The Ditz is a character whose defining characteristic is profound stupidity. Female ditzes tend to be sweet and naive, while 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.
Unlike The Fool, The Ditz is seldom in any real danger, and luck probably couldn't save him if he or she ever were.
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. Taken to its extreme, the Ditz can evolve into a Cloud Cuckoolander.
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, Dumb Blonde, and The Klutz.
Can overlap with This Loser Is You, but isn't the same thing.
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 deconstructed 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.
Anna (after she returned to normal) is another example, being unable to solve basic mathematical problems.
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.
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.
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.
In his defense, the gorilla is pretty much the smartest member of the class. Yeah. It's that kind of series.
Himeko from Pani Poni Dash!. She's so dumb, she faints upon SEEING English letters, since her brain can't take it.
Minori from Toradora, described by one erudite forum member as "a 1-inch deep ball of happy idiot".
Minori is much, much more intelligent than she appears. She's quite possibly the smartest character in the entire anime.
Italy from Axis Powers Hetalia; the name of the series is even a portmanteau of the Japanese words for "hopeless" and "Italy". America is more of the 'lovable/obnoxious oaf' kind.
In Matsuda's defense, he is not so much a could-not-function-in-normal-society Ditz. Most of the time, he acts like a fairly normal (if somewhat impulsive and over-enthusiastic) young man. It's just that in a situation where one false move (like revealing your face to the wrong person) could mean instant death, any false move starts to come off as Too Dumb to Live. It also doesn't help that he's working with (or, as it turns out in one case, against) people like Light, L, Near, and even Mello.
Sidoh, the Shinigami, is a particularly sweet example.
Rino Rando from Best Student Council. Most of the smarts seem to have been given to her snarky hand puppet Pucchan.
Ash from Pokémon, at least initially. He was just plain stupid: Ash: "Hey, that Mankey just stole my hat! * Screams and climbs up a tree after it, while the others just stare at him* " He's gotten a lot better since then.
So Team Rocket seems to have become cursed to this position ever since.
Not to mention May and Dawn when they first started as trainers — May was a bit less competent because she didn't really want to train Pokemon, which was before the anime introduced Contests. This even passed on her starter Torchic, who Took a Level in Badass and evolved into Combusken in the middle of Hoenn, eliminating this trait.
Kanako from Maria†Holic is marvelously dumb. She flunked nearly all her exams and, when given notes that "even an idiot could understand" by Sachi, she fails to comprehend even that. She's so single-minded in her pursuit of finding girl-love that she's dim in just about everything else.
Including the fact that liking girls makes her a lesbian.
Luffy from One Piece easily falls into this trope. From recognizing mixed animals by their least dominant feature to chalking up anything beyond his comprehension (i.e. most everything!) as "mystery" things, Luffy is easily the most gullible and air-headed of Shounen heroes.
An extremely ditzy Re-Coder shows up in Code: Breaker. When asked how many people she killed, she says "One, two, three... Ten, I guess, because I have ten fingers! But I'm not in a counting mood, so now I'll kill you painfully!" Notably, she never lapses into a Slasher Smile but remains cheerful and perky throughout.
Nai is a boy version of this from Karneval,although he's really a cute little animal. Yogi is more of the "lovable oaf" kind when he's not being serious, which is often.
The main lead of Angel Densetsu has his moments (it's more a combination of Nice Guy, The Klutz and Selective Obliviousness actually), but then we have the most fearsome and brutal of the Shadowy seven: Hishida Haruka! Yep, she's The Ditz, and The Klutz, and almost a Pollyanna ...she's also the living embodiment of Confusion Fu, and she's not even aware of all the destruction she's spreading around.
Naruto himself fits this in part 1, though it's really more a case of Book Dumb. He outgrows it after the timeskip.
Arguably, the titular character from Yotsuba&! qualifies. Sure, she's five years old, but what kid that age doesn't even know how a swing works? She can also be led by the nose rather easily. Any moderately intelligent five-year-old would eventually figure out that cardbro is simply Miura in a cardboard box, for instance.
Dumb Bunny from the Inferior Five ('60s humor comic from DC), whose name pretty much says it all, really. She's "stronger than an ox - and almost as smart!"
Boom-Boom Meltdown Tabitha Smith of Nextwave: trailer-trash klepto with the power to make things go boom. She says "zomg" out loud and misspells her own name.
"I hate cops! Because, like, cops keep arresting me and stuff? For stealing? Like stealing's a crime or something?
Forbush Man's mental powers do not work on her. Guess why. Her explanation? "I gave him the explodo because I am clever."
The Parademon from the Villains United miniseries. He even fully admits to wanting to die in a stupid gesture.
One of Scamp's sisters in Lady and the Tramp 2, Danielle, is an adorable, ditzy Cocker Spaniel. However, coincidentally, she is voiced by the same person who voices Phil and Lil from the Rugrats.
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.
Though he turns out to be a bit of a Genius Ditz in Wake Up Ron Burgundy (a bonus 'film' on made of deleted Anchorman scenes)
Virtually every character played by famed comedian Lou Costello of the Abbott and Costello comedy duo. Occasionally he will even lampshade himself, such as when one of his characters in the film Who Done It? turns on a radio and hears "Who's on First?" (one of Abbott and Costello's most famous routines) and immediately turns it off, remarking how stupid the "short, chubby guy" (actually Costello himself) is.
Bullshot: "I see. You intend taking on the Most Dangerous Man in Europe by yourself do you? Have you given a moment's thought as to what you intend using for brains?"
Rosemary: "How dare you! I've done pretty well without brains so far!"
Officer Ed from Scotland, PA. Why would anyone trust this man with a loaded gun? They don't.
Ed: Sir, I called the number, like, 95 times. I practically had it memorized.
Volatilus, the sweet but not too bright little dispatch dragon from the Temeraire books.
In Buddenbrooks, Tony is impressed by smart people (like Morten Schwarzkopf — a doctor-to-be with whom she falls in love, but can't marry him because of the Grünlich thing), but is neither book smart nor street smart herself, and calls herself "a silly goose" sometimes. Her poor relative Klothilde is even more so.
Mrs Korobochka the widow in Dead Souls, who hesitates selling her "dead souls" and even suggests that "you could still need them".
Tawneee (yes, three 'e's), a minor character from Discworld.
As in the film example above, Gracie Allen's ditz character pretty much supported The Burns And Allen Show, although there was a usually a weird sense of logic behind her statements.
Edith Bunker from All in the Family was one of these a lot of the time.
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".
J.D. from Scrubs is an interesting case. Despite being a talented and well educated doctor, he delves into extreme ditz-hood when dealing with certain subjects, including sports (he thinks basketballs come "three to a can" and that Arnold Palmer is famous only for inventing a drink), politics (does not know the difference between a senator and a congressman, and knows Dick Cheney only as "the bald assistant president who has all the heart attacks") and geography (mistakes Austria for Australia and New England for New Zealand).
There's a couple of issues of Young Justice, set in 'Australia', where the artist apparently made the same mistake (there ain't no mountains like that in Sydney, bub!). And The Simpsonslampshaded it.
Lucy Moran and Deputy Andy Brennan from Twin Peaks.
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?"
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.
Susan's mother Sophie is far ditzier than her daughter, especially when it comes to men, coming across as an aged Brainless Beauty. Susan's daughter Julie on the other hand is smart and mature. If this family trend continues Julie's daughter might be the next Marilyn vos Savant.
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.
Dean: What the hell is this?
Sam: ...she gave you her myspace address.
Dean: What's that? Porno?
Mr. Bean, although sometimes he can be quite bright.
Edmund Blackadder 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 a well-loved Bumbling Sidekick.
London Tipton from The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. She may be one of the most idiotic girls on TV. Hilariously so, but still. However, initially she was just Book Dumb and acted a lot like Zack, but she was flanderized into a ditz.
Finn and Puck aren't the brightest bulbs either (Finn's default expression is an open-mouthed blank stare), though they split the difference and are slightly less dumb than Brittany.
In Puck's case, it's sort of implied that he's not really stupid at all, it's just that he usually doesn't put in that much effort. The moments when he does put in effort in things, he usually does just fine. Finn, however, plays this trope straight.
Luke in Modern Family is always tripping, jumping on the trampoline while on a pogo stick, getting his head stuck in the staircase railing...
He inherited it from his Bumbling Dad Phil and shares it with his sister Haley.
Alicia Gianelli from The Adventures Of Shirley Holmes had shades of this, being the "girly girl" of the cast, although she could be quite smart/insightful sometimes.
Canada's Worst Driver has no shortage of the truly clueless. Andrew Younghusband often wonders how in tarnation they get their drivers licenses, and Season 4 was a toss-up between a ditz and a road rager.
Paisley, Gibson, and Fletcher on A.N.T. Farm, but especially Paisley, who sometimes forgets that her name is Paisley.
Max from Wizards of Waverly Place. The only person who could write "One Syllable" as the answer in a game of charades.
Chelsea from That's So Raven was derailed into one in later seasons.
Barbara Jean on Reba (who's also a Dumb Blonde), to the point were most of the characters(usually Reba) make fun of her intelligence(or lack thereof)
Music
'Cause I'm a Blonde by Julie Brown. "Because I'm blonde, I don't have to think, I talk like a baby, and never pay for drinks..."
2D of Gorillaz. The man introduced himself in an interview with "Hi, my name is 2D, and I'm the singer, and I need the toilet ..." Then in Rise of the Ogre he was quoted as saying:
"I never really thought about what I wanted to do after school, though ... I've never really thought about anything, as far as I can remember."
He is, however, implied to have some Hidden Depths, as he is still capable of composing stunning music and saying some surprisingly philosophical things once in a blue moon. 2D may be more of a Genius Ditz or Brilliant, but Lazy, when he's not thick with painkillers.
Professional Wrestling
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.
Radio
Dennis Day portrayed himself this way in The Jack Benny Program. Apparently he didn't even realise he was supposed to cash the paychecks Jack gave him each week.
Danette and Levin may suffer from an unfortunate Racial Hat, but Levin acknowledges Danette as the Ditz, and Danette acknowledges herself as the ditz!
Though thankfully, Levin turns out to be a lot smarter than he lets on, so you don't have to suffer his supposed "idiocy" forever.
Danette gets a little better as well, after the seal of her memories (and seemingly other brain functions) is broken.
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.
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?
Tenebrae: Am I really that much of a stick in the mud?
Emil: I can't believe he's still thinking about that.
Colette: I honestly don't see any mud on you. But what's wrong with getting mud on you anyway? Everyone gets a little dirty now and again.
Marta: I don't think he meant that sort of mud.
Colette: Well then, what sort of mud did he mean?
Emil: No, listen. There was never any mud to begin with.
Colette: Oh! So was it more of a muck? Or maybe a slime?
Tenebrae: So now I'm slimy?
Colette: I have to say, I prefer mud to slime myself. It's easier to clean.
Tenebrae: Well, it would depend on where the slime came from.
Emil: Yeah, but think about your fur. Slime would stick to it, while mud would just wash off, no problem.
Marta: Someone, anyone, please make it stop!
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. And those are only examples from the first game.
For context, she's not incapable but she tends to miss things in conversations and dig herself into holes while speaking. A good compilation is here.
Surprisingly, NOT Goofy from Kingdom Hearts. Despite him easily qualifying for this in the comics and TV-shorts/shows, he's pretty smart in KH, except for occasionally confusing similar words.
Sarrie from Star Ocean: The Last Hope is the living, breathing embodiment of this trope. Just how bad is it? She wakes up on a sacrificial alter, in a room with greenish light...and simply says "Good Morning!" She then remembers that "guests" came in through her window, and she was going to serve them tea...
Aino Heart from Arcana Heart is this trope turned up to Eleven. She's a combination of this and Love Freak.
Taokaka from BlazBlue. While she's incredibly energetic, she often forgets things that are told to her just seconds after the fact.
Shion Uzuki from the Xenosaga series, in particular the first episode.
Several characters on the Homestar Runner site. Homestar himself is the most noticeably ditzy, but there's more than one Idiot Ball being passed around among the cast.
All of the characters in the video podcast Tiki Bar TV drift in and out of this. This is largely because the dialog is improvised while the actors are drunk, leading to some bizarre exchanges that drift back and forth between The Fool and Cloud Cuckoolander, and generally end up falling around The Ditz.
Dr. Tiki: I'm a PhD MD USB for a reason!
Caboose from the popular web series Red vs. Blue gradually degrades from The Ditz in the first series to being completely retarded and almost completely disconnected from reality (at one point, he loads his gun with crayons and forgets how to spell his name).
Donut also qualifies and pretty much stays The Ditz the entire time, though ironically he's the only one from either team who ever managed to accomplish their objective (capturing the flag). Sister could also count when she arrives. Both of them share two traits - speaking terribleSpanish, and both of them talk way too damn much.
The Red and Blue unicorns from the two Charlie the UnicornYouTube videos appear to be this at first, but seeing as they tricked him into donating his kidney— without consent— in the first movie, and ended up robbing him in the second, they're something else entirely.
T-Rex in Dinosaur Comics is another male example, as well as a giant green dinosaur example. He worries about being racist against taxi drivers, and makes good-natured attempts to use pretty much every school of philosophical thought in recorded history to justify the things he does every day (mainly stomping on people and things).
Crystal, the goth assassin. Uncommon in so far that she has neither the good attitude nor the good looks most ditzes have. If she wasn't The Rival of Haley Starshine (which lets her gain a level every time Haley gets one, for the Dungeons & Dragons rules), she'd probably still be at 0th level.
Crystal's little pickle stunt moves her closer to Too Dumb to Live. The Ditz may be stupid, but there's stupid and there's unbelievably retarded.
Duchess Letita of A Magical Roommate is very ditzy, although whether it's due to her stupidity or just her strange viewpoint is somewhat debatable.
Her younger daughter is a straighter example, though it's implied that she's only ditzy because she thinks she's entitled to everything and chooses not to use her brain.
Zack: "The Blue's Clues guy? Wait, I forget. Was he the blue one, or was he the dog?"
Tiffany Thongbiscuit. When she heard from The Vogue (Pronounced "the vagooey") that "Mad Men" was fashionable. She went to school dressed like a literal mad man.
At the Super Hero School Whateley Academy in the 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 ethereal protagonist and steal said character's powers; she gets run through the Humiliation Conga for her efforts.
February from Starship. She takes the fact that she removed her helmet before she was supposed to on an unfamiliar planet as a sign that she's "super ahead of schedule".
Bug and Junior have their moments, too.
Western Animation
Ralph Wiggum from The Simpsons, so much so that he had his own trope for a while.
Subverted in Rocket Power with the story "Twist of Fate", where after being ridiculed for being a fan of a cartoon on safety, Twister ends up using the knowledge he's learned from that show to get his friends out of trouble in the Grand Canyon, showing that (to paraphrase Rose) he's "someone who's not quite as dumb as he appears".
He often heads into Cloud Cuckoo Lander territory, depending on the local humidity and/or piggy count.
The perfect example of a male ditz is Gonard from Kappa Mikey, who at one point forgets where his hat is. It's on his head. Also, he takes part in the auditions for a new cast member for Show Within a Show "Lily Mu", despite already being a cast member. All this is in the pilot episode. "Cheerful buffoon" is putting it mildly.
Gonard: Dude! Check out my laced gloves! Hey, where'd my shoes go?
Chris Griffin on Family Guy has an intelligence somewhere between that of a sign post and a bag of moldy French fries. Jillian, Brian's ex-girlfriend, is another example.
The titular character from Bonkers, but it could be explained away by his being a Toon; he's super emotional, gets all huggy (and kissy) when he's happy, and seems a bit naive when it comes to human matters (especially in the Miranda episodes). On the other hand, he's very knowledgeable about his own kind, and knows just what sort of Toon stunt or prop can save the day.
The entire (except the Chief and probably Justice the dog) Action League from Action League Now!, a skit on KaBlam!!.
Also Bob of Prometheus and Bob.
June used to be one of Nickelodeon's biggest ditzes until her change into the Deadpan Snarker starting in season two.
