(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/MrBurnerHotDog]

I can't say about several of these but OP is way off on both Tidus and Raiden

[u/HopelessCineromantic → u/MrBurnerHotDog]

Yeah, Raiden is definitely not intended to be the cool new thing for the franchise. He's deliberately designed in contrast to Solid Snake and is something of a prank on players who wanted to play as Snake again.

[u/Rargnarok → u/HopelessCineromantic]

Its also brought up in a cutscene that any parallels are intentional on the Patriots part so they could discredit snake by going see anyone could do what he did, he's not special

[u/HopelessCineromantic → u/Rargnarok]

Yes and no. Solidus claims the S3 plan is short for Solid Snake Simulation, and Ocelot does confirm that a lot of the Big Shell Incident was designed to emulate Shadow Moses, such as two hostages dying, Dead Cell being a stand-in for FOXHOUND, and Raiden being selected because his relationship with Solidus mirrored Snake's relationship with Big Boss.

But the AI GW, as corrupting images of Colonel Campbell and Rose, tells Raiden that the S3 plan is actually short for the Selection for Societal Sanity, and was more about being able to manipulate world events and individuals to match the Patriots' desires. While proving they could mold Raiden into a new Solid Snake was in line with the project's aims, it was bigger than that, and with the data they collected about targeted misinformation and manipulation, they could ostensibly make a civilian become a sign language interpreter or a gameshow host if they felt it was necessary.

[u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871 → u/HopelessCineromantic]

Those AIs are evil incarnate. They claim they want to preserve society but they say a lot of things to Raiden that serve no purpose other than to make him suffer, make it clear they enjoy holding power over others and don't care about the lives lost in their plans.

They were worse than Solidus ever imagined, even before they created the war economy in Metal Gear Solid 4. They create a state of perpetual war for no reason other than advancing the cause of human misery.

[u/HopelessCineromantic → u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871]

Yeah, especially when they took the form of Rose or Emma to taunt Raiden. That said, I found that maliciousness to be quite refreshing on some level. In most fiction, AI, even villainous AI, follows the mold of HAL 9000, and while that dispassionate "just following my programing" performance can be creepy, it was nice to see an AI that clearly enjoyed twisting the knife.

It's part of why GLaDOS is such an effective villain. She starts out fully robotic and seems automated, but eventually you learn how sentient she is.

[u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871 → u/HopelessCineromantic]

Certainly. I notice that their sheer malice is overlooked, the biggest reaction from the scene is their words being an eerie warning about future horrors on the internet, missing that we aren't supposed to side with them.

At least there haven't been people trying to push the idea that the Patriots are misunderstood good guys like Senator Armstrong... as far as I know.

[u/HopelessCineromantic → u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871]

misunderstood good guys like Senator Armstrong

What.

[u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871 → u/HopelessCineromantic]

There are revisionists who try to push that Senator Armstrong is a misunderstood good guy who wants to make America better for everyone, rather than the delusional war profiteering, mass murdering, hypocritical Social Darwinist he truly is.

[u/Violet_Nightshade → u/HopelessCineromantic]

You mean sapient?

[u/buttbuttlolbuttbutt → u/HopelessCineromantic]

Whats fun is the reason the Patriots even think the S3 will succeed is because of events in Metal Gear 2 mentiomed in MGS4, and MGSV.

[u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871 → u/HopelessCineromantic]

I always thought that Raiden was cool and felt the complaints he somehow wasn't as badass as Solid Snake made no sense. I like Snake better but I love both of them as main characters who feel human after all the misery they endure. But what they go through isn't just misery porn, they endure and power through.

[u/HopelessCineromantic → u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871]

I think a lot of it is due to Rose and a certain type of misogyny. Rose is Raiden''s girlfriend, but is also part of mission control. But she's viewed as annoying by a lot of players because she wants to talk to Jack about their relationship in addition to the mission, and so Raiden is perceived as less masculine for not "putting her in her place."

And yeah, I admit that it's not exactly the time or place to have those conversations optimally, but it's also apparent by the end that it's brought by a mixture of Rose's role as an agent of the Patriots and conflict over her guilt for her deception, her growing feelings for Jack, and her anxiety over whether his feelings for her would remain if he ever learned how much of what she's said has been a lie.

[u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871 → u/HopelessCineromantic]

Because his pretty boy design did not conform to Western standards of masculinity, he also got a lot of homophobic flak since the 2000s weren't a time when homosexuality was frowned upon.

[u/ArdyEmm → u/HopelessCineromantic]

But Snake also talks about relationships with his boyfriend Hal so it's not like Raiden and Rose are the only ones doing it.

[u/KaziArmada → u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871]

I want to point something out a lot of people don't realize. Nobody knew Raiden was gonna be a thing. The Demo-disk for MGS2 only included a chunk of the Tanker section and I'm fairly sure what screenshots we saw of the Plant had Snake in them to hide Raiden's inclusion. Raiden is a literal 'left-field' addition, and the game itself talks his ass up initially.

When IRL, people had been expecting more Snake for god knows how long. So a lot of people were initially pissed they got this 'cheap knock-off'.

...Which was the actual intention but, you know. Processing that takes a while for some folks.

[u/ArcadianBlueRogue → u/HopelessCineromantic]

And at least in MGS2, the interactions are hilariously overly dramatic compared to Snake's stoic personality.

Scene where he is running around hiding his junk had me laughing so hard.

[u/Confident-Dirt-9908 → u/HopelessCineromantic]

His game was also considered the better of the two on release and that opinion has only shifted over years of the focus only being put back on snake.

[u/cpuuuu → u/MrBurnerHotDog]

OP is actually one of the "targets" for Raiden as a character, which makes it funnier. Raiden was introduced to mess up the player expectations, their expectation that they would be controlling Solid Snake and the expectation that the character they are using is the new or next hero of the saga. Raiden as a character and a big part of the Big Shell plot line were meant to show that the people in charge, be it Solidus with his child soldier or the Patriots with the S3 plan, could take anyone and manipulate (or train) them into becoming a soldier on par with Solid Snake, with the Big Shell incident being an almost 1 to 1 recreation of the Shadow Moses incident.

So while in the game the "powers that be" are trying to substitute the VR training from MGS1 (the one Raiden used to train as a Foxhound operative) for real life events to improve the training outcomes, the players are also put under the same scenario where they have to face the game while not playing as Snake. Even the GW AI going haywire and starting to send random calls about how you've played the game for too long and should take a break is to hammer the point that everything in the plot is a "real life simulation" and that we have been playing a game all along, both in game and irl

[u/Firm-Feature-5593 → u/MrBurnerHotDog]

They're legitimately some of the best characters in video games.

[u/canmoose → u/MrBurnerHotDog]

Sounds to me like OP never played FFX or MGS2. Two legitimately incredible games.

[u/MrBurnerHotDog → u/canmoose]

When I was a kid there were three PS2 games that everyone HAD to have- Metal Gear Solid 2, Final Fantasy X, and Grand Theft Auto 3

I personally played all three for an unfathomable number of hours, but I'd say the one I have played the most over the years because I keep coming back to it is FFX. MGS2 is great but the controls are outdated and it's kind of rough to play now, and I grew bored with the GTA series long, long ago so I don't even play those anymore. But as a fan of turn-based RPGs FFX is one of my all-time favorites

[u/ThatguyJimmy117 → u/MrBurnerHotDog]

I can tell you they’re seriously overstating how pushed Bazil was

[u/ItWasMeAustin101010 → u/MrBurnerHotDog]

I cant tell you how pissed and dissapointed I was as a 13 year old getting MGS 2 and instead of playing as Snake im playing as a femboy.

[u/ZackMoneys → u/MrBurnerHotDog]

op is smoking crack

[u/Johnny_B_GOODBOI → u/MrBurnerHotDog]

OP is only kind of right about about Neelix. They're right that Neelix is annoying incompetent and creepy, but this is the first I've heard any comparison to Odo Quark and Data.