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  • ️Sat Sep 21 2024

Almighty Janitors in Live-Action TV.

  • In Season 2 of The 100, Clarke is technically just a juvenile delinquent and isn't supposed to have any say in Camp Jaha's government. However, the Grounders and the remaining members of the 100 listen to her above anyone else, letting Clarke largely control the camp's relations with the Grounders and their war against Mount Weather. When Abby, the camp's official leader, tries overruling her, Clarke tells her, "You may be the Chancellor, but I'm in charge."
  • Kenneth the Page on 30 Rock was identified in the third episode as being destined for a meteoric rise to running the company. He may also be immortal.
  • Handicapped (by the loss of a hand) former Canadian super spy Adderly was banished to the Department of Miscellaneous Affairs, which handles jobs too insignificant to be dealt with by anyone else. Only slightly impaired by his prosthetic, he insisted on running amuck as a Cowboy Cop.
  • In Andromeda, by the end of the second season, Beka Valentine's skills and achievements are so great that the only reason Dylan hasn't promoted her any further is that there's literally nobody who can promote her to a level which would do her skills justice.
  • On Are You Being Served?, there is Mr. Harman, a multitalented Packing and Maintenance Department employee who frequently helps, in various roles, the Ladies and Gents staff members (getting extra pay for it doesn't hurt, either). His powers are perhaps never plainer than in "Take-over," when he finds out about the plot point "emptying the waste-paper basket" and comes up with his own plan for saving the firm.
  • The Ark (2023): Alicia is a waste management engineer. She is abruptly promoted to be chief of life support after the command staff are killed and the supposed previous chief of life support turns out to be an impersonator who bribed his way onto the ship. It turns out that she has multiple masters degrees and is the only one left who knows how to fix the life support controls. Why was she willing to work in waste management with those qualifications? Apparently Earth is so bad that "everyone wanted to be on this ship".
  • The Janitor in Black Hole High is actually an extremely knowledgeable time traveler from the far-far future who is meant to observe and ensure the continuity of the timeline. He is known as "Observer of Observers".
  • A Running Gag in the third season of Barry is the main characters venting about their problems to a slack-jawed baker who proceeds to give them extraordinarily good advice - which they inevitably ignore. At one point, it's revealed there's a whole line of people across the block come to talk to him.
  • The Blacklist:
    • The Debt Collector, a highly skilled Psycho for Hire, is a janitor as his day job.
    • Glen Carter, an extremely skilled skip tracer and tracker in Reddington's employ, works at a D.C. DMV.
  • Bones: Not an all-powerful variant but a wise one. The night guard at the Jeffersonian, shown in only one episode, always knows just what to say, although he claims he just attends a lot of lectures at the Institute in his spare time. Given that Bones is hallucinating in this episode, it is possible that he doesn't really exist. Booth, for example, had no idea who she was talking about.
    • Also, Dr Hodgins, the self-described "bug and slime guy", is rich enough to probably buy the place if he wanted. He prefers to pretend otherwise unless it's necessary to solve a case, such as when his knowledge of sailing came in handy.

    Angela: I never knew you sailed.

    Hodgins: I was a rich kid. We had to sail and have at least one girlfriend named Muffy. It's in the charter.

  • Breaking Bad:
    • A decidedly dark version in Mike Ehrmantraut, a retired cop introduced as Saul's hypercompetent private investigator. It turns out the job is just a sideline to Mike's more lucrative career: right-hand man and chief assassin for Gustavo Fring, a major drug trafficker.
    • Demonstrated in the prequel series Better Call Saul. Gus nominally hires Mike as a "security consultant" to cover up a large payment Gus owes him for a crime. Without being asked to, Mike visits a warehouse affiliated with Gus's empire and immediately identifies a long list of security issues. Gus is impressed enough to give him a major role in his business.
    • Gus himself dabbles in this trope, hiding in plain sight as the humble manager of a minor fast food restaurant chain.
  • In Chernobyl, Glukhov is just the chief of a coal mine in Tula. But when the Minister of Coal comes with 2 armed guards to press-gang and send them to 'a classified location', he refuses to budge unless they tell him where to and why. He then dares the soldiers to kill him and his crew, but warns them that they won't be able to take them all out, and whoever's left will beat the everlasting piss out of them. The Minister of Coal then reveals what he knows to Glukhov, that they're going to Chernobyl to help with the effort there. The entire scene shows how despite Glukhov's relatively low status as a mine foreman, it's the Minister of Coal who has to tread lightly around him and not the other way around.
  • Chuck is ostensibly just a shop-floor computer repairman with the Nerd Herd at the local Buy More (a cheap electronic goods store), but the entire staff considers him their leader and always expects him to solve whatever problems they have. Including the store manager. Of course Chuck is actually brilliant, just shy of an Mechanical Engineering degree from Standford, and good with people (in spite of being a raging nerd), so he was always the most competent person in the store even before he was accidentally recruited to the CIA.
  • Johnny from Cobra Kai, full stop. He may be a drunken belligerent handyman and complete loser who hasn't done anything of note with his life for thirty years, but he also has a black belt in a particularly vicious form of Karate and was the star student of his Vietnam War veteran sensei. Naturally, even after being out of the loop for so long, when pushed into a fight by a group of asshole bullies he utterly dominates all four of them in a fight and kicks the crap out of all of them with very little effort. After having been drinking heavily, no less.
  • Played for Laughs in Community:
    • In "Contemporary American Poultry", where it's revealed that the cafeteria fry cook could easily become akin to a mafia don for the whole school and control everything and everyone because the only edible food in the school cafeteria are the chicken fingers, and the cafeteria fry cook is responsible for cooking the chicken fingers — and deciding who gets them...
    • Starting in Season 3, it was revealed that the entire profession of air conditioning repairmen collectively fulfills this role, dating back to the days of slaves using palm fronds to fan Egyptian Pharaohs. Matter of fact, Vice Dean Laybourne, who also serves as head of the Greendale A.C. Repair School, commands more power and influence than Dean Pelton himself.
  • "The Days And Nights Of Molly Dodd" has Davey, the elevator operator (and later doorman) of Molly's building. He is an expert at everything. In glimpses of his private life he is shown to have important connections, and other indications that he is more than he seems.
  • Doctor Who:
    • The Doctor is himself an example, as among his own kind he's just a madman who stole a TARDIS. He ends up becoming the most powerful Time Lord to ever exist, earning the title of Lord President of Gallifrey (thrice!) and President of Earth, as well as the greatest hero in the Universe, but still prefers to just wander from place to place.
    • Donna Noble, best temp in Chiswick, discovers key information in several episodes by putting her paper-filing and administration powers to good use. In "The Sontaran Strategem", for example, she finds an empty sick-leaves folder that leads them to question the episode's suspicious company.
    • Rory Pond briefly, but memorably, becomes this in "The Big Bang", after his wounded wife is trapped in the Pandorica for nearly 2,000 years. As an immortal robot (long story), he vows to guard Amy until the Pandorica opens again, and passes into legend as the fabled "Last Centurion", safeguarding the box from Roman times all the way into the late 20th century. When the heroes meet up with him again in the 1980s, he's become a security guard at the London museum where the Pandorica is displayed as an exhibit; the same museum, in fact, where his adventures as the Last Centurion are chronicled as ancient history.
    • Perkins the train engineer from "Mummy on the Orient Express" proves to be a Hypercompetent Sidekick and more resourceful than the train full of scientists, doctors, and professors. He is able to provide a box of data on Mummy sightings, and is the one to figure out the Mummy's ability stemmed from the fact it was out-of-phase. He even earns the very rare "You, sir, are a genius!" remark from the Doctor.
  • Eureka:
    • Henry Deacon, the simple mechanic who knows everything about everything. Need a crash course in quantum physics? Call Henry. Temporal theory? Give Henry a ring. How about a quick list of any of the town's supergeniuses who might possibly know something he doesn't? He can tell you. This is only subverted midway through Season 3, where he is named the town's Mayor-elect in a surprise write-in ballot.
    • A lot of characters could qualify as this, considering it is a town of Mad Scientists. Take Vincent for example. He seems to run a simple restaurant, but is so good at his job that no customer has ever been able to request a meal that he cannot provide. note  Taggart, who everybody sees as being a nut, is actually probably the greatest trapper and animal expert in the world. Even Fargo, the resident Butt-Monkey, is a genius capable of building a sentient house despite being treated as little more than a lab assistant by most of the other residents.
  • In an episode of Freaky, a troublemaking student discovers too late that the school caretaker is some kind of supernatural being who commands an army of floor buffers. Said troublemaker ends up a permanent stain on the floor of the school gym.
  • On Fringe, Olivia has trouble readjusting after her return from "over there." Nina Sharp refers her to Sam Weiss, the man who "helped put (her) back together" after she got her cyberarm. As it turns out, Sam Weiss is a bowling alley attendant. He's also a brilliant, if eccentric, physical therapist.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • A literal version: Tyrion tells Varys that at the age of 16, his father Tywin assigned him the job of running the sewers and cisterns of Casterly Rock. Tyrion revolutionized it and made it perfect to spite his father.
    • Hobb, the cook at Castle Black, proves he's a full-fledged member of the Night's Watch by defending his kitchen from some Wildlings with a cooking pot and a big-ass cleaver.
    • This is Ramsay's cover to gain Theon's trust.
    • Jon Snow is one for the first four seasons. He's one of the most respected and well-liked men of the Night's Watch, as well as one of its most formidable warriors, despite officially being a Steward—one of the lowly laborers of the Watch, in charge of maintaining the castles and grounds. note  Subverted, though, in that he's Lord Commander Mormont's personal steward, and he gets the position because Mormont wants to groom him as his successor. Then double subverted when Mormont is killed in a mutiny before he can establish Jon as a potential successor, leaving Jon as a garden-variety Steward who's resented as an upstart by most of his superiors. He still gets himself elected Lord Commander.
  • House:
    • When House was a child in Japan, he witnessed doctors asking for medical advice from what looked to be a literal Almighty Janitor. It turns out the guy was a medical genius who worked as a janitor because he was a Burakumin (an untouchable). House says this is the reason he became a doctor. The man wasn't liked, but he was respected "because he was right."
    • Subverted in the Season 4 premiere where, after the ducklings have all quit or been fired, House starts using the janitor to bounce ideas off of, even having him pretend to be "Dr. Buffer" and deal with the patient's family.
    • Returned to again in the Season 8 premiere, where the Almighty Janitor is a prison inmate working as a janitor.
    • House briefly had another one on his team in one season: The man had an encyclopedic knowledge of medicine rivaling that of House himself but it was revealed that he didn't actually have a medical degree: he was actually an admissions officer at Columbia who audited 30 years worth of medical school classes.
  • In Into the Badlands: Veil is a doctor, not a janitor, but she is also the only doctor in the Badlands (at least after Baron Quinn kills her parents). This gives her a lot of power and effective leverage, even over the powerful Barons.
  • It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
    • Charlie Kelly is an odd example: as a janitor, he ranges from merely competent to downright bizarre in his methods (he's dealt with the pub's rat problem through carbon monoxide and spiked bats), and his intelligence borders on Psychopathic Man Child, but he's by far the best worker of anyone in Paddy's Pub, and the only one who seems to take his duties seriously. Compared to a bouncer who can barely fight, a waitress who insists on practicing her comedy routine to waiting customers, a bartender who once converted all his savings into printed bills with his face on them, and an owner who does nothing but occasionally bail the bar out out-of-pocket, he looks downright exemplary for a guy treated consistently as the bottom of the totem pole. One episode showed him devising a massive (and successful) Xanatos Speed Chess plan to get the pub, which was currently in the middle of a chickens-steakhouse-and-airline-miles scheme, a perfect score from the health inspector, while the other workers cared more about who would get credit for the scheme than about the possibility of the bar being shut down.
    • On the other hand, this was subverted in the episode "The Gang Reignites the Rivalry", where Charlie decides that he'll ingratiate himself with the students by copying the events of the film Good Will Hunting. He thinks he'll say something that reveals him to actually be an intelligent and well-learned genius despite the initial impression of him being a simple janitor, which will wow them and make them love him. Unfortunately for Charlie, it turns out he's not just a simple janitor—he's a flat-out moron with almost no education to speak of. When he tries to act smart around the college students, his incoherent rambling totally fails to impress them.
  • A semi-common theme in Kamen Rider is everyman characters who occupy ordinary positions in society coming into possession of great power.
    • Eiji in Kamen Rider OOO starts the series off as a hobo who becomes the titular character through happenstance, as the temp job he was working just so happened to be a company that had a group of Ancient Evils in storage.
    • Touma Kamiyama, the titular Kamen Rider Saber, is a fantasy book author. This works in his favor though since his skill as a writer makes him a really effective swordsman via the Magitek the Kamen Riders in the series use, as his creativity lets him continually come up with new ways to wield his Seiken. By the end of the series, he effectively becomes a Physical God after unlocking his Super Mode and becoming the new guardian of Wonder World.
  • Las Vegas: Mike Cannon is an engineer, MIT graduate, and nerd. He starts the series as a valet. He's called in to help the actual security staff several times during the first season. Despite his initial reluctance — due to actually liking being a valet, and the potential pay cut — he eventually becomes full-time security staff. In the final season, he's actually promoted to head of security.
  • Leverage: Redemption: The custodial staff at the University of Louisiana New Orleans maintains a secret society (complete with a fez-wearing poobah) that works to keep things running while making life miserable for those who cross its members.
  • Played with in Lie to Me with Ria Torres, discovered by Lightman working at an airport as a TSA agent, whose naturally developed Living Lie Detector abilities rival those of her future boss.
  • Lincoln Heights, both Eddie and Jenn Sutton work as a police officer and Nurse, respectively. Eddie has spent 12 years as just a low level beat cop but is clearly capable of being a sergeant or even detective. He actually purposely doesn't test for those positions, knowing that a promotion would take him off the street and put him behind a desk where he wouldn't do much good to the community. His family could certainly use the extra pay. Jenn is more understandable as she most likely would of gone to school to become a doctor, or at least a Nurse Practitioner or Physician Assistant, but became pregnant at a very young age and never went to college.
  • Mad Men:
    • The company dumps all of the unattractive girls in the switchboard office. In spite of their lowly status, Joan understands that the switchboard operators hold a lot of power, so she's very careful to stay on their good side and often brings them gifts.
    • The trope applies to Joan herself. Despite being a secretary, she soon proves to be the single most competent person in the office because she is the only one who knows how to deal with all the boring, bureaucratic (and very, very important) stuff that none of the SC partners ever bothered to know.
  • In the series finale of Malcolm in the Middle... You get two guesses and the first one doesn't count. Kid had to pay for college somehow.
  • M*A*S*H:
    • Corporal Walter "Radar" O'Reilly practically ran the 4077th M*A*S*H.
      • Early episodes depicted him as possessing genuine telepathic (and possibly precognitive) powers, but these were abandoned about midway through the first season.
    • Cloudcuckoolander Klinger is an extremely good supply officer and corpsman which is why he can't get himself kicked out of the army. If it wasn't for Radar, he'd be the most important person in the unit. Indeed, after Radar leaves, Klinger takes his place.
  • Merlin (2008):
    • Merlin himself. He appears to be a normal boy (and servant to Arthur), but he in fact is quite skilled in magic and can kick most people's butts. Arthur's made it so clear by now that Merlin's opinion is the one he values over all others — but still forgets to pay his wages half the time, let alone make him an official adviser. Be honest, Arthur just likes throwing things at Merlin and wouldn't get to do that if Merlin had rank. Merlin also takes advantage of this trope by hanging out all over the place when he needs to gather information, since no one will question the Prince's manservant "cleaning the bedrooms" or hanging out around the throne room.
    • The trope is also deconstructed—even though everyone in the know values Merlin's opinion, his position as a servant means that Uther and many other Jerkass knights treat him like dirt.
  • Lenny Bicknall from M.I. High and his replacement Frank London. International superspies forced to masquerade as a school caretaker.
  • Mr. Young has Dang, who in addition to possessing martial arts prowess, can move incredibly fast, defy gravity, and even be in two places at once.
  • Ye Olde Tyme Parody TV Show Police Squad! had Johnny the Shoeshine Guy. Inspector Drebin would consult him about "the word on the street"; Johnny would say "I don't know nuthin'!", whereupon the Inspector would slip him a twenty and get detailed insider info about the Bad Guys' operations. And in a running gag, after the Inspector left, someone else would come up and Johnny would give them detailed information using the same procedure. The persons in question included a surgeon asking how to perform open-heart surgery, a priest wanting to know about the Afterlife, a fireman needing instructions on how to put out a warehouse fire, Dr. Joyce Brothers needing to know about mental health, baseball manager Tommy Lasorda needing tho know how to handle his pitching staff, and TV music host Dick Clark asking about new musical trends (and getting his supply of anti-aging cream).
  • The crew of the Orion from the 60s German science-fiction series Raumpatrouille (Space Patrol) are a whole crew of Almighty Janitors. Despite being the best crew of Earth's starfleet, they're backset from rapid space units to space patrol because of the unorthodox methods of their captain. And yet, they still save the day several times, including single-handedly stopping a full-fledged invasion of Earth by an alien power.
  • Red Dwarf:
    • Dave Lister has some traits of this; though officially ranked the bottom-most on the ship's social structure (he was a Third Technician — which translates as "assistant chicken soup vending machine repairman"), he nevertheless has several surprisingly displays of skill, including being able to repair a smashed mechanoid with only a few minor glitches in memory, instantly spot the flaws in a computer's simulation of using a nuclear explosion to dislodge planets to block up a white hole, promptly recalculate the "play" himself due to his skill at pool, and devise a plan to double-bluff a ruthless time-travelling judge-droid. Said judge-droid even demands to know how Lister can justify living his life as such a lazy bum when he has so much potential that he's never bothered to use.
    • Lister is also, for the bulk of the series, the de facto captain of Red Dwarf and Starbug, in spite of never actually formally being promoted beyond Third Technician. In the first season he tries to take the exam to qualify as a chef in order to outrank holo-Rimmer de jure as well as de facto, but that falls through due to Lister only having two working tastebuds.
  • Dr. Krogshøj from Riget is, despite his status as a low ranking doctor, one of the most powerful people on the Kingdom Hospital as he is both the resident Knowledge Broker and Friend in the Black Market for the entire hospital. He both knows every dirty secret worth knowing about every member of the staff and he is able to get his collagues whatever they request from him within a few hours, and without the bureaucracy and red tape that comes with requesting it through the official channels, making him a pretty powerful political player in the employee hierarchy.
  • Scrubs:
    • The Janitor himself is so devious, underhanded and omniscient it borders on a superpower.
      • He is the king of lies and is mighty enough to domineer over both Dr. Cox and Dr. Kelso and he can make people do things with his mind.
      • He has the ability to sense when squirrels are scared.
      • The Janitor can speak several different languages fluently, particularly Spanish.
      • He was a licensed taxidermist at one point, but had his license revoked for killing and stuffing animals. Not that losing it stopped him at all.
      • He's an inventor, although all of his inventions are just two already invented items combined together. Knifewrench, the Penstraw, Drill & Fork (Mostly Fork), a Paintball gun that also makes business cards.
      • In "My House," Janitor made an impressive painting on the wall in one of the hospital rooms.
      • The Janitor can use fear alone to get the entire hospital staff to do anything.
      • He made a key that opens ANY LOCK EVER.
      • The Janitor was in a Harrison Ford movie.
      • He once traveled faster than the speed of sound but you must never ever ask him how.
      • He doesn't believe in the moon, thinking it's the other side of the sun. A statement which is probably now correct...
      • He was a world-class hurdler when he was 19 years old and could have gotten a college scholarship if he hadn't had sex with the president's daughter. The daughter of the President of the United States that is. In his forties, he does a 100m hurdle run in less than 10 seconds, calling it "not even world-record pace." In fact, it beats the world-record by a lot!
      • He once said that the US should search for Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and was later proven right.
      • He can move pens with his mind, though it only seemed to work in his house on a slightly slanted table. But he did it!
    • In Real Life, Janitor's actor Neil Flynn began ad-libbing his lines early on in the show rather than sticking to the script (Dr. Jan Itor being a classic example). Eventually, the entire cast ended up following his lead, and the series creator would sometimes walk in on scenes and have no idea what was being filmed because it was being ad-libbed and deviating from the script so much. Sam Lloyd, who plays Ted, claimed that one time he opened up his script and when it came to Janitor, it just said "Whatever Neil says."
    • Carla seems to have the most power in the hospital, in that she holds sway over every single full-time staff member, including The Janitor. In "My Nightingale," Carla switched her shift to help the protagonist doctor trio when they are left without supervision for a night. Not that they noticed.

      J.D.: (voiceover) Even though we all know tomorrow morning, the three of us [J.D., Turk, and Elliot] will go back to being the most unappreciated people in the whole damn hospital.
      Nurse: Hey, what are you doing here? I thought you were off last night.
      Carla: I switched shifts to help some friends out. Have a good one.

    • There was an episode where Turk was in charge of some interns and one of them (a big buff Eastern European) was being somewhat of an Insufferable Genius. Turns out he was a surgeon with a few years experience back home but had to become an intern again when he came to Sacred Heart.
    • Subtly invoked in the series finale via Casting Gag: as J.D. leaves Sacred Heart, the last person he bids farewell to is an anonymous Sacred Heart janitor we've never seen before. Said janitor is played by series creator Bill Lawrence in a Creator Cameo, effectively bidding farewell to the series that he brought to life.
  • Sherlock:
    • Depending on just how much you can trust his word, Mycroft. It's not just in Sherlock; Mycroft's minor/notable position is actually canon from the original Sherlock Holmes books by Arthur Conan Doyle. "He is the British Government" was lifted word-for-word from "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans".

      Mycroft: For goodness' sake! I occupy a minor position in the British Government.
      Sherlock: He is the British Government. When he's not too busy being the Secret Service, or the CIA on a freelance basis...

    • In "A Study in Pink", Sherlock comes face-to-face with the source of the "rash of suicides" in London, who turns out to be a serial killer with a twisted game he's played against each victim so far... staking either side's life on seemingly even chance that he's "won" four consecutive times. After a few minutes of conversation, Sherlock at least grants that whether everyone else is an idiot compared to him, or (the man suggests this with a chuckle) God just loves him, "you are wasted as a cabbie..."
  • Stargate Atlantis:
    • You can say John Sheppard. He mentions that people "never thought he'd make it past captain", and his job's been in trouble many times due to him having messed with the guy upstairs. Also, shown to be pretty intelligent, but doesn't really like talking about it. You can also say the entirety of his team is like this.
    • A good example of just how much of an Almighty Janitor he is can be seen in the two-parter, "The Storm" and "The Eye" in Series 1, where he manages to hold off an occupying force of Genii soldiers in Atlantis single-handed by outsmarting them at every turn. All the while, while managing to disable key systems so they can't follow him and still find time to accomplish his other objective, rerouting the lightning rod grounding stations to power the City's shield to protect it from an incoming hurricane that covers roughly 20% of the planet's surface.
      • He also qualified for, but turned down Mensa membership.
  • Stargirl (2020):
    • Invoked with Blue Valley High's janitor who is able to fight off Cindy Burman with surprising efficiency. Justified since he's actually Shining Knight whose mind has been damaged after being tortured and experimented on.
  • Star Trek:
    • These memory-alpha sites state that the petty officers (naval counterparts to army sergeants) have the most experience in Starfleet. Despite this, this analysis states that the enlisted are excluded from meetings and the chain of command.
    • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
      • Boothby knows all the cadets and gives many of them advice. Picard recommends Wesley pay attention to him even though he's just a janitor and gardener and he himself seeks Boothby's counsel when he's investigating Red Squad. Boothby is also mentioned fondly in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager.
      • Guinan. She's a bartender and a "listener" who always has good advice and has a special relationship with Picard (turns out they will have met before he was born because she's older than she looks). She also can tell when time has been retconned and adopts a defensive posture against Q as though she thinks she's capable of fighting him. Q's reaction suggests he thinks she can as well.
      • Even Picard himself shows shades of this at times. Though he is at the top of the pyramid in the Enterprise crew as the Captain, he is still this compared to the higher echelons of Starfleet rank. He could easily become an admiral (and the admiralty even regularly pressures him to do so), but he prefers to be a captain of a starship, much like Kirk before him. Exemplified in the Battle of Sector 001 in Star Trek: First Contact. Once he finds out that the admiral's flagship is destroyed, he takes charge, and the remainder of the fleet follow.
    • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
      • Garak. This plain and simple tailor has knowledge of multiple cultures, multiple languages, has in-depth computer skills, can crack codes that baffle entire intelligence agencies, excels at engineering, bomb-making, and interrogation techniques, is a crack shot with a phaser, is tapped in to more resources than almost anyone else, and when he's been out of the game for several years his unarmed combat skills are still good enough to put Worf on the defensive (Worf still won, but it left him with a hefty respect for Garak's skill). He's a tailor because he's in exile from Cardassia for an unspecified crime. Prior to his exile he was one of the most powerful Cardassians alive, protégé and biological son of Enabran Tain himself (the head of the Obsidian Order who, at his peak, was unofficially the single most powerful — and feared — Cardassian alive). Now Garak's a tailor. A tailor the Federation comes to rely on more and more heavily as the show progresses.
      • In addition to all that, he's a damned good tailor as well.
      • Miles "the only enlisted man in Starfleet" O'Brien. When he isn't present nobody can keep the station running, and he's effectively the chief engineer on the Defiant as well. When the Dominion war is full swing he's also effectively in charge of a major repair station that services warships from three navies. Any one of these should be a senior officer's job, and he does all of them at once as a CPO. He's frequently seen ordering commissioned officers around, suggesting his de facto rank is quite a bit higher than his actual pay grade.
      • Captain Sisko himself is a downplayed version of this trope. While he does spend a lot of time on the front lines commanding the Defiant, or commanding his station, both responsibilities befitting his rank, he also is one of the main architects of the Federation's grand strategy in the Dominion War as a whole, which really should be the responsibility of a flag officer. He's often discussing major strategy with General Martok and Vice Admiral Ross and being treated by both as more a peer than a subordinate.
    • Star Trek: Voyager:
      • When Species 8472 creates a simulation of Starfleet Academy, the creature in charge of the project takes the role of Boothby, the groundskeeper at the real Starfleet Academy.
      • Tom Paris. Junior Lieutenant. Best pilot in the Federation. Once took down a cruiser with a half broken shuttle craft. Saved Voyager multiple times single-handed. Built an engine that could do infinite speed (though that was declared non-canon).
      • Halfway through Voyager, Harry Kim realizes that he's effectively become this trope. He's been on so many adventures and saved the ship so many times, but the fact that Voyager is thousands of light-years away from Earth means he can't be officially promoted and is stuck at the rank of Ensign until they get home, even though by Season 4 he's become vastly overqualified. He does take steps to combat the trope, though, taking on larger responsibilities, challenging authority when needed, and getting past his initial naivety, but because of Voyager's position he remains the lowest-ranked member of the crew (aside from Neelix and Seven, but only because they aren't "officially" members of Starfleet).

        Alien: (after being rescued by Kim) How long have you been Captain?
        Kim: I'm just an ensign.
        Alien: Ensign? Uh... What is that?
        Kim: A junior officer. (beat) The lowest ranked officer, actually.

      • But it's ridiculous and untrue that he could not be promoted. Capt. Janeway promotes Paris. She make Torres a Lieutenant JG and Chief Engineer though she wasn't even a Star Fleet officer. There are other examples. He could be given a field promotion. Janeway could and should but inexplicably does not promote Ensign Kim to at least Lieutenant SG over the course of the seven years.
    • Star Trek: Lower Decks features Mariner, who is incredibly competent at every skill applicable to being a Starfleet officer. She nevertheless prefers to be an ensign on the lower decks rather than on the bridge. When she's promoted, she is still very adept — but also incredibly miserable from all the bureaucracy required of the role.
  • On Suits, Donna — the all-knowing legal secretary — fits this role to a tee. It's a big part of her charm. Fittingly, when a former managing partner tries to take back control of the firm, the first part of his plan is to neutralize Donna. With her out of the picture he easily out gambits master manipulators like Harvey and Jessica. As soon as Donna returns, she is able to figure out the next part of his scheme within seconds of seeing that Louis is wearing a different suit than usual.
  • Supernatural:
    • In "Tall Tales", Trickster God Loki masquerades as a janitor in a university, thus allowing him to find people within the university to punish in twisted yet darkly comedic ways. A few seasons later, he is revealed to be the Archangel Gabriel, on the run from Heaven as a result wanting no part in the impending apocalypse, thus making himself an example of this again.
    • In "The Dark Side of the Moon," the Winchester brothers travel to Heaven, and meet a lowly gardener who knows a lot about the whereabouts of God—a question which is a great mystery that puzzles even the greatest of archangels.
  • Done very literally in Todd and the Book of Pure Evil. Jimmy (recognizable as the first half of Jay and Silent Bob) serves as the janitor at Crowley High. Though mostly The Stoic, he serves as a reliable source of information (and weed) for the central characters and occasionally cleans up the huge amounts of blood and gore that flood the school on a regular basis. The second season finale reveals that this is deliberate: he's actually a Big Good who secretly protects the school from three demons who have been trying to break inside for years; as a trade-off, though, he has to remain inside the building forever, which explains why he's always around just when the heroes need him.
  • Ianto Jones of Torchwood is initially identified as the team's tea-boy/janitor, who sometimes mans a Tourist Information desk. In practice, however, he takes on pretty much every role the team can throw at him, ranging from being Gwen's wedding fairy to going hand-to-hand with a Weevil.
  • The Unit is about a secret US Army special ops unit. The cover story, however, is the very boring "303rd Logistical Studies Division". The cover extends to the soldiers who are expect to be experts in packing and loading of military equipment, alongside their actual combat roles.
  • In the series Warehouse 13, the individuals who control and make decisions for the Warehouse are the Regents who "hide in plain sight" as grocery store clerks, diner waitresses, etc. One particular Regent, Theodora, not only guards the secrets of warehouse full of artifacts and objects that could destroy the world a thousand times over- she also makes the best pie in the county.

    Artie: I... You know, I just would have thought that... this waitress is a Regent?
    Valda: John Adams was a farmer. Abraham Lincoln was a small-town lawyer. Plato, Socrates were teachers. Jesus was a carpenter. To equate judgment and wisdom with occupation is at best... insulting.

  • The Weinerville Chanukah Special gives us Mrs. Kababble, the Weinerville Ski Lodge's terrifying housekeeper. She only appears for two scenes, but makes it quite clear if you forget to wipe your feet, no one can save you- not even if you're an alien invader.

    "YOU GOT SNOW ON MY FLOOR!"

  • The Wire:
    • Lester Freamon begins the series as a very lowly regarded detective in a department whose only job is keeping records of (potentially stolen) items sold to pawnshops over a certain amount, and he is given so little to do that he spends his days crafting dollhouse furniture rather than work cases. However, his low status is due to the fact that he is being punished for past insubordination, not for a lack of ability. When given the opportunity to shine again, he's quick to prove himself one of the very best detectives in the city. Furthermore, because Freamon gains the complete trust of Cedric Daniels in the early seasons and Daniels suddenly enjoys several unexpected promotions in the last few seasons, this gives Freamon much more clout and leeway within the department than would be expected considering that he is never promoted past detective.
    • As Jimmy McNulty explains, patrol officers have much more power and freedom in interacting with the public and with street criminals than one would guess from their rank, going so far as to call a patrol officer on his beat "the one true dictatorship in America." Patrol officers can choose to let criminals or civilians go, write them up for minor crimes, or snowball what should be a minor charge or interaction into an accusation of a major crime, and as long as their fellow officers will back them up (which is almost always, unless they've really gone out of their way to alienate their colleagues), they can get away with it. They also have more freedom from Da Chief than a lot of the higher ranking police commanders, since the top brass can keep tabs on all the mid-level police management, but simply can't look over every patrolman's shoulder all day. The show explores both the good side of this, such as McNulty and Baker skipping out on writing pointless tickets to investigate a robbery spree, and the bad side most notably Rabid Cop Colicchio brutalizing and robbing the people on his beat, and Officer Walker terrifying the local street kids and using his position to steal from suspects.
  • Jennifer from WKRP in Cincinnati is an example of this; despite being a mere receptionist, she is the highest-paid employee at the station, arguably the most competent person in the entire outfit, and untouchable by anyone, including the REAL boss.
  • Sir Humphrey Appleby of Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, despite being anonymous to the population at large and describing himself as a "humble functionary", is effectively running the country from behind the scenes by the end of the series.

    President of Buranda: I've always thought that Permanant Under-Secretary is such a demeaning title... makes you sound like an assistant typist or something, whereas you're really in charge of everything aren't you?

  • An Israeli satire show once did a famous sketch whose concept is "What would happen if Superman was Israeli, and serving in the IDF?" Naturally, Superman was made a lazy, obnoxious and practically omnipotent quartermaster. In the sketch, even the Chief of Staff has to make deals with him to get him to do anything.