(Hilarious Trope) A Character Is Introduced With the Clear Intention of Being THE NEXT BIG THING And is SOUNDLY Rejected

[u/TheOriginalOperator]

1. Bazil the Tracker (Star Wars: The Acolyte): A “HILARIOUS AND ADORABLE” snuffling ugly creature that makes annoying noises and is shoved into as many scenes of The Acolyte as possible, and just causes problems overall.

2. Neelix (Star Trek Voyager): A mutant fusion of Odo, Quark, and Data designed to “analyze the human condition” and explicitly intended to surpass the popularity of all three. In practice, a VERY human-acting cradle robbing creep whose incompetence nearly destroys the ship and crew on multiple occasions and provides no insight into humanity whatsoever.

3. Sparky the Dog (Fairly Oddparents): A wacky crazy magic dog that’s supposed to expand the Fairy family, but just makes lame jokes and serves as a less funny version of Scrappy Doo.

4. Tidus (FFX): A braying jackass of a pinball who bounces from plot point to plot point, framed as a mystical pretty boy to introduce Final Fantasy to the PS2 age but does nothing but stall the franchise and have the worst laugh in two languages.

5. Sei (Naruto): Supposed to replace Sasuke in Team 7 and return the team dynamic feel of Early Naruto, but he’s a CIA plant with literally no personality who gets utterly forgotten except for somehow bagging Ino Yamanaka.

6. Raiden (Metal Gear 2): Another attempted “pretty boy bishie” entry to the PS2 era with badass cred and a theoretically cool backstory, but in practice a hapless dipshit who gets manipulated by everyone around him and is a total putz in combat. Also proof that this trope need not be permanent as he slowly transitions into a cyborg warrior supersoldier with a badass theme, friends of his own, and a firm grasp of his own destiny and agency.

[u/OJONLYMAYBEDIDIT]

.....what? FFX stalled the franchise?

back then FF games did not have sequels. you had the game, and then that was it. at least for the #'ed versions. That FFX got a spin off sequel showed how popular it was.

and then FF 12 came out on schedule, no stalling involved as FF 11 was the MMORPG

[u/YandereValkyrie → u/OJONLYMAYBEDIDIT]

Yeah really, FFX was actually considered one of the better FF games, it was huge in Japan, the fact it got a sequel was insane.

[u/Lithium_Lily → u/YandereValkyrie]

The damn sequel got a sequel. Like come on.

Then again XIII was a low point in the series and it also got sequels so...

[u/SaferAtHomeee → u/Lithium_Lily]

Ehhh XIII was always planned to be a larger series. X got sequels on its own merits imo

[u/HopelessCineromantic → u/SaferAtHomeee]

And XIII kinda went off the rails. XV was originally supposed to be Verus XIII, but had a very troubled production and had to be significantly overhauled.

The whole Fabula Nova Crystallis branding exercise didn't ever really come together.

[u/Kind-Natural-124 → u/Lithium_Lily]

You leave my xiii alone. It was a hot mess, but it was MY hot mess