Well Quark did grab his ears alot. I would think that might create headache's but who knows how the human mind works. Jason
Apparently he suffered two head injuries. One that made him talk like that, and another that made him from an idiot into a brilliant engineer.
Who you knew as "Rom" was really a Changeling agent playing the long game to infiltrate the Ferengi government.
Wasn't he pouring something in his ear in Bar Association and then fainted? That was my first thought reading the thread title.
Only trouble is there aren't that many changlings. They probably save them for more significant infiltrations like the Federation, Klingons, Cardassia, Romulans...
I never thought that he was *supposed* to *actually* be an idiot, it was just that he was so dominated by Quark for so long and it took his potential relationship with Leeta (she left Bashir for Rom long before anything else was expressed between them on screen). dJE
At first he was just a standard Ferengi which really lasted one episode. Even his voice sounds different in that episode were Keiko talks him about Nog going to her school. Then they made him super dumb. Then it turns out he was what I guess you could call a idiot-savant who was dumb at everthing except engineering stuff then they gradually gave him a heart which means he stopped being dumb but just naive and lacking confidence. Also something of a doormat especially to Quark but I think that sort of fits under the lacking confidence angle. Jason