The Fool is a trope that has never really disappeared. It's grown and evolved to immerse itself in the stoner, the deadbeat, the nerd--any one that falls into a outcast social group has the freedom to get layers.
Ideally. I can think of many examples of lazy writing, so let's just specify that well-written genre entertainment has this trope.
"[The Fool] may be seen as half-witted, a natural whose wisdom is instinctive clairvoyance, or as a sage rationalist, shrewd and thoughtful. [...]He has also been portrayed as embodying the conscience of the King, as a voice of social protest, and as a court fool who 'shrivels into a wretched little human being on the soaking heath' (Bayley, 61)." R.A. Foakes, "Introduction to King Lear," Bloomsbury, pg. 133.
The writer/director who most forcibly embraces this conceit is Joss Whedon. If you have watched any TV show, seen any movie, or read any graphic novel that Whedon has been involved in, you know that amid the character dynamics and clever quips is a character who seems to see through illusion and transcend distraction. The best example is probably Cabin in the Woods (2012), in which Whedon parodies popular entertainment by relegating initially complex and varied characters into static tropes, including "The Fool." However, as Cabin in the Woods is rated R, so a more approachable example would be Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Firefly. Characters who don't fit into any of the societal categories such as Spike, a vampire who can't hurt humans, and River, an insane prodigy that straddles the divide between culturally human and instinctively animal. These characters see what other characters don't, and these characters can say what other people can't. There is another excellent Fool in Twelfth Night. I'm eager to see how Shakespeare varies the role.
