Basic Trope: An intelligent-looking character is not as smart as their appearance suggests.
- Straight: Keith is a bespectacled bookworm whose grades average at C+.
- Exaggerated: Keith ticks almost every appearance stereotype for The Smart Guy: e.g. having Geek Physiques, wearing glasses, and being insufferable know-it-all. However, he is at the bottom of his class and the "trivia" he spouts are mostly nonsense.
- Downplayed:
- Keith is assumed to be a genius due to his appearance. While fairly intelligent, he's not as smart as people think he is.
- Character see Keith studying hard and assume he is academically minded, but in actuality he had been slacking off for awhile and needs to catch up.
- Justified: Keith wears glasses because he likes reading in the dark, but most of the books he read are trashy fiction that doesn't help his studies one bit.
- Inverted: Keith is a huge, muscular and abrasive jock whom most people dismiss as a Dumb Muscle. He's actually on his campus's academic Dean's List.
- Subverted: It turns out that Keith's poor grades are due to Deliberate Underperformance, and when he is motivated to excel, he does.
- Double Subverted: Even when motivated, Keith's grades aren't as high as people expects it should be.
- Parodied: ???
- Zigzagged: Keith is wears glasses and has poor grades, but this is because he's actually a foreigner who's still struggling to understand English and does much better if the lessons are conducted in his native language. However, his grades are only marginally better even in his home country, although this is due to Deliberate Underperformance to avoid suffering from Tall Poppy Syndrome—which is prevalent to his culture.
- Averted: Keith is just as intelligent as he looks.
- Enforced: The show's creator wants to subvert common appearance stereotypes by making the nerdy-looking character less intelligent than his peers.
- Lampshaded: "You got 65 for that last test? I thought you'd score higher for sure..."
- Invoked: Keith knows that he's not intelligent, but wears fake glasses and nerdy outfit so that people would think that he's smarter than he really is.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: ???
- Discussed:Alice: Hey, that Keith is kind of cute. He looks smart, too.
Bob: Don't get fooled by his glasses. His grades are actually lower than mine. - Conversed: "But you can't make the glasses guy unintelligent! That's against fiction rule!"
- Played For Drama: Everyone wonder why Keith would help Jerk Jock Bob with homework, given how poorly Bob treats Keith. Secretly Keith is the one who needs help with homework, and he puts up with Bob's treatment in exchange for Bob's silence.
Back to Dumber Than They Look.
