About: Invincible Incompetent   Sponge Permalink

An Entity of Type : owl:Thing, within Data Space : 134.155.108.49:8890 associated with source dataset(s)

An Invincible Incompetent is a hero who defeats powerful opponents, despite having very little skill or ability. Frequently, they keep this up for years, heroically gaining almost no power as they progress, so as to make their constant victories even more impressive. This trope caters to audiences who like to identify with the "weaker" side in any conflict. A downside is Villain Decay; it is hard to present a villain as a credible threat if they repeatedly fail to stop the bumbling hero. Examples of Invincible Incompetent include:

AttributesValues
rdfs:label
  • Invincible Incompetent
rdfs:comment
  • An Invincible Incompetent is a hero who defeats powerful opponents, despite having very little skill or ability. Frequently, they keep this up for years, heroically gaining almost no power as they progress, so as to make their constant victories even more impressive. This trope caters to audiences who like to identify with the "weaker" side in any conflict. A downside is Villain Decay; it is hard to present a villain as a credible threat if they repeatedly fail to stop the bumbling hero. Examples of Invincible Incompetent include:
dcterms:subject
dbkwik:all-the-tro...iPageUsesTemplate
dbkwik:allthetrope...iPageUsesTemplate
abstract
  • An Invincible Incompetent is a hero who defeats powerful opponents, despite having very little skill or ability. Frequently, they keep this up for years, heroically gaining almost no power as they progress, so as to make their constant victories even more impressive. The method by which they do so differs. Some win on sheer, blind luck. Others know exactly when to say "Let's Get Dangerous", or intelligently exploit a major weakness of their enemy before returning to their previous state. Many get by on the efforts of mentors and other side characters. However they do it, it makes them effectively invincible, despite being largely incompetent. This trope caters to audiences who like to identify with the "weaker" side in any conflict. A downside is Villain Decay; it is hard to present a villain as a credible threat if they repeatedly fail to stop the bumbling hero. Despite the clear comedic applications of this trope, it is just as often played for (relatively idealistic) drama, with the audience expected to root and identify much more with an outclassed hero. Closely related to The Fool and the Idiot Hero. See also: Underdogs Always Win, which is this trope on a meta level and primarily applied to sports stories. Inspector Oblivious is a subtrope. Examples of Invincible Incompetent include:
Alternative Linked Data Views: ODE     Raw Data in: CXML | CSV | RDF ( N-Triples N3/Turtle JSON XML ) | OData ( Atom JSON ) | Microdata ( JSON HTML) | JSON-LD    About   
This material is Open Knowledge   W3C Semantic Web Technology [RDF Data] Valid XHTML + RDFa
OpenLink Virtuoso version 07.20.3217, on Linux (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu), Standard Edition
Data on this page belongs to its respective rights holders.
Virtuoso Faceted Browser Copyright © 2009-2012 OpenLink Software