Basic Trope: Someone born very wealthy is clueless or flat-out stupid.
- Straight: Bob McRich, the heir to a fortune that has been in the family for ten generations, isn’t too bright.
- Exaggerated: Bob is a member of the Fiction 500 and cannot even spell his own name.
- Downplayed:
- Bob is an upper-middle-class kid who was Held Back in School.
- Despite his wealth, Bob knows how to do things, but occasionally he lapses back into letting others carry him.
- Justified:
- Bob’s vast finances removed the need for him to work or learn anything.
- Bob is a toddler.
- Inverted:
- Bob is rich and intelligent.
- Alice is poor but intelligent and determined to use that intelligence to make something of herself.
- Charlie is poor and stupid.
- Subverted:
- Bob is just pretending to be a dolt.
- Bob is too stupid to realize he's actually not very rich.
- Double Subverted:
- Eventually, though, he forgets it’s supposed to be an act.
- Bob inexplicably gains a vast fortune that makes his lies true.
- Parodied: Money contains a chemical that inhibits cognitive development in children. If they live around little money, they won’t be that badly affected, but if their families have a lot, they’ll grow up to be really, really stupid.
- Zig-Zagged: Bob has some knowledge of how the world works, but in everything else he does, he messes up to varying degrees, from forgivably to colossally.
- Averted: Bob’s wealth does not make him stupid.
- Enforced:
- The producer is a Self-Made Man who regards what he calls “latter-day aristocrats” as acceptable to mock and makes the writers change the story to ridicule them.
- The producer and most of the writers encountered their fair share of these in college (and may have also had a few as interns over the years), and Bob is a composite of various people who they have known.
- The writers are writing a Slobs Versus Snobs story and they need to give the rich people a Fatal Flaw to compensate for having more money and connections than most governments. Being brain-dead stupid will hopefully be plausible enough for the audience. They may also make the working class people intellectuals, but unable to afford an education.
- Lampshaded: “Let me guess, rich kid… you don’t know that you’re not supposed to put your bus pass in this slot. It’s for individual tickets.”
- Invoked: Upon realizing he’s set for life, Bob decides he won’t expend one joule more energy than need be.
- Exploited:
- Grace wins Bob’s heart, all the while plotting to drain his bank account.
- Bob conceals the fact that he's Amazing Man by making people believe he is too stupid and lazy to be him.
- Defied:
- Bob’s father sets him up a job interview at a place where he’ll need to keep his wits about him.
- Bob may be set for life, but he puts it to good use by studying extensively.
- Discussed: Bob’s parents wonder whether he might be getting too used to his wealth and what it might be doing to his grades.
- Conversed: “Could rich people on TV be any more stupid? Why can’t someone who needs and deserves money earn it?”
- Implied: Bob is a C to D student, and his family is in the highest tax bracket.
- Deconstructed: Bob is unable to cope when his parents cut off his allowance.
- Reconstructed: Recognizing his habit of spending money poorly, he decides to build up a nest egg.
- Played for Laughs: Bob is unable to walk two steps without incurring Amusing Injuries.
- Played for Drama: Bob’s ineptitude leads to him losing the entire family fortune and never being able to work his way back up.
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