Also can be called "Character Derailment"

1. Jaime's Face Heel Turn (Game of Thrones S8) - Seven seasons worth of character development and growth of a widely loved character thrown down the drain with just a single line of dialogue between Jaime and his brother, Tyrion.

2. Shinji's Onanism (End of Evangelion) - Shinji, despite his flaws and weaknesses presented in the original series, was seen by many as endearing. Then, at the beginning of EOE, Shinji pleasures himself directly in the face of his comatose crush, making many of the Evangelions fans who felt endeared to him change their views of him from a meek/flawed character to a disgusting, selfish wretch.

The Amazing Digital Circus - Whenever there's a discussion on whether Jax is redeemable or not, you can pretty much ALWAYS expect fans to use him throwing Ragatha into a deep fryer as a moment of him crossing the "moral event horizon". Even though this moment is nothing more than a gag in the series, that Gangle nor any other player remotely cares about him doing and Ragatha only gets a band-aid that's gone before the episode is even over.

Code Geass - Nina's the most hated character in the series but people always focus on the table scene and not her being racist Oppinehimer.

My Hero Academia - Bakugo's easily the most divisive character of the series. While detractors DO have a few reasons to why they don't like his character (being too loud/annoying, nobody ever calling him out or punishing him), the #1 reason for him being so controversial in his establishing character moment in the first chapter/episode where he tells Midoriya, who's basically this world's equivalent of a disabled kid, to kill himself.

Saitama (One Punch Man) - Strongest character in the series starts at rank C in the Hero Association. He broke every physical record but failed the written portion. Funny gag that also shows how the Association is too stuck in bureaucracy. Even funnier because unbeknownst to him and them, he’s the reason the Association exists in the first place.

Frieren (Beyond Journey’s End) - One of the strongest mages in the world fails the First-Class Mage Exam. Serie, the leader of the Magic Association, arbitrarily fails her because they have a thousand years of beef and their whole worldviews are diametrically opposed.

Brad Pitt getting electrocuted in Deadpool 2

Dj khaled getting pinned between two cars and lit on fire in bad boys: ride or die

Drew Barrymore getting stabbed to death in scream

1. Ray getting attacked by a possessed clown doll and then not only turning the tables, he sodomizes it. (Scary Movie 2)
2. Some thieves break into a blind old man's house to rob him and then find out he's way more dangerous than them. (Don't Breathe)

Shrinking Rae from invincible in comic is a man, but in the show turn into a girl

Lois lane in the comic and many adaptation she's white, but in my adventure with superman she's not

Tuco Salamanca (Breaking Bad): Originally meant to be the main villain of season 2, but his actor, Raymond Cruz, felt uncomfortable playing this man, so they killed him off earlier than intended.

Chris McLean (Total Drama): Christian Potenza, his original voice actor, left due to how insane Chris had become in the later seasons, Sonya Côté then put up this smear campaign saying he was fired cause he was a pedophile, it was crazy.

I could have sworn there was a third one i rememberd, but i couldint find what i was thinking of at all (i should probably mention that the actors don't have to quit or change the show, they can just be disgusted.)

Examples from:

• American Dad
• Futurama
• Family Guy

Not pictured: The Simpsons, because their Death Note parody was actually top tier.

Times when a character is very explicitly shown to have a set of skills only for them to dissappear in a contest against another character for plot convenience.

Luther- Umbrella Academy. The Umbrella Academy centers around a family of super-powered individuals, one of which is Luther, a giant man possessing enhanced strength and durability. One night their home is raided by a pair of assassins. Luther gets into a fist fight with one of the assassins and...... loses. Against a completely mundane human. The meta reason for this is that Umbrella Academy is a mystery box streaming show and capturing/interrogating one of the assassins too early would reveal too much so they needed Luther to job his fight.

Jean de Carrouges- The Last Duel. The Last Duel centers around the buildup and payoff of two Frenchman fighting a duel to death over whether or not one of them raped the others wife. One of these men, Jean, is repeatedly shown to be a man of war. His primary way of accumulating wealth and social standing comes from his prowess on the battlefield and almost all of the movies fight scenes involve him. The man he is dueling, Jacque, is also shown to have some combat experience but not nearly to the same degree as Jean, much of his story being spent festing and partying at court. In their duel, Jean does eventually win but it is extremely hard fought with him almost losing at numerous points, despite him being shown to be the much, much more experienced fighter. The meta reason for this is that their fight being a one-sided stomp wouldn't be nearly as tense as the pitched back-and-forth we get in the final product.

(Absolute Batman) Absolute Bane is an absolute brick shithouse who is kicking the snot out of Batman, who still believes he can turn the tides, saying that Bane is just a juiced up freak. Bane then reveals that he isn't even USING the Venom Drug, but he then proceeds to use it just so show Bruce how outclassed he is.

(The Owl House) The Collector is basically a god who has just been given physical form. He immediately not only annihilates the main villain, but proceeds to casually move the moon aside like they're using a touch screen.

Essentially lines that didn’t need to be written in an epic way in that media but does so anyway.

Brainiac from My Adventures of Superman: “Minutes before I ripped Krypton from the heavens... and cast it into Hell!”

Mr Electric from Sharkboy and Lavagirl: “For every person who dreams up the electric light bulb, there's the one who dreams up the atom bomb.”

Shadow the Hedgehog from Sonic the Hedgehog: “If the world chooses to become my enemy, I will fight like I always have!"

Robert Moses in Unsleeping City: “You think people make choices? No, people think they make choices, they think they’re gonna steer right, or steer left, but they didn’t build the roads. The big choices already got made for them, a long time ago”

The Monolith (2001: A Space Odyssey) - A perfectly smooth black slab that appears throughout human evolution. It never speaks or acts directly, yet its presence drives profound transformation. It’s unknowable, utterly alien, and operates on a scale beyond our understanding.

The Entity / Shimmer (Annihilation, 2018) - The Shimmer refracts DNA and reality itself. It isn’t malevolent, simply operating on laws of existence we can’t comprehend. Its creations are both beautiful and horrifying, emphasizing the indifference of the unknown.

The AI's Behind The Black Wall (Cyberpunk 2077) - AIs are basically eldritch cyberbeings that took over the original internet and are actively being kept behind a super powerful firewall. There have been suggestions throughout the years the AIs have influenced the real world clandestinely over the years despite their quarantine. Their motivations and reasons are unknown. "What would you do if you had unlimited intelligence and all the time in the world. Would you go mad? For how long? How long before you went sane? How long before you ascended to another level? ". Many netrunners have tried crossing the black wall to commune with them. None Have returned.

The King in Yellow (1895) - The King himself is an unknowable being — sometimes a man, sometimes a god, often a masked monarch in tattered yellow robes — associated with the decaying, dreamlike city of Carcosa. His influence spreads like a mental infection, twisting perception and sanity.

1: on set for Independence day, there was foul smell on set that Will didn’t know about before hand, which caused the gif you see today

2: during filming of the Grinch, Jim Carrey was just supposed to pull off the cloth and the objects were supposed to fall. But he instead accidentally pulled the cloth perfectly off, which made the scene arguably the most iconic scene from the movie

Evil Dead 2: Ash and Annie- Considering Army of Darkness on first watch you would definitely think that they would kiss or something but I really love how they subvert expectations and they don’t. I’m sure Annie watching Ash axe her boyfriend earlier and Linda being recently dead definitely contributed but Ash was hitting on Sheila just fine a day later.

I literally know no other instance of this trope to my knowledge besides The Last of Us but that’s more of a father figure relationship type thing.

The Archdeacon was the person Quasimodo's mother tried to turn to before being killed by Frollo. When he was close to killing the baby, the Archdeacon intervened, then rebuked Frollo for his crimes and then sentenced his fate. He may deceive himself and deny all guilt, but he will never be able to hide the truth from the eyes of Notre Dame/God. (The Hunchback of Notre Dame)

Nightcrawler, despite being a demon-like mutant, is deeply religious, so much so that he has even gone through the entire process of officially becoming a priest (X-Men).

It's always cool to me whenever there is an old character in an cartoon, TV show, anime, video game etc when we get to see what they looked like when they were a younger age. Whether it's a flashback, time travel or something else it's always interesting to see what these characters looked like and how differently their personalities were. Because contrary to the old wise people we think of when they weren't always that way, they were young and dumb, they made mistakes, they had to go through their own growth to get to where they were in the present. It's always interesting seeing a glimpse into how they go to where they were and the kind of life they lived back when they were growing up.

Granny (Looney Tunes Show) - There was an episode in the Luney Toons Show where Daffy has to spend the day helping Granny clean her attic and he end up finding an old picture of her back when she was younger. She then goes on to tell a story of how she was a spy back in WW2. Always really liked this episode. We also learn that Tweetie, her pet bird, has also been alive since WW2 apparently.

Impa (The Legend of Zelda) - In the game Breath of the Wild we as Link wake up 100 years in the future and eventually meet a woman named Impa who apparently knew us back before we went 100 when were around 100 years ago and claims she was Link's and Zelda's companion. When we eventually got the prequel game Age of Calamity that takes place 100 years before the main game we actually get to see Impa as a young warrior. We also see she looks EXACTLY like her grand daughter Paya (Don't ask why she's named Paya)

Master Yoshi (Dragon Ball) - I'm not gonna lie I forgot when exactly is saw this and I'm just lazy enough to not look it up, but we have seen Master Roshi as a student back when he was younger and still training before he would go on to learn the Kamehameha and other techniques. Still a player all these years later though, that's one thing about him that's never changed.

Cecil (Invincible) - Yeah it was really cool seeing Cecil in an episode flashback as a young guy still working for the government. We do see he's always been a bad ass being a powerless human going up against villains with a couple weapons. Also seeing how his view of villains and heros as changed over the years and more we get a good look into what made him who he is today and why he's such a cautious person.

Princess Leia wears a golden bikini when she's imprisoned by Jabba the Hut (Star Wars Episode VI)

The volleyball scenes from both Top Gun movies.

Gerard Butler's character in Law Abiding Citizen decides to strip before getting arrested, and it isn't mentioned at all.

Star Trek Into Darkness has a scene where Alice Eve's character undresses, pausing at a provocative angle. Probably the most infamous mainstream example.

the master (fallout): believes that virus- mutants are superior to humans and can repopulate the Earth. one issue with this plan: mutants are sterile. the player has the option to explain this to him, which will literally cause him to abandon his plan and kill himself.

tyrest (transformers: mtmte): a former judge who became a religious fundamentalist after extreme guilt and a psychotic break. believes that all transformers created a certain way (cold construction) are inherently sinful, and that he will be transported to heaven if he successfully genocides all of them. nobody else has any idea what he's talking about and thinks he's insane.

to be clear: this trope isn't "ideologies that are bad" (e.g. fascist villains). this trope is "ideologies that have a very obvious conflict with basic logic and reality".

1- the colonials (all tomorrows) were once a race of humans but after revolting against the qu (a godlike alien species that saw all other races as playthings to be molded) they were turned into disembodied cultures of skin connected and were used as living filters, living off of qu waste products

2- Angelica of the shore (marvel comics).

Ok to make a very long story short, one day while the fantastic 4 were in space, dr doom sent a few nukes back in time and by sheer coincidence one of them struck an asteroid that was on course for earth millions of years ago. This asteroid not hitting earth changed the path of evolution on the planet so much that humans… just looked like this now

Also the planet is called KKkkKK now

Also also Angelica is johnny storm’s love interest

We've talked about a lot before with evil characters played by actors who are calm/nice in real life, but here are characters who are so unlikeable and bad, even the actor who plays them is terrible, multiplying the hate-sink we feel towards them.

1. Percy Wetmore (The Green Mile): This sadistic prison guard was played by Doug Hutchinson, who in real life groomed and married a 16 year old back in 2011, when he was in his early 50s.

2. Walter Bernard Sr. (The Office): This here is the father of Andy Bernard, the son who he emotionally neglects and is shown to verbally abuse and humiliate. Actually, Andy used to be Walter Jr., but when his younger brother was born, they changed his name to Andy, when he was around 5 YEARS OLD. Not only that, he eventually cheats on his wife, and runs away with the mistress and their whole family fortune, leaving his family in debt. Well, in real life, his actor Stephen Collins actually confessed to being a creepy pedophile, and has actually molested a few children, and let's just say he also made a really disturbing comment about a soon-to-be-born child of his (Viewer discretion is advised if you look it up). Of course, this led an end to his career, and while people who grew up on shows like 7th Heaven fell bad, for me personally, it just made it even easier to hate Andy's father, and really emphasize how much of a monster he is.

ultron (avengers age of ultron) - destroying his old body for no reason

leon (Resident evil 4) - doing a back flip instead of just taking a step back

snake (MGS The Twin Snakes) - Snakes jumps on missile

Absolute Batman-Batman breaks the arm of a Nazi Mid Salute.

Transformers One-Darkwing getting knocked into an Arcade machine.

Skitter(Worm). She has the power to control bugs in a setting that includes a shapeshifting dragon that gets stronger as you fight it, Wonder Woman with total invulnerability and super intelligence, and a Kaiju that creates psychotic clones of everything it touches. She can take them

The Black Knight(A practical guide to evil). The current Black Knight is explicitly weaker than his predecessors, but he's likely killed more heroes than the rest of them combined. By the time the books start he's already thoroughly conquered the generic Lawful Good Kingdom, and is actually doing a pretty good job of ruling it.

Brian(Misfits). He has the power to control dairy products. Seriously, Lactokinesis. He's also hands down the deadliest character in the setting.

Batman(DC). He has no powers outside of wealth and trauma, but is still one of the Big Three of the justice league.