Naïve Newcomer

aka: The New Guy

Miranda: O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures
are there here!
How beauteous mankind is!
O brave new world,
That has such people in't!
Prospero: Tis new to thee.

— The Tempest

A character whose inexperience with the world presented by the show lets them act as the Audience Surrogate. Often it is through their eyes that we are introduced to the show's principal characters and milieu (see Welcome Episode). Sometimes incorporates qualities of The Watson and Fish out of Water. May lack Genre Blindness.

They may be Trapped in Another World, a new student at an Extranormal Institute, the fresh military recruit, or just The Intern, but the device is the same.

In dangerous situations, this character may condemn himself as a coward for feeling fear, until a sager head tells him that only the Fearless Fool avoids that.

A popular character type in Speculative Fiction, because it allows the reader or viewer to explore the world as the character does, meaning the character is still an Audience Surrogate, but is a little more instrumental to the story because of the greater amount of details being presented.

Done poorly these characters may just become flimsy justifications for an Info Dump, making them a sort of inverse Mr. Exposition.

Can overlap with Country Mouse, Kid-Appeal Character (who is also there to draw in younger audiences), Welcome to the Big City (their usual introduction to city life), Ordinary High-School Student (impressionable person applied to an odd situation). Accidental errors may lead to a Bewildering Punishment.

A Super-Trope to Rookie Red Ranger (the newcomer is also The Hero and/or The Leader), Ensign Newbie (the newcomer is an officer presiding over a more experienced enlisted crew), and The Watson (the newcomer's purpose is to get information for the audience by proxy). The Token Good Cop is often, but not necessarily, one of these as well,

Compare Unfazed Everyman, who accepts any new situation with ease and few questions asked (if any), and Logical Latecomer, a newcomer whose questions about the work's status quo are meant to lampshade it rather than invite explanation. See also Little Jimmy. Contrast Team Prima Donna.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Novice tennis player Eiichirou has to learn the basics of the sport in Baby Steps.
• Black Clover: When he first joins the Magic Knights, Asta has no idea about what a Magic Knight is supposed to do, despite it being his dream to join the organization and become the Wizard King. As a result, he relies on the other Black Bulls to tell him what they're supposed to do.
• Rokuro Okajima, AKA Rock, from Black Lagoon. A salaryman kidnapped by pirates, his decision to stay with them introduces the audience to the criminal underworld of the series.
• The virginal Kate Curtis in the hentai Bondage Queen Kate.
• Cells at Work!: AE3803 is a rookie red blood cell who is still trying to feel her way around the human body, and often has to ask questions about how things work.
• In Haibane Renmei, Rakka acts as the Naïve Newcomer, appearing in the Haibane's world and having to have everything explained to her by the seasoned residents.
• Keiichi in Higurashi: When They Cry is played as this in the first time loop, having only recently moved to the town a month prior, but in later ones it seems like he knows more about Hinamizawa.
• Madoka and Sayaka in Puella Magi Madoka Magica start out thinking they're in a typical Magical Girl series. Cue abrupt disillusionment when the idealistic Mami is killed in action in the third episode. Sorry girls, it's not that kind of series.
• Shinji Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion. However, he is a lot less of a Wide-Eyed Idealist than many examples. He also possibly already knows at least one of the hideous secrets of the Evas, though he does choose not to remember it. It was how his mother ended up "dying"- she was turned into a pool of LCL and her soul got sucked into Unit 01 during a test run- with him watching as a young tyke. Ouch.
• Luffy tends to get most of these moments in One Piece, as he honestly doesn't care how the world works unless it's directly relevant to him somehow. The other members of the Straw Hat crew also occasionally get moments of it, being among the very few denizens of the relatively tame East Blue to travel the considerably deadlier Grand Line, and thus having heard precious little about it beforehand. This is enforced with the Time Skip, as Luffy was kept out of the loop for two years, so he could focus solely on his training. All the news that occured within those two years were slowly revealed to Luffy and the audience after the Time Skip.
• Ouran High School Host Club: Haruhi transfers into Ouran in the first episode and then she's dragged into its host club. She's baffled by all the odd rich people at first, then she takes it in stride.
• Ahiru in Princess Tutu since she's a duck that was magically turned into a girl.
• Utena early on in Revolutionary Girl Utena. She knows absolutely nothing about the Duels and the Rose Bride, prior to mistakenly challenging the current champion to a duel.
• Tsukune in Rosario + Vampire, a human accidentally enrolled in Youkai Academy. As such, the world of the monsters is introduced through him slowly learning about them.
• Linna Yamazaki in the Bubblegum Crisis remake, Tokyo 2040. Rather than an existing member of the team, the series follows her recruitment and learning curve.
• Noelle from I'm Gonna Be an Angel!. Might be slightly subverted in that she is the heroine but the plot is told from her love interest's point of view.
• Takumi from Initial D is an interesting variation on this forthe first couple seasons. Despite being nearly godlike in his abilities, he's often having basic racing techniques and auto facts/mechanics explained to him because he's developed his skills in isolation on his own and has no background. Later on, the racers he's defeated (despite being high-level themselves) often serve as the audience to explanations.
• Mitsuki Koyama/Fullmoon in Full Moon. Justified since she's been fighting a cancerous tumor most of her life.
• Hayato Kazami from Future GPX Cyber Formula at the beginning of the TV series, in which he has to learn the basics of racing and driving the car. This is justified as he has no previous experience in racing (outside of motorcycle racing).
• Hanaukyō Maid Team. Taro is constantly befuddled by what happens at the mansion each episode throughout both series as he's continually hit by new information and surprises.
• New people who were killed get transported into the Tokyo condominium inhabited by the black sphere Gantz every time the old batch get killed during their alien hunting missions. In this case, having the more battle experienced members explain the rules from the get-go could mean the difference between successfully completing the mission (barely) alive and immediately getting turned into a bloody smear on the sidewalk (or get their heads blown off by the distance activated bombs placed in their noggins).
• Priestess from Goblin Slayer started out as this, and it resulted in her team getting raped and murdered by a horde of goblins they underestimated and were ill-equipped to deal with. After she was saved by Goblin Slayer, she learned how to be a better fighter and spell caster.
• Eureka Seven: Renton Thurston starts out as one when he joins the Gekkostate. He's a jovial kid who hates his dull life and wishes to have more freedom. Too bad Gekkostate sees him as a gawky, timid, 14-year old snot nose whose sole purpose is to be their Butt-Monkey. Renton is enraged that the crew sees him as an immature baby whom they give no respect. Come several episodes later, he's had enough, blows his stack in a firefight, and slaughters a whole KLF squadron very horrifically. Shortly afterward, Eureka's pissed at the whole crew for egging him all this time, which causes them to drop all ideas of messing with him and treat him as an equal.
• Idol Densetsu Eriko: Eriko had an idealized view of the Idol Singer industry and assumed it would be a walk in the park when she debuted. Not only is she overworked, exhausted and forced to buckle to all sorts of norms and pressures. Even her school life and personal relationships are impacted since she doesn't have time for them anymore.
• In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Simon appears to be this when it comes to being flung into hot-blooded mecha battles with his badass "bro" Kamina, freaking out most of the time when trouble rears its ugly head. Whenever he does something awesome, usually Kamina encouraged it. However, when Kamina dies in the battle to take the Dai-Gunzan from Thymilph, Simon goes into a Heroic BSoD that turns him Darker and Edgier for a short while and wipes out his cowardice in place of grief and anger. However, when he gets over it... he, too, becomes a triumphant badass who's by no means a naive kid, but a man. Post-Time Skip, he's 18 years old and effectively a mature, well-versed leader in battle. Government, however, is another story.
  • When first introduced, Nia isn't even aware of what a human is despite she and her father being ones themselves.
• Astral in Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL, who is unaware of the how the world there works. Although he has become less naive as the series has progressed. Yuma also counts, as he's rather bad in playing Duel Monsters and has to learn it through duels.
• Cardfight!! Vanguard brought in Large Ham Naoki in the third season, Link Joker, to act as an Audience Surrogate learning the game for the first time, since the regular guy, Aichi, had not only already learned the game, but had also completed his character arc fully.
• Z in From Eroica with Love is the newest addition to the infamous Alphabet Team.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • Nanoha was this for the first season, where she first realized the existence of mages and of other worlds. She became this again in the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha INNOCENT Alternate Universe, where she's a newbie to that continuity's latest gaming craze, Brave Duel.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS passed this role over to Subaru and Teana, the latest recruits of Riot Force Six.
  • In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid, newly befriended co-protagonist Einhard Stratos takes this role for CompAce readers unfamiliar with the rest of the Nanoha franchise. This leads to a hilarious moment early on when she mistakes Nanoha and Fate for ordinary mothers.
  • Thoma of Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force, who was not only a newly infected Eclipse Driver, but also became a newly hired recruit of Special Duty Section 6.
• Lucy Heartfilia, and later Wendy Marvel from Fairy Tail. Downplayed in that it's still a fun universe - it's a world built up on how awesome it is to test magic with your friends - but it takes a while for it to sink in that a lot of these missions are really dangerous.
• Most of the 104th Trainee Corps in Attack on Titan were woefully naive about just how terrifying Titans were. Even after their hellish training, most start panicking during their first mission and die like flies.
• Intentionally invoked in Tokyo Ghoul, with Yoshimura requesting that the newly-Half-Human Hybrid Kaneki begin to learn about Ghouls in order to understand them, and judge for himself whether they are the monsters humanity has been led to believe. Juuzou serves as this to the CCG side of things, having been recruited without any formal training or education and partnered with Shinohara, a former Academy instructor.
• Sand Chronicles has the main character Ann who moves from Tokyo to the rural village Shimane. She finds it hard to adjust to the close-knit and carefree lifestyle in the countryside which makes it easy for personal information and rumours to fly around. She is also not accustomed to the idea of hunting wildlife for food - she's horrified when she learns the rabbit her new friend caught isn't going to be a pet but his dinner, and she's driven to tears when she finds out the delicious meat she's been eating (at the same friend's house) are what she considers precious animals (deer, boar and duck).
• In Endride, Shun gets Trapped in Another World and has no knowledge of Endora. It's a running gag for him to severely over- or underestimate Endoran wildlife, with others correcting him, and occasionally deceiving him.
• In Accel World, Haruyuki, the protagonist, starts off as this when introduced to the highly secretive and competitive world of Brain Burst. On his first day as a Burst Linker, he makes the mistake of walking around connected to the internet, leading to him getting curb-stomped by a low-level Burst Linker, although he soon learns how to defeat said opponent and recoup his losses, before soaring to even greater heights - figuratively and literally. His Childhood Friend Chiyuri also gets involved because she thinks it's a game and she wants to do it with her friends Haruyuki and Takumu (the latter of whom is somewhat experienced), and while she gets a fairly traumatic wake-up call, she's determined to protect them as she can, even if it means pretending to serve their enemy as a means of tricking him and enabling Haruyuki to recover his stolen power of flight.
• In Naruto, Team 7 acts as this for the first arc. Despite their time at the ninja academy, they're still rookie ninja who don't know much about what being a ninja actually means.
• In HIGHSPEED Étoile, Rin Rindo is shown as the newcomer seeing the NEX Race series as her means of regaining the spark in life she lost from not being able to do ballet. Behind the scenes, however, NEX Racing is shown as secretly being a competition between human and AI racers with one year for racers to show results before getting kicked out.

Comic Books

• Matty Roth from DMZ. Long story short contest: imagine an Alternate History with a Divided States of America and a continuing Civil War between the two sides. Imagine that the island of Manhattan is the line between the two sides, a No Man's Land that neither side can take, neither side will give up, and where the locals hate both sides and are trying to continue living as best they can. Now imagine a naive photographer who has just graduated college with little interest in politics or history, got himself an internship with a news corporation, and within a week wound up stranded and alone in Manhattan when the story he was going to be part of went terribly wrong. Good luck, Matty.
• The Eye of Mongombo: Mick Moss, undergraduate intern to Adventurer turned duck Cliff Carlson, is rather naive when he joins Cliff on his search for the titular Eye.
• Jonas serves this role in Poet Anderson: The Dream Walker, being introduced to the Dream World by his older brother Alan.
• Clara in Death Vigil is the newest member to the Vigil, and therefore, the older members explain the details of the Vigil to her and for the reader. As a bonus, the readers get to observe the other Vigil members and see their backstories from Clara's perspective.
• Giant Robot Warrior Maintenance Crew has Erica Pratch, the most recently-hired member of Herotron's maintenance crew. She feels honoured to be a member of the team, much to the others' surprise.
• In Pouvoirpoint, we discover the life on board starship Entreprise-2061 through the main character, who is a trainee graphic designer.
• The titular character in the Lucky Luke-album "The Tenderfoot" is a Quintessential British Gentleman who has inherited a ranch from his uncle. Unlike most examples, he actually is extremely competent, but his British upper-class mannerisms and values frequently clash with the more rough-and-tumble locals (for example, he is easily the best hunter and rider in the album, but his idea of dressing for riding and hunting involves a red tailcoat).

Fan Works

• Antipodes: After living underground their entire lives, when Tiptoe and Jigsaw travel to the surface they know absolutely nothing of its dangers, nature and societies.
• Turnabout Storm: Phoenix Wright in regards to Equestria. His cluelessness on the workings of the land gets him in trouble a few times.
• With Strings Attached: The four, who are suddenly transported to an alien planet, given super powers, and tasked with restoring a Dismantled MacGuffin. Although the four return to C'hou in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World and think they know what's going on now, things have changed so much that they're returned to the status of Naïve Newcomer.
• Shepard's R&R: Equestria is on a planet-wide scale, at least to the Mass Effect universe. In particular, Twilight Sparkle assumes a Virtual Intelligence hologram to be a familiar, Rainbow Dash complains that the bleeding-edge Normandy SR-2 "doesn't looks spaceshipey enough," and overall they're unaware of the scale of the destruction the galaxy underwent at the hands of the Reapers.
• The Captain of the Virtual Console has Ash the Pikachu, who lived in a forest for most of her life. She's never seen an ocean, among other things.
• Four Deadly Secrets: Jaune is constantly shown to be completely unaware of Hunter traditions and culture, managing to be both completely horrified by the way hunters do things, and completely horrify the hunters because he doesn't understand what it is he's threatening to do.
• The Commission: Jaune is one, which is why he decides to tell everyone else in Team JNPR that he faked his transcripts, rather than just Pyrrha, when opening up to them because he feels like a liability. Another example is the Spring Maiden, Haruko Miki. She acts like a Toku hero, seeks out Ruby "The Bloody Rose" Rose with a For Great Justice declaration and takes offense when the latter attacks her in the middle of her speech.
• The Stargate SG-1 fic “The Power of a Kiss” basically makes Sha’re this when she escapes becoming Amaunet’s host and comes to Earth with Daniel to join the search for Skaara. She is driven to tears when she overhears some of the staff making fun of her and thinking she’s stupid just because of her background, although SG-1 and others in the SGC senior staff recognise that Sha’re is very intelligent and has just had limited opportunities compared to some.
• Risk It All: Despite living in Gotham, Ren has a certain idealistic streak that hopes everything will turn out alright. This idealism is what got him tangled up in the Mob War in the first place, as his dream of winning big and taking his earnings home brings him face-to-face with Black Mask. After getting superpowers, he starts his crusade with the hope that he'll be able to stop Black Mask despite being woefully inexperienced and largely outgunned. This part of him is quickly challenged by the realities of superhero work. He lets himself get mugged after seeing a gun again triggers his PTSD. He watches a man he tried to incapacitate non-lethally get shot in the middle of a Mob War. Then said war escalates as a result of his actions and he's branded a villain by the internet due to multiple cases of Not What It Looks Like. He chastises himself multiple times for his naïveté, but continues to stubbornly stick to Thou Shalt Not Kill and minimizes collateral damage whenever he can.
• In The Rose and the Crown Cinderella is one to the politics of the court and the kingdom.
• In The Portal Thomas Smith, being a human in a blue dragon's body, has a lot to learn about living in the Dragon Realms.
• Artemis in It's An Unliving is the portrayed as the most naive of the team when it comes to heroics. Unlike the team's other non-powered member, Artemis not only doesn't wear armor, but leaves roughly half her torso exposed. Even after getting a suit of scarab armor, Artemis spends some time trying to configure it into resembling her original costume. Not helping matters is that Artemis's chosen hero alias is her first name.
• Tony from Glee Reprise has no knowledge of show choir or how the world of Glee works when he joins the club, so the characters who are more familiar with the competition circuti (like Beth and Julian) have to explain several things to him to catch him up.
• PMD: Another Perspective: Zig-Zagged with Purry, who has just arrived in the world of Pokémon for her mission. While she has a lot of knowledge on how battles work and knew she'd turn into a Pokémon beforehand, she lacks information on how various things in the new world work, like rescue team badges. She also doesn't know about the presence of towns or the existence of Mystery Dungeons until Blazy mentions them.

Films — Animation

• Mario in The Super Mario Bros. Movie is not knowledgeable on the Mushroom Kingdom, having just arrived there by total happenstance, isn't an adventurer, and is inexperienced compared to the games' version. He gets to free-run across Brooklyn, but that's it.

Films — Live-Action

• Steve Rogers in The Avengers (2012). Compared to the rest of the Avengers, he is inexperienced with the new world and with SHIELD. He's the least jaded of the Avengers and the youngest (physically speaking, at least). The trope is subverted in that he's their best leader.
  • In Avengers: Endgame, while a fair number of characters express confusion or shock about certain pieces of information, it's mostly Scott Lang that serves this role, as his own adventures were completely divorced from every major event of the "Infinity Saga" outside his brief participation in Captain America: Civil War. Coupled with him having been stuck in the quantum realm for five years, and he's utterly Locked Out of the Loop.
• In Big Trouble in Little China, approximately one third of the gags involving Jack Burton revolve around the fact that he walked into a Wuxia film and the other characters have to fill him in on the background details… and the ones that don't remain in Noodle Incident territory get a "huh?" response from Jack.
• Adam Webber from Blast from the Past. Living in a bomb shelter with your parents for 35 years will do that to ya.
• Das Boot: The presence of a war correspondent aboard the titular vessel means that there is a proper excuse for explaining various aspects of submarine operations to the audience, by having crewmembers explain them to this character, who could reasonably be expected not to already know it.
• Anderson plays this role in Dredd, but the movie inverts the usual mechanic; rather than Anderson asking Dredd questions, Dredd gives Anderson pop quizzes throughout the film as part of her assessment as a rookie Judge.
• Subverted in Ghostbusters (1984). Winston Zeddemore is not a scientist, let alone a parapsychologist, and applies for the job after seeing an ad put in the paper by the seriously over-worked Ghostbusters. His interview is a small moment of comic relief suggesting that he has no idea what he's getting himself into... and then he has no problem with the job, even going so far as to suggest a paranormal explanation for why the Ghostbusters were so over-worked in the first place.
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): Mark Russell is ironically both this trope and the Team Prima Donna — he's technically being brought back into Monarch, but he's been out of the loop long enough for this trope to be in effect. Mark shares in the audience's surprise at the many developments in Monarch that the top brass introduce; such as Emma recreating the ORCA, there being dozens more living Titans besides Godzilla around the world at clandestine Monarch containment outposts, and Monarch having a fancy new base of operations in Bermuda.
• In The Grizzlies, history teacher Russ when he arrives in the remote Canadian Artic town of Kugluktuk. Especially seen in his first interactions with the Inuit students and the principal.
  Co-op cashier: $327 and 65 cents.
  Russ: I'm sorry, what? I got like, twelve things.
  Mike: Why do you think they kill their own food?
• Higher Learning gives us three in the form of college freshmen Malik, Kristen, and Remy. Of those three, Kristen remains naive the longest.
• Will Smith's character in Men in Black learns that his experience as a NYPD cop means precisely dick when he enters the new world of alien policing.
• In the film version of Astrid Lindgren's Mio, My Mio the titular character serves as the Naïve Newcomer as he was taken from the Land of Faraway as a newborn and doesn't return until nine years later. After a while it gets a bit tedious that he constantly needs to have the world explained to him, but it also leads to a rather funny moment (largely thanks to Christian Bale's delivery). It involves Mio (Nicholas Pickard) and Jum-Jum (Bale) gallopping along a bridge that's being raised, and Mio panicks when he can't get the horse to stop. The horse then proceeds to fly across the gap in the bridge, and then the following exchange:
  Mio: It felt like we were flying! I didn't know Miramis could do that!
  Jum-Jum: (in a kids-are-stupid tone) What you know does not amount to much, Mio.
• Tom from Mortal Engines, especially in comparison to the cynical and very experienced Hester. He's never been outside London before the events of the film, so the audience is introduced to many of the film's concepts - scavenger towns, Airhaven and the Anti-Traction League, Shan Guo - through his eyes.
• On the Buses has Sandra, Stan's new clippie. The fact that she is so eager to learn is a great thrill to Stan, who fancies her.
• Shilo from Repo! The Genetic Opera. She was locked in her bedroom for 17 years. A large chunk of the story is about her entering the real world for the first time, and the trouble being naive gets her into.
• Cpl. Upham in Saving Private Ryan. A speaker of French and German roped into the squad with zero combat experience after Miller's translator is killed during Omaha, for most of the film he stays down and out of the way during the firefights. He also spends the whole film trying to find out what "FUBAR" means.
• Lt. Saavik in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. In the next film, she was taken out of this capacity, but stuck around anyway. And was recast with a less charismatic actress.
• Norvile Barnes in The Hudsucker Proxy is a naive midwesterner, fresh from business school. He arrives in New York for work and finds everything requires experience, and he winds up in the mailroom.
• Dr. Reeves in Twister. As a psychiatrist riding with tornado chasers, she asked questions on behalf of the audience like "Is there an F5?".
• This is the whole point of Annabelle in the 2007 St Trinians.
• Turkey Shoot: Chris enters the camp without a clue what's going or why she's there. She's quickly clued in by the brutal administration and dissident Anders. The audience learns of their workings through this.
• The Wolf of Wall Street: In the very beginning of his career as a stockbroker, Jordan is shown to be a naive and idealistic young man who wants to help his clients make money and is uncomfortable with the blasé and hedonistic attitude that the other brokers have. This does not last long.

Literature

• Animorphs: In "The Resistance", a group of Star Trek fans get caught up in the heroes' struggle and insist on helping, thinking it will be cool and fun to hang out with aliens. They get a harsh dose of reality when they see how horrific war is and some of them get killed.
• Lemuel Gulliver from Gulliver's Travels. Not exactly his fault, though; how the hell was he supposed to know that giants and pygmies existed? Indeed, he turns out to be a fast learner and settles into a comfortable routine in each new kingdom.
• Harry Potter:
  • Harry is this throughout the book series, due to being a newcomer to the wizarding universe who is dumped into Hogwarts at age 11 without knowing a thing about magic. Over and over again, most of all in the first novel but quite a bit in subsequent novels, someone explains to Harry and the reader some point about the magical universe. In the fourth novel, Goblet of Fire, there's a great slab of exposition in which Arthur Weasley explains to Harry and the readers how Portkeys work; this knowledge proves crucial to the climax.
  • Hermione is this to a lesser extent as she was raised in a Muggle home, but comes to Hogwarts much better informed than Harry is. There are things she still has to have explained to her, such as wizard fairy tales. And there are scattered examples of all the students being Naïve Newcomers, as they are in a school and even pureblood children don't know everything about magic.
• Dr. Maturin in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels often serves as an excuse to explain naval lingo, especially in Master and Commander. Otherwise avoided because Maturin is otherwise the most sophisticated character on board.
• In The Chronicles of Narnia, Eustace on his first trip to Narnia in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; likewise, Jill on her first trip in The Silver Chair.
• The Diogenes Club series features a secret society that investigates supernatural menaces. In "The End of the Pier Show", the first published story of the series, the viewpoint character is Fred Regent, who starts off not knowing that supernatural menaces are real, then narrowly avoids being killed by literally nightmarish creatures, which leads to him learning of the Club's existence and taking part in their subsequent investigation.
• Paul Carpenter in Tom Holt's The Portable Door (and subsequent novels). Considering the entire place pretty much is having fun keeping him thinking he's insane due to all the crazy things happening, he doesn't really fall into this trope as much as sink horrifyingly into it as it slowly closes its inky black waters around him.
• Thursday Next herself in the Thursday Next series. She's an apprentice in the BookWorld, and is always being educated in its many intricacies.
• The viewpoint character of nearly every utopian novel ever written (often combined with The Watson).
• Most fantasy novels do this to some extent. If the lead character isn't summoned from another world, he's almost certainly from a small town and hasn't experienced the larger world. Either way, many things must be explained to him and, thus, the reader. Examples are numerous.
• In Dracula, Jonathan Harker is an englishman exploring Transylvania. His contant commentary on the strange new lands gives him away as a stranger in a strange place
• In Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte, Fiene has some trouble acclimating to the Wizarding School, especially as she's a commoner and she is surrounded by nobles, thought to be the only magic-users, plus the fact that Medieval Universal Literacy is Downplayed in this series, meaning she has less mundane knowledge than any other student. The love interests (and Lieselotte in her tsundere way) help her get along.
• Misaki, in Girls Kingdom exaggerates this trope, in that she had no idea that the school she applied to was for training maids alongside teaching rich young ladies until the day she arrived. She learns all about campus culture and the ins and outs of things right alongside the reader, as she undergoes maid training and serves under the most popular girl in school as her personal maid.
• In Lord of the Rings, Bilbo and Frodo Baggins grew up in the Shire, isolated from things that made you late for breakfast.
• In The Belgariad, Garion grew up on a small farm, specifically isolated from the larger world by his "aunt".
• In The Wheel of Time, Rand al'Thor and his friends Perrin and Matt grew up in a small town far from the turmoil of the world.
• In Myth Adventures, Skeeve grew up in an isolated, backward universe.
• N.E.R.D.S.: In the first book, Jerk Jock-turned-social outcast Jackson Jones discovers the titular secret organization and becomes a member.
• Isaac Asimov:
  • "Strikebreaker": Steven Lamorak, a sociologist from Earth, is visiting Elsevere to learn about their customs and Fantastic Caste System because nowhere else in the galaxy are people put into niches from birth. Because he doesn't have the same cultural mores that they do, he finds it easy to volunteer to operate the sanitation machines of the entire City Planet when the family assigned to that work goes on strike.
  • "The Psychohistorians": This story replaces a part of "The Encyclopedists" and introduces Gaal Dornick so that someone unfamiliar with Trantor politics can be used to ask questions of the other characters. He's especially useful to introduce the audience to psychohistory, a branch of mathematics whose broad strokes is pivotal to understanding the plot of the Foundation series.
    "His name was Gaal Dornick and he was just a country boy who had never seen Trantor before."
• Adam of the web-novel Domina. Maybe. He looks like it at first, but then he was able to shoot a zombie without so much as blinking, so maybe he doesn't really count for the "naive" requirement.
• In The Monk, Antonia is so unused to life in the city that she doesn't know her custom of wearing a veil in public is considered old-fashioned.
• In Someone Else's War, Matteo has been newly conscripted into the Lord's Resistance Army and must quickly learn to adapt to life as a combatant... until he decides otherwise.
• Dill, in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, is a way to introduce to the reader the secrets and history of a self-contained and private community and family.
• In Island in the Sea of Time, Ian Arnstein, a visitor from the West Coast, serves as this, helping to introduce the reader to Nantucket.
• A Mage's Power: Eric is new to the world of the Tariatla and to the Dragon's Lair Mercenary Company. The first couple chapters are about him learning about both of them, training for his new position as a battle mage, and spending nine days in a library. Then it's out into the wilderness to fight monsters...
• In first story of Toadies, Dora is still a newcomer to magical world and has no idea how it works. When Leon realizes that a witch doesn't know that hell bars are "bad neighbourhood" and doesn't know of a difference between czart and czort, he nearly has a stroke.
• The Traveller in Black series by John Brunner is set in a magical otherworld, but the first story in the series has a 20th-century Londoner find himself transported there, providing a familiar viewpoint for the reader. (He's sent home at the end of the story, having served his purpose both in-universe and out-.)
• Warlocks of the Sigil: Since Quinn was in the school most of his life and just got out he needs things about the world explained to him, including somethings that are different than our world and somethings that are the same.
• In Warrior Cats, Firestar acts as one in the first arc. He starts out as a kittypet named "Rusty" who runs away from home to join ThunderClan in the forest. Born a housecat, he doesn't know anything about clans or being a warrior.
• Survivor Dogs:
  • The Leashed Dogs act as this. They were raised as pets until their owners evacuated due to upcoming earthquakes. Clueless and defenseless, they have to learn how to live on their own alongside the reader.
  • The Street Smart Lucky becomes this in the second book. He has always been a Lone Dog and doesn't know about pack life. So, when he's forced to act as a spy for a rival pack, Lucky doesn't even know what a "beta" (second-in-command to the alpha) is.
• Discussed in Hieroglyphics. Instrumental in producing ecstasy; as the POV character experiences awe at coming face-to-face with something they have never encountered before, the reader vicariously feels that same sense of awe.
• Fate/Prototype: Fragments of Sky Silver: Tatsumi Kitano was raised as an ordinary student with no knowledge of the supernatural when he accidentally summons Berserker and gets dragged into the Holy Grail War. After getting the War explained to him, he eagerly joins, hoping to become a hero in the name of justice. He ends up getting himself killed.
• Fate/strange Fake:
  • While Flat Escardos is a powerful magus, he is incredibly naive and joined the Holy Grail War because he thought it would be fun and cool. He is the first contestant to die.
  • Ayaka Sajyou was an ordinary person who had no idea the supernatural existed. When she gets dragged into the Holy Grail War, she is incredibly confused and whenever anyone discusses magecraft, Servants, or the War, she complains that she can't understand what they are saying.
• The Mouse Watch is about an international Heroes "R" Us organization of mice who protect both the human and animal worlds. We're introduced to it through protagonist Bernie Skampersky, a new recruit who has been trying to join for years. We follow Bernie and another rookie, a rat named Jarvis Slinktail, as they learn about the team together.
• Watchers of the Throne: despite being hundreds, if not thousands of years old, Valerian has never left the Imperial Palace. Eventually, events throw him together with the Imperial Fists (Space Marines who, as an organization, have been active for over ten thousand years), and when he suggests that a different Space Marine chapter (in this case, the infamously vicious and brutal Minotaurs) can be their allies, the Fists commander is stunned.
  Captain Garadon: Hells, you are a child, Custodian. You have not been out in the void for too long. This war has created monsters, and not all are in the camps of the enemy.
• In Rebuild World, Akira begins the story by investigating a famous and dangerous ruin on his lonesome with no gear aside from a pistol he picked up off the ground. If not for dumb luck and Alpha's guidance, Akira would have perished in the first chapter. His naivety also lets Alpha lead him any way she pleases, with him growing to trust her unconditionally due to her constant aid (or at least that's how it appears at first). Regardless, quite a lot of exposition takes for form of everyone Akira knows reciting common knowledge of the setting to him.
• Misaki, in Girls Kingdom, is an especially naive newcomer. She has no idea that the track on the school she applied to is for training maids, that there is another track exclusively for rich girls, nor what a Seraph or Exousia contract are (Permanent and temporary exclusive maid contracts with said rich girls respectively). Half the fun of the first book is learning all of this and seeing Misaki react to all of it, which is part of why it's marketed as a comedy.

Live-Action TV

• 3rd Rock from the Sun: The aliens, who are quite unaware of how humans work.
• The Bill: PC Jim Carver is introduced in the pilot as new to policework in general, and it shows.
• Blue Heelers: Constable Maggie Doyle is new to country policing, though she'd been a cop in the city for a while. Later new characters may fit this better, in particular Adam Cooper, first introduced at the Police Academy (however briefly)
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Buffy was new in town and had to be introduced to everyone and to all significant locations. Gets a little odd when she's already been there for a few years and still doesn't know anyone outside of the main cast in any of her classes at their supposedly tiny school.
• Carnivàle: Ben who is the butt of many a joke among the carnival folk at the beginning of the series.
• Cops: L.A.C.: Priscilla Smith, the younger of two Probationary Constables in the cast.
• Criminal Minds: Elle was this in the first episode. She only stayed on for one season, and the show never used this trope again.
• CSI: Holly Gribbs shapes up to be one of these in the first episode. She's promptly shot at the end of the episode, dies in the second, and is replaced by Sara Sidle.
• Doctor Who: Just about all of the Doctor's companions, but especially Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright in the original show, and Rose Tyler in the current revival. In those case we get introduced to the Doctor through their eyes, whereas in other companion introductions we already know the Doctor when we see him meet them.
• A good chunk of ''ER's new characters were introduced in this mold: Dr. John Carter (from the very first episode), later Lucy Knight, Abby Lockhart, Michael Gallant, Neela Rasgotra, etc. Even the last episode was the firstday for a neophyte physician, Dr. Julia Wise.
• Eureka: Jack Carter. Later season episodes justify this continued status by focusing more on his inability to understand complicated science rather than his lack of comfort with the many world-ending experiments performed in the city, though he may also be evolving into The Watson.
• Firefly: Simon fits this. He’s a proper, upper class rich guy who gave up everything to save his sister from being tortured, and definitely inexperienced with the criminal/smuggler life he signs onto working on Serenity
• Game of Thrones:
  • Ned Stark to the Court. Poor Ned never fully grasps the subtle intricacies of King's Landing.
  • Jon Snow to the the North side of the Wall, where he knows nothing.
  • Tommen Baratheon was never groomed to rule and his only capable mentor dies soon after Tommen gets the throne, which makes him an easier target for manipulation, as he has to learn almost everything by himself and the ones who could teach him are only interested in controlling him.
• Grey's Anatomy: Taken to its fullest potential, where the main quintet Five-Man Band are all first-year surgical interns.
• Homicide: Life on the Street: Detective Tim Bayliss is this for most of the run. Ultimately a Subverted Trope at the end of the series and in the subsequent movie, where he guns down a serial killer set free in the former and confesses to his ex-partner in the latter and presumably goes to jail.
• Wes Gibbins in How to Get Away with Murder is an aw-shucks well-meaning type who rides a bike to Annalise Keating's law class, a class where most of the students are already cocky backstabbers. To give it context, one of his fellows has already prostituted himself for evidence by the end of the pilot. It should be noted, though, that after a short speech by the professor near the end of the episode, he does his best to shed his naivety.
• Kyle XY: Kyle, who is essentially a 16-year old infant. The same goes for Jessie when she's introduced.
• Law & Order: SVU: Detective Brian Cassidy, in the first season, to the point where he ends up transferring because he can't take it anymore. Retroactively subverted to some extent in Season 20, when it's revealed that his inability to handle it wasn't actually because he was a naive kid being shocked by the nature of their cases, but rather because he was a little too familiar with it all; the cases were hitting too close to home because he himself had been sexually abused as a child.
• Leverage: Redemption: Breanna and (especially) Harry, who has to get used to the original members' catchphrases, in-jokes and rituals. Ultimately, they fulfill a similar role to who Hardison, Eliot and Parker used to be in the original series: relatively new to being a part of a team and inexperienced to their roles, but over time grow into them to become equals to the rest of the crew.
• McLeod's Daughters: Tess, a City Mouse with little to no farming experience.
• New Girl: The main premise of the show, where adorkable Jessica Day is the Naïve Newcomer to a loft apartment already occupied by three other guys. She spends the entire first season clumsily navigating her new living situation.
• Nikita: Alex is a new recruit of the covert assassin operation known as "Division" in this action series.
• Oz:
  • Tobias Beecher is a kindly Shrinking Violet who had a fairly privileged life before being sent to prison for killing a child in a drunk driving accident. After going through a hellish Trauma Conga Line and undergoing serious Sanity Slippage as a result, Beecher adjusts to prison and winds up becoming fairly respected amongst the inmates after taking revenge on his primary tormentor Vern Schillinger.
  • Clayton Hughes is a rookie guard who wants to follow in his father's footsteps, but lacks the thick skin and nerve to do so. After a series of humiliations, he winds up becoming radicalized and is sent to Oz as a prisoner himself after trying to assassinate the governor.
• Odd Squad: Otto from Season 1 is first introduced as a rookie agent who is partnered up with Olive, who is more experienced, and his Character Development throughout the season involves him becoming more of a veteran agent.
• Uli in 'Ninguém Tá Olhando' (Nobody's Looking) is the first angelus created in hundreds of years and has a habit of asking questions which frustrate his much-older colleagues, and poking his nose into things to find out how they work such that at the end of the first episode he breaks the machine which generates assignments for the entire world's angeli, and stops the system in its tracks.
• Porridge:
  • First-time offender Godber qualifies as this, and shares a cell with serial offender Fletcher.
  • The movie introduces the new screw Mr Beale, who tries to be stern and tough with Fletcher. Fletcher sings about him when he first sees Mr Beale, with his newly polished boots.
    Fletcher: Do you see yon screw with his look so vain,
    With his brand new keys on his brand new chain,
    With a face like a ferret and a pea for a brain,
    And his hand on his whistle in the morning.
• Power Rangers: This show is rather fond of this, typically putting one of these in as Red Ranger. This in contrast to Super Sentai, more fond of having the same ranger be The Ace, leading to occasional amusing dissonance between character and behavior in the American version.
• Revolution: Charlie Matheson. Justified Trope, because she has spent years of her life living in an isolated town in a territory that is effectively a third world country ("Pilot"). While the naive part sometimes reaches to Too Dumb to Live levels, she has gotten better by the end of the first season ("The Dark Tower").
• Sanctuary: Will Zimmerman. Eventually he had to pass this torch to Kate, but he still gets his chances at it occasionally.
• Scandal: Quinn, so very much. She becomes less so as the series progresses, however.
• Stargate SG-1:
  • Dr. Daniel Jackson. But he quickly fit in.
  • Jackson's Suspiciously Similar Substitute, Jonas Quinn, did much of the same thing, oddly enough, long after the show and other characters had all been well-established to the audience.
    Sam: How come you're not smiling?
    Jonas: Should I be?
    Sam: Well, it is your first time being captured by a Goa'uld.
    Jonas: Funny.
  • Colonel Mitchell makes this an Averted Trope nicely when he joins SG-1 by having read all the mission reports. In fact, he ends up giving a lot of the background exposition, which is a nice change from Sam and Daniel always having to do it.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dr. Julian Bashir starts off this way, having no idea of what things are actually like out on the frontier. To his credit, Dr. Bashir starts to wise up fairly quickly.
• The West Wing: Donna's orientation by her predecessor in a flashback sequence. She's not only tricked into thinking there's a nuclear warhead on the White House grounds, she reveals her surprise of this "fact" in an interview with a teen magazine, showing her "bambiesque naivite" to the world ("I'm too stupid to live!").
• The X-Files: Scully is a doctor and trained FBI agent, but is totally unprepared for what she's facing on her new assignment....

Manhwa

• Soah from The Bride of the Water God, a Country Mouse now living at court with the Water God, and dealing with the intrigues of the Emperor.

Radio

• Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978), particularly since he was in space for the first time owing to Earth's destruction.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings:
  • In Planescape natives and veterans to the setting can instantly tell one of these (A "prime", as said people are typically fresh off one of the various Prime Material planes) from other people, simply by how much they stare at Sigil's utter bizarreness.
    
    And "Prime" is the in-game polite term. The not-so-polite term is the far more telling "Clueless." It's quite appropriate based on how much the setting deconstructed the typical D&D experience. It also happened in the metagame. A player new to the setting was quite likely to find the typical way he thought about D&D turned upside down.
  • Ravenloft, a Gothic horror setting which took inspiration from 18th-20th century horror literature and Hammer Horror films, had an equally disorienting effect on players who approached it following the tropes and logic of other settings or "general" D&D.
• Warhammer 40,000.
  • The Tau Empire. Imagine a tiny, multi-cultural alien empire that holds up a belief called the Greater Good, promoting peace and co-operation between all races. Now, put them in one of the biggest and scariest Crapsack Galaxies ever devised, with hordes of genocidal, xenocidal and even one or two omnicidal factions all waging constant war. The results are expected, and the fluff plays this up often: on two separate occasions, the Tau have stupidly tried to ally with the Necrons and the Dark Eldar and both occasions things ended extremely badly for them. That said, recent updates seem to show that the grim reality of the universe they inhabit is slowly starting to sink in, and while they're one of the weaker factions on a galactic scale, it's still not a good idea to trifle with their ground settlements.
  • This is an inherent problem with newly-founded Imperial Guard regiments, as stated in the spin-off tabletop RPG Only War. There is much pomp and glory in joining a Guard regiment and fighting for the glory of the Imperium, and new Guardsmen are often very proud of being inducted. The reality of actual service against the various terrifyingly advanced aliens and daemonic horrors of the galaxy is a bit more miserable than most of the poor bastards expect. This is especially true of regiments founded on agri-worlds; unlike hive worlds and feral worlds where the recruits tend to have backgrounds as tough criminals and gangsters or grizzled hunters and survivalists, agri-world recruits tend to be simple farm-hands who grew up in a (relatively) sheltered environment, wholly unprepared for what nightmarish things dwell outside their little agrarian homes.
    • Imperial Guard veterans have a term for new recruits: "fungs", from FNG (frakking new guy). The nature of 40K warfare ensures that those who aren't competent cease to be so very quickly, by learning or by dying.
  • In the backstory, the Imperium itself was this during the Emperor's reign and mankind's golden age. Almost everyone else is amazed to learn that they had no idea what Chaos is at all.
• Some of the Weird Wars settings for Savage Worlds have a Hindrance for simulating this trope called F-ing New Guy.

Theatre

• Cesare - Il Creatore che ha distrutto Angelo knows nothing of the important figures in 1491 in Italy, who he's coming into contact with for the first time at Sapienza University in Pisa (Lorenzo de'Medici is paying his tuition). Luckily, his friend and fellow Florentine, Roberto, can explain everything to him, and the audience.
• Cyrano de Bergerac: At Act I, Christian has scarcely been twenty days in Paris and begs Ligniere to introduce him to Roxane. He also will join the Guards in the Cadets the next day.
• Older Than Steam: In The Tempest, the situation is inverted: the new world is brought to Miranda.
  Miranda: O, wonder!
  How many goodly creatures
  are there here!
  How beauteous mankind is!
  O brave new world,
  That has such people in't!
  Prospero: Tis new to thee.
• Westeros: An American Musical: When Eddard Stark arrives in the King's Landing Decadent Court, Littlefinger give him the advice to "trust less, conspire more". Eddard response is You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!. Not following Littlefinger's advice results in Eddard being dead a couple songs later.

Video Games

• Phoenix Wright starts off as this in the first Ace Attorney game. He gets nervous, but doubly becomes so when the prosecution gets the upper hand in court or if Phoenix loses his advantage in the case. On top of this, he's always looking to someone to bail him out of a jam if he gets stuck, such as Mia. Despite characters that tell Phoenix that he is blind to how things really work, he still does what he think is right by just sheer determination. By the next two games, Phoenix slowly starts to shed off his newcomer skin and by Apollo Justice, Phoenix is a lot wiser and more mellow, but still fierce in finding the truth.
• Call of Duty 4 starts off by new S.A.S. member Soap MacTavish showing his proficiency at a firing range and making his way through a 'killhouse' shooting pop-up terrorist targets. The game suggests a difficulty based on how well you manuever through said killhouse. That he soon starts taking levels in badassery needs not to be said.
• Theo Decabe, from the final game of the Chzo Mythos, is a Naïve Newcomer. Trapped in the building of an evil occult organization Theo mostly just tries to figure out what's going on and to find a way out. Outside forces, however, conspire him to A Fate Worse Than Death.
• Merrill in Dragon Age II has little experience with anything outside the Dalish, and is inordinately fascinated by the Kirkwall Alienage.
• Fate/EXTRA: Hakuno Kishinami wakes up with no memories (because they are actually an NPC character who gained awareness due to an error) and is immediately dragged into a Holy Grail War and has to fight for survival. Their Servant and allies like Rin and Rani have to teach them everything about both life and combat.
• Fate/Grand Order: Ritsuka Fujimaru was a teen living an ordinary life who had no idea the supernatural existed. Then Ritsuka is discovered to have magical potential and is abducted by the Chaldea organization to be a Master of Servants to stop the Incineration of Humanity. Ritsuka needs a crash course in magic and summoning and starts their first adventure completely confused, but gradually adjusts.
• Fate/Samurai Remnant:
  • Miyamoto Iori was given a little bit of training in Magecraft, but he barely knows anything about the supernatural and nothing about Servants and the Waxing Moon Ritual when he gets dragged into it. He needs his Saber and others to explain everything to him.
  • Saber is only slightly less informed about the Waxing Moon Ritual than Iori in that they know what it is, but not much else. They consider their Master Iori The Load and attempt to abandon him, arrogantly saying they will win the war on their own. Musashi has to warn Saber that if a Master dies, their Servant dies too.
• Tidus from Final Fantasy X. His father Jecht, while not a Point-of-view character, also suffered from this several years earlier.
• Gears of War 2 features the main characters leading a 'green as grass' new recruit on his first patrol - who, by bizarre coincidence, is one of the three brothers of the redshirt on Marcus's squad in the previous game.
• Like Winston Zeddemore discussed under "Films" above, the Rookie in Ghostbusters: The Video Game doesn't have much of a problem adjusting to the job of catching ghosts and stopping a supernatural apocalypse. The trope is played straight at the same time, however, as he's caught somewhat off-guard when told his job description in layman's terms is to test new gear on the off-chance it explodes. Interestingly, it's suggested that Winston has become a scientist in the time between the first movie and the game.
• Guilty Gear XX: Bridget, one of the new fighters introduced, is only just starting out her bounty hunting career. As such, she's visibly more clumsy with her attacks than the other experienced fighters, and she's easily manipulated by I-No to chase a list of fake bounties. Come the events of -STRIVE-, she's grown out of this.
• Legaia: Duel Saga has the protagonist filling this role. Which is really, really irksome when, after playing for twenty hours, you realize he's entirely oblivious about everything, when everything quite literally revolves around him.
• James Vega in Mass Effect 3 is a subversion, as he is a veteran soldier who is only naïve in galactic politics.
• Persona 5 Strikers has Zenkichi Hasegawa, the thieves' new cop ally. He's fairly experienced in crime, corruption, and other such things normal police officers experience in the line of duty, but he has no idea what he's getting into when it comes to the Metaverse and has a glorious Freak Out when the Phantom Thieves take him to a Jail.
• In a very odd way, the Nameless One of Planescape: Torment; despite being hundreds of years old at minimum, everything in his bizarre world is new to him because of his amnesia.
• The first two Shadow Hearts games have the female lead be a Naïve Newcomer to the world of monsters and the supernatural, while Yuri is a relative old hand—and the Cool Old Guy is very much an old hand. From the New World inverts this, with the male lead being the Naïve Newcomer, and the female lead the old hand, while the Cool Old Guy is likely as or more naive than the male lead, although he's too crazy to show it.
• Agent 8, the Octoling player character in Splatoon 2's "Octo Expansion" who, even if they weren't an Amnesiac Hero, comes from an underground military society and is completely new to living on the surface world with Inklings. Most of this comes across in their more cautious and inquisitive body language in menus.
  • Marina, the DJ half of pop duo "Off the Hook", due to also being an Octoling that came to the surface world just a few years prior to the start of the game. She's a technological prodigy, having been one of the top engineers in the army, her designs resulting in some of the more annoying obstacles in the single-player campaigns, but is still forgetful about local holidays, events, and even the fact that bodies of water can instantly dissolve cephalopods such as herself. Not the best thing when you and your best friend are trying to hide that you're a different species from an audience of millions, but Inklings are thankfully great at failing spot checks.
• When Arnie first meets Richard and Saya in Super Robot Wars UX, they act like a bunch of comedians to fool him, and not long after he finds out they're the UX, but he still believes they're capable of living as actors/comedians (comic story tellers) rather than mercenaries.

Visual Novels

• Played for laughs in Daughter for Dessert with Lily, who comes to the diner seeking employment despite being a drifter who is woefully unaware of anything about the working world. It takes a lot of hand-holding to get her work to a place where she is a reliable employee.
• Fate/stay night: Shirou Emiya has no training as a magus except a basic grasp of strengthening and a rather intuitive knowledge of projection because his father Kiritsugu died of a cursed illness just as they were starting his training. Rin Tohsaka gets pretty annoyed that he knows next to nothing about magic and nothing at all about the Holy Grail War. He's drastically unprepared for the violence going on, so it's a good thing he's The Hero and has a Servant so brokenly strong that she's still a match/superior to any of the other Servants except Berserker and possibly Lancer.

Web Animation

• Marcus when he enters the forest in Episode Two of Of Weasels And Chickens. Incidentally, he gets fooled into tagging along with a forest weasel of questionable morals, Prima.
• From hololive:
  • Oozora Subaru was this starting out. After the first generation, background in content creation became a requirement for auditioning, so it is notable that she was hired despite having no prior streaming experience and little knowledge on content creation in general. She even mentioned that she tried and failed to fake proficiency during an interview. When she asked YAGOO about why she was accepted despite these, he (and the hiring manager) said it was because she had passion.
  • Kobo Kanaeru revealed that she was a newcomer to not just Hololive but to streaming and gaming in general. Prior to joining the group, she had never watched any streams before and only auditioned after insistence from her real life friend, while she had only purchased a PC for only a few months prior to her debut.

Webcomics

• In Beyond Bloom, Yokiro is completely oblivious to the existence of magic and believes his home-intruders to be cos-players. Sikue and Tatsuma show signs of this trait, too, as the story progresses.
• Contest Jitters has Janet Steele in her second bodybuilding competition. She is shown to be a bit too trusting for her own good.
• Ann and Annette in Creative Release. Actually, Player 1 would be the real one - they appear to have much better a grasp of what is going on when they aren't being controlled by Player 1.
• Fate/type Redline: Kanata Akagi knew about the supernatural and has magical abilities, but he was uninterested in learning more about it and wanted a normal life. When he gets sent to the past and dragged into a Grail War, he annoys his companion Tsukumo Fujimiya by knowing nothing about Grail Wars or Servants. Due to his normal life, he is completely unprepared to deal with violence and death and quickly panics or freezes up.
• Zoe fills this role in Sleepless Domain, having only become a Magical Girl (and only come out as a regular girl, for that matter) a few weeks before the story begins. As such, she's still quite understandably terrified of the mortal danger that a magical girl's work entails.
• Calix plays this role in the "Oceans Unmoving" arc from Sluggy Freelance. Most of the explanations he gets about Timeless Space are done in the form of extremely boring informational videos, even when the people around him could answer his questions far more quickly. Calix gets kinda pissed about this.
• The Specialists:
  • The Baron's new secretary introduces us to the ubermenschen as she arrives.
  • Also, Max, when he first meets the other Specialists, but somewhat easier than her, because some of them make him welcome.
• In Sturgeon's Law, not only has Rakesh not figured out that the rest of the company doesn’t share his altruistic streak, but he’s unaware that the company is anything more than a law firm.
• Jack in Thornsaddle. He's a muggle-born entering a Wizarding School for the first time without knowing anything about the wizarding world.
• Tower of God: Twenty-Fifth Bam, who spent years living in a cave with only a single girl as social contact, enters the secluded world of the Tower, which is an alien environment for most, and finds out that it can get a little rough when everybody is aiming for the same.
• In True Villains, Bayn fills in new villain apprentice Sebastian about Xaneth's past.
• Having transferred from a prestigious school, Gray from Weak Hero knows next to nothing about the hierarchy of Eunjang High and the workings of Yeongdeungpo's gangs in general, leaving it up to Eugene to explain most of it to him.
• Mei from Welcome to Chastity moves to the town of Chastity with almost no knowledge of the place prior and is understandably freaked out when she discovers that the town's entire female population are insanely busty.

Web Original

• Dream High School's protagonist, who gets Kidnapped by the Call as well. And the story's told in the First Person, which may count for bonus points.
• Galactiquest has Leon Summers, who while technically isn't the only rookie of the cast, has the least experience overall with the Interstellar Forces and space travel. Until his brother joins, that is.
• Many members of the Yogscast take a while to adjust to Garry's Mod and the various gametypes, such as Trouble in Terrorist Town and Prop Hunt. Strippin and InTheLittleWood initially do rather badly at Murder, with the former constantly dying at spawn and the latter failing to notice a murderer walk right past him.

Western Animation

• Fry from Futurama started out as this trope, but as the series went on and he adapted to the 31st century, he transitioned to being Too Dumb to Live.
• Jubilee in X-Men: The Animated Series, since she's a teenager that is relatively new to the whole "humans hate mutants" thing and takes a while to get used to the team, also being fairly easily manipulated by villains such as Sabretooth.
• Doug was this slightly when he moved to Bluffington in the first (chronological) episode.
• Starfire from Teen Titans (2003) is new to Earth, but since the audience is already familiar with the planet (we live here, after all) this doesn't lead to infodumps. Mostly it's just funny to watch her suggest putting mint frosting on pizza and drinking mustard^note she tried drinking it in the first place because of this trope, though she found the "tangy yellow beverage" to be "truly delightful" so she now does it by choice and thinks it's weird that humans don't do so.
• Thomas from Regular Show is a subversion of this trope, as he doesn't interact with the rest of the cast often enough to be react to the crazy events that always happen.
• In the later episodes of Timothy Goes to School introduces a new student named Juanita a Spanish cat who just moved. In the first episode where she visits Hilltop School for the first time with her mother. She feels very shy and tells her mother not to leave during school. In the same episode, the class runs out of orange juice so Juanita's mother leaves class for a while to buy some more orange juice. When her mother leaves, Juanita starts feeling sad and lonely until Yoko comforts her telling her that she will be back. This episode is also similar to the Yoko & Friends book called "Mama, Don't Go!"◊. In anther episode, Juanita tries to become friendly with other but has trouble meeting new people. Even their teacher Mrs Jenkins starts feeling sorry for her. The episode also involved making a birthday cake for Juanita's mother.
• Camillot from Mixels. Having lived a sheltered life as a royal, he is entirely unsure about everything common, from sports, to even how to make new friends. However, it's his quick thinking that saves the day in the end, making him quite the hero.
• In the first episode of Mia and Me while the titular Mia is familiar with Centopia through the stories her father used to read to her, she is completely unaware of Panthea's threat to Centopia when she first arrives, since they weren't part of those stories.
• D'Vana Tendi of Star Trek: Lower Decks is this. While all four members of the main cast are all Ensigns, Tendi starts the series arriving on the USS Cerritos. As well, as she's the (most likely) first Orion in Starfleet, a lot of her plots deal with trying to make a name for herself when the rest of her species is known for being Space Pirates.
• Total Drama Island (2023): Damien has never seen or heard of Total Drama before, having only signed up because of a dare from his friends. While the rest of the cast has some idea of what they're getting into, Damien learns the hard way that the show can and will horribly maim him if he's not careful.

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