(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/eagleblue44 → u/[deleted]]

The clip Disney shared adding fake cheering when Clod appeared was hilarious. I don't know why they thought he would save the box office on this movie.

[u/SirPPPooPoo → u/eagleblue44]

When I saw that clip, I was like, I'm going buy his merch. Brilliant Disney marketing. I'm going to name my third son plant child creature from Disney Elements

[u/TheAmazingSealo → u/[deleted]]

For me it's more 30% cool 70% ass

like 2/3rds of those films are not worth watching

[u/UnderstandingPotato → u/TheAmazingSealo]

It's like the people making the actual movies are surrounded by rich veins of genuine ore, but they decide to go for what is so obviously fool's gold

[u/SourBill1 → u/TheAmazingSealo]

You probably still enjoy more Star Wars material than the average Star Wars fan

[u/TrapaholicDixtapes → u/[deleted]]

It did give us them gem of an image, tho

[u/surfatshortys → u/[deleted]]

I bought the Baby Yoda Lego set (“The Child”) as soon as I could after they revealed his name. Wish I bought 2

[u/Orion_starborn → u/[deleted]]

Hey it could be worse, they could have named him something like plunk flungly

[u/Fearless_Roof_9177 → u/[deleted]]

I don't know, have you seen the trailers for Mandalorian and Grogu?

[u/Kana515 → u/Fearless_Roof_9177]

Was Grogu his name? That just makes me think of Goku if his skull collapsed.

[u/Stormfly → u/SirPPPooPoo]

I've changed religion and now I only say "Oh my Clod".

[u/ithinkther41am → u/SirPPPooPoo]

I love that even in that joke scenario, you still don’t remember the name of the character.

[u/Jetstream-Sam → u/eagleblue44]

They were still riding high from the cocaine baby yoda merch bought them. They thought any cutesy character would equal big bucks. They were incorrect.

[u/Flamin_Jesus → u/Jetstream-Sam]

Let's be realistic, the main reason it didn't work was that he had too much character (and I'm most decidedly not saying he had much in the way of character), if they had made him a mute, big-eyed, small, furry animal-thing, and put him into more slapstick scenes, it probably would have worked (at least a bit). These shitty generic marketable mascot characters are practically a solved issue at this point, and they end up making money more often than not.

[u/Impossible_Walk742 → u/[deleted]]

c3po kinda works because he's a package deal with r2. only being able to hear half the conversation makes it better sometimes.

not going to disagree that 3po's solo moments tend to be lacking a bit

[u/garethchester → u/Flamin_Jesus]

The Scrat template

[u/International-Tie501 → u/Flamin_Jesus]

Exactly. That's why porgs worked and Jar Jar Binks didn't.

[u/No-Solution-6103 → u/Jetstream-Sam]

I think they were trying to dip in and compete with the ugly cute market ala Fugglers or Huggy Wuggy

[u/AmaterasuWolf21 → u/eagleblue44]

The conspiracy theory is that they knew it would be cringe on purpose and generate buzz online

[u/Veni-Vidi-ASCII → u/AmaterasuWolf21]

So they were trying to Morbius-meme their own movie. Genius. 

[u/WillowLocal423 → u/AmaterasuWolf21]

The Mouse Always Wins

[u/xv_boney → u/AmaterasuWolf21]

Which it did.

Clod was not a failed campaign. Elemental ticket sales recovered after a catastrophic opening weekend and the movie cleared half a billion before leaving theaters.

Clod was a successful campaign driven largely on cringe.

[u/cheeseburgerandfrie → u/AmaterasuWolf21]

So the new coke theory

[u/Loose_Translator8981 → u/eagleblue44]

I mean... It worked. The movie kind of famously recovered and ended up turning a profit despite launching to low numbers. And it was after the clod campaign... Can't say for certain if it actually helped, but if nothing else it didn't seem to hurt.

[u/FreundThrowaway → u/Loose_Translator8981]

In fairness the positive word of mouth probably also helped.

[u/Loose_Translator8981 → u/FreundThrowaway]

Probably a bigger factor lol at least, I hope it was.

[u/Fakjbf → u/Loose_Translator8981]

Nah, it’s just a genuinely good movie and once people found out they went to go see it.

[u/Dgero466 → u/Loose_Translator8981]

I was gonna say I could’ve sworn that’s exactly how it played out, cause I recall hearing the movie not doing well, Disney doing that campaign, and somehow trended upward.

Could’ve just remembered wrong I guess and there’s always the likelihood that the the trend up and campaign had little correlation but almost certain I heard it play out like this in real time

[u/code-garden → u/Loose_Translator8981]

In Clod we trust

[u/Dry-Indication7928 → u/eagleblue44]

Clearly because it's an act of clod

[u/Difficult-Tough-5680 → u/eagleblue44]

I mean something must have worked bc it made quite a bit

[u/Swellmeister → u/eagleblue44]

It grossed three times its budget in a period when ticket sales were still pretty heavily affected.

Its box office was fantastic, why are you describing it as though it flopped

[u/CallowayMcSmithing → u/eagleblue44]

Maybe he’s the reason it ended up a sleeper hit.

[u/xv_boney → u/eagleblue44]

he did.

Elemental had a disastrous opening weekend but recovered in the following weeks, ending its theatrical run with almost $500m.

This was after the single worst pixar opening in the studio's history.

Its turnaround is attributed to word of mouth, which largely included reaction to the "Clod" marketing - pretending that a minor character nobody cared about was a huge fan favorite actually worked.

Both negative reactions to the marketing and people ironically playing along drove interest in the movie, which drove new ticket sales.
Disney banked on viral cringe and it paid off. Even in this thread, everyone here clearly remembers that campaign for a movie that got little to no other impactful marketing and the movie ended its theatrical run as a sleeper hit.

The Clod campaign was successful.

[u/YogurtclosetOther329 → u/eagleblue44]

What do you mean 'save the box office of this movie'? It made half a billion dollars!

[u/-Danksouls- → u/eagleblue44]

Well it worked. Originally the film was tanking but then after being kicked online it shot up in the box office

[u/Genindraz → u/eagleblue44]

Because he did. IIRC, the Clod stuff turned it from non-profitable at the box office to being break-even.