Brilliant But Lazy / Video Games

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• Advance Wars has the resident Friendly Sniper Grit, who is far more competent a CO than his boss Olaf and subordinates Colin and Sasha, but practically needs to be threatened with a court marshal to be roused from his bed. He's thus far the only enemy who the obnoxiously arrogant Adder has shown any respect to, to the point the man actually tried to convince Grit to defect to Black Hole, and he also worked in secret with Sonja in the first game to help unravel the mystery of the world war that was going on. Pretty much the only time he's not lazy is when Adder admits to have demolished some cities For the Evulz, which makes Grit turn scarily eager to take Black Hole down.
• Bloodborne has the Hunter taking advice from Gehrman. At first, he comes off as nothing more than a creepy, lecherous old fool, who does nothing more than sit about or sleep when undisturbed. However, all that instantly changes, when the Hunter denies his free escape from the dream. In truth, Gehrman is a very competent opponent with incredible skills with his Burial Blade. Proving he's not just some quirky old coot after all.
• Bug Fables: Stratos and Delilah gained their nickname "Team Slacker" from never finishing any missions, instead just scouting a given area looking for monsters and dropping out of fighting them. As shown by their postgame superboss fight, they are bar none the most powerful and skilled fighters in the entire game if they really try. The battle they start proves to be even more difficult than the sparring match with Team Maki, which is lead by the Ace of the Explorer's Association.
• The titular protagonist of the Cotton series is a powerful witch who has the power to save entire lands...but really doesn't care. She'll only help if she's promised Willow candy.
• Rufus, the protagonist of Deponia, fits this. He far prefers working on escape plans and other machines (that rarely function as planned) to cleaning or holding down a job.
• Disgaea:
  • From Disgaea: Hour of Darkness:
    • The demons hanging around Laharl's castle in Disgaea: Hour of Darkness are all ridiculously powerful (level in the triple digits, which Laharl is not likely to reach in the first entire playthrough), and none of them ever bother to help Laharl except for the odd Hopeless Boss Fight.
    • Etna is both powerful and wise enough to be the Overlord, but as the Etna Mode (where she ultimately decides it is not worth it) and the Prinny games (where she leaves the position open even though Laharl is a Prinny) have exemplified, she is too irresponsible and lacks the drive to do it.
  • From Disgaea 2, there's also Adell, who is quite a bit more intelligent than one would initially think (and most obvious in his tendency to be the Only Sane Man in the game), but usually turns his brain off because he enjoys beating the crap out of his problems instead.
  • Valvatorez the vampire from Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten is an odd example of this crossed with Honor Before Reason. He was once widely respected and feared as a Tyrant, and considered on par with the President of the Netherworld in terms of power. However, he wound up abstaining permanently from human blood due to a promise he made and lost his powers. But throughout the game, he slowly rises from his lowly position as a Prinny Instructor to challenge the entire government, and people endlessly marvel at how unstoppable he is — even without a drop of blood. But he stays put because A) he has no interest in actually governing and B) he's actually very proud of being a Prinny Instructor.
  • In Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance, one of the personalities you can give to a Sage is "Idle". Sages are massively-damaging spellcasters with high INT parameters to match no matter what personality you assign them (the change is purely cosmetic), but Idle Sages, in particular, complain constantly about being tired and wanting to rest, and consider 16 hours of sleep to be insufficient.
    "I thought up the perfect strategy. It's...um...Zzz..."
• Donkey Kong Country paints its titular hero as this, he's the King of Swing, the Prime Primate, the Thrilla Gorilla and the hero of Kong Island. It's shown that he can near singlehandedly take out any threat to his home but he'd much rather just laze around on the beach only getting involved when he finds out his Banana hoard has been stolen.
• Both original Fallout games had the Gifted trait, which essentially amounted to this trope. Gifted characters had the best SPECIAL stats in the game, and due to the importance of the stat, usually a very high intelligence value as well. The tradeoff was the ease of which everything came to the character turning him into a slacker — namely, fewer skill points per level (though from a gameplay standpoint, it was universally considered the best trait).
  • Fallout: New Vegas has Poindexter of the Misfits squad. A stereotypical Insufferable Genius who speaks in Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness, he joined the NCR military with the hopes of eventually landing a cushy desk job far from the action and otherwise has no real interest in being an actual soldier. In the quest to improve the Misfits, he suggests altering their records to make their squad look better but if properly trained or given a good pep-talk he's shown to be fully capable of being a competent soldier.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones:
    • Rennac, at least according to his in-game description. His supports reveal that he's an extremely cunning thief and entertainer, but also horribly apathetic due to his upbringing.
    • Forde, too. He's one of the most trusted knights of Renais... but he'd rather be a painter, and he likes to take naps in the battlefield. To the point that he specially outfitted his horse saddle so he can nap while riding without falling off.
  • Fire Emblem Fates:
    • Deconstructed with Felicia. Her supports have her listed as a pretty good soldier — far more capable than as a maid (her base class). However, her bases and growths are more appropriate for a level one character, whereas she starts off as a promoted class. She repeatedly refuses to acknowledge her inherent skill as a soldier, preferring to instead be a maid. This becomes a little more pronounced when one recruits her sister Flora — whose stats are far more appropriate towards a promoted class. In-universe, Flora is stated to be a less naturally gifted fighter than Felicia but worked to hone her skills to be a better fighter unlike her sister, whose skills never blossomed.
    • A proper example of the trope being a butler rather than a maid, Dwyer has proven to be miles better than his father Jakob, who had been established as a more competent servant to Corrin than Felicia, but often can be seen lounging around the castle and wishing people would stop making messes so that he would not have to work as hard. In the chapter you recruit him in, he is even berated by Jakob for hiding behind others and for making a complete mess of the mansion he lived in.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses:
    • Linhardt, a student of the Black Eagle house, is among the most intelligent students at the Officers Academy, with a keen interest in Crests and a sharp mind when it comes to theories of combat and war. At the same time, however, he has an aversion to physical exertion, is prone to napping at any and all hours, and tends to grow bored quickly, which leads to him dropping his projects without seeing them through.
    • Hilda from the Golden Deer is surprisingly crafty and observant of her surroundings, and often manipulates people to get out of work. Pre-Time Skip she'll often request to sit out of battles, constantly claiming to be weak despite having one of the better strength growths in the entire game. She admits to Byleth that she doesn't like doing most work because she's scared of disappointing others, reasoning that if nobody expects anything of her, she can't fall short of those expectations.
• Tact Mayers, the protagonist of the Galaxy Angel trilogy. His biggest flaw is his penchant to avoid work and mess around instead, forcing his subordinates (like his best friend Lester) to pick up the slack. While serious when needed, Tact will always opt to skip work and do something fun instead of sitting around his desk. On the battlefield, however, he's a genius tactician, and by the time of Galaxy Angel II, he's greatly respected by both allies and enemies alike.
• Genshin Impact:
  • Lisa is a massively powerful Sorceress and a well-respected member of the Knights Of Favonious. She is the most esteemed graduate of Sumeru Academia in the last two centuries, extremely well-read, and invented an automatic cauldron in her spare time. She is also very, very lazy. She prefers to foist any minor task onto other Knights so she can spend her days napping, drinking tea and basically living in the library.
  • Alhaitham is the Scribe (basically a file clerk) of the Sumeru Academia. He discribes himself as a "weak, feeble scholar" but this couldn't be further from the truth, as he's a Hunk and The Ace, even if he's too lazy to possess many ambitions. At one point he's even appointed as the Acting Grand Sage of the Sumeru Academia (basically the highest authority in the state, second only to the god of Sumeru). He accepts the position and does a good job. He also immediately submits his resignation, because he knows the search for a permanent replacement will take some time and he wants to go back to his leisurely style of life as soon as possible.
• In Golden Sun: The Lost Age, the blacksmith Sunshine is so deeply mired in depression from his work stagnating that he's unwilling to even get out of bed. However, if you bring him raw materials or rusty ancient weapons, he becomes inspired enough to instantly forge or refurbish them into masterpieces.
• Sol Badguy of Guilty Gear is this all over. Despite how he acts (rudely) and speaks (crudely), the man is an utter genius on magic, science, and history, but he never really takes the time to explain anything and this has a negative effect on his ward Sin's education. This is reflected in his fighting style; it's completely rough and unpolished, full of wild swings and haymakers. He deliberately holds back massively on the vast majority of opponents, mostly because he can't be bothered to make the effort, and it's suggested that not even his hated enemy That Man is able to get more than 50% of his full potential out of him — not that it matters much, seeing how as Sol is the Super Prototype Gear, he can curbstomp most of the cast at only 10% of it.
• Kale Vandelay from Hi-Fi RUSH is a genuine genius capable of developing a highly advanced brainwashing AI like SPECTRA, as well as a good enough fighter to beat even Korsica, yet his plans for SPECTRA don't go anywhere beyond using it to make himself CEO and to keep customers loyal to the Vandelay brand, and just seems to lack the general motivation to run the company, choosing to let his less competent and/or less evil directors take care of any problems for him, something that creates even more problems for the company that could be easily avoided if he were to just step in and take care of the situation himself. When he's defeated, his final words are: "This is too much work..."
• The Idolmaster has Miki Hoshii as a justified example. She turns out to be naturally talented and easily picks things up that she never had any reason to really apply herself to anything, leaving her to grow up bored. And her father is only nurturing this viewpoint because he tells her that his political connections can open her so many doors, she'll never have to work a day in her life. Her route in the Xbox 360 game revolves around her learning that improving as an idol does require her to actually buckle down and do some work.
• Kid Icarus: Uprising:
  • Thanatos, one of the Underworld Army's Co-Dragons, is a capable and effective Not-So-Harmless Villain... and would rather (A) lounge around while his Mooks do the work, (B) chat than fight, and (C) stay loyal at his current and simple rank than become The Starscream and therefore have work his ass off.
  • Dyntos, Top God of the whole franchise (surpassing even Palutena and Hades), would rather enjoy his Ultimate Blacksmith hobby than exercise any authority (beyond requiring people to call him "Lord Dyntos") or become an Invincible Hero or Invincible Villain. In fact, he avoids the conflict altogether, staying in his "workshop" until someone needs an Infinity +1 Sword (which he ultimately makes — in the form of the Great Sacred Treasure — for Pit to use against the Final Boss).
• Art club member Nikolai from Kraken Academy!!, despite being a talented artist, really doesn't do a lot of actual drawing. He's the background artist for the comic book he and Stanislav are supposed to be working on together. And yet, much to his partner's constant frustration, he'd much rather goof off and play video games.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, it's implied that Link has a habit of spacing out in (or downright skipping) lessons in the Knight Academy, only to breeze through them anyways.
  • The Lorulean Blacksmith of The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. When you first meet him, he is a Henpecked Husband who hardly does anything for the benefit of his business, a far cry from his diligent Alternate Self in Hyrule. When you show him the Master Sword after the Hyrulean Blacksmith has upgraded it, however, he suddenly gets the inspiration to upgrade it even further into the most powerful sword in the game.
• Like a Dragon:
  • Yakuza 4:
    • Shun Akiyama is a slovenly-looking fella who has scruffy hair and hobo stubble, almost never cares about keeping his office clean and runs a money-lending company rather poorly, always sleeping on the job, missing deadlines to goof off and is even seen sleeping on a couch in his full business suit in the opening moments of the game. Yet despite this, he's a business grad from a top level university, has keen enough senses to notice when even the slightest thing in his office has been meddled with by intruders and said company he runs has been so successful that he went from only having enough to start it up to sitting on 100 billion yen by the time the game begins. And of course like other Yakuza protagonists, he's skilled in martial arts, specifically using a fast and precise kick-based fighting style and taunts to befuddle and down his enemies.
    • Masayoshi Tanimura rarely puts any effort into his work as a detective, and will often skip out on patrols to gamble or otherwise laze around. That said, when he bothers to apply himself, he's shown to be an impressive sleuth and a dangerous fighter capable of taking down a small army. Sugiuchi and Arai, who have been on the force for decades, consider him the only cop they've ever met that's worthy to uphold the concept of justice.
  • Sosuke Komaki from Yakuza 5 is the inheritor of the Komaki school of martial arts, and is just as deadly with it as his grandfather. However, he'd rather spend his time picking up girls or getting into street fights rather than train seriously.
  • Tianyou Zhao from Yakuza: Like a Dragon has everything that could make him a good leader for the Liumang... except an interest in being in charge. It makes him quite jaded about holding the position despite having the brains and the brawn to fill it. It's also one of the reasons why he respected his blood brother Mabuchi, since he had both the talent and ambition to be boss but ultimately couldn't. By the time of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, he has completely surrendered control of the Liumang to Geomijul leader Seonhee.
• In Monark, Kokoro Surugudai is an extremely intelligent and well-educated young girl who had been able to pass high-school level exams and curriculums when she was in elementary and was a college student in her early teens before coming back down to high school due to non-academic issues. She is also the Pactholder of Sloth, its supernatural "Authority" granting her the power of Precognition, not seeing the whole future but certainly the steps needed to achieve it. She is also astoundingly lazy, her dream being to use her massive intellect to just read all day and have an endless supply of yakisoba bread alongside it, and during combat, she relies on a Super Wheelchair to do most of her fighting for her.
• Laid-back Miis in Miitopia are lazy Miis that often show unwillingness to go on adventures, and often save MP or rely on other teammates for items or protections, but can get serious if they feel like to.
• Persona:
  • Adachi in Persona 4. He was smart enough to get a job as a detective, but his lack of effort makes him an ineffectual laughingstock to the rest of the Inaba police department. When he actually does focus on his work, though, he can be pretty effective. His social link in Golden also highlights his boredom with the countryside, tendency to cut corners in work, and his desire for a woman to do all his cooking and cleaning for him. Especially notable when Adachi turns out to be the Big Bad; he started his killing spree mainly for the entertainment value, and runs circles around the heroes because nobody suspects a lazy bum like him of being that capable.
  • In Persona 5, the protagonist will come off as this as long as the player is maxing stats. He's consistently shown slacking off in class, but is considered one of the more intelligent members of the team and will regularly make above-average to top-ten grades if the player knows what they're doing.
• Pokémon:
  • Slaking, whose stats are on par with legendaries. What's stopping it from being amazing is its Truant ability, where it loafs around doing nothing every other turn. An opponent with Protect can easily make it useless, but it has its niche in double/triple battles.
  • Similarly, the legendary Pokémon Regigigas has the ability Slow Start, which cuts its Attack and Speed in half for five turns after you send it out. On the sixth turn, however, watch out.
  • Drayton from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet is one of the strongest trainers at the Blueberry Academy, but he's also mentioned to have repeated a year three times because he never does his course work properly.
• Randal's Monday: Randal proves himself as surprisingly bright during the story, but his alcoholism and generally apathetic attitude early on cause him a lot of problems. He and Matt both may be taking positive steps in their life in the ending.
• In Shadowverse, Nicola Adel's lack of passion in anything prevents him from going all out with his inhuman strength. Urias attempts to break him out of this trope so that he can fight at full power.
• The eponymous Sonic the Hedgehog tends to be portrayed as this, though it usually is a case of Depending on the Writer how much this trope applies. Generally speaking, Sonic is pretty laid back about his heroics and is mostly seen relaxing whenever he's not fighting Eggman. Overall, he tends to treat heroism as an afterthought and never really takes it seriously unless the circumstances call for it.
• Shovel Knight has King Knight, the Warm-Up Boss of the other campaigns in his own quest, King of Cards: he is revealed to be an incredibly strong and persevering fighter who can beat the three most powerful kings with only Dash Attacks, but also a professional Joustus player. However, when his dream to become the king is fulfilled, he slacks off until Shovel Knight brings him back to his place.
• Roger Wilco from Space Quest might be considered this as he is extremely resourceful and inventive but is also extremely squeamish and begins his very first adventure by waking up from a nap he took during his work shift.
• The Dnyarri of Star Control II. The only reason they didn't conquer the galaxy sooner with their awesome powers of Mind Control was that they were too lazy to design their own starships. Fortunately for them, the Ur-quan visited their world...
• Rufus from Street Fighter is a Fat Bastard and slob who loves to eat, but his fighting style leaves almost all other characters impressed. It is actually the product of Rufus deciding to emulate what he saw in Kung Fu movies, and the resulting long, rigorous training under various Kung Fu masters around the world as he sorted out what moves in those films were practical or actually useless. After this burst of dedication, he never bothered to try shedding his considerable bulk to further improve himself. The other characters' win quotes are a combination of compliments for Rufus' skill and contemplating how much stronger he could be if he only made the effort to lose weight.
• Suikoden:
  • Suikoden V has Shigure, one of the members of the Oboro Detective Agency. Oboro insists that he's a talented investigator, and combat-wise he's a Lightning Bruiser who can easily slice up enemies... but he'd much rather lay around, and complains "What a pain..." whenever he's roped into working.
  • Juan from Suikoden III is in a similar boat. Physically he's the best attacker in the game and a talented combat trainer. However, he's very lazy and even starts battles asleep.
• Gadlight Meonsam from Super Robot Wars Z3: Jigoku-Hen is Capable of taking the sleeping desire for conflict inside the hearts of humans and reversing them, which he took advantage of to throw the Earth into chaos. Loves to laze about and drink sake, and normally stays in a bar watching the chaos he unleashed himself.
• Tales Series:
  • In Tales of the Abyss, Jade Curtiss fits this trope. He invented an entirely new branch of fonic artes at the tender age of nine years old. He also avoids doing anything that looks like it might actually be mildly challenging, from pushing boxes to explaining secrets that might lead to emotional confrontations, often with paper-thin excuses or simply by changing the subject. He is, however, a consummate professional when it comes to doing things that are actually in his job description as a soldier of the Malkuth military, and a manga bonus shows him nearly working himself to death in a flashback for a project he actually cared about personally. He also acts as a deconstruction, as in some cases (like said secrets above), he really should have done something. He even admits it later.
  • Yuri Lowell in Tales of Vesperia is also like this, especially at the start of the game. Various people want him to return to the knights because they think he's wasting his time. Character Development and events have him start buckling down and putting effort into things; and when he does, it proves the general desire to get him back into the knights to be well founded as he really is that talented and skilled, not to mention much smarter than he seems at first.
• In a downplayed example, the Engineer from Team Fortress 2 has 11 PhDs, is the inventor of a machine equivalent to the Medic, turrets from hell and gadgets literally able to teleport people from one place to another. His relaxed attitude, the defensive strategy of the class (set up somewhere and then don't move), and his Rancho Relaxo taunt is what gives him this position, as well as his cosmetics the Level Three Chin and the Egghead's Overalls.
• The Thief series' protagonist, Garrett. Can break into any building undetected, steal any item, kidnap any person. Saves the world three times over the original trilogy. Very justifiably known in-setting as the greatest thief who ever lived. Left to his own devices, however? All he really wants to do is steal enough to pay for the rent of his apartment and be just stealthy enough to keep the City Watch from bothering him at home. More often than not, he puts off the former right up until the point that his landlord is about to evict him. He goes for the easiest targets with the biggest payout on his own time, and only saves the world when it becomes clear that literally nobody else can do it and he'd get killed by each game's villain if he didn't.
• Touhou Project:
  • Yukari Yakumo. Mathematical genius, most powerful being in the world of Touhou Project. Spends almost all her time either sleeping or fooling around (again) while getting her familiar to do her work.
  • From the same series, there's also the main protagonist, Reimu Hakurei, who is absurdly powerful for a human but never bothers with training (to the point she spent 11 games and several other spinoff works before learning how to use the powers of the gods of her shrine), and so intuitive she can just fly around in a random direction and be confident she'll stumble on the final boss of the game at some point. It's a testament to Yukari's laziness that she has managed to rope Reimu into solving various incidents for her.
  • Shinigami Komachi Onozuka fits in this category as well: she's a slacker that barely hangs on to her job. But if you do something to screw with the cycle of death and rebirth, you can expect an ass-kicking. The problem is that that's not actually her job...
  • Yukari's friend Yuyuko is also this; in most of her appearances (particularly Touhou Shinreibyou ~ Ten Desires) she cryptically alludes to knowing everything about the current incident, but is content to laze around Hakugyokurou eating and trolling her devoted servant Youmu. At least Yukari has some pretense of long-term plans.
• TRON 2.0: Jet Bradley shows many signs of the Trope, much to his father's annoyance. Getting arrested for hacking into the school's server (because he was "bored"), getting an "A" in computer science while getting three incompletes in his other college classes, getting sent to the principal's office in high school for making sarcastic comments in class. When he does clean up his act, he turns down a promotion in order to continue making video games.
• Leona Kingscholar from Twisted Wonderland is incredibly smart and could easily excel if he put in any effort, but would rather nap and laze around than work hard for things he has little interest in. This may be stem from his upbringing, being constantly compared to his more successful elder brother.
• In Undertale, Sans the Skeleton appears to be extremely knowledgeable about almost everything that goes on in the game but spends all his time loafing around and making puns for his own amusement. It is heavily implied that Sans is some form of time traveler/scientist that has observed multiple timelines. The reason he's so lazy is that he knows the truth about how easily the world can be reset regardless of what he does. Only on the full genocide route, where the main character becomes a threat not just to that timeline but all of them, does Sans actually become motivated enough to fight, and he's by far the hardest boss in the game. Deconstructed as well; his ultimate move of doing literally nothing (to prevent the player from doing anything) tires him out enough that he starts to nod off, allowing the player to strike while he's vulnerable.
• Vandal Hearts:
  • Diego Renault is the heir to a business empire that he's implied to run very well in his ending but instead he plays archer for Ash's tiny squad in the capital's police. Similarly, Grog is a brilliant sailor and fighter, but he spends his time drowning his sorrows instead.
  • In Vandal Hearts II, main character Joshua is an intelligent and competent fighter and leader, able to stand toe to toe with the fiercest of knights and shows an intelligent mind from time to time. He'd rather live a life of freedom and not get involved in politics though.
• Sho Minamimoto from The World Ends with You, a math genius who wastes all of his time piling junk. And then there's Koki Kariya, the bean paste-loving Harrier Reaper, who deliberately turned down several promotions to officer because he hates simply being "one of the suits" sitting in the office all day.
• The entire Ma-non race in Xenoblade Chronicles X is like this. They're far more technologically advanced than the other inhabitants of New LA, and their engineering know-how helps the humans to further stake a claim on Mira. Unfortunately, their long reliance on gizmos means that they're culturally more used to letting the machines do most of the work while they sit back and relax, in contrast to the typical work ethic of many humans. One particular case study is a Ma-non who was fired from a human business for spending most of the day napping and eating pizza.

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