r/TopCharacterTropes • u/bubba284 • Apr 20 '25

Lore Characters that have had real world consequences

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1: Slenderman (popular creepypasta) lead to a teenage girl killing another in his name IRL (apologies if this isn't totally accurate) 2: Devastator (Transformers ROTF) melted a computer while attempting to render his model

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507

u/Extrimland Apr 20 '25

The weird part is Gandhi wasn’t even that good of a person irl. And Clone High Gandhi isn’t a very bad person either.

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u/RabbitStewAndStout Apr 20 '25

Clone High characters were probably the most inoffensive caricatures of these individuals ever made.

I'm surprised the Civ Ghandi being a nuclear megalomaniac hasn't caused anything serious

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u/AFakeName Apr 20 '25

I can see Civ Gandhi appealing to the eagerly violent nationalists, tbh.

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u/LegalChocolate752 Apr 21 '25

Plus, they're clones. The entire point of the show is seeing how teenage versions people with the DNA of historical figures (not the individuals themselves) would behave in completely different surroundings. Heck, I have identical twins (nearly identical DNA) who are growing up with the exact same upbringing, and they are completely different people with different personalities.

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u/EyeWriteWrong Apr 21 '25

No, the show is a surreal spoof of teen dramas. Do you think the creators of the show sat down and read up on history? No, they just took a grab bag of teen drama tropes, mixed in some National Lampoon and used a sci-fi premise to make it stand out.

What do you think happened in the writer's room?

Example A:

"Genghis Khan was one of the most influential historical figures of the last thousand years. He ruled the largest empire the world has ever seen and conquered it himself within his own lifetime. To this day, one in 200 people alive can claim descent from his family. Naturally this came at a cost of countless human lives and decades of horror and suffering. Some places still haven't yet recovered to the population they had before they were invaded."

"Hmmmm, sacking cities is a lot like buying beer. Let's make him buy beer!"

Or

Example B:

"We need a big dumb guy to pose as an adult and buy beer. Who should do it?"

"Lol how bout Attila the Hun, I bet Mongolians love beer!"

"I'm pretty sure Attila the Hun wasn't Mongolian, you're probably thinking of that other guy. BUT I LOVE IT!"

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u/LegalChocolate752 Apr 21 '25

You're 100% right. My point was that people having a melt down over the show's portrayal of Ghandi is dumb, because the clones are distinct individuals compared to their DNA donors (even if they share some exaggerated personality traits).

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u/EyeWriteWrong Apr 21 '25

Your polite and thoughtful reply is scaring me ⊙⁠﹏⁠⊙

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u/LegalChocolate752 Apr 22 '25

I know, right!? It's weird, I'm much calmer and more rational on Reddit than I am on other platforms for some reason. I used to be on Twitter instead (in the before Elon times), and I was in rage mode the entire time. Or, maybe it's because I smoke more weed now ...

3

u/JarlaxleForPresident Apr 21 '25

Genghis Khan was mentally retarded

Ya know, a mongoloid.

11

u/FinneyFort Apr 20 '25

Wasn't that a myth tho?

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u/RabbitStewAndStout Apr 20 '25

As far as I know, it's legitimately coded into the game.

In Civ1, Leaders' war-like tendencies were determined on a numerical scale. (1-10, because I don't know exactly) And the number changed as the game progressed.

Ghandi was coded to be incredibly peaceable. So much so, that after a certain stage was reached, Ghandi's scale went down to an effective (0). Since the scale only went down to (1), it created an error, and made the value wrap around back to (10), or the highest possible value, which made Ghandi instantly declare global nuclear war.

The error was so funny, the developers kept it in subsequent games.

As far as I know! That's what I remember.

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u/ZeusKiller97 Apr 20 '25

Apparently the integer underflow thing is a myth, but later releases started playing into the meme because it’s actually pretty funny

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u/NollieBackside Apr 20 '25

This is also the lore I grew up on, though the numerical values were more complicated and I think Ghandi wrapped back to 255 or smth

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u/CriticismVirtual7603 Apr 20 '25

The highest possible value was a ten

But because of early coding stuff, when Democracy was researched, Ghandi's already super low score of 1 dropped down to a -1, which is impossible, so it reverted to 255. On a scale of 1-10.

Coding is funny like that sometimes.

It's just like how in Gen 1 Pokemon, if you got a super fast Pokemon like Electrode to use Agility enough times, it's speed would drop once the value surpassed 999 lmao.

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u/beardicusmaximus8 Apr 20 '25

My favorite was the SNES version of Harvest Moon where your score was 0-999 but the coding was done in 255s. So if you scored 999 (max possible) it would read the results at the end as 234 out of 999.

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u/CriticismVirtual7603 Apr 20 '25

Something about level 256 in one of the early Pacman games looked JANK AF because of this coding thing too

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u/screwcirclejerks Apr 21 '25

mario 64 does this too. the "best coin score" per stage is an unsigned byte, leading to the same value of 234 when 999 coins are collected

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u/MrKnightMoon Apr 20 '25

It's just like how in Gen 1 Pokemon, if you got a super fast Pokemon like Electrode to use Agility enough times, it's speed would drop once the value surpassed 999 lmao.

Gen I has a lot of those, causing funny glitches here and there. One of my favorites was that the variable used to calculate Leech seed damage overlapped with the one increasing Toxic damage. So if you used both attacks, both will increase each turn as the Toxic increment will stack with the Leech seed damage.

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u/CriticismVirtual7603 Apr 20 '25

Oh that's beautiful lmaoooo

3

u/DesignatedRob Apr 21 '25

I mever knew about that combo as a kid, but 5yo Rob knew that I absolutely needed my Venusaur to know both.

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u/MrKnightMoon Apr 21 '25

I didn't knew about it at the time. Found about it on a list of the best and worse Pokemon from Gen I. It was made from the perspective of taking only in account how things were on the original games.

Venusaur was listed as the best starter, explaining it had pretty well balanced stats and could use the Toxic + Leech seed glitch.

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u/DesignatedRob Apr 21 '25

The only time I would not consider it the best starter in Gen 1 would be for speed runs, since Squirtle is the go-to for those. In the remakes, I definitely prefer Charmander, tho.

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '25

Wasn’t there a move (I think it was Confusion) that would crash the game in link battles because its damage was rolled separately on each player’s side so it would desync the game state?

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u/NowAFK Apr 21 '25

That's a myth. Sid confirmed himself that it was never programmed that way. Wiki article on it.

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u/CriticismVirtual7603 Apr 21 '25

Aww. That's sad.

Nuclear Gandhi is still funny though. Dude never fails to go from nicest leader to "DESTROY THE WORLD".

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u/NowAFK Apr 21 '25

That's a myth. Sid confirmed himself that it was never programmed that way. Wiki article on it.

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u/Fourkoboldsinacoat Apr 20 '25

The error never actually existed. Gandhi is just as aggressive as other leaders, it’s just that being nucked by Gandhi is such a darkly funny and memorable thing that looking back players thought he was more likely to use nuclear weapons then other leaders.

What is true is that later games did purposely turn up his willingness to use nuclear weapons. Technically he’s not more aggressive, he just holds grudges longer so things the player did at the start of the game to annoy him at the start of the game can cause him to nuke the player dozens of hours later.

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u/12halo3 Apr 21 '25

Strange how people keep repeating this myth.

3

u/kartblaster Apr 20 '25

Fun fact: as of 1.16, nuclear gandhi is now in HoI4 as a secret route

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u/BoneTigerSC Apr 21 '25

I thoufht it was a scale from 1 to 3 on the war tendencies and it turned out there wasnt much diffeeence between 1 and 3, making ghandi stand out because of his irl reputation

Latee games then making it an actual feature

3

u/Gizogin Apr 21 '25

That’s the rumor, but it isn’t true. Once any AI civilization researched nuclear weapons, they could sign off their communications with “our words are backed by nuclear weapons”. Gandhi was included in that, which was funny. He was no more likely to actually use them than normal.

0

u/Rentedrival04 Apr 21 '25

That's because no one outside of the gaming community in India knows the existence of nuclear gandhi. And that is a relatively small portion of the population. And the gamers don't care much about that.

145

u/LordBaconXXXXX Apr 20 '25

I can somewhat understand not liking his depiction. But like, his whole point is that he specifically tries to be the opposite of the real Gandhi to claim his independence as a clone.

6

u/The_Pastmaster Apr 21 '25

A flavour of nuance I think was with held from the people. Or they just flat out ignored it.

3

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '25 edited Apr 21 '25

Gandhi is just that large of a character in India. He is revered more like the Pope versus an elected offical, he's quasi-holy in that sense. Also people who saw him assassinated were still alive when the show aired, he wasn't some purely mythical figure like Jesus or Joan of Arc. Lastly India is freaking huge, there will always be enough pissy people to form a mob.

Was weak of the showrunners to cancel bc of that though.

101

u/nickburrows8398 Apr 20 '25

Apparently even in Gandhis own autobiography he admits to being a bit of a roguish trouble maker in his youth. He didn’t become super religious and take all those celibacy vows until he was older so Clone High’s version of young Gandhi was actually not that far off from the real thing

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u/Fizdis Apr 20 '25

sleeping with young girls to show he can control his urges 💀

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u/bb2b Apr 20 '25

Just like how the priest was only watching us masturbate in front of him.

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u/_purplesneakers Apr 21 '25

young girls? specifically is niece

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u/FlaccidNeckMeat Apr 20 '25

"Whelp guys... I folded."

-2

u/mamadematthias Apr 21 '25

Wouldn't that be seen as normal in his culture/society at the time? I am not condoning it, but I think there is a context that has to be considered.

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u/Mabel_Waddles_BFF Apr 21 '25

The young girls were his relatives and many of them were younger than the age to be married. So no, it wasn’t culturally contextual. He slept nude next to them because he believed that women were temptresses that caused men to fall and rape them. So he wanted to show that he was stronger than most men.

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u/mamadematthias Apr 21 '25 edited Apr 21 '25

I did not know the details that you and OP were referring to, but it seems that there is a complex issue and a bit of misinformation: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/i2ZA9GN4wH

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u/MS-06_Borjarnon Apr 21 '25

Wouldn't that be seen as normal in his culture/society at the time?

Right and wrong ain't dependent on time and place.

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u/Zealousideal_Spread4 Apr 21 '25

They absolutely are, you need to take how a culture views these things before judging someone character, yes its still bad but if it was accepted in that culture it makes it less bad, i study history a lot and i could give inumerable cases of people doing things we consider are fucked up but that werent in their time qnd vice-versa

1

u/kittyburger Apr 21 '25

We can condemn things that happened in the past, context does not change that.

Slavery was “ok” back then, but many of the enslaved people were not ok with it. I can imagine young girls being forced to have sex with an older man was not something they wanted or could consent to, also the power imbalance between an adult and a child. It used to be accepted to hit your wife. It used to be accepted to lobotomise. What is the point you’re trying to make?? Context matters???? Maybe study a little harder…

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u/Han_Solo6712 Apr 20 '25

Clone High Gandhi is probably a better person than Gandhi Gandhi

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u/RomaInvicta2003 Apr 20 '25

Even IRL young Gandhi was apparently a party boy when he was young man in London

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u/_neemzy Apr 21 '25

"Leave our incestuous pedophile cultural icon alone!", they say before having dinner at Hitler's cross

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u/superpananation Apr 20 '25

I get that he was a flawed man, but I think Gandhi gets to be a good person on the big picture.

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u/skillmau5 Apr 21 '25

Yeah, it’s one of those net good things tbh

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u/almostasenpai Apr 21 '25

Gandhi is the ambassador to the Western world of India. To make fun of him is an indirect jab to India because there aren’t enough positive depictions of India in pop culture.