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Informed Flaw

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"What do you mean, you don't belong? You're incredible! You see better than how most people can see! In fact, are you even blind?"
— The Nostalgia Critic responding to Garrett's refusal to return to Camelot in Quest for Camelot

Much like the Informed Ability, an Informed Flaw is a Fatal Flaw that simply doesn't have any real effect on the event or character. It can come up in one of two forms:

  1. The narrative tells us about a flaw, whether it be through a character, the narration, or some other source. The flaw then doesn't materialize and nobody would have ever thought of it if the segment describing said flaw was removed.
  2. Alternatively, the flaw in question might be showcased as an Establishing Character Moment. After their first scene (where it will usually be pretty contrived and blunt), it will evaporate for the rest of the work. Think Compressed Vice, only compressed to a single scene and not given any natural resolution.

In either case, the defining part is the total abandonment of the flaw after its introduction, with it playing no role and thus having no importance. Often, it comes about because a character is decided to be too unrealistic, so they add in a token flaw or two to add some flavor. Other times, it's just to pad out some of the length. However, most of the time, it's a result of careless rewrites.

Infallible Babble ensures that it's never a case where the characters talking about the flaw are misinformed, or spiteful.

Disabilities, especially milder, inconsistent or not readily visible disabilities, very often turn into informed flaws. They are milked for Angst at various moments, without interfering with the character's ability to do the things the plot expects them to do.

Remember that Tropes Are Tools — many examples on the page are negative, but that does not make the trope negative in nature. (See Playing with a Trope.) A common variation that is NOT the result of poor writing is where the character believes that they have a flaw (e.g. a big nose) because of, say, past teasing or bullying, but to any viewer, it is obvious that such a flaw is nonexistent.

A Sub-Trope of Informed Attribute and Show, Don't Tell, and a Super-Trope of Hollywood Homely, Hollywood Pudgy, Allegedly Dateless, Gorgeous Gorgon, Informed Loner, Tin Man, and Designated Villain. Can cover Urban Legend Love Life when the character's romantic/sexual tendencies are portrayed as a flaw. Related to Informed Ability. Contrast with I Am Not Left-Handed, Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass, and Obfuscating Stupidity.

noreallife

Example subpages

Other examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • 7 Seeds: Hana has difficulty connecting with other people. She never made friends beyond Arashi before coming to the future. She's a loner, who just plain can't make friends because of her headstrong, stubborn nature. This gets claimed repeatedly by Hana herself and Arashi when the series shows the complete opposite. Hana seems to quickly connect with Fujiko and Chisa and hangs out with them frequently, several guys end up crushing on her, and her headstrong, stubborn personality is something that the members of the other Teams often mention to be an impressive quality about her. Only two people seem to heavily dislike her — Ango and Ryo. And Ango is implied to find her annoying because the two of them are too similar in their stubbornness, while also finding her stubbornness to be attractive, and Ryo dislikes her simply because her presence annoys Ango.
  • Yomi of Azumanga Daioh is frequently seen trying to lose weight and being called fat by Tomo, even though she doesn't really look heavy at all. However, this could simply be Tomo being a jerk and Yomi taking her more seriously than she should, since no one else calls her fat.
  • Berserk (2016) falls into this largely by way of Adaptation Explanation Extrication: there's a scene where the smith Godot gives Guts a very thorough dressing-down, talking about how his quest for revenge is destroying him and turning him into a violent monster who doesn't care about the people he loves. The thing is, at this time in the anime, Guts hasn't really done anything that particularly shows this; he's a jerk who's not fond of authority, but that's about as far as it goes. This is due largely to the anime skipping over as much of the Black Swordsman and Lost Children arcs as possible—the arcs that showed Guts doing things like taking an innocent girl hostage or kicking a disabled man in the face and calling him ugly, which made Godot's disgust at Guts's current attitudes entirely warranted.
  • In Code Geass, the second season once shows the Black Knights ranked by statistics, and Tamaki is dead last with the lowest possible ratings in each area, including loyalty. His low loyalty score becomes especially strange when you consider that he's the least willing to believe Schniezel's accusations against Zero and shows more loyalty than basically every other Black Knight besides Kallen (who took Zero's side until he pulled a Shoo the Dog on her) and Kaguya (who was away at the time) did.
  • Death Note: Matsuda is well-known for being an idiot, but this isn't really that evident. While he does tend to goof off and isn't the brightest guy around, he's clearly competent enough to be on the task force. Plus, you can't help but look slow when you're in the same events as Light and L. If you watch any scene where the task force discusses their next move, Matsuda will usually raise at least one good point. He also level grinds in competence during A Day in the Limelight, where he manages to infiltrate Yotsuba, discover where a secret meeting is taking place, and narrow down the list of suspects from hundreds to eight. Then when caught, he plays one fast game of Xanatos Speed Chess, using an alias he's barely familiar with, and fakes his own death without showing fear or breaking character. And of course, he tops himself in the final episode.
  • Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: During the curse-induced dreams the heroes have against the Lower Rank One fight, Zenitsu appears with an exaggerated overbite in Kyojuro and Inosuke's dreams, which is not so much as hinted at in his usual character design. A volume extra has the author confirm that Zenitsu has an overbite, but it never materializes outside of this brief caricature.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • It's claimed that becoming a Super Saiyan causes the user to be consumed with murderous Unstoppable Rage, making it almost a Superpowered Evil Side. This is even introduced when Goku tells Gohan that he might kill him if Gohan doesn't run. However, after that point, Goku mostly acts as he always does in a fight, perhaps a bit more seriously. In fact, minutes later, he allows Frieza to reach his maximum power (ostensibly to humiliate him) and, soon after, even gives Frieza some of his energy so he can leave the planet safely; he doesn't attempt a killing blow until Frieza attempts to kill him. After that, he can enter and leave the form whenever he wants, and it changes his personality very little, if at all. The idea resurfaced, however, for Gohan's initial transformation into Super Saiyan 2, which caused Gohan to act significantly different and considerably more murderous.
    • Son Goku
      • The end of the Cell Saga has Goku declare that he wants to stay dead because he believes himself to be a Doom Magnet who keeps attracting trouble. But pretty much the only time a villain has arrived unbidden for reasons relating to Goku is in the case of Raditz, who was his brother. Every other time, it was a case of either the villains having an evil agenda from the get-go and Goku getting involved to stop them, or it was the villains delaying their evil agenda and wanting revenge on Goku because he interfered in their initially-unrelated scheme. The intended idea is that Goku is a Destructive Saviour whose presence creates more problems than he solves, but the fact is, even in the cases where Goku did create a problem by provoking the vengeance of the villains, those villains would have still been a threat to Earth either way. In fact, a major plot point at the beginning of the Android Saga was that, without Goku who died of heart disease in the original timeline, the androids steamrolled the rest of the Z-Fighters and triggered a Bad Future — Trunks' plan to Set Right What Once Went Wrong explicitly involved bringing heart medicine to Goku so he'd be alive to fight them off, meaning that if anything Goku should have had the exact opposite idea than what he had at the end of the Cell Saga. Ironically, Goku is right that he's technically responsible for the events of the arc—but it had nothing to do with him being a Doom Magnet, and everything to do with him deliberately refusing to attack or investigate Gero until his scheme was well underway, which is never called out in any significant capacity.
      • Similarly, Goku suggests that his presence prevents the good guys from reaching their full potential because he always saves them, which is another reason he leaves. However, the opposite is actually true. Goku's interactions with other characters have consistently led to them becoming much stronger, whether through training with him or using him as a benchmark. While they can't keep up with him, many were in far worse places, both as fighters and people, when he first met them (and many were villains). Conversely, after Goku leaves at the end of the Buu Saga, most of his friends slack off, giving up on fighting, and show no power increase or even regress.
    • The statement that Gohan "doesn't like fighting" is a recurring theme in the later parts of the franchise, despite evidence to the contrary. Gohan has willingly fought numerous opponents, from Raditz to Frieza, and often rushes in to protect innocent lives. As Great Saiyaman, he even fought crime as a young adult, and displays confidence in his Ultimate/Mystic and Beast transformations. A more accurate assessment might be that Gohan doesn't like killing, as his hesitation with Cell stemmed from the expectation of having to kill his opponent – it was his first outright Duel to the Death (though he had previously killed one of Frieza's mooks on Namek). It could also be argued that Gohan doesn't enjoy fighting as much as Goku and Vegeta do.
  • Musashi's kicks in Eyeshield 21 are supposedly powerful with the drawback that he isn't entirely accurate. Yet he never missed a single kick in these sports (apart from a flashback where Shin had directly blocked it). Even his rival Kotaro, who is known for his 100% accuracy instead of power, misses a pivotal kick.
  • In Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, the titular character's one noted fatal weakness is that she stops detecting mana for a brief moment whenever she casts a spell. She was always more interested in studying magic rather than learning to fight properly, and so has this very basic weakness that most mages trained to overcome. That being said, exploiting this "weakness" is much, much harder than it sounds. First of all, even the most advanced of mages can barely deduce it, with Denken only noticing it during a controlled demonstration as opposed to in the heat of battle. Secondly, Frieren's combat experience and magic capabilities are so devastating that exploiting this weakness requires careful planning, extensive bombardment, and coordinated precision timing, as demonstrated when it took the combined effort of both Frieren and Fern to take down Frieren's clone.
  • In Great Pretender, both Makoto and Laurent have a notable one:
    • Makoto has his English skills. At the very beginning of the series, before it switches to using Translation Convention, it's shown that Makoto's English is stilted and heavily accented. However, after the series switches to being translated for the audience's benefit, several characters comment on the quality of his English—without him sounding any different to the audience. It's even implied that his English improves over the series, but the audience never hears his improved English.
    • Laurent has his pervertedness. According to the other members of Team Confidence (especially Abbie), he's a relentless skirt-chaser and horndog who's prone to making sex-motivated decisions. In actual behavior, aside from having a rather flirty way of speaking, he's always professional and is never openly Distracted by the Sexy. He does seem to have fewer inhibitions around the topic of sex, down to being entirely comfortable chatting with his compatriots while naked, but he's never as bad as Abbie implies.
  • In HeartCatch Pretty Cure!, Tsubomi is saddled with the derogatory nickname "The Weakest Pretty Cure in History" due to her poor showing in her first battle. While she's quite poor up until episode 4, after that, she's actually pretty good. If anything, that nickname should have been saddled with Hime of HappinessCharge Pretty Cure!, who spends over half the series in this position.
  • The Hero Reborn as the Daughter of Heroes Aims to Become a Hero Again: Nicole is repeatedly described as being physically weak and frail, but the only time this is really demonstrated is when she is too weak to lift the sword that all of her fellow students have no problem with, which is immediately negated by the fact that she is immediately given a lighter sword, which she is highly adept with to the point where one wonders why the standard swords are so much heavier for no appreciable advantage. Not only can she hold her own in a fight just fine, but getting slashed in the limbs is barely an inconvenience. Moreover, one of her three Gifts is the ability to increase the physical strength of anyone she chooses, and so far there is nothing to indicate that she couldn’t target herself if she really needed it.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable: Josuke is afraid of turtles. You only hear of this in the beginning when first introduced to him, where he is initially a little tentative about helping a turtle he found.
  • It's mentioned at multiple points in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War that there is a sharp divide between pures (the rich kids who have been attending Shuchi'in since elementary school), and impures (Scholarship Students who began attending later in their academic careers) and that the former looks down on the latter. Barring some background comments during Shirogane's reelection, none of the three impures seen for the majority of the series are ever shown to be unpopular (in fact, both Shirogane siblings are indicated as being very high up the social ladder). It's only at the tail end of the series that we see the newest impure Takano being bullied, and even then it's more because he lords over everyone with his high grades.
  • In Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, Kanna is stated to have been kicked out of the dragon world due to being mischievous and prone to acting out. She's very well-behaved every time we see her. However, this is justified given that the stated reason for her acting out was because her parents ignored her. Since Kobayashi and Tohru both give her lots of attention, she doesn't have a need to misbehave.
  • My Hero Academia:
    • Izuku Midoriya's poor performance on the Quirk Apprehension Test. While it's obvious that proper use of a quirk that's well-suited to the task can enable someone to do several times better than a normal person, Midoriya places last on the test despite having one of the best scores in the ball-throwing contest and having spent months training to learn to use One For All. Even though some of his classmates' quirks wouldn't seem all that useful (for example, Koda can communicate with animals, but he places eleventh out of twenty), everyone else still places ahead of him. The anime offers a Hand Wave for this, with Midoriya saying that after he broke his finger on the ball test, he was too badly injured to do well in the subsequent events.
    • Ochaco Uraraka is meant to be 'chubby' and gets teased for being overweight at times. Going by her appearance👁 Image
      ◊, she's nowhere near what one might refer to as overweight, even when looked at by anime design standards.
  • Naruto:
    • Sakura is teased for having a large forehead, yet she's not usually drawn with a forehead any bigger than the other characters. That said, it's indicated that the allegedly large forehead is less of a problem than Sakura's insecurity over it, which she starts to get over after becoming friends with Ino.
    • Tsunade's Mitotic Regeneration Technique (which she uses on several occasions — the battle of the Sannin, Pain's invasion, and the final battle) is said to shorten her lifespan. She's still alive in the series epilogue, which takes place around 15 years after the final arc, and there's no indication that she's in poor health. She'd be around 70. Though her mix of Uzumaki/Senju blood from her grandparents may have helped boost her resilience and lifeforce.
  • One Piece: If a Devil Fruit user eats a second Fruit, they will not just die, they will explode. At least that's what Blueno claims. Thing is, there's as many things contradicting this as there is confirming it. For starters, it's never happened onscreen and nobody can relate the names of anyone who has done this. Not to mention, Blackbeard does indeed have the powers of two Fruits, having stolen one from Whitebeard, an exception that immediately strikes some witnesses as something that shouldn't have happened. However, while Blackbeard is the only one to have two and lived, nobody can claim to have witnessed an event where a user has exploded as a result of trying it. (Likely, few are willing to test it). Jabra seems to know someone who knows someone who this has happened to, and Blueno may have witnessed it himself. (Blueno does not believe anything he cannot confirm with his own senses, and he claims this is what happens if you eat a second, so he wouldn't have made the claim unless he was sure of it).
  • Sailor Moon
  • In Sonic X, Chris Thorndyke often complains about being rich meaning he doesn't have any real friends, and his parents never being home. While at first this seems almost true, over time, he is shown to have more human friends, more guardians, and his parents repeatedly manage to physically show up for special occasions. Being obscenely wealthy is certainly never played as a disadvantage.
  • In Urusei Yatsura, the male protagonist, Ataru, is described more than once as being the most unattractive teenager in all of Tomobiki. However, he looks like an average teenage boy. He has a steady girlfriend before the start of the series. Unknowingly charms the Cute Alien Girl Lum, who refuses to let him go, and other female characters throughout the series and movies.
  • Nate being a Ridiculously Average Guy is a running gag in Yokai Watch but he isn't nearly as generic as he is stated to be.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!
    • Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Jaden is accused of being selfish and not taking things seriously by numerous characters in Season 3. This however, goes against what's shown in the first two seasons where he's shown to know what's at stake and take things seriously at various times, plus he's shown to care for his friends and their wellbeing, trying to help them find the right path when they're stuck and he constantly tries to help strangers he meets with their problems (for one example: when Lynd asked him to bring Prince Ojin back, he directly went to challenge Ojin with a serious face, once he beat him and brought him back to his normal self, he immediately made a beeline towards Saiou bowing that he wouldn't let him do whatever he wanted anymore). It's a bit staggering that his characterization in the first two seasons goes against what was claimed in the third.
      • What's more, there's actually nothing wrong with simply wanting to have a good time as a duelist. If anything, that's exactly the whole point of playing card games in the first place. Yet, others like Aster scold him for "not having a purpose", as though helping others simply out of altruism is a bad thing.
      • Furthermore, Word of God states that Jaden was incapable of defeating someone like Yami Marik until season 3, despite already besting a duplicate Winged Dragon of Ra in season 2. And unlike Yami Yugi, Jaden won without another God card or a specific card to counter Ra's abilities.
      • However, It should be noted that dueling prowess aside, many of Jaden's opponents up to Season 2 were significantly less vicious, openly murderous, or completely insane compared to Yugi's, and thus more open to pulling a Heel–Face Turn. The assertation may have been more towards the attitude of Jaden's opponents. Indeed, when Yubel's forces shows up, Jaden gradually succumbs to their manipulation and ends up making several costly mistakes. The main reason Yugi and Yami continued to succeed was through unity, whereas Jaden at that point ended up alienating his friends.
    • Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's
      • The 4Kids dub gives Yusei entomophobia for apparently no other reason than to add an element of fear to his duel against an Insect duelist — despite the fact that his character shows no obvious outward signs of being afraid of bugs at all.
      • Overlapping with Redemption Demotion. It's stated repeatedly over the course of the third season that Jack has no idea how to play defensively. This is despite the fact that before then, he ran many cards (Twin-Shield Defender, Battle Fader, the entire Resonator archetype) that favored defensive play, and even outright stated in his time as King that he sometimes played defensively to make the Duel last longer than it would if he went all-out.
    Comic Books 
  • Batman:
    • Stephanie Brown is often stated to be by far the least competent member of the Bat-family, to the point that her being completely out of her depth as Robin was the entire impetus for War Games. While she's mostly self-taught, usually underequipped, and not as inhumanly skilled as some members of the group, in actual fights or on missions, she doesn't seem much less able than most versions of Robin, and can still manage to beat up dozens of thugs or sneak into top-security fortresses with the best of them (not to mention, while under-equipped, she's shown repeatedly to be quite capable with her limited resources). This was one of the reasons her being fired as Robin and thus leading to the events of War Games is so controversial, as its framed as if she was never cut out to be a vigilante, let alone Robin, because she didn't listen to Batman and got herself taken hostage once, when this was something Dick, Jason, and Tim had all had happen to them countless times without Bruce ever considering it a failing and they've all at times disobeyed him without issue, making it less that Steph was a terrible Robin and more that Steph was held to a completely unfair Double Standard to the rest of the Bat-Family.
    • Absolute Batman was marketed as a Working-Class Hero with none of his mainline counterpart's wealth, but this doesn't stop him from getting abundant amounts of gear, tech, and resources all across Gotham, to the point of having multiple Batcaves in abandoned buildings all over the city. The only difference is that they're not as overtly hi-tech as they normally would be for most versions of him. In fact, in some ways, his technology is more advanced on a mechanical level (such as his claw-cape and the ability to move the ears of the cowl without touching it), but less in terms of electronics. Issue 3 does address this somewhat by revealing that Bruce's resources are actually much more limited than they appear, with him having to heavily rely on recycling them, putting him at a disadvantage against Black Mask who has the wealth to endlessly fund the Party Animals. Issue 4 also implies that he made the money to acquire such resources through stock trading, and it's also shown that he built all of this over a very long period of time.
  • The French in Crécy are presented as monstrous terrors that have oppressed England for centuries which basically forces the English to engage in war crimes in order to combat their enemies. However, the narrative doesn't particularly portray them as any more vicious than the English, and given the context of the conflict, it's the English who come off as worse since they are the aggressors and the French are merely defending themselves.
  • In the original run of Doom Patrol, the original cast was meant to have really unpleasant superpowers that made them viewed as freaks from society. Robotman's metal body meant that he had no sense of touch, and Negative Man was essentially a host for a parasite — but then there was Elasti-Girl, who could stretch and expand her body to any size, even becoming a Giant Woman, a power which she had full control over. It was stated that early on, she didn't have much control over her power, which ruined her acting career, but by the time of the comic, it was difficult to see the downside, and she was shown to be a very competent crimefighter. Later writers ended up retooling her powers to carry more obvious problems, such as her collapsing into a human blob if she lost concentration.
  • In Green Lantern: Rebirth, one scene shows Green Arrow attempt to use a Green Lantern ring in a fight, and he's shown to be physically and mentally exhausted to the point that he can barely even stand after summing up the will to create a single small construct of an arrow. Kyle tells him that it feels like that "every time" he uses his ring. This is rather unusual, as Green Lanterns have been shown many times using their rings with no visible strain, including for casual and frivolous purposes (i.e. making a green hand to point at something).
  • In Jessica Jones and the original Alias (Marvel Comics), Jessica's ability to fly is regularly downplayed, treated like she's terrible at it and that its largely useless. For the most part, when she does use it, she seems to get where she's going relatively quickly and without issue controlling her flight path, enough to keep up with Flying Brick heroes. The biggest difficulty she seems to have actually is landing, a problem that completely goes away in her appearances in-between these books (during which time she's portrayed sober and far less self-destructive), implying that its actually just that she's flying drunk most of the time.
  • In Monica's Gang, Monica is always bullied by being "shorty, toothy and chubby", but toothy is her only apparent characteristic. She's as short as any other child of her age and she looks to have the same BMI as her bullies, although it is sometimes portrayed as "heavy", but not necessarily "chubby".
  • When "he" first appears in New Avengers a sharp-eyed reader might notice that the mysterious character Ronin seems to be ignoring Spider-Man and Iron Man. This makes sense when it's revealed that Ronin is actually Echo — a deaf woman — who can't lip-read someone whose mask/helmet covers their mouth... unfortunately, once that's revealed, Echo's deafness seems to go away; she even replies to comments made by people facing away from her.
  • The Phantom Zone: One panel in the opening scene goes over a Long List of Phantom Zone prisoners who appear in earlier comics but remain offscreen in this one. They are described as a “legion of infamy”, each responsible for “heinous” crimes. However, some of them are only guilty of lesser crimes like theft (Ak-Var and Tra-Gob) or forbidden scientific experiments that didn’t hurt anyone (Vorb-Un), and several of them (including the aforementioned three) were even paroled and allowed to live in Kandor prior to this story. Possibly justified, since their crimes may be considered worse by the standards of the more advanced Kryptonian society, and the Phantom Zone inmates giving Quex-El dreams about the prisoners may not care about that point.
  • An early Superman Christmas story shows us an older boy who's supposed to be spoiled and unappreciative of his wealth, but the actual writing shows him as no worse than sheltered, and far from being unappreciative of his many toys, he's surfeited, and wants to move on to real things, which is perfectly normal and reasonable for a twelve-year-old.
  • In The Umbrella Academy, Alison, The Rumor, is described as being narcissistic despite never displaying this trait.
  • Zipi y Zape: The twins have bad publicity and some stories show the citizens running away in panic from Zipi and Zape as if they were terrorists or horrible monsters. In reality, Zipi and Zape are two of the nicest people in their town, and they always want to help people. The bad publicity may be due to Characterization Marches On, as in earlier stories the twins were slightly more mischievous and more prone to perform pranks such as tying cans to dog tails. In later stories (the ones that are easier to find and everyone remembers), this trait is dropped, but the citizens' reaction to their pranks isn't. Another possibility is that Values Dissonance is at play: the comic was made in a different time when people were more strict regarding certain behaviors and may have seen their pranks and actions as something more grave.
    Comic Strips 
  • Bloom County: Early in one arc, Steve Dallas becomes a surprise test subject for Oliver Wendell Holmes' "electro-photo-pigmentizer," which temporarily turns light-skinned people black. Steve has no idea what happened and thinks it's a The Twilight Zone-style Karmic Twist Ending because he is "an occasional mutterer of racial slurs." While Steve demonstrates all kinds of boorish behaviors on a regular basis and it wouldn't be surprising if he did use racial slurs, he's rarely if ever shown doing so.
  • In one Calvin and Hobbes strip, it's claimed Susie eats sandwiches by taking them apart and eating each ingredient separately. Not only is this never referenced again, several later comics show Susie eating her sandwich normally.
  • Therese of For Better or for Worse was repeatedly described as shallow, petty, materialistic, and whatever else Lynn Johnson could use to paint her as the villain in Anthony's marriage. However, she rarely got any panel time that involved anything other than complaining to Anthony about Liz — whom she turned out to have good reason to dislike. When she was shown interacting with other characters, she came off as little more than a normal if somewhat removed person and some thought her actions were justified when details of their marriage came to light.
  • Ever since the start of the strip's run, Garfield has been consistently described as being fat, but, as drawn, he has actually gotten significantly more svelte over the years.
  • Charlie Brown in Peanuts claims that everyone hates him and he has no friends, even though Schroeder and Linus are clearly his friends, and although Lucy insults him, she also hangs around with him an awful lot. Also, all the neighborhood kids let him be manager and captain of the baseball team. Of course, this makes more sense when you know that the creator Charles M. Schulz, even when he had a wife, five children, and millions of fans, still complained of being anxious and lonely. This is slightly more evident, if still underwhelming, in the animated cartoons, where the others can sometimes be more apathetic or ignorant of his suffering. Charlie Brown's defining characteristics are being wishy-washy and most of the symptoms you think of when you hear the term "clinical depression". Too bad There Are No Therapists (other than Lucy, who's probably worse than nothing in terns of therapy).
    Fan Works 
  • Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): San's tendency to be distracted and slow on the uptake (as seen in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), and explicitly referenced by himself and Ichi and Ni in this story) becomes this. As half of Monster X, San is competent and quick on the draw when it comes to battle and defending themselves. Possibly justified by him caring for Monster X's Vivienne Graham half giving him motivation that he didn't have when attached to his hateful brothers.
  • A Pikachu in Love gives us the other Pokemon considering Pikachu the 'teacher's pet' of the team due to being Ash's favorite. At most, this is only elaborated on once or twice, and we don't see any of the other Pokemon in the fic treating him as such.
  • Sakura in Chunin Exam Day allegedly treats Naruto like garbage until she's brought into the "Groundhog Day" Loop. However, almost every time she actually interacts with Naruto, she's perfectly friendly, such as when she visits his apartment due to being concerned about him then complimenting all the remodeling he's done to the place. The one time she's anything but friendly with him (barring when Naruto increasingly acts like a sociopath) is when he gets the team disqualified from the titular exams for his apparent cowardicenote Naruto didn't understand that passing each part of the exam caused the loop to progress, thus he went to the wrong location after passing the first exam the previous day and his teammates got disqualified for not having a full team present.
  • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses: Fifth Path Hilda is frequently referred to as being lazy by others, much like in the actual game, but is never actually shown being lazy.
  • The Naruto fanfic For Your Eyes Only describes Sakura as being the type who Really Gets Around. She violently rejects the only male to speak with her onscreen, only ever flirts with one male offscreen and is killed for it. We never even hear her point of view on this, as she doesn't get so much as a word of dialogue.
  • Infinity Train: Seeker of Crocus has many things it says about Goh that really aren't backed up by the story itself.
    • The main problem with Goh that gives him flak to no end are his, as often eloquently put, "piss-poor social skills". However, while his social skills do need a bit of work, most of the examples regarding social skills aren't even directly connected to them; instead, they're the result of him being Locked Out of the Loop (He didn't know about Chloe's problems so he didn't even know that she needed help), him being Innocently Insensitive and then having said moment blown out of proportion (Him saying his damning words to Chloe, which eventually led to the girl demonizing him and cutting him out of her life), or even outright slander meant to make him look worse (again, most of what Chloe says about him in her initial train trip, and also what Class 5-E prefer to do during their free time.)
    • The narrative makes it no secret that Goh stays inside in front of a computer all day, looking obssessively for Mew and ignoring everything around him. However, rarely is Goh ever actually shown cooped up in his room, let alone near any computers; if anything, he actually spends more time at the Institute than at his own house.
    • Another flaw that gets called out is that Goh tends to take things for granted because everything gets handed to him on a silver platter. However, the same things that are said to be given to him (a job as a research assistant, not having to go to school except for tests) were either because of his qualifications (the job) or because of external sources that were worried for his safety (the staying at home part), with every other interaction he has with people not even showing them giving him the time of day.
    • It's mentioned later down the act that with Chloe not being around to deliver him his homework, Goh has fallen behind in his studies. This would imply that he's Book Dumb, but there's rarely a moment in the story that shows him being that bad at studying; at most, he's shown to not be enthused about studying and heading to school when he doesn't need to, which is perfectly justified given how terrible school is in this story.
    • As Chloe herself puts it, "if it's not about Mew, it's not his problem". This implies a level of tunnel vision that means he doesn't bother with anything else if the Pokémon isn't involved, but the story shows otherwise: not only is Goh able to become aware of other problems that don't relate to Mew, the Pokemon himself rarely ever crosses his mind.
  • Lucki: Silver is supposed to be weak, but wins almost every battle she partakes in, often singlehandedly. She even shrugs off a super-effective Thunder attack from Wattson’s Raichu. This is a parody of how protagonists of these stories only lose to throw the readers off the trail of thinking they are Mary Sues. Once Fara joins the team, Silver starts losing.
  • Jeremiah Walker in The Man With Two Names👁 Image
     is stated more than once to have a problem with his temper. Yet the only times he's shown losing his temper in the story are when someone is completely screwing him over, such as a vendor charging him over ten times as much due to racism or his employer not only refusing to help him get a work visa so he won't get deported to the Everfree Forest but also trying to frame him for attempted murder. The ultimate case being his argument and "murder" of his older brother, Abe. The story completely ignores that not only was Jeremiah the wronged party, like always, but that Abe was the one who escalted their argument to violence and his death was a complete accident which Jeremiah was completely horrified by note Abe stole the pastor position at the local church Jeremiah always wanted. Their father was the previous pastor and Jeremiah had been training to become the new pastor since he was a kid while Abe wanted nothing to do with the church. After college, Abe came home with a useless degree, no money, and no job, so their father gave him the pastor position out of pity. After taking the job, Abe then proceeded to remove all Christian influences from the church to "be more inclusive", and his idea of helping Jeremiah is offering a recommendation for him to be pastor at a church of a different religion. When Jeremiah called him out, Abe hit him, resulting in them escalating to a fist fight. While his brother was strangling him, Jeremiah blindly grabbed a knife he kept in his boot (due to being a camping enthusiast) and lashed out, accidentally gutting his brother.
  • My Immortal: Snap and Loopin are apparently pedophiles for peeping on Ebony. While it's certainly wrong to peep, especially on one's student, Ebony is of legal age. Also, Loopin is apparently very dangerous even though he doesn't do anything, and is actually somewhat polite toward Ebony.
  • Ronan of Naruto Veangance Revelations, has two flaws listed; he has a mole on his face, and he can't do housework. He has over six times the point threshold at which the "Official Mary Sue Litmus Test" says a character is a lost cause.
  • In Friendship is Witchcraft, Spike is apparently incredibly fat. He clearly isn't. This just reinforces how he is the eternal Butt-Monkey of this universe.
  • Origins: A Mass Effect/Star Wars/Borderlands/Halo Massive Multiplayer Crossover, Admiral Allison Nimitz really, really doesn't like working with the Pandorans and inhabitants of the wider galaxy because they're "uncivilized". She does anyway, claiming the Godzilla Threshold has been crossed, but given everything that's happened (and indeed looking at things Trans-Galactic Republic forces participated in previously, such as at a minimum ignoring tyranny spreading as a result of their technology), her complaints fall flat. Further, the actions of the Mega Corps make sense in their own universe, which is even discussed by a Trans-Galactic Republic captain, alluding to "blue and orange paint".
  • In The Prayer Warriors, we are told that the Prayer Warriors don't murder, unlike the Satanists. Never mind that the vast majority of the deaths in the story are someone being murdered by a Prayer Warrior, and the relative few that aren't are often Prayer Warriors being killed while trying to kill someone else.
  • Pink Personal Hell And Altering Fate plays this a little differently — Nickel Steel doesn't believe he's good at magic despite having a "magic" Cutie Mark. Actually, that's just him not being sure enough of himself — meaning his flaw isn't that he's unskilled at magic, moreso that he's just not sure of himself.
  • Justified in When the Moon Fell in Love with the Sun. Katniss considers herself ugly, but to hear Peeta tell it, she's the most beautiful girl in the world. This is one of the hints that Katniss's terrible self-esteem is coloring her narration.
    Films — Animated 
  • Ackar from BIONICLE: The Legend Reborn is said to be an old warrior way past his prime, and as such, his people are growing tired of him. Doesn't stop him from performing impossible multi-somersaults and wiping away a gang of marauding Bone Hunters and their dinosaur steeds with ease.
  • Finding Nemo: Nemo's undersized fin is often described as making him bad at swimming, but he appears to be able to swim perfectly fine in all his scenes.
  • The posters for Ice Age: Continental Drift described Scrat as mischievous👁 Image
    ◊ when he is actually a Butt-Monkey Determinator who only causes trouble unintentionally (and then suffers worse than anyone for it.)
  • The Russian animated movie Ilya Muromets and Nightingale the Robber draws attention to Ilya's superstitiousness for about its first half, and then it's forgotten and has no effect on the plot when the characters get to Constantinople.
  • Supplementary material for The Incredibles 1 claims that Elastigirl's strength is decreased the more she stretches. This is never borne out in the film itself. If anything, it seems like the opposite is true; she tends to use her stretching power while throwing punches and kicks and routinely knocks people out while doing so, and her biggest feat of strength (keeping an entire RV with her family in it suspended for a fairly long period) was while her entire torso was stretched to the size of a tablecloth.
  • Little Angels: The Brightest Christmas: Daniel is treated as selfish, but the first thing he does is offering to get a job to support the family.
    Films — Live-Action 
  • In Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, Jeremiah Ecks is introduced as an alcoholic that spent the previous couple years getting sloshed in bars. Apparently, not only did it not reduce his physical prowess at all, but he didn't even need any time to sober up.
  • Played for Laughs in Being John Malkovich. Dr. Lester apologizes for his horrendous speech impediment when in fact he has no impediment whatsoever. He just thinks he does because his secretary is extremely hard of hearing and mishears everything he says.
  • Boys From County Hell:
    • Eugene is said to be a screw-up because he's unemployed and drinking a lot at the start. Except, he sensibly goes into work with his father to finance a move to Australia, and assembles a team of locals to help out with construction who'd otherwise avoid the project due to Francie being a Bad Boss. He presumably had to train Claire and SP, and even gets good work out of the local drunk. And when the horror starts happening, it's Eugene who's the most proactive with his quick thinking. This could be justified by Francie being overly hard on him.
    • He's also blamed for the accident that gets William killed. While they were out drinking late, Eugene still made sure he walked him home and had a light on his phone to make sure they wouldn't get lost or have an accident. William being gored to death by one of his own father's animals was completely out of Eugene's hands, the blame lying entirely on George for not controlling the pig.
  • The Brass Teapot has Payton, played by Alexis Bledel. By the way the other characters talk about her, one would think she was the resident Alpha Bitch, but other than some snootiness and condescension, she’s nowhere near that bitchy and she does keep inviting her poorer former high school classmates to her parties.
  • A Bronx Tale: Tony Toupee supposedly insists on singing all the time despite being a terrible singer, but in all of his scenes, he's either staying quiet or being drowned out by a voiceover.
  • In The Broadway Melody, the two main characters, a sister act, each have one. There's the "attractive but untalented one" (who seems every bit as good a dancer and singer as the other) and the "talented but plain one" (who is not even a little plain).
  • Sally Bowles of Cabaret is said to have an average voice in the source material, and she's an untrained dancer; basically the idea is that she's passable for the Kit Kat Club but unlikely to ever rise above it. Several productions get around this by having the actress add tired inflections to some of the songs, but the 1972 film version casts Liza Minnelli. She had years of experience in both singing and dancing and, while she did come up with some techniques that an enthusiastic amateur would use for "Mein Herr", her singing is perfect.
  • Cleaner (2025): Michael is noted to be autistic to the point where he qualifies for a government grant to be put in a home despite being ostensibly adult age, but other than losing his temper often, he is not shown to otherwise be suffering from autism. The most his mental disorder is shown is that he has issues making eye contact with people when speaking with them, which is typical for people with autism.
  • Conclave: Cardinal Adeyemi is described as homophobic and bigoted, but he never expresses these attitudes onscreen. He's further described as being as awful as Tedesco is, but aside from his screaming and fighting with a nun who turns out to be his former lover, we never see him be outright nasty to others.
  • Thomas Sharpe of Crimson Peak has a twofer:
    • He claims he's nervous in crowds and says he has to shut his eyes during his and Edith's first dance together. He never once displays No Social Skills at any other point in the film — interacting with strangers confidently and charismatically. Specifically he says he has to shut his eyes during uncomfortable situations — which he never does, except for when Edith discovers his incestuous relationship with Lucille.
    • Edith claims he's "always looking to the past". A character trait that might accurately describe Lucille, but Thomas is shown to be very ambitious and imaginative — never displaying old-fashioned or outdated attitudes.
  • In the 1955 adaptation of The End of the Affair, Maurice tries to point out Henry's flaws to Sarah to get her to leave her husband. He claims Henry is possessive and jealous, and that the reason Sarah stays with him is out of fear of him. The movie seems to be on Maurice's side, but nowhere is it shown that Henry is anything like that, and in fact, these traits actually apply much more to Maurice himself. He's the one who went to see the private detective out of his own paranoia about what Sarah was doing when Henry changed his mind about it, and throughout the movie Maurice breaks Sarah's boundaries and nags her about her behavior that he views as suspicious rather than being an adult and communicating with her.
  • Fifteen & Pregnant: Earlier in the film, Evie goes on about how Adam is some kind of a troublemaker to the point of having to go with Cal, yet outside of him being a bit annoying, we aren't shown this rebelliousness.
  • Wendy, the protagonist of Final Destination 3 tells us constantly that she's a Control Freak. Throughout the whole film, she never shows a problem with not being in control (she in fact lampshades that her control freak nature failed her when she could have stopped the opening accident). She shows no problem with letting Kevin help or even take the lead when trying to figure out Death's design.
  • Flubber: Brainard's absent-mindedness is showcased in the first fifteen minutes of the movie, then never appears again.
  • Godzilla (1998) repeatedly has other characters tell Audrey (and by extension, the audience) that she's far too nice for her own good. The idea is to sell her as an Extreme Doormat but, before the movie has even started, she and Nick are broken up because she chose her career over marrying him. And in the course of the movie, she ruins his career by betraying top-secret information to the press to further her own.
  • In The Great Outdoors we're told several times that Roman's daughters are weird and creepy, and the theme from The Twilight Zone plays when they enter a scene. We're never shown why they would be considered weird or creepy (aside from being identical twins, which in itself is pretty mundane).
  • Screenwriter Steve Kloves said that the reason Hermione Granger became his favorite Harry Potter character was due to her having "no idea" of the effect she has on people, suggesting a certain degree of social ineptitude, yet this trait never seems to come up in any of the films (except in the first where she butts in on a lot of conversations she wasn't invited but that drops fast), where she seems quite capable of socializing with others, despite being a supposedly bookish nerd.
  • Ice Princess:
    • When she quits skating, Gen says that she's not good enough to keep up with the others anyway. This isn't supported by Gen's actual skating performance, where she comes across as being of about the same skill level as Nikki and Zoey and noticeably better than Tiffany.
    • Zoey is repeatedly referred to as an untrustworthy skate thief but is never shown stealing anything.
  • In Good Company: One of the reasons Carter gives for firing Louie is sexual harassment, but this aspect of his character is never shown in the film (although some deleted scenes hint at it).
  • The Italian Job (1969): Before they start working with him, Bridger and "Camp" Freddie seem to feel that Charlie is a small-time bungler who is certain to get caught in Italy. However, he comes across as quite skillful throughout his screen time.
  • It's a Wonderful Knife (2023): Winnie's parents give her a tracksuit, because she needs it in their view. She does not appear any less thin than a year prior.
  • It's a Wonderful Life: George's guardian angel Clarence is described by the other angels as having the faith of a child, but the IQ of a rabbit, but everything we see of him afterwards suggests that he's reasonably smart.
  • Jurassic World:
    • It's said that Zach "can be so mean" to his little brother Gray. At worst, Zach is less compassionate than he could be regarding Gray's sadness over their parents' impending divorce, but when the Indominus rex attacks, Zach's Big Brother Instinct kicks in.
    • Claire is also repeatedly told she's in over her head and out of her depth once the disaster starts. She in fact handles herself very well in the jungle and never becomes The Load. While this could be written off as underestimating her because she's an office drone, she pulls off many heroics in the film but these largely get ignored by the other characters — who continue to treat her like a liability. Her shoes are also made fun of for being impractical (she's wearing high heels because she wasn't planning to get lost in the jungle that day) — but again she's able to walk and run in them quite easily when the occasion calls for it.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Mary Poppins:
    • One scene has the title character measuring the children's flaws. Michael's ('extremely stubborn and suspicious') is demonstrated multiple times throughout the film. Jane, on the other hand, is just 'rather inclined to giggle', which only shows up in that scene. She's otherwise quite sensible, and in the Uncle Albert sequence, everybody else starts laughing before she does.
    • A justified example with how the Banks children are hyped up to be the brattiest pair of troublemakers that drive their nannies mad when they're perfectly normal children by modern standards. Mary Poppins's function is to teach the parents to show their children more affection rather than foist them onto nannies to discipline them.
  • Subverted in Mean Girls. Janis and Damian hype up Regina's Alpha Bitch nature to Cady, who is then surprised at how nice Regina and her Girl Posse are. It's only when they get to Regina's house that it becomes clear that she's a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing.
  • The protagonist in the pro-life film October Baby is a survivor of a botched abortion, and is said to have depression, epilepsy, asthma, and a childhood full of hip surgeries. Throughout the film she never exhibits any symptoms of the first two, never uses the inhaler after a couple of scenes in the opening act, and doesn't walk with any sign of a limp (and in fact spends hours dragging around a heavy suitcase).
  • Philip's paintings in the 1934 film version of Of Human Bondage are said to be awful. A glance at them shows that they are quite nice, or at least he'd have no problem selling them. It's possible there's some Values Dissonance here; impressionism was still catching on at the time Philip is working as an artist, so they might just be unpalatable for the period.
  • Penelope (2006): The curse is described as giving Penelope the face of a pig, but all that she gets is the nose and ears. The ears themselves are often covered by her hairstyle, and are only visible on Christina Ricci in a single scene.
  • The Phantom of the Opera (2004) has Carlotta, supposedly a talentless case of The Prima Donna; her assistants are shown listening to her singing with earplugs on. She's noted to be blown out of the water by Christine, as well. But in the actual film, Carlotta's singing is significantly better than Christine's; even if you take Technician vs. Performer into account, they actually had to alter some songs from the stage version due to Emmy Rossum's inability to sing them properly. Carlotta does scoop a few times in her otherwise skilled performances, and it's called attention to, but Christine does as well, and it isn't. Especially egregious since Minnie Driver was dubbed by Margaret Preece due to her lack of proficiency with opera.
  • In The Producers Roger De Bris is supposedly a terrible theatrical director, but he competently stages a production of "Springtime For Hitler", complete with an elaborate Busby Berkeley Number. Of course, his main problem is that he makes everything way too campy. It just happens to work out with "Springtime for Hitler" by pushing it into Crosses the Line Twice territory.
  • In The Raid, main character Rama is said to be a rookie officer joining a fairly elite group. Over the course of the film, he displays by far the most ability of any individual character. We're not talking Action Survivor moments of occasional competence, either—he straight-up kills dozens of people in open combat with near-superhuman levels of martial arts skills. By contrast, his fellow officers are whittled down very quickly.
  • In Scream (2022), Richie claims to be a total newbie to the horror genre and to the Stab movies specifically, yet he also makes meaningful allusions to Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th and watches a YouTube video bashing Stab 8. This later turns out to be Foreshadowing the fact that he's actually a diehard horror fan — and one of the killers.
  • In Spider-Man 1 Norman Osborn is said by a newspaper in a Freeze-Frame Bonus to be an Insufferable Genius with a history of alienating his colleagues with his abrasive, arrogant personality. However, all the times we see him before taking the Psycho Serum and becoming the Green Goblin he's quite genial, although a bit hard on his son Harry.
  • The titular superhero of The Super Inframan is stated to gain his powers from Solar Energy, which allows him to pull off his Finishing Move, the Solar Armor Beam. According to the film, without the sun, Inframan will be severely weakened... except that's not the case. When the villainess, Princess Dragon Mom, blocks out the sun with a powerful smokescreen, preventing Inframan from using his Solar Armor Beam, Inframan instead switches to using his Infra-kick and destroys two monsters with it. That's not accounting for the fact that the final battle took place indoors, where Inframan wouldn't be receiving any sunlight, but it still doesn't stop him from killing tons and tons of enemy mooks and monsters.
  • This Is Spın̈al Tap: Their music is awesome, but try telling that to the in-universe critics. Case in point, a review for their album Shark Sandwich said simply "Shit sandwich." Then again, a song with a title like "Lick My Love Pump" probably wouldn't chart.
  • The main character of To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday is said to be paralyzed with grief for his dead wife because he doesn't want to move back to the mainland, doesn't want to date, and has long talks with his wife's ghost on the beach. (Roger Ebert pointed out this gives him an excellent reason for not wanting to move.) The movie seems to be faulting him for grieving at all.
  • What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? makes Jane Hudson out to be a terrible actress. The problem comes when we're shown clips from actual Bette Davis films of the past. While the actress herself picked her worst performances, we don't see enough of the rushes to gauge how bad Jane is (although at least it's said to be her drunken behavior on set that counts against her most).
    Literature 
  • Bazil Broketail: Nesessitas is stated to be inclined to dragonish dourness, but her later actions (saving Relkin and comforting him when he breaks out crying in despair) paint her as one of the most kind-hearted of dragons depicted in the series.
  • In Darksaber, Pellaeon is said to have little charisma. What does he do in that series? Display more persuasive ability and likability than anyone else on his side. Before that was written, he was known to have taken command of what was left of the fleet during the disaster at Endor, calling the retreat. After this was written, he set up a peace treaty with the New Republic and talked the Imperial Remnant into accepting it. Yeah, that's something someone with little charisma can do.
  • In The Dark Tower, people keep saying that Roland is a slow thinker who lacks imagination, yet he comes up with many an inventive strategy and thinks quickly on his feet on more than a few occasions.
  • The Divine Comedy places Marco Lombardi in Purgatory to do penance for his sins, but everything Marco says and does demonstrates a strong sense of virtue and public responsibility. Since we know nothing about Marco outside of the Comedy, there is no indication as to why Dante choose to put him in Purgatory instead of in Heaven.
  • In Ender's Game, Bean is claimed to be bad at commanding large armies, but can use a few as precisely as a scalpel. Why he would be bad with large armies is never given any examples past being stated so... until the P.O.V. Sequel Ender's Shadow which revealed said trait was in fact a lie to keep Bean from shouldering too many responsibilities because he's Ender's replacement in case he fails. Being a P.O.V. sequel also gives it more time to show that the lie does have a bit of truth to it. Bean's tactics are excellent, but morale under his command tends to be low because he's not good at empathizing with others.
  • GONE series:
    • Diana is apparently a "slut" who really gets around, which is admitted by even Diana herself. In fact, in previous books, she even wears the label proudly despite many characters (Astrid, Dekka, Brianna, and Drake) thinking ill of her for it and making it her main identifier in the series, apart from her being "beautiful and snarky". However, she's only been in a romantic relationship with Caine for the duration of the series and spent a lot of time declining his advances too. She's never cheated in the series or flirted with anyone but Caine, leading some fans to think this reputation is unfair. Unfortunately can be a case of Truth in Television, seeing as some young girls tend to get labelled by their peers as "sluts" based on appearance and demeanor rather than actions.
    • Sam's flaw is how he's "always trying to play the hero"👁 Image
      and how it constantly backfires on him despite him doing the right thing...It seems to be more self-pity in recent installments of the series (reasons for the self-pity ranging from having to be the leader, not being the leader, everything going wrong, nothing going wrong and it being boring, his girlfriend refusing to be pressured into sex and repercussions from cheating). But he's the nice guy who does the right thing always and gets disproportionate retribution for his godly sacrifices.
  • Tom and John's father in The Great Brain books has a reputation for buying new inventions that turn out to be worthless, but it never happens in any of the stories. He orders a flush toilet in the first book that works, to everyone's surprise, and gives John a basketball and backboard that make him the most popular kid in town.
  • The Great Greene Heist: Jackson and his friends talk about Wilton as if he's a bully and Sycophantic Servant to Keith, but most of Wilton's POV scenes have him seem like a Minion with an F in Evil who is slowly getting fed up with Keith's jerkiness.
  • In Harry Potter, it's established in the first book that the eponymous protagonist was a potential candidate for Slytherin, which he fears because Slytherin has historically been an evil house, and he would have probably wound up there if he didn't explicitly request otherwise. However, Slytherins are supposedly ambitious, shrewd, ruthless, and cunning, traits Harry almost never shows. If anything, he's consistently shown to be hotheaded, impulsive, and constantly downplaying his own achievements while caring far too much about others. The major Slytherin flaw is that Ambition Is Evil, but Harry is essentially a rich celebrity who could absolutely use his fame for his own gain, but instead consistently treats it as an annoying burden that he'd prefer not to have. He also has no interest in the philosophy of Fantastic Racism that most Slytherins espouse, and wouldn't qualify as pure-blooded even if he did. The only real explanation is that the Sorting Hat was picking up exclusively on the Voldemort parts of him, as otherwise the whole concept doesn't make sense.
  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The series makes frequent jokes about the eponymous Guide being useless, horribly written, and riddled with errors. Based on the excerpts from it that are shown throughout the series, it actually provides a great deal of useful information, delivered in a style that's clear, easily readable and engaging. Most of them also seem to be reasonably accurate, with the notable exception of one entry claiming that no life forms actually exist anywhere in the Universe.
  • Gideon Lightwood from The Infernal Devices, is supposedly an even bigger Jerkass than his little brother, although he's shown himself to be nicer than Gabriel. Considering that was Will speaking, it's no wonder[[note]]He was possibly a bigger asshole than Gabriel, but he shaped up during his time in Spain.
  • Jeeves and Wooster: Bertie Wooster claims to have terrible luck with women in general, only being able to attract a certain type. It seems that that type is the only one who ever shows up in the stories.
  • Melanies Marvellous Measles: Sam is said to have a "weak immune system", but from what little we see of him, he seems fine. He is shown to be able to play sports.
  • NOS4A2: We're repeatedly told that Vic is a terrible mother with serious mental problems, but we rarely see her be anything but a quite good mother who's just perpetually depressed. It's implied that all her real screwups happened in the years between chapters, but we never get to see them or even hear more than passing references to them. The one instance where Vic did act crazy was in burning her house down - which is, admittedly, a pretty big screwup, but it seems less like the result of an inherent flaw and more an effect of being driven to drunkenness and despair by years of Manx's children harassing her.
  • In John Ringo's Paladin of Shadows series, the main character is said to have degenerative injuries from years in the SEALs that forced him off the teams and out of the Navy itself. Precisely, "degenerative damage in half the major joints in his body and a back that was compacted enough for a fifty-year-old," none of which slows him down at any point. He needs to stretch at the start of the first book, he wakes up stiff halfway through the book, it gets a brief mention once or twice in the second or third books and then is never mentioned again. This wouldn't be that big a deal, but he's not lounging on a beach sipping a drink, he's running and gunning with people half his age.
  • In the Pellucidar novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs there are a race of gorilla-like humanoids called Sagoths. In the book, it is stated a few times that Sagoths are inferior to humans in intelligence. However, none of the Sagoth characters appear to be particularly stupid, the Sagoth guard captain in the second book is able to see through a human's ruses, and the Sagoth that Tarzan befriends in the fourth book seems to be of at least average intelligence.
  • Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Supposedly each Demigod has a fatal flaw, some of which are obvious and shown repeatedly (like Percy's Chronic Hero Syndrome), but others are just... not. Bianca, as a child of Hades, is said to have a fatal flaw of holding grudges, but it just never shows up before her death. Even after that happens, she doesn't seem to hold any grudges at all, much to the frustration of her brother Nico (who is said to have the same flaw and does tend to show it, blaming Percy for her death).
  • Redwall: Some mentions of the Bloodwrath mention that those cursed with it can't tell friend from foe and end up attacking their own allies without realizing it. Except that we've never seen any evidence that this could happen, making the Bloodwrath more awesome than cursed. It's possible everyone realizes that one should stay out of the way of people like that.
  • A Series of Unfortunate Events plays with this trope in regards to the narrator. Lemony often compares himself to the Baudelaires and finds himself wanting, and calls himself a coward. However, his "autobiographical" series, All the Wrong Questions, shows that he is every bit as courageous and capable as the Baudelaires and even exceeds them in certain aspects (unlike the Baudelaires, Snicket has a more intuitive grasp of people and is capable of pulling off a Batman Gambit at need).
  • Sherlock Holmes:
    • Holmes' drug use is this in the first few books. Naturally, since A. it wasn't really all that out of the ordinary for the time, at least for those of Holmes' bohemian lifestyle; B. he mainly does it from boredom when he doesn't have a case, and the stories are all about the cases; and C. Watson eventually gets him to kick the habit, it just doesn't come up. That said it's still popular for many adaptations to start with Holmes on a drug-fueled bender before getting a new case, and some like The Seven Percent Solution push this angle for all it's worth.
    • Watson lists several of his own "vices" in the first book, which include being lazy, hating arguments and noise, and getting up at odd hours at night. Seeing as how he's a Shell-Shocked Veteran recovering from being wounded and ill, these hardly count as vices and do not appear in later stories after he recovers. He also says that he has "another set of vices when I'm well", none of which are ever actually depicted in the stories either (there are subtle allusions that hint that these mysterious vices may include gambling and possibly womanizing, but they are never shown). Of course, he is the narrator; maybe he's editing out the parts he's uncomfortable with?
    • In "The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place", Watson mentions for the first and only time that he spends half his wound pension gambling on horse races. For story purposes, this is mostly an excuse for him to know something about people associated with the sport, but he had never really shown much interest in this before (or mentioned spending that much time making bets or watching races, though one short story has a mention that Watson keeps his checkbook locked in a drawer to which Holmes has the only key — a preventative measure some people who admit to gambling habits use to prevent themselves from wagering more than they can afford). Some adaptations have run with this somewhat offhand remark and given Watson a general compulsive gambling problem.
  • Spellsinger: In the series main character Jon Tom is usually mentioned to be a horrible singer by everyone, including himself. It's a minor plot point in the first novel (when his singing actually starts a bar fight), but after that is mostly just something that the other characters will occasionally mock him for. This could be partly because he tries to take singing lessons over the course of the series (which covers over two decades in-universe), and partly because by the standards of the setting he's in (rock and its derivatives are unknown and there are common species with innately more melodic voices than humans) his singing style is much harsher than anyone's used to. Whether and how much it's an actual flaw (as he's making music for magic rather than audience entertainment) is never really clear.
  • In A Song of Ice and Fire, we're often told how the Targaryen family is so prone to madness as a result of their massive inbreeding that "when a Targaryen is born, the gods flip a coin." If you actually break down their genealogy, though, out of the line of seventeen Targaryens who held the throne, only Aerys II and Maegor I were truly insane due to their breeding. Aegon II, Aegon III, and Baelor I had mental issues but either owed them to trauma or were largely functional outside of them, a number of others had issues with their rulership but were quite sane, and overall, most Targaryen monarchs seem to have had a fairly standard range between "incompetent but kept the lights on" and "The Good King." Never mind the numerous Targaryens who never ascended to the throne and seemed to overwhelmingly be normal, reasonable people. Some have inferred that these kings were merely the best of a bad crop, but even then, they seem to have been pretty lucky with those coin tosses until very recently. Of course, the most recent Targaryen monarch (and the only one most people still alive would remember), the above-mentioned Aerys II, did have several people burned alive and was generally so insane that it sparked a continent-wide rebellion, so it's also possible there's some recency bias and historical revisionism in play.
  • The Star Trek novel "Immortal Coil" has android antagonists who are supposedly incapable of applying the information they gather to personal growth or change. Yet either their personalities have profoundly altered since their creation, or the (organic) Old Ones were profoundly stupid to craft a race of androids with an obsessive hatred of non-cybernetic life and then go on depending on those androids for more than the time it takes to switch them off or pick up a firearm.
  • The Twilight Saga:
    • Edward Cullen always tells Bella that he's "dangerous" and "she should stay away from him." However, everyone knows he would never hurt Bella physically. While he does mentally abuse her and is extremely controlling, he doesn't cross the line into physically hurting her. He always thinks he knows better what is good for her than she herself, like in New Moon where he broke up with her. Allegedly to protect her from him and his vampire family.
      • Edward is an atoner who doesn't trust himself not to fall back into blood lust. It doesn't help that Bella's blood smells super-delicious to him and to his knowledge that has only ever ended badly for the human involved (and he does have personal experience of this, it happened with Emmett). This is arguably less an informed flaw and more a case of self-doubt that turned out not to be justified.
      • However, although Bella is allegedly extremely difficult for him to not chow down on, the equivalent of personalized heroin for a drug addict, whenever the rubber really meets the road and she bleeds around him, Edward has nigh-perfect self control. He is able to suck the vampire venom out of her without hurting her in Twilight, Jasper reacts far more violently to her wounds at the start of New Moon than he does, and by Eclipse he no longer has even the shadow of an issue.
    • Edward says at a few points that humans find vampires naturally frightening, and thus try to avoid them. Given that the entire town all but hero-worships the Cullens for being so beautiful, mysterious, generous, and so on, that's kind of hard to buy. Of course, we're later told that vampires have physical features meant to lure humans closer, so it could just be a case of the author not being able to make up her mind/remember what she wrote.
    • Another alleged flaw of the vampire race is that they need the masquerade to protect them from being exterminated by humans. This seems a baseless fear since these vampires have none of the traditional vampire weaknesses (unless you count sparkling in sunlight) but do have Super-Strength, Super-Speed, are nigh-unkillable even if they don't use either of the above, and can easily create a whole army of new vampires. Add in powers like foreseeing any danger (like an incoming human army or cruise missile), and the Cullens alone could take on a country and win, even if the humans are aware of their existence.
    • Bella claims that she just doesn't get along with most people, having no friends in Phoenix besides her mother. The instant she gets to Forks, everyone she meets clamors to be her friend. Not to mention that while she insists she's uninteresting, she gets the attention of Edward, who it is stressed had no interest in most folks outside of his vampiric family, ever since his transformationnote albeit through the plot device of her blood smelling especially attractive to him.
      • Alternatively, Bella is the narrator so this could just be her self-esteem issues talking. Plus her mass appeal seemed largely due to her being the new girl from an exotically distant locale rather than because she was especially good with people. Self-esteem issues or not, though, the depictions of the various characters over the next few books show most of them wanting to be Bella's friend, wanting to go out with her, or being bitterly jealous of her.
    • Leah is often described as a shrew of the highest order, to the point where Breaking Dawn has Jacob finding it extremely weird to have a civil conversation with her, and everyone agreeing that the miserable life she's living is her own fault. While Leah does say some not nice things, a lot of her "jerkishness", like trying to convince Jacob to stop pursuing Bella because she's getting married, makes a lot of sense. Not to mention that her "shrewish" behavior started after her she lost her fiance to her cousin, turned into a werewolf, went through the stress of her dad dying, and generally had her whole life ruined and screwed up. It is not surprising that haters of the series see Leah as the Unintentionally Sympathetic Woobie, garnering a massive fanbase in the process.
    • Jessica and her group, with the exception of Angela, are described quite differently than what they are. Bella says they're shallow, annoying, clingy, and rude. Indeed, right after meeting Jessica, Bella thinks to herself that Jessica just wants to be her friend to be popular, but we never find out what made Bella think that. In Midnight Sun (a P.O.V. Sequel starring Edward) his mind reading depicts them this way, too, but many people feel this is out of character, and essentially Meyer trying to confirm her assertions. Basically, Jessica was already popular, and Bella was never sociable enough to help her with that even if she weren't.
  • For a guy who claims he was far too squeamish to finish medical school, Escott from The Vampire Files seems awfully at ease with collecting bottles full of cow blood for Jack every couple of books or even letting Jack bite his wrist when he's really horrifically injured.
  • In Elizabeth Vaughan's Warprize, the protagonist explains in narration that she's not "diplomatic" enough to be a good queen. However, she has just spent the entire novel bonding with a tribe of foreigners, advising them on Xyian politics and medicinal techniques, and trying (successfully) to keep her Arranged Marriage with their king stable. So that 'flaw' comes off as a lie she tells herself in order to justify passing the crown to someone else and permanently joining the tribe...which may be the point.
  • In Warrior Cats book The First Battle's finale, proto-StarClan shows up to tell both the protagonists and the antagonists what horrible people they are for fighting. The fact that the Moor Group were fighting to protect themselves from being slaughtered by the Big Bad, who they had unsuccessfully tried to reason with before, is never really acknowledged.
  • What The Hell Did I Just Read: A Novel of Cosmic Horror: Played for comedy. Dave keeps referring to John's friend Nicky as a horrible person, the kind who laughs too loud at her own jokes and no one else's. Dave pointedly excludes her from the narrative, so we have only his word to go on, until the very end, when she shows up and seems perfectly normal.
  • In one book of the X-Wing Series, Wedge Antilles' childhood friend Mirax teases him about his ego, saying that it's so big he thinks he can control it. Wedge's pride is barely shown at all — in Wraith Squadron he puts up with one of his pilots saying that at twenty-eight he's too old for the job to a point and then challenges her to a race and wins, but he doesn't even rub it in. He once goes on a spectacularly destructive but strategically unnecessary strafing run because a TIE pilot and the ground defenses "irked" him for almost shooting him down, but that incident is never followed up on. Wedge is happy getting little credit, and once when playing a gambit for the benefit of one of his pilots regrets that credit will go to him and not them. Granted, Mirax also says (in the same dialogue, no less) that as a redeeming characteristic, he usually can (and does) keep it in check. And those few times he doesn't, it's usually his enemies that are the worse off for it. The books after his day in the limelight tend to show this trait more.
    • One of Zahn's books has Han meeting a contact with Wedge in disguise present as incredibly obvious backup, something the contact points out. (Though with Wedge being obvious, the covert backup also there went unnoticed). Wedge is said to be a Bad Bad Actor but to get a kick out of it. In the X-wing books he's quite good, taking on three entirely seperate identities (two of them completely ridiculous) without causing suspicion. It's either Depending on the Writer, or Han mistook Wedge's performance for actual inability.
    Music 
  • Devo's "Mongoloid" is about someone with down syndrome who is "happier than you and me" but otherwise lives a perfectly normal life, with no one aware he is different. The song initially seems to be praising this guy's ability to fit in with society. However, Devo are actually saying that society has devolved to the point where it's impossible to tell a mentally handicapped person from someone who isn't.
    Mythology 
  • Classical Mythology: The ancient Greeks often described Herakles as dumb or at least less clever than other classical heroes. This is in stark contrast to a man who found an unconventional and clever way (combined with a hell of a lot of strength) to solve almost all of his problems. This all may simply come from the need to give Herakles a flaw, as the adventures of a genius with super strength would be a lot less suspenseful. Which is a little odd, as the original stories already gave him a Fatal Flaw: namely, his impulsiveness.
    Professional Wrestling 
  • This is usually done on purpose by the rudos (hence why they're called rudos). Claim a fan favorite wrestler is stupid (Rob Van Dam), then you can by extension call his fans stupid because they relate to him. Call one of the humblest guys on the roster (John Cena) arrogant because he brought up a flaw you actually have.
  • Another way is accuse the fans of something. Chris Jericho once showed video evidence to prove the fans were hateful toward men like him because they hated values, but the video showed the audience clapping for him.
    Radio 
  • In the Edinburgh episode of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme, the Storyteller sketch has him explain that his inability to pronounce "f" and "th" sounds led to him being discharged from the Third And Fourth (Forthshire) Fusiliers, only to instead join his uncle Theodore Finnemore's Thimble Factory, where he works under Thaddeus McFarlane procuring fingers and thumbs. And, for the purposes of telling the story, he has no problem describing any of this. Indeed, at one point, even within the story, he's able to announce his realisiation that "Theodore Finnemore is the foremost thumb-fence this side of the Firth of Forth".
  • I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue has incessant jokes about Colin Sell's terrible piano playing, even though he is actually an excellent pianist and plays flawlessly in every episode.note Except in the "Bad-Tempered Clavier" game where his playing is deliberately awful for comic effect, which in itself requires great skill.
  • Old Harry's Game: Satan claims Thomas is the most evil person in all of Hell. While Thomas has done a lot of bad things, he doesn't seem to particularly stand out compared to the many other horrible people Satan has to deal with on a regular basis. Lampshaded in one episode where Thomas asks Scumspawn why Satan considers him worse than Hitler or Stalin.
    Thomas: At least I didn't kill millions of people!
    Scumspawn: He says that's just because you hadn't gotten around to it yet.
    Tabletop Games 
  • Cardfight!! Vanguard: The lore of Keter Sanctuary mentions that it is the current incarnation of the idealistic kingdom United Sanctuary, having Took A Level In Cynicism during the 3000 year time skip. It is now a classist, isolationist dictatorship where the poor live on the ground in horrid conditions while the rich live on floating islands, completely cut off from the strife below. Or at least, that's what the lore says. Keter has certainly taken a level in authoritarianism with many cards that have flavor texts discussing the law as something meant to be followed for its own sake rather than something meant to protect the rights of those who live under it. However, there are basically no cards that talk about oppressing the poor or anything of the kind.
  • A standard trick by powergamers in tabletop RPGs is to take a character flaw that will have almost no impact on their character, to reap the benefits (flaws usually come with perks or extra XP). A common example is taking a social flaw, and then to simply never speak in character.
    • Most DMs of these systems get wise to this after their first experience or two and start limiting character flaws players can take. The Shadowrun 4th edition rulebook went out of its way to encourage DMs to make certain flaws unavailable to characters who are never likely to get into a situation where they matter.
    • Conversely it is often seen as the responsibility of the DM to ensure that characters run into situations where their flaws will come into play and ensuring the player roleplays the flaw.
    • Of course some systems also seek to prevent this from happening. One method is to attach flaws to related perks, providing a benefit at the expense of the flaw (for example, being able to deal more damage at the cost of also receiving more), thus ensuring that in any situation where the benefit can be reaped, the flaw also comes into play. Other systems also actively encourage players to include their flaws, such as the Savage Worlds system, were the DM can give the players extra re-rolls for including and role-playing their flaws.
  • Somewhat famously, GURPS had the flaw of Weirdness Magnet. This was popular among min-maxers for the expedient reason that player characters are invariably Weirdness Magnets already. And due to the way the flaw was written, once one character had it, there was basically no effect if everyone else took it as well since it was already a party-wide effect that didn't stack. Not to mention, there's the angle of "So... the downside to taking this flaw is that I get to go on ''more'' exciting adventures and be the center of attention?"
  • Any system that includes a "Nightmares" flaw is generally ripe for this, mainly because most DMs/GMs/Storytellers aren't willing to waste time coming up with elaborate, horrifying nightmares for one character and likely bogging down the session in the process, and many systems only describe the consequences of the character being tired from lack of sleep or nerves without applying actual mechanical penalties in the flaw's description. This often results in a grumpy, obnoxious character with little patience, which is what your average munchkin is looking to play anyway.
  • World of Darkness played this straight by giving you character creation points for flaws. New World of Darkness corrects it by making flaws work by granting you additional experience after any session where they came up and caused you actual problems — so if you choose a flaw that never causes you any problems, you don't get any benefit from it, either.
    Webcomics 
  • 8-Bit Theater: Red Mage abuses this as much as possible to max out his "character sheet".
  • In-Universe: Pete in Darths & Droids took Lactose Intolerance as a flaw ...for R2-D2, a droid that doesn't eat. His character is also supposed to be effectively mute, which never comes into play as none of the players ever act that much in-character anyway. When the DM actually started enforcing the language restriction, the player created an original Conlang for the game (which was allowed because it was awesome).
    • When they start in on the third trilogy, Pete tries again, giving his character the flaw of never being able to find a decent parking spot. It backfires this time, and the DM takes great pleasure in making finding parking come up multiple times.
  • In Homestuck, multiple characters, including Aranea herself, comment that she always tends to bring conversations back to herself. While she is extremely talkative and literally addicted to explaining things, she mostly talks about other people, except when she's explaining who she is in her introduction. Calliope, on the other hand, is portrayed as modest even though she talks about herself far more than Aranea does.
  • Donut from Lily Love complains that she can't attract men because she's chubby, not light-skinned, has thick legs, and has a large forehead. None of that is blatantly correct; she's portrayed as pale in colored artwork and is skinny.
  • Gary of Ménage à 3 claims to have a mass of psychological problems sufficient to sustain a Ph.D. thesis, but he seems to be just a fairly ordinary geek with poor social skills, a taste for porn (to geekily obsessive but not socially disabling levels), and in early episodes, a tendency to suffer manga-style nosebleeds in the presence of attractive real women. This may be deliberate, showing that his real problem is just self-pity. It becomes especially egregious as the story progresses and Gary ends up becoming the most sexually successful character in the comic, wooing dozens of women, and yet still gets extremely nervous around women.
  • One Piece: Grand Line 3.5:
    • Zoro was supposed to have this. His Munchkin metagaming player, Cory, took a ton of flaws he never expected to come into play for extra feats, such as his Loyalty flaw not mattering because Zoro didn't answer to anyone... until he joined Luffy's crew. The GM has targeted some of his other intended-to-be-useless flaws as well, making the trope truly subverted.
    • On the other hand, the Game Master will often stack useless flaws onto Non Player Characters in order to give them enough skill points to keep up with his ridiculously powerful players. "I gave them Tourette's and made them mute" was an excuse given for how Buggy's goons had such good dodging skills.
    • Overlapping with Cursed with Awesome, it is apparently a "flaw" that a sleeping Zoro wakes up when anything out of the ordinary is nearby.
  • In Sinfest, Crimney assures Fuchsia he's not always sweet, he gets angry👁 Image
    . His flustered difficulty shows how seldom this happens.
  • Star Impact: During Chapter 3's fight between Etna and Ponpon, Phoebe mentions👁 Image
    that "(Etna is) weakest against boxers with solid pressure, and Ponpon's is intense." However, Etna had no trouble whatsoever in trouncing her.
  • Vegan Artbook:
    • Shawn is said to be stupid, lazy, and to hate vegans. However, he never does anything particularly stupid and in fact has several academic awards in his room, is shown to have enough stamina to do yard work, and once outright stated that he has no problem with veganism in itself; he just doesn't want to be vegan.
    • Chanel is said to be racist and prejudiced against the poor, but she never acts racist, and not only does she seemingly have no disdain for poor people, she actually expresses concern for them in one strip.
  • Keli from World of Fizz is said to have👁 Image
    a "high gas factor", although other characters are more frequently shown belching or farting than Kelli, in fact she is rarely shown doing it all.
    Web Video 
    Western Animation 
  • One episode of Adventure Time has Jake ignoring Finn for nearly the entire episode because he seems to believe out of absolutely nowhere that Finn constantly makes up adventures.
  • American Dad!:
    • One common joke about Steve is him supposedly being extremely feminine, despite not being noticeably girlier than most 14-year-old boys. One episode even has him join a lesbian gang because the members thought he was more girl than boy and in "LGB Steve," he joined a women's roller derby team because Hayley introduced him to the team as her sister and the other team members believe that he's too feminine to be a boy.
    • Stan is allegedly such a Control Freak that God Himself called him on it, but it's shown time and time again that he actually has very little control over his life. He doesn’t want Hayley to date Jeff — Jeff marries her and moves in with the Smiths. He doesn't want another baby — Francine tries to rape him. He doesn't want Roger to risk exposing his alien identity — Roger sells photos of himself to the local media. And while Hayley’s actions are usually given the excuse of his harsh rules, they’re usually things like coming in past curfew, dying her hair green, drinking while underage, getting a job as a stripper, having boys in her room, and stealing monkeys from an animal testing lab and keeping them in the house (although that's still better than letting then be tortured by evil scientists). It's reached the point where the family does the complete opposite of what he says the moment he says it (although it's possible that his Control Freak tendencies are actually a result of the lack of control he has in his life).
  • Lana Kane from Archer is constantly made fun of by other people for having big hands, even though her character is drawn in proportion with normal-sized hands. note This is actually somewhat of a development gag — Her voice actress, Aisha Tyler, has rather large hands.
  • Atomic Betty: According to the bee-people in the episode "The Pre-Teen Queen of Outer Space", Penelope is the most evil female in the universe. Yeah, she's mean, but she's not that mean.
  • In Beast Wars, several characters make fun of Optimus Primal for being a guy who never lets up with the heroic speeches and moralizing. While this was a trait of Optimus Prime, the character Primal is sort of a successor to, Primal himself rarely does any kind of speechifying (he makes a few things that could be called speeches in the first few episodes, but they're pretty short), and he generally comes across as a take-action pragmatic sort.
  • Ben 10:
    • Ben and Kevin independently state that being Ghostfreak made them feel strange. Both of these comments happen well after Zs'Skayr hijacked Ghostfreak's form and escaped the Omnitrix, and not while either of them was seen using Ghostfreak.
    • The Master Control function disables the time limit for Ben's transformations, although it's treated as a Dangerous Forbidden Technique as staying transformed for too long carries the risk of permanent damage to the user's DNA. However, Future Badass Ben 10,000 had Master Control full-time and regularly ignored the time limit with no ill effects.
  • Bluey: Subverted for Snickers; his character bio on the official website initially said that he was Athletically Challenged, but the actual show showed him being capable of playing sports just fine. Later, however, this item was removed from his profile.
  • As stated by multiple characters in Codename: Kids Next Door, Numbuh One's butt is supposed to be ridiculously huge, but it looks just about the same as the other characters.
  • The Dragon Prince: Rayla keeps insisting that she’s not good enough and frequently screws up. However, the one and only time she failed at something was when she spared Marcos at the beginning of the story, and this was because she was too good-hearted to kill an innocent life. Otherwise, she’s shown excelling at almost everything she tries. The writers have also said that Rayla has a hard time with “softer emotions and expression,” but apart from an episode here or there, this is never an issue for her.
  • Family Guy:
    • Meg gets called ugly a lot. Reactions vary from just calling her fat and disgusting to committing suicide at the mere sight of her. She is a bit chubby, but not particularly ugly compared to other characters. In fact, she looks very similar to her mother Lois, who is considered to be very attractive.
    • Likewise, Peter's boss, Angela, is also portrayed as being ugly and not worth having sex with, to the point where even Quagmire absolutely refuses to do her. Other than Angela's breasts sagging down when they're revealed, she looks pretty plain.
    • Peter himself is shown in "The Fat Guy Strangler" to be so fat he's developed his own orbit. While he is very big (his overhanging stomach acts as a censor when nude), he ends up looking downright svelte in comparison to some of the guys who join his "National Association for the Advancement of Fat People".
  • Futurama:
    • In-universe: Project Satan involved building a car out of the most evil car parts in the world, including the windshield wipers of KITT (from Knight Rider). When Fry pointed out KITT wasn't evil, Calculon tells them the windshield wipers were, it just didn't come up in the show much.
    • Played for Laughs during a "Tales of Interest" segment parodying The Wizard Of Oz. The introduction of the Tin Man, Scarecrow, and Cowardly Lion are all rushed through without giving them much of a chance to show off why they need what they need from the Professor until Zoidberg just pulls up in a taxi as the Cowardly Lion (without a costume) and flatly proclaims, "And I'm the third guy. Courage. Not enough of it."
    • Bender claims in the same episode that as a robot, he doesn't have emotions, and sometimes that makes him very sad.
    • Leela's problems with depth perception. If you only count in-show achievements, Leela hardly has any depth perception problems at all, being an excellent spaceship pilot and a skilled martial artist. Indeed, the only time Leela has any problems with depth perception is immediately after it is brought up how she has problems with depth perception, making her real flaw the Centipede's Dilemma.
    • Matcluck, a Simple Country Lawyer hyperchicken, is regularly referred to as a terrible, terrible lawyer. He's been put on trial for incompetence, and once pled insanity for his client with the evidence being that they hired him. Indeed, he doesn't seem like a very smart guy (though it's Futurama; everyone's pretty dumb), but he's actually not an incompetent lawyer. In fact, onscreen, he has a perfect record. Yes, even the insanity defense.
  • In Garfield and Friends, Jon is said to have a terrible singing voice. However, anyone with an ear can hear that Thom Huge actually has a nice singing voice. Otherwise, he would not have been asked to perform the musical numbers. Also, his ability to cook is questioned... obviously he can make lasagna capably, and presumably other dishes as well; however, when he deviates from his small store of pat recipes and experiments, the results leave much to be desired (he once used mayonnaise as a substitute for some necessary ingredient, reasoning that "it's the same color"). Even Garfield won't touch these culinary abortions.
  • Quite a bit of fuss in a Gravity Falls episode is about how 12-year-old Dipper has the voice of a pubescent boy whose voice is breaking. The problem is Dipper sounds like a full-grown man. His voice isn't remotely squeaky.
  • In Home Movies, especially the last season, everyone criticizes the main character's movies as being horrible, but they're actually pretty good, even by adult standards - and the characters doing them are pre-teens.
  • Hot Wheels: Battle Force 5: Kryosis is said to be incredibly arrogant even more so than Stanford to whom he's an Evil Counterpart to. In the show itself, he barely says much and usually functions to shoot at stuff. In his A Day in the Limelight webisode, he's portrayed as a calculating warrior who manipulates his comrade to psyche him up for a fight, which he later explains and is thanked for.
  • In Invader Zim Dib is regularly mocked for having a giant head, even though his head is the same size as any other character's.
  • Invincible (2021): Donald Pierce is called a coward by Omni-Man, but he's shown to be incredibly brave despite his slightly mousy demeanor throughout his screentime.
  • Kaeloo: Kaeloo and Mr. Cat repeatedly accuse Stumpy of being a liar throughout the series; the audience rarely sees him lying about anything, but the narrative treats it like lying is something he does often.
  • Metalocalypse: Toki Wartooth, Dethklok's rhythm guitarist and almost-literal second-fiddle to Skwisgaar Skwigelf, has an entire episode devoted to his inability to play the guitar. However, the only time we actually hear him play during the episode, he's upstaging Skwisgaar during a concert and doing a good enough job of it to threaten his confidence. The rest of the time, he's not as good as Skwisgaar and there is considerable distance between them in terms of skill, but he's still the world's second-fastest guitarist.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Unicorn magic is said to be limited to casting spells relating to their talents. But of the unicorns shown to cast spells beyond their default telekinesis, more have been the supposedly rare prodigies able to cast any spell than those with this limit. The series increasing gave normal unicorns previously unique spells like magic blasts, shields, and teleportation. Regardless of possible rationales there's been more exceptions to this supposed rule than examples.
  • The Owl House: Amity states during a memory in "Understanding Willow" that Skara is mean, but we never see her being actively mean when she's not around Boscha. This can probably be chalked up to the fact that Amity is unlikely to have interacted with her up to that point without Boscha also being present.
  • The Patrick Star Show: Squidina's stage fright is listed in the theme song, where she runs away from the camera, and she's nervous when made to perform in "Stair Wars". However, in every later episode, she is completely capable of acting on the Patrick Show, to the point that "Patty Poo" removed "She's shy!" from the theme song in its Opening Shout-Out.
  • Rick and Morty: Morty Smith is described as being "as stupid as Rick is smart", but the show never provides any evidence of his stupidity. He's smart enough to easily grasp scientific and philosophical concepts well beyond most people his age, like how the existence of a Multiverse with inter-dimensional travel makes moot the concept of objective meaning in life. Furthermore, his plans are almost always more well-thought-out than those of any other character (albeit they usually fail anyway due to the Universe screwing him over), in "Total Rickall" he single-handedly solves a scientific mystery that was too difficult even for Impossible Genius Rick, and in "Mortynight Run" he manages to trick the mind-reading Fart which implies impressive mental discipline. The only time we've ever seen him do something to suggest that he's as stupid as is claimed — struggling with a basic math problem in "M. Night Shaym-Aliens" — was later revealed to be part of a simulation. At least one episode implies Rick is deliberately keeping Morty's confidence down out of fear of his potential to become like Evil Morty.
  • Sabrina: The Animated Series:
    • The Halloween Episode has Chloe give Sabrina a "The Reason You Suck" Speech for nearly ruining her own party because she was too busy "trying to outdo Gem". Except that Sabrina's behavior was quite reasonable — making sure everyone had plenty of food and trying to liven the party up when Gem was going out of her way to sabotage everything. Had Gem not sabotaged the food or tried to prevent the other guests from talking, the party would have been fun.
    • In the episode "Working Witches", we're told at the end that Sabrina had let the fame of winning the contest go to her head. However, other than one blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene where she's proudly posing for pictures without Salem (which the guy right next to her threw away, not her), she doesn't show any signs of Acquired Situational Narcissism and instead is perfectly justified by everything she does. Salem doesn't even seem to mind her getting all of the attention, and his biggest gripe is her almost using his camcorder without his permission, which was justified to keep their family secret.
  • The Simpsons:
    • The Simpson family are repeatedly noted as being incredibly dysfunctional by the rest of Springfield. While they do have flaws, each member has many redeeming qualities, especially in the early seasons, as well as clearly being nowhere near the worst that the city ever has to offer. If anything, they're actually far more lucid than a majority of their friends and neighbors, who went as far as to attempt to murder Bart and Homer in season 1, simply because Bart defaced their town statue (even though he and Homer were clearly trying to set things right, no less).
    • Homer Simpson is frequently portrayed as being seriously, even morbidly obese, even though he has a relatively average body type compared to other people in Springfield (his established height and weight of 6' and 239 pounds technically qualifies him as medically obese, but not by much and nowhere near the guidelines for morbid obesitynote His weight and height gives him a BMI of 32.4). Apu, Krusty, and Dr. Hibbert, to name three, are just as fat as Homer though they're never portrayed as such, while Barney, Mayor Quimby, and Chief Wiggum are considerably fatter and the Comic Book Guy is by far the fattest of them all. However, one episode had Springfield declared the fattest town in the USA, so there's at least some acknowledgement. As the whole of Springfield is overweight, this is not so much "informed" but more normal for the town.
    • Many, many episodes see Homer combating his stated tendency toward Parental Neglect. This means that if you don't account for Negative Continuity, the focus on his relationships with his children over the course of the Long Runner might make him come off as a particularly involved dad.
    • Thanks to Values Dissonance in regards to measure intelligence and awareness of learning disabilities, as well as a combination of Flanderization and Negative Continuity, Homer and Bart Simpson's "stupidity" borders on this. While both are The Ditz, it's been shown on several reasons that when putting aside their immaturity and Skewed Priorities, the two are quick, clear thinkers on par or above Lisa, easily learning multiple languages in a matter of minutes, as well as mastering advanced skills whenever the plot requires them to. Season 4 outright lampshades this with Bart, showing him to have become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court as an adult. With this in mind, all the dire assessments of their intelligence seem very wrongheaded, especially when Homer was said to have an IQ of 55, which is the equivalent of a mentally handicapped individual.
    • A case with a place rather than a person, but Springfield is generally portrayed as being a small, backwards town with crumbling infrastructure completely ignored by the wider world. However, the sheer level of Geographic Flexibility adding new wealthy citizens, districts, landmarks and establishments over the show's 30 years means that it now appears to be a thriving city that everyone in the world wants to visit and invest in.
    • In one episode, Lisa mentions that Milhouse puts Vaseline on his toast. He has never been seen doing this.
  • South Park plays with this a lot, such as informing the audience that a character is hideously ugly or very attractive when they look no different than anyone else.
    • In one episode, Cartman is sent to jail, leaving the other boys to single Clyde out as "obviously" the fattest kid in the class, even though he is literally the exact same shape as all the other kids other than his hair.
    • Special mention goes to Ugly Bob, who was exiled from Canada for his ugliness despite looking identical to every other Canadian (and not being considered ugly by non-Canadians). It turns out that his ugliness gives him the gorgon-like ability to turn anything that looks at him into stone.
    • In "The Hobbit", Wendy points out her and the other kid's imperfections (like Bebe having acne and Jason having freckles, yet they're not shown); like herself having pimples and crooked bottom teeth (neither of which are visible), and points out that Stan has short stubby legs, even though they look just like everyone else's. What's weirder is that Jason does have an actual identifiable flaw (a prematurely receding hairline).
  • Broadside, of Transformers: Generation 1, is stated in his bio to be a complete nervous wreck. He's a Triple Changer whose altmodes are a space jet and an aircraft carrier, but he's both afraid of heights and gets seasick easily. You'd think this'd make him near-useless, right? Well, not really; Broadside's fears have been ignored by pretty much every bit of media. In fact, given his (usually) massive size and his membership into the elite and high-risk Wreckers in the comics, Broadside's pretty consistently shown to be the opposite of scared or ineffectual.

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