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Osaka is not like you.
"So I was thinking...wait that doesn't sound right. What's it called when you lie down in water and there's all these foamy piles of bubbles on top of you?"
A character with their head in the clouds. They aren't quite stupid, and they aren't quite insane, but they lapse into non sequitur a lot and are strangely oblivious to things that everyone else takes for granted, such as whether it is okay to turn their suitemate's room into a landfill and board it up. They are still, somehow, able to function day to day.
An example of their internal dialog:
That is where corn chips come from. Hmm... Maybe ol' Professor Hardwood is onto something. He probably really loves corn. And all corn-related products. I mean, isn't that what you're supposed to put in a frame? Things you love? I'm gonna do that. When I'm get home, I'm gonna frame a bunch of stuff I love. Like lasagna. I LOVE lasagna. It's SO good. And cheesy. You know who else loves lasagna? Garfield. Man, that cat really loves lasagna. Maybe I should put a picture of Garfield in a frame. You know, as a kind of shorthand way of saying "I love lasagna." That would be so fucking inside. Or how 'bout a photo of PRESIDENT Garfield? Oh shit, that would be totally meta! People would be all like, "Jane, why do you have a photo of President Garfield on your mantle?" And I'd be like, "Because I like lasagna, of course."
— Jane, while staring at a framed ear of corn, Smiley Face
Sometimes also called "Space Case" or "Space Cadet", or plain old " Strange".
One mark of a Cloudcuckoolander is when, 90% of the time, you think the character is just plain nuts, but 10% of the time, you suspect that the character is in fact the only truly sane person on the show. In other words, a Cloudcuckoolander has massive knowledge and understanding of the workings of the universe... too bad it's not the one they live in. Sometimes it's the one they came from, though.
The name of the trope comes from the city built on air above the Greek plain in Aristophanes' play The Birds, 414 B.C.
When they are given a specific disorder, it is often Attention Deficit... ooh, shiny! When their weirdness delves into disturbing territory, they become a Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant.
On rare occasion, a Cloud Cuckoo Lander may become Bored With Insanity and become more normal. If this happens, sometimes it sticks, and sometimes a "we want our cloud-cuckoolander back" movement, subsequently getting bored with sanity too, or some other means of inducing insanity will make him or her a Cloud Cuckoo Lander again.
Frequently given a Weirdness Coupon. Certainly, many of them get away with a good deal no one else would be allowed.
Examples
Anime
- Mihoshi from the various Tenchi series seems like a complete airhead, but manages to save the day on several occasions. This is usually the result of her outrageous luck, but it's also indicated that Mihoshi is much smarter than she seems... at least in the OVA continuity.
- Osaka from Azumanga Daioh is another example: She has a tendency to say and do strange things out of the blue, drift off into daydreaming from which she is very hard to shake, and at one point apparently suspected that Chiyo's pigtails were detachable. Or when she decided to wake up Yukari with a frying pan. How that knife got in her hand no one could explain, least of all Osaka. She expressed mild astonishment. Yukari, well, didn't.
- Orihime from Bleach; on one occasion, asked to draw what she thought she would be like in the future, she drew a rather unnerving picture of herself as a giant, highly destructive robot.
- Since everybody who knows Orihime is aware of her overactive imagination, she's able to give truthful accounts of her activities, and the ordinary humans think she's just making crazy stuff up again.
- When asked what Orihime would do on a date with Ichigo by Tatsuki, it start innocently enough with a simple race to a see saw that starts to get pretty heated, which is then interrupted when some black track star comes out of nowhere, which then logically leads to a boxing match and then a assassination attempt. Which she is all acting out as she imagines it. Tatsuki is confused naturally.
- Masaru Hananakajima from Sexy Commando Gaiden definitely qualifies; he practices an entire martial art based on the idea that a confused, unsettled enemy cannot defend themself. His usual technique to produce that state involves groaning "Ahhhhh" while reaching to unzip his pants.
- Similarly, Bobobo Bo Bobobo, in the show of the same name, while supposedly using a martial art based around his nose hairs, usually wins his fights by confusing the enemy into surrender. Then again, everyone on that show but Beauty likely qualifies for this trope.
- You could argue that Beauty is the only character who qualifies. All the others are off in their own little reality, but she's normal and thus the exception.
- Gedatsu in One Piece; he often forgets to keep his mouth open while talking, or unreverse his eyes to see, and apparently isn't even able to cross his arms properly without advice.
- Nene Mori of Princess Nine always dreamed of being the manager (gofer/janitor, not coach) of a high school baseball team, just like in all the manga she read. Since she was sent to a private all-girls school, this just wasn't going to happen. Once a girls baseball team is formed, Nene sees it as her destiny. Unfortunately, while she is very Genre Savvy, she only knows what a manager does, not how to do it (her family's filthy rich, she's never even done laundry), so she mostly exists to Hang A Lampshade on the more obvious clichés the writers embrace, by suggesting them. Fortunately, she has a good heart, and a butler (and access to lots of resources).
- Jeri/Juri Katou from Digimon Tamers.
- Tsukasa from Lucky Star, apart from randomly spacing out for no discernable reason, finds balsamic vinegar strangely fascinating.
Tsukasa: Strawberries smell like strawberry shortcakes!
- Konata also falls into this at times.
- Fuura Kafuka from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei combines this trope with being a big-time pollyanna to incredibly creepy extents; for example, she believes that nobody could ever want to hang themselves, and those who do are simply trying to "make themselves taller". She then cheerfully goes on to describe how her father went and tried to make himself taller... Repeatedly. No-one is sure if she's deeply disturbed, in heavy denial, or both.
- Taro Maria Sekiutsu can be considered one too, especially considering she comes from a country where apparently massacres happen regularly. She's upbeat, cheerful, and makes little to no sense usually. Unsurprisingly, she gets along great with Kafuka.
- The titular character of Suzumiya Haruhi who rants about dumping all her previous boyfriends because they weren't aliens, time travellers, or espers, seems to fit this trope at first... until her criteria turn out to be less farfetched than they seem...
- Ed from Cowboy Bebop. Though as a hyperactive teenage super-hacker, she also qualifies as a Genius Ditz.
- Milly Thompson from Trigun is an almost stereotypical example. She once nearly threatened a shopkeeper with her Really Big Gun when in search of pudding... and got it. Only to drop her grocery bags a few moments later to emphasize a point midconversation.
- Dita from Vandread is the resident Cloudcuckoolander for the show. Despite have deep feelings for the main character Hibiki, she seems to forget his name, calling him Mr. Alien instead.
- Ichijou, the Class Representative from Pani Poni Dash, is weird even for a thoroughly Widget Series. She also appears to have inexplicable (and unexplained) powers that ignore the laws of physics, reality, and sanity.
- Himeko also seems particularly unconcerned with anything remotely approaching reality, though in a much more energetic way than Ichijou.
- Yotsuya from Maison Ikkoku continuously annoys the main male protagonist with his outlandish behavior, including but not limited to extortion, theft and housebreaking. He is very polite about it, though.
- Mutsumi Otohime from Love Hina.
- Nia Teppelin from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann; at first due to her sheltered up-bringing but it quite clear she isn't all there in the head when even after 7 years in the outside world she still surprises everyone with her quirky misunderstandings. Simon even remarks that he has a hard time understanding what she says.
- Tristan from Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series is a combination of a Cloudcuckoolander and a Ralph Wiggum. Almost every line that he gives is an illogical non-sequitur, such as his randomly given cry of "Burn the witch!" and "Take off your clothes!"
- Emperor Fred from Samurai Pizza Cats, the eccentric ruler of Little Tokyo who largely communicates by saying his name ("Fuh-red!") and scat-singing ("Doo-wah!"). In one episode he caught a bad cold, and instead of becoming delirious with fever, he became sane with fever:
Princess Violet: He's speaking aloud back there, as if he had a mind of his own!
Al Dente: Oh no, then he's very sick!
- Hohenheim from Fullmetal Alchemist has a way of looking and acting as if he came straight from another planet. A scene in the manga even shows him mumbling to himself while Ed yells insults and accusations at him on Trisha's grave then out of the blue, comparing Ed to "a little boy who has wet his bed and hidden the sheets" in a fairly threatening way. This might partly be a case of Obfuscating Stupidity though, as when he does get serious, he reveals that he's understood the situation way earlier and better than anybody else. Plus, some of his apparent non-sequiturs actually contain important hidden messages and information. Still, pretty much everybody notices how ''weird'', socially awkward and absent-minded he is.
- A scene of the anime in which he talks with Winry on Trisha's grave (and shocks her when he tells her totally non-ironically that "It's sad" that her parents were killed during the Ishbal genocide) suggests that he has spent several entire days and nights in the graveyard.
- In the manga, Al is disturbed by Hohenheim's body language and way of making terrifying or ridiculous confidences with an impenetrable face and Scary Shiny Glasses —and Al himself is practically a suit of armour.
- In a key scene of the manga, 'Father', the homunculi's boss, starts acting like a caricature of Hohenheim, complete with non-sequiturs, creepy staring, senile mumbling, suddenly standing uncomfortably close to people, and pensive beard-twisting. Ed proceeds to yell at him, "LISTEN TO ME, ALIEN!" An official Yonkoma even shows him letting Ed persuade him to get a 200-year subscription to a Central City newspaper. In the last panel, Bradley / Wrath calls him a "naive Hikikomori with no knowlege of the world."
- At one point, during a pitched battle, he even suddenly moves uncomfortably close to Scar and politely asks him a question.
- In Hayate No Gotoku, Saginomiya Isumi has really impressive command over the non-sequitur and is generally completely spaced out, leading to such scenes as she asking a construction worker if the subway involved getting dinosaurs into bullet trains. As a result, Isumi's the only one capable of following Nagi's utterly nonsensical attempts at creating manga.
- Izumi, one of the Nadesico's Aestivalis pilots, is notable for her bad poetry and her even worse puns (though she laughs uncontrollably at them), and often seems to be off in a world of her own. This doesn't stop her from being a competent pilot.
- Yuichiro Tajima in Ookiku Furikabutte is a baseball prodigy with expert peripherial vision and incredible accuracy when batting. When off field, he's borderline hyperactive, has the tendancy to loudly discuss his masturbation habits and at least once almost stripped naked in public just to work on his tan.
- Kotomi from CLANNAD is very awkward, lacking all but the basic social skills, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that she is a genius. She also tends to space out and come up with totally non sequitur responses, which she often combines with a deeply seated fear of bullies. Nevertheless Tomoya drafts her for the drama club, where her sweet and thoughtful demeanor makes her very popular with its members — as long as she refrains from playing the violin.
- Fuuko is also a total space-cadet. At one point she tells Tomoya she's warmed up to him, explaining that she likes him more than sea slugs (but not as much as starfish). Tomoya doesn't understand the rankings.
- Dolce in Geneshaft is also a genius, this time in computer programming. She keeps a calm and quiet appearance herself, but communicates loudly and obnoxiously through her puppet.
- Ryou and Fuu from Sketchbook ~full color'S~ are always together, seemingly living in their own world which only slightly touches upon reality. They do appear to understand each other perfectly though, which is already the case in the manga and which gets exaggerated in the anime so they seem to have some sort of two-person hive mind. They love to play pranks on the other students and often function as some sort of off-beat narrators to the show's events. Still, they will help out their friends in times of need — albeit in their own fashion.
- Shinobu Morita from Honey And Clover, who also has the tendency to disappear for days in a row.
- Well, that is for work. He still qualifies, mind, especially in the way he treats Hagumi.
- Hotaru of Samurai Deeper Kyo can't remember his own mentor's name and so calls him Yun Yun, insists on moving caterpillars out of the way before fights, asks directions from Mauve Shirt villain Kubira, and is off in his own world when he's not fighting. And that's just a short list.
- Finland from Axis Powers Hetalia shows signs of this; he thinks that "Blood-smeared Flower Egg" is a perfectly acceptable name for a puppy. Italy combines elements of this with The Ditz.
- You'd think Usagi of Sailor Moon is a clear candidate, but the Cloudcuckoolander, at least in the anime, is definitely Minako with her infamous malapropisms.
Minako: Mi o sutete koso, ukabu setomono mo are! (Along with throwing your life away, you throw away floating pottery.)
(the real quote is "Mi o sutete koso, ukabu se mo are" (Along with throwing your life away, you throw away your chances.)
- Many of the odder villains in Gash Bell fall under this trope. Victoream will drop everything for a melon, and usually sing a song about it afterwards. Koral Q will drop everything if you missed his awesome transformation, and usually sing a song about it afterwards. Kiees will drop everything if you ignore his brilliant Beethoven mishmash, and... well you get the idea.
- Gash also acts this way in the better half of the first season, especially when he's unaware of his powers. (He loses consciousness when Kiyomaro reads spells and at first thinks lightning came from the sky when he uses them.)
Comic Books
- The eponymous Lenore of Roman Dirge's comic is a rather dark take on the Cloudcuckoolander, as her inattentiveness, tenuous grasp on reality, and near-nonexistant understanding of the concept of mortality leads her to frequently inadvertently cause the deaths of the people and animals she deals with. She could be considered Ax Crazy, but she's not truly insane, and usually doesn't intentionally mean to cause harm.
- Delirium from The Sandman graphic novels sometimes comes close to this trope — since she's the Anthropomorphic Personification of insanity, it's probably reasonable to assume that she is genuinely crazy, but nonetheless she does have at least one moment during the series where she pulls herself together and becomes briefly 'sane', though it's made clear that she finds it very difficult to do this. She also has a few other moments in which she seems to become temporarily slightly more lucid, and comes out with a very perceptive or useful comment before reverting to her usual chaotic self.
- Deadpool.
- "...the man trying hard not to hump your TV is The Drummer."
"First name The, second name Drummer."
"You'll regret being so damn abusive when the electric UFO gods transphase in from Dimension Ten to appoint me Manager Of The Universe.... I said that out loud, didn't I?"
Film
- Gracie Allen's ditz persona frequently slipped into this type. Sample dialogue from College Swing:
Hubert: Everything makes me think of Love, Gracie. (She leans gently on his shoulder) What are you thinking about?
Gracie: (sighs rapturously) Clams.
Hubert: Aren't they beautiful? I hope I don't make you think of clams.
Gracie: Oh no, no. I was just thinking, if we were clams, we'd never have to take our shoes off. Wouldn't that be wonderful?
Literature
Live Action TV
- Jack Handey of Saturday Night Live, who gave us such "Deep Thoughts" as:
"If you saw two guys named Hambone and Flippy, which one would you think liked dolphins the most? I'd say Flippy, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong, though. It's Hambone."
- Also from Saturday Night Live, Tracy Morgan's sketch character named Brian Fellow who interviewed various animal trainers and made inane comments about the animals. Usually at the end, he would have a daydream about the first animal in the sketch that sometimes was completely random. For example, at the end of a sketch featuring a bunny, he imagined a bunny cutting its hair. And then he reacts to the delusion—in a way that his real second guest can hear!
- Will Ferrell's Harry Caray certainly counts as well. As the host of an astronomy show, he asks his guests if they would eat the moon if it were made of spare ribs (he would) and proclaims the sun to be his favorite planet, which is why he stares at it. After a guest asks him about his death, his only response is, "What's your point?"
- Cosmo Kramer of Seinfeld. Although, his problem isn't that he doesn't understand what's going on around him, or what is or isn't considered acceptable by society, but rather that he doesn't care, and thus behaves as if he were oblivious.
- Dougal McGuire from Father Ted has to keep a list of things that don't exist, including "non-Catholic gods", "the Phantom of the Opera", and "Darth Vader".
- Richie and Eddie from Bottom start off in this situation and descend occasionally into Ralph Wiggum territory. When they think they've killed a gas meter reader, Richie suggests they eat the corpse in order to dispose of it; when they go camping, Eddie lights the Sterno without inserting the valve and almost sets himself on fire; and then there's the following exchange over a crossword puzzle:
Richie: Hey, I'll tell you what... Why don't we think of another word that means "ironmonger" but only has six letters?
Eddie: Heh! Well, that'd be cheating, wouldn't it?
Richie: Who's to know?
Eddie: Hah! You're right, me old pal! We get through a few scrapes, don't we?
Richie: Yeah, so, where are we?
Eddie: Er, right. "Ironmonger", six letters. ...Oh, got it! "Harold."
Richie: Harold?
Eddie: Yeah, well, he's an ironmonger, isn't he? Harold the Ironmonger, remember? We ate his dog!
Richie: Oh right! Yeah, we bloody won that bet, didn't we?
Eddie: ...Uh, no, we didn't. That's why we had to eat his dog.
- J.D. from Scrubs, who, when faced with problems outside medicine, keeps coming up with solutions involving monkeys, gnomes, or his head being independent of his body. Sometimes his statements sound more bizarre to the other characters than they are, because they didn't hear the Inner Monologue leading up to it, but more often, knowing what he was thinking just makes it weirder.
- Phoebe Buffay from Friends is probably the most well-known example for a mass-media audience, though most of the characters have "Cloudcuckooland" moments at one time or another, as does Rachel's sister Amy.
- Major Gowen in Fawlty Towers typically understood about one-third of any conversation that didn't involve the game of cricket. His cognitive skills usually failed at a critical juncture of one of Basil's schemes. He once went to a remembrance service, but didn't remember it.
- Trudy from Reno 911! tells a story of how she mistook a goat for a Turk (or maybe vice versa), and seems to think that she's in a relationship with the openly gay Lt. Dangle.
- Power Rangers: Bridge is definitely one of these. Of course, basically being a human tricorder and having no way to really turn it off will do that to you. One episode revolves around his weirdness actually being an asset. In the 15th season's Reunion Show some seasons later, the only one who really got him was Overdrive's resident Cloudcuckoolander Dax. The others look on in astonishment.
- River Tam of Firefly, while she is actually insane, does have her lucid periods, during which she is endearingly unpredictable. Notable examples include her deciding to imitate Badger's accent while deconstructing his gangster facade and her attempt to "fix" Shepherd Book's Bible. It's difficult to tell how many of these moments are due to Cloudcuckoolander-ness and how many are actually because she's kind of a genius.
- My favorite one of these was in the Episode "Trash"
Jayne: As a rule I say girlfolk ain't to be trusted.
River: Jayne is a girl's name.
- Or saying this completely randomly during one of her more lucid moments in "Safe".
River: The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
To which Mal responds that he has no problem with "morbid and creepifying" as long as she does it quietly.
- In Green Acres, everyone in Hooterville except (maybe) Oliver Wendell Douglas seemed to be a Cloudcuckoolander.
- Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad had Amp: "Am I a space cadet, or what?" Turns out he wasn't kidding about that, though.
- Reverend Jim of Taxi.
- Margaret in One Foot In The Grave sometimes lapses into this despite usually being the Straight Man (er, woman). Every now and then she will make some wild claim that makes very little sense, sometimes seeming a bit out of character. For example, when talking about friends who have died to her husband Victor she mentions someone who apparently died of a terminal disease:
Victor: What, measles?
Margaret: Well she died, didn't she?
Victor: ...She fell off a cliff!
Margaret: Only because she went to the seaside to convalesce!
- Cat of Red Dwarf.
Cat: I hate to get all technical on you, but: all hands on deck! Swirly thing alert!
- Station owner Jimmy James from News Radio often showed signs of being a Cloudcuckoolander. However, this may or may not have been cover for the fact that he was actually a Genius Ditz, a Trickster Mentor, and/or a Magnificent Bastard.
- Tracy Jordan of 30 Rock has a rather tenuous hold on reality, perhaps best summed up here:
Tracy: I do not want to disappoint my Japanese public! Especially Godzilla. Ha Ha Ha, I’m just kidding. I know he doesn’t care what humans do.
- Mork from Ork. Granted, he's an alien, but the reason he was sent to Earth in the first place was because he was considered weird by Orkan standards (and, judging by the other Orkans we meet in the series, especially Orson, they're right).
- Wendy's neighbor Noser from The Middle Man seems to do little else but sit in the hallway with a guitar and quote lyrics and pop culture references to Wendy.
- Cassie from Skins.
"Oh, it's cool. I wear a white dress and now I can eat yogurt, cup of soup, and hazlenuts now. I'm not sick if you want to play with the cats. Yeah, it's like... hazy days, y'know?"
- Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys, who lives in a shed with his many cats. Bubbles may actually seem retarded because of his awkward gait and absentmindedness, but he actually seems to be one of the smartest people on the show.
- Walter Bishop from Fringe is still a brilliant scientist, but spending more than a decade in a mental institution has given him a few quirks like obsessing over certain foods and constantly forgetting the existence or just the name of one particular member of the team.
- Who could forget Rose Nylund of Golden Girls and her frequent tales of the complete insanity of her hometown of St. Olaf, Minnesota?
- Mad About You has Ursula, the waitress at their usual restaurant, who is played by the same actress that plays Phoebe from Friends. The food must be really good.
Professional Wrestling
- WWE wrestler Al Snow became most famous as a Cloudcuckoolander who has "HELP ME!" inexplicably written backwards across his head and gets advice from a mannequin head (appropriately named "Head"). One particularly memorable storyline had him thinking that Head betrayed him and stole the Hardcore Championship from him, so he started using Pierre, a taxidermied deer head, to substitute for Head. Another had Al winning the European Championship, and deciding that, in order to better represent "the citizens of Europea", he would dress in the traditional garb of a different country each week (including, inexplicably, a '50s style greaser outfit for Greece). And then there was his tag team with Steve Blackman, WWE's resident Unfunny, in which he insisted that Blackman wear a hat shaped like a wedge of cheese so they could call themselves "Head Cheese", and that they make their entrance surrounded by midgets holding sparklers... and his infamous hardcore match with himself... yeah, Al Snow was one weird dude.
Videogames
- Subverted in Psychonauts: Shegor appears to be a Cloudcuckoolander under the delusion that her kidnapped pet turtle can talk and has the answers for everything. When you finally rescue her turtle, after it just sits there for a while... it actually does start talking and its plan does solve everything — at least for the moment.
- But also played straight with... well, about half the cast, give or take.
- The legendarily bizarre ranger Minsc and his "Miniature Giant Space Hamster" Boo from the Baldurs Gate series.
- GlaDOS of Portal, despite being an all-powerful AI, seems to have a very loose grip on reality. She regularly makes childish insults at the player in later portions of the game and even tries to convince you that one of the puzzles is impossible to test your resilience in an atmosphere of "extreme pessimism". She also instructs you to take the infamous Weighted Companion Cube (a box with hearts on all its sides) with you on one of the tests, then asks you to euthanise the inanimate object at the end by dropping it in an incinerator.
- Phoenix Wright: Justice for All has Regina Berry, who demonstrates that a Cloudcuckoolander can be the cause of tragic circumstances in a (mostly) realistic setting. Due to being raised in a circus, she has a fairly substantial disconnection from reality. She doesn't understand, for example, how her putting pepper on Bat's scarf led to him being bitten by a lion... or that he may never recover from the resulting coma. Bat's brother, Acro, was so infuriated by her lack of remorse that he decided to kill her.
- The whole Phoenix Wright is chock full of less tragic-inducing 'landers, including Maya Fey's laughably bad grasp at technology, Ema Skye's utterly bizarre "scientific theories", and Trucy Wright (who had a rather... interesting exchange about how 'Revolver' and 'Wonder Bar' sound the same).
- Let's not forget the Judge, whose grasp on reality is just firm enough to give the right verdict every time — but no firmer.
- Manah in Drakengard, when she's not trying to be actively evil, has all the charm of a cute little girl playing with imaginary friends.
- Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines allows you to play one in the form of a Malkavian. Funny dialogue choices, even funnier if you've played the game before and know what the dialogue is normally like. You also get the chance to have an argument with a stop sign. ("No, you stop!")
- Aldanon in Neverwinter Nights 2 is basically a wizard equivalent for the absent-minded professor stereotype, exhibiting qualities like lapsing into rambling doublespeak with metaphors abandoned halfway, changing subjects mid-conversation, forgetting his own orders, or mistaking a prison cell for his own house.
- At one point, he begins listing off a number of RPG tropes that he claims your team will have to perform, complete with "reforge the broken key" and "acquire some rare, arbitrary items." Only to be almost immediately shot down by one of his servants, who he had commissioned to do the exact thing he supposedly needed the arbitrary items. Then he congratulates himself on a job well done.
- Sheogorath, the Daedric Lord of Madness from The Elder Scrolls is of course obliged to follow this trope.
I've been waiting for you, or someone like you, or someone not like you.
Well, looks like the cat's out of the bag now... who puts cats in bags, anyway? Cats hate bags.
But enough about me. Let's talk about you. I could turn you into a goat. Or a puddle. Or a bad idea. I could make you eat your own fingers. Or fall in love with a cloud. Perhaps... I could make you into something useful.
I once dug a pit and filled it with clouds....or was it clowns.... come to think of it, it began to smell... must have been clowns. Clouds don't smell, they taste of butter. And tears.
- His butler also confirm the "pit full of clowns" story was true.
- Many other characters in that expansion could fit the trope. For example, Big Head, once you give him the Fork of Horripilation he was searching: "Happy day! Happy day! The blind shall see! The lame shall walk! The short shall tall! Forks for all!"
- Considering that the Shivering Isles pretty much is Cloudcuckooland, this is hardly suprising.
- Banjo-Tooie had a bunch of literal Cloud Cuckoo Landers, as one of the stages was named Cloud Cuckoo Land. To say the place was crazier than an asylum is an understatement.
- One of the Mission Control guys in Metal Gear Solid 3 is definitively a Cloud Cuckoo Lander, deciding that the person he never saw before (Actually the Player character wearing a Latex Perfection mask) must be an alien — "A Venusian, not the crab kind".
- Arguably, everyone else in the damn game has a tendency to dip into this, the creator of the above mask decided that making a mask blink is more important then making the mouth move, Naked Snake discussing how being in the box brings inner happiness, among other things.
- Wigglytuff from Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness is the leader of the Pokemon guild, but is unbelievably flighty.
- The Touch Detective games has Penelope. A banana loving girl who is a Cloudcuckoolander to the point that her very hair is soft and fluffy and cloud-like. A good example of her air-headedness is displayed in a conversation between protagonist Mackenzie and shopkeeper Daisy.
Daisy: Well, she's been pretty quiet lately. But, I really didn't give it any thought. I mean, it's Penelope. She could wake up and say, "I'm not talking today!"
Mackenzie: She's done that. In fact, she didn't talk for a week.
Daisy: Really? Even to herself?
Mackenzie: Well, she pantomimed to herself.
Daisy: She pantomimed to herself!? She's madder than a hatter.
- Subverted with Princess Sapphire Rhodonite in Disgaea 3. At first she appears to be a slightly out-of-it Rebellious Princess who is easily distracted by things that are small and cute (like Raspberyl, as she uncomfortably learns). It's not much later that we get a glimpse into her head and discover that she prepares plans in her head on how to most efficiently kill anyone she meets, should the time come. Kinda like if Osaka was raised by Machiavelli.
- Charmy Bee from the Sonic The Hedgehog games.
Charmy: Oh, flower, pretty flower, come to me and I'll sting you...
Webcomics
- Largo from Megatokyo at first finds it hard to tell the difference between the real world and the videogame world. Then it turns out the Megatokyo world is indeed a conglomeration of anime and videogame tropes. Which just shows you can be Genre Savvy and a Cloudcuckoolander at the same time; in fact, it can be an advantage if the situation you're in is itself insane.
- Roger and Lily Pepitone in College Roomies From Hell!!!
- Every single character (save for Jame and maybe Liln) in Terror Island. Sid and Stephen (the main characters) are especially bad, what with the groceries and all that.
Stephen: It's strange how we have an invisible postal worker who delivers the mail by altering history so it was always here.
Sid: We don't. We have a normal mailman who comes by before you're awake.
Stephen: Same thing.
- Ethan in Ctrl+Alt+Del.
- Cube, from the Stick Figure Comic Stickman And Cube, occasionally drifts into this territory. For instance, on Talk Like A Pirate Day 2007:
Cube: Pirates give me gas.
- Ellen from Questionable Content, but Raven seems to have officially taken over that role recently.
- Hannelore might also qualify on occasion.
- T-Rex from Dinosaur Comics.
- Kwerki in Ghastlys Ghastly Comic. She started off seeming Raised By Wolves, but quickly turned into a chatty little loon who believes citrus fruits squirting juice in your eyes is an S&M thing for them, among the other crazy and not-particularly-worksafe theories she has to explain equally mundane things.
- Wonderella from The Non Adventures Of Wonderella. And her sidekick, Rita, is even more of one.
- Red Mage of 8-bit Theater is convinced his world runs on Tabletop Games rules. He carries around a character sheet
 , rolls twenty-sided dice to see if he succeeds at things, and is obsessed with manipulating these rules to his advantage. If he were in another webcomic, this would make him Genre Savvy. However, the world of 8-Bit Theater doesn't actually run on Tabletop Games rules; it runs on the Rule Of Funny instead. That means he's just a Cloud Cuckoolander, except when it would be funnier for him to be right. He's simply insane all the time, in his own special way, and often oblivious to logic, warping reality with his own bizarre ideas. Just because his crazy schemes occasionally briefly succeed (like the Chocobo breeding experiment) doesn't make him sane. You would never ever think of Red Mage as "the only truly sane person of the group".
- Elan of Order Of The Stick. For instance, when Haley argues that, as they are adventurers, everything they do counts as an adventure...he takes off his shirt, covers himself in jam, stands on one hand, drapes a lantern from one foot, puts a squirrel on the other and plays with a paddle-ball with his free hand. And shouts "I'm on an adventure!"
- In a slightly-more-coherent example from an earlier strip, Elan found out that wearing armor incurs an armor-check-penalty on certain skills, including Hide. Therefore, he decided that removing all his clothes would increase his Hide skill to the point of invisibility. Hilarity Ensued.
- Richard of Looking For Group is a combination of Heroic Sociopathy in the vein of Black Mage from 8-Bit Theater and Cloudcuckoolander tendencies, bearing most of the humor of the comics currently due to Cerebus Syndrome.
- Fluffmodeus, aka Little Blue Friend, in Something Positive, especially his first appearance.
"And and and and this other time? I was at the zoo and the man at the zoo was all 'You can't feed animals here' And I was all 'But why not?' And he was all 'Cause there's no one to feed 'em to.' HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA It's funny, new friend! It's so funny! ...it only takes seven pounds of pressure to crack open a man's head.... from the inside. Kisses now!"
- Come to think of it, Fluffmodeus is actually pretty scary.
- Schlock Mercenary's Lieutenant Pibald turns into one of these when he forgets to take his medication, acquiring delusions of having hyperbolically exaggerated status or talents which he doesn't. This wouldn't be as serious a problem as it is if his hobby wasn't homemade explosives...that metastasize and form colonies.
- Eddie from Emergency Exit is nothing 'but' this. He is obsessed with traffic cones, thinks chickens are out to take over the world, collects distractions, and just generally acts like a insane 7 year old on an eternal sugar rush. He also wields a Hyperspace Mallet, and uses a "coolness enhancer" that enhances whatever it's attached too. Anything. He also has a fully stocked Mad scientist laboratory, although the whether the stuff he makes is powered by science, magic, or some combination of the two is anyone's guess.
- Captain Fang from Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic is arguably insane and stupid (though who can tell for sure with him?), but he's the ultimate king of absurd non-sequitur. A few examples.
- Most characters in Sore Thumbs slip in and out of this; Harmony is firmly cemented in it.
- In UG Madness, Wizards of the Coast R&D director Mark Rosewater is portrayed as this. He's also an imp. The author claims this to be a true and accurate portrayal. Many who have read Mr. Rosewater's articles might agree.
- Torg from Sluggy Freelance does this quite a bit, such as when he declares "I will find us a new place to live!" He doesn't actually make any effort to find a new apartment; he thinks making the big dramatic statement should be enough.
- Quilt from Dominic Deegan literally has no brain (he's a necromantic golem, a la Frankensteins Monster), and thus can be a little... out there. When told "Keep your eye on him", his response was to take his eye out of the socket and point it at the subject.
- Lord Sykos from The Wotch is, as his name suggests, completely insane. Example: "Sorry, but no one goes anywhere 'til I'm done with my little investigation. 'Cept for you. You need to get me a taco. I don't know what they are, but I want one." His Perky Female Minion Aimee is pretty strange, too.
- Bass in Bob And George, very much unlike his video game version. He's not evil at all, and spends most of the comic wondering what's going on while staring blankly, and unlike Mega Man, never has moments of clarity.
Web Animation
- The Homestar Runner universe has a number of these:
- Homestar Runner is usually The Ditz, but his energetic, active stupidity often results in some surreal dialogs (or monologues).
"Say, you got a girlfriend? Well, what if your girlfriend was a wooden spoon and an orange plastic bowl? That'd be really weird, man. What kind of screwed-up kid are you? We don't recruit your kind! Get out of here!"
- Homestar is often naive to the world around him, so he often needs Pom Pom to help him... too bad Pom Pom is The Unintelligible.
Homestar: (upon walking into a cemetery) Oh man, Pom Pom, this is gonna be so great! First, we'll hit Space Mountain, then over to Mr. Toad's, then Tom Sawyer's Island, and don't forget, we parked in the Goofy lot!
- Homsar, on the other hand, is the Lord Mayor of Cloud-cuckooland. He communicates largely in non-sequiturs with only the flimsiest connection to the topic at hand, and his disconnection from reality is so strong that he breaks the laws of physics (by levitating either himself or his hat) every time he speaks. He also somehow managed to survive having a Heavy Lourde dropped on him.
Homsar: Oh no! You shanked my Jengaship!
Strong Sad: I shanked your Jengaship? We're playing Connect Four.
- It's been heavily rumoured that said Heavy Lourde dropping was what made him this way, since he had no dialogue before this occured, but he could not be removed from the storyline, according to the characters.
- Until you count that he managed to say something coherent while thanking Marzipan for the flowers she gave him while he was in the "hos-spee-tal".
- "Strong Badia the Free", the game of the series shows that Homsar is apparently just speaking his own incomprehensible language rather than being a true Cloudcuckoolander. Strong Bad can temporarily understand Homsar, who is actually quite articulate to those who can understand him. To anybody else any conversation those two have ends up as a series of confusing rambling.
- Then there's Senor Cardgage, a creepy-old-man-with-a-combover version of Strong Bad who constantly
mispronounces "invents" new words and refers to men (and robots) as if they were ladies, among other things.
"Home Lawn, Escrow, Re-Financin'; you name it, we've got it! Come along down for a free canceltation with one of our handsome-talking experts. (Points at an empty chair.) One o' them said they'd buy me lunch, but I don't see nobody taking me to Chick-Fil-A."
- And Marshie is just dadaist Nightmare Fuel.
"You better believe it's new Fluffy Puff Malloween orange and black flavored marshmallows! "They Taste the Same, but Loo—" [violent coughing] Sorry. Must've got a toenail caught in m'throat!
- Coach Z has his share of weirdness as well:
Marzipan: Coach Z, might I ask why you're buying up all the "great for baby" items?
Coach Z: I'd prefer that you didn't...
- Fred of Fred The Monkey.com acts this way on occasion.
Web Original
- Survival Of The Fittest's Mitch Gunter. The following quote is all of the explaination required.
Mitch: Dog eat dog. Dogs don't eat dogs, they eat birds and cats and Kibblebits if they have a family. Those words are silly. But I would have gotten that right if that silly glasses boy hadn't answered before me. Yes, I would have gotten it right.
- See also Sven Kekule from V1.
- The Mad Scientist Wars Ahem. Well... Everyone, at some point or another. Particularily if in the middle of going Mad.
- Major Raikov in the Metal Gear Solid fanfic Stray is "always the type who took sanity more as a suggestion," to the extent that Ocelot considers Raikov's Psycho Electro boyfriend to be the stabilizing influence in the relationship.
- The titular character from John Dies At The End. His antics include: Creating an elaborate system of coded phrases that sound even more incriminating than the messages they are intended to conceal; Leaving random and often inappropriate comments on customer's files at his work; Threatening to "dick-slap" random strangers; doggedly reusing the same tired pun multiple times throughout one fight; and refusing to abandon a gimmick which he thought up several years prior at four in the morning while drunk. His status as a Undisclosed's resident Cloud Cuckoolander is one of the main reasons he is able to blog about all the supernatural stuff that happens to him without bringing down The Masquerade.
Western Animation
- Xander Crews form Frisky Dingo is a good example, mainly because he lives in his own world without consequence, eventually adopting the alias of Barnaby Jones when he gets in trouble, and generally says ridiculous things
Killface: This is hopeless.
Xander: ook, don't worry man. At his age, I was like, chronic masturbater. Kinda, kinda still am. But the point is — I like it. I would like to masturbate right now in this car. You know? If I had my stuff with me. I would! What are we even talking about?
Killface: I'm talking about searching for Simon!
Xander: Oh.
- Captain Murphy from Sealab 2021 is like an unusually clueless child. He thinks you don't have to pay for things bought by credit card, and never quite gets what people want from him. ("If trenches are what Hollywood Actor Beck Bristow wants, then trenches he shall have!")
- Master Shake from Aqua Teen Hunger Force is selfish to the point of absurdity, and justifies himself with reasons that seem natural only to him ("I should not walk, so that a child may live... well, that's what it does!"). He also shows a profound gift for jumping to conclusions — e.g. convincing himself that a threatening cell-phone call is not coming from inside the ominous bus parked at the curb, but from the bus itself.
- No mention of Meatwad? Quite possibly the biggest Cloudcuckoolander ever conceived in fiction. The poor guy really will believe anything he's told.
- The titlular character of The Tick, with his odd proverbs ("That's trouble with a capital troub!"), odder lapses of knowledge (Spanish is a "crazy moon-language") and even odder Spoof Aesop a minute, as well as his battle cry of SPOON!
- The titular character of Spongebob Squarepants.
Mr. Krabs: I didn't want to say this in front of Patrick, but that hat makes you look like a girl.
Spongebob: Am I a pretty girl?
- Starfire of Teen Titans frequently acts this way. It's unclear, however, what part of this is her cultural upbringing as a literal alien from another planet, and what part's her own unique personality. (The mustard-drinking incident seems to lean toward the "unfamiliarity with Earth" explanation, plus is probably a good example of Bizarre Alien Biology.) Considering her more savvy sister, it would most likely seem to be a result of her personality, plus it made for easy laughs. On the other hand, on the episode we see her homeworld, they acted more like Starfire than her sister, so the sister may actually be the odd one amongst her people.
- Mitsuki on Kappa Mikey (you might think Gonard too, but he's more of a ditz).
- Ty Lee of Avatar The Last Airbender.
Ty Lee: Hey, look at that dust cloud. It's so... poofy. ...Poof.
- There's also the "nomads" in "The Cave of Two Lovers":
Chong: We're nomads, happy to go wherever the wind takes us!
Aang: You guys are nomads? That’s great! I’m a nomad.
Chong: Hey, me too.
Aang: I know… you just said that.
Chong: Oh. (Looks at Sokka) Nice underwear.
- Ed of Ed Edd N Eddy bounces wildly between Ralph Wiggum, Cloud Cuckoolander, and The Ditz, occasional bouts of surprising genre savviness not withstanding.
- Johnny, whose best friend is a piece of wood with a crude face drawn on it, is also an apparent expatriate of Cloud-Cuckooland.
- Given Ed's immense strength and the rampage he went on while in a bad mood in "Little Ed Blue", this is probably for the best. Not to mention the episode where he believes he is an alien monster, and then, through massive strength and surprising cleverness manages to practically become an alien monster and begin picking off the children in a horrific manner.
- Crystal Zilla of My Dad The Rock Star is a Pink-haired New Agey sort of Cloud Cuckoolander, who is also Closer To Earth on occasion. But she's a mother, and her husband is rock star, so maybe it's a defense mechanism.
- Fry from Futurama has at least one foot in Cloudcuckooland at all times, most obvious when...
- He is asked a 'yes or no' question:
Gypsy: Have you heard of the Monks of Deshuba?
Fry: I've not heard of them.
- He thinks he's being asked a question:
Leela (feeding her pet): Aww... somebody likes snouts!
Fry (overhearing): Is it me?
- He tries to explain something from his frame of reference:
Fry: "It's just like the story of the grasshopper and the octopus. All year long, the grasshopper kept burying acorns for the winter, while the octopus mooched off his girlfriend and watched TV. But then the winter came and the grasshopper died and the octopus ate all his acorns. And also he got a racecar. Is any of this getting through to you?"
- Or he tries to formulate a plan:
Fry: Okay, I've gotta break down that gate, beat up those three guards, steal that chopper and rescue Bender.
(Leela beats up the guards)
Fry: Yay, I did it! ...Wait, that's not me!
- Pinky of Pinky And The Brain is a notorious Cloud Cuckoolander, most commonly during the Are You Pondering What Im Pondering exchanges.
- One mini-episode that was done entirely from Pinky's perspective (to the point of having his snout in the camera view at all times) revealed the train of thought that led to one such exchange. It didn't come across any less weird for the explanation.
- Many, many Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends characters: Bloo's insane theories, Madame Fosters strange actions and speech patterns, Coco's occasional inexplicable behaviour, Cheese's spastic jabbering and Goo's... entire personality. Of course, most of them are products of the fertile imaginations of young children.
- It's implied that Goo's parents may be the same, since they were unwilling to rein in her imagination (in spite of the fact that it regularly produced hundreds of imaginary friends) and apparently allowed her to name herself shortly after she was born (Goo claims her name is short for "Goo-goo-ga-ga").
- Wakko, Yakko, and Dot from Animaniacs takes this trope to extremes, as even their theme song is filled with non-sequiturs and bizarre references.
- The same can be said about Freakazoid from Freakazoid.
- Many characters on Family Guy, especially May
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