How do you quickly establish someone as intelligent? Give them a PhD, so they can be called the appropriately dignified honorific "Dr.".
So how do you establish someone as reaaally intelligent? Give them multiple PhDs. Maybe three or more. The more they have, the smarter they must be, right?
In real life, not really. Very few people get two PhDs; the career benefits for getting more than one tend to be minimal compared to the time tradeoff, and virtually none get more than two. The vast majority of distinguished experts have one because a Ph.D.note mainly proves that you are capable of independent research, and should only be the first step towards becoming a top researcher/academic. If a professor wants to publish in a new field they usually don’t back to school. Instead they just…do research
and publish in that field. And regardless of the student's brilliance, even the quickest graduates take at least a few years to do so because of required coursework and the amount of research needed to be conducted to prove one's dissertation hypothesis. Multiple masters' degrees or postdoctoral fellowships make more sense in terms of broadening one's horizons since they are shorter, (in the case of the former) partially coursework-based, and (in the case of the latter) more flexible. Although getting a second Ph.D. can help with switching fields and updating one’s research skillset, anymore than 2 is redundant and pointless. Further, a university is a lot less likely to award doctorate degree funding to candidates that already have a Ph.D., so getting a second one would be financially difficult for most people. Furthermore, actual scholars consider having more than one Ph.D. (especially if they are in unrelated fields) as a red flag instead of an impressive accomplishment, as it could be a sign for being indecisive in a choice of career or being an eternal student who's not eager to actually start their academic career.
However, in fiction, having a Ph.D. is shorthand for "I'm an expert in this field". So the TV Genius with an Improbably High I.Q. will be shown to be so brilliant that they finish their first degree in two years, defends their fourth dissertation on the phone while picking up their child from daycare, and pump out publications in their sleep — that is, if the writers even consider the usual paperwork involved in getting a Ph.D.. Most of the time, their lengthy academic record will only be mentioned in a throwaway line as the rest of the work focuses on how smart they are, resulting in Fridge Logic as fans wonder just how much time they spent in school.
If the fields are disparate, it's likely an attempt to justify an Omnidisciplinary Scientist or Renaissance Man via I Minored in Tropology. If the character is relatively young with multiple completed doctoral dissertations, it's also an example of Improbable Age. They'll probably be a Teen Genius or a Child Prodigy in an attempt to Hand Wave it. Conversely, it may be justified if a character has a long lifespan or some other sci-fi quirk that makes getting multiple advanced degrees plausible. Bonus points if these degrees are from highly reputable universities like the Ivy Leagues.
A note: Fiction often uses "doctorate" and "PhD" interchangeably; not all doctorate degree holders are PhDs. However, a PhD is one of the most common types of doctorate degrees, and is specifically research-focused, so if they're a researcher/scientist/professor type of character, they are almost certainly intended to be PhD holders.
This trope is not mainly about honorary doctorates, which are occasionally conferred by universities to prominent people in a field (even if they already have a doctorate). The work must imply, quickly or otherwise, that the hyperintelligent character put in the work for at least two PhDs and graduated (if a guy with five says two of them are honorary, he still counts). It's also not about any character who has multiple terminal degrees, such as a PhD who is also qualified to practice law or medicinenote , unless this is also treated as an unrealistic sign of genius. Finally, not even every multi-PhD-holder is an example, especially if the work gives a reasonable explanation for getting two (eg. they're middle-aged and transitioning into a new field of research). It is specifically about having an unrealistic number of doctorate degrees as a shorthand for intelligence.
Compare other quick ways to establish a character as intelligent, such as Improbably High I.Q., Elite School Means Elite Brain, Rubik's Cube: International Genius Symbol, Smart People Play Chess, and Genius Book Club. See also Try to Fit That on a Business Card for a similarly long list of accomplishments. And despite all their expertise, these guys are still not immune from being mistaken for medical doctors.
Examples:
- Particle physicist Nils Nielsen of Gundam Build Fighters achieved three PhDs at a young age, which earned him the nickname "Early Genius".
- The DCU:
- Mainline DC Comics hero Michael Holt, the second Mister Terrific, is a polymath with 14 Ph.Ds as well as master's degrees in law, psychology, chemistry, political science, computer science, rocket science, and mathematics. Described as a man who has "a natural aptitude for having natural aptitudes", Holt possesses a Photographic Memory and is a Gadgeteer Genius recognized as the third smartest man on the planet.
- Gotham City Garage: Kara says Lex has kidnapped the world's top minds, all of whom have "at least three PhDs at the end of their name".
- Marvel Universe:
- Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four is an Omnidisciplinary Scientist widely recognized as the smartest man alive and one of the most intelligent beings in the universe. Depending on the Author, he has claimed to have anywhere between two to eighteen doctorates in a variety of fields, including physics and engineering. Having started taking college courses when he was 14, he completed his first two Ph.Ds by the time he was 22 while working as a scientist for the army.
- Iron Man: Brilliant engineer/inventor/industrialist Tony Stark has multiple PhDs, though the number tends to vary: in New Avengers he says he has three, while in a 2010 issue of The Avengers he says he has seven. He even uses two different numbers in two different meetings with The Illuminati. One fan theory says he went out and got some more just because they didn't call him "Doctor".
- X-Men:
- Charles Xavier is the psychic mastermind behind the titular team. He's usually written as having finished school early and completed multiple doctorates. The Marvel website claims he has four (in genetics, biophysics, psychology, and anthropology, explaining his expertise in mentoring the X-Men) and an M.D. in psychiatry.
- Team mainstay Hank McCoy, better known as the Beast, is a genius biochemist and geneticist who has at least two doctorates in genetics and biophysics but has claimed to have as many as six. One of the eight smartest men in the world, his skills veer into Omnidisciplinary Scientist territory, having invented a time machine with the X-Club and installed a thermonuclear reactor into the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning.
- Charles Xavier is the psychic mastermind behind the titular team. He's usually written as having finished school early and completed multiple doctorates. The Marvel website
- Gaz's Horrible Halloween of Doom: When Gaz finally gets home after having a horrible Halloween, she bites into her candy only to feel a stabbing pain in her mouth. Her father Professor Membrane, who has several Ph.D.s (one of them in dentistry), scans her mouth to find out she has several cavities, throws away all her candy, and drags her down to the basement to test a prototype of his new dental surgery equipment on her.
- Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget: Played With. The villain introduces Dr. Fry as a genius (though she claims it's not evident from his appearance). He has degrees in multiple scientific fields, as well as one in drama, but it's not declared what level of degree they are.
- American History X: Robert Sweeney has two PhDs, yet works as a school prinicipal. He seems aware that he is overqualified for the job but thinks that the best use of his advanced education is helping kids from his old neighborhood.
- The Librarian: Insufferable Genius Flynn Carsen apparently has 12 bachelors, 6 Masters, and 4 PhDs according to Return to King Solomon's Mines, which justifies his wide breadth of knowledge (but not that he is only 30 in the first film and 33 by the third film). Somewhat justified since some of these are in the same field (four in Egyptology, two in Spanish Literature) and since his mother mentions he has been a perpetual college student since he was 15 years old.
- Ghostbusters:
- Ghostbusters (1984): Played with. Dr. Peter Venkman has PhDs in parapsychology and psychology, as he explains to Walter Peck. (Peck fails to address him as "Doctor" through the entire conversation, deliberately calling him Mr. Venkman.). Venkman is a genius, though a lazy and sleazy one.
- It actually does come into play in The Real Ghostbusters, as Venkman is often the one to ascertain a ghost's motivations, and once used his psychology skills to talk down a boy transforming into a Grundel by reminding him of his love for his brother.
- It also shows up in the original movie: Venkman's way of dealing with the possessed Dana is completely accurate to real-world psychological and religious methods.
- In Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Phoebe Spengler is investigating her grandfather's workshop and is tinkering with a power pack. When she wonders how he got a certain part so small, Egon's spirit moves a desk lamp so that it illuminates a wall of diplomas.
- Pacific Rim: The Hong Kong Shatterdome's resident Kaiju biologist and Bunny-Ears Lawyer Dr. Newton Gieszler is mentioned to have six PhDs in supplementary material. However, this trope is somewhat downplayed, as five of them are honorary.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (2020): Dr. Ivo Robotnik is mentioned early on to have five doctorates, as well as an absurdly high I.Q. (and being "a psychological tire fire") as the reason why the Pentagon tries to tolerate him as a specialist.
- Thor: Ragnarok: Dr. Bruce Banner, the world's foremost expert on gamma radiation, mentions that he has seven PhDs. Unfortunately, none of them are for flying alien spaceships.
- A Discovery of Witches: Geneticist Matthew Clairmont has four doctorates (at least) and is a tenured professor at Oxford while looking just 37 years old. Justified since he's actually a 1500-year-old vampire who worked with the likes of Charles Darwin.
- Doctor Who Novelisations: In the novel version of The Twin Dilemma, the Sylvest twins inherit their genius, to some extent, from their parents, with their mother described as working on her fifth PhD. Deconstructed, in that this is presented as a displacement activity to avoid her Enfant Terrible sons (who, as in the episode, consider her a fool).
- Dragon's Egg: The elite crew of the Dragon Slayer ship have all at least two doctorates. The Smart Gal of the team has four, and expects to get a fifth for her work on the mission.
- Fu Manchu claims to have earned doctorate degrees from three or four Western universities in text. In one film adaptation, this is specified as I am a doctor of philosophy from Edinburgh, a doctor of law from Christ's College, a doctor of medicine from Harvard. My friends, out of courtesy, call me 'Doctor'."
- The Seven-Per-Cent Solution has Sherlock Holmes travel to Vienna, and meet with Sigmund Freud at his home. A Sherlock Scan leads Holmes to deduce that Freud is a genius or nearly so; only because he advanced some radical theory is Freud reduced to private consulting at home. A smiling Freud asks how he could have known. Holmes points out spaces on Freud's wall where certificates and diplomas once hung, but no longer. "A man may become disenfranchised with one or two, but surely not the whole lot. No, Doctor, I postulate it is they who became disenfranchised with you." "And a genius?" asks Freud. "The fact that you bothered to qualify for so many certificates in the first place."
- Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Both Fitz and Simmons are introduced as 20something geniuses — him, mechanical, and her, biological — with multiple PhDs apiece. According to "Making Friends and Influencing People" Simmons had obtained her two PhDs by seventeen.
- Arrow: In "Suicidal Tendencies" the genius inventor-superhero Ray Palmer tells Felicity that he has an IQ of 140 and 3 PhDs in the same scene where he explains how he used his tech to uncover the Arrow's identity.
- In The Ark (2023), Alicia Nevins managed to rack up four different advanced degrees before turning 18.
- Bones has two characters with three PhDs to help explain why the characters' group at the Jeffersonian is one of the world's top forensic teams.
- Temperance "Bones" Brennan's PhDs are in forensics, anthropology, and kinesiology, explaining both why she's so good at studying dead bodies and why she's so insufferable.
- Jack Hodgins' PhDs are in entomology, botany, and mineralogy, which basically makes him the "bug and slime" guy.
- In "The Parts in the Sum of the Whole", a Whole Episode Flashback, Jack tells Bones and Zack that he has as many doctorates as the two of them put together because Zack (then a grad student) doesn't have any.
- Inceidentally, Angela has a BFA in Visual Arts with a minor in computer science from UTexas at Austin. She's the team's forensic facial reconstruction specialist. She's the only regular in the lab without a doctorate (after Zack graduates), but she still has multiple degrees.
- Alluded to in the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend song "Without Love You Can Save The World" when Rebecca sings that 10,000 hours of anything makes one an expert. She then sings that she's spent much longer than that in Mad Love, and thus has "a BFA, an MFA, a PhD in obsession"; she proceeds to list other important and intelligent things she could have done with that wasted time and intelligence.
- Criminal Minds: Spencer Reid is introduced having three bachelor's degrees and three PhDs by the age of 24. He's mentioned to have been a Child Prodigy with a Photographic Memory and an IQ of 187.
- The Newsroom: Sloan Sabbith's two PhD's (one of which is from Duke) help establish her as a highly promising financial analyst, even if the actress playing her was not even 30 when she started.
- Charlie Eppes, protagonist of NUMB 3 Rs, is an incredibly brilliant mathematician who published his first treatise as a teenager and has only gone up from there. "Decoy Effect" mentions he is a multiple PhD.
- Quantum Leap: Genius Renaissance Man Sam Beckett has seven different doctorates in six different fields (music, medicine, quantum physics, archaeology, ancient languages, chemistry, and astronomy) and is a Nobel laureate.
- Sabrina the Teenage Witch: Aunt Zelda brags that she has three PhDs and is generally an expert on physics and chemistry. Unlike most examples, Zelda actually could pull this off, as she's a Long-Lived witch who's already several centuries old despite looking like she's in her forties; as such, she has the time to devote entire decades of her life to getting advanced degrees.
- Stargate SG-1: Dr. Daniel Jackson is generally referred to as an archeologist, but some episodes mention that he has PhD's in anthropology and linguistics as well. Strangely enough, the character whose genius is usually heavily focused on, Samantha Carter, is only ever mentioned as having a PhD in physics.
- Star Trek:
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In the episode "Dax" Jadzia reveals that she had earned advanced degrees in astrophysics, exoarchaeology, exobiology, and zoology before she was joined to the Dax symbiont. (Then again, she's a Trill. It's not shown how their educational system differs from Earth's.)
- Star Trek: Enterprise: Dr Phlox has at least a "dozen" degrees, mentioned subjects include Interspecies Veterinary Medicine, Dentistry, Hematology, Botanical Pharmacology, and Psychiatry. It is not specified if these degrees are all doctorates, but they do establish him as a Super Doc. This lengthy academic record is explained by the fact that Denobulans don't share the same sleeping patterns as humans, only needing about five to six days of sleep per year which means Denobulans have more time for academic pursuits if they so wish. This lack of sleep also explains Denobulan proclivities towards polyamory. In the same show, Dr Arik Soong (a progenitor of Dr Noonien Soong, creator of Data, Lore & B4) also had multiple degrees (again, not specified what they are or if they are doctorates) and considered Phlox some sort of academic rival given his reputation.
- Played With in The Weird Al Show: Bill Mumy's character apparently has multiple PhDs and a Nobel, but is by all appearances a normal delivery man.
- Action Taimanin: Taimanin Shizuru Kousaka has two PhDs and is one of the most educated Taimanin in Gosha Village who boasts omnidisciplinary expertise and is fluent in six languages while acting as Gosha Academy's English teacher.
- Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer: Digby mentions that his sister Isabelle has the highest IQ among all the animals in town and managed to get 19 different engineering degrees that she got just for fun from the best universities.
- Apex Legends: Brilliant physicist Horizon mentions having a few PhDs (though none of them are in cybercrime).
- In the old Popcap game Atomica, according to preliminary help files, the squeaky-voiced, Labcoat of Science and Medicine and Opaque Nerd Glasses-sporting advisor has a triple Ph.D.
- Black Mesa features a minor scientist who complains that the button-pressing he's confined to performing is beneath him because he has two PhDs and an Oersted Medal, which may be interpreted as a dig at how Gordon Freeman, both here and in the original Half-Life, is made to do grunt work in the Anti-Mass Spectrometer despite being a doctorate holder. The Hazard Course mod takes this further with some dialogue that implies that a large majority of the scientists employed at Black Mesa hold multiple PhDs, and Gordon with his single PhD in theoretical physics is actually an outlier.
- Civilization: Beyond Earth: Daoming Sochua is a Child Prodigy who completed four PhDs in engineering and physics by the age of 30.
- The ClueFinders 3rd Grade Adventures: The Mystery of Mathra: It's mentioned that Joni's uncle, Dr. Horace Pythagoras, has "a PhD in everything."
- Fallout: New Vegas: Doctor Dala in the DLC "Old-World Blues" claims to have 213 doctorates, many of which are in fields that didn't exist before she began studying them. She and the rest of the Think Tank have been "alive" for well over three hundred years by the time you meet them... but they're also all certifiably mad in one way or another.
- Team Fortress 2: The Engineer, the team's Southern-Fried Genius who builds deadly sentries, ammo dispensers, and teleporters, is said to have "eleven hard science PhDs", according to the official website.
- Trails Series: Thanks to the enhanced intellect she gained as a result of being the subject of horrific human experimentation that she barely survived, Renne has written and published doctoral level theses in chemistry, mathematics, and information theory. For fun. Before turning twelve. And this without having even being entered into the traditional school system until her teens.
- The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: The title character is an omnidisciplinary doctor with dozens of graduate degrees that he had attained by having dozens of clones of himself made with orders for them to go out into the world and study an individual subject (Many not even related to medicine). After a few years, the original McNinja and all of the clones were merged into one body—the Doctor McNinja we are familiar with from the webcomic—with all of the knowledge acquired from the clones... Except for one, which is why he doesn't know agricultural science.
- In Space Boy, the prosthetist Dr. Jonathan Kim, Oliver's foster father, reminds him that he has three PhDs when he doubts his advice.
- Parodied and subverted in the JonTron video "Dr Ho: License to Practice". When he sees Dr. Ho working on a patient in the ad with his degrees displayed on the back wall, he does a spoof where he shows off all of his framed degrees, the number of them growing more and more absurd until he runs out of wall space and they are put on display on the floor and ceiling. After accidentally stepping on one, he admits that he bought them all on eBay.
- Stuff You Like: Deconstructed for laughs by Jill Bearup with Bruce Banner in her review of Thor: Ragnarok. She questions how Bruce had the time, money, or sanity to get seven PhDs, and points out how most people in the real world get one, maybe two, PhDs and then do post-doctoral research. She speculates for his sake that at least five of those PhDs could be just honorary. She later clipped this moment as a short in "Bruce Banner: SEVEN PhDs? Just... WHY?".
Jill: Bruce Banner, what kind of eejit gets seven PhDs? Seven? Really? Seven? Are you serious? [...] No wonder you're so angry, man!
- Animaniacs: Zigzagged for Hello Nurse — in the song the Warner siblings sing about her, they claim she has several PhDs when trying to make her come across as a genius. However, at the end, they say, "If she's not all we said, then may lightning strike us dead", and then lightning strikes them but doesn't kill them, leaving it ambiguous as to whether any of what they said was true.
- Gravity Falls: The Author/Stanford Pines has a whopping twelve PhDs. This does explain his expertise in various fields.
- Dr. Quinn in Sealab 2021 has boasted that he has an IQ of 260 and has earned five Ph.Ds in various scientific disciplines.
- Super Giant Robot Brothers!: Exaggerated with Dr. Alex Rose, a renowned Teen Genius who earned fourteen PhDs, thirty-two Masters Degrees, and a hundred and twelve Associate's Degrees by the age of three.
- In The Venture Brothers, Jonas Venture Jr. acquires two PhDs after escaping Rusty's body during the one month Time Skip between the season one finale and season two opener. Unlike his college dropout brother Rusty (who goes by "Dr. Venture" via his honorary doctorate from Tijuana), his ability to accomplish this shows that Jonas Jr. is the true heir to the multi-generational line of Omnidisciplinary Scientists following his world-renowned father and grandfather.
