The Short Guy with Glasses

Usually a boy who is much younger than the rest of the group, but is technically the smartest. This kid always has a plan (and a back up plan) when it comes down to it. Often wears green for some reason. Can be The Runt at the End.

Compare Bookworm and Literal Bookworm, who both also tend to be short and studious. See also Shorter Means Smarter. Potentially overlaps with Bespectacled Cutie, especially when the character is female.

Not to be confused with That Guy With The Glasses.

Examples:

Advertising

• The Burger King Kids Club Gang had I.Q., a shorter and presumably younger kid who wore thick rimmed glasses. The Gang was a band of tokens, I.Q. being the token smart/nerdy kid.

Anime & Manga

• Negi Springfield in Negima! Magister Negi Magi, among other roles.
• Voltron had Pidge (Hiroshi Suzuishi from GoLion) and Chip (Yasuo Mutsu from Dairugger XV). Naturally, the Frankenslation makes the above characters brothers.

• Kyōju and Emily from Bakuten Shoot Beyblade are the shorty with glasses of their respective teams. They're the smartest of their teams and while Kyōju is heavily associated with green due to his association with frogs, Emily leans more towards yellow, though still accessorized with green. Kyōju's franchise predecessor is Rokumaru from Jisedai Beigoma Battle Beyblade, who's also the smart one with glasses in green.
• Pokémon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire: Max, May's brother, is shortest member of Ash's group in this series and wears glasses to signify his booksmart knowledge of Pokémon since he's too young to be an official Pokémon trainer himself. He is also tutored by Brock, the group's oldest and most experienced trainer, and often acts as a sanity leash on his mentor whenever he falls for another girl in their travels.
• Narusawa Kazuma from Detective School Q. He even has the green clothing going on, although he is not the smartest character in terms of pure intelligence among his peers - Kyu holds that title. He is, however, a tech-savvy Gadgeteer Genius.

• Rekuta from Duel Masters is practically the same character. With a few more Megaton Punch sequences.
• Albert Pitt from ARIA fits this trope to a T. He's short enough to make those who don't know him personally think that he's almost four or five years younger than he actually is.
• Case Closed's Conan Edogawa. He (as a 6-year-old) is very small for his age, even smaller than the girls. But this is subverted as a teen, as his glasses are only a disguise, and as Shinichi Kudo his height is appropriate for a teenage boy.
• Partially subverted with Fullmetal Alchemist's Kain Fuery — he fits the description and is the Communications expert, but Vato Falman and Heymans Breda are the smarter ones in Col. Mustang's group.
• Marucho in Bakugan fits this trope to a T, as he's the only brawler who wears glasses, he's shorter than the others and looks much younger than them, despite being only one year younger. Throughout the series, he doesn't grow an inch (his hair grows, though), despite being 17 in the last season. He's The Smart Guy of the Team.
• Insector Haga/Weevil Underwood from Yu-Gi-Oh! is a minor Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain who nonetheless fits this perfectly; he is very short with Nerd Glasses, is a cunning schemer, and always wears green. He's also younger than most of the major duelists, starting the series at age 14 and ending it at age 15.

• Dai'chi Muroto from Kotoura-san. He is, however, merely Older Than He Looks. Per the trope he also acts as The Smart Guy to at least Yuriko, if not the massage wand as well.
• Chibi Maruko-chan: Nagayama, the book-smart kid in Maruko's class.
• Els Tasmin of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid, the bespectacled Student Council President of her school and the shortest one amongst the group of veteran tourney fighters.
• The Smart Guy and youngest of the Combattler V team, Kosuke Kita, is also the shortest and uses Opaque Nerd Glasses to boot.

Comic Books

• Dilton Doiley from Archie Comics is the resident glasses-wearing Teen Genius and distinctly shorter than all the other boys.
• Linus Van Pelt of Peanuts is slightly younger and shorter than most of the other kids, but generally the smartest, and he wore glasses for a brief period in the early '60s.

Fan Works

• Hetalia: Axis Powers fanfic Gankona, Unnachgiebig, Unità: Although Japan only wore hexagonal glasses with his Teru Mikami cosplay, he still is a very smart person. He also happens to be the shortest of the former Axis Trio.
• Varric is explicitly stated to be the shortest of the male teachers at Skyhold Academy (as a nod to the fact that he's a dwarf in canon), and wears reading glasses. He's also often shown to be the one coming up with a plan, a scheme, or just a really good story.
• Pokémon Reset Bloodlines: In Belladonna's group, Vedia is the shortest member and the only one who wears glasses, as well as the most tech-savvy of them (being the one who hacked into the Gringy City Power Plant's security systems to facilitate their infiltration).
• Guys Being Dudes: Arlo is described as short, wears glasses, and is the most book-smart of the Team GO Rocket leaders. Of course, his glasses are purely aesthetic.

Films — Animation

• Glasses, the smallest and youngest crow in Dumbo, and the one that supplies the Magic Feather (from his tail!), wears large rose-tinted glasses.

Films — Live-Action

• Murder by Numbers (2002) has the delightful Justin Pendleton. Admittedly, he only seems to need the glasses when he's reading (or when he's trying to act a teeny bit more like an emo Nathan Leopold) but there you go. Smarter, shorter, primmer, but probably not younger — and, of course, in possession of an Evil Plan. A shared Evil Plan, but nevertheless.
• In The Avengers, Bruce Banner is recruited for his brilliance as a nuclear physicist; he needs thick glasses to read and is the physically smallest of the main male cast. His alter ego on the other hand...

Literature

• The Quest for Karla: George Smiley. Short, chubby, bespectacled, soft-spoken, and arguably the greatest case-officer to ever work for British intelligence.
• Discworld: Ponder Stibbons is younger and smaller than most of the other wizards and is considered by most people to be "the only one who does any work in the university."
• Barsamin, one of the POV characters in Glory in the Thunder, is short and bespectacled and enjoys novels. He even wears green.
• The Dresden Files: Coroner Waldo Butters is Harry's go-to man for both medical care and (eventually) computer science.
• Scobie in Don't Call Me Ishmael! is the shortest of the debate team and the leader. He's the best debater on the team and also the smartest, as well as keeping the others in check and planning their strategy for the debates. He needs glasses and seems to be Blind Without 'Em.

Live-Action TV

• Classic Game Show emcee Bill Cullen, of such shows as The '50s' Price Is Right, To Tell the Truth, and The $25,000 Pyramid. Notable for being a real Deadpan Snarker.
• Corporal Walter "Radar" O'Reilly on M*A*S*H was very short (if only because his actor, Gary Burghoff, was short) and was Blind Without 'Em. He wasn't necessarily The Smart Guy, but had excellent organizational skills, could predict whatever his commanding officer was going to ask for before actually asking, and had the uncanny ability to know helicopter ambulances were approaching before anyone else. He was also much younger than the other main characters.

• George from Seinfeld is the biggest subversion of The Smart Guy part of the trope, as he's not the brightest of the ensemble, and often makes thick-witted or mean-spirited mistakes that snowball humiliatingly. While on occasion he does have a clever scheme that actually works, it somehow or other blows up in his face. He's out-schemed by Newman, the Other Short Guy With Glasses who plays the trope a little straighter, but it's less due to 'smarts' than a cunning more vicious than the others are willing to get.

Video Games

• Boys Love Games and Otome Games usually have one of these as an option to end up with, since girls find them Moe.

• Bottles, who teaches all the moves in Banjo-Kazooie, wears thick coke bottle glasses. His Suspiciously Similar Substitute in Banjo-Tooie, Jamjars, wears Cool Shades instead.
• Lester from Grand Theft Auto V is not only short, balding, and wears glasses, but is crippled and walks with a cane or confines himself to a wheelchair.
• Nevan's glasses in Dragon Quest VI cover most of his face. Fanart generally puts him next to Dumb Muscle Carver to make him even shorter.
• Ignatz from Fire Emblem: Three Houses is one of the shortest male characters in the game, even after the time skip, and he's the only character to wear glasses. He also likes studying (he can be found gushing over the library's collection in an early chapter) and has an Authority boon, suggesting he likes tactical thinking.
• Arno from Learning Voyage is short, wears glasses, and is pretty smart, considering his vocabulary (although in Sand Trapped!, he misheard "Put worm traps by the back door" as "Put trap doors back by the worms").
• Matt Bauer from Crossing Souls is the improbably clever Teen Genius of the team, is one of the shortest playable characters, has glasses, fights with a laser gun he invented and can hover by using propellers on his shoes. Kevin, main character Chris's younger brother, is shorter than him and also wears glasses, but he's more of a Tagalong Kid.
• Sheldon from Splatoon is a a short and enthusiastic horseshoe crab who both runs a weapon shop in Inkopolis and serves as a member of Mission Control in Splatoon 2. He developed nearsightedness from staying up late studying weapon parts, so he wears a pair of thick glasses.

Web Comics

• Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures: Jyrras is definitely short, and he wears glasses, even though he doesn't need them; it's an image thing. He's also the one with the greatest technical aptitude.
• Tedd in El Goonish Shive is the shortest of the group, but isn't any younger. He admits that he doesn't need glasses, but Invokes the trope because he's an androgynous Pretty Boy and the glasses help avoid Stupid Sexy Flanders moments. As he gains more self-confidence and eventually comes out as genderfluid, he stops wearing them. And then he finds out he's actually somewhat nearsighted and could benefit from real prescription glasses, leading to their return in the Party arc.

Western Animation

• Scooby-Doo: Velma is a classic female example. The shortest of the Mysteries Inc. crew, The Smart Guy, and Blind Without 'Em.
• Rafael, from Transformers: Prime. He's the smallest human in the show by a significant margin.
• Albert, a.k.a. Presto, from the Dungeons & Dragons (1983) cartoon fits the visual style and personality, but the magic item he received from Dungeonmaster was a magic hat from which he could pull anything he wanted. Unfortunately, the hat was something of a Literal Genie with a trend towards notoriously random interpretations; as a result, he never had a plan he could rely on.

• Dexter of Dexter's Laboratory isn't usually part of a group, but he is a Child Prodigy, wears glasses, and is much shorter than most other kids on the show.
• Jeremie from Code Lyoko, though admittedly he's only shorter than two-fifths of the main cast. (He is the youngest, though.)
  • It's worth pointing out that, while he doesn't wear green, the towers that he controls on Lyoko are.
• Kevin French from the short-lived Mission Hill. In fact, his character was based on the afore-mentioned Dilton Doiley.

• Sam AKA Squid of Rocket Power is the shortest of his group of friends, wears glasses, and is frequently the one to come up with a plan during a predicament.

• Steve Smith of American Dad! is almost half the size of his parents which is unusual for a 14-year-old (they are frequently taller). He always has a plan when scheming with his friends about getting girls and is such regarded as the group leader. However his plans always go astray either due to bad luck or because he is hopelessly naive about it. Toshi is the only one to ever call him out on his idiocy, but of course he does it in Japanese, so no one can understand it.
• Odie is the shortest member of the team in Class of the Titans, and the only one who wears glasses. His designated role on the team is "The Brain," and Big Bad Kronos even specifically calls him "the little one."
• Newton from the children's show I.N.K: Invisible Network of Kids is a perfect example. Several years younger than the other members of the group, but easily the most intelligent one, even smarter than almost any adult.
• Gretchen from Phineas and Ferb is the shortest of the Fireside Girls, wears glasses, and tends to use long words. Ironically, in the episode "Act Your Age" (which takes place ten years later), she has the biggest growth spurt of the group.
• Kaeloo: Invoked in one episode where Stumpy, the second shortest of all the show's characters, is granted Sudden Intelligence and starts wearing glasses.
• Mitchell Petersen from Ready Jet Go! is the the second shortest character (although he is taller than Mindy), and he wears Nerd Glasses. He is quite smart for his age, as well.
• W.: William does not seem to have a lot of height.
• Recess: Gus is the smallest of the six main characters, and wears glasses. Averted with Gretchen, the second tallest of the group who also wears glasses.
• Darryl from Bob's Burgers is short for his age, wears glasses, and is into math and video games.