjoys watching female cadets read from inches away, is obsessed with buttery toast, completely avoids his roommate's best frend for no apparent reason (in fairness, the friend was evil and Bridge is psychic), rambles incoherently, and is terrified of everything. Then again, he also ID'd a perp by her shoes, helped a friend rebuild an obsolete robot into armor, and manipulated a minor villain into giving up a larger villain by threatening to promote the guy's business. The latter is amazing because Bridge lacks any social graces whatsoever.
- Played with in Psych; Shawn Spencer's psychic abilities lead him to indulge in some fairly odd and eccentric behaviour, but almost everyone overlooks it because his visions are nearly always entirely accurate and always help solve the case... except, of course, Shawn isn't psychic at all; he's just highly observant, but he enjoys playing up the psychic thing, partly because it does let him get away with doing things that under other circumstances he'd be frowned on (or even arrested) for doing. Of course, he also greatly enjoys the attention as well.
- Detective Lassiter also has elements of this, being that he fancies himself a sort of action hero and has had multiple "incidents" that has had him banned from going undercover. But he is also one of the best detectives on the force with an impressive detective exam grade.
- Walter Bishop of Fringe is released from the loony bin when events similar to the experiments that sent him there start showing up. He's still very intelligent and remembers everything about his work, but his time behind bars had some adverse effects: his first act upon being freed is to wet his pants, he obsesses over various foods he hasn't eaten since being locked up, and he constantly forgets the name or even the entire existence of another member of the team.
- Penelope Garcia of Criminal Minds talks two hundred miles an hour, plays MMORPGs at the office, gets hysterical when people interfere with her workspace, regularly answers the phone with lines like "talk dirty to me," and is accustomed to wearing elaborate hairdos and cleavagey tops (both in colors not normally found in nature) to work at the FBI. She's the resident computer supergenius.
- It is actually said in a commentary that the FBI accepts her behavior (which actually breaks several regulations of the agency) because they absolutely wanted to have her: she is actually so good at what she does that she can bend the rules of a federal agency.
- Technically, the FBI hired her because she's one of the most dangerous hackers in the world. In "Penelope", we learn that she joined the FBI rather than go to prison.
- Dr. Jacob Hood, the Omnidisciplinary Scientist on Eleventh Hour. He doesn't have any one bunny ears quirk, but he does act quite oddly, melting someone's watch on a hot plate and then dipping it ice cream, entering a school building (not covertly) through the ventilation system instead of the doors, and so on. He always has some valid exploratory or demonstrative reason for doing these things, but it never occurs to him to explain before hand. Also, his eccentricities were sufficient for the FBI to assign him a handler at all times, and it has been implied that several of his previous handlers quit in exasperation.
- Most of the cast of Pizza and Swift And Shift Couriers would be Bunny Ears Lawyers... except that they're all amazingly terrible at their jobs.
- Sons of Anarchy has an episode centered around the protection of a corrupt accountant who Knows Where The Money Is Hidden, after he completes his jail term where he developed a compulsive tic: unconscious masturbation.
- Patrick Jane of The Mentalist. He enjoys playing mind games with coworkers and suspects alike, whether or not this will actually get results towards solving the crime, and a lot of his more outrageous stunts are inadmissible as evidence. But the CBI keeps him around because he does always manage to catch the culprit.
- All of the members of Torchwood Three. Jack's a pansexual from the future and can't die, Toshiko's a shy technical expert who just happens to cover up murders for a living and has a horrible case of the Cartwright Curse, Ianto makes the coffee, uses a stun-gun and has a Cyberwoman hiding in the basement, Owen's an abrasive medic who is just as handy at giving bullet wounds as healing them and Gwen's an ex-policewoman who is, on occasion, just a bit too idealistic. That said, most of the time, they do a decent job of saving the planet (although it was often their fault in the first place).
- Benton Fraser on Due South has conversations with his deaf wolf-dog and his father's ghost, runs around Chicago in his red serge dress uniform, and analyses evidence by licking it, among other quirks. He is, however, a very effective crimefighter.
- Larry Fleinhardt from Numb3rs is a highly eccentric scientist who, among other quirks, only eats white food, and once gave up all his possessions and spent several months in a monastery. However, since the latter came about after he got to go into space, he's clearly qualified enough to act however the hell he wants.
- LAPD Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson of The Closer had her boyfriend move back out to avoid the fallout with her mom, is constantly breaking off dates to work on a case, is quite possibly the most insecure character on network television, will cheerfully lie to suspects, is generally caustic to anyone she doesn't like, and never takes no for an answer. She is also a brilliant detective who manages to close virtually every case to come her way... hence the show title. Chief Pope sums it up:
Pope: I'm sorry, she sometimes forgets there are other people. In... the world.
- Pretty much all the squints on Bones are utterly brilliant but quirky. Brennan and Zack are the smartest people on the show, but extremely people dumb; Hodgins is a conspiracy theorist, and Angela is kind of a nympho. Even Booth likes to jazz up his serious FBI-ness with wacky belt buckles and crazy socks.
- Don't forget the interns, from random-fact-spouting Mr. Nigel-Murray to emo-tastic Colin Fisher. They even throw in an intern whose quirk is that he is constantly horrified by the quirks of the other squints.
- River Tam from Firefly is insane and a little knife-happy at times. Half of the reason she has a bunk on the good ship Serenity is Mal's tendency toward Honor Before Reason, but the other half is because of those exceptionally useful Psychic Powers she has.
- Agent Dale Cooper, in Twin Peaks, combines wide-eyed innocence and purity of heart with an array of highly unusual investigation techniques and an openness to the supernatural that makes Fox Mulder look like a hardened skeptic. Of course, from the other agents we see in the series, the entire FBI seems to be made up of people like this.
- Mulder himself is paranoid, abrasive, arrogant, addicted to porn and sunflower seeds - such a joke to his peers and headache to his superiors that he is hidden away in the basement at all times. Yet he is kept around, partly because he managed to make some powerful friends but also because he is the most brilliant profiler the FBI has.
- FBI Special Agent Frank Lundy from Dexter is a chipper and quirky man, who does things like stopping what he's doing at one o'clock exactly every day to have lunch, spending hours looking over evidence while going through various types of music to try and find the type which will put him into the right state of mind to figure out clues, and telling his task force that he'll probably make several food-related metapors because he "likes food". He is also a legendary investigator who has a reputation for catching serial killers in cases which were considered unsolvable, who comes just short of determining the identity of the Bay Harbour Butcher.
- In Tomica Hero Rescue Force Eiji Ishiguro is the most stoic, silent, by the book character in the whole series. When he "Builds up" into R5 He becomes a Hot Blooded Large Ham who ... you know what just Watch the clip it'll explain it a lot better than I ever could.
- In The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Cameron has her....quirks. Some of them being homicidal rampages. However, she's just too damn usful - being the only one among the Connors' group who can go toe-to-toe with a Terminator.
- Bob Pinciotti from That '70s Show. A cheerful, dim-witted, somewhat immature man who is completely hopeless when it comes to taking care of himself, has the worst fashion sense of anyone on the show, and is given to try some strange quirks alongside his wife Midge (among them nudist and wife-swapping parties). He's also an incredible businessman, owning at least 2 establishments of his own over the course of the series and well-known to be a rather wealthy bastard throughout it. It's also worth noting that while both businesses eventually went under, it was due entirely to big businesses coming in and robbing him of all his customers with prices he couldn't hope to compete with (specifically noting that Price-Mart sold microwaves for less that what Bob had to pay them for from manufacturers).
- Parker from Leverage. Possibly the best thief on the planet but she has...quirks. Enough so that she spent an entire scene dressed as a nun and nobody asked her why because they figured that either it was part of a scam or her just being herself.
- Bert Cooper, the elderly co-founder of the Sterling Cooper ad agency on Mad Men: He's a Japanophile who insists on having everyone remove their shoes on entering his office, fires secretaries and then forgets he did so, rhapsodizes about Ayn Rand, and congratulates employees on non-existent birthdays. But he also got where he was with a keen entrepreneurial sense, comes in to the office alone in the middle of the night to personally handle urgent business, and recognizes and rewards good work and loyalty.
- Comical, ambulance-chasing personal injury lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) on Breaking Bad, despite his goofy demeanor, also happens to be an expert in helping drug dealers get off the hook, with extensive connections in the criminal underworld. He manages to find Walter a lookalike willing to get arrested in his place, and sets up a meeting between Walter and an extremely secretive drug lord.
- The Soup Nazi on Seinfeld. He treats his customers ridiculously harshly, but his soup is so good they willingly submit to his regime rather than go without it, thus his business is safe. (At least until Elaine steals his recipes.)
- Battlestar Galactica. Dr. Baltar is always twitching and rambling on to himself as if he's interacting with an invisible person, but no-one gives him more than a funny look because he's a recognised genius and their Cylon expert — it's not as if he has a Cylon in his head or something. A more straight-up example would be Starbuck, whose flagrant insubordination and conduct unbecoming is only tolerated because she's such a hotshot pilot.
- Well, that and the series premise. When the human race has been reduced to 50,000 individuals and the enemy can respawn indefinitely, throwing away a talented Jerk Ass or Cloud Cuckoo Lander is less of an option.
- For that matter, Baltar's actual lawyer at the end of season 3, Romo Lampkin, is a kleptomaniac who wears sunglasses for almost an entire season and carries his ex-wife's cat around in a bag. He's also an amazing lawyer.
- Arguably all three presenters on Top Gear, but the best case can be made for their masked, perpetually silent, possibly non-human "tame racing driver," The Stig.
- The main character of Drop Dead Diva comes off as being a bit eccentric due to her secretly being someone else dropped into her current body, but with the old inhabitant's brains and her ingenuity, she's a good lawyer. At one point, she actually wears a pair of bunny ears while making closing arguments.
- Pretty much everyone in Eureka but two people stand out in particular.
- Crazy Survivalist Jim Taggart who spends most of his time hunting an apparently hyper-intelligent stray dog named Lowjack (whom he maintains is "evil-incarnate"), but is one of the best zoologists in the world.
- Douglas Fargo, the man who put the Schmuck in Schmuck Bait. Though lacking in social skills and practical knowledge, as well as being a Sarah Michelle Gellar fanboy, he's proven more than once that he deserves to be in Eureka and is long established as the right-hand man of first Nathan Stark, then Allison Blake, the previous and current heads of Global Dynamics respectively.
- The doctor who deliver's Phoebe's babies on Friends is obsessed with Fonzie, brings him up constantly and insists on watching Happy Days every day, even if he's delivering a baby while doing so. He's also the head of the department and delivers triplets without a hitch.
- In the fourth season The Man From UNCLE episode "The Summit-Five Affair", U.N.C.L.E.-Northeast head Harry Beldon is pretty much set up as a Bunny Ears Lawyer. He's a flamboyant playboy who arrives at his Berlin headquarters garishly dressed, in a chauffeur-driven limousine, while drinking champagne with two beautiful women (at least one of whom is married, since Beldon tells her "remember me to your husband"). Something which is remarked on:
Illya Kuryakin: Hmmm. Harry Beldon... Everything a cautious, unobtrusive, successful secret agent shouldn't be, except he's successful.
- The entire staff of Veridian Dynamics on Better Off Ted, but especially Phil and Glem who are uttery unable to function outside of a laboratory setting but are impossibly brilliant. Veronica is also a sociopath who courtship with Mordor the Unforgiving (not Kevin!) involved things like slaughtering a goat.
Professional Wrestling
- Eugene, WWE's resident "special" wrestler, started out as a Professional Wrestling Idiot Savant who, despite his mental handicaps, was an excellent ring technician. Faces lined up to be his friend thanks to his simple, childlike demeanor and his kicking a lot of ass, and heels lined up to manipulate him to their own ends, thanks to... his simple, childlike demeanor and his kicking a lot of ass. Unfortunately, he eventually got Flanderized and became a jobber, and towards the end of his run served mostly as a way for heels to Kick The Dog.
Video Games
- Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney is filled with eccentric lawyers. Phoenix and Edgeworth love to do the finger-pointing thing, Franziska von Karma has her trusty whip, her father Manfred's nigh-ludicrous obsession with perfection (to the point of highlighting it by making his ATM PIN '0001' because he sees himself as number one - and citing this as evidence during a trial) and the Geordi LaForge-masked Godot can't go a single case without drinking exactly 17 cups of coffee a day (and gets away with calling himself undefeated - because this is his first case). Despite these quirks, they're all said to be the best at what they do. Case 5 of the original game introduces a plethora of eccentric police officers to join the scruffy, dim-but-loveable Dick Gumshoe, from klutzy rookie Mike Meekins to literal Cowboy Cop Jake Marshall.
- This troper feels no character here quite out-eccentrics the Judge, who is famously reliable in passing fair judgements in spite of being more than a bit of a Cloudcuckoolander who will misunderstand basically anything, to the point of Franziska's Xanatos Gambit of showing him an illegally-taken photo as vital evidence to make her case (evidence which could just as easily have been turned to Wright's favor) fails - because he just doesn't get the point she's coming across with. At all. Until the next year, when Phoenix successfully uses it in a related case.
- The fourth game gives us Apollo Justice, who stays up until 5 in the morning doing voice training so that he can yell '''OBJECTION''' more impressively, carefully gels his hair every day in a way that makes it look like insect antennae, and gets the truth out of witnesses by using a bracelet that enables him to mentally zoom in on them and dramatically point out their nervous habits. Then there's Klavier Gavin, prosecutor and renowned rock musician, who peppers his speech with random German words and performs air guitar in the middle of trials. Spark Brushel is also worth a mention, being an investigative journalist who seems genuinely knowledgeable despite seemingly never listening to anything anyone tells him and eating far too many mints to the points where he himself smells of them.
- The theme for talking to people without their own theme in Justice for All-on is acctualy called "eccentric".
- Excellen Browning from Super Robot Wars is a goofy, flirtatious woman who insists upon being called "Big Sister" rather than "Ensign", and has on more than one occasion donned a Playboy Bunny-style costume to raise her teammates' morale. She also happens to be an exceptional mecha pilot and an insanely good sniper, as well as part of one of the most respected and feared teams in the SRW universe.
- Heck, this trope applies to most of the cast. Among the most dangerous pilots in the group are an amazingly talented mercenary and battleship captain who's convinced that his Paper Thin Disguise has everyone in the world fooled, a German samurai with a penchant for In The Name Of The Moon speeches, an Ascended Fanboy at the controls of the most dangerous war machine on Earth, and a 14-year-old girl in a maid costume. Don't forget the CO who ORDERED said 14-year-old girl to wear a maid outfit. And is apparently a butler, and dresses like one. Also, don't forget the amount of ex-enemy officers.
- Psychonauts gives us Milla, Sasha, and Ford. Milla appears to be mentally stuck in the 1960s, Sasha is a borderline emotionless stoic with an irrational hatred for tacky lamps and Ford is... well, special. Despite this, they form a crack team of psychic spies unparalleled to none.
- Really, all the kids at the camp are this trope in training. They're all (presumably) going to grow up to be Psychonauts, and there's not a normal one among the entire bunch.
- Jodie Foster of Metal Wolf Chaos enjoys watching soldiers getting slaughtered by her boss's Humongous Mecha a little too much, and apparently spends her spare time wondering about how various buildings would look if they were destroyed, and somehow managed to become secretary to the President of the United States.
- Considering what President Michael Wilson gets up to, Jodie probably looks like an icon of sanity by comparision.
- The Mission Control of Metal Gear Solid 3 contains an overtalkative genius physician who chatters endlessly about her favourite B-movies, a James Bond fanboy Major with an obsession with his own Britishness and a thing for the paranormal, and a brilliant technician who makes useless objects because they 'look cool' and considers a human catapault a valid weapons development project (and harbours a complex about being the only normal person there). In Portable Ops, they start a UFO club. But they are frightenly competent at throwing the entire world into a long and bitter war.
- Hal Emmerich is a brilliant engineer who designed Metal Gear, and also happens to be a massive Otaku. Ocelot is a ridiculously superb marksman and the series' resident Magnificent Bastard who is also unhealthily obssessed with his revolvers and Big Boss. Even Snake himself, a formidable warrior by anyone's assessment, has his tendency for meaningless philosophical ramblings and a rather disturbing relationship with The Box(TM). It's also implied he loves trashy action movies and women's figure skating, he's a fan of dog-sledding, and one of the Japanese-only supplimental material guides revealed that his favourite food is blueberries.
- Double H from Beyond Good And Evil. On one hand, he has a tendency to quote things at random from his military training manual in an UNECESSARILY LOUD VOICE, he runs things over with his head and never takes off his armor because it makes him "feel manly", and he gets really worked up over hovercraft racing. On the other hand, he's the IRIS Network's best operative, he's good at following directions, and he's pretty tough in battle. Pey'j too—He's a Texan-accented anthropomorphic pig with a habit of swearing like a prospector, and he has an... erm... unusual special attack. He's also a brilliant inventor and engineer. And, you know, the all-mysterious and all-powerful leader of a rebel organization.
- The brilliant engineer Dr. Cid from Final Fantasy XII fits this troupe well—the Draklor Laboratory and the Archadian Empire as a whole manage to ignore his conversations with a not-so imaginary friend due to his skill at manufacturing airships and weapons with nethicite. Balthier, however, was not quite so tolerant.
- Elite Beat Agents. Just look at that hair... and those dance moves! Yet somehow, they managed to stop an alien invasion, prevent the Zombie Apocalypse, rescued a lost puppy, and fight off a virus.
- A good deal of the commanders in the Advance Wars series. A spectacular example is Javier, who wears plate armour all the time and acts like Don Quixote, and is a Boisterous Bruiser to awesome effect.
- The Dungeon Master noble in Dwarf Fortress is a talented animal trainer and metalsmith who permits your fortress to train a variety of creatures you usually can't. He or she tends to also wander around the fortress, naked except for a cloak, shoes, and gloves.
- Arcueid Brunestud. Ditzy blond. Clingy jealous girl. Keeps a doll of Shiki under her pillow and magically traps her underwear drawer. Ok maybe that one wasn't canon, but still, it IS like her. Also responsible for Shiki's rather infamous erotic dream. Oh, and she is the most powerful vampire in existence, capable of dragging around moons if she wants. Moons from the future. That she pulled from said future. Why? So red moonlight would splash on her opponent and render him killable. And she was at 30% power when she did that.
- The doctors in Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc. They're recommended as exceptionally good doctors, and are shown to be at least reasonably competant, but their behaviour is decidedly odd, and their methods even more so.
- Pretty much all the teachers of Persona 3, from the homeroom teacher with an almost "L"-like addiction to sweets and to playing MMORPGs as a l33t-speaking alter ego, to the school nurse and his over-the-top obsession with mysticism, to the history teacher who always wears his Sengoku-era samurai helmet, to the math teacher who spends most of the class just gushing about the aesthetic beauty of numbers. They're all shown as very knowledgable, and they're all various shades of Cloud Cuckoolander.
- Minsc from the Baldurs Gate series. He's quite nuts, but when he talks about kicking butt, he knows what he's talking about.
Dynaheir: Minsc is, well, Minsc, but he hath a strong sword arm.
- Also, none of the mages are exactly well-adjusted, with the possible exception of aforementioned Dynaheir. And even she speaks funny.
- In Mass Effect 2, this describes your entire crew with the exceptions of Jacob and Tali. Let's just say it's an extreme Dysfunction Junction in which everyone is one of the best people in the galaxy at what they do and leave it at that.
Tabletop Games
- Warhammer 40000's Adeptus Mechanicus are a sect of Mad Engineers who have the theology of a Cargo Cult, even for things they fully understand.
- In fact, the rigorously theological Imperium, in which any heresy against the God-Emperor is punishable by several of the more eccentric forms of violence, is propped up by the Mechanicus, who openly worship machines, and the Space Marine Chapters, who each have their own wacky and heretical Emperor Cult, but who's going to tell them to change?
- Some types of Ork also qualify. Burna Boyz are pyromaniacs carrying backpacks filled with promethium and willing to set their buddies on fire, but are useful in battle and for metal work. Weirdboyz have a habit of making heads explode, but their powers can be directed at their foes if they focus. Mad Dok Grotsnik performs surgery unorthodox even by Ork standards and often times his bionics will "mysteriously" explode if the owner annoys Grotsnik, but he saved the life of his tribe boss and is highly dangerous in battle.
Webcomics
- In El Goonish Shive, we have Grace, as shown in this strip.
- And arguably, also Amanda as shown in this one.
- Truly astounding example: Doctor McNinja. He's a doctor, and a ninja (and constantly masked, to boot). That alone should have been enough, as each profession is the bunny ears for the other. But he's also obsessed with Batman, not to mention just about everything else about him.
- Ekphobippe from Amazoness!. A fearsome Hot Amazon with a long list of victories, she's also a clear parody of Sailor Moon. Her pink heart-shaped armor and In The Name Of The Moon speech is described as "the dumbest and most awesome strategy I've ever seen".
- Danny Hua in Nukees is a sweet-tempered Cloud Cuckoo Lander who can't follow most basic metaphors, is compulsively honest and has a phobia of speaking with contractions. He is also a brilliant nuclear engineer and one of the finest weapon designers in the world, being personally responsible for the creation of the Giant Robot Ant. There currently is a small contingent of groupies who have decided he is the Wise One for his incomprehensible, unintentionally profound-seeming speech quirks. He is also, according to author Darren Bleuel, based on a real friend of his, and there is a page full of quotes to prove it!
- What about King Luca? He literally believes himself to be royalty, wears a crown and cloak, and routinely grants land, nobility, or knighthood to his followers. And he does have followers, because he's a wonderful physics tutor who singlehandedly helped many students pass their classes.
- Elan from Order Of The Stick. The advantage? He's unbelievably Genre Savvy, such that he even sticks out in the No Fourth Wall world of the comic. The catch? He's a bard. Well, and a total moron. Then he literally Took A Level In Badass, so he's starting to balance out a tad.
- Celia may also count, more literally than the other examples. Most of the time she's a Granola Girl whose fighting skills are negligible, and whose righteous ardor for small woodland critters, as well as the sanctity of life in general borders on infuriating, but get her in front of a lawsuit, or two conflicting parties in need of a settlement, and she is hard and cold business right away.
- And Lord Shojo, who pretends to be senile in order to ward off assassination attempts, but was able to fool not only the paladins he controls, but also the entire Order of the Stick, despite not having any levels in a PC class.
- In Sluggy Freelance recruiting Bunny Ears Mad Scientists (but keeping them at a safe distance) is basically the whole point of the Hereti Corp freelancer program.
- Doug from Fletcher Apts. In high school, he was head of the Science Honor Society and #2 player in the chess club. In college, he's the vice president of the psychology club. Also, he's known for barfing easily and freaking out over female breasts.
- Rayne Summers from Least I Could Do. Marcy McKean - Rayne's boss and CEO of the company - puts up with his Red Bull addiction, childlike behaviour, and non-existant attention span because he is genuinely good at his job.
- Lampshaded by Hector in Antihero For Hire, but it is later revealed that one of the people he's talking about is... something quite different.
Web Originals
- This episode of SMBC Theater gives us a plumber with rock bottom prices, high skill and reliability, amazing punctuatlity ....and an insistence that customers watch him act like a plumber in a porno movie. Yes, both the male and female customers. When questioned, he will immediately say he is the best value in the city.
Western Animation
- Silverhawks, a sci-fi cartoon by the makers of Thundercats, has Colonel Bluegrass. Despite his rank, he looks, talks, dresses and acts like a stereotypical cowboy from the Wild West, but he's also an ace pilot described as being able to master anything that flies. If that wasn't strange enough, he's also a skilled guitar player, and is so fanatic about it that his futuristic guitar is not only a weapon, but actually integrates with the piloting mechanism for the Miraj, the team's spaceship.
- In Transformers, this is a type commonly found in the Decepticon ranks. From ace gunfighter/closet coward Slugslinger to preening victory obsessed egotist Drag Strip, many of the more stable Decepticons find themselves grudgingly accepting the obvious personality disorders around them because the people with them are among the most effective warriors.
- In the case of Starscream, his quirk is that he wants to surplant Megatron. It is very much his superior skill that he is kept on as a Lieutenant, although later incarnations has Megatron far less patient with him.
- The Autobots aren't devoid of quirky robots, either. For staters, we have Silverbolt, leader of the Aerialbots, who is afraid of heights... which is a bit of a problem when you and everyone in your combiner team turns into an airplane. Broadside, a triple changer who transforms into a jet and an aircraft carrier, is both acrophobic and prone to seasickness. Also among the heroic forces are he egotistical Sky Lynx, neat freak Wide Load, and Siren, who has No Indoor Voice, among others. And this is just in G1.
- How could anyone forget Georges Hautecourt from Aristocats? Tarara-boum-di-ey!
Real Life
- People diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome often tend to be real-life examples of Bunny Ears Lawyers. See also Disability Superpower. Sadly, it's not a sure thing.
- About half the characters on this list would likely be diagnosed with Asperger's in real life.
- And then there's Something Awful, which made anyone who admitted his Asperger a prime target for snarky comments. Blessed With Suck indeed.
- To be fair to Something Awful, we'd had a bit of a run with a bunch of lunatic trolls who defended themselves from righteous indignation at their racism, sexism, homophobia, and general moral rot by claiming to have Asperger's. Any further declarations of Asperger's were almost universally by those following in the same path as this lot, so we found ourselves having a bit of a sport as to who could take apart such a silly and immoral defense the fastest.
- Asperger's, at least in popular culture and the Interwebs, tends to come across as "Quirky, reclusive/antisocial, and very intelligent", which leads to self-diagnosed Aspies claiming that they're not antisocial assholes, they're just Asperger's sufferers, and should be respected for that. It's probably more infuriating than claiming the right to ignore good taste because one's an elf, simply because there are very few actual elves out there who get painted with the same brush. Yes, this editor has legitimate Asperger's, no he's not bitter.
- This troper apparently has just a touch of it, but compounded by about 30 billion other issues. When the psychiatrist told me, it explained me not 'getting' [i]so much[/i].
- The late Bobby Fischer, chess master and notorious crackpot.
- Mathematicians seem to be very prone to this:
- Paul Erdős was famous not only for his intensely prolific mathematical career but also for his idiosyncratic vocabulary (children were "epsilons", women were "bosses", men were "slaves", the Soviet Union was "Joe" (Stalin?) and the US was "Sam" (Uncle?), etc.) and being helpless in day-to-day life to the point that fellow mathematician Ron Graham accompanied him a large amount, almost to the point of being his caretaker. For much of his life, he had no permanent home, and no possessions but a bag of clothes and some notebooks, but was so well respected that other mathematicians would let him stay over nearly anywhere he happened to travel. He also accused God of hiding his socks.
- The amphetamines probably helped his eccentricities along; on the other hand, when he gave them up for thirty days on a bet, he claimed that the '...progress of mathematics had been set back by one month.'
- Kurt Gödel was a paranoid recluse with a terror of being poisoned. Beacuse of this fear, he eventually refused to eat and starved to death.
- John Forbes Nash, Jr., subject of the film A Beautiful Mind, who won the Nobel Prize before succumbing to schizophrenia. Although his depths of mental illness was an unproductive period for him, he could hardly be called "normal" before and after. Creator of the board game So Long Sucker.
- Alan Turing's odd habits are legendary: for example, he had a bicycle which he used for most travel, even after WWII ended, which had a damaged chain and spokes which would cause it to de-rail regularly; rather than replace it, he would count the number of turns before it would de-rail, and step off the bike to reset it.
- Unfortunately his brilliance couldn't save him for being persicuted for his homosexuality. He was stripped of his security clearence, chemically castrated and eventually driven to suicide.
- John Von Neumann was, like Turing, one of the fathers of the electronic computer; like Szilard and Teller, he played a key role in the Manhattan Project, and formulated the game theory from which US nuclear weapons policy was developed. He was also an inveterate womanizer and gambler, and was known to give class lectures in the suit he'd worn to parties the night before, having stayed awake the whole night. He also liked fast cars and to drive recklessly - a corner where he wrecked more than one car was named "Von Neumann Corner" by the people in the city. Feynman (below) would later attribute his 'creative irresponsibility' to something Von Neumann had said to him while they were both at Los Alamos.
- Norbert Wiener, one of the founders of the field of Cybernetics, was known for being absent-minded and getting lost frequently even in familiar places; while at the Institute for Advanced Studies, he would find his way to his office using the 'right-hand rule' for maze solution, trailing one finger along the walls as he continued reading, which led to him startling colleagues by walking into their offices, following the walls around and back out, without speaking or even looking up from his book the whole time, seemingly oblivious to where he was until he reached his own office. He was also named Norbert Weiner.
- Theodore Kaczynski deserves special mention, as he was considered eccentric by other mathematicians even before he went Ax Crazy.
- Stonewall Jackson, of the Confederate Army during the American Civil War, was a shrewd tactician and a dauntless battlefield commander. He was also a hypochondriac and restlessly raised one arm, and had the habit of praying, eyes open, on horseback, content in the belief God could surely hear him there as well as anywhere. This was in order to ward off demonic possession, which he feared, with the prayer.
- Before the war he taught at Virginia Military Institute, where he earned the name "Tom-fool Jackson" for his useless physics lectures.
- Fred Hoyle, a great contributor in the field of astronomy, for his discovery of nucleogenesis is controversial for amongst others things, his coinage for the term Big Bang which seems like brilliance at first but many believe that he used it as a pejorative against the theory of the development of the universe from a singularity in favor of the steady-state model he proposed, although that had more in line with his philosophical beliefs than actual science (although he claims he used the term "Big Bang" to help listeners understand what it was). It seemed even more so when discoveries supporting the Big Bang model such as cosmic microwave background radiation, and young stars and galaxies, he still rejected the Big Bang theory. Also, he rejected abiogenesis as an explanation of life on Earth, citing instead that the development of life began in space and evolution is driven by viruses arriving on Earth via comets. Just as odd, he argued that the human nose is shaped as it is, because it had evolved to help protect it from influenza...which he believed came from outer space. He also questioned thee veracity of the "Archaeopteryx" fossil, causing a hub-bub in the scientific community. After esigning from his position as director of Theoretical Astronomy in Cambridge Institute and as Plumian professor, he cited that Cambridge was politically motivated and accused them of being "Robespierre-like", and has gone on record saying that the scientific community does not give a fair chance to opposition towards the theory of evolution, despite the fact he didn't present any evidence contrary of abiogenesis or natural selection, or those supporting his own wild theories of life beginning in space, or life occuring somewhere else in space in the manner he proposed.
- Richard Feynman, a physicist and member of the Manhattan Project, prankster, raconteur, drummer, amateur lockpick, and self-taught hieroglyphics translator. He was called in to investigate in the aftermath of the Challenger shuttle disaster, and reported on a variety of organizational failings and produced a dramatic demonstration of the notorious o-ring failure. Not to mention that his Nobel-prize-winning research into quantum electrodynamics started out when he saw a paper plate being thrown across a canteen and wondered what caused it to wobble in mid-flight. And he once failed a military-draft psychiatric test by overthinking the questions.
- Jack Parsons was a brilliant chemist and explosives expert, and was one of the founders of Jet Propulsion Lab. He was also an occultist who was the leader of the Agape Lodge, the major branch of the Ordo Templi Orientalis in the western US. Which brings us to two other men who figure prominently in his story...
- Aleister Crowley, "The Great Beast 666", who was a chess master and expert mountain climber, and in addition to being the most famous (or notorious) occultist of the 20th century, and...
- Well, then he certainly qualifies as a Bunny Ears Lawyer, because he was so good at mastering chess and climbing expert mountaints that his co-workers in chess mastery and expert mountain climbing were happy to look the other way about the whole occult thing.
- Lafeyette Ronald Hubbard was a prolific science-fiction writer and, when he served in the Navy, was described as a capable(if energetic) officer and above-average navigator. He was also a nutjob who founded his own religion which has a...let's say colorful..reputation that really can't be done justice here.
- Many prominent politicians seem to have to have some sort of quirk by default.
- Just going by US Presidents, we have many examples of people that ranged from somewhat quirky (George Washington was known for breaking into tears at the slightest provocation) to Lyndon B. Johnson who had a habit of making his (male) subordinates discuss issues with him while he was on the toilet, and once famously whipped out his dick at a press conference. His actions in the movie Forrest Gump where he asks Gump to show him his buttock scar are very funny because that is exactly the kind of thing he would have done.
- Richard Nixon was one of (if not) the most corrupt and paranoid presidents ever. Yet he fought for open relations with China, against inflation and segregation, and for environmental concerns. He's been described as an "idiosyncratic president, so brilliant and so morally lacking".
- And let's not forget all the President Actions we've had- from Andrew Jackson and his penchant for duels, to Theodore Roosevelt, who had a rather long daily jog, and foreign ambassadors generally had to go on it with him if they wanted to speak with him.
- Canadian Prime Ministers, we have such a wonderful number, too. William Lyon Mackenzie King, our PM for WWII, was a brilliant man in office, but at home? He used spirit mediums to get advice from his dead mother and several of his dead pet dogs, all of them named Pat. In more recent years, there's also no forgetting Jean Chretien, renowned for not being to speak either official language.
- That was from Bell's palsy, though, so does it still count?
- Winston Churchill goes one better. Worked and slept unusual hours, for a start, but topped it by holding a meeting with Franklin D Roosevelt while taking a bath. He commented that "two great men have nothing to hide from each other".
- Ulysses S. Grant was a brilliant battle tactician and (supposed) drunkard who, after winning against Robert E. Lee and meeting him at Appomattox Courthouse to negotiate a surrender, showed up in his dirty uniform with muddy boots in contrast to Lee's perfectly arranged uniform, leading at least one spectator to comment that if you hadn't known better you'd thought the other guy had lost. (James Thurber's story "If Grant Had Been Drunk at Appomattox" has the hungover Union commander making this mistake himself and handing over his sword to the astonished Lee.) Lincoln also reportedly ordered his aides to find out what sort of whiskey Grant drank and send a case to every one of the Union generals.
- Despite being cool as a cucumber during battles, riding up closer than generals were supposed to, with holes through his uniform from bullets (plus numerous horses shot dead as he rode on them) Grant could not stand the sight of blood. That's right-after each battle he retired to his tent and wept. Every stake he ate had to be devoid of blood or he would become physically ill. (Wyatt Earp also went his entire career without once being shot, unlike Doc Holliday who had been nearly killed multiple times including at the OK Corrall, but still dying of tubercolosis in bed, how he didn't want to go-his last words were "this is funny," looking at his feet in bed, since he always hoped to "die with his boots on.")
- I would be devoid in my Troper duties if I did not point out that the usage of the word "stake" in the above gives this Troper a hitherto undiscovered respect for the good general. Devoid of blood indeed
- Two or three factual reasons actually lie behind this. Lee surrendering was the death of the Confederacy, so Lee showed up in his finery the way soldiers are buried in dress uniforms. After 5 years of long hard fought war, could you really blame Grant for wanting to hurry up and see it finally over?
- Grant may also have been making a statement that his status as victor was higher than Lee's. The higher your status, the worse you can dress, and the better your subordinates must dress in your presence. So, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur wore an an open-collar shirt to meet with Japanese Emperor Hirohito after the surrender of Japan in World War II. MacArthur wore a similar shirt, and a dirty hat, when he met President Harry Truman on Wake Island to discuss the Korean War, and Truman may not have liked that, because it may have suggsted that MacArthur thought his own status was higher than Truman's. Truman wrote: "We arrived at dawn. Gen. MacArthur was at the Airport with his shirt unbuttoned wearing a greasy ham and eggs cap that evidently had been in use for twenty years." (President Harry S. Truman Handwritten note, November 25, 1950. Papers of Harry S. Truman: President's Secretary's Files)
- Immanuel Kant, one of the Western world's most influential philosophers, was known as a man of exceedingly regular habits. He would take a walk every single day at 3:30 pm and it was said that you could set your watch by him. Supposedly the only time he ever missed a walk was when he was reading Rousseau's Emile. He also never ventured more than 40 miles from his home in Königsberg.
- Benjamin Franklin may have taken part in occult rituals and was heavily obsessed with sex and turkeys, and yet, is one of the most celebrated American historical figures.
- Not only was Roald Dahl one of these (he played practical jokes on his upper crust friends so often it's a wonder any of them ever trusted him, and he had very specific demands when writing, including using a particular kind of pencil that was only ever sold in Britain), but he was also a magnet for these kind of people. Apparently, early in his life, Mr Dahl travelled on with an entire boatful of Bunny Ears Lawyers.
- Michael Jackson. Everybody knows he's obsessed with reclaiming his childhood through things like his Neverland Ranch, with its personal zoo and amusement park. Everybody knows he's utterly, utterly obsessed with young boys, possibly sexually. However, he remains popular among many people.
- Later weirdness aside, his musical talent and showmanship during the years when he was still black is impressive. I mean, the man made THRILLER.
- Even after he "became white", he still made impressive music and performances. Of course, that's the era overshadowed by his extracurricular antics.
- When his comeback residency at the O2 arena in London this year was announced, tickets went extremely quickly.
- And now that he's dead, he's gotten even more leeway.
- William Moulton Marston. Creator of the polygraph (lie detector). Creator of Wonder Woman. And perfectly willing to use both to demonstrate his eternal love of bondage. And that's not to mention his belief that the world would be better off entering into "loving submission" to a world matriarchy, also demonstrated in his Wonder Woman book. Or the "menage a trois" household he maintained with two women...
- Usain Bolt of Jamaica. Called the fastest man alive after his performance at the 2008 Olympics, he was perhaps better known for his behavior on the field. He set a world record by a significant amount in the 100-meter while showboating for the last twenty. And his shoelace was untied, and he'd most of the previous day watching TV and eating fried chicken.
- Phil Hellmuth, aka "The Poker Brat". His nickname comes in part because he's prone to wild and hilarious temper tantrums when someone else bets a hand that conventional strategy says they should've folded and gets lucky...and partially because he was the youngest ever WSOP Main Event Champion and has won more bracelets than any other player in World Series of Poker history. (Though the first record was broken in 2008).
- In the same vein, Mike "The Mouth" Matusow is one of the best pro players around, but, well... you can probably guess how he got his nickname. He's cooled down a lot in recent years, though.
- And for an example of a pro player with more flamboyant tendencies, there's Humberto Brenes, who calls himself "The Shark" and has the toy shark card protectors to prove it, which he tends to use more as a means of doing a prop comedy act than actually protecting his cards, and has a tendency to turn his volume up to 11 any time he goes all-in. He also finished in the top one-hundred of the World Series of Poker main event two years in a row in 2006 and 2007, when the fields of entrants exceeded six thousand players. Even for a big-name pro that takes serious skill.
- Buckethead is well known for conducting interviews by using a hand puppet resembling a face turned inside out, is almost 7 feet tall, apparently has a crippling fear of women, and watches a lot of horror movies. He also happens to be one of the most impossibly skilled virtuoso guitar players in the world.
- Field Marshal Bernard "Monty" Montgomery was a man with an ego a mile wide, a severe lack of tact, a level of racism that was high even by World War Two Allied standards (Axis standards being, well, you know), did not get on well at all with his senior officers and was unwilling to admit when he'd been wrong. However, the British think he was an excellent general (historians from other nations regard him as anything from an egotistical poser who extended the war by months to a mildly competent commander who was more concerned with keeping the British army intact, rather than using it to win battles,) while his men, who he got on well with, loved him. He ended up Viscount Montgomery of Alamein.
- His career almost ended before it began- he nearly got kicked out of Sandhurst for setting fire to a comrade's shirt during a hazing ritual.
- Monty acquired a personal Crowning Moment Of Awesome in the First World War, where he was severely wounded at Meteren and given up as hopeless to the point a grave was dug for him. He recovered and picked up a Distinguished Service Order medal for gallant leadership. The more impressive thing- the DSO is typically handed out to officers of Captain rank or above. Monty was a Lieutenant. If a Lieutenant gets a medal like that, it is generally seen as a sign that they just missed out on a Victoria Cross.
- Apropos Montgomery's legendary ego and lack of tact, there is a story that then-prime minister Winston Churchill was once discussing Monty with King George VI and confided that he thought Monty was after his job. "That's a relief," George VI is supposed to have replied, "I thought he was after mine..."
- Performance Artist and perky pervert Bob Flanagan collaborated with alt-musicians like Sonic Youth and Nine Inch Nails, designed numerous museum installations and, for a time, held the world record for living with Cystic Fibrosis until his death in 1995, at 43. He was also a CF Summer Camp Counselor for more than half of his life and a stand-up comedian. His secret? Bob was a self-proclaimed "Supermasochist" and believed in fighting "sickness with sickness." He routinely tortured himself with everything from C-47s to barbeque forks. He also (censored for squick) hammered his penis to a wooden board at least twice and got it on video tape.
- Sir Isaac Newton is rightly regarded as one of the founders of the concept of a rational, mechanistic universe. However, he was also an apocalyptic Christian, astrologer, numerologist and mystic. One example of this interfering with his scientific work is the inclusion of the colour indigo in the spectrum - he wanted there to be seven colours in the spectrum instead of six, as it fitted with a numerological theory that he had. Also, he lived in permanent chaos, constantly leaping from one idea to the other. His servants would often find him in the morning half in and half out of bed, halted in place by an unstoppable train of thought. When he first produced a mathematical model for the orbits of the planets, he not only neglected to publish, but mislaid his notes and workings on it. It was only when a horrified Sir Edmund Halley (of comet fame) persuaded him to redo his workings with all speed (and send him a copy so that he could win a friendly wager with Sir Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke) that the enforced focus resulted in his famous Principia Mathematica, which set down what became known as Newtonian Mechanics.
- Newton himself regarded his writings on spirituality and the Bible to be his chief accomplishments, rather than his mathematics - indeed, in terms of sheer word count these writings outweighed his science. He was also an alchemist - recent studies on existing samples of his hair show that Newton had massive amounts of mercury in his system, which could certainly account for his odd behaviour. Brusque, deliberately obtuse, and short-tempered to the point of rudeness, he made his published works deliberately obscure and hard to follow so he would not be continually bothered by questions or suggestions from "smatterers", as he called people not up to his mathematical skill. One of his Cambridge colleagues wrote that he could not recall seeing Newton smile once in ten years. It certainly would appear from most first-hand reports of Newton's life that he was indulged in his more eccentric pursuits and tolerated for his unbearable personality precisely because he was otherwise such a brilliant scientist.
- Newton was a member of Parliament for a year. During his term, he only uttered one sentence in Parliament, to complain about a draft caused by an open window.
- He was also Master of the Mint (as in where coins come from) in 1699, a post at which he remained until his death. However, he actually was good at this job (which is weird, because Master of the Mint was by this point a sinecure to allow him to get paid to do nothing), helping reform the English (and then British) coinage system, cracking down on clippers and counterfieters, and ultimately (if accidentally) moving the pound to the gold standard in 1717.
- Indeed, Newton pursued a job he was expected to do nothing at with such vigor, that he was good enough to earn a knighthood for it (and not, as is often assumed, for his scientific achievements).
- Dr. Bronner of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps. For sixty years, Dr. Bronner's company has been selling soaps, shampoos, and conditioners with quotes from the Bible, Rudyard Kipling, and pieces of Dr. Bronner's own theology and environmental philosophy on the packaging. However, it is good soap, and it's organic and fair-trade to boot.
- Supposedly to some extent special forces came off as this in earlier years, as it took quite some time for them to be accepted in certain military hierarchies. An illuminating look at this was the book Blackhawk Down, where as late as 1993 a certain special operations unit was looked at from a Ranger captain's point of view thusly:
The disdain was mutual. [Captain] Steele accepted that these operators were good at their jobs, but he wasn't in awe of them. He found their civilian manner and contemptuous attitude toward Ranger discipline hard to take. Sure, it was a good idea to encourage individual initiative and creative thinking in combat, but some of these guys had strayed so far from traditional army norms it seemed unhealthy. They could be comically arrogant. When they'd gotten a list of potential target sites, for instance, the D-boys had divvied them up among different teams. Each was assigned to draw up an assault plan. Since his men were involved, Steele had sat in on the meeting when the various schemes were presented. The captain's experience with such a planning session was like this: You sat there and took notes and asked questions only to make sure you got things down correctly and then saluted on your way out. The D-boys' meeting was a free-for-all. One group would present its plan and somebody would pipe up, "Why, that's the stupidest thing I ever heard," which would provoke a sturdy "*** you," which quickly degenerated into guys screaming at each other. It looked to Steele like they were about to assume Kung Fu stances and have it out.
- Renaissance-era painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was by all accounts, an absolutely loathsome person. An alcoholic with a explosively violent temper, Caravaggio spent much of his life in and out of jail. He was notorious for picking fights even in an era and place when such behavior was commonplace, and eventually had to flee Rome after he murdered a man. Despite this, Caravaggio was arguably the most famous and influential artist in Italy while alive.
- This guy has some of the best videos on global climate change you'll find. He tackles and refutes skeptics' claims and gets down to the nitty-gritty details of how greenhouse gases affect climate, far better than Al Gore ever thought of doing. The proverbial bunny ears come in with the assortment of strange and goofy hats he wears while doing it.
- Real l33t h4x0r5 (who never refer to themselves that way) routinely exhibit this; the canonical example wears an Hawaiian shirt and has more hair hanging below his shoulders than on his head.
- Nikola Tesla, suffered from what today would be diagnosed as extreme OCD, had a crippling phobia of hair, and routinely espoused whacky theories, dropped out of school had several nervous breakdowns— and established the basis of all modern electrical systems, including radio (although Marconi still routinely gets the credit).
- Howard Hughes. 'Nuff said.
- Many professional athletes with a reputation for "trouble" can fall into this. Those whose stigma overshadow their impressive accomplishments include Pete Rose, Terrell Owens, Allen Iverson, Dennis Rodman, and Michael Vick, among others. And some who are clearly known as a dominant force first and foremost are not without their own shortcomings, such as Kobe Bryant (infidelity that led to rape charges), Michael Jordan (his multiple retirements are suspected of being linked to gambling issues), and Rickey Henderson (for being
the greatest Rickey).
- Kanye West initially made waves with the impressive unorthodoxy of his first three albums, and many artists owe their careers to his studio work. The non-musically inclined, however, may know him more for his arrogant public persona away from the studio, especially when the comparisons to Jesus came about.
- Miyamoto Musashi, the Japanese "kensei," or "sword-saint," thought to be Japan's greatest swordsman, invented an entirely new school of fencing, and wrote a kendo manual that is used the world over as instructions for virtually every subject there is, regardless of whether it has to do with swords. Once he realized he was unbeatable in duels, he dispensed with real swords altogether, and wielded only wooden practice swords (and on at least one occasion, one he whittled himself from an oar), and remained undefeated. He reportedly spent long periods without bathing, as it would require him to be separated from his weapons, and went about with wild, filthy hair.
- Henry Cavendish was so brilliant that in 1800 he weighed the planet and determined its density using nothing but two iron balls and a system of pulleys IN A CAVE WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS. It took 100 years for anyone to improve on his figures. Unfortunately no one knew about most of his work because he was cripplingly terrified of other people, so much so that when ambushed by a reporter he fled down the street and had to be retrieved by his family. The only way people could consistently communicate with Cavendish was to stand behind him and wonder about something out loud.
- Wesley Willis, a morbidly obese paranoid schizophrenic, wrote some brilliantly funny songs, including "I Whooped Batman's Ass", "Cut That Mullet", and "Rock And Roll McDonald's", garnering him a cult following.
- Yukio Mishima was a brilliant and prolific author who was considered for the Noble Prize for literature three times before he turned 43. He was also an ultra-nationalist, rigidly obsessive exerciser, and closeted homosexual who founded his own army, took over a military base, and there committed suicide at the age of 45.
- This is one of the recommendations if you don't want to fall victim to the dreaded Peter principle (advancing to a position for which one is not competent enough): Develop quirks which will exclude you from being considered for promotion, but which have no impact on your actual work.
- The late Ron Luciano, who umpired in American League baseball games during the 1970s. He would dance and spin on the field, do more than just call players out ('OUTOUTOUTOUTOUTOUT!', with his personal record being sixteen 'outs'), would shoot out baserunners with his index finger, and was known for repeatedly getting on Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver's nerves (and vice versa). However, during his career he was regarded by baseball players as one of the few truly "great" umpires of that era, and regretted his actions if they interfered with his job.
- Jay Miner designed several computers and game consoles in the '70s and '80s, and he is generally considered to have been one of the greatest hardware designers in history. He also brought his dog with him wherever he went (to the point of getting the dog a worker's ID card while at Atari) and consulted the dog whenever he ran into difficult design decisions. His habit of wearing plaid and Hawaiian-print shirts only added to his quirkiness.
- Ignaz Semmelweis, the doctor who found out that it was a good idea for med students working with cadavers (which is what they did when not treating a patient) to wash their hands before delivering babies, which of course resulted in a massive decrease in childbirth deaths when he instituted the policy. However, when his ideas were questioned, instead of publishing his results, he went around insulting all skeptics (most of the medical establishment at the time). He didn't publish his research until after most of the influential doctors in his country strongly questioned his judgment, so his results were attributed to other causes, and hand-washing generally not implemented. He continued to use the insulting method in his attempt to gain supporters, and he ended up in an asylum where he died after being beaten by guards. However, his ideas were more accepted abroad, where they quickly gained popularity and after Pasteur's work gave explanation, they also became accepted in his native Austro-Hungary.
- The way I heard it, Semmelweis did try to publish his results, but was laughed at by the establishment who thought that the whole "germ theory" thing was ridiculous, as Puerperal fever clearly was the result of an umbalance of bodily humors. Besides, why would doctors who are clearly gentlemen of the upper crust need to wash their hands like some common servant? What slowly drove poor Semmelweis over the brink was the fact that despite the clear evidence that his theory was correct, ten percent of all new mothers in hospitals were dieing simply because doctors were too arrogant to bother to wash their hands after autopsy or admit that they were the cause of the disease.
- Glenn Gould, celebrated classical pianist. Always insisted on using a certain chair when performing, and would hum loudly and make strange movements while playing. He was also an unusually withdrawn person who hated being touched and was very sensitive to cold.
- Alan Moore. The man is a practising magician who believes he's met several of the characters he has written and worships a god even he admits is a hoax, and yet his works are suberb in quality and lauded by both critics and the masses.
- Which is a belief system called Chaos Magic, and really not all that uncommon. It basically means that believing in something magical can trigger moments of strength and insight that being skeptical won't trigger, so the act of believing in a god/demon/anything is used to explore parts of yourself you wouldn't otherwise find. Knowing rationally that the god/demon/whatever doesn't exist is moot - it's the act of believing, not the object of the belief, that gives the believer strength/insight/joy. It's basically a cultivated personal religion without bullshit.
- Um, can you say "Albert Einstein?"
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