Discord (Equestria Girls)

Equestria Girls is an alternate reality to Equestria in which the characters are (for the most part) human, and the setting is a high school.

For this reason, Discord does not appear; however, he is referenced in the form of a carnival plush toy that Twilight gives to Fluttershy—with the ironic twist that Fluttershy does not actually like the plush.

Rocket Raccoon (Classic Ultimate Universe)

In the classic Ultimate Universe (Earth-1610), the goal was to bring the Marvel Universe to a new generation with a more "realistic" approach. This—combined with their lack of popularity at the time—is why the Guardians of the Galaxy were left out.

Nevertheless, they were referenced—albeit in a mocking way—in *Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man*, where we see an individual dressed as Rocket being arrested for erratic behavior, all the while claiming that he was acting as a "guardian" for the city.

Takako Uko (Jujutsu kaisen)

Xenolhu (Godzilla)

Demons (Tales of Berseria)

If humans get enough Malevolence, aka impurities born from negative emotions, they end up becoming Daemons, which generally are mindless monsters (with some potentially retaining their mind)

Distortions (Project Moon)

If a person experiences a deeply personal psychological shock which threatens the very foundation of their beliefs, to the point of nearly losing their ego, they will end up hearing The Voice, where she will try to convince you to embrace your heightened emotions, which, depending of if you deny her or accept her, will either result in you manifesting E.G.O, or becoming a Distortion, basically a monster that acts on such desires by generally causing destruction.

Witches (Madoka Magica)

If a Magical Girl ends up experiencing a lot of despair, their soul gem will blacken, and inevitably transform, transforming them into a Witch, a sort of bizarro monster who attacks people. In fact, they are supposed to become Witches, since the energy they release from their despair and transformation somehow makes entrophy be slower

This trope is essentially a showcase of the problem with having a leader in the form of an immortal being or a higher power. In specific it's the problem of their warped sense of time often leading to them overlooking the plight of the common people.

1. Heimerdinger (League of Legends/Arcane) - In Arcane S1 Heimerdinger's warped timescale is criticized heavily through the show. He pushes Jayce to wait to unveil his inventions and measures time by decades as opposed to years like non-immortals would normally do. As a result, he ends up overlooking the horrendous conditions of Zaun and doesn't realize what's happening until he is ousted from the council.

2. Solel (Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave) - Spoilers for Fortune's Weave One of Solel's defining flaws is his long lifespan leading to him being way too passive and reactive of a leader. One of his actions include locking away his own daughter for decades following mysterious disappearances at her temple.

3. Yoda (Star Wars) - As pointed out by Count Dooku, Yoda has been around so long that he has become complacent to the evils done by the Republic, no longer noticing the smaller things they do nor the budding rebellion that would form the new empire.

There's something about a horse with malicious intent and/or mien that I find especially unnerving. Perhaps it's their huge size, their fuckass teeth, or the fact that they can easily shatter your neck with single kick. Whatever the case may be, I have a particular aversion to evil and intimidating horses, despite not being sapphic.

Horses (Skyrim) - these fuckers look at you head-on, as though they have forward-oriented ocular alignment of a predator. Iirc there's also an unambiguously evil and intimidating horse you can acquire via the Dark Brotherhood questline.

Horse (Hunter: The Parenting) - for starters, this fucker has a bald spot, and we all know bald people have no hair because they want God to get a clear view of their evil thoughts. Second: despite horses not being capable of vomiting (from what I've been told, at least), this thing vomits several gallons of blood. Third: he's an alcoholic that drinks copious amounts of absinthe. Fourth: he tells creepy prophecies to his 11-year-old nephew, including seemingly foretelling the death of his nephew's father. Fifth: he's based on Horus Lupercal from Warhammer 40,000, so this mf definitely has schemes.

Ludwig The Accursed (Bloodborne) - a former monster hunter that got turned into a horrific eldritch horse beast, and then was sent to a hell devised specifically for hunters, where he spends his free time trampling and mangling the other denizens. He's also large enough to completely take up the interior of a residential garage, and yet this abomination can leap a dozen meters like it's nothing and crawl on the fucking ceiling.

Possessed horse (Berserk) - was a fairly normal horse up until it got possessed by an evil spirit, at which point it's appearance morphed into that, and it proceeded to attempt to attempt several different sex crimes against one of the manga's secondary protagonists. Fortunately, Guts was there to summarily decimate the wh*rse.

The Dilophosaurus underwent several changes in the transition from the literary work to the film; in the book, it spat venom into its victim's face, whereas in the film—while still spitting venom and have a expandable frill—it was portrayed as being smaller in stature. Its reduced size and ability can be explained as a way to distinguish it from the Velociraptors; had it been the same size and lacked an expandable frill, it would not have been easily distinguishable from a Velociraptor in the feature film. Unfortunately, this adapted version of the animal has become the primary reference for how it is perceived (Jurassic Park)

*Uma Musume* is a story that adapts real-life racehorses into "horse girls." The character Fujimasa March is based on the horse March Torso (the name was changed to avoid copyright issues). While Oguri Cap went on to compete in national-level races, March Torso also participated—unlike Fujimasa March, who remained in regional racing. However, in his national-level races, March Torso finished last every single time—even losing again upon his return. Being depicted this way—as someone who was Oguri Cap’s first rival—would be quite humiliating for both the character and the real-life horse. This fan comic was created by u/rikarudo010 (Uma Musume Cinderella Gray)

Often, franchises ruin the terrifying monsters from the first installments by further developing them and in many cases, humanizing them. There are many examples of this, and they all hurt because they really did ruin the horror - the demogorgon from Stranger Things, the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who. But sometimes, they do it right.

Both of my examples are from the same game, Halo 2. The Flood's development was negatively received at first - people thought the Gravemind was some weird plant thing that controlled the Flood. What it actually is, is an amassment of the captured biomass/bodies the Flood has accrued with the combined intelligence of all of them. The Flood is not merely some body-snatching zombies that can terrorize and destroy a planet of people, it is a galactic threat that is completely unstoppable. It cannot be outsmarted and nothing can hide from it or keep a secret from it, because as soon as someone gets infected who knows the secret, the Flood now knows the secret. You can also never guarantee that you've killed them all, hence why the Forerunners kept samples to study after the firing of the Halo array. Ironically, this precaution taken just in case the Flood still existed somewhere may have been exactly what kept them around, though there's no way to know.

Then there's the alien enemies, the Covenant. In the first game, they're just the bad guys you shoot at, and you're told that they're at war with humans. In the second game, you learn that they are a theocracy that believes the Halo rings are ascension devices that the Forerunners used to become gods. You see their leaders, you find out about the hierarchy of species, and you play as one of their members, the Arbiter. All of this is great stuff, and it makes the Covenant seem so much more real and alive.

5 Years Time by Noah & The Whale (Superman 2025): In Superman, this song starts playing when Mr. Terrific is fighting off Luthor’s men. While It may seem a bit strange, The song actually relates heavily to Mr. Terrific.

In the comics, Mr. Terrific became a superhero after the death of his wife and a failed suicide attempt. 5 Years Time tells the story of a young couple over a melancholic beat That implies a greater sadness that’s about to occur.

Baby Blue by Badfinger (Breaking Bad): The final song that plays in Breaking Bad is pretty much Iconic in how it relates to the overall story of Walter White.

Verses like Guess I got what I deserved act almost like Walt‘s internal thinking as he talks about his one true love, The Blue Sky Meth he made.

Sleepwalking by The Chain Gang of 1974 (Grand Theft Auto 5): You rarely hear people talk about the music choices of the Grand Theft Auto series beyond them being really good.

The song is about the emotional numbness and sadness of everyday living. This relates to Michael De Santa’s storyline the most as he is essentially living the American Dream and yet it feels empty as he’s stuck sleepwalking through the numbness until Franklin shows up.

Ralph (The Simpsons)

In this scene, Ralph fails English, and demonstrates why through bad grammar and wrong spelling.

Elmo (Sesame Street)

A guest points out how he speaks in the third person, which he follows up with speaking in the third person.

Shanika (The Blackening)

In this scene, the characters have to sacrifice who they deem "the blackest", and among their excuses as to who's the blackest, Dewayne mentions Shanika saying the N-word the most. Shanika then angrily proceeds to respond with the N-Word.

* Charon (Hades) - In this roguelike inspired by Greek myth, the designated shopkeepers is Charon, the ferryman of the dead. He's usually pretty friendly, but if you steal his money, he'll start kicking your butt.

* Shoopkeeper (Spelunky) - Another roguelike, this one with destructible terrain. There are a few ways to make the various shopkeepers hate you and attack you, one of them is trying to leave their shop with an item without paying.

1. Dragon (Shrek)

2. Lunastra (Monster Hunter)

3. Light Fury (How to Train Your Dragon)

4. Sisu (Raya and the Last Dragon)

5. Ember (Spyro)

1. Kung Fu Panda was thought at first to be a stupid idea for Dreamworks and was expected to be another forgettable miss from the studio. But that movie brought Dreamworks back to its peak and was one of the best and most mature films they have ever made. It was so succesful it kickstarted a franchise.

2. The Lego Movie (2014). Was expected to be a toy commercial. Turned out in the end to be one of the most creative and excellent animated films of all time.

3. Ben 10. The idea of a kid with his family going on a road trip and picking up a watch that turns him into aliens sounded like a stupid idea, but in the end turns out to surprisingly be one of the most unique and well-fleshed-out shows Cartoon Network has ever made. The first show was successful and well received thanks to its story and worldbuilding; it kickstarted a franchise and became a success for the network.

4. K-Pop: Demon Hunters. An idea of a K-Pop group fighting demons sounded like a basic idea and likely wouldn't click with people. After release and discovery on Netflix, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon and garnered awards, especially for its hit Golden.

5. Pacific Rim. A movie about mechs fighting alien kaiju that sounded like another awful b-movie blockbuster turned out to be one of the best and most entertaining monster movies of all time.

Thor and gorr (Thor love and thunder) thor manages to talk gorr into choosing his daughter over his revenge against the gods

Spider-Man and Otto (Spider-Man 2) spider man manages to talk otto into going against the ai of the arms and getting rid of his artifical sun that would've destroyed the city

1. Little Misfortune-In very first scene of the game, the narrator says today is the day Miss Fortune will die. The player assumes this means she will die at the end of the game, and so slowly waits for that moment. She actually dies in the second scene, and the rest of the game is her soul in the afterlife, but this isn't revealed until the end.

2. Fight Club-In the opening of the film, the narrator tells us about the building's danger, and says "I know this, because Tyler knows this", showing their minds are linked, because they are actually the same person as revealed much later. But because this is the opening of the film, most viewers don't interpret this line like that since the themes of the movie haven't been established yet.

Baldur's Gate III: Ketheric Thorm's introductory scene has him taking a halberd to the chest, courtesy of a desperate goblin. Being magically immortal, he simply tears it out, then drops the weapon at her feet and challenges her to try again. After an equally unsuccessful attempt he kills her and then orders the remaining goblins slaughtered, but it's one hell of a way to introduce a deadly threat to the player.

RWBY: According to Hazel, this trope is how Salem broke his spirit before recruiting him to her side. She simply allowed him - one of the most powerful, dangerous fighters in the setting - to go all-out and kill her repeatedly. As Salem is immortal by literal divine decree, she came back from anything and everything he threw at her, which allowed her to convince him that fighting her was a inevitably a losing prospect.

Princess of the Void: A fundamental part of the Taiikari Empire's first-contact policy with other species. When a species achieves FTL travel, the Empire sends the local Void Princess (regional governor/warlord) to "offer" vassalization and accession to the Empire. Should the would-be subjects refuse the initial offer, the Princess is authorized to commence escalating displays of force, starting with using her flagship's energy weapons to carve her sigil into a prominent moon. Throughout these demonstrations, no attempt is made to engage or even avoid defending ships; the flagship's shields can tank railguns, nukes and just about anything else without so much as flickering. The message is simple: the Empire prefers you alive and well, but fight them and you will lose.

Syndromes henchmen, FN 2199, and the German mechanic (Incredibles, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones respectively) are examples of of minor evil characters giving the protagonist trouble, but I was interested if there were any examples of the opposite, with the villain having some problems with minor heroic characters

When a character gets a genius idea and then performs a move so shockingly dumb it makes other people facepalm in embarrassment but ends up working as intended.

1. Naruto sexy jutsu.

Naruto special move that he developed is the sexy jutsu where he turns into a naked woman, it’s regarded as immature and tasteless by everyone around him but it usually does work in throwing the target off creating an opening.

He used it on the 4th hokage the Village leader and the strongest ninja in the village, who gets taken by surprise and gets blustered and later uses it against the final villain of the series. This god tier villain who has all these powers that makes even hitting them hard.
Naruto says he has the perfect plan to fight her and runs off, it builds up this idea he figured something out and is about to pull off this amazing power, he then creates multiple clones of himself and uses reverse sexy close jutsu harem where he turns into a bunch of naked men.
His teammate Sakura gets blustered while his sensei kakashi is shocked and embarrassed. Sakura angrily declares this would work on her but there’s no chance it would work on the villain only to then see Naruto punching the villain right in the face revealing that it did in fact work.

1. Mirio moons shikaraki
   In my hero academia, a team of heroes are fighting shigaraki and losing, the mc deku is just seconds away from arriving but shigaraki is going for a kill shot, mirio out of ideas to stop him and buy deku time then jumps out showing his butt to shigaraki screaming out him to look at it.
   Shigaraki stops dead in his tracks utterly confused at this response and even chuckles a little as he’s just that confused and this buys deku enough time to arrive and slam shigaraki.

2. Goku bite.
   He’s done this a few times the most famous is his fight with Frieza where, Frieza is strangling him with his tail and is amused at watching Goku chock to death. Out of options Goku immediately just bites into the tail making Frieza jump back and letting Goku go.

Goku is a martial artist and biting is considered to be such a childish way of fighting someone that it’s never used but Goku will bite showing how primal he will get. Frieza is so shocked he instantly slaps Goku.

1. Goku gomu daze.

In one piece when fighting enel a man made of electricity luffy can’t get a hit in as enel can predict all his moves and keeps hitting luffy,

So luffy in order to counter enel comes up with a new attack, he then just turns off his brain.
Luffy then begins to dodge all of enel’s attacks as he’s just depending on instinct.the issue is that Luffy doesn’t attack enel as he’s has no thought process.

1. DC Comics
   
2. Loving Death Webcomic
   
3. Adventure Time

This is specifically for characters in games with CYOA decision making at the front. Characters who are for the most part inconsequential to the main plot but have a forced death despite the series/game being known for branching paths.

Pic 1: Leandra Amell, Dragon Age 2. In this game, this is your player character's mother. You lose your home along with your siblings and end up involved in a political conflict in the city you all move to called Kirkwall. Your mother starts talking about meeting a new, kind man after losing your father. You can do no investigational work beforehand, nor can you even meet this man. It is then revealed he abducted your mother, he's a serial killer, and brutally dismembers her along with several other women to make a zombified version of his dead lover. You can't save your own mother to a side goober in a series where you save the world and determine the fate of 8+ companions.

Pic 2: Brendan, Cyberpunk 2077. A small side quest where you find out a vending machine is empathetic and offers advice to passerbys. This is determined by his corpo overlords SoftSys to be a malfunction and he is brought to a warehouse to be wiped. Despite (especially late game) being able to do extreme hacking and technical feats by the player character V, Brendan can't be saved and is mind wiped despite having no real impact on the world aside from hurting players and a few poor people who liked talking to him.

1) Scott Duvall from Invincible

His sister (who pretty much raised him) and her daughter die in fight between Omni-Man and Invincible. He has every reason to hate the Omni-Man, and would be pretty useful asset in the war against Viltrumites (not like super useful, but decent).

But Omni-Man fucked of to fight some bugs, so he takes his anger at Invincible. His initial demands aren't even that unreasonable - he wants an investigation (which would almost surely clear Invincible, and he says he is ok with that). When he doesn't get it... Well, he turns against the Earth's strongest soldier for the sake of revenge.

2) Cersei Lannister from Song of Ice and Fire

While "sold to a guy you hate so your father can make an alliance with him after your mother died during childbirth" is pretty standart deal in feudalism, it's still reasonable to be upset. So whom she hates? Her father? Absolutely not. Her husband? Yes, kind of. Her younger brother Tyrion for "killing" her mother when he was born? Absolutely.

3) Ponka from Winnetou II

After Forrester's men destroy his village in attempt to stop a peace deal between the natives and whites, he manages to kill decent chunk of them (also saving the protagonists without even knowing).

Then he wholeheartedly attemps to also stop the agreement and start a war.

I don't think the second film is many people's favorite, but it was probably the only Winnetou film (from like 10) that attempted to have some moral grayness (not only regarding this guy), instead of being white and black fairytale with guns.

Games where you, the player character, was charged with saving the world and failed spectacularly. Now either you need to try again, or another PC has to clean up your mess. Mainly so the developers have an excuse to justify the sequel.

The Commander (XCOM: Enemy Unknown/Within and XCOM 2): No matter how well you play your game in the first XCOM, the plot of XCOM 2 establishes that you lost the war. The aliens announced themselves to humanity and tricked everyone into thinking they were friends, not foes. The world governments welcomed the aliens with open arms and turned on XCOM, giving up the location of your base and allowing the aliens to capture you. The sequel started with your XO from the previous came, Bradford, leading a mission to rescue you from the aliens, giving you a second chance to save the world.

Anduin Lothar and Orgrim Doomhammer (Warcraft and Warcraft 2): Though Warcraft allows the player to play as both orcs and humans, the protagonist isn't named and there are two scenarios where orcs and humans win. The human campaign ends with the orcs being hunted down and run out of the kingdom, while the orc campaign ends with the orcs razing the kingdom of Azeroth and making plans to take over the rest of the world. Warcraft 2 brings a bunch of new lore and retcons into the setting, and it establishes that the humans lost the war. The human PC, Anduin, took the surviving humans north to a new kingdom to beg for aid, leading to the creation of the Alliance. Meanwhile, the orc PC, Orgrim, finds allies and creates the Horde. The events of the next game document the second war between orcs and humans, as well as their respective allies.

Hawke (Dragon Age 2 and Dragon Age: Inquisition): Hawke's goals in DA2 involve protecting the city of Kirkwall from everything and everyone who would harm it. No matter what actions the PC takes, Hawke fails this goal. Hawke spends the whole game trying to stop a brewing conflict between mages and Templars in the city. But eventually, a mage blows up the church and provokes the Templars into attacking the mages. Hawke can either try to protect the mages, or aid the Templar in slaughtering them all. But regardless of what happens, Hawke is run out of Kirkwall while mages and Templars go to war. The plot of Inquisition starts with the Inquisitor picking a side and ending the war.

(Also, the big bad Hawke kills in the DLC shows up to be the main antagonist in Inquisition. Because Hawke isn't allowed to have nice things, apparently.)

The Game (ye olde millennial meme): You lost. Again. Good day, sir.

• Walter White (Breaking Bad, 5x1)
• Wolverine (Logan)
• Rick Grimes (The Walking Dead, 9x5)
• Arthur Morgan (Red Dead Redemption 2)
• Hal Jordan (Lanterns, 1x1)
• Indiana Jones (Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny)
• Joel Miller (The Last of Us Part II)
• Tony Stark (Avengers: Endgame)
• William Munny (Unforgiven)

1 - In IT: Welcome to Derry, Pennywise is about to kill one of the protagonists when Dick Halloran manipulates Pennywise's mind and puts him in an illusion where some dudes try to convince him that he's Bob Grey. Pennywise is absolutely baffled and confused by this, and it's one of the funniest scenes ever.

2 -  Over the Garden Wall (2014). The Beast was tormenting Wirt, Greg, and all the others the whole story. That’s until Wirt realised that they’ve been carrying The Beast’s soul in the lantern the entire time. The Beast tries to scare them one more time saying “Are you ready to see true darkness?”, only to get a response from Wirt: “Are you?” (not the best example, I just haven’t found another one as good as Pennywise)

Family Guy: Crippletron - smaller cripples make big abled person

Gantz: Alien - alot of girls make a big girl

Blue Dragon: Jumbo Mecha Bot - Bunch of robots make a big robot

A move mostly common in fighting games, it looks similar to a stylized version of a piledriver but it’s actually different as a pile driver has the user standing upright while the opponent is upside down. This one has both the user and the opponent go upside when falling

It doesn’t have to be from fighting games, my favorite examples just happen to be from them

Vega and Guy (Street Fighter)

Ryu (Dead or Alive)

Valentine (Skullgirls)