Basic Trope: A scientist is an expert in all sciences.
- Straight: Bob is a nuclear physicist, but he is shown to be an expert in biology and chemistry too.
- Exaggerated: Bob is an expert in everything.
- Downplayed: Bob is a nuclear physicist, but he's an expert in other branches of physics too.
- Bob is able to accomplish the same tasks as a specialist in the field but only with reference materials and while taking three times as long, and often three times the resources from failed experiments. Compared to the massive failures of untrained amateurs that is pretty good.
- Justified:
- Bob specializes in an interdisciplinary field such as astrobiology
which requires some knowledge of physics, biology, and chemistry. - Bob is supernaturally intelligent and learns science for fun.
- Bob lives in a time when scientific disciplines are very poorly developed, which allows him to study many of them.
- Bob is several centuries old, which has given him time to study several scientific branches.
- Bob specializes in an interdisciplinary field such as astrobiology
- Inverted: Bob is ridiculously specialized and only studies uranium.
- Subverted:
- "I'm a physicist, not a biologist!"
- Bob was just being arrogant; he only understands nuclear physics.
- Bob specifically says that he is merely the Closest Thing We Got.
- Double Subverted: Bob still knows way too much about things out of his field of study.
- Parodied:
- Bob is also an expert in cheesemaking and balloon animals.
- Bob occasionally mixes up his disciplines, prescribing antivirus software to human patients while attempting to administer booster shots to computers.
- Zig Zagged: Bob's knowledge varies depending on how much the writer knows about science.
- Averted: Bob is a nuclear physicist. He only understands nuclear physics.
- Enforced: The writers want an expert character but can't be bothered to research individual fields.
- Lampshaded: "So...Bob's a nuclear physicist, what does he know about frogs?" "Don't question it."
- Invoked: Universities force any student going into sciences to study all the sciences.
- Exploited: Bob is able to get many high-paying jobs because of his wide expertise.
- Defied: Bob refuses to discuss any science other than nuclear physics.
- Discussed: "It's a good thing we've got Bob. Hiring a whole R&D team would be super expensive.
- Conversed: "You'd think they'd need to have more scientists to do all of this stuff, but I guess then it'd be hard to keep track of all the characters."
- Deconstructed: Bob is actually a Stupid Scientist with a Small Name, Big Ego who has spread himself too thin.
- Reconstructed:
- Bob's cursory knowledge of multiple fields allows him to oversee and coordinate specialists in those fields.
- Bob may not be the foremost expert in a given field, but he's familiar enough with them that he can sense if something a purported expert says sounds wrong and prevent the group from being conned straight away until he can do some independent research to verify the claims.
- Bob having familiarity in a diverse range of fields allow him to come up with unorthodox ideas by blending one field with another. They don't always pan out, but it helps to serve as a check for the actual experts on whether there's some hidden assumption they're collectively missing that might be causing the problem.
- Implied: Bob is specifically a robotics engineer, but is mentioned inventing new components for said robots that would normally require a different area of expertise.
- Played For Laughs: Bob is repeatedly asked what field he specializes in. He always gives vague answers like "science, obviously!"
- Played For Drama: Being the only person working on all of his research and experiments is running Bob ragged and severely impacting his mental health.
Back to Omnidisciplinary Scientist
