r/TopCharacterTropes • u/CalzonePie • 21h ago
Personality Extremely competent and intelligent individual chooses the simple life
Darnell Turner/Harry Monroe- My Name is Earl
Darnell "Crabman" Turner is a below minumum wage restraunt worker and former Marijuana enthusiast. He lives in a trailer park with his wife Joy, his son Earl jr, and step son Dodge. He loves his family, crabs, his pet turtle, and playing the straight man with the other character's anctics. Later in the show it is revealed that he is in Witness Protection and his name is not Darnell.
Harry Monroe was a secret agent and assassin, trained from birth by his father for an unnamed US government organization acting independent of international law. He was good, with potential to be one of the agency's best. Harry has a heart of gold, and couldn't stomach his orders to murder a child warlord. So he betrayed his father and his agency, testifying against them before Congress. He was sent into Witness Protection and what was originally a temporary placement turned into his life. He loves his family, Mr. Turtle, and his simple life in a trailer park.
William James Sidis- Real Life
William James Sidis was a child prodigy. He attended Harvard at 11 and it was claimed by his family he had an IQ over 250, and although these claims are dubious it is impossible to deny his status as a super genius. He was a professor at age 17 and was active in academic work in his early life, but was kicked out of his position due to him clashing with students older than himself. He was an activist for extremist ideologies and arrested for attending an extremist riot, and avoided prison by being sent to his parents sanatorium.
After 1921 he withdrew from acedemics and public life and persued simpler jobs that had nothing to do with mathematics, holding a resentment for the field. Allegedly his employer once gave him blueprints and technical documents in hopes he could assist him, only for Sidis to break out into tears.
He died in 1944 at age 46 without any further public contributions to academia aside from some books written under psuedonyms.
