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Lord Percy: The fashion today is towards the tiny.
Blackadder: In that case you have the most fashionable brain in London.
"Aren't you happy, Flonne? We finally found somebody dumber than you!"
The Ditz is a character whose defining characteristic is profound stupidity. Female ditzes tend to be sweet and naive, male ditzes tend to be oafish but lovable. The Ditz is written to appear unintentionally funny. In drama series, he or she provides comic relief.
The person is not a true Ditz unless you are left wondering how someone this stupid could possibly hope to function in modern society. The other characters can also share this view (see Who Would Be Stupid Enough). Unlike The Fool, The Ditz is seldom in any real danger, and luck probably couldn't save him if he or she ever were.
As Wash on Firefly once asked of Jayne (who had ditzy moments but was more of a big dumb tough guy), "How did your brain master human speech? I'm just so curious."
A good looking Ditz (of either sex) might be The Brainless Beauty. An independently wealthy Ditz is an Upper Class Twit. An exceptionally clumsy Ditz is a Dojikko.
A more competent Ditz will often become The Fool. A Ditz who is too moronically optimistic to notice their own hardship is classified as the Pollyanna. Taken to its extreme, the Ditz can devolve into a Cloud Cuckoolander or a Ralph Wiggum.
One reason you can find The Ditz on so many TV shows is that it gives the audience someone to feel superior to. No matter how stupid you might be, you are smarter than The Ditz.
See also Genius Ditz, Obfuscating Stupidity.
Can overlap with You Suck, but isn't the same thing.
Examples:
Anime
- In the image above we have Millefeuille Sakuraba, from the anime Galaxy Angel -- the perfect example of The Ditz if there ever was one.
- Floe from Simoun.
- Mihoshi, in the various Tenchi Muyo television series (Flanderized from a Bunny Ears Lawyer/Genius Ditz in the OVAs).
- The title character (and arguably most of the cast) of Excel Saga.
- Kousaka from Genshiken isn't quite as dimwitted as some; his ditz qualifications comes mostly from his utter lack of a filter between his thoughts and his mouth.
- Brutally lampshaded in Elfen Lied. Director Kurama's ditzy secretary, Kisaragi, is decapitated by Lucy in the first 10 minutes of the show. She's literally Too Dumb To Live.
- This isn't made better in the German dub, where one of her colleagues tells her "Just don't lose your head." moments before.
- Joshua Lundgren in Gun X Sword straddles the line between ditz and Cloudcuckoolander. He once looked for Wendy by heading into every women's restroom in a train station, not understanding why the women were screaming until he got arrested for it.
- Kujyou Himeka from Kamichama Karin.
- Yayoi of Koi Koi 7 (the pink-haired one, not the one with the eyepatch.) When standing in the middle of a heated battle with the shots missing her, her only response is "Fireworks!"
- Mahiro Muto from Busou Renkin, after spending time early on as a distressed damsel.
- Isaac and Miria the Bonnie And Clyde pair from Baccano!.
- The characters of Cromartie High School tend to pass the Idiot Ball around quite a bit, but Hayashida is particularly stupid. The Other Wiki describes him as "dumber than a gorilla"--which, considering a gorilla is actually part of the cast, is proven true in the show.
Western Animation
Live Action TV
- Mrs. Eunice "Lovey" Wentworth Howell, from Gilligans Island.
- Vera from Alice.
- Bull Shannon, from Night Court.
- Matthew Brock, from News Radio.
- Phoebe and Joey from Friends (by the end, at least).
- Joey's ditziness especially shines through in the subject of geography - at various points in the series he has thought that the Netherlands was where Peter Pan lives, described Chandler's "going to Yemen" ruse for getting rid of Janice as clever because "it almost sounds like a real place", and gone to the bank to try changing dollars into "Vermont money".
- Ted and Georgette from The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
- Monroe from Too Close For Comfort.
- Lucy Moran and Deputy Andy Brennan from Twin Peaks.
- Debralee Scott
 , in any of her Game Show appearances of the 1970s and early 1980s.
- Dougal from Father Ted (in the UK, a Channel4ID had him forgetting what channel he was promoting).
- Alice from The Vicar Of Dibley.
- Kelso, from That 70s Show.
- Rose, from The Golden Girls.
- A beautiful Double Subversion of this trope occurred in the pilot of Golden Palace, a short-lived and otherwise unremarkable spinoff of The Golden Girls. Rose, confronted by a robber at the front desk of the hotel the girls are running, is too ditzy to even realize that she's being robbed. The robber eventually leaves, with nothing, in frustration. The trope is subverted as Rose immediately calls the police, providing a detailed description of the robber, where he's headed, what kind of car he's driving, etc., ending with "Who is this? Oh, just someone who's not quite as dumb as she appears," much to the delight of the audience. The subversion itself is then subverted as we hear Rose's next line into the phone: "Oh, this is four one one?"
- Bridget Hennesey, from Eight Simple Rules.
- Christmas Noelle "Chrissy" Snow (Suzanne Somers' archetypal role) from Threes Company.
- Kelly Bundy of Married With Children was eventually Flanderized into a brainless trollop who hadn't enough mental capacity to remember her homework and the members of her own family at the same time.
- Her analogue on the horrid MWC knockoff Unhappily Ever After, Tiffany Malloy, was a subversion, being a genius and a Deadpan Snarker, besides looking hot. A virgin to boot. At least one time, she gained an intellectual rival who was blonde, hotter, and spoke in a baby-doll voice.
- Maria from WWE is a good example of a ditz, though this was subverted in the "Trial of Eric Bischoff" episode of WWE Raw, by Maria making a particularly more-intelligent-than-usual speech about Bischoff's failings as a general manager. In a later appearance, Bischoff accused Maria of pretending to be "stupid and sweet" in order to win the fans' favor, which, if true, would make this an example of Obfuscating Stupidity.
- That token black kid on Hip Hop Harry, affectionately nicknamed "Stupid Scott" by Joel McHale of The Soup. Despite being roughly around the age of 12, he expresses the cognitive skills of a 6-year-old and has to have explained to him (by the smarter Asian girl) things like how to fill up a bathtub or why its not a good idea to feed ice cream and hot dogs to a pet gerbil. The program goes out of its way to make viewer wonder how on earth he manages to cross streets on the way home.
- Susan Meyer from Desperate Housewives started out as the Ditz, but it was largely limited to being a horrible cook and having a tendency to trip over things. This has since been Flanderized to the point where she occasionally just seems mentally disabled, such as her being so desperate to get the new neighbors to like her that she kidnapped their dog planning to heroically "find" it later. It...didn't work out very well.
- Dean Winchester, from Supernatural, is like this for pretty much anything that doesn't relate to hunting, his family or his car. Most of the time it's adorable but sometimes he can come off as an annoying brainless beauty.
- Mr Bean although sometimes he can be quite bright.
- Edmund Black Adder in the first season of Black Adder, but in series 2 he became the Deadpan Snarker he is known as in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th seasons. Baldrick also fits this to some extent as well as being well....The trope namer for The Baldrick.
Film
- Tom Hanks plays the Ditz extremely well. A fine example is the main character in Forrest Gump.
- Forrest Gump is really more of The Fool.
- Gracie Allen's Alter Ego Acting personality.
- Babs from the Nick Park movie Chicken Run.
- Cher Horowitz in Clueless... kind of. She's certainly no genius level intellect, and is definitely more than a little naive and 'clueless', but she's savvy enough when she needs to be and has enough wits about her to 'negotiate' her grades with most of her teachers.
- Mr Bean in Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie and Mr Bean's Holiday. Also Johnny English to some extent.
Web Animation / Podcasts
Webcomics
Literature
- Lydia Bennet and her mother in Pride And Prejudice. Thus making this one yep, you guessed it.
- At the Super Hero School Whateley Academy in the webfiction Whateley Universe, one example is the minor character Bubble. Someone comments to herself, "She has a bubble all right. Between her ears." Another good example is the egocentric, villainous Solange, who isn't smart enough to be an effective villain. She uses her powers to absorb an etherial protagonist and steal said character's powers; she gets run through the Humiliation Conga for her efforts.
Video Games
- A very common character in Nippon Ichi Video Games: Examples include Flonne and Captain Gordon, Defender of Earth! in Disgaea, Trenia in Makai Kingdom, Taro in Disgaea 2, and Danette and Levin in Soul Nomad And The World Eaters. Most of them are used as a foil for the resident Deadpan Snarker.
- Danette and Levin may suffer from an unfortunate Racial Hat, but Levin acknowledges Danette as the Ditz, and Danette acknowledges herself as the ditz!
- Arcueid, she of Tsukihime and Melty Blood fame, comes off quite ditzy, being a centuries-old vampire princess not used to the societal norms of the human world. Watch out, because she can kill you before you can blink, even before her Superpowered Evil Side kicks in.
- Cirno in Touhou. In particular, the manual for Phantasmagoria of Flower View has a screenshot with numbers pointing out items of note (i.e. 1. Player Character, 2. Score, etc.); Cirno was labelled 9. Baka.
- Actually since then Cirno has been nicknamed "Nine-ball" or simply "⑨".
- Lucia in Shadow Hearts Covenant is described by her own teacher Carla as "slow".
- Both Lloyd and Colette of Tales Of Symphonia both qualify quite well for the title of The Ditz. A great example is a skit conversation between the two and Regal when Colette asks how Lloyd memorized every single Dwarven Vow (of which there are at least 108).
Lloyd: Since I was a child, I memorized one before each meal and was tested on it. And if I couldn't say it, I didn't get to eat.
Colette: Oh, I see.... There must have been Dwarven Vow memory ingredients in the food.
Lloyd: Huh? R...really?
Colette: I wonder if I can memorize all the Dwarven Vows if I eat Dirk's cooking.
Regal: No, Colette, that's not it. Lloyd's desire for food temporarily strengthened his memory.
Colette: Oh... So Dirk's food has powers like an Exsphere to increase people's abilities.
Lloyd: I see!
Regal: ...Why does the topic of conversation go out the window when talking to Colette?
- One of the female cheerleaders in Osu Tatakae Ouendan, Aoi Kanda (the pink haired Meganekko), is completely clumsy when it comes to anything outside cheerleading, whether it's failure to make a meal for sale, failure making a pottery, dropping foods on floor (or not chewing it properly), spacing out on class, and the list goes on, see the bottom of the page.
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