When the Wise Old Turtle doesn't need to be old.
The resident Smart Guy or Girl in Video Games.- Ace Attorney: Ever since Miles Edgeworth's Heel–Face Turn, he will usually fulfill this role blissfully when playable or supporting the protagonist. In the Ace Attorney Investigations games, this is even a gameplay mechanic, called "Logic".
- Baldur's Gate III has the team Squishy Wizard Gale, a former Child Prodigy who speaks in Purple Prose. His natural talent with magic was so immense he became a protege of the world's greatest wizard Elminster and The Chosen One of the goddess of magic Mystra.
- BattleCry: While the Gadgeteer of each team likely tends this way by default, Mykola of the Cossacks is a particularly good fit, being the only one on his team with formal education.
- Call of Duty: Zombies:
- Ultimis and Primis both have their own Richtofen. Whereas the other 3 members are soldiers who were sent by their country to investigate Nazi Germany, Richtofen was a German Mad Scientist with a direct hand in the creation of the zombies, and is the only one who has a clear idea of an objective.
- Victis has Marlton, and he will not let you forget it.
- Positron, a signature character in City of Heroes (and Author Avatar of the current lead developer, Matt Miller) is a mutant who built a suit of Powered Armor to amplify his radiation abilities, which after the Rikti War became his seal to prevent him from exploding. Citadel also may count, being a Ridiculously Human Robot.
- V from Devil May Cry 5 in stark contrast to Dante and Nero is soft spoken, well read, poetic and tactical since he relies on his guardian beasts in combat instead of brute force. This serves as Foreshadowing for V’s real identity as Badass Bookworm Vergil’s Soul Jar.
- In Deltarune, Kris is the brains of their team, being the one to solve puzzle and to improvize a strategy in every battle they take part to. The puzzle-solving part is weaponized when Susie is the only one who can free Ralsei and Kris, and the latter has to give her indications on how to solve the puzzles she faces.
- Jennifer in the first Disgaea game, Hanako in the second, Raspberyl in the third.
- Donkey Kong: Funky Kong serves as this for the Kong clan, being mainly a Non-Action Guy who's responsible for engineering the Kongs' vehicles and weapons out of wood and fruit. He notably defies the usual characterization of the archetype by being a Surfer Dude.
- Jeff in EarthBound (1994) is also archetypical of this trope. With regard to fantasy settings, he's an atypical example, in that he is the only party member who doesn't use magic.
- In The Elder Scrolls series' mythology, Julianos, the Aedric Divine of Wisdom and Logic, serves as this within the Nine Divines pantheon. He governs over many aspects of wisdom and knowledge, including magic, mathematics, language, literature, history, and law.
- Several characters in Evolve fit this to varying degrees, though they tend to specialize in certain areas. The most straight forward example is Caira, who holds two degrees and was the youngest Catalog team leader in history. She's the one who provides most of the information about the monsters, primarily about how their physiology works. A later character, Kala, one-ups her by having researched the monsters for years and being an actual genius in her field.
- In Farnham Fables, Flewdor is the most well-read of the three princes. He carries a large reference book around, and his unique verb is "Study". In Episode 1, he's the one who can tell which mushroom Dr. Keith needs to make the medicine.
- In Final Fantasy VIII, Quistis Trepe fulfills this role because she is initially their teacher. Selphie Tilmitt might also fit because of her knowledge of weaponry and explosives.
- But then, even Zell could work, because he's quite knowledgeable on the history of a few places the SeeDs visit, and occasionally serves as exposition before missions.
- Final Fantasy X has Lulu as the Black Mage of the group, and her status as Ms Exposition is lampshaded. Rikku fits another aspect of this trope as Gadgeteer Genius and Wrench Wench.
- Final Fantasy XIII's Five-Man Band gives us Sazh Katzroy, a professional airship pilot as well as the Only Sane Man of the team. He usually ends up pointing out flaws in the group's plans. That's not to say he always has a better plan, but he tries to think things through before charging through the front door with the rest of the team. He's also the only member who doesn't blindly believe in the Anti-Pulse propaganda (besides Fang and Vanille, who are Pulse citizens).
- Final Fantasy XV has Four-Man Band member Ignis Scientia, royal advisor and strategist to the Prince. All of his techniques involve Noctis asking for a strategy to help the group win the fight.
- Damon Baird is the smart guy for Delta Squad in Gears of War.
- Lester from Grand Theft Auto V. He's crippled and requires a cane or wheelchair to get around, but he comes up with the plan for almost every major heist and sets up assassinations (as well as mentioning how to use the assassinations to manipulate the stock market).
- Halo:
- The Huragok/Engineers serve as The Smart Species. They're the only ones in the Covenant who actually know enough about their technology to build and maintain it, which puts the other races in a bind when most of them vanish after the Great Schism.
- Cortana acts as a smart girl for the Master Chief, as she's an AI who can do all the fancy tech stuff.
- In Halo: Reach, Kat is Noble Team's Smart Gal, being the team's tech expert and tactical planner.
- In Halo 4's Spartan Ops, Roland is this for the Infinity support staff, being an AI and all.
- Kay and Yu from Haven (2020) are both highly intelligent, but while Yu is focused on practical engineering concerns, Kay is more interested in biology and less immediately relevant science.
- In Kingdom Hearts, Donald Duck is The Smart Guy of the team, being the Disney Court's royal magician, and good at his craft. However, he doubles as the bad kind of team Lancer as well, because of how self-centered, small-minded, and short-tempered he is; he's always trying to get his way, and doesn't consider the consequences of his bullish behavior. All of the wisdom is instead found in Goofy, The Big Guy of the team, making him something of a Genius Bruiser. This pretty solidly seems a case of Dumb Is Good. Actually, considering how many evil scientists there are in the series, it could seen as a double-whammy of Dumb Is Good and Science Is Bad. Even good-guy inventor Cid can't escape the fact that his gummi ships couldn't be built without breaking off material from the shells that protect each world from Darkness. Goofy's also the only one of the trio that knows how to properly use a computer (Sora only barely knew how to type and Donald had no idea) as well as caught on to Mulan's true nature.
- In the Five-Man Band of the Resistance Group in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, history enthusiast Shad is the official Smart Guy.
- The Mass Effect trilogy offers several examples:
- In Mass Effect Tali is a technology expert and knows more about the Geth than anyone else in the crew. Liara is recruited for her knowledge on the Protheans, which proves vital to tracking the Big Bad.
- Mass Effect 2 has Mordin Solus, who is an Omnidisciplinary Scientist (mostly) who runs the technology lab. Tali returns, still an engineer and tech expert. Legion, an Automaton, possesses the collective technological knowledge of the Geth, and Kasumi Goto is the greatest hacker and infiltration specialist in the galaxy.
- Mass Effect 3 has Tali, once again, and EDI, the crew's Do Anything AI. Liara, as the Shadow Broker, has shades of it as well, with her research on the Protheans coming in handy once more and leading not only to the discovery of The Crucible, kicking off most of the plot, but also uncovers Javik, the last Prothean.
- Overwatch has many smart characters but the clear standout is the Genius Bruiser Silverback Gorilla Winston, who fans often aliken him to Beast from X-Men.
- Persona:
- Persona 4 has a few party members share this role. Early in the game, Lancer Yosuke Hanamura doubles as this, since he has most of the plausible investigative theories, with only Yukiko Amagi coming close in terms of contributing to the actual investigation. Later in the game, professional detective Naoto Shirogane firmly takes over this role after joining the party.
- Persona 5: Makoto Niijima ends up becoming the Phantom Thieves' main strategist and battlefield analyst, while Futaba Sakura becomes their brilliant tech expert and hacker. In particular, they're the main brains behind the successful plan to fool the traitor and fake their leader's death.
- Rebecca Chambers from Resident Evil is the Combat Medic for S.T.A.R.S and in RE0 Rebecca is the only character who can mix herbs to create healing items, though she can’t push heavy objects and has less health.
- Leon S. Kennedy counts as well being a highly pragmatic and tactical government agent. Ada Wong a international super spy even admits that Leon is a “genius”.
- Miles "Tails" Prower from Sonic the Hedgehog has an IQ of 300 and is a master Gadgeteer Genius, as well as being a very good Ace Pilot when flying his biplane.
- Tails fills his usual role in Sonic Chronicles, but is joined and assisted by Dr Eggman!
- Vitali in Soul Nomad & the World Eaters. Lobo in the Demon Path.
- Mechanical genius Slippy Toad of the Star Fox franchise, and egregiously so.
- In Super Mario Bros. Luigi is actually considered this being far more cautious and sneaky than his brother.
- The Engineer, Medic, and Spy of Team Fortress 2 all fit the role. The first is a relatively goodhearted Gadgeteer Genius, the second is a crazy Mad Scientist, and the third is a haughty Magnificent Bastard. All utilize technology, and they neatly encapsulate all traditional skills of The Smart Guy — machines, support, and subterfuge. And all of them are arguably Bat-Shit Insane.
- Kanna fulfils this role in Three the Hard Way, being the Really 700 Years Old sorceress who knows more about the game's universe than most of the party and provides a lot of exposition regarding such topics. Interestingly, she doesn't actually have a lot of innate magical skills, and her "spells" are alchemy-based, and must be manually created before facing the battles.
- Siblings Welkin and Isara Gunther from Valkyria Chronicles usually fill out the role of being smart for Squad 7. Coincidentally, they're both in the tank.
- Wonder Black from The Wonderful 101
- Taion from Xenoblade Chronicles 3, having previously served under Colony Lambda (the Agnus nation's main espionage and intelligence hub), takes pride in his tactical ability. Time and again, he's the one to come up with the plans to help the rest of the Ouroboros out of binds. It's even represented mechanically in the game's Chain Attack feature, by Taion having the highest base Tactical Points of the team (which represent how efficiently they can carry out their plans in contribution to the Chain Attack).
