Obfuscating Stupidity / Video Games

• Akatsuki Blitzkampf: Marilyn Sue Dajie is a bubbly, ditzy, cheerful Anime Chinese Girl with few more than her huge boobs going for her at first sight. But make no mistake: this beautiful young woman is a very skilled Dark Action Girl, as well as determined enough to take risks that other Triad members and assassins won't, in her desire to ascend into the Triad's hierarchies.
• While crawling through the vents as an alien in Aliens vs. Predator 2, you hear some Marines discussing how their technology will protect them from xenomorphs. They make it clear that they believe the xenomorphs are just beasts, incapable of intelligence. Bad news for them that you understand both their language, and their descriptions of technology - and figure out how it can be defeated by attacking a computer mainframe with, say, massive claws.
• Played straight and averted in Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura. In the Museum of Oddities in Tarant there is an exhibition of Gar, "world's most intelligent Orc". It turns out that Gar is actually a full-bred Human with a strange mutation and just pretends to be stupid, because people wouldn't put up with an Orc smarter than themselves.
• Bear & Breakfast: When Hank first meets Tony, the latter pretends to be surprised by him talking when both of them are Funny Animals, to Hank's disappointment. Tony then quickly remarks that he was just messing with him.
• BlazBlue gives us Makoto Nanaya. On the surface, you have a girl who glomps whatever she finds cute, eats way too much for a 49-kilo girl, climbs trees for exercise, tends to forget the NOL creed, and acts like a Fun Personified womanchild. Beneath it all, however, she is surprisingly clever and adaptable - she attended the NOL Military Academy entirely on scholarship amongst a throng of noble jerks, and she proved dangerously competent as a spy within NOL Intelligence and Sector Seven. This, coupled with her desire to protect her friends, elevates her threat level to Hazama considerably - as if finding a throng of rejected Noel / Saya copies in Ibukido wasn't enough, she unknowingly thwarted his plans in another timeline, almost knowingly ruined them again in an alternate possibility of the main timeline, and is an active detriment to his plans at large that aforementioned cleverness makes it a nightmare to plan around her. Of all the pieces in his chess game with Rachel and Jubei, she's the one whom he will skip all other measures and kill on sight.
• Tyalie from BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm acts like a hyperactive ditz most of the time, but occasionally she’ll drop nuggets of deep philosophical wisdom, hinting that there may be more going on inside her mind than she lets on. Finally, in a secret scene just before the True Ending, she breaks the fourth wall and confesses to you, the player, that she’s been playing the part of a Plucky Comic Relief character so that you won’t forget about her when the game ends and she ceases to exist.
• The Ultimis incarnation of Richtofen in Call of Duty: Zombies purposely acts as if he doesn't know what's going most of the time as a means of covering up the fact that he's the Big Bad. Lampshaded during the Shangri-La quest where Nikolai and Dempsey briefly bring it up.
  • Primis Richtofen also tries playing dumb when asked by Dempsey about the Blood Vials, in an attempt to keep them a secret from Monty, however it doesn't last long as he eventually just tells Dempsey to stop talking about them.
• Deadly Premonition
  • George Woodman pulls a few of these at later murder scenes. The character's actions are meant to either try to help the victim (wanting to cut the wires that are holding up a barely-alive Becky) or the typical hotheaded reactions (wrestling with Nick, trying to arrest him for Diane's murder), but ultimately result in making things worse. During The Reveal, the player realizes that all of that was done on purpose to actually bring about the deaths while looking like clumsy, well-meant accident.
  • There's also Forrest Kaysen who really plays up the entire jolly, helpful, yet bumbling person role. When the gig is up and Forrest Kaysen is revealed to be pretty much the Man Behind the Man, the charade is completely dropped.
• Devil May Cry
  • A certain character in Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening admits invoking this trope:
  Arkham: You failed, Vergil, because you underestimated humans
  Jester/Arkham: I even went so far as to dress up like a complete idiot!!
  • Dante himself plays into this a lot. He seems like an overly carefree and fun loving idiot, but in reality is a cunning warrior that can go toe to toe with eldritch abominations, can identify flaws in his opponents, and managed to fully purchase his own shop by the time he was 18. He's also shown to have enough of a knowledge of Shakespeare that he can use quotes from Hamlet in the appropriate situation.
• The main character of Devil Survivor has some decidedly ditzy dialogue options (especially: "What's 0+2?"), but generally seems to figure things out much faster than he lets on. He even gets called out on it in one of the Multiple Endings. It gets Lampshaded earlier than that, too. In the game's prologue, during a brief meeting with Naoya, the main character has the option to guess that the Laplace Mail is predicting the future. Naoya is amazed — not just because that's correct, but because it's a downright bizarre and even somewhat stupid conclusion to draw from the current evidence.
• Dark Adonis aka Midboss and Seraph Lamington from Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. The first appears to be a foppish Recurring Boss whose sole purpose in the story is to get his ass kicked by Laharl. The second appears to be a hands-off sort of boss content to just walk around his garden while his subordinate plans a coup to conquer reality. In the end, it turns out Lamington was aware of everything all along. In addition, the entire game is essentially a Secret Test of Character masterminded by Lamington and Midboss to make Laharl a great and compassionate Overlord. Midboss is also heavily implied in the end to be the temporarily reincarnated form of Laharl's father the previous Overlord.
• In Dragon Age II the Hawke's "sarcastic"-choice dialogue indicates that personality type uses this and Buffy Speak seemingly as a tactic to lure enemies into a false sense of security, before revealing that their title of "Champion of Kirkwall" is very much deserved and they really are that dangerous. Cue many an Oh, Crap! moment from their enemy.
  Sarcastic!Hawke: Oh I'd make a terrible slave. For one thing, I talk too much.
  [pulls a knife out thin air and holds it to the slaver's throat]
  Sarcastic!Hawke: Plus, I do that.
  • In the original Dragon Age, take a shot every time someone mentions the old saying that Mabari are clever enough to speak and wise enough not to.
    • When reminded in the endgame that the other Wardens will have questions about the Archdemon and why both Wardens made it out , Alistair cheerfully replies that "I can shrug and look stupid. It's a talent." (Alistair himself—despite what Morrigan insists—has a decent education as a Templar and is a competent soldier, and if he's hardened and made king, he does better at ruling than Anora (well, most people) imagined.)
• Dragon Quest:
  • Dragon Quest IV: Torneko. Hinted at in some of his party chats to play the fool both to boost his team's morale and to make other's suspect little of him. Considering how his goofing off always tends to do something good for the party, this may very well be true.
  • Dragon Quest V: Both Madchen and Tuppence suspect Dr. Agon is only pretending he is a weird and somewhat crazy helpless man. They are proven right when Dr. Agon reveals his real form: the Zenithian Dragon.
• Liu Shan is implied to be this as of Dynasty Warriors 7.
  • This is expanded upon in Warriors Orochi 3 during an unlockable level, where he regularly deprecates himself and becomes depressed over how foolish and useless he is. One of the themes of the level is Motochika and Yoshimoto letting Liu Shan remember that he isn't as stupid as he thinks.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • The Khajiit have a reputation for being rather simple (not helped by their cultural propensity toward drug addiction, their bestial appearance, being third-person people, etc.) and often morally ambiguous (their language has no word for "rules" and they have a very loose view of what constitutes personal property). Despite this, they are as intelligent as any other race, and are known to play up the perceptions other races have for them as simple and unintelligent in order to take advantage of them. Cleverness is, after all, a virtue in their culture.
  • Morrowind:
    • Caius Cosades, Imperial Spymaster of the Blades in Morrowind and primary Quest Giver for the first act of the main quest, is doing this as part of his cover identity, along with Playing Drunk. His cover identity is that of a poor Skooma addict.
    • Crassius Curio, one of the few Reasonable and Honest councilors of Great House Hlaalu, a haven for Corrupt Corporate Executives with several in the pocket of the Camonna Tong, is doing this as part of his Guile Hero style plan to clean up the corruption within the House. He lets others believe that he is an easily manipulated fool (which isn't hard, given his Lovable Sex Maniac and Dirty Old Man predilections) as he brings his plans together beneath their suspicion.
• In Fate/Grand Order, this trope is the summary of Edward "Blackbeard" Teach's character. Unlike his Real Life legacy of intimidation tactics and pyrotechnics, this version of Teach deliberately acts as a Comedic Lolicon Occidental Otaku to disgust his enemies and troll his allies, causing both sides to consistently underestimate him. In the pirate-infested Okeanos Singularity, he was even more foolish and perverted... to mask that he was guarding a Holy Grail and keeping one hand on his gun the whole time.
  Hektor: *(regarding Blackbeard)* A genius who acts like an idiot is much more dangerous than an idiot who acts like a genius.
• In Final Fantasy XIII, Vanille is introduced as a carefree, optimistic, and naive girl who's a tragic victim of circumstance like the other four strangers she soon calls friends. But as events transpire, it's slowly revealed that Vanille is smarter than her new friends realize, and she knows more than she lets on. Vanille knows about what's happening more than them since she's partly responsible for their lives being turned upside down. Pretending to be cheerful and clueless is part of her Stepford Smiler facade.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Nowi from Fire Emblem: Awakening seems to be a ditzy, childish dragon girl and few more. But she's pretty good at fighting and her childishness is at very least partially faked, as a part of her decision to handle how she wants to enjoy her immortal life. A pretty good example of this is her being a Trickster Mentor to her serious and bookish Kid from the Future Nah: knowing that her daughter doesn't take her seriously, Nowi pretends that she only wants to play with Nah, and helps her fix her fighting problems by training her through their "games"...
  • In Fire Emblem Fates, Female Kana is aware that people see her as a bit of a ditz and she sometimes uses it to her advantage. i.e, in her Supports with Dwyer she pretends to go along with his (very clearly bogus) martial arts training to get him to see that he's been acting like a jerk.
  • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Sylvain turns out to be pretty damn smart and practically good at everything with little effort during his supports with Annette. But he intentionally pretends to be lazy and plays up his laid-back attitude because genuine work would lead to people putting higher and higher expectations on him, and he considers his issues from having a Crest to be enough to deal with already. He does end up becoming more serious and not as obfuscating during the later portion of the game and his epilogues.
• I Was a Teenage Exocolonist: In Vace's three-heart event, he pretends to struggle with his xenobiology homework just to get Sol to help him. He then reveals that he knows more than just to hit things because understanding xenofauna behavior is essential in defending the colony from them.
• In Kingdom Hearts II and Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, Xigbar shows every sign of being basically a surfer dude Punch-Clock Villain who just happens to be That One Boss in the former. Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep reveals that he knows everything about what's going on, even more than the Big Bad of the organization, Xemnas, and may have even been at least in part The Man Behind the Man regarding Xemnas' more Xehanort-like actions. Heck isn't it turns out he isn't just any old man, he's the original wielder of Xehanort's Keyblade and its even implied that he played the old coot like a fiddle.
  • Kingdom Hearts III takes it farther. The Big Bad does know everything, and he still gets taken in by Xigbar's deceptions, as Xigbar pretends to just be a simple greedy gloryhound and in the process steers Xehanort towards his own ends.
• Atton Rand in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords at first seems like your typical Han Solo-Expy, (Street Smart but completely out of his element when it comes to Jedi vs. Sith conflicts), but various characters drop hints that he is much more than he lets on. If the Exile confronts him on Nar Shaddaa, he finally lets it slip that he used to work as a Sith hunter and torturer... who specialized in capturing/killing Jedi. Much of his persona is him using his emotions and lesser thoughts as a mental shield. How much of his behavior is faked and how much is genuine is debatable.
  Atton: I haven't known who I am for years.
• A journal entry from Anju's grandmother in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask implies that she is faking her senility in order to avoid having to eat Anju's terrible cooking.
  "It was my granddaughter who cooked again today. Putting that to the lips shortens the life! I thought of a way to get by without eating. I'll try it tomorrow. I just hope I'm not caught."
• Gaston in Luminous Arc 2 is such a Large Ham his overacting gets questioned by other characters in the game on occasion, but has a very real, very sensible code of honor and duty to the Queen, and is a legitimately skilled Knight Commander, preferring to lead from the front line.
• Mad Father: Aya, concerning her father's experiments (at least at a young age).
  Aya (in narration): I feigned ignorance the whole time. Because I loved father.
• The final boss of MadWorld is the one character you spend the game thinking you'll never meet in person, pure comic relief: The Black Baron, the guy who keeps getting killed to show off Bloodbath Challenges. Not only is the Baron the final boss, but it quickly becomes clear that they earned the spot.
• Flay from Mana Khemia Alchemists Of Alrevis has flunked the academy three times, yet he is the one who plans almost all the hijinks that the True Companions get into. And they work...sometimes... Although he's smart enough to have conquered half of the world in his ending at the very least.
• Double from Mega Man X4 is a portly rookie Maverick Hunter, who is shown falling over at times in the game's FMV. Despite his goofy appearance and clumsiness, he is actually a fiercely powerful maverick in a fake body.
• The (almost) eponymous heroine of Neptunia is somewhat implied to be this just to get the attention. Putting that in mind, Histoire's inclination to lecture and get angry at Neptune's shenanigans and laziness make a bit more sense now.
• Neon White has Neon Violet, who pretends that she forgot how to use a gun in order to entice Neon White to... ahem, teach her.
• Neverwinter Nights' Hordes of the Underdark expansion has an ogre mage who lives in Undermountain. He speaks very eloquently and has above-average intelligence, but enjoys playing up what he describes as 'the "Me smash you good!" stereotype' of ogres when in combat because it makes his opponents underestimate him.
• Most of the characters of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors do this in some way, shape, or form. Particularly June and Santa, who are Zero and her brother respectively.
• No One Lives Forever has a recurring character - a drunk who shows up in virtually every level, acting like an idiot. He even somehow shows up on an enemy space station, presumably just for the gag...but a post-credit sequence reveals that the idiot is actually the leader of HARM, the evil organization, spying on you personally
• Florian Greenheart in Overlord II pulls this, acting like an Ineffectual Sympathetic Hero Antagonist when in truth he's also Emperor Solarius, ruler of The Glorious Empire. He states that he keeps up the Florian guise after becoming Solarius in order to subvert the efforts of Queen Fay and the Elven Sanctuary.
• Asmodeus from Painkiller, an easy-going imp who followed Daniel around for most of the game only to reveal that he was Lucifer himself, digging holes to allow demons into Purgatory from Hell.
• Persona:
  • Shuji Ikutsuki relies heavily on this to fool Persona 3's protagonists into bringing about the Fall for him. A harmless character known for bad jokes becomes The Chessmaster in one fell swoop..
  • Persona 4: Adachi plays much the same role. People who have played Persona 3 will probably be instantly suspicious towards him because of it. However, it eventually plays like more of a subversion. While they do successfully obfuscate their real personality from others and are implied to be fairly intelligent, they mostly stumbled into the plot without any real planning or cunning on their part. In fact, their direct involvement is what ultimately gives them away. What they're really obfuscating is their morbid curiosity and sheer disregard for others, which they've twisted into believing is some sort of deep revelation.
  • Persona 5 Strikers, Kuon Ichinose initially appears to be a ditzy professor with an endearing lack of social skills, who assists the Phantom Thieves in unearthing the conspiracy surrounding EMMA, an app she developed. Near the end, it's revealed that she was fully aware of and abetting EMMA's true agenda the entire time, and promptly turns against the Thieves so that they won't interfere. Her lack of social skills is not an endearing quirk, but an indicator of her crippling inability to relate with others, which causes her to label herself as a heartless monster.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon Diamond and Pearl: Dr. Footprint can essentially read Pokemon's minds. Some of the more slow or dumb Pokemon will express simple thoughts full of "hnurr" pauses - except when they suddenly share a complex and grammatically correct sentence or two about how people and other Pokemon assume that they don't think much because they don't speak up often. They don't seem annoyed or insulted though.
  • Guildmaster Wigglytuff in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness: a Cloudcuckoolander who looks like a big pink bunny...and one who gives Team Skull a well-deserved beatdown.
• In RuneScape, there's an NPC near the Barrows Brothers who is only known as the Strange Old Man. Normally, he just acts like a useless idiot who won't tell you a damn thing. But during the quest "The Temple at Senntisten", the Strange Old Man becomes a lot more lucid, a lot more direct, and a lot less weird.
  Player Character: But I thought you were just some mad old bloke with a spade obsession.
  Strange Old Man: I do my best to look useless. If only others knew the truth, it would chill their hearts.
• In Skyborn, Sullivan Chesterford is introduced as a rich fop who earns Claret's ire by being a poor pilot for his airship, forcing it to need repairs within a year. He proves himself surprisingly competent in a fight when he and Claret team up in the first battle of the game. This makes sense as he's the Red Spectre. His half-sister Jillian actually offers this as an explanation for his behavior:
  Jillian: He acts that way on purpose, silly! Deep down, he's actually a really thoughtful guy!
• Levin from Soul Nomad & the World Eaters appears to be a complete idiot...up to the point where he stabs your Old Master dead out of the blue and reveals he's the last world eater; he's helped you because you've been killing off — or given him an opening to kill — everyone who was ever a challenge to his future bid for godhood, and every single time he left the party to wander around and came running back dragging trouble behind him, he did it entirely on purpose.
• It's very debatable as to whether Space Quests Roger Wilco is a lucky Idiot Hero or brighter than he looks and just very unmotivated. The Big Bad of the sixth and final game muses about this and concludes it's some of both.
• In Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, after losing his eyes, Rahm Kota becomes so depressed that he spends all his time binge-drinking and claims that he has lost his connection to the Force. It eventually proves that he is still a mighty Jedi Knight, like when he steals Emperor Palpatine's lightsaber.
• In Super Robot Wars UX, Richard takes up a foreigner act and starts talking mixture of easy words from languages to pretend he's not a serious mercenary when he's on cover missions with Saya, Agnes is completely fooled by this and thinks they are comedians (comic story tellers).
• Zelos from Tales of Symphonia is highly intelligent, skilled at manipulation, and has severe self-loathing stemming from some severe Parental Abandonment, not to mention being a triple agent who's playing the party, Cruxis and the Renegades against each other to ensure he's got a shot of joining whoever's the victors. He hides all of this under a facade of being a happy-go-lucky Handsome Lech who seems to have made it his life's mission to hit on every female in existence and antagonise Sheena.
• When Raven joins your party in Tales of Vesperia, he presents himself as a goofy but skilled middle-aged Handsome Lech who imparts nuggets of wisdom that no-one asked for and constantly complains about how he can't keep up with the other, much more youthful party members. In fact, he's The Mole for the local Smug Snake. His true identity is that of a cunning, experienced and suave knight who, under his "Raven" persona, managed to infiltrate the highest levels of the Dahngrest government over ten years.
• The Talos Principle: Milton plays his cards close to his chest at first, not letting on his true level of intelligence for the first third or so of the game. For instance, if you ask him who Elohim is when you first boot him up, he simply parrots back the dictionary definition of the Hebrew word as a mindless AI would, though he knows perfectly well what you meant.
• Tears to Tiara 2: Hamil pretends to be a dumb, unambitious youth lacking any sword skills, magic powers, or will to avenge his father or frees his people. He did this for seven years to prevent a rebellion by the Barcid Party for as long as he could, and at the same time save up enough magic to give Melqart enough power to defeat the imperial army if the rebellion does occur. He throws off the disguise to save Tarte.
• The entire Team Fortress 2 team, all of whom the Announcer refers to as having "below average" intelligence, outside the attack classes, could count. Demoman seems like a friendly, reasonable guy when he's not drunk, based on the War update comic, and it's hard to be stupid and make five million dollars in one year; plus, as he puts it, it he weren't skilled at combining and preparing highly volatile compounds, he "wouldn't be here discussin' it with ya." Heavy has a Ph.D. in Russian literature, and if the Russian "Meet The Heavy" is any clue, is much more eloquent in his native language. Engineer has 11 "hard science" Ph.D.s, which speaks for itself. "Meet The Medic" revealed Medic is indeed a trained doctor, though he's barking mad and he lost his license for stealing a patient's skeleton. Sniper managed to rig a tribal shield to electrify its attackers, and while not as smart as the rest, doesn't seem "below average." Spy had the resources, intelligence, contacts, and capability to thoroughly research a "Your Mom" joke, in addition to being able to do a spot-on impression of the voice of all eight other team members, and seeming like a completely civil, intelligent gentleman off the battlefield. Below average, indeed.
  • Pyro could be too, as most of when they're trying to speak under the mask sounds somewhat condescending.
    • A later "Meet the Pyro" video revealed that they are utterly insane and views the world as a happy, colourful place where they skip around dishing out lollipops and rainbows to adorable cherubs, when in reality they are causing pain and suffering by shooting gouts of searing flame at their enemies. Since they have such a warped view of reality, the smart/dumb scale doesn't really apply to them.
    • In the comics, it is shown that when not being a mercenary, Pyro is a successful businessperson, being responsible for a company's "best quarter ever" as their new CEO. They still see everything as a cartoon and still only hear gibberish, but everything looks grey and boring to them if nothing is on fire.
• Touhou Project:
  • Remilia Scarlet starts the Windows-era tradition off, and can be considered a feeling out of how to make this trope work. The first and second things you'd notice about her are her overwhelming, unsubtle magical and physical power and her childish, often bratty, clearly villanous nature. She loves playing all of the above - and sometimes the fool besides - but honestly is an elder vampire who can lose the immaturity in an instant. Her oldest friend is a magic researcher, and Remilia's refined both magic and vampiric powers to the point of being nigh-unkillable; she can play the villain because she can afford to lose. And for an apparent recluse she's sometimes suspiciously well informed about outside events. Her version of this trope is easy to write for: a Remilia who knows she's being played will do exactly the same thing as a Remilia who doesn't, just with a bit more snark. But she's not that manipulative or into scheming, and as she usually has no motive to play dumb beyond "it's so much more fun this way" (although playing a child is also for the benefit of her little sister, who in canon really is mentally stuck there), she can be considered a first step towards the following more developed cases.
  • Resident hungry ghost Yuyuko Saigyouji definitely fits the bill; while she tends to act like a ditzy Cloudcuckoolander who seems to barely pay any attention to what other characters say to her, she's clearly smarter than she lets on and it's often implied that she's figured out what's going on long before the other characters do. It's a very real possibility she's actually even smarter than The Chessmaster Yukari.
    • During Yuyuko's appearance in Imperishable Night she keeps talking about the incident-solving as a "wonderful midnight snack tour across the land" and have an overall very carefree attitude towards the whole thing. But if you look at her dialogue carefully, it's very much implied she already figured out everything beforehand, and each "dish" is a metaphor for every enemy they're facing.
    • She continues this in Ten Desires. After picking a fight with the player character for no real reason, she then quickly points them out to the right direction despite never actually leaving her mansion.
  • For that matter, Yukari Yakumo herself, while never pretending to be stupid, is incredibly good at either making her ingenious masterplans look like really petty mischief or covering up the fact that her more obviously ingenious plans are way more complex than they appear to be and there's seldom any way to actually beat her without giving her exactly what she wants.
    • In the past, Yukari rallied groups of youkai and initiated an invasion of the Moon. To the Lunarians, this looked like a foolish, doomed attempt by the youkai to overthrow them. To the youkai, it started out as an attempt to get their hands on the Lunarians' technology, but quickly became a lesson not to listen to people who want you to invade your neighbours, because that is liable to get you killed by said neighbours. To Yukari, it was all an opportunity to study the barrier that the Lunarians had set up in order to hide away in their own Pocket Dimension. She needed this knowledge in order to create a Fantastic Nature Reserve that the other youkai, now that they had learned a lesson about expansionism, would not carelessly venture out of: Gensoukyou, the setting of the games.
    • Many, many years later, Yukari initiated a second invasion of the moon. First she set up Remilia Scarlet to invade the Moon head-on in order to distract the Lunarians from Yukari's own, much stealthier, invasion of the Moon; which she, in turn, set up in order to distract the Lunarians from the infiltration of the Moon lead by Yuyuko... Which was a resounding success! Yuyuko infiltrated the Moon and... stole a bottle of sake from the Lunarians on Yukari's behalf? Now you're probably thinking "was stealing a bottle of sake really worth all that trouble?" Well, considering that Yukari used that bottle of sake to emotionally scar the Lunarian goddess of knowledge by putting the fear of the unknown in her, which ultimately had been her objective all along, yes. And even beyond that... Yukari had the abilities and power to get this done in a number of ways. The reason she picked such a convoluted one? Everybody wins. And succeeds, which isn't the same thing. Every single person even tangentially related to Yukari's plot succeeds at their stated goals, succeeds at any hidden goals they had, and also comes out ahead. Pawns, servants, allies, rivals, opponents, people who Yukari hadn't yet met... everyone. The average Omniscient Morality License holder has more advantages and gets worse results.
  • Moriya Suwako fits the bill as well. She looks and behaves like a Cheerful Child but is actually a Physical Goddess well over 2000 years old. It's been all but stated outright that her childishness is an act and her appearance might very well be a shape she has assumed to make her act more convincing.
• While it's not the only possible way to win, playing as the Jester in Town of Salem more often than not is carried out by acting as a new player who is a bad Executioner or Mafia role, when in reality they want to look and act suspicious to have town lynch them.
• Professor Alba from Trails in the Sky acts as a friendly but ditzy archaeologist with the innocent motivation of unearthing Liberl's true history. By the end of FC, however, it's revealed that he's been secretly manipulating the events of the game this entire time, using memory manipulation to keep anyone who might recognize him off his trail. His true identity is the 3rd Anguis of Ouroboros, Georg Weissmann, and he goes on to become the Big Bad of SC, and the most conniving and ruthless character in the entire game.
• Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children: Sion's cheerful, laid-back Big Eater personality is genuine, but it is a very small part of his personality, that he plays up to mask the rest of it. Behind the mask lies a Cultured Badass with a seriously advanced education, Nerves of Steel and some very serious trauma. He just likes playing Brilliant, but Lazy, and does it so well it's very easy to forget that there's a LOT more to him.
• Temmies from Undertale are an entire race of cheerful dolts named Temmie with terrible language skills (aside from Bob). The Temmie in the shop, however, will suddenly speak perfect, stern English if you anger her.
  Temmie: Is this a joke? Are you having a chuckle? Ha ha, very funny. I'm the one with the degree.
  • In a more plot-relevant way, SANS. This character looks like its purpose is slapstick comic relief, seemingly anywhere to pull off another gag. But if you pay attention, the game drops hints that he's a quantum physicist that can alter the timeline to appear in multiple places at once, secretly monitoring and judging the player's progress. However, despite knowing the player is the anomaly that causes various timelines to branch apart and abruptly end, he's ultimately powerless. That's why he's lazy; he knows everything will just get reset again. And Lord help you if you act so monstrously that he decides he has to care again.
  Sans: do you wanna have a bad time? because if you take one step closer, you are REALLY not gonna like what happens next.
• Knox Harrington in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines first appears as a vampire's excitable, none-too-bright servant who's gotten in over his head while following a target and needs the player character's help. Turns out with the right questions and mental stats (or Malkavian insight) that he's actually a competent former bounty hunter and his job all along was to get your character to go after the target.
• Played with in We Happy Few. One memory has Percy lying to an angry woman that he was in a tree outside her daughter's bedroom window, while in reality it was his brother, Arthur. When Arthur later confronts him about this, Percy says that he took the blame because he's slow^note Percy has mental issues that would nowadays fall under the autism spectrum, but since Arthur and Percy grew up in the 1940's, his condition is left undiagnosed and would thus not be punished as harshly (since people would assume he was just being weird, instead of being a pervert).
• Letho, the Kingslayer, from The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. He's a big, hulking mountain of muscle who really doesn't look very smart and he uses this to his advantage like a true Magnificent Bastard as he manipulates the Scoia'tel and the Lodge of Sorceresses to aid him in slaying kings under the pretense that it would aid their own ends, when his actual goal is to make the Northern kingdoms descend into chaos so the Nilfgaardian empire could easily invade them:
  Sile de Tanserville: Letho played us all! We were decieved by his dull face and sluggish stare.
• In World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich King, the Lich King uses this trope as part of an extremely effective Xanatos Gambit.

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