Big Brains In Entertainment

If you wanted to cast an actor to play an ordinary Joe turned super genius, John Travolta isn't a bad pick. In 1996's Phenomenon, he plays George Malley, a car repairman who is exposed to a mysterious flash of light that makes him super-humanly intelligent. Unfortunately, it doesn't make his life much better, and it turns out that the "flash of light" was actually caused by a tumor inside his brain. Not a very good deal, in my opinion, but some of the other dudes on this list have it worse.

Fans of the Mental Organism Designed Only For Killing have been enjoying a great year, as the Marvel Comics' villain was one of the left-field picks in Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 and was one of the masterminds behind the War of the Hulks. George Tarleton was a humble technician for the science-terrorist organization AIM until he was chosen to undergo a variety of horrible procedures. These experiments enlarged his head to behemoth size and made him into MODOC - the Mental Organism Designed Only For Computing. Needless to say, computing didn't last and he quickly found something more fun to do.

Let's get over to the positive side of the spectrum in the world of comic books. David Alleyne, also known as Prodigy, was always smart, but when he started to enter puberty he suddenly found himself a lot smarter. David's ability was to absorb knowledge and skill from the people around him, always making him the smartest guy in the room. The brainpower faded when he moved out of their radius, which was probably for the best. He was depowered after M-Day, but can now access some of that knowledge again, which is awesome.

Science loves to try to make dummies smart and, in the kitschy classic flick The Lawnmower Man, that comes in the form of Jobe Smith. Jobe is a humble mentally-deficient gardener played by Jeff Fahey. Using awesome '90s virtual reality and drugs, Dr. Angelo has already increased the intelligence of chimps, so why not try it on the guy who cuts the grass? Things, of course, go horribly wrong both in the real world and in cyberspace.