Warning: constant exposure to the Watterson family will drive you nuts, regardless of who you are.
"You seemed smarter than me when I met you."
— Jeff Winger to Britta Perry, Community, "Course Listing Unavailable"
As a series progresses, characters will change along the way. One of the most notable ways is when a character who used to be the sanest person in the room becomes just as goofy as the people that surround them. This trope refers to characters who were once the voice of reason in their story but, for one reason or another, no longer hold that role. Whether it's due to their quirks being amplified, becoming dumbed down, suffering from Sanity Slippage, or simply the character choosing to loosen up, they no longer serve as the grounded perspective they once did.
Sometimes, it's a case of the writers gradually altering a character's personality as the story goes on. Other times, the change is woven into the story itself, a character being influenced by their wackier friends or learning to embrace the chaos around them. In some cases, the tone or setting of the story itself changes so much to the point where a character's old "rational" perspective is no longer relevant. What once seemed absurd may now be the norm. Whatever the reason, these characters serve as an example of just how much stories and personalities can change over time. Yesterday’s straight man might just be today’s clown.
Compare and contrast Dumbass No More. Related to Not So Above It All, when they pop their eccentricities sporadically, and Giving Up on Logic, where a character simply gives up on making sense of illogical situations. Not to be confused with Sanity Slippage, where a character's mental health deteriorates, though the two may overlap. An inversion of Logical Latecomer, the character who is the Only Sane Man if only by virtue of not having been around long enough to have grown used to the madness surrounding them.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Dragon Ball: During the early days of the series, Yamcha was generally the most level-headed and rational member of the cast, especially after overcoming his fear of women, and had rather astute observation, being the first one to realize that Jackie Chun was truly Master Roshi in disguise. By the 23rd World Martial Arts tournament, Yamcha became much more boisterous and arrogant, completely underestimating Shen only to be utterly trounced by him when they fought. While Shen, who was secretly Kami taking control of his body, deliberately portrayed himself as a klutz, making Yamcha's cockiness understandable, the Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy characterization would go on to stick for Yamcha throughout Z and Super (especially in anime filler), Yamcha regularly being overconfident in his abilities, only to be easily defeated in combat or simply humiliated as a gag.
- Illkubo from Futari wa Pretty Cure starts off as a somewhat cold and distant but reasonable leader to the Dark Five...that is, until episode 19 when the others have tried his patience enough times for him to handle things personally. From then on, he reveals more and more of his real personality: a fanatical worshiper of Jaaku King with a noticeable sadist streak. By his final bout with Pretty Cure, he's gone openly Ax-Crazy and insists on trying to blow them up with an Unholy Nuke attack to score a fitting final blow.
- Future Diary: Played for Drama with Yukiteru Amano. He starts off as a rare Token Good Teammate alongside Kamado Ueshita, having no patience for the Diary Holders' wacky murder schemes and sprees. He avoided lethal force whenever possible and tried to build relationships with his fellow Diary Holders. However, after losing both of his parents, he decides to play his rivals at their own game and win, with tragic and brutal results.
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2016) has a villainous case with Ganondorf, who is initially depicted as comparatively more level-headed and diplomatic than the Psychopathic Manchild Zant and The Brute King Bulblin, even willing to entertain a We Can Rule Together pitch towards Princess Zelda. But after Link raids Hyrule Castle, and during their subsequent fights, Ganondorf's inner Ax-Crazy nature wins out, becoming a bloodthirsty monster even worse than Zant or King Bulblin.
- One Piece: Early in the series, Roronoa Zoro used to be second only to Nami for the most rational member of the Straw Hat Pirates, keeping Luffy’s impulsiveness in check, and regularly calling out members of the crew for their stupidity. As the story progressed however, he began to develop his own quirks, such as his helpless sense of direction, sleeping during a storm, or being more concerned about picking a cool pose than his life when he's about to be turned into a wax statue. While he can still act as the voice of reason for the crew during tense moments, such as in regards to letting Usopp rejoin the crew so easily, his early role as the grounded straight man of the crew has long since faded.
Fan Works
- Knight of Salem (RWBY):
- Jaune, the fic's protagonist, starts out as the Only Sane Man to the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits that consists of himself, a de-Grimmified Salem, Tyrian and other quirky, sociopathic or insane members, meandering chaotically all over Remnant. Towards the fic's end, while Jaune still considers himself the voice of reason, it becomes clear to separate characters like Pyrrha as well as to the reader that he's long since become Only Sane by Comparison at best, having gotten completely used to the group's insanity and hijinks as he no longer bothers to balk at them attempting murder or transmogrifying a terrorist into a tree.
- When Mercury first joins the gang in Mistral, he's the most frantically vocal about Salem's "eccentricities" endangering them, like her trying to land an airborne vehicle by treating it like a horse with them onboard or antagonizing the army of Atlas on their doorstep in Argus. But after they've somehow pulled through one insanity too many, and after their trip to Menagerie has gotten Mercury addicted to winning Ghira and Kali's parental approval by becoming their future son-in-law through Blake; he's gone fully native, being genuinely confused as to whether or not he should have stopped the White Fang from kidnapping Jaune.
Literature
- Discworld: The Bursar of Unseen University was once about as straight-laced and unimaginative as an accountant for an institute of higher learning is expected to be. But once the Large Ham, Egomaniac Hunter, and all-around unkillable Boisterous Bruiser Ridcully becomes Archchancellor, the Bursar's mind and sanity erodes away from the constant shouting and mismanagement until he's the biggest Cloudcuckoolander of them all, and needs to be given pills made from poisonous frogs to "hallucinate being sane".
Live-Action TV
- 30 Rock: In the pilot, producer Pete Hornberger was Liz's voice of reason and grounding, and to put it mildly, the character eventually wound up in a very different place. By series' end, he was the neurotic miserable Butt-Monkey with a bizarre pileup of backstory details that didn't make any sense.
- The whole premise of Arrested Development was Michael Bluth being the Straight Man who constantly had to bail his Dysfunctional Family out of whatever major screw up set off the plot of the latest episode. However the Netflix revival separated every member into their own special episodes to cope with the cast's scheduling conflicts. This resulted in Michael going through heavy Flanderization due to not having any wacky family members to work of off.
- Blake's 7: In the first two series, Kerr Avon acts as the Only Sane Man as a foil to the rebel leader Roj Blake. After Blake and the rest of the crew are separated at the beginning of Series 3, Avon becomes the new leader of the crew and this and their constant struggle against the evil Terran Federation, as well as other unfortunate circumstances, such as the loss of their ship, the Liberator, play havoc with his mental state, to the point that he starts to gradually lose his mind in Series 4.
- Catch-22 (2019): Yossarian spends most of the series just trying to stay out of harm's way and get sent home, in the company of flight officers who are variously Insane Admirals, would-be war profiteers, stupid, or doing their best to be happy in spite of the madness of the air war. He finally cracks in the last couple of episodes when a New Meat tailgunner gets eviscerated by flak and dies in his arms, and stops wearing any clothing other than his hat.
- Community: In the first season, Britta was positioned as the socially conscious, compassionate member of the study group, often acting as the closest thing to a voice of reason. However, as the series progressed, she became increasingly flanderized into a bumbling Soapbox Sadie who was constantly mocked for her lack of self-awareness, and tendency to mess things up (to the point where her name becomes its own word for that). By the second season, any pretense of her being the sensible one was long gone, which goes lampshaded by Jeff more than once.
- Everybody Loves Raymond: Being only a Barone by marriage, Debra starts off as a relatively stable observer of the dysfunction of her husband and his family, but by the time Amy gets together with Robert, she realizes she's become fully embroiled in the family madness.
Debra: Oh, god, I keep forgetting what a freak show this family is until somebody new comes in and looks at us like that. I remember that look. That used to be me. And now I'm one of them.
- Ross Geller from Friends started out as the token funtional adult of the group, he had his neuroses and insecurities but was constantly depicted as the most rational one. Then over time these neuroses were heavily flanderized, and he started to come off less as the adult of the group and more like a Manchild trying to convince everyone how mature he was. He also went through something of a Sanity Slippage after becoming a three time divorcee.
- It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: In the first season, Dee Reynolds was firmly the voice of reason for The Gang, often calling out the guys’ schemes and acting as a more grounded presence in contrast to their rampant selfishness and stupidity. However, this dynamic didn’t last long; Kaitlin Olson pushed for her to be just as unhinged and awful as the rest of the gang, not wanting to play the token “reasonable woman” in the cast. Starting from Season 2, Dee quickly shed any semblance of being the sane one, becoming just as narcissistic, delusional, and morally bankrupt as the rest of The Gang.
- The Office (US): Ryan starts off as a fairly grounded temp at the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin, but after a meteoric rise and fall from grace at the company he becomes an immature poser, who spends the rest of the show either locked in a mutually toxic relationship with Kelly, or constantly trying to swindle his fellow employees with hairbrained schemes which he inevitably fails to follow through on.
Video Games
- Grand Theft Auto: Lazlow started out in GTA III as a radio talk show host who commented on the Crapsack World nature of the GTA universe, in keeping with the series' broader satire of American pop culture. Later games through GTA V would bring him back and show him at various stages of his career in media, and each time, he was revealed to be Not So Above It All as more of his backstory was fleshed out. By the time of V, he's become a degenerate, egotistical game show host who hits on women and girls much younger than him with the promise to get them a leg up on the show if they sleep with him. One of those women is Michael's daughter Tracey, leading to a Papa Wolf reaction from Michael (and Trevor) and a Humiliation Conga.
Web Videos
- Dragon Ball Z Abridged:
- In the early episodes of the series, Vegeta serves as a relatively serious and competent counterpart to Nappa, playing the Straight Man to his partner’s over-the-top idiocy. Even after killing Nappa and his own quirks becoming more prominent, Vegeta remained one of the more grounded characters throughout Season 2, especially compared to the obliviousness of Goku and Krillin, or the quirky nature of The Ginyu Force. Come Season 3 however, he loses any remaining claim to being the Straight Man and—in part because he's now The Friend Nobody Likes and in part because he's now desperately trying to catch up to Goku after the past humiliations he's faced—he becomes a narcissistic rageaholic with a Hair-Trigger Temper. The role of Only Sane Man has since been inherited by his son, Trunks. In HFIL, Cell chalks the difference up to an ego boost from how many of Freeza's men he killed back on Namek.
Cell: Holy shit! No wonder Vegeta had an overinflated ego—you all fed him!
- Early in Season 2, Nail was depicted as a serious Straight Man to Guru, being constantly exasperated by his behavior, and regularly questioning his irresponsible decisions. After fusing with Piccolo and living inside his head, Nail is finally able to cut loose due to no longer serving as Guru's guardian. As such, he develops a far more comical side, regularly bantering with Piccolo about trivial things such as the lack of apps Piccolo has in his head, or new names for techniques.
- In the early episodes of the series, Vegeta serves as a relatively serious and competent counterpart to Nappa, playing the Straight Man to his partner’s over-the-top idiocy. Even after killing Nappa and his own quirks becoming more prominent, Vegeta remained one of the more grounded characters throughout Season 2, especially compared to the obliviousness of Goku and Krillin, or the quirky nature of The Ginyu Force. Come Season 3 however, he loses any remaining claim to being the Straight Man and—in part because he's now The Friend Nobody Likes and in part because he's now desperately trying to catch up to Goku after the past humiliations he's faced—he becomes a narcissistic rageaholic with a Hair-Trigger Temper. The role of Only Sane Man has since been inherited by his son, Trunks. In HFIL, Cell chalks the difference up to an ego boost from how many of Freeza's men he killed back on Namek.
Western Animation
- The Amazing World of Gumball: Whilst always a case of Only Sane by Comparison, Nicole was originally the mature voice of reason and sensibility within the chaotic Waterson family who held them together. However, by season five of the show, her competitiveness, anger issues, stubbornness, underhandedness, greed, and inability to back down when slighted, had grown to the point she lost any claim of being more rational than the others, with the role being taken over by Anais.
- Family Guy: Lois Griffin was the voice of reason for her husband Peter, though she was Not So Above It All as she had some flaws and quirks of her own. Later seasons warped her into someone who is just as impulsive and destructive as Peter is.
- Futurama: Leela was consitently the Only Sane Woman of the Planet Express crew throuout the original Fox run, she did have anger issues but that was mostly just a device to show how much of a badass she is.This trait was mostly lost throughout the shows various continuations, Leela slowly becoming a reckless hothead who resorts to violence at the drop of a hat.
- The Owl House: Kikimora is initially portrayed as the most professional of Belos' subordinates, lacking any emotional hangups or patience for her peers' bumbling. However, in season two, Kiki starts a rivalry with the Golden Guard out of growing paranoia and becomes increasingly obsessed with winning Belos' favor and killing off her coworker. As the season progresses, she is gradually reduced to an egotistical sycophant while Steve overtakes her position as the Only Sane Man up until he defects.
- Earlier episodes of Teen Titans Go! usually placed Raven in the role of the Only Sane Woman, with her generally being the most reserved and least likely to get involved with the other Titans' antics. As the show went on, Robin became the Titan least likely to get involved in antics, likely because his over-the-top frustration had more comedic value, and as a result, Raven started participating in the very sort of shenanigans she would have loathed in the first seasons, although she could still be exasperated by her team every now and again.
- Total Drama:
- In Island, Trent was one of the most level-headed and laid-back contestants, often serving as a calm and rational presence compared to the more eccentric members of the cast. He was supportive, reasonable, and generally avoided unnecessary drama. However, by Action, his character took a drastic turn, becoming increasingly obsessive and insecure in his relationship with Gwen. His paranoia led to self-sabotaging behavior, like intentionally losing challenges to impress her, as well as him growing increasingly obsessive over his self-proclaimed lucky number, 9.
- In Pahkitew Island, Dave was initially portrayed as one of the more rational and grounded contestants, often reacting with exasperation to the bizarre antics of his teammates. However, as the season progresses, his feelings for Sky and his tendency to complain get more exaggerated as the season goes on to the point where he's a complete crybaby who will do anything to get Sky to love him. By the end of the series, his Deadpan Snarker and Only Sane Man qualities have been totally abandoned. He even got progressively dumbed down throughout the season, which was lampshaded by Sky in the finale.
Sky: He was brighter before, wasn't he?
