Little Jimmy - Television Tropes & Idioms

Jimmy: Mr. McClure?
Troy McClure: Oh! Hello Bobby.
Jimmy: Jimmy. I'm curious as to how meat gets from the ranch to my stomach.

— The Simpsons, "Lisa the Vegetarian"

Little Jimmy is a young character without any distinguishable traits other than complete ignorance related to the subject at hand. Most likely found in educational films, commercials, and public service announcements. Their only job is to represent the young and stupid viewers of the film who know nothing about common sense and would very well get into a car with a stranger offering candy unless some superhero or other fictional character comes along and tells them that it's wrong.

He's typically young, white and freckled.

Compare Constantly Curious and Curious as a Monkey, both of whom have insatiable curiosity and are quite willing to indulge it on their own. See also The Watson, Too Incompetent to Operate a Blanket.

Examples

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Comics

One issue of Action Philosophers features Karl Marx giving an explanation of communism, as he originally interpreted it, to a Little Jimmy character.
Used quite frequently in Chick tracts, one prominent example being the child in The Missing Day who has the "true" meaning of Thanksgiving explained to him by his fundamentalist uncle, leading him to convert. There is also a reoccurring character named Li'l Suzy who might fit this trope as she does go to her fundamentalist grandfather for explanations for things like Islam, but then more often than not she's the one explaining things to her naive and uninformed classmates, so she could be a subversion.

Films — Live Action

In Dodgeball, the American Dodgeball Association of America training film includes a Little Jimmy character, who is visibly shocked when the Narrator addresses him in the beginning of the film.
C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America has a Little Jimmy character early on who appears to be at least 12 years old. An older character lectures him on the necessity of slavery to the Confederacy's economy. (The premise of the film is that the South won the American Civil War and instituted slavery throughout the United States, with the abolitionists all fleeing to Canada.)

Live Action TV

Trope Namer is the kid from Mr. Wizard, a neighbor boy who'd come to see Mr. Wizard's science tricks.
The Barney-esque series Hip Hop Harry featured Scott, a boy whose ignorance often lead to him asking what a fried apple is among other rhetorical questions, usually so that the titular rapping bear can explain the subject at hand to younger viewers. Taking note of Scott's outstanding lack of common sense, Joel McHale of The Soup nicknamed him "Stupid Scott."
The Daily Show's "Midterm Elections" Schoolhouse Rock parody.
Jimmy: Sounds like midterm elections are a chance to really change things!
Grandpa: Are you listening to a goddamn word of this? Out of 535 seats we'll be lucky to get ten new people!
Ask Mr. Lizard, the Show Within a Show from Dinosaurs, has Timmy. Who is killed in every episode, leading Mr. Lizard to say "We're going to need another Timmy."

Music

The "Little Jimmy" Skits in Kanye West's The College Dropout album present Jimmy as a naive child who was implied to be entirely impressionable due to his father's "influence".

Pro-Wrestling

R-Truth, after his Face Heel Turn, said that he was sick and tired of all his younger fans, refferring to them as "Little Jimmies". As his Sanity Slippage progressed, he became convinced that all the Little Jimmies were in on a conspiracy to prevent him from holding a title belt.
- He's since turned face again, claiming that he and Little Jimmy made peace with one another after an absence due to injury*
  Said injury being sustained after The Miz beat him down on an episode of WWE Raw.
  .

Web Comics

Captain Broadband: Captain Broadband's nameless partner exists solely for this purpose. Captain Broadband provides him with explanations of events solely for the sake of providing explanations for events. Apparently it doesn't even matter what he's explaining as long as he's explaining something. No matter how gibberish it can be.

Western Animation

The quote at the top of the page comes from The Simpsons, where Lisa begins to have doubts about eating meat, so her school shows her class a propaganda video from the meat industry titled "Meat and You: Partners in Freedom". It features our good friend Jimmy as he is "educated" (and traumatized) about the wonders of the meat industry.
- Similar videos show up every now and then, more often than not featuring Troy McClure.
Futurama has a similar video where a little girl is taught about Global Warming. The same clip is also used in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.
G.I. Joe features And Knowing Is Half the Battle segments in which dumb kids do things they shouldn't and the heroes have to come along and tell them not to.
- Transformers also adopted And Knowing Is Half the Battle sequences.
This trope was going to be parodied in an Invader Zim episode, where ZIM is sent to judgement for his actions. In it, Tallest Red tells what an Irken PAK is to Little Timmy (something the script describes as "so adorable it makes you sick to watch.")... But when he is done, Tallest Purple promptly orders a pair of Guards to drag him kicking and screaming to the Dungeons because He Knows Too Much.