Basic Trope: Dodos are portrayed as comedic and/or unintelligent.
- Straight: Derek the Dodo is either silly, foolish, or both.
- Exaggerated:
- Derek is the logical extreme of Too Dumb to Live.
- Derek's actions are Played for Laughs in every scene he's in.
- Every dodo ever shown in the work is very unintelligent.
- Every dodo ever shown in the work is a goofball.
- Downplayed: Derek is a Cloud Cuckoolander and isn't always the smartest, but he's not necessarily stupid.
- Justified:
- Derek never paid attention in school.
- Derek works as a comedian.
- Derek never had any real challenge in life, making him unprepared for actual threats and danger.
- Derek didn't know strife until 1598, long after he reached adulthood.
- Inverted:
- Derek is a genius.
- Derek is overly serious.
- Subverted: Derek was only pretending to be unintelligent.
- Double Subverted: Derek is actually a lot less intelligent than he was pretending to be.
- Zig-Zagged:
- How smart Derek is depends on the writer.
- How funny Derek is depends on the writer.
- Some dodos are intelligent, but some aren't.
- Some dodos are funny, but some aren't.
- Averted:
- Dodos are not shown in the work.
- There isn't anything noteworthy about dodos' intelligence or silliness in the work.
- Enforced:
- "We need a dumb comic relief character in this work that features extinct species, what should it be?" "How about a dodo?"
- Artistic License – Biology, if the writer actually does think that dodos were that unintelligent in real life. (In reality, dodos were fairly smart birds, but were clueless and had little fear of humans, which eventually caused their extinction.)
- Lampshaded:
- "Derek, did you get dropped when you were an egg?"
- "Derek, can you stop making everyone laugh all the time?"
- Exploited: The villain of the story knows that Derek isn't very smart, and realizes he might be the easiest to kidnap.
- Defied:
- Derek actively tries harder to be more intelligent.
- Derek actively tries harder to be serious instead of silly.
- Conversed:
- "I tend to notice that dodos are usually portrayed as unintelligent in these works."
- "Dodos sure are goofy, aren't they?"
- Deconstructed: Because of the stereotype of dodos being unintelligent and/or goofy, it's hard for dodos to get jobs in more respected fields, such as scientists and doctors.
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