Adaptational Dumbass

Knuckles the Echidna, 2008: Translator of ancient runes.
Knuckles the Echidna, 2014: Illiterate.

When adapting an existing character for a new work the character is often altered in transition from the source material. They might become nicer, meaner, heroic, nastier, more badass, a lot less badass, or smarter.

Then there are these characters, who are actually made dumber; for example, a character who was The Smart Guy in the source material becomes The Ditz in the new one.

A Sub-Trope of Adaptation Personality Change. Compare and contrast Took a Level in Dumbass, where a character decreases in intellect inside the particular work, and Adaptational Intelligence, this trope's polar opposite. Adaptational Nonsapience is the more extreme version.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

Death Note: While Misa Amane wasn't the most intelligent person in the original manga, she did have a good head on her shoulders and was serious about her actions, knew simple, slightly dangerous yet effective plans on how to get what was needed, like in the Yotsuba Arc where she goes off on her own to investigate Higuchi from the Yotsuba group and records his admission that he is the current Kira which played a big role in finishing up that arc. The anime altered her intelligence to the point of downplaying any big moments she had in the manga and even changed her personality to be more airheaded and up-played her Yandere traits towards Light, making her a typical The Ditz character.
Dragon Ball Super:
- Unlike the anime, manga Goku Black is more likely to grab the Idiot Ball, such when he didn't kill Future Trunks after he's weakened from fighting Future Dabura, and actually spares Trunks' life again because he wants to keep fighting him, while anime Black is far more pragmatic and no-nonsense since he tries to kill Trunks every chance he gets and even traps him in the past by destroying the Time Machine. However, the sparing Trunks is justified: much like Captain Ginyu, this version of Black couldn't access anywhere close to all of Goku's power at first, requiring him to use the Saiyan race's innate Came Back Strong abilities to tap into it by having Trunks injure him and being healed by Future Zamasu in turn.
- In the manga, Gowasu is even more of a Horrible Judge of Character toward Zamasu than he is in the anime. While Gowasu in the anime is aware of Zamasu's issues and tries to help him, manga Gowasu is completely unaware that Zamasu hates mortals until he slices the Barbarian in half, and just harshly tells him to know his place and act like a god without actually trying to quell his issues with mortals. Also, while in the anime, Gowasu chose Zamasu as his successor in part because of his pure heart and strong sense of justice, in the manga, it's heavily implied that Gowasu chose Zamasu as his successor based purely on his battle power, which Whis himself states was a stupid move. Also, whereas Gowasu offers Zamasu and Goku Black a Last-Second Chance in both versions, in the anime, he at least did so while Goku and Vegeta were there and able to back him up; in the manga, he approaches Black to do so alone.
- Overlapping with Flanderization, but Goku himself tends to get hit with this hard in both anime and manga adaptations of Super, especially compared with the preceding Z and to lesser extent GT. Most of his Older and Wiser traits from the Buu Saga are chucked in the bin and he’s far, far more of a fight hungry dumbass who does everything from forgetting Senzu Beans and the talisman for the Evil Containment Wave during the fight against Zamasu, to inciting a multiversal tournament that will result in trillions of lives getting erased from existence and put his own universe in jeopardy^note. He also doesn't know what a kiss is or why pregnancy is hard, despite being a married man with two sons, and at one point chastises Vegeta for meditating which is something he's practiced before. Granted, there is some Revisiting the Roots at play as Toriyama never intended Goku to be a mature protagonist, and it can be assumed that his current mindset is the result of his suppressed Saiyan instincts massively flaring up. Regardless, the Character Development he got throughout Z is often disregarded for humor, as well as relearning lessons he'd adopted years prior.
El-Hazard: In the original The Magnificent World OAVs and their sequels, Ifurita is a stoic, dignified, competent but melancholic figure deeply wounded by her long years as a reluctant servant to brutal masters that made wanton use of her Person of Mass Destruction abilities. In the spin-off TV series The Wanderers, Ifurita is reimagined as a bubbly, chipper, bumbling goofball who constantly bungles her orders, to the point an entire episode is devoted to her creating a tornado, losing control of it, and being trapped inside until she can beg one of the series' heroines to help her stop it.
Fullmetal Alchemist (2003): Alphonse starts off as an intelligent, insightful young boy who was the sensible one compared to Ed. Later on he makes many very poor, and arguably stupid choices like taking Barry the Chopper's mind games to heart, and distrusting people who he's known all his life. This happens in both the manga and anime, but in the manga, Al learns from this and doesn't do anything like it again. In the first anime it mainly takes effect in the later half, where he runs off every time he gets upset, even though the Homunculi and Dante are looking for and trying to kill them, going along with Shou Tucker's plans and not telling Ed (even though Tucker made his daughter into a chimaera, resulting in her death, and letting Sloth convince him that she's his mother (which she technically is), even though she is a Homunculi when Ed is trying to remind him that they're fighting for their lives, immediately running towards Envy disguised as Winry, right after Ed says it isn't her, and barely putting up a fight. He arguably became more impulsive than his brother, whereas earlier in the show it was the other way around. This could be interpreted as the writers having Al act more like how a real little boy would if they were put in such a situation, but he becomes more competent again in the finale. Other than that he basically becomes quite the load.
Ask anyone who only knows the anime adaptation of Kaitou Saint Tail and they'll probably tell you that Asuka Jr. is a romantically challenged idiot who's so confused between having feelings for both Meimi and Saint Tail that he passes them off as having a coincidental resemblance. In the manga, this couldn't be further from the truth: a Mid-Season Twist had revealed that much of what we'd been led to believe about him was inaccurate, and the rest of the plot had upgraded him to the Deuteragonist position as he started catching onto Saint Tail's identity, realizing the true nature of the Secret-Identity Identity problem, and saving Meimi from a mental health crisis out of sheer devotion. Although all of these plot points are carried over to the anime, it also adds tons of episodic Filler that constantly ignores continuity and resets his characterization to the prideful, gung-ho Worthy Opponent stance he had at the beginning of the series without any of the Hidden Depths, leading many an anime viewer to never realize he was actually supposed to have a character arc.
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2016):
- In the original game, King Bulblin finds ways to adapt to Link's tactics, such as wearing buckler shields to counter the hero's sword blows and even preparing his own fortress to self-destruct on the off-chance he loses their rematch in the desert. Here, he's a bruiser through and through.
- Rusl's game counterpart was a skilled smith in addition to being a swordsman, and it's commented that the Ordon Sword he crafted was a worthy tribute to the Hylian Royal Family. In the manga, he credits an unseen character named Gine for forging the Ordon Sword.
Mazinger Z has an unusual version with Doctor Hell. In the original manga, there was in fact an explanation for why he never reused a Mechanical Beast even when one of them almost defeated Mazinger, with fixes for whatever let Mazinger win: he couldn't, because he was excavating his Mechanical Beasts from ancient ruins, and whatever he got that week was what he had to use. In the anime, he quickly grows frustrated with the excavated Mechanical Beasts and destroys them before starting to build his own, better ones, making him more intelligent than his manga counterpart...but also meaning that he now has no excuse for not reusing the effective ones.
The version of Kycilia that appears in Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin is a far cry from the coldly pragmatic Kycilia that appeared in the original Mobile Suit Gundam, to the point where she almost has more in common with Gihren than she does her original version. While she's not exactly incompetent and still manages to be a major threat, the fact that she possesses most of Gihren's personality flaws (his overconfidence and extreme Lack of Empathy in particular) while lacking in the areas that made Gihren such a threat (including his eerily persuasive charisma and oratory skills) and has her impulsiveness dialed up a bunch means that she's nowhere near as effective at playing politics as the original Kycilia was, and is prone to rash decisions that only worsen things for her side (like having one of her brothers assassinated at a time when political tensions were already high).
Negima! Magister Negi Magi: Lead girl Asuna Kagurazaka is a pretty bad student, but shows intelligence in areas unrelated to school. In Negima!? (second season), however... She's basically the dumbest member of the cast and spends most of the series chasing down the mythical Chupacabra.
One Piece: The anime does a fair amount of this to crew compared to the manga especially in Filler arcs. For example Roronoa Zoro get stumped by a path that leads into water and Sanji is willing to get eliminated by the villain team in a game thanks to the female entourage cooing him into it, while they definitely have these weaknesses in manga it never quite gets as bad as it does in the anime. Monkey D. Luffy is the crowning example however, in the manga he is a Idiot Hero but he at least has some sense of why particular things are important. In the anime however Luffy will infamously try eating a treasure chest before throwing it away.
In Persona 5: The Animation, there's a minor case with Ann. During the Medjed arc, a mysterious hacker called Alibaba offers to help the Phantom Thieves deal with Medjed in exchange for stealing the heart of Futaba Sakura, Alibaba's real identity. In the game, Ann immediately realizes that Futaba has the same name as Sojiro Sakura, owner of the Leblanc café and Ren's guardian, after Ren shows her the IM conversation in which Alibaba made the request. In the anime, Ann says that the name sounds familiar, but doesn't make the connection until Yusuke points it out in a scene shortly after the group's first IM conversation with Alibaba. The same could be said for Makoto, who's on the cusp of realizing the same thing before Ann spells it out, but it's possible that Sojiro never told her his name during the scene in which she first met him.
Pokémon the Series: Psyduck in the game is a reliable hitter and even with specialized moves like HM it can hit pretty hard. In the anime, Misty’s Psyduck is a total Butt-Monkey who can't even swim (while in the games he's more than capable, both swimming and hitting hard, with HM Surf) at least until his psychic powers awakened. Although it should be noted that only Misty’s Psyduck is portrayed like this, with other members of the species being much more like the ones from the game.
Rocket Girls seriously dumbs down Yukari's father. In the light novels, he acts like someone a little confused about the somewhat-spiritual experience that got him where he was, but he still seems intelligent and practical. When Yukari points a gun at him, he calmly but cautiously persuades her, reminding her that she won't get any kind of happy family if her father's there at gunpoint, and even scolds her for quitting in the middle of what she's doing with no sign of subterfuge. In the anime adaptation, he acts like a stoner who burned out his last brain cell a decade ago, tends to respond like a petulant child or with exaggerated shock, and generally discourages any manner of respect.
Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee has Lag show differing levels of intelligence after Gauche seemingly returns to normal after being shot by Lag's letter bullet. In the manga, he gradually realizes something is off, and eventually confronts "Gauche" about the fact that he's still Noir, and the only thing that's changed is that he gained the memories Lag has of him. In the anime, he doesn't suspect anything until Niche, as well as Noir himself point it out to him.
Tenchi Muyo!: In the OVA, Mihoshi was a competent cop, but had been overworked to the point that she had a nervous breakdown and was forced to take a leave for her health. She'd just been reinstated when the series began, but she still wasn't back on the ball and made silly mistakes. The third OVA implies that something terrible and traumatic happened to her that caused her mental break, but nothing definite is ever pinned down. All other continuities portrayed her as a ditz from the get-go, with the understanding that she'd always been incompetent. Even worse is that her level of intelligence seems to drop with each continuity, the worst being the version from Sasami: Magical Girls Club.
In the mainline Marvel Universe, Kitty Pryde is a Teen Genius, but in X-Men: Misfits she's unable to understand basic geometry, or manage to work her powers properly after weeks of training.

Comic Books

Absolute Universe:
- Absolute Wonder Woman has a downplayed case with Veronica Cale. While this version of Cale is still an incredibly intelligent Chessmaster and Manipulative Bitch, she isn't a Mad Scientist like her mainline counterpart, instead relying on Doctor Poison and other scientists under her employment for science related work.
- Absolute Superman:
  - This version of Brainiac lacks the Super-Intelligence of his counterparts, instead being a Rogue Drone of an entire hyper-collectivist society of Brainiacs, and of them he was one of their dumbest and tasked with nothing but melting down corpses before suffering brain damage that turned him into an insane sadist. While he's still smart enough to successfully pose as Lazarus' A.I. and upgrade Christopher Smith with cybernetic implants (a dumb Coluan is still probably smarter than most humans), this is basically child's play when compared to what other depictions of the character are capable of. To drive the point home, he's forced to go to the other Brainiacs for help dealing with Superman, with one of his superiors deducing Clark's origin and weakness within seconds.
  - This universe's Christopher Smith isn't a Gadgeteer Genius like his mainline counterpart, and progressively degrades more and more mentally as he suffers Sanity Slippage, especially once he is turned into Metallo.
- Absolute Flash does this with Eobard Thawne. Mainline Thawne is an Evil Genius who has managed to concoct various intricate plans to ruin Barry Allen and his loved ones' lives. This universe's Thawne also starts out as an intelligent Mad Scientist, but after spending decades trapped in the Still Point, by the time of the comic's present events, he's mentally degraded into a near-mindless monster that destroys anything in his path without thought.
- Absolute Green Lantern does this with Hector Hammond. Mainline Hammond was an Evil Genius even before he experimented on himself to give himself Super-Intelligence. This version of Hammond, while clearly not an idiot, largely comes off as a Know-Nothing Know-It-All who spends most of his time shouting orders at his scientists while they do all the work.
Batman: Earth One: This universe's version of Batman did not undertake the usual round-the-world crimefighting education backstory Bruce did, so while he has the heroism and fighting skills similar to the traditional Batman, he is a piss-poor detective, to the point of cluelessly trampling all over a crime scene in volume 2 and asking Gordon for tutoring in this area. Volume 3 sees him hiring Catwoman to sniff out the source of the gangs' weaponry when he proves unable to do it himself in the limited time available.
Demon Knights: Justified in the case of Etrigan, since the story takes place before his demotion to rhymer. Instead of the sly, cunning and manipulative demon he is in comics like The Demon, Swamp Thing or Day of Judgment, here he is much less ingenious and is even manipulated himself by Xanadu.
Fantastic Four: Life Story: While Victor Von Doom is still fairly intelligent, he relies on Reed Richards to build his armor, something he'd always forged himself in other continuities.
Justice Society of America: The series portrays Adolf Hitler as a ranting and raving buffoon who leads mostly because of his cult of personality and charisma than for an any real merit. It further shows several times that he does not fully comprehend the consequences of his actions and is as equally ignorant as he is malicious.
Justice League 3000: The 14th issue shows an interpretation of Kamandi who, in contrast to being one of the few humans to still be intelligent and articulate after the Great Disaster, is depicted as a speech-impaired and primitive idiot, with Ice insinuating that his reputation as a hero in the aftermath of the Great Disaster was a fabrication created to comfort those in despair.
New 52:
- Captain Stingaree was wrong about his hated identical brothers being Batman but he had clear reasons for drawing that conclusion and Bruce himself ensured that his suspicions were (initially) confirmed by having one of said brothers be unmasked by Karl as Batman. His plan was also meticulously plotted out. Post-Flashpoint, his brothers are overweight with absolutely no resemblance to Batman and he accuses them of being Batman while Bats himself is right there. He also generally acts like a loon in a poor portrayal of his adaptation-specific mental illnesses.
- Batman villain Sterling Sliversmith went from the swordsman runner of a criminal enterprise who just happened to be obsessed with silver and who nearly got away with his brother's murder to a deranged High School teacher whose lessons are useless and who can't control his students, instead spending time whining about them.
Sonic the Comic: Downplayed with Tails. He's still good with tools, but he's not the Child Prodigy of the games. Sonic frequently calls him "pixel brain" because of his more naive characteristics. Justified, since this version of Tails comes from the Nameless Zone, which has technology equal to Medieval Britain.
Ultimate Universe (2023):
- Part of the reason for The Maker's unending hatred of Prime Timeline Reed Richards is the fact that 616 Reed is smarter than him on account of having far more life experience as well as having mastered the science of a universe less grounded in reality. This was what led him to create Earth-6160 in the first place, as living on Earth-616 meant he was a Big Fish in a Bigger Ocean.
- Ultimate Spider-Man (2024):
  - The Peter Parker of Earth-6160 suffers from this as a result of getting his powers much later in life and having no reason to exercise and maintain his interest in science after pursuing a career in journalism. As a result, he's unable to follow along with Otto's Techno Babble while his mainline counterpart is a runner-up for World's Smartest Man. He manages to get outsmarted by Shocker (a version that didn't even invent his own gear to boot), twice.
  - Unlike in the main universe, this universe's version of the Shocker didn't invent his superpowered gauntlets, with them instead having been invented by Iron Lad and Shocker having stolen them off of the dead body of the man who was supposed to receive them.
- Invoked in The Ultimates (2024); as part of his Twilight of the Supers plan, The Maker gave the Hank Pym of Earth-6160 mild brain damage to rob him of his Super-Intelligence and ensure he never discovers Pym Particles & becomes Ant-Man. However, because You Can't Fight Fate he still joins The Team thanks to the intervention of Iron Lad and Captain America.
Ultimate X-Men (2001): Kitty Pryde isn't the computer whiz her mainline counterpart is.
Wonder Woman:
- Wonder Woman (1987): The Amazons as a culture were hit with a stark removal of intelligence, knowledge and scholarship in their Post-Crisis revamp. The original Amazons had a Paradise whose culture was based on scholarship and study along with competitive athletics; they had a small space worthy fleet of ships, hosted troubled children in their school, had advanced medical procedures, welcomed refugees, and regularly played bullets and bracelets as a game. The Silver Age Earth One Amazons weren't QUITE as advanced, but this was a plot point, as the more advanced technology outside of Paradise Island on Earth One forced them to be even more isolationist and lead to an attempted coup on Hippolyta, whom Amazon scientist Panthea believed was holding back their progress. After this coup is suppressed, the Amazons continue to search for ways to catch up to their Earth Two Golden Age counterparts. The Post-Crisis Amazons are isolationists trapped in an Aegean Bronze Age stasis who are flabbergasted by modern technology and see the first gun they encounter as a mystical artifact to be kept in a vault. Wonder Woman's work as an ambassador does lead to them starting to develop technologically, and after nineteen years of publication time they have progressed certain fields further than any other nation on Earth, but they never reach the status of their Silver Age counterparts, much less the Golden Age Amazons.
- Wonder Woman volume four makes the Amazons even dumber than they were in volume 2, as they're now violently oppossed to advancement, unless it involves better weaponry, and they can get that from clandestine deals with sorceresses and gods rather than learning and applying newfangled skills and sciences.
- In the Golden Age Wonder Woman comics, Tillie Heyday was the smartest, calmest and most responsible out of her four siblings and one of the most rational of the Holliday Girls. In The Legend of Wonder Woman (2016) Tilly Heyday is a clueless, impulsive airhead and easily the dumbest of the Holliday girls.

Fan Works

Played for Laughs with All Might in 1-X. He already had his issues with being a teacher in canon such as regularly referring to cue cards, but that's taken even further here, regularly forgetting his lines to the point Izuku has to subtly coach him, failing to pull off dramatic movements due to technology errors, and showing himself to be a lot less composed to his students. All of 1-X end up considering him much more dorky in person as a result.
In Batman Written by an AI, Batman, normally one of the smartest men on Earth, briefly forgets his parents are dead and seems to genuinely think he's a bat at points.
The Boy Who Cried Idiot:
- Mrs. Johnson believes that Lincoln damaged his textbook and not the raccoon, even though what the raccoon did was bite the book.
- In Lincoln's nightmare, he mistakes Martin (a redhead) for Clyde (a black boy) from a distance. Then again, it was a dream.
Cain (MHA) has a debatable example in Katsuki Bakugou. While he isn't an outright idiot, Bakugou's overweening pride, entitlement, and prejudice give him incredible tunnel vision regarding Izuku and how he views the world around him. Time and time again, Bakugou embarks on some plan or tactic to sabotage Izuku. While Bakugou's escalating actions towards Izuku are genuinely horrifying, they all ultimately have short-term gains as he's too blinded by his pathological sadism and hubris to realize the consequences of his actions and soon gets his own misdeeds revealed and his reputation ruined by the end. Also, when considering Aldera's faculty members and student body playing along with Bakugou's bullying and smear campaign of Izuku and going to great lengths in covering up any of his misdeeds, his grades are also likely fixed to look perfect rather than being legitimately earned.
Coeur Al'Aran: Often used for laughs in his more comedic RWBY fics:
- In Your Wildest Dreams: Zig-Zagged with Salem. This version of Salem still hasn't pieced together up to the present day after the passage of milennia that her own past deceit and defiance of the Brother Gods prove that they're not omniscient or omnipotent after all, unlike her canon counterpart whom worked that out before her second rebellion against the Gods in her backstory. On the other hand, this version of Salem is at least wise enough to know that if she did see the Brothers again in the present, it would most likely end in them seeing through her actions again and tormenting her even further instead of giving her what she wanted, in contrast to how the canon Salem is speculated in the show to be trying to summon the Brother Gods back and manipulate them again in the hopes of being freed from her immortality.
- Knight of Salem: Whereas Salem's canon self was a ruthless and seemingly tactically-competent Big Bad who apparently understood modern technology, the Salem of this fic is oftentimes significantly less in touch with the reality of what's happening, she misreads a lot of situations throughout hers, Jaune's and Tyrian's chaotic meandering across Remnant, and she's very behind on the technological and societal progressions since her medieval time — after she's stripped of her control over all the planet's Grimm, only a combination of Salem managing to be chaotically competent through her stupidity, and her still being a magic-wielding Physical God by modern Remnant's standards who can fall back on that to cow anyone around her, keep her and her group consistently afloat.
- Professor Arc: Ozpin is hit by this, along with "adaptational laziness" and arguably "adaptational insanity". While the canon Ozpin certainly makes some questionable decisions, there is at least some logic behind them. In this story, Beacon is run by a man who is unable to handle basic paperwork, wastes millions on near-useless things like a golden lemur statue and appears more concerned about his coffee than about the fate of his school. Only Glynda's vigilance prevents Ozpin from destroying Beacon faster and more thoroughly than Cinder. Then again, some characters think he might be Obfuscating Stupidity, but it remains ambiguous how much, if any of his incompetence is actually fake.
- The Second Torch (link): As part of the fic's comedy, Roman Torchwick is significantly sillier, less apt and less self-aware than his conniving, street-smart and vicious canon self. He acts like a bumbling dad to Neopolitan, his solution to Neo being slightly under the weather is to feed her a cocktail of every pharmaceutical drug he could nab under the assumption that one of them would do the right trick, and he can't ever tell that Neo's subsequent "gestures of adoration" at him during the fic are her trying to throttle his neck in frustration.
The Dark Underbelly Up North: In the Despair Island story, Heather quickly realized that acting like a mean popular girl in a life-or-death competition, where her teammates could vote her off, would be bad for her, so she tried to be a little more civil to her teammates. However, in this story, Heather acts like a mean popular girl, being rude and cruel to her teammates and manipulating them to get ahead in the game. As a result, Heather gains hatred from her teammates, who are willing to vote her off.
While Lindsay was never the brightest character in canon, Despair Island ramps up her lack of her intelligence, to the point she lacks even basic awareness of the situation.
While Stoick was a leader set in his ways in How to Train Your Dragon (2010), it was mostly out of concern for the prosperity of his village. In The Dragon and the Butterfly, he allows Berk to fall into ruin when the raids increase out of denial, logics himself into thinking that Hiccup's bond with Toothless is just teen angst and that he would be okay with killing Toothless later on, and repeatedly ruins what little progress he makes with Hiccup by either saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing. He had weeks to properly prepare for their assault on the Red Death and a platoon of trained dragon riders at his disposal, yet he ensures that all of the Dragon Riders stay behind out of misguided protectiveness towards his son, turning what was an ignorantly-made Last Stand to an outright suicide mission.
Farce of the Three Kingdoms: In the original, Xu Shu is portrayed as second only to Zhuge Liang (though that is largely an Informed Ability). In this version, he's a Genius Ditz at best, and makes several idiotic mistakes.
Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail: Not in the sense that she's dumber than canon per se, but Chloe Cerise makes a lot of hasty decisions that bring about terrible aftermaths without considering the consequences. For example, she assumes that Parker is a good option for The Confidant, despite the fact that he's five.
The Marvelous World of DC: Downplayed with Diana/Wonder Woman. She's not stupid, but she's not an extreme Omniglot like she is in the comics, and has to rely on her friend Thor to translate English for her. Thankfully, Doctor Strange fixes that problem with his magic.
My Huntsman Academia: Junior is dumb enough to try and pick a fight with all of Team MNVW after Pyrrha alone managed to burn down his entire club. Predictably, they wreck his club pretty quickly. Compare this to his original RWBY counterpart, who was wise enough to remain non-hostile to Yang after she visited his bar again in search of information.
The Stalking Zuko Series: Aang is portrayed as more childish and naive than in canon. As a result of his immaturity and stubborn adherence to Air Nomad ideals, his decision-making skills are much worse than in canon and he rarely contributes anything useful to discussions.
The Ellie Rose Collection: As the title suggests, Ellie is made the protagonist instead of Henry, essentially making her the Idiot Hero instead of him, whereas in the source material, she often plays the role of the Only Sane Woman.
Trampy Movies: The 2023 Christmas video established none of the engines can read, in sharp contrast to the books and TV series where they are shown to be able to at least read the signs and clocks at the stations (such as the first scene in Thomas and the Magic Railroad where Gordon tells Thomas to read a sign aloud so he can mock him for being late).
Total Drama World Tour The Animators Cut: Bridgette gets increasingly naive as she falls for Alejandro's charms and ends up dumping Geoff for him.
In Turtles a retelling of Girls und Panzer in which Koume, the girl Miho saved in the finals, comes to Oarai, the student council comes off this way. In canon, they restarted their school's tankery team on a whim during a discussion with a MEXT official planning to close the school, despite not knowing how to play or whether they even have any tanks left, because, as Anzu points out, it was better than just sitting around and waiting for the school to close down. The fic, however, goes into the logistical difficulties of setting up a team and training everyone in more detail, making the student council seem even more naive and foolish. To make matters worse, they don't often listen to Miho and Koume, the two students who have tankery experience, such as when the two of them propose finding an easier opponent than St. Gloriana for a practice match (it's unclear whether the option was available in canon).
Mean Rabbit: Unlike canon where he was close to being an outright Genius Bruiser, especially in regards to his analytical ability, Izuku is instead too dumb to comprehend using the various tools on his utility belt in a fight or accept that someone could be significantly faster and stronger than him without a Quirk. Notably, Izuku initially thinks Sir Nighteye has an enhancement Quirk and outright refuses to believe Knuckleduster is Quirkless.
A Dip in the Inkwell: In "Powering Down for the Night", Oona is portrayed as being more idiotic in addition to her usual eccentric personality. She's more prone to Comically Missing the Point, going off on long unrelated tangents about various topics, and is a Genius Slob when it comes to washing her hands regularly.
In Psychonauts 2, Nick Johnsmith/Gristol Malik, manages to orchestrate his Evil Plan (which included infiltrating the Psychonauts, brainwashing Dr. Loboto, swapping bodies with Truman, manipulating Raz and eventually uncovering the Maligula Conspiracy) all by himself. In Razputin Vodello AU, it was a cult of Delugionists who got him into the Psychonauts, only for him to quit when he fails to find Maligula. It also doesn't occur to him that the Delugionists want Maligula for reasons unrelated to him and his rightful place as Grulovia's Gzar, The Omniscient Council of Vagueness managing to easily fool him into thinking that they were going to make him their leader (as he petulantly demanded) before killing him.
In a rare example of this trope being Played for Drama, Po in Fate Can Be So Cruel lacks any real education due to being sold off into slavery at just five-years-old. While Canon Po isn't a terribly smart person, being clumsy, impulsive, and sometimes lacking in common sense, this iteration of Po Never Learned to Read and doesn't even know what basic everyday things are like peaches, birthdays, money or chess.

Films — Animation

Alice's Birthday starts with Alice failing her history exam. In the original books, she is very good at history and admits at one point that it is her second favorite subject after biology.
Carface in All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 (and its TV series) may as well be a completely different character compared to his original counterpart.
Nourishing in The Amazing Maurice. In the books, she was just nervous and inexperienced; here she's more like The Ditz, with a penchant for Comically Missing the Point.
The Angry Birds Movie: Bomb. In earlier Angry Birds media, he was never portrayed as stupid or incompetent (at least, compared to the other birds) and was even The Smart Guy at times. In this film, he is significantly dumber, and is reduced to comic relief many times.
Onua suffers from this in BIONICLE: Mask of Light. He was meant to be a wise and mature Genius Bruiser who only seemed dumb because he rarely spoke, analyzing every situation before acting. He was so efficient at saving others, it almost became a running joke. The movie portrays him more as a dim-witted Boisterous Bruiser who rushes into a fight without thinking, resulting in his home town's destruction which nearly cost the lives of hundreds, including his entire team. In the film, he needs to be saved and his only action not to end in an unintended disaster is lifting up a few rocks during the battle at Kini-Nui. The directors claim they based Onua on a stereotypical New York construction worker whose main concern was physical work. Fortunately, later portrayals in books and comics retained his original depiction and some of the traits he displayed in the film would be played straight with actual dumbasses later on, most notably Krekka and Nocturn.
Disney Fairies: Silvermist was perfectly normal in the chapter books, being somewhat clever, hard-working and with her main character trait being a calm, unflappable demeanor. The movies turn her into a complete space-case who can't even tell irony or exaggeration from fact ("And she just exploded!" "*gasp!* She exploded!?").
The Jungle Book (1967):
- In Kipling's The Jungle Book, Baloo is the wise, strict but fair, teacher. Old but well respected by the wolves and Bagheera for his vast knowledge of the laws, languages, and customs of the different jungle animals. In the film, Baloo is a goofy, fun-loving, lazy, and rather irresponsible character. And more of a fun uncle/older brother figure to Mowgli than the mentor/grandfatherly figure he was in the books.
- In the book, Kaa the python, similarly, is a wise Anti-Hero figure who once saves Mowgli's life in the book. In the film, he's turned into an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain who repeatedly tries to eat Mowgli and fails miserably.
Pinocchio (1940): In the original book, the Fox and the Cat were two con-men on equal footing. But here the Cat is the Fox's bumbling sidekick.
The Green Goblin/Norman Osborn from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a far worse example than the version in Marvel's Spider-Man mentioned below. This incarnation of the Goblin is shown to be just a dumb brute instead of being an intelligent, scheming, and manipulative criminal mastermind like most versions of the character. Of course, given his size and monstrous appearance, it's entirely possible that his usage of the Goblin Formula had degenerated his mind to a degree.
Ben Riley aka Scarlet Spider gets hit with in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse along with Adaptational Wimp. In the comics he’s a Genius Bruiser being a clone of Peter and incredibly skilled fighter. Here he’s got more muscles than brains, Thinking Out Loud to what he sees around him while talking like he’s in a Liefeld comic resulting in him effortlessly falling into Gwen’s trap and being defeated. This was certainly a Take That! from the filmmakers at The Clone Saga as well as '90s Anti-Hero era in general (which are both often considered reasonable targets of mockery) but suffice to say Ben’s fans weren’t amused with the portrayal.
Zazu in The Lion King (1994) is often the butt of slapstick and/or rendered helpless due to his small size (something he's very unhappy about), but he's also quite competent, a trusted advisor to Mufasa, and much wiser than the naive, thrill-seeking Simba. The Lion King (2019) dumbs him down into a dopier and more scatterbrained character, to the point where he mistakes his own shadow for that of a predator's.
In Norse Mythology, Odin Allfather was famed for his wisdom and cunning, having established his authority over the Nine Realms using trickery and strategic warfare, having sacrificed his eye to achieve supernatural wisdom from Mimir's well. In Legends of Valhalla: Thor, Odin is portrayed as a lazy lout who's grown complacent with all of the free food his worshippers give him, and ends up losing his eye out of carelessness with Mjolnir.
The Sword in the Stone: Downplayed — Wart's still smart (albeit in the process of learning), but in the original book, he knew how to read and write just fine. In the film, Archimedes has to teach him.

Films — Live-Action

In The Baker Street Dozen series of films, Dr. John Watson is a bumbling fool who's completely incapable of following even the simplest thread of reasoning and gapes with astonishment at even the most self-evident observations by Holmes. This is in contrast to his portrayal in Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, where he's quite intelligent and competent, though a foil to Sherlock Holmes in that he lacks the latter's imagination and genius. Apparently, the writers and directors of the Baker Street films decided to change "not a genius" to "outright idiot" so as to make the foil to Holmes part more obvious. This is also a case of Audience-Coloring Adaptation, as the Baker Street films are better known to many people than Conan Doyle's stories, so the public perception of Watson (and his portrayal in many later adaptations) is mostly that of a clumsy, dim-witted buffoon.
- Much the same happened to Chief Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard. In Conan Doyle's stories, he was workmanlike and quite competent, although unable to piece together subtle clues with the brilliance of Sherlock Holmes, whereas in the Baker Street films (and most subsequent adaptations), he's completely useless.
Batman & Robin: Whereas the comics Bane was smart enough to come up with a plan to beat Batman, the movie Bane was barely able to speak, only engaging in Hulk Speak and saying one or two words at most when he did. Turning the Genius Bruiser into barely sentient Dumb Muscle is one of the many, many reasons why fans would rather pretend that movie never happened.
The Blind Side's portrayal of a young Michael Oher falls under this. The film (along with, to a lesser extent, the book it was based on) portrays Oher as a Dumb Jock who can't succeed on his own merits even while applying himself, both on and off the field. To his credit, the real Oher took issue with this, and wrote a memoir to set the record straight.
Carrie (1976):
- Tommy Ross is portrayed as a Dumb Jock, who was confirmed in a deleted scene to pass Sue's work off as his own in class. In the book, he was noted to be an Academic Athlete, and the poem was genuinely written by him.
- Billy Nolan was a cunning, calculating sociopath in the book; the reason Chris was with him there was because she wasn't able to manipulate him. In the film, he's a bumbling idiot whom Chris can easily make do what she wants.
- Carrie herself in a sense. Sissy Spacek's portrayal of her is far more innocent and naive, prone to acting like a child in certain scenes and speaking out of turn. Her climactic massacre at the prom is hinted to be her losing control or going into shock - whereas the book had everything as premeditated revenge.
Conan the Barbarian: In the original stories, Conan is a Genius Bruiser (a tactical genius, multilingual, can basically read any script he comes across, well-travelled and familiar with every culture from the Pictish Wildnerness to Afghulistan etc.) who just happens to be super muscular and, well, a barbarian. In the Arnold movies, he's much, much dumber. This can, however, be explained. The thing is, Schwarzenegger wasn't able to speak English fluently enough for the producers' liking at the time, and staunchly refused to have his dialog dubbed by someone else ever again after Hercules in New York. This carries over to the reboot starring Jason Momoa as well, but to a lesser extent due to the fact that Momoa is a native English-speaker.
The Count of Monte Cristo (2002): In this version, Edmond Dantes never learned to read or write, which is what makes it easy for him to get falsely incriminated over allegedly being a Bonapartist and imprisoned in Chateau d'if, and he later learns to read and write from Abbé Faria. This is unlike the original book, where Edmond was already literate and also had a working knowledge of Italian and Romaic (Modern Greek) before becoming more educated by Faria.
Zig-Zagged by the DC Extended Universe's Lex Luthor. While he was smart enough to figure out the Secret Identity of both Superman and Batman, it's overshadowed by the fact that he's a Psychopathic Manchild whose mental instability makes him a detriment to himself and humanity. He created Doomsday with no thought as to what happens when the unstoppable monster has no one who can stop him, and the planned sequels would have seen him ally with the God of Evil Darkseid after paying The Riddler to solve the Anti-Life Equation for him, with Lex predictably being Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves. By contrast, the Lex of the DC Animated Universe was smart enough to solve the Equation himself and to know that Darkseid is the end of everything.
Death Note (2017):
- In the original Death Note anime and manga, Light Yagami is a Teen Genius who is perfectly able to manipulate practically everyone around him. By contrast, the protagonist of the Netflix version is smart, but nothing out of the ordinary, being manipulated instead by the live action counterpart of Misa, Mia.
- This also applies to the Japanese live action adaptation of Death Note. Light, while still very intelligent in this version, is also more impulsive and makes quite a few mistakes his anime/manga counterpart wouldn't have. Such as feeding Ryuk an apple out in the open when Raye Iwamatsu was stalking him.
- L goes from being The Chessmaster and an eccentric Bunny-Ears Lawyer detective from the source to an impulsive and overly emotional teenager in the movie; with L showing his face to Light in a coffee shop and openly trying to directly goad Light into revealing himself as Kira during dinner with him. He also has more openness to weaponizing the Death Note for himself, something his counterpart from the anime and manga would never consider a sound option.
Enola Holmes: As in the books, this version of Mycroft Holmes has average intelligence and is said to be bitter about lacking the mental gifts of his younger brother Sherlock. In Doyle's original stories, however, Mycroft is smarter than Sherlock, to the point that he occasionally takes control of the British government.
Nermal in Garfield: The Movie is portrayed this way compared to in the comic strip. He's just Garfield's comic relief sidekick. In contrast, his comic version is intelligent and sneaky.
Frankenstein (1931), the Monster is rather infamously hit with this. In the original novel, he was a fast-learning intellectual who's bilingual and cunning enough to frame someone for murder. In the film, he's a nearly mute brute with an intelligence equivalent to a small child and has trouble even walking right. The film's version is much more well-known in pop culture than the novel's.
Halloween: In the original series, Michael Myers was a Genius Bruiser. In Rob Zombie's films, he's more of a straightforward brute with little interest in setting traps for his prey.
Harry Potter: A common criticism about the movies is how many of Ron Weasley's scenes in the book changed to turn him into a full comic relief character, and much of his expository dialogue regarding the wizarding world is simply given to Hermione instead.
The Joker is one of the most infamous criminal masterminds in fiction, able to concoct complicated, dastardly schemes and match wits with Batman. Joker (2019)'s grittier, more realistic take on the character is too hampered by his mental illnesses to pull off that kind of supervillainy, and most of the havoc he wreaks comes from being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In the original animated Disney version of Sleeping Beauty the Three Good Fairies were a bit bumbling but fairly competent, to the point they could be easily considered the heroes of the film. By contrast, in Maleficent they are totally incompetent twits who are utterly incapable of properly raising Aurora.
Mary Goodnight of the book The Man with the Golden Gun is an intelligent and competent assistant to James Bond. In the movie, she's a classic Dumb Blonde who makes things worse several times.
Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Guardians of the Galaxy does this quite a lot for the sake of laughs. Most notably Drax the Destroyer in the comics is nowhere the near the Literal-Minded simpleton that he is in the MCU. Mantis likewise in the sequel is equally dim and alongside Drax in the Christmas Special wreak havoc with their chaotic stupidity, this is a stark contrast to the comic where Mantis is a fighting genius who impressed even Vision with her mind. Adam Warlock in turn gets this as well, being a Genius Bruiser and Warrior Poet in the comics whom even Thanos respects, whilst in his debut he’s more of a naive Manchild. Justified in Adam’s case at least since he was only just recently hatched and Born as an Adult so his lack of smarts is an absolute given.
- Downplayed with Black Panther, since the MCU's T'Challa is still smart enough to make some of his own gear and run Wakanda, but he's also more down to Earth, whereas the T'Challa of the comics was The Chessmaster and among the Marvel Universe's 10 smartest characters.
- In the comics, The Shocker was a genius inventor who created his own gear and a pragmatic tactician who evaded capture many times. Spider-Man: Homecoming portrayed him as a common thug who relied on the Tinkerer to make his gear and show him how to use it. This applies to both Jackson Brice and Herman Schultz, although the former is clearly the dumber of the two.
- Iron Man 2 sees Justin Hammer get hit with this royally. In the film, he thinks he's a grand manipulator, but in reality, he's a Know-Nothing Know-It-All and Big Bad Wannabe who's the patsy of Ivan Vanko — a far cry from the comics, where he very much is The Chessmaster and a Diabolical Mastermind in his own right, having been the Big Bad of both "Demon in a Bottle" (manipulating events to include framing Iron Man for murder and exploiting Tony's now-well known alcoholism) and the original "Armor Wars''.
- Captain America: Brave New World: In the comics, once Thunderbolt Ross becomes the Red Hulk, he keeps his intelligence. Here, this version of the Red Hulk acts more akin to Bruce Banner's Savage Hulk. Justified because whereas comic Ross deliberately engineered his transformation into the Red Hulk, this version was forced into the Red Hulk.
The Muppet Christmas Carol: While not stupid by any means, the Muppet version of The Ghost of Christmas Present is shown to be rather absent-minded and often forgets what he was talking about. He explains that, due to specifically embodying the present, it's difficult for him to focus on anything other than the here and now, an idea unique to this version of the story.
The Naked Gun film series does this with Frank Drebin, relative to his appearances in Police Squad!. In Police Squad!, he's generally shown to be a highly successful cop, bordering on The Ace, with his main joke being the fact that "competent policework" in the world of the series is totally ludicrous and yet he handles it with the utmost seriousness. In The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! and its sequels, he's shown to be more of a bumbling idiot who frequently screws up and isn't given much respect, being more of an Accidental Hero.
Sleeping with the Enemy's film version makes the heroine much stupider than she was in the book. In the latter, she kept her wedding ring on while the film has her flush it down the toilet (and that's one of the reasons her husband discovers she's faked her death). She keeps her wig on in Iowa, while the film has her take it off as soon as she gets there. Additionally, the circumstances surrounding how her husband discovers the swimming lessons are changed; in the book, he just bumped into a friend at the supermarket who was eventually cajoled into revealing the lessons. In the film, Laura gave her name and number, and one of the friends phones the husband to offer condolences. She's also much more tight-lipped in the book than the film.
King Shark from The Suicide Squad. While King Shark has never been a genius in any medium he's appeared in, this one is a childish meathead who only speaks in broken Hulk Speak and has to be herded around from place to place like a small child.
Superman (2025) examples:
- Ultraman undergoes this and Adaptational Non Sapience, going from a fully conscious alternate timeline Evil Counterpart to Superman to a Dumb Muscle enforcer in the control of Lex Luthor. This is because he's a genetic clone of Superman that Lex deliberately made this way so he'd have total control of a means of ruining Superman.
- Zig-Zagged with Eve Tessmacher, who comes off as much more of a ditzy Dumb Blonde than previous incarnations. It later turns out to be a case of Obfuscating Stupidity, including feeding Jimmy Olsen intel hidden in her glamor shots.
- For the Kent couple, particularly Martha, they pushed the envelope in making them technologically blind elderly yokels, whereas their usual portrayals usually don't veer in such a direction.
Played for laughs in Team America: World Police with Matt Damon. While by all indications a pretty thoughtful guy in real life, the puppet of him "came out looking retarded" in the manufacturing process per Trey Parker and Matt Stone's words, so they changed his personality to fit. In the film, he can only say his own name.
Voltes V: Legacy, the Live-Action Adaptation of Voltes V does this to Heinel and Katherine (who are named "Zardoz" and "Zandra" respectively).
- When Zardoz leads the Voltes team straight to his trap, instead of killing them (rendering the Super Robot without its pilots and leaving Earth without it's only protectors, therefore fulfilling his role of being a Conquering Alien Prince), he chooses to keep them alive and spar with them....despite spending the vast majority of previous episodes trying to murder them.
- Zardoz disguises himself as a human to gather information on Camp Big Falcon and learns that the youngest pilot of the Voltes team, John, is a Gadgeteer Genius. When he has the Voltes team in his trap, Steve begs him to let Jon since he is just a child. Zardoz decides to have mercy and releases him, and Jon proceeds to rig the teleporter device to rescue the Voltes team. In contrast, Heinel in the original anime was willing to hurt children and refused to show Kenichi any mercy.
- In the original anime, when Katherine found out that Zuhl was The Mole, she set up a trap for him using a Robot Me of Heinel, and then tried to have him killed off with a bomb. However, when Zandra found out that Judalah is a turncoat, she gathers her soldiers but toys with for her own entertainment, which leads to Judalah escaping.
Downplayed in the X-Men Film Series. While Wolverine is by no means stupid, the film version lacks his comic counterpart's worldliness and Cunning Linguist skills. In fairness, the film version is suffering from amnesia for most of the time we see him for, and he is shown to be fluent in both French and Japanese at various points.

Literature

Godzilla vs. Kong — The Official Movie Novelization has an exchange that wasn't present in the finished film: Mark Russell and Director Guillerman can't decide straight away whether they're rooting for Godzilla or Mechagodzilla. This would normally be quite reasonable, except that MonsterVerse Godzilla is normally exclusively heroic, whereas Mechagodzilla just annihilated several blocks of Hong Kong filled with people simply because he could. The book also confirms that Mark hasn't been the most competent father since Madison started to live with him following her mother's death, self-destructively overcompensating for his previous absence from his daughter's life by acting coddling and controlling towards her, and living in complete denial of how this is blatantly frustrating Madison and driving a wedge between them all over again; whereas the movie only suggested this was the case.
Maskerade which adapts/spoofs The Phantom of the Opera gives this treatment to Christine to an even greater extent than the musical (see below in Theatre). While musical Christine at least got to keep her great vocal talent in the latter despite losing her agency and bravery from the book, in Terry Pratchett’s version Christine lacks even her great singing voice being a Innocently Insensitive Brainless Beauty who only gets by through her looks and a father pressuring the owners to get her a leading part. This was likely an intentional jab from Pratchett to highlight the shallow standards of the industry as the real protagonist Agnes Nitt has all Christine’s musical strengths from the source material but doesn’t share her beauty thus is looked down upon.
Nigel Bruce is notorious for depicting Watson from Sherlock Holmes as a heavyset buffoon, while in the original books he was a Badass Bookworm former British Army doctor. Parodied in a strip of Hark! A Vagrant, in which two different Watsons appear, one of whom really loves his jam.

Live-Action TV

In Cadfael, a plot point in "The Devil's Novice" is condensed by making the involved characters either hubristic or stupid. The dead man, Peter Clemence, is identified by his fancy jewelry, and it's revealed that Tristan, Roswitha (Rosanna in the show) and Janyn were involved in the murder and cover-up when Roswitha's bridesmaid quietly pins Clemence's large cloak-pin to Roswitha—in the excitement of the wedding, they don't notice until Cadfael and the other investigators point it out. In the show, Rosanna chooses to wear it, even though it's just as big and distinctive as it's described in the book.
Game of Thrones:
- In the books, Sansa Stark can spout historical and literary trivia and identify Renly Baratheon and Barristan Selmy purely by Sherlock Scan, but in the show, she literally thinks "shift" is a vulgar word for dung. She also remains oblivious to subtle character clues like Loras Tyrell's chivalrous disinterest and Littlefinger's Stepford Smile instead of sensing them after a single conversation, and she trusts her mysterious new maid Shae "even though she tells me not to" rather than assuming she's a spy (which is true of her maids in the novels).
- Arya Stark is a lot more heedless and prone to Revenge Before Reason than in the books, where she prefers to avoid confrontations and only fight when she has no other choice. For instance, in "Mhysa", she attacks a man-at-arms for bragging about desecrating her brother Robb's body without any heed to his comrades, which simply doesn't happen in the books, and in "Two Swords" she's intent on confronting several soldiers at an inn despite the Hound's protests, while in the books it's the Hound who rushes into the inn despite Arya's protests and she only loses control on the last man standing at the end of the fight.
- Robb Stark is made more brash and impulsive due to the show's changes to his marriage. In the books, he marries Jeyne Westerling to save her from being Defiled Forever by their one-night stand, fully knowing it's a terrible move because he's already promised Walder Frey he'll marry one of his daughters but choosing Jeyne's honour anyway. The televised version sees him marry Talisa Maegyr, who faces no such dilemma, because he can't control his raging... love for her and refuses to hear what a stupid move it is. He also brings his entire court to the Twins for the Red Wedding in the show, resulting in all of them being either killed or captured. Granted, he doesn't foresee the Freys' betrayal in the novels either, but he does recognize the foolishness of keeping all his eggs in one basket and therefore leaves his wife at Riverrun with the Blackfish rather than bringing her with him.
- Stannis Baratheon needs to be told of the Lannister incest by Ned Stark and schooled on the Dance of the Dragons by his own daughter Shireen in the show. In the books, he's the first to raise suspicions of incest and co-investigates with Jon Arryn, and he knows enough history to specifically include a faction leader of the Dance in a list of historical traitors. He's also initially very cynical of Melisandre and her religion in the books but dives right into fundamentalism in the show, and his military tactics always seem to boil down to direct assaults.
- Mace Tyrell isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer in the books either but he's far from the clueless oaf depicted in the show. For instance, his feasting at Storm's End is implied to have been a psychological weapon against Stannis's starving garrison and he personally commands the right wing of the army in the Battle of the Blackwater, which are things that are very hard to imagine him doing in the show.
- Roose Bolton, for all his political and psychological savvy, can't seem to see what a viper his son Ramsay is and openly rebels against the Lannisters before he's ready by marrying Ramsay to Sansa (which is never actually shown to win him any support among other Northerners), leaving Littlefinger free to descend on them with an army. Contrast this with the books, where Roose keeps Ramsay on a short leash by controlling his goons and strengthens his ties to the Lannisters by acquiring an imposter Stark bride from them, which brings half the North at least begrudgingly to his side and provides him thousands of reinforcements from the south. In addition, the book version of Roose doesn't constantly antagonize his psychologically unstable son by threatening to take away his inheritance. In fact, he's creepily at peace with the fact that Ramsay will eventually kill any heirs Roose and his new wife Fat Walda Frey produce since Roose himself is too old to raise new sons to manhood and "boy lords are the bane of any House."
- The show portrays the Sand Snakes as Dumb Muscle whose main pursuits are bickering and trying to kill people, and even when they try to get involved in diplomacy they're just insulted and told to "let the grown women speak." In the books, they're still stubborn and hotheaded but only Obara could even be accused of not also being cunning and politically aware, and Prince Doran Martell even tasks Nymeria and Tyene with infiltrating the Small Council and the Faith Militant for him. Tyene Sand, although still a Master Poisoner in the show, displays none of the cunning she does in the books, where she suggests invoking Dorne's gender-neutral inheritance laws to crown Myrcella Baratheon (who is engaged to Doran's son Trystane) as a rival to Myrcella's brother Tommen, the Lannister-supported Puppet King of the Seven Kingdoms, in an attempt to lure the Lannisters into an unwise attack on their almost-impregnable Thirsty Desert kingdom. Instead she comes across as merely a petulant Psychopathic Womanchild who still calls her mother "Mama."
- Hand in hand with other deviations, Jon Snow makes more mistakes or just doesn't get to be as clever as in the novels, particularly in his leadership which—unlike The Strategist of the novels—mostly amounts to being a Frontline General in numerous battles and skirmishes, many of which are likely or even unequivocal defeats until The Cavalry bails him out. He also often neglects important administration or delegates it to his entourage, whereas in the books he's something of a Badass Bureaucrat Pen-Pushing President who competently institutes major logistical reforms, has greenhouses built, and frequently negotiates treaties, alliances and loans in a cunning manner. Some fans chalk this divergence all up to not spending enough time being mentored by Qhorin Halfhand in Season 2. However, Book Jon possessed a useful working knowledge of Westerosi history and culture from the start due to his noble education at Winterfell and was noted by Tyrion Lannister himself as a good reader of people and situations, traits not really demonstrated in the show, nor does Show Jon provide Stannis with key advice like his book counterpart did.
House of the Dragon: The testimonies in Fire & Blood seemingly indicated that the plan to kill one of the princes was near-perfect in execution, and that Blood and Cheese duo got along well enough as Those Two Guys. Here, they bicker when Cheese admits he doesn't know the upstairs layout, and are clearly improvising during their search for Aemond before panicking and settling on their contingency plan to kill Jaehaerys. Of course, the aforementioned testimonies are heavily implied to be unreliable, meaning there might have been a vested interest in portraying the two men as brilliant assassins executing a fool-proof plot instead of two borderline Stupid Crooks who stumbled their way through an embarassing lack of security at the Red Keep to murder the young prince in his bed. It also serves to paint Rhaenyra as a cold-blooded Queen who ruthlessly ordered the murder of a child as a Revenge by Proxy as opposed to ordering the death of the man directly responsible for the murder of her own son (Daemon ordered to kill the child as a contingency plan).
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: In the lore, Galadriel was suspicious of Annatar, who was Sauron in disguise, pretty much the second she met him. Here, she develops feelings for Halbrand, an equivalent identity forged by Sauron, and only finds out who he really is after coming upon evidence that he lied about his identity. What's worse is that even after finding this out, she decides to keep it a secret out of shame, even though Sauron knows that the Elves are going to forge the Rings of Power.
In The Muppet Show (1976), the Swedish Chef, while clumsy and a little scatterbrained, is still a competent chef, whose sketches' humour is usually derived from the bizarre ways he cooks (often involving large weapons), the food itself fighting back (typically when it's a live animal), or something completely out of left field happening (such as when he discovered he had a coffee pot growing out of his head). In Muppets Now (2020), the Swedish Chef cannot handle a single thing correctly in the kitchen, and usually just makes a mess while the guest star (a real-life celebrity chef) demonstrates a recipe. In one episode, he can't even make rice properly without both a rice cooker and his kitchen aid Beverly supervising him.
Happens a few times in Power Rangers, which adapts Japan's Super Sentai series, and it tends to overlap with Demoted to Extra:
- Consider America's Time Force vs. Japan's Timeranger. In Timeranger, futuristic crime lord Don Dolnero is the Big Bad, at least at first. In Time Force, Dolnero is renamed Gluto, and he's the hapless comical minion of the mutant terrorist Ransik.
- In Japan's Kyoryuger, the Big Bad is a reptilian beast called Deboth, who later evolves into a smarter human-shaped form. America's Dino Charge replaces him with Sledge, an evil alien bounty hunter with different motives. Deboth's bestial form is repackaged as Greenzilla, Sledge's ultimate weapon.
Persuasion: The original book versus ITV's made-for-TV movie adaptation:
- Mary Musgrove of the book is a self-absorbed, whiny woman constantly seeking attention, mostly by playing sick. She's certainly not the sharpest tool in the box, but nothing in the book suggests that her intelligence is below average. In the 2007 movie, she's absolutely, utterly idiotic and behaves like a lunatic, always twitching and jerking about, unable to read other people, speaking with a nasal voice and laughing and whining all the time and manages to embarrass herself at every opportunity.
- Charles Musgrove is a fairly intelligent and friendly chap in the book. In the 2007 adaptation, he's a stupid, ditzy guy who doesn't seem to realize how embarrassing his wife is and behaves like a dimwit. For instance, unlike in the book, he doesn't seem to realize that his wife only pretends to be ill.
The 2015 Richie Rich series transforms Richie's father (renamed from Richard Rich Sr. to Cliff Rich) from the kindhearted, levelheaded Honest Corporate Executive of the comics and most adaptations into a lazy, dimwitted Manchild.
Jessica Wakefield in the television adaptation of Sweet Valley High. While her academic performance tended to vary in the books Jessica was almost always depicted as smart, sometimes extremely so. The TV version ranges from being cunning but Book Dumb to being a Brainless Beauty whose stupidity causes any scheme she embarks on to implode.
The Worst Witch's 1998 series.
- Agatha Cackle becomes far more Stupid Evil in the series (admittedly this is due to Adaptation Expansion giving her more screentime than the half a chapter she had in the book) and prone to evil gloating - which allows others to either figure out her evil plans or surprise her.
- Miss Bat becomes a Cloud Cuckoo Lander in the series, as opposed to her stern and strict persona in the books. She even flirts with being a Misplaced Kindergarten Teacher.
In the live-action drama based on Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches, Ryu Yamada's inability to grasp complicated concepts reaches new heights. In the drama, he generally cannot understand any of his friends' observations without long explanations, the most noteworthy example being when Shiraishi has to use five minutes of an episode to explain to him how his copy power works, and whose powers he has copied. In the manga, the same conversation only takes a few panels, and Yamada immediately grasps what's going on once Shiraishi mentions that she is the one with the body-swap power.

Theatre

Carmen (1875): The opera omits Carmen's intelligence in the novella, such as her knowledge of Don José's native Basque and her schemes to lead and uphold her gang.
The Phantom of the Opera: Christine would get hit with this like a ton of bricks in Andrew Loyd Webber’s version of the story. In Gaston Leroux‘s original novel Christine certainly has naive traits but she’s still pretty damn intelligent, has a great deal of pluck and understands the danger she’s in after the Phantom reveals himself to her. The musical version of Christine is firmly The Ingenue and is completely susceptible to the Phantom’s mind games, genuinely believing he is supernatural for most of the musical unlike the novel.
Hamilton: In "Hurricane", Hamilton decides to write the Reynolds Pamphlet out of paranoia that his enemies would reveal his secret, but in real life it was for a far more sensible reason. By the time the pamphlet was published, the speculation charges mentioned in "We Know" had made their way to journalists and were publicly released, with said journalists openly accusing Hamilton of financial crimes. Thus, Hamilton released the pamphlet hoping that by admitting to the affair but denying the financial crimes he would be considered trustworthy and the charges would be forgotten (it actually worked too, but his reputation never fully recovered). In short, the historical corruption charges were already public, so his release of the pamphlet made more sense, while the theatrical corruption charges see Hamilton try to get out ahead of them and come out looking worse off for it.
Westeros: An American Musical: In the original story, Bronn could be suprisingly smart for a low-born sellsword. His parody version is a fairly minor character whose vocabulary is reduced to Pokémon Speak, which makes it hard to portray him anywhere near as smart as his canon counterpart.
Legally Blonde: In the movie, Elle decides to better herself and take law school seriously all on her own, while the musical has Emmett having to guide her through the same process step by step. She also doesn't give up on getting Warner back until after she gets the internship instead of having her epiphany at the party. Justified, as the change is meant to develop Emmett as a character more and also build a stronger foundation for Elle's eventual romance with him. In addition, it is common for law school students to create study groups to go through the material, since it's hard to go through it all alone, so Emmett also serves this role.

Video Games

The epilogue of Discworld II hinges on Granny Weatherwax, mistress of headology, falling for some blatant Reverse Psychology by Rincewind, who even snarks about how stupid she was to do so.
Rincewind: What a clever woman! Clever... yet oddly dumb...
Throgg in Warhammer, particularly in the End Times, is a highly eloquent, philosophical and well-spoken servant of Chaos. In Total War: Warhammer he is intelligent... for a troll, speaking in broken English, frequently talking about eating his enemies and being quite dumber. The description of some of his skills do hint that the intelligence might still be there, but voice-wise, it doesn't really show up.

Web Animation

Danganronpa But Really Really Fast: In the original game, Leon Kuwata was at worst someone Brilliant, but Lazy who fell victim to Didn't Think This Through covering up his murder of Sayaka Maizono, with the idol actually making an attempt to hide her Dying Clue from him and him actually making an attempt to get rid of Sayaka's blood. Here, Sayaka is able to write a full sentence accusing him without him noticing (in Italian, but his full name is clearly visible) and he's completely drenched in her blood even during the investigation.
Fazbear and Friends (ZAMination):
- In the games, Bonnie was an enemy for the player who could stalk from the darkness, and according to Scott Cawton's words, he was the scariest one in the first game. However, here he is much dumber, like his original counterpart, he is mischievous and also obsessed with eating pizza.
- Boris the wolf, was an ally of Henry who helps him in chapter 3, here Boris is much dumber where he confuses Foxy with the reflection of a mirror, he confuses the words of the ritual that Bendy was doing and he is very bad at playing Dogeball.
- The Among Us was a crew member who always goes about his work while being stalked by the impostor. In the series, he is not very intelligent, he only speaks Galamtias with his name, during The Glass Bridge, he falls despite not stepping on any fragile glass and his language fails to make people not understand him.
- Baldi was a sadistic teacher who always got angry every time the player answered a question wrong, here he is much less smart than his game self, every time he has the opportunity to teach what they face, he ends up dying in the middle of his explanations, and allows himself to be killed by Young-Hee just because he thinks she is a good student girl even though she is a robot.
- Glamrock Freddy is not up to the task of being a father figure for Gregory, whenever the latter needs help, Glamrock Freddy only ends up making the situation worse, such as following him to the bathroom, activating the alarm by accident, among other things that his original counterpart would never do, in addition he also proves to be a coward like Gregory.
- The Toys of Poppy Playtime: Huggy Wuggy was much more dangerous in the original game, but here he has fear, a simple and cowardly voice and a crazy instinct, Mommy Long Legs was also like that, but here he is given a silly personality and very bad in the aspects of playing Musical Memory, even the players are much worse still, first, Girl Player is excited to visit the toy store instead of going to investigate and also bother the toys that are alive, Pro Player is dedicated to recording blogs while he is in the factory and chases Huggy Wuggy, and also tries to pay Mommy Long Legs in Bitcoin (that was a mistake for him) and Noob Player believes that the toys are not all bad, even when he wakes up Boxy Boo from his box.
FreedomToons: The way that Dave Rubin is portrayed is basically FreedomToons's answer to Team America: World Police's Matt Damon. The only barely coherent phrase he can utter is "I agree with that".
Miraculous Chibi: Everyone in this series acts much dumber than their normal counterparts. Marinette's schemes are even less poorly thought-out, Adrien is even more oblivious to Marinette's crush on him, Chloe is even easier to trick, etc.
The Movie of the Century:
- In the first episode, Darth Vader gets a call from the Emperor to capture Kirby — only that it is later revealed it was Squidward posing as the Emperor without even wearing a disguise.
- Later on, after he had both Kirby and the Cheat captured, they escape and leave behind obvious cardboard boxes with their likeness badly drawn onto them — which Vader promptly gets fooled by until the very moment Kirby is brought in front of him again.
SMG4:
- It's probably safe to say that most of the Mario cast was hit by this, but none more so than Mario himself. Canon Mario is intelligent enough to qualify for a doctorate and can come up with a cunning plan when needed. The SMG4 take on Mario can't even count and probably qualifies as having brain damage.
- Steve from Minecraft also qualifies, as he is even stupider than Mario.
- "SMG4's Origins" ends up explaining just why everyone has room temperature IQ. We see the world as it was before the first blooper and it shows the cast much closer to their canon counterparts until the Guardian Pod that SMG4 came in and acted as The Corruption, which caused the populace to lose intelligence and sanity. When Mario took a hit from it at point-blank range, we see him transform into the cross-eyed, big mustached, gaping mouth version he appears as in the videos.

Web Videos

While Ron wasn't exactly the most Book Smart of the trio in Harry Potter, he was born and raised in a Wizarding Family and was the most intuitively familiar with Wizarding customs of the trio. In Welcome Back, Potter, he's a Fratbro that does whatever Jarry says and comes across as a total ditz.
The Spider (Just Preston): Spider-Man is often defined by, among other things, his wit and intelligence. Here, his mutation alters his brain chemistry and makes him more aggressive, only growing worse as the mutation worsens until he eventually becomes too reluctant to speak.
Sword Art Online Abridged: Unlike his canon counterpart, who was held up as a master of VR game development, Kayaba is a demonstrable failure of a designer, with SAO suffering from bugs and the fact that there's no defense against players stealing NPCs, up to and including the tutorial. Kirito even claims that nobody would have ever bought a copy if it wasn't the first VR game.

Western Animation

The Addams Family (1992) made Pugsley Addams significantly dumber than he was in previous continuities, in contrast to being a boy genius in the 1960's live-action television show and 2019 MGM animated film and having average intelligence in the live-action film by Orion and Paramount and its sequel.
While he was still able to threaten a scientist into building him a suit to contain his powers, Mr. Freeze's counterpart in The Batman (2004) isn't a scientist like most other incarnations.
Bunnicula: In the books, Harold is the smart one out of the three pets, having to put up with the scatterbrained Chester and the hare-brained title lapin. But in the TV series, Harold is often portrayed as being impossibly stupid in comparison to the now-competent Chester and Bunn.
Chase Devineaux in the Carmen Sandiego Word Detective and Math Detective games was one of Carmen's former partners, and whom she considers a Worthy Opponent as he gives you instructions on accomplishing your goals. In the Carmen Sandiego Netflix series, Chase tends to grab the Idiot Ball more than once, and Carmen easily outruns him. He also seems to have little knowledge of history and geography, making him less capable of seeing the big picture of Carmen's plans and his obsession with capturing her makes him blind to the times where she is not the enemy. Fortunately for fans who preferred the original characterization, Chase does start getting better during Season Two and he continues to get better as the series progresses.
In Clerks: The Animated Series, Randal is much dumber than he was in the original film (and also more self-assured).
Curbside, an unsuccessful pilot revolving around an Animated Anthology starring revamped versions of Terrytoons characters, gave this treatment to Muskie Muskrat from The Deputy Dawg Show. Rather than a clever trickster who regularly outwitted Deputy Dawg, he is made Deputy Dawg's bumbling sidekick who caused him grief unintentionally through his idiocy.
The Cuphead Show!: In the game Cuphead could do some dumb things due to being impulsive and greedy, but otherwise seemed fairly average in intelligence, while in the show he's a borderline Idiot Hero to the extent that it's a miracle he hasn't killed himself yet.
Darkstalkers: Despite being a mummy whose brain was most likely removed post-mortem according to ancient Egyptian tradition, Anakaris in the original games was a rather eloquent figure well-versed in magic. Here, most of his dialogue is incoherent rambling and he demonstrates little, if any of the intelligence he displayed in the games.
DC Animated Universe:
- Batman: The Animated Series:
  - The series's take on Hugo Strange is far less clever as a manipulator or as an inventor than his Psycho Psychologist and Mad Scientist comics counterpart. His discovery of Bruce Wayne's Secret Identity as Batman was less of him doing a proper psychological profile on Bruce and more of something he stumbled upon while scanning Bruce's mind. Likewise, his entire plan to auction Batman's secret identity to the supervillains comes across as extremely foolish since, unlike his comics counterpart, he never set up a bullet-proof glass wall to ensure the villains don't attack him if they feel swindled or just want to get the secret for free.
  - While not a complete idiot like in Batman & Robin, Bane still isn't as smart as his comics counterpart, who's a strategist on par with Batman and even figured out Bruce was Batman.
- Justice League reimagines Dr. Destiny as a petty criminal who got his powers via volunteering for experiments with a device called the "Materioptikon". In the comics, Dr. Destiny was a Mad Scientist and, while The Sandman (1989) revealed that the power source was Morpheus's dreamstone, the Materioptikon was something that he built himself.
DC Super Hero Girls (2019):
- Supergirl is more of an impulsive Dumb Muscle than her mainline comics incarnation, being shown to do poorly in the field of academics and preferring to beat enemies with her fists instead of thinking over a strategy.
- This continuity's Barry Allen is considerably stupider than normal, as "#BackInAFlash" has him unable to understand Batgirl's verbose explanation on how he can use his super speed to travel through time, while "#ScrambledEggs" has him break his and Carter Hall's assigned egg by putting it under Carter's rear under the flawed logic that Carter's alter ego being Hawkman and birds typically hatching eggs means that putting the egg under his keister is the best means of keeping the egg safe.
Devil May Cry (2025): Dante in the games is something of a Manchild who frequently goofs around, however a lot of this is actually Obfuscating Stupidity as The Trickster to catch opponents off-guard. Dante is actually much smarter and more mature than he seems, and he knows full well about his demonic parentage — he just simply doesn’t like acknowledging it. Here Dante is genuinely an Idiot Hero who doesn’t even know he is part-demon, even though he obviously has a Healing Factor and doesn’t know Sparda is his father either. While there’s a few moments of Dante’s skilful brilliance from the games, they are few and far between, and he is more commonly outwitted by opponents.
DuckTales (2017)
- In the comics and original series, Dewey was just as smart as his brothers, the latter indicating at times that Dewey was slightly more intelligent than Huey and Louie. Here, he's by far the dumbest of the triplets, having little to no sense of caution, and is heavily implied to have suffered brain damage from being dropped as an egg. Despite this, he still shows some moments of intellect during adventures from time to time.
- In Darkwing Duck Steelbeak was one of Darkwing’s smarter enemies, being able to get the upper hand on him on several occasions and often didn’t fall for his disguises and traps, and was competent enough to command a small army. Here, he is a complete idiot who can’t do anything he is commanded to right, messes up easy tasks, and works as a henchman rather than being a boss. That said, Word of God explains that he just recently joined F.O.W.L. and will grow more dangerous in his subsequent appearances. And sure enough, in the series finale he uses the Intelliray on himself to become smarter and becomes a Diabolical Mastermind as in the original show.
- This is also the case for Flintheart Glomgold. In the comics and original series, he was a clever schemer. In this show, he is a complete moron to the point he called for tails when flipping a Two-Headed Coin and actually believed Scrooge died from a disease made up by Glomgold himself.
- It gets zig-zagged from time to time with Launchpad McQuack, Depending on the Writer. Many an episode depicts him as a little on the dim side compared to the laid-back version seen in the original, sometimes showcasing him as being unable to discern a movie from real life. Other times, he just a very enthusiastic pilot who happens to show a lot of Hidden Depths. That being said, every depiction holds no bars when it comes to his infamous tendencies to crashing anything, including himself!
Harley Quinn (2019)
- The show's version of Bane is not the Genius Bruiser of the comics or The Dark Knight Rises (despite his voice mimicking the latter), but rather a big nerd who likes smoothies, magic tricks, and stand-up comedy, with a very short fuse and an obsession with Stuff Blowing Up. He's not as dumb as his iteration from Batman & Robin though, and he shown to be incredibly dangerous when he needs to be, and surprisingly well adjusted compared to his fellow villains, making him one of the few villains in Gotham that Harley actually likes.
- Clayface is also hit with this. The original version was no genius by any stretch of the imagination, but he at least was clever enough to hide himself in plain sight until the situation called for it. This Clayface, however, is so meticulously obsessed with being an actor that he often blows his cover or makes crucial mistakes to stay in character, to the point that others are easily able to pick up on his duplicity. That being said, he does get a little smarter in Season 2.
House of Mouse:
- Daisy Duck comes across as a The Ditz and an airhead in this Iteration, in contrast to her normal portrayal that shows her in a generally normal light.
- While Scrooge McDuck is always portrayed as a miser, he usually also is a competent buiseness man. In hisbappearance in "House of Scrooge" he doesn't show any of that skills, even stating he has no idea of the show bizz and just wants the money and his actions to cheapen the show are mostly without any thoughts.
The Incredible Hulk (1996) focuses more on She-Hulk's funny and flirtatious side instead of her skills as a lawyer — and the one episode that sees her work as a lawyer doesn't present her in a good light.
The Looney Tunes Show:
- Daffy Duck in the original shorts was more gullible and a bit naive than anything else but he was portrayed as intelligent when it suited him. In The Looney Tunes Show, he is portrayed as a total dumbass who can't do anything right.
- Lola Bunny, although she doesn't get many lines, seems reasonably intelligent in Space Jam. In The Looney Tunes Show, she's a total Cloudcuckoolander. It's somewhat inverted with New Looney Tunes, where she is more competent again but still fairly crazy.
- Cecil Turtle gets this along with Adaptational Jerkass and Villainy in The Looney Tunes Show. Cecil in the original shorts was one of the few characters to ever beat Bugs Bunny by outwitting him. He was also one of the few to see through Bugs's obvious disguise but plays along in order to exploit Bugs's bruised ego and trick him into putting himself at a disadvantage. Cecil here, as a result of being the one to antagonize Bugs first, ends up on the receiving end of Bugs's karmic trickery, falling for Bugs's disguises and being played like a fiddle. In his second appearance when he has Bugs and Porky at gunpoint, Bugs exploits his ego by making him share the details of his crimes and tricking him into siting back on Daffy's broken recliner, knocking himself out.
While by no means dumb, Norman Osborn in Marvel's Spider-Man gets blindsided by his arrogance more often than in other incarnations, such as failing to realize Otto Octavius was going to betray him as soon as he told Otto that he owns Otto's tech.
My Adventures with Superman:
- The titular character gets hit with a downplayed case of this trope. He's nowhere near an idiot and overall fairly intelligent, but unlike his comic counterpart, he's absolutely terrible at keeping his secret identity under wraps, regularly displaying his powers in obvious ways and then coming up with unconvincing lies to try and cover it up. Lois is quickly able to deduce that Clark is Superman partly because of this, while Jimmy is revealed to have known about Clark's superpowered status for years because he kept accidentally breaking things and coming up with unbelievable excuses.
- Comic character Professor Ivo is a genius Mad Scientist responsible for such scientific feats as discovering the key to immortality and creating Amazo, a robot capable of absorbing the powers of the Justice League. This show's counterpart, Dr. Ivo, meanwhile, is still a successful scientist and tech entrepreneur, as well as an alleged Teen Genius, but is also portrayed as incredibly impulsive and is implied to have leeched off the work of his assistant Alex when it came to working on the Parasite suit. To add to this, as the season progresses, Ivo rapidly undergoes Sanity Slippage, becoming more and more of a raving lunatic with every appearance. By the time season 2 rolls around, he's shown to have mentally degraded into a near-mindless brute.
- In the comics, Heat Wave invented all of his own tech and has never had any problems with maintaining them. This show's version of the character, meanwhile, not only didn't invent her tech, but also doesn't seem particularly good as maintaining them, with them constantly malfunctioning throughout her debut episode.
Scooby-Doo:
- Fred in the original series was the smartest member of the gang right next to Velma, if somewhat generic, but many adaptations, most notably A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, What's New, Scooby-Doo?, and Velma, turn him into a Cloudcuckoolander (with the latter in particular making him into a wealthy Manchild). He also started out this way in Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated (even taking his fondness for traps even further), but in that show's second season he Took a Level in Badass and got a lot more competent (though he was still eccentric), while Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! sticks closer to his initial portrayal, though he is far more harsher in that show.
- Speaking of Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!, Daphne is turned into an airhead who lacks common sense, though she is still competent.
- Velma Dinkley from Velma is much less intelligent in the series given how she constantly jumps to conclusions without thinking things through, and doesn't do well in class. In the case of the latter, she even has to copy homework notes from Shaggy/Norville, who's usually not that intelligent.
While the 1965 version of Morocco Mole from Secret Squirrel was a Bumbling Sidekick, in the 90's revival, Super Secret Secret Squirrel, he's outright Too Dumb to Live.
Happens in-universe in The Simpsons episode "Homer to the Max". The character Homer Simpson in the Show Within a Show Police Cops starts out as a smart badass hero in the pilot episode, only to be replaced with a Bumbling Sidekick in the series proper, much to Homer's (the real one's) dismay.
Sonic the Hedgehog:
- In the original games, Sonic was an excellent combatant and could impart great insight in general to others on occasion. He was also pretty sharp-witted, with official sources stating that Rouge sees him as the one guy she can't outsmart. Contrary to this, SatAM and its tie-in comic made him rather ignorant and Book Dumb (game!Sonic was established to enjoy reading books on rainy days), as well as much more reckless, immature and full of himself, usually so that he would play the role of the ever-wrong Red Oni to Sally's always-right Blue Oni.
- Similarly, Tails was a kid Gadgeteer Genius in the games. The 90s western cartoons and comics ignored this side of him, turning him into a more stereotypically immature Kid Sidekick and Tagalong Kid. SatAM notably had Canon Foreigners Rotor and later Sally play the role of Gadgeteer Genius instead, with Tails being Demoted to Extra as a result.
- Sonic Boom:
  - In the original games, Knuckles was merely Super Gullible and poor at dealing with people, having lived in isolation for most of his life. He was still able to perform such feats as translating ancient runes. Here, he's little more than Dumb Muscle; he's illiterate, it takes him a few seconds to understand left from right and he can't even count.
  - Dr. Eggman. While his game counterpart was also a comical character, he was more of a Not-So-Harmless Villain, capable of concocting good plans and being a real threat. This incarnation is more of an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain who tends to come up with ridiculous plans that rarely pose a major threat.
- Sonic Prime: In contrast to his video game counterpart, this series' incarnation of Sonic makes numerous mistakes with disastrous consequences (the entire premise gets started because he accidentally destroyed the Prism Shard despite his friends' warnings) and is much less smart, often requiring others such as Shadow to ring him in. Not helping matters is that the producers of Prime have stated that the series is canon to the games; the latest one to have come out during the show's production, Sonic Frontiers, had Sonic at arguably his most empathetic and most competent.
Spider-Man: The Animated Series: In the comics, the Hobie Brown version of the Prowler was a Gadgeteer Genius and made his suit himself. In the series, Hobie has no such skills and has to turn to The Kingpin's men to get his suit.
Tak and the Power of Juju (2007) made Tak noticeably dumber than he was in the video games.
Teen Titans (2003): Contemporary Caveman Gnarrk is depicted as only being able to say his name, when his comic counterpart eventually learned to speak English.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
- The 1987 series Turtles and Shredder from Turtles Forever are portrayed as reckless, immature, pizza obsessed idiots and a clownish buffoon respectively. In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987), the Turtles were a lot more careful in their actions and while they didn't think things through from time to time, they weren't as dumb and incompetent as the film made them out to be, Leonardo and Donatello took most situations seriously, and Shredder though having comical moments here and there could be a major threat and was a competent fighter who usually got the better of the turtles in hand to hand combat.
- While Michelangelo has been depicted as the most laid-back and even bumbling member of the turtles before, his 2012 counterpart is a complete idiot. From nearly getting the Turtles killed by Shredder because he wasted all their smoke bombs previously for the most trivial of reasons, to nearly getting himself killed by pouring experimental goo of Donatello's on himself that was clearly labeled as toxic and dangerous. The episode "Journey to the Center of Mikey's Mind" even revealed he never mentally matured past the age of six.

Adaptational Dumbass
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Adaptational Dumbass
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