*glass breaking* Stop me if you've heard this one. *clears throat* Everyone say hello to our new protagonist. They're such a goofball, you've gotta wonder if they even know where they are half the time! They're so silly! And yet, their stupidity is strangely endearing. But oh, no! *gasps* Plot is happening and something dangerous is threatening our idiot hero! How on earth will they cope!? What's this? Our idiot hero seems to be much less of an idiot now than they were a second ago. How are they beating this guy so effortlessly? What just happened?! Congratulations, you've just met the Crouching Moron Hidden Badass, a popular character across all genres of literature, who's pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. This character looks and acts like an idiot, but hiding just below the goofy surface is a Grade-A Badass, just waiting for a chance to be underestimated and show off how confident they really are. Now, there are several flavors of CMHBs. While they all share the key characteristic of being perceived as a goofball while being capable of being a badass, the way that internally manifests varies from archetype to archetype. For example, let's look at the Faker CMHB, the character who is a stone-cold badass, but puts up a veneer of wackiness, usually either to throw people off their guard or just because they genuinely like being silly, and to a certain extent they prefer to just pretend that they're a lovable goof instead of a terrifyingly competent murder machine. The Faker archetype frequently comes with a dark and troubled past, to explain why they're so averse to being openly badass but are still willing to bust out the old moves when the situation gets dire enough. But sometimes, they're just goofing off in their down time. Also, sometimes the Faker is an old mentor type who plays up the Retired Old Person angle to get themselves underestimated, then busts out some surprise ability when the going gets tough. A step more extreme than the Faker is the Split Personality CMHB archetype, where the character's Moron and Badass personalities are literally separate people. The Badass half has a tendency to stay dormant unless absolutely necessary, but will often make dramatic appearances when the Moron half is out of their depth. Frequently, the Moron half won't know the Badass half exists, at least at the start. Also, this variant shows up as a brain-damaged anime girl with amnesia a solid 90% of the time. I don't know why that is, and I kinda don't wanna know. This is the laziest version of this trope, honestly. Rather than developing a multifaceted character, it takes an utterly useless character and sticks them in the same body as a competent but generic and frequently kind of evil character and has them switch places as the plot demands. This gives you two uninteresting characters instead of one interesting character. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the Manchild variant, which is almost the ultimate fusion of the CMHB. This character is at all times capable of being both a moron and a badass. They're a goofball, but that doesn't impede their competence at whatever it is they're good at. They're a badass, but that doesn't stop them from goofing around or not taking things seriously. Rather than switching between two distinct modes, where they're either serious or silly with no overlap, the Manchild almost never drops the silliness completely, and will instead dial it back gradually as necessary. The Manchild is extremely sincere and often quite self-aware of their silliness, but not always. On the far Moron end of the bell-curve, this character is more like a generalized idiot who's surprisingly good at a select few things, and outside of those things will be barely functional. This contrasts with a similar variant, the Zero-Confidence Goofball CMHB. This character is pretty much unaware of their badassery. They know they're a goofball, and they frequently have hang-ups about being so ridiculous and messing things up, but without them realizing it, they're actually very capable in at least one skill set. The Zero-Confidence Goofball shares traits with the Manchild in that they seamlessly blend their silliness and their seriousness, but in this case, it's usually because they don't fully process that they're doing anything exceptionally badass. Usually, when it's pointed out to them, they first dismiss that as just a normal thing, and then get very excited. The Zero-Confidence Goofball can be relied on to be very competent and badass when the situation is dire, and will usually have a character arc centered on gaining some self-confidence. A fairly specialized variant is the Shonen Protagonist, or the Goku, if you wanna be overt. See, most shonen heroes are based on Goku one way or another, which means on average, they care about only three things: food, fighting, and friendship. And most of the time, these guys are really goofy when they're not doing the fighting thing. But when they get pissed, usually as the result of one of their friends being threatened or hurt, they kick into Serious Mode and start singlemindedly trying to fight whoever's responsible. They are a simple folk. They are morons until circumstances persuade them to be badasses. These characters often develop an in-universe reputation for ludicrous power as they ass-kick their way through the seasons, but that never seems to stop people from underestimating them when they meet face-to-face and find out that this walking, talking force of nature thinks marriage is something you eat. Generally, the Shonen Protagonist is a bona-fide idiot who happens to make up for their brain deficiency by being ludicrously talented at kicking ass, so whenever the situation develops into a good old-fashioned punch-up, they get their chance to shine. An even more specialized variant is the Second Fiddle, which is more of a quirk of how protagonist group dynamics form. See, in a lot of group-oriented shows, with, like, a Five-Man Band as the focus, the main hero will be a super-badass, and their Lancer will be slightly less powerful than them, but still serve as a rival. In cases where this rivalry is played for comedy, the Lancer will lose every time they clash with the Leader, and it'll be funny every time. What this means is that you have a character who's only required to lose when they fight the hero, but is objectively very powerful on their own, as they're second fiddle to the best of the best. But we're only reminded of that power when they're allowed to fight someone who isn't the main hero. So in the group dynamic, the Second Fiddle will play up the comedy factor, but in a solo combat situation, they'll be allowed to show off their badassery. The CMHB is one of my favorite character tropes, but it's not exactly a personal preference. CMHBs are tailor-made to do two things: be funny and be awesome. And guess what: people like funnies, and people like awesome. And I'm people. The CMHB is the perfect storm of humor and "hell yeah." Or at least, they are when they're well-written. A CMHB is ideally designed so that at all times, they provoke one of two responses: "Heh, that's funny," or "Oh, that's awesome!" They're an attempt to get the best of two worlds--Comic Relief and Awesome Badass-- without having to deal too much with character complexities or other frustrations. See, purely comic-relief characters have one glaring problem: by their nature, they are useless to the plot. They're just there to punctuate the plot by cheering up the audience. So a lot of comic-relief characters will have their personalities supplemented by traits that help them function in a plot-relevant situation. Oddly, making them snipers is strangely common. So is making them hackers. The CMHB is a highly-polished version of this. It takes a comic-relief character and makes them competent. Antagonists expect comic relief and are blindsided by badassery. Ideally, the CMHB retains the audience-cheering properties of the comic relief, as well as the awesome heroics of the badass, and even gains a quality outside the sum of its parts by hitting the audience with surprise heroics. We expect badassery from the resident badass. When it comes from the comic relief, we're pleasantly surprised. In its perfect form, the CMHB is a whole character with benefits greater than the sum of its archetypes. However, this only works when the CMHB doesn't come across as annoying to the audience, and there's a lot of ways to screw that up. For one, a major trait of the CMHB is that they're chronically underestimated. If they're not being seen as a moron, then the moment when they pull out the badassery loses impact, so in general, anyone about to get whacked with the badass side is only expecting to see the moron side. But sometimes, you run into the issue where the CMHB is badass so regularly and so visibly, that it makes no sense for anyone to underestimate them anymore. It can disengage an audience if every single one of your antagonists comes across as a total idiot for writing off your ridiculously badass hero as just another goofball. An audience can also suffer from badass fatigue. Sometimes, when your CMHB pulls out the badass for the first time, it's played like a big character reveal, shocking the other characters along with the audience. But after that, sometimes writers will abandon the previously demonstrated moron-badass dichotomy in favor of keeping the character badass in perpetuity. This character isn't really a CMHB; they're just a badass who had a weird gimmick when they first showed up. Since they lose the comedic moron side to be a perma-badass, we lose the "Ha, that's funny" and the "Aw, that's awesome" impact, since the character isn't funny and their badassery isn't surprising. The character loses the benefits gained by being occasional comic relief. When a character is only ever allowed to do one thing-- even if that one thing is "be a badass"--the audience is liable to get bored. Badass Fatigue. Know the symptoms. And sometimes, the moron and badass sides of the character just don't seem balanced. Frequently, for example, the moron persona is just really annoying or useless, and actively gets into unnecessary trouble that it really seems like the badass persona wouldn't allow. This is most commonly an issue with the Split Personality CMHBs, but can show up with any version if the character's goofiness becomes actively disruptive. At which point, instead of reaping the benefits of a multi-faceted character, the audience treats one side of the character as an obstruction to the other. Hard to find the moron half funny if they're just cluttering up the plot for the badass half to clean up later. In its most extreme form, this turns into a whole problem of its own, when the moron and badass sides are in direct conflict. See, moron shenanigans are really only funny so long as they aren't disruptive. If you have a CMHB who's supposed to be a single coherent character, but something they do in Moron Mode actively causes problems that it seems like Badass Mode shouldn't have let happen, that becomes disruptive. If the moron and the badass sides of the character don't fit together, then why put them in the same character in the first place? Consider a CMHB in a dangerous combat situation, who goofs around and ends up getting someone injured. In this case, the moronitude actively clashes with the badassery. From a writing angle, the badass side shouldn't have allowed someone to get hurt, so the moronitude starts feeling annoyingly irresponsible and out of character, rather than funny. Ideally, you don't want your audience going, "Ugh, with THIS again?" every time your CMHB starts to goof off. Then again, sometimes the character's moron traits fit perfectly with their badass traits and are still frustrating to the audience. Classic example: Dragon Ball Z's Saiyans are all complete idiots when it comes to fighting, since they care more about fighting strong opponents than they do about actually efficiently stopping them from doing evil stuff. Goku and Vegeta both notoriously let their enemies get as strong as they possibly can in order to get a good fight, and it's just as frustratingly stupid every time. But it's frustratingly stupid and in character, so it's totally fine from a writing angle. Hell, if anything, it makes the character more convincingly a moron. See, sometimes when writing a CMHB, the character can come across as really not that much of a moron at all. They'll mess around when things are chill, but they'll never do anything actively problematic, and will handle every crisis that comes their way with customary levels of competent badassery. Basically, they're funny, but they're not stupid. And this is fine! But you can also get comedy from characters who really do do stupid stuff, despite being badass. Their moronitude isn't just decorative; it's true to their character and can actually cause problems. Brooklyn Nine-Nine's classic Manchild CMHB Jake Peralta is comically terrible at being an adult or following the rules, but he's an amazing detective. But his loose-cannon-ing and disdain for protocol have actually gotten him in trouble beyond just pissing off authority figures, when his actions have unforeseen consequences. While these storylines can be annoying to the audience if the stupidity involved seems out of character, Jake is established at being terrible at thinking through consequences, so it totally fits for him to actually screw up on occasion. And it makes it more interesting than if his
wacky stupidity was just restricted to office pranks and cute one-liners. He's a flawed character, and that makes him more interesting than if he were a totally unproblematic golden boy. Broadly, the biggest strength of the CMHB is that it avoids the primary pitfalls faced by comic-relief characters and stone-cold badasses. Comic relief can get insufferable with overexposure, or just feel situationally inappropriate when the going gets rough. Or worst of all, wind up obnoxiously useless in high-stakes situations, cluttering up the drama with half-assed one-liners and getting in the way of more serious characters. On the other side, stone-cold badasses can often wind up stuck as nonentities outside of dangerous or dramatic situations. If they're not kicking ass, the writer doesn't know what to do with them. By writing a CMHB--or at least, writing one well-- you end up with a character who has a charming and funny personality outside of danger, and is more than capable of pulling their weight while in danger. A CMHB also has the potential to have a lot of emotional impact on your audience. Now, a pure comic-relief character can usually only make the audience laugh. Or if they wind up in a situation so bad that they can't or won't be funny, they can sometimes give the audience an "oh, no!" reaction, since their uncharacteristic humorlessness communicates that this situation is really bad and/or sad, as it's managed to knock the fun out of a character made of fun. A pure badass character can also produce the "oh, no!" response in dangerous enough situations, but they're mostly designed to get the "oh, yeah!" reaction when they do something exceptionally cool. The CMHB can readily produce all three reactions. When they're funny, they get a laugh. When they're cool, they get an "Oh, yeah!" And when they're truly, deeply upset, they can readily get an "Oh, NO." My favorite example of this is Justice League Unlimited's Flash, who, in the climax of his most memorable arc, manages to produce all three reactions in rapid succession. Throughout the show, the Flash has shown himself to be a classic lovable goofball and the designated funnyman in a team full of generally stoic badasses. And he's a solidly-written Manchild-variant CMHB, in that his humor never compromises his ability to save the day. He's also very clearly the emotional heart of the team, which is touched on in some detail in an early episode of the show, where the team finds an alternate universe where the Flash had been killed several years prior by President Lex Luthor, and the League had gone full dictator as a result, starting with Superman killing Luthor in the Oval Office before going on to take over the world. At the time, Flash even quips about how this proves he's the heart and conscience of the team, and they should probably put all their focus on keeping him alive. It's a joke, but it's also kind of not a joke. This comes back into focus in season 4, when Lex Luthor decides to start screwing with Superman by hinting that he's trying to recreate the circumstances in that other universe that drove Superman to abandon his morals and full-on kill him. Step 1 is become President, Step 2 is kill the Flash, Step 3 is get murdered. Stellar plan, Lex. Flash even cracks a couple jokes about it, and tells the team that clearly, the number-one way to foil Lex's evil plan is to make sure to keep him alive at all costs. Obviously, superhero nonsense happens to complicate things, and in the finale, Luthor ends up fusing with Brainiac into a big scary robot man, with Brainiac's ludicrous power and Luthor's flair for the dramatic. During the boss fight, we get a few funny Flash moments, because that's just kinda how he talks most of the time, but after KOing the League in a big explosion, Luthor decides he may as well kill the Flash while he's got a minute to spare, and Flash, for the first time in the show, seems scared. This is an "Oh, NO" moment for the audience, and signals that this bombastic superhero season finale has taken a turn for the intense. Flash has been in danger before, obviously--it is a superhero show-- but he's never been this alone and frightened before. Since he's normally such a ray of sunshine, or at least snarky when in distress, seeing his character completely devoid of wackiness is an audience gut punch. Zero attempts at comedy means he's really freaked out. The "oh, no" intensifies when Flash manages to break out of Luthor's grip, but when Lex condescendingly asks him if he's really gonna fight him alone, Flash hesitates, then wordlessly turns and runs away. No sass, no one-liner, just running for his life. But this "oh, no" moment quickly turns into an "oh, yeah!" when Flash reappears on the horizon and blindsides Luthor really hard, having run around the world first to build up speed. He then does this, like, six more times, culminating in him vibrating Luthor and Brainiac apart molecule by molecule while moving faster than we've ever seen him go before. This is probably the coolest thing he ever does in the show, in no small part because he's so completely unfunny during this scene. This is pure badass, no funny, and it's AWESOME. But it immediately snaps back to "Oh, NO!" when Flash vanishes into the Speed Force from overtaxing his superpowers. And, y'know, obviously they pull him out and it ends happily and stuff, because it is a kids' show, but this is the emotional impact a CMHB can have. You're used to the character being funny and awesome in roughly equal measure. When they're serious and awesome, you revel in the pure badassery of them going all out. But when they're serious and totally not funny, it hits you like a truck that this adaptable ray of sunshine is really freaked out and has no idea what to do. Now, obviously, this example only worked as well as it did because Flash was a really well-written CMHB, who never got annoying and was consistently written as pretty much always being at least a little wacky. He'd never really gone Humorless Badass before, so it had a lot of impact when he finally stopped messing around. He also didn't bounce back immediately. When they pull him out of the Speed Force, he just kinda weakly says he's pretty sure he can never go that fast again, and it really sells that this was a very disturbing experience that's left him quite shaken. So, CMHBs are capable of hitting the audience with a lot of emotional highs and lows, as well as navigating a range of situations without feeling unnecessary. Where a pure comic-relief character can be useless at best in a serious situation, a CMHB can be relied on to stay relevant, even when the plot starts getting hairy. And where a stone-cold badass can be awkwardly out of place when the plot gets all light-hearted and filler-y, the CMHB is charming even when out of danger. If you can manage to hit that sweet spot between "irritatingly stupid" and "not really all that funny," you'll find a lot of possibilities to play around with. But there's more you can do with the character than just slide around a dial between All Moron and All Badass. See, a lot of the core concept of the CMHB is built around this perceived dichotomy between Funny and Badass, the idea that you have funny scenes and awesome scenes, but never the twain shall meet. And this isn't really the craziest idea in the world. A lot of our comedy is built on people screwing up, while a lot of our awesome moments are written around people succeeding spectacularly. And it's hard to make those concepts play nice. The CMHB is an attempt to play with this; it produces a character capable of wacky failures and heroic successes and keeps both sides of the character fresh by never letting either one overstay their welcome. The character fails in a funny way and succeeds in an awesome way, but these qualities are still kept separate in some key ways. The CMHB might quip to punctuate a fight, but the actual fighting part will usually be kept serious. Even the Manchild CMHB variant, who's badass in a funny way, can still come across as maybe less effective a badass than they could be if they got really serious. Lots of quippy superheroes signal that they've gotten really serious by finally shutting up. The comedy intrinsic to the character is still seen as a detriment or an obstruction to the badassery. But guys. Did you know... that you can have scenes that are awesome and funny... at the same time? Let's talk about Jackie Chan. Buster Keaton was a pioneer in slapstick comedy. Bruce Lee was a pioneer in martial arts cinema. Jackie Chan is what happens when a Bruce-Lee-grade martial artist starts idolizing Buster Keaton and playing around with weapons-grade slapstick. What resulted was a whole bunch of movies where Jackie Chan leveraged his excellent martial arts ability to choreograph some very striking fight scenes that were really, really funny. There's a kind of physical comedy you can only really get when you're ridiculously physically skilled and you're willing to do a hundred takes to get the exact impact right. The payoff is a library of highly engaging fight scenes that are, yes, simultaneously funny and awesome, and that makes the character involved simultaneously funny and awesome. Comedy is not inherently built on failure; it's built on the unexpected. And it's very possible to make a character badass in consistently unexpected ways. The CMHB can, in its most extreme form, embody this perfect fusion of badassery and comedy where their characterization is almost completely static, instead of switching between comedy and badassery as the situation requires. So, uh... Broadly, the primary benefit of this character archetype is the hybridization of the most impactful qualities of its two component archetypes, but the hardest part in writing this character is striking a balance between the two without one overshadowing or disrupting the other. In its most sophisticated form, the two archetypes fully combine into one thoroughly coherent character, but that's even harder to get right than the normal version of the character, and I can only think of one example that ever made that work consistently. So, uh... yeah. *calm string music continues to end*
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I wonder how Saitma in “One Punch Man” or Deadpool fit into this trope.