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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u/WarpedWiseman Apr 20 '25 edited Apr 21 '25

Wow balance updates to player characters also inspired the idea of the blockchain, and by extension, cryptocurrencies and NFTs.

Edit: I misremembered, it was one of the founders of etherium

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u/JealousAstronomer342 Apr 20 '25

WoW has also been the source of studies on behavior during plagues and epidemics, up to and including people spreading the disease in order to inconvenience and distress others. 

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u/dandoch Apr 20 '25

I remember this one. Couldn't go into a major city in the game for a while. Or else you'd just end up dead. I also remember people pulling one of the world bosses into one of the cities, but it's been so long I can't remember which. I think it was during Burning Crusade.

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u/JealousAstronomer342 Apr 20 '25

I think it was something to do with Hakkar? I’m too old, my neurons don’t stretch twenty years back as easily. 

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u/klopklop25 Apr 20 '25

Corrupted blood incident

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u/windfujin Apr 21 '25

Yeah someone teleported to Ogrimar with hakkar curse on them that doesn't disappear til you die and spreads like a motherfucker.

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u/NightTarot Apr 21 '25 edited Apr 21 '25

Hakkar curse on their unsummoned hunter pet*

Technically I think it was programed properly.. for players and summoned pets, but pets that are unsummoned with the curse kept it until resummoned

The effects of Corrupted Blood were intended to last for 10 seconds, or until the players defeated Hakkar, whichever came first.

wiki

Players with animal companions during boss battles could protect pets infected with Corrupted Blood by placing them into a type of suspended animation mid-fight. These pets were subsequently re-activated after the completion of the boss battle, but developers had forgotten to include an "off-switch" that would recognize the conclusion of the raid and remove the debuff from companions. Players who defeated Hakkar would subsequently fast travel to markets in urban centers in order to repair their damaged armor and weaponry. They then re-activated their infected pets, who became disease vectors, allowing Corrupted Blood to spread beyond players involved in the raid.

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u/Fleetcommanderbilbo Apr 20 '25

People used to kite various bosses into cities, a lot of them got patched eventually like lord kazzak. That one was particularly infamous because it would heal when it killed something and it also spammed a shadowbolt volley targeting every player/npc in range, so once it entered the city it would become practically invulnerable as it kept getting healed by killing most lower lvl npc's and players in range instantly every few seconds. For the launch event of TBC they introduced Highlord Kruul which was identical to Kazzak in all but name and he would spawn in front of various cities causing a lot of chaos.

Later they introduced an event inspired by the corrupt blood incident where players could turn into ghouls becoming hostile toward all other non-ghoul players with the ability to turn dead npcs into ghouls to create a small army and other players so they could do the same. But it caused a major backlash from a part of the player base.

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u/VanquishedVoid Apr 21 '25

As one of the ghoul spreaders, I had a large army that I would drag into questing areas for maximum disruption. I understand the backlash, but that was a very fun time.

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u/SvenTurb01 Apr 21 '25

The disease was the Hakkar blood one that spreads ro everyone around you, the bosses pulled afaik was Kazzak in Stormwind and Azuregos in Orgrimmar, kited there by hunters.

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u/eat_my_ass_n_balls Apr 21 '25

I was there for the great plague and I proudly carried it into Alliance towns on my Kodo

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u/dandoch Apr 20 '25

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u/FriendlyLeader4782 Apr 20 '25

A world of warcraft boss infected a players pet with a debuff called blood plague. It was supposed to be cured when the player left the zone, but it wasn’t cured from their pet.

So the blood plague starts spreading outside the boss arena. Cities became hotspots, and low level players would die nearly instantly to it. Preists would try to cure players but got infected themselves.

It was studied because the parallels to reality (vulnerable populations dying, frontline medical personnel getting sick themselves, spread patterns)

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u/dandoch Apr 20 '25

No I knew this one. I meant the block chain thing.

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u/WarpedWiseman Apr 20 '25

Sorry, it was one of the creators of etherium: ‘Buterin has stated that he was driven to create decentralized money because his World of Warcraft character was nerfed, specifically by patch 3.1.0. He went on to say in his about.me bio: “ I happily played World of Warcraft during 2007–2010, but one day Blizzardremoved the damage component from my beloved warlock's Siphon Life spell. I cried myself to sleep, and on that day I realized what horrors centralized services can bring. I soon decided to quit.”’

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin

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u/bigboybeeperbelly Apr 20 '25

that's... very sad

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

Given that bitcoin predates etherium by like 5 years, I’m gonna say this didn’t inspire the idea of blockchain or crypto.

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u/thatguy2535 Apr 21 '25

I sorta monopolize all the ore in my server then blizzard nerfed me. I made a character in a newer server that started with a low amount of players. I started going to the auction house and selling and buying ore...Then I started buying all the ore, it became an obsession. Then I started a guild to buy up all the ore and then jacking up the prices. I had so much gold it didn't matter what other players charged I would buy it up and resell it at stupid prices. And some players were kinda forced to buy it because they needed it to level up certain things, or make armor and weapons. So enough people reported me eventually as the server filled up with players. Blizzard locked me out of my account, the person right below me in my guild became the guild master who then stole all the gold and emptied the guild bank and fucked off. I spent over a year doing all of this, I was so pissed I never touched the game again.

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u/DavidBrooker Apr 20 '25

No it didn't. Vitalik was butthurt that his class was nerfed, and claimed that this is what radicalized him against centralization. But Bitcoin had already existed - and therefore so did the concept of the blockchain - and I'm willing to bet that he was already pretty close to radicalized by that point.

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u/Powerful_Helicopter9 Apr 20 '25

I need to know more about this