A classic Five-Man Band only has one position for The Smart Guy who handles all its exposition and Applied Phlebotinum needs. This trope is about ensembles where this role is filled by not one, but two very different (but complementary) individuals, both in terms of personality and scientific disciplines. This allows them to cover a wide scientific background with slightly more plausibility than a classic Omnidisciplinary Scientist would, while also opening up new venues for amusingly nerdy squabbles within the team.
The basis for a Science Foil pair's contrast is varied, but a few examples (with other overlapping tropes) are:
- Hard vs. Soft Science: Experts of "hard science" (math, physics, chemistry) frequently hold up facts and numbers as the be-all-end-all of the world, who contrast with experts of humanities or "soft science" (psychology, sociology, anthropology) that utilize more abstract concepts in their work. Will commonly engage in "facts" vs. "feelings/gut" debates, or Harmony Versus Discipline discussions about working with the world or controlling it.
- Nature vs. Technology: Experts of life sciences that focus on the natural or social environment (biology, biochemistry, anthropology), working with experts of more man-made disciplines (engineering, computers, machines). Also a pair that will engage in Harmony Versus Discipline discussions.
- Theoretical vs. Applied: One character will be focused on theory, knowledge and understanding the problem of the week, and the other is more focused on applying what they know to solve the problem of the week. An example would be a studious researcher, scientist or computer whiz who focuses on books and computers and never gets out of the lab, contrasted with an engineer or mechanic that loves getting their hands dirty with field and practical work. Oftentimes they both need each other's expertise to get the job done.
- Romanticism Versus Enlightenment: One expert can wax poetic of the intricacies and beauty of their field of study, while the other will be focused on the logical understanding of one's world. The former will often also be concerned of the ethics of their work, while the latter will often only care for advancement and progress.
- Technician Versus Performer: One expert will conduct slow, deliberate, well-thought-out research and analysis of a problem and won't stop until they've come up with the perfect solution, while the other expert will never let "perfect" come before "good" and will come up with crazy, creative ideas and test them out until one works well enough.
The Science Foils will often show signs of other tropes, such as Red Oni, Blue Oni, and frequently will be of opposite genders, to increase the contrast between them, especially if the female scientist gets the aforementioned humanities/life sciences inclined discipline and the male scientist gets the "hard" sciences. Very frequently overlaps with Those Two Guys, while a particularly inseparable scientist duo may even become The Dividual.
This trope does not apply to series where most of the main characters are some form of scientist or doctor or where The Smart Guy role rotates by roster and situation. The Science Foils function as the team's "Smart Guy" together, although one or the other may take the lead on a particular project or episode.
Can overlap with Unequal Rites if the Applied Phlebotinum of the setting is magic, with experts of differing magical styles or disciplines working alongside and contrasting with each other. See also Magic Versus Science if the setting has both magic and science and thus necessitates two experts on the team for both.
Examples:
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Anime
- Macross Delta has Makina and Reina. Although they are Idol Singers first and foremost due to being members of Walkure, they also harbor additional tech skills that assist Xaos in the field. Makina is an aeronautics engineer who specializes in maintaining Xaos's Variable Fighters, has a bubbly and affectionate personality, and is extremely well endowed leading her to act as The Tease. Reina is a Playful Hacker who operates the group's electronics, has a shy and introverted personality, and is on the petite side in terms of both height and chest. Fittingly, there is quite a lot of Les Yay between the duo, helped by the fact that they act as the backup singers in Walkure and often duet with one another.
Comic Books
- In the Disney Ducks Comic Universe, the role of The Smart Guy is usually divided between genius inventor Gyro Gearloose and master theoretician Ludwig Von Drake. This is in contrast with Disney animation from The '90s onward, which simplifies matters by making Ludwig an inventor and disposing of Gyro.
- One notable Italian story
is set entirely around the contrast between the two. Gyro and Ludwig get in an argument on whether theoretical knowledge is better than practical applications, with Gyro preferring application and Ludwig praising theory. They decide that the winner will be he who better survives a night in the desert, relying on his preferred type of knowledge. The story allows the reader to follow different paths, in the style of Gamebooks, depending on whether they agree with Gyro, Ludwig or none of the two. The perfect ending is the one where Gyro and Ludwig make peace and put their abilities together.
- One notable Italian story
- The Five Swell Guys, the superhero team in Promethea, have two different members in the role of The Smart Guy: Stan "the mechanic" (who can build amazing machines out of scrap) and Marv "the team genius" (whose abilities are never really made clear). This becomes a plot point when Stan reveals he resents Marv's status as the team's smartest member, and created Painted Doll to kill him.
Fan Works
- Harpflank and Sweets has Vinyl Scratch and Octavia act as the team scientists. One is more mechanical and the other is more of a programmer.
Films — Live-Action
- As soon as the Genius Bruiser Bruce Banner (a nuclear physicist) and the insufferably suave Gadgeteer Genius Tony Stark (a weapons engineer) meet in The Avengers, they strike up an Odd Friendship based on mutual geekery and work together for the rest of the film, even driving off together at the end. (Of course, it helps that they both know enough that they can bounce ideas off of each other without having to "dumb down" anything; their discussion about the Tesseract is one example.)
- In Pacific Rim, Newt is an extremely experimental scientist who will put his own life and sanity on the line for the sake of his research, while Gottlieb is an analytical theoretician who takes pleasure in shooting down Newt's crackpot theories. Nevertheless, they turn out to have been perfectly Drift Compatible all along.
Literature
- The Beginning After the End has Gideon and Wren, who act as the chief scientists and artificers in Arthur's coalition of allies. Gideon, a human inventor, is an egotistical Insufferable Genius whose creations and experiments are volatile thanks to him expediting his process. Wren, a titan asura blacksmith, is a serious and harsh individual who tends to stay away from the spotlight and his creations tend to be much more reliable and effective thanks to him spending much time analyzing the scenarios and specifications for their creation. When Arthur introduces Wren to Gideon, the two hit it off surprisingly well in spite of their contrast.
- The KZ Detective Team in Tantei Team KZ Jiken Note is formed by a group of loopsided students. Two of them particularly fit in this mold: Uesugi, the Stoic Spectacles mathematician, and Kozuka, the Boy Next Door biologist. In addition, Aya, the Nervous Wreck linguist and Nanaki, The Shut-In computer scientist, also adds to this trope.
Live-Action TV
- On Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Coulson commissions Fitz and Simmons (two initially non-action genius scientists so inseparable the cast calls them "Fitzsimmons") to act as the brains to the rest of his secret agent team's muscle. While they're initially extremely similar in terms of personality, both get a serious case of Break the Cutie after the events of first two seasons, and start to clash over various things such as the Inhuman issue (Simmons gets Fantastic Racism and deems them monsters, while Fitz thinks it's a pretty extreme reaction).
- Chernobyl: Legasov and Khomyuk are both scientists and part of the show's Power Trio, with Khomyuk's idealism about speaking the truth contrasting with Legasov, who only gets there after a lot of Character Development.
- While most of the cast of The Flash (2014) is some form of scientist (Barry is in forensics and Wells is a theoretical physicist), Caitlin and Cisco are the scientists specifically assigned to monitor help Barry with his powers. Caitlin is a straight-laced biologist while Cisco is a fun-loving engineer, so naturally they're constantly arguing. Despite this, they're very close.
- MythBusters and shows based on them seem to follow this mold, except that the two guys are the main focus of the show. They tend to have largely overlapping but distinct areas of expertise, with personalities that make them a bit of an Odd Couple (and which may be exaggerated to give the show a semblance of drama). If Word of God is to be believed, they actually like each other even less than they appear to while on-camera.
- NUMB3RS: A Romanticism Versus Enlightenment example. The premise of the series is the mathematician Charlie Eppes that uses mathematics and logic to predict the actions of criminals, but his mentor and research partner is the astrophysicist Larry Fleinhart, who frequently talks about the beauty of space and experiencing the unknown.
- Power Rangers:
- Power Rangers Lost Galaxy: While Kendrix is an expert at research and analysis who is driven by logic, Damon is a mechanical engineer who is more emotionally open, especially about his fears.
- Power Rangers: Dino Thunder: Tommy, Ethan and Hayley all cover different fields. Tommy is the group's expert in biological engineering and paleontology, Ethan is the computer expert and Hayley builds and maintains their equipment.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "11001001" an alien race called the Bynars are lifelong science duos.
- Stargate-verse:
- On Stargate SG-1, Daniel Jackson and Samantha Carter have this kind of relationship. Daniel is an expert in the soft sciences of linguistics, archaeology, and anthropology, while Sam is an expert in the 'hard' subjects of engineering and physics. They further play off each other in that Daniel is a civilian and Sam is a decorated Air Force careerist. (They subvert the 'hard science male, soft science female' trope, though.)
- Dr. Rodney McKay of Stargate Atlantis tends to be placed in these kinds of relationships, acting as an Insufferable Genius Foil to the more humble scientists Samantha Carter (in his appearances in Stargate SG-1) or Radek Zelenka (as a regular character in Stargate Atlantis). McKay and Zelenka clash greatly because Zelenka is a Nice Guy who tries to exercise caution with his experiments and McKay is pretty much a Bunny-Ears Lawyer, with the "bunny ears" being an absurd amount of pompous Pride that makes him try to reactivate very risky Ancient experiments repeatedly throughout the series (and never seems to learn even when they literally explode on his face, and once even wiped out a solar system — McKay prefers to point out that it was only most of one).
- The X-Files downplays the science aspect (mainly with Mulder), but its central duo, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully have degrees in psychology and physics (specializing in criminal profiling and forensics), respectively, but Scully's rationality frequently clashes with Mulder's flashes of intuition and belief in the paranormal.
Tabletop Games
- Pandemic has two scientist specializations: the actual Scientist and the Researcher. The Scientist's role is to spend player cards to find cures faster, while the Researcher's is to hoard cards and pass them out to other players as necessary. The two of them make a perfect team despite vastly different functions.
- Sentinels of the Multiverse's main scientist is Tachyon, whose approach to it is very restrained and controlled; her intern, Unity, complains that she is "uptight about science and hates explosions in the lab". Following their Enemy Mine, she ends up contrasted sharply with Baron Blade, who is legitimately brilliant, but also utterly lacks Tachyon's patience, sense of restraint and belief in research ethics. This is most obvious in the background for Sky-Scraper's Extremist variant; when Tachyon refuses to ramp up Sky-Scraper's powers, saying that only a madman would do such a thing due to the considerable risk to Sky-Scraper's health, Blade immediately pops around the corner and goes, "A madman, you say..." They even have shared mechanical space on the tabletop, with both Tachyon's hero deck and Blade's hero deck as Luminary relying on getting cards into the trash to power up their biggest moves; additionally, Tachyon's Super-Science variant combos really nastily with Blade's hero deck, letting you fill Blade's trash swiftly.
- Warhammer 40,000: Ork Killa Kans require the "expertise" of both a mek and a dok: the mek builds it, and the dok hooks up the grot that pilots the Kan.
Video Games
- Assassin's Creed has Shaun Hastings (operations, historian and codebreaker) and Rebecca Crane (gadgetry and general computer expert), a pair of specialists who bicker constantly. Notably they invert the usual Mother Nature, Father Science relationship, with most of Shaun's areas of expertise being "softer" than Rebecca's.
- The Lutece twins in BioShock Infinite are both brilliant quantum physicists, but Rosalinde is driven and creative in her research, while Robert is more cautious and mindful of the implications of their work.
- In Dishonored, the Loyalists' resident science guy and inventor Piero Joplin is repeatedly contrasted by the Lord Regent's Royal Physician Anton Sokolov. Where Sokolov is an unkempt, bearded brute of a man who nonetheless rose all the way to the top of Dunwall academia, Piero is a clean-shaven and well-groomed unappreciated genius. Furthermore, the Outsider takes distinct interest in Piero, directly inspiring many of his inventions through visions, while dismissively ignoring Sokolov's repeated attempts to contact him. Late in the game, the two find themselves in a Rivals Team Up situation, however, and discover their skills to be highly complementary.
- Downplayed by Hanneman and Manuela in Fire Emblem: Three Houses: while both are tenured professors at the Military Academy of Garrech Mach, only Hanneman conducts active research (even holding the respectful moniker "Father of Crestology" for his work), while Manuela is a former songstress now in charge of the academy's infirmary. Still, they do specialize in different types of magic (he, in Black Magic and Reason; she, in White Magic and Faith) and have the Like an Old Married Couple act down pat.
- Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth: Both Fuuka Yamagishi and Futaba Sakura are tech-obsessed Navigators, but, as noted in a conversation, Fuuka specializes in the hardware side (having built custom headphones for the protagonist during her Social Link) while Futaba is more focused on software (being The Cracker and a videogame geek).
- In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Dr. Vahlen is an analytical scientist who believes that science is good and that all the ethical conundrums will sort themselves out eventually. Dr. Shen, meanwhile, is the constructive one (more like The Engineer, really, despite his doctorate) who nevertheless sermons caution and points out the dangers of carrying out scientific research without considering future implications.
Western Animation
- Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys: Dr. Splitz is a more theory-oriented Mr. Exposition; Splitzy is a skilled technician that can put the other's ideas in practice. Bonus points for being a single ape with a split personality. Their synergy is evident in "Splitzy's Choice", where the two personalities acquire separate bodies and find out they can't function without each other.
- Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!: Otto is the team's mechanics expert and is something of a ditz. Gibson covers other scientific fields such as physics and chemistry. While Gibson has questioned Otto's intelligence, he does respect Otto's mechanical skills, even admitting that he is Gibson's superior in that area.
- In Voltron: Legendary Defender, Hunk and Pidge are frequently shown complementing one another's knowledge and expertise of science and technology: Hunk is an engineer with an extensive knowledge of hardware and physics, while Pidge is proficient in computer hacking and other software technologies.
