Also sometimes known as "playing dumb", a tactic whose effectiveness is predicated on characters convincing others they are complete oafs and therefore harmless. Acting like an ignorant hayseed, misinformed tourist, Handsome Lech, Dumb Muscle, or Funny Foreigner is popular.
In many cases, a character pulling this off may play along until they're in a good position to drop the charade and get serious, usually catching anyone underestimating them badly off-guard. Another variant of this, primarily found in teen comedies, is the popular student (almost invariably a girl) who acts like The Ditz in order to avoid being stigmatized as a nerd; in such cases, the character may be willfully ignorant, but inevitably faces a situation where she needs her native wits to escape a problem.
