Basic Trope: An idiotic character becomes intelligent and the other characters long for the days that said character was an idiot.
- Straight:
- The normally idiotic Alexandria becomes intelligent, but she becomes a hinderance, getting the others to want her to be an idiot again.
- Exaggerated:
- Alexandria has the IQ of Einstein and she becomes so insufferable to everyone she comes across to the point that people want her gone.
- Downplayed:
- Alexandria becomes a bit smarter. Despite some flaws, people still accept Alex for who she is or are a bit annoyed with her at worst.
- Justified: Alexandria's insufferability is a character flaw so huge that people really would prefer not having to deal with. If the only way to get rid of it is to knock down a few IQ points, then that's the way it is.
- Inverted:
- Alexandria becomes an idiot when she's usually intelligent and people long for Alexandria to become intelligent again.
- Subverted: Alexandria loses her smarts but the insufferable attitude remains.
- Double Subverted: Alexandria is still insufferable but is not getting people killed with the half-baked plans she assumed were not half-baked because she made them with her great smarts, so it balances out.
- Parodied: The intelligence-boosting procedure only boosted Alexandria's IQ by one point. Her friends still decry it removed her humanity.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted:
- Alexandria becomes intelligent and people don't have an issue with it.
- Enforced: Alexandria's actress wanted an episode where she would be allowed to not act like an idiot and the executives compromised by 1) making the intelligence boost temporary and 2) Alexandria would be a jerk in her "smart" phase.
- Lampshaded:
- Invoked: Evulz makes sure that his Evil, Inc.'s intelligence-boosting drugs include empathy blockers.
- Exploited: Evulz tries to recruit Alexandria to his side by pointing out that her friends don't like her new attitude and would prefer her to be an idiot.
- Implied: Five minutes after Alexandria gets her intelligence boosting procedure her little sister Amanda walks into the recovery room and comes running out one minute later crying and screaming "that thing in there is not my sister! I want her back! I want my sister back!"
- Defied: "I'm smart now. And I may be a bit rougher around the edges now, but that is because I now have the mental faculties to understand when people are being rude to me, not because I became a sociopath. So deal with it."
- Discussed:
- Conversed:
- Played For Laughs:
- Played For Drama:
- Deconstructed: Alexandria was "an idiot" because of something awful like brain damage and now that she regained full use of her mental faculties she is afraid this won't last (regardless of how realistic is that fear), and the fact that some of the people she knows are actually looking forward to the time her brain will fail again rather than make an effort (or more of an effort) to accept her as she is now makes her (understandably) furious.
- Reconstructed: Alexandria really won't own up to it (at first, with appropriate redemption arc), but she took a titanic number of levels in Jerkass when she became smart, and even the people willing to accept her as she is now that she is clever (and a jerk) look back fondly when they first met her as a Kindhearted Simpleton and the fact it won't ever truly come back.
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