Basic Trope: Corvids (crows, ravens, jays, and magpies) are intelligent.
- Straight: Carson the Crow is shown to be very good at solving various problems.
- Exaggerated: Carson knows everything.
- Downplayed: Carson is rather smart, but he's not exactly a genius.
- Justified: Truth in Television — corvids (especially crows) are notoriously smart for birds.
- Inverted: Corvids are Too Dumb to Live.
- Subverted: Carson turns out to have been Feigning Intelligence.
- Double Subverted:
- But then it turns out that he was Obfuscating Stupidity.
- That, or he legitimately becomes smarter.
- Parodied: Carson is a Funny Animal crow who always gets the highest grades in class.
- Zig-Zagged: Sometimes Carson gets the Idiot Ball.
- Averted:
- There are no corvids.
- Corvids are not particularly intelligent in the work.
- Enforced:
- To teach the audience about how smart crows can be.
- A way to avert the Creepy Crows trope.
- Lampshaded: "Carson sure is smart."
- Invoked: Carson is always sure to work hard to get good grades in school.
- Exploited: Since Carson is the smartest in the group, he's often chosen as the one to solve hard problems.
- Defied: Carson never uses his intelligence to any advantage.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "Why are crows so intelligent?"
- Played for Horror: Clever Crows + Creepy Crows; Carson is also a malevolent Evil Genius.
- Played for Laughs: Carson knows everything the other characters want to know, but punctuates each of his philosophical arguments with a reminder that he is a wild animal.
- Played for Drama: Carson angsts as he finds that Intelligence Equals Isolation.
- Deconstructed: Carson relies on his intelligence for everything, but when he comes across a problem that needs one or more skills he doesn't have, or at least not a lot of, he isn't that good.
- Reconstructed: Carson makes a point of acquiring and honing as many skills as he can. Because he's so smart, this is not difficult for him.
- Implied: Bob is looking at the exam results posted outside a classroom door. He walks away saying, "Aw, man. I was upstaged by a crow."
Carson Crow: "Here's the link back to Clever Crows. Caw!"
