The Wonka

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A genius nut who can't be fired because they run the show.

In every society, things are done in certain ways. There are social conventions that have to be followed, logic patterns that always get applied, and priorities that are shared. Just don't expect The Wonka to take any notice. By extension, don't expect their employees to notice either because they're too used to their boss's eccentricity. They may or may not be normal in themselves, but their boss will appear to be out of their mind.

They appear to be out of their mind. "There's a fine line between genius and insanity", and Wonkas clog dance on it. They make perfect sense to themselves (and they are usually male, although female examples do exist), but utterly confuses those around them to the point of them wondering whether or not they really are all there. The Naive Newcomer will think he's genuinely nuts until he does something amazing that proves he's merely using a different brand of logic. Long-term employees will either groan at the craziness, become like him, or be so desentitized they'll regard it as mundane and pay no attention.

These sort of characters are usually Freakish Loners, but if they do have friends, they will be close ones. Genius qualities do not a Wonka make, but they must show some sort of prowess in at least one area in order to confirm that they are in fact not mad, but merely "differently sane". Other common traits include irreverence, lack of social skill or any sense of danger and doing bizarre things that, nevertheless, make perfect sense if you take a step back and think outside the box, because that's where Wonkas live.

Different from a Cloudcuckoolander in that Wonkas have their heads in Loonyland and their feet on earth, whereas Cloudcuckoolanders are completely in orbit. Also, Wonkas tend to be more extroverted and energetic than drifty, dreamy Cloudcuckoolanders, and they use more logic. For example, a Cloudcuckoolander may carry a gas mask around once to scare away evil spirits, but a Wonka will carry a gas mask around everywhere "in case there's a gas leak. Duh," and then act as though you're the odd one because you don't.

Also different from Bunny Ears Lawyer in that the lawyer is a brilliant employee who isn't fired because they are so good at their job. Tolerating their weird mannerisms and unusual quirks is worth it for the work they do; they win a cost/benefit analysis. The Wonka is a brilliant employer and can't be fired because they own the company. Also, the Wonka's unusual brand of sanity is likely the reason for their success, while success and quriks are unrelated in the Bunny Ears Lawyer.

If the roles are reversed such that The Wonka is the one who's the normal one and it's everyone else who's crazy, you've got the Only Sane Man.

Compare with Inexplicably Awesome and Eccentric Mentor. Contrast with Genius Ditz and Obfuscating Insanity - Wonkas don't have an act to drop.

Examples of The Wonka include:

Advertising

• Commercials for Jack-In-The-Box often portray Jack this way; Jack himself claims that, "the best part about running a company is, no matter how crazy my ideas are, I still get to do them."

Anime and Manga

• The eponymous Irresponsible Captain Tylor is this through and through. His idiosyncrasies annoy his commanders so much that when they gave him a medal, they put a bomb in it.
• Bleach:
  • Kisuke Urahara, the owner of a candy shop is this in spades. He seems childish and a little crazy, but he's a brilliant scientist and a captain-level shinigami.
  • The anime sometimes uses filler comedy to turn Badass Grandpa Yamamoto into one.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!!:
  • The original anime has Pegasus, the brilliant but loopy cartoon-loving creator of Duel Monsters. His employees take his eccentrics in stride.
  • Gavin from Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS. The student body president, he comes off quickly as a fussy, control freak and Rules Lawyer, often to the "anal retentive" level, so much that he actually gives himself detention for running in the halls! He tends to come off as a Jerk with a Heart of Gold and ironically, his stuffiness, ego, and fear of even the slightest blemish on his record often work for the benefit of the other protagonists, as he tends to go the Honor Before Reason route in any conflict.
• Niizuma Eiji from Bakuman｡ knows as much about creating brilliant manga as he doesn't about normal behaviour.
• Shinra's father in Durarara!!. Apparently a relatively well-respected doctor, he goes around everywhere with his lab coat on and a gas mask. After all, everyone knows lab coats protect your body from contamination (that's why you wear them in the lab) and modern-day city air is so filthy it's bad for your lungs.
• One Piece:
  • Monkey D. Luffy may not be a loner, but he's The Captain and definitely operates on an entirely different wavelength compared to normal people.
  • Of course, pretty much any named character in a position of power in the series is an eccentric. For instance, his ally Ivankov looks like a goofy drag queen (because he is one); he's an odd fellow, and most everyone sees him as campy and weird, but few want to get on his bad side. He's capable of leading armies if he has to.

Comic Books

• Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four drifts near to this trope sometimes. His wife usually has to reel him back in.
• John Porter of Damage Control. Given the nature of the cases they have to deal with, it's understandable.
• Rotor Walrus from Archie Comics Sonic the Hedgehog, especially during the early comics. To put it in perspective, in the future he will create the living computer NICOLE; as a kid, he grossed his friends out trying to make carbonated milk shakes.

Film

• Trope Namer: Gene Wilder's portrayal of Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, the 1971 film adaptation of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Wilder's trademarks in this role: ignoring others' comments because of what's Really Important right now while reciting a bit of doggerel, throwing in a pithy quote or other choice bit of sarcasm as a bonus. Also being a super genius.
  • Johnny Depp's portrayal is somewhat more of the extreme of this trope in 2005's Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. A genius, sure, but a genius who scares, annoys and bemuses the life out of his ex-employees, never mind his guests.
    • This is a (less prominent) trait in the original book.
• Captain Jack Sparrow (another Johnny Depp role) from Pirates of the Caribbean. A good pirate? Yes. A quick thinker? Definitely. Completely unpredictable? Foppish or odd mannerisms? Crazy ideas? Absolutely.
  • And in his own words:

Lord Beckett: "You're mad." Jack: "Thank goodness for that, because if I wasn't this would probably never work."

• The Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland. Noticing a pattern here?
  • Or maybe it's a hat thing?
• God from Dogma. He/She/It comes to Earth occasionally to partake in such wondrous acts as smelling flowers, playing Skee-Ball and doing handstands.
• Dr. Emmett Brown from Back to The Future. He constantly comes up with weirder-by-the-minute inventions, steals plutonium from terrorists, and sets all of his clocks to run exactly 25 minutes slow. The first time Marty meets him in the past, he's wearing a metal cage mind-reading contraption on his head that puts jungle gyms to shame. Oh, and he invented Time Travel.
• Edward Magorium from Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. He operates by his own brand of logic, which is to be expected from a 200-year-old owner of a sentient toy store.

Literature

• Willy Wonka from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. Willy Wonka does not operate under the same rules as the rest of humanity, and will roll right past your questions without stopping. Significantly more full of wonder, less creepy, though no less mad, than Gene Wilder or (especially) Johnny Depp. This trait seems even more prominent in the sequel.
• Albus Dumbledore from the Harry Potter series seems to have a mild case of this. The Hogwarts Headmaster and highly respected and able wizard seems to use a different strand of thought to the rest of the world—his unorthodox problem-solving methods and airy manner have often caused people to wonder if he's winding them up. The answer is usually no, as is shown when he gets the last laugh.
• Ford Prefect from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy strays towards this fairly often (and back and forth and beyond) though he's something of a variation in that he actually is from another planet.
  • Unsurprising, seeing how his creator also wrote for Doctor Who during that period.
• Discworld's Captain Carrot is this to a tee. The other characters can see some sort of sense in his optimistic, simple and innocent way of thinking, but how he can honestly, truthfully sail through events that would drive anyone else mad with a childlike smile on his face is so far beyond everyone's comprehension that most characters at least suspect that it has to be an act. Not only that, but he also has near-supernatural powers of persuasion despite very rarely using threats or violence and being shocked at the idea of blackmail, and is so literal-minded that almost any idiom or bit of sarcasm gets totally lost on him.
  • Cohen the Barbarian, as well. He takes violent exception to being called any word he doesn't know to be harmless, considers odds of 1:100,000 to be an amazing bargain, shouts terms that in anyone else would count as hate crimes, and yet he ends up as emperor of the Agatean Empire.
• Danny Wallace from Join Me, Yes Man, Friends Like These, and all of his other autobiographical books, tends to act a little like this. Most of the books involve him taking on strange projects that seem unnecessary and unfeasible to those around him, but never the less make perfect sense to himself. Also the narration can sometimes take the oddest turns, and he will seem to genuinely believe something that most normal people would dismiss as imposable as soon as it occurred to them.
• Psmith from PG Wodehouse's series. Other characters are constantly confounded by his refusal to follow a normal conversation, although he's completely reasonable in his own way.
• Michael, from the Knight and Rogue Series is this. He pretty much does whatever he wants within the law and just smiles when people laugh at his odd idea of being a knight. Though he claims it took him a while to get used to this, and he does still care when dealing with his father or being treated like a retard.
• Angela is definitely one of these. She is known for random quips (modeled after the author's own sister of the same name), general looniness, and concern with unusual names for already-awesome objects (e.g. a sword potentially made of diamond that can slice through anything like a hot knife through butter gets named... Tinkledeath).

Live Action TV

• The Doctor from Doctor Who. He has saved and ended worlds countless times, yet acts like an overexcited Jack Russell who's been locked in the cellar for too long, leaping backwards and forwards between highly technical, rapid-fire explanations to "It's my timey-wimey detector. It goes ding when there's stuff." Occasionally he will calm down long enough to feel sorry for himself, but once the crisis is averted, the chuntering is switched back on and he will zoom off again, his imagination running berserk.
  • Likewise, the most recent incarnation of The Master fits this. Dancing around to the Scissor Sisters whilst trying to destroy the world, for instance.
  • The Doctor also calms down if he's genuinely angry.
  • Amazingly, the above description could apply to pretty much any incarnation of the Doctor. He ranges from an archetypical Trickster to a bit of a grumpy old man, but he's always the same lovable, ineffable weirdo. Bonus points for also doubling as Inexplicably Awesome, as we really have no idea how he ended up this way.
  • Not to mention his logic always saves the day (after a while of alien happenings and running). For instance, in Terror of the Vervoids where the best way he can think of to combat a plant race is to accelerate their life-cycle.
• Charlie Crews, the Defective Detective and Zen Survivor in Life. In the first season, his more level-headed partner is guaranteed to question his sanity and/or stare at him in total incomprehension at least once per episode. This lessens during the second season, but it's outright stated that this is because she's getting more like him, not the other way around.
• On an episode of Frasier, both Crane brothers were hired to testify on opposing sides of a hearing in which a rich eccentric old man was accused of being incompetent. Frasier believed that the man was The Wonka, whereas Niles thought he was a Cloudcuckoolander. Niles was right.
• Ted Allen's persona on Food Detectives on the Food Network is casually sadistic towards the cast of test subjects with a whimsical, oblivious smile; the overall effect is two parts Adam Savage and five parts highly concentrated Wonka.
• Steve Valentine's persona as the host of Estate of Panic. Imagine Depp's Wonka, but 20 years older.
• Judge Harry Stone from Night Court.

Video Games

• Every master in the Great House Telvanni from The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. Even Master Aryon, who needs Turedus Talanian to bring him back to harsh reality.
• Wade, the Ambiguously Gay Ultimate Blacksmith from the Dragon Age series.
• Yuyuko, the Ghost Princess of the Netherworld from Touhou. She acts utterly, completely loopy to nearly everyone (save for her old friend, Yukari), treating, for example, an investigation of an incident as a midnight stroll for snacks. However, she's also one of the oldest and wisest beings in Gensokyo and is one of its major power players despite (or perhaps, because of) her unique brand of logic. This becomes apparent in the games where she's playable. While everyone is frantically investigating the cause of the latest incidents, Yuyuko tends to have already figured out the cause and the parties responsible from the very beginning; all her loopy antics are just ways of passing the time while waiting for everybody else to come to the same conclusion.
• Agent Francis York Morgan from Deadly Premonition as well as Agent Dale Cooper, the character he's somewhat based off of.

Web Comics

• Llewellyn from Ozy and Millie. In the creator's own words, opinion is divided between those who think he's incredibly wise, and those who think he's got a screw loose. The reality, of course, is that both are true. It's just sort of a dragon thing, in general, to judge by his relatives. Their occasionally-successful dabblings in the surreal also make them a mild case of Inexplicably Awesome.
• According to the author, the Bob and George version of Dr. Light was supposed to have this characterization, but Characterization Marches On, and his eccentricity was instead attributed to his drinking habbits.

Web Original

• Cheese, of the Whateley Universe. One of the very few people on earth so smart that Jobe respects his intelligence. In fact, Jobe fears his intelligence, and with good reason, as seen in the short story Bad Seeds. No one even understands why he specialises so much in new kinds of lactose based technology.
  • Also from the Whateley Universe: Thorn. A fifteen year old mutant with the power to create literally anything from ectoplasm, who dresses and carries himself—by choice—as a Victorian era gentleman, and has an express taste for surrealistic humor.... and surrealistic behavior in general. He even looks like The Wonka, specifically the Johnny Depp version, and dresses in Victorian garb, from top hat to spats.
• Dave of Civil Protection is prone to doing whatever random thing comes into his head, like pretending to be a ninja because he's bored. He does seem to be the smarter of the two main characters, though, and he knows a lot of random trivia (often about dangerous things, like how to make napalm).
• The Nostalgia Critic anchors the That Guy With The Glasses organization with his insightful, poignant analysis of nostalgic popular culture. His personality, however, ranges from Adult Child to violent, criminal insanity.
  • More than once, mental health professionals—apparently always standing by off camera in case of complete psychotic break—have intervened during reviews.
  • And naturally this gets deconstructed, as he's regularly depressed that his only talent seems to be riffing on cheesy nostalgia.

Western Animation

• The Simpsons
  • Goose Gladwell, a Willy Wonka parody, from episode "20 stores in 30 states". Goose is a former Green Beret who fought in Vietnam and claims that his experiences from those days are what made him crazy.
  • Hank Scorpio, fast talking, casual but caring Diabolical Mastermind.
• The Warden of Superjail can only be described as a psychotic Willy Wonka, right down to the clothing.
• King Bumi of Omashu from Avatar: The Last Airbender, a man who takes great pride in being called a 'mad genius'.
• Phineas from Phineas and Ferb is a child example. He even gets to dress up as Willy Wonka in the episode where he and Ferb take over a factory. (Which isn't even a chocolate factory, but hey.) Another character to be considered a Wonka in that episode was the head of the company that owns the factory. Not only did he have a chocolate river in the factory (even Phineas questioned the logic of having a chocolate river in a toy factory), but he once wore nothing but his underwear and claimed to be wearing clothes only intelligent people could see.
• Professor Farnsworth in Futurama. His cloned son berates him as a total crackpot, only to later discover that the Professor's theories and inventions all work because he thinks completely outside the box.
  • Hermes can be pretty spacey too, like in the Valentines Day Episode where he chews himself out for slacking on the job.
• Pinkie Pie is the proto version of this in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. She works at a bakery, and no doubt drives her employers (and any co-workers that she may have) batty with her unusual but insightful logic. Depending on the episode, she is either crafty and intelligent—often coming to conclusions none of the rest of the cast would have thought of (such as stashing eye patches and balls all over Ponyville on the off chance they're needed)—or a straight Cloudcuckoolander with minimal attachment to reality.
• One of the most Crazy Awesome one-shot characters in Gravity Falls (where that Trope applies to almost everyone) was President Quentin Trembley, the heretofore unknown 8½ President of the United States. (The government had put a lot of effort into keeping him a secret, as he was something of an embarrassment.) Among the things he did as President: outlaw pants, wage war on pancakes, and appoint six infants to the Supreme Court. While he found out the hard way that while one shouldn't try to wrestle a giant hammerhead shark, he appointed the same shark Secretary of Defense. He also believed he could make himself immortal by sealing himself in a block of peanut brittle - although in that case, turns out he was right.

Real Life

• Sir Isaac Newton. Genius? Check. Has confusing ideas that make sense the longer you think about them? Well, he pretty much tried to reduce all of reality to basic mathematical equations, so check. Batshit insane? Check. He experimented with alchemy at a time when people had already stopped taking it seriously, and suffered from dementia caused by mercury poisoning.
  • He was the first person to calculate why the orbits of the planets are ellipses, rather than circles—a problem that was a really big deal at the time. He then completely forgot about it until he offhandedly mentioned it to a friend. When his friend asked to see his proofs, he realised he'd misplaced them. Solution: rewrite all the calculations purely from memory.
  • And when the friend perused over the papers he did find, there were the whole Principia Mathematica, putting everything then known about maths, physics, optics and the Universe on its head. Newton had not organised them; it's simply that at a time, to be able to solve a problem he'd just invented infinitesimal calculus wholesale.
  • He poked a knitting needle into the corner of his eye, a handy gap between the eye and socket in order to test if human eyes had lenses by deforming one. Squick.
  • Some of his eccentricity worked against his output. He was crippled by shyness, and only published his mathematical ideas at the insistence of his close friends.
• Nikola Tesla. 50% genius, 50% crackpot, 100% amazing. He was self-employed but did have to get investors.
• Joy Division producer Martin Hannett was this, bordering on a flat-out Cloudcuckoolander.
• Real Life chocolatier Louis Barnett was once considered a real-life Willy Wonka. As a kid, he was home-educated for not meeting his teachers' expectations.
• Frank Zappa. The man had genius level IQ, his discography spans nearly every genre of music and features near-impossible compositions. Despite this, his songs covered topics like fetishism, human-muffin hybrids, teenage prostitution, televangelism and even a man dressed as a Housewife courting a nuclear powered Pan-Sexual Roto-Plooker.
• Whether he was truly a genius or not depends on personal opinion of his controversial ideas, but by his own admission, "right to die" advocate Jack Kevorkian thought he was like this. To quote from an interview from 60 Minutes:

Andy Rooney: I think the American public is puzzled about you. They don't know if you're a medical philosopher or a nut. Which are you? Kevorkian: Probably both. You might say I'm a philosophic nut or a nutty philosopher. It doesn't matter, words don't mean anything. If you dig into anybody's character you can find eccentricities, and you can characterize him as a nut.

• The whole interview is here.

• Donald Trump, who despite being an outlier with no prior political experience as well as of dubious repute and sanity, managed to land himself a seat in the White House in the face of significant media scrutiny and criticism; he successfully leveraged scathing coverage of him on mainstream news media as well. Not that his tenure lasted into a second term though.
• Ditto with Filipino politician Rodrigo Duterte, who in spite of his brutish demeanour and associated gaffes such as his lewd statements towards women, (jokingly) giving Pope Francis a Precision F-Strike in a press conference during his campaign (especially considering the Philippines being predominantly Roman Catholic), and other such bombastic and inflammatory comments towards those getting in his way, still managed to win the presidency.