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Characters are known by their personalities. They are who they are. In a Flowers for Algernon story a character either:
- gains something that is perceived in general as good (intelligence, for example), or
- loses something that is perceived in general as bad (stupidity or bossy behavior, as examples).
However, by the end of the episode, the character is back to normal, sometimes because the character's "normality" is required to solve a problem. At other time as a bow to Status Quo Is God.
Named for the book (expanded from a short story) Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. In the book, the main character, a mentally retarded man named Charlie, undergoes medical treatment that boosts his intelligence. In fact, Charlie eventually goes to superhuman intelligence, learning multiple languages and becoming smarter then those who performed the operation. It gradually fades, however, and he ends up no different (and possibly a little worse) than he started. The stage and film adaptations of Flowers for Algernon are entitled Charly. Cliff Robertson probably did one of his best performances ever, playing the title character in the movie. Some references to this story will therefore play off this title.
Done badly, this is a warped or family unfriendly message that being smart or even above average will make you unhappy and insufferable, and the only way to have friends and be acceptable is to be at (or below) their own level. Smart is bad, dumb is good. It's done badly fairly often.
Done well, this is about accepting who you are and making the most of what you have instead of relying on artificial enhancements.
The polar opposite of Brought Down To Normal and Cant Stay Normal.
See also We Want Our Jerk Back and Loss Of Identity.
Examples:
Comics
- The Spider-Man storyline "Flowers For Rhino": dimwitted Spidey villain Rhino goes through a brain procedure to make him super-intelligent. While the procedure works, he finds that his intelligence just keeps growing to the detriment of his ability to feel joy (for example, he even rewrote Hamlet due to finding the writing style "sloppy"). When his intelligence starts to reach near-omniscient levels (even managing to discover Spidey's secret identity through a mathematical equation), he orders the surgeons to not only reverse the procedure but make him stupider than he was before "just to be on the safe side". The doctors comply, he goes back to his old life and he couldn't be happier.
- Bonus: Because of his invulnerability, they had to perform the surgery with an industrial strength oil drill.
- The newspaper comic Tank McNamara did a riff on this trope. Tank gets zapped by one of Dr. Tzapp's experimental machines, and it cures his fumblemouth. Before long, Tank starts fancying himself an incisive critic, and the show's ratings plummet because nobody wants to listen to that. Eventually one of the other characters re-zaps him and he turns into his lovable, fumblemouthed self again.
- Another newspaper comic, Heart Of The City, has done this a couple of times, usually with Dean. One arc had him becoming a popular jerk, and a more recent one has him becoming "mature." In most cases, Heart tries to snap him out of it.
Film
- This trope is the major plot point of a 1990 movie starring Robin Williams, Awakenings, which has some basis on real life and describes the treatment of catatonic patients with a then-new drug called L-Dopa.
- Disney's The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes
 (1969). A computer student has the knowledge and abilities of a computer downloaded into his brain, leading to multiple problems and opportunities. By the end of the movie he's lost everything he gained and is normal again.
- Rookie of the Year. A kid gains a Major League caliber pitching arm from an accident. Another accident sees him lose that ability in his last game and have to bluff his way through the final inning.
Literature
- In Animorphs, Tobias overstays his morph as a hawk and ends up stuck that way for a considerably long time. Later, a sufficiently advanced alien known as the Ellimist restores his morphing power and allows him to morph into his own human form, with the same rules as earlier. Though he could return to human form permanently, he chooses not to, both because he wants to stay in the war and because he actually prefers his hawk form.
- In John DeChancie's Living With Aliens, the main character starts out as a below-average teenage boy who befriends a pair of eccentric, stoner, renegade aliens. They offer him "smart pills", which greatly boost his intelligence into high genius levels. Since the story is written in first person, the effects of the intelligence drugs change the prose as the story goes along. Eventually, the pills wear off slightly, but enough of the effect lasts that he's able to maintain membership in Mensa.
- In the My Teacher is an Alien book series, unintelligent bully Duncan Dougal has his brain fried into a more intelligent state in the second book, and later becomes horrified when learning that he may lose this intelligence.
- Detritus becomes temporarily hyper-intelligent after being locked in a meat locker, but it is explained that the optimum temperature for his silicon-based brain is also close to fatal for trolls. After he is rescued, his supercomputer-level intelligence largely goes away, but he receives a cooling helmet to make him smarter than the average troll for the rest of the series.
- Subverted in the Xanth novel Ogre, Ogre. Smash Ogre is made intelligent by an Eye Queue vine, drastically complicating his life. He eventually learns that the Eye Queue vine just provided him with an excuse to demonstrate that he was smart all along.
Live Action TV
- Newsradio, "Flowers for Matthew", Matthew drinks what he thinks is a intelligence-boosting drink and becomes smart through the placebo effect. Paradoxically, his intelligence eventually drives him to understand that the drink has no actual chemical effect, at which point the placebo stops working on him and he rapidly returns to his original state.
- The Six Million Dollar Man — Jaime Sommers' first appearance in the show gave her bionics, then apparently ended with her death because her body rejected them. (Of course, she was revived and re-empowered when the network discovered she'd make a good spinoff, but that was outside of the realm of the original episode's plot.)
- Monk, "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine" — Adrian Monk begins taking medication to combat his Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It works; however, he not only loses his amazing detecting abilities but in a twist, he also turns into an insufferable egotistical jerk who talks like a '50s hipster and wants to be referred to as "The Monk." Naturally, by the end of the episode, everyone is begging him to stop taking the medicine.
- Angel — Charles Gunn undergoes a magical procedure to give him encyclopedic legal knowledge, but after half a season it begins to degrade. This is referred to in the episode as 'acute "Flowers for Algernon" syndrome.' In this case, he is able to regain the knowledge through some shady dealings, but comes to regret it.
- Red Dwarf: Rimmer gets a "mind patch" to raise his intelligence to genius-level so he can pass the entrance exam for a ship of super-genius holograms. Naturally, his brain rejects it. (But he passes anyway, when his opponent forfeits.)
- Rimmer also gains his self-confidence and self-respect back (externalised as dashing swordsmen) in the episode "Terrorform", but loses them again almost at once on finding out what his comrades really think of him.
- Rimmer assumes his dashing alter-ego Ace (what a guy!) on a number of occasions, but things are soon back to normal
- In Scrubs, psychiatrist Molly Clock talks to The Todd, the innuendo-spouting stereotypical jock surgeon, and manages to turn him into a normal, nice man. When asked about it, she responds "Yeah, but I only talked to him for a few hours. Without continuing therapy, he'll probably be back to normal in a week", lampshading the eventual Snap Back he'd fall victim to.
- In the 2000 The Invisible Man series, the protagonist's partner, Hobbes, is accidentally injected with an intelligence-boosting retrovirus. Unfortunately, the effects ultimately lead to mental overload and catatonia; by the time this is discovered Hobbes doesn't care, but his partner does, and manages to emotionally blackmail him into creating an antidote.
- In an episode of Malcolm In The Middle, school bully Reese is beaten by a girl in wrestling. This knocks some sense into him, making him decide that he doesn't want to be a bully anymore. Unfortunately, this leaves a power vacuum in the school, with numerous students running rampant, picking on others randomly. Even his brother Malcolm, who was left alone despite being a particularly snarky Insufferable Genius, suffers painful payback now that the threat of fraternal vengeance is gone. After all this is pointed out by Malcolm and his friends, Reese reestablishes both his role as school bully and order in the school.
- Doctor Who: Donna Noble's incredible journey and transformation from Runaway Bride to the end of Season 4, culminating in the human-Time Lord metacrisis and her becoming DoctorDonna. Then the Doctor has to wipe every single memory of these adventures to save her. Unlike most of these entries, this actually is presented as a tragedy.
- Andromeda: In Season 1, in the episode Harper 2.0, the Andromeda rescues a dying Perseid librarian who is carrying a huge archive of knowledge within his own brain. At the point of death, the Perseid seizes Harper and dumps the archive into his brain, giving him access to a huge store of knowledge. This leaves him with the twin problems of an overheating brain and a ruthless bounty hunter who'd like to separate him from it. He solves the former problem by downloading the archive for storage in a sun after the bounty hunter experiences a touch of You Have Failed Me at the hands of the Big Bad.
- This happens several times on House MD, where apparently anything that makes Dr. House happy, more considerate, or not constantly in pain also steals his keen observation and intellect.
- In Forever Knight, Natalie uses vampire blood to increase a mentally challenged teenager's intelligence.
- StargateSG1 has O'Neil become the repository for a cache of Ancient knowledge, but ultimately having his brain overstuffed proved bad for him.
Video Games
- In the Let's Play of Fallout 2 Trogg overdoses on Mentats, and becomes a near-genius from a barely sentient troglodyte. He realizes what he was doing and sets out to atone. When the effects wear off, though, he reverts to his old self, not understanding why he did things he did. In fact, he even becomes dumber than he originally was for a while (as a side effect of the Mentat withdrawal).
Western Animation
- Rugrats, "Smell of Success": A copy of "Flowers For Algernon", except with Chuckie gaining and losing an uncanny sense of smell. Came complete with Chuckie befriending the white lab mouse as homage.
- Futurama did this no less than three times:
- In "The Cyber House Rules" Leela gets a second eye surgically installed. She goes back to one, after seeing that the person she's been dating (and who gave her the operation) treats a kid with three ears differently from other kids. In this case, it had been established earlier in the episode that having one eye wasn't really a problem since it didn't stop Leela from being successful and accomplished...it just made her look odd (and the second eye was merely cosmetic, she still had no depth perception). Going back down to one eye was actually Character Development for her to accept that fact.
- In "Parasites Lost" Fry accidentally ingests parasitic worms that make him super-strong and super-intelligent. He gets rid of the worms because he wants Leela to love him for who he really is. This also turned into Character Development because Fry finally learned how felt about Leela and spent the rest of the series trying to better himself normally.
- Scientifically speaking, though, the title is misleading. It's only parasitism if the host suffers. What Fry and the worms had was mutualism.
- Yeah, but "Mutualists Lost" just isn't as punny an episode title.
- Symbiosis!
- Subverted in an episode where Farnsworth gives a monkey an intelligence hat, and the monkey decides he doesn't like being smart, and throws the hat away. Then he realizes he doesn't like not being sapient either, so he puts the hat back on, but it's damaged. Then he finds he likes just being moderately smart.
- Done with much emotion in the final episode of the TV run, "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings" where Fry enters into a deal with the robot devil in exchange for hands that are good enough to play the holophoner. Hedonism Bot hires Fry to write an opera. In the end, Fry gives the devil back his hands to save Leela from marrying the robot devil.
- The Simpsons, "HOMR". Dumb Homer had a crayon lodged in his nose since childhood, and when it was removed he became intelligent Homer. He eventually had the crayon re-inserted after discovering that a man with a 102 IQ is too intelligent to be happy in today's world (which isn't much comfort to Lisa). The title plays off Charly.
- And again when Bart takes a behavior drug called Focusyn to control his "ADD". Sure enough Bart becomes focused but he becomes paranoid about Major League Baseball spying on the town using satellites (he's right). After stealing a tank he's convinced to stop taking the Focusyn and onto "good old Ritalin".
- And again when Moe gets plastic surgery on his face turning him into a handsome jerk.
- Ducktales, Bubba Duck becomes intelligent, civilized, and utterly ruthless and incapable of compassion, something indicated to be directly connected to his new intelligence. He becomes dumb and barbaric again when his brute strength is needed to pound a monster threatening his friends.
- Transformers: Grimlock, who by the third season had suffered Flanderization to the point where he could barely speak coherently, became super intelligent after getting hit with a Transformation Ray. He quickly became the best Autobot you could have ever wanted, but was forced to build a new team of combining robots and transfer his intelligence into them to solve a dilemma.
- The Weekenders, "Sense and Sensitivity": Tino wants Lor to pass the ball to her teammate in an upcoming hoops game. Lor becomes nice. Next thing you know, Tino fears that she'll pass to the opposition.
- Captain Simian And The Space Monkeys: Gor gets a full dose from the intelligence booster (his original dose was interrupted partway through), but becomes too detached to access his anger-fueled Super Strength. He later reverses the process.
- Elroy does this to Astro in the 1980s Revival of TheJetsons.
- In an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures, Dizzy Devil is made intelligent and cultured, but finds that none of his friends (or his bevy of attractive girlfriends) like his snobish new personality. He is eventually restored to normal and is happy.
- Family Guy does this, but with looks instead of smarts. Peter gets cosmetic surgery to become beautiful. He also becomes a jerk. And, even though his family recognize that he has become a jerk, most of them are willing to put up with it because he is beautiful. At the end, he is restored to the status quo by accidentally falling into a vat of lard at a meat factory and eating the contents to avoid suffocation. The family is happier. Lois asks, "I guess you learned a valuable lesson?", to which Peter replies, "Nope."
- They did it again when Joe regained the ability to walk, then ditched his friends and alienated his wife. The episode ends with his wife trying to shoot him in the spine and repeatedly missing, until he finally takes the gun from her and does it himself to make her stop.
- Also done when Meg got a makeover, she ended up being a big-time pop diva but went back to being herself because she didn't like being judged for her looks and because it's hard work staying that pretty.
- In the Spongebob Squarepants episode "Patrick Smartpants", Patrick becomes a super-genius, but decides to go back to being stupid after he realizes he's turning into an Insufferable Genius and alienating all his friends.
- Chowder takes this to the next level. In one episode Mung Daal gives him Brain Grub, which makes him super smart. So smart, in fact, that he realizes that he's a cartoon character in a TV show. Thinking that being in the show will keep him as a "scatterbrain," he uses his newfound power to turn the show into an educational program. However the new show doesn't work out; cooking is now boring and the show's audience started crying. Realizing the damage he has done, Chowder yanks his new brain out of his nose and smashes it into bits, effectively deleting the show altogether. Of course things go back to normal in the next episode.
- Subverted in American Dad: It's revealed that one of Steve's exceptionally stupid friends is only stupid as a side effect of a medication he regularly takes. This medication intentionally kept him stupid because he's secretly a brilliant psychopath.
- In the Kim Possible episode 'Go Team Go', the title character gains super-strength from another hero due to a bumbling villain's attempt at revenge. Of course, she gives it back later.
- In The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob, Bob gains super powers briefly. A villain tries to steal them, and they ultimately get transferred to a potted geranium, which likes them very much and flies away.
- JimmyNeutron once boosted his friend Sheen so he could pass a test and wouldn't be held back a grade. The upgrade made Sheen increasingly smarter, but also continued to mutate him, eventually giving him Psychic Powers and a God complex. Fortunately he has a What Have I Become moment and drains his brain back to normal.
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