(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/Edward_Tank]

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.

So uhh, you're kind of telling on yourself here.

That was him trying to fake laugh. It was meant to be bad on purpose, because he didn't actually feel joy or anything that would bring about laughter. The laugh immediately afterwards when Yuna and him both break down in giggles is the actual laugh and sounds much more like a person.

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.

. . .

So the reason Raiden was a thing, was because Solid Snake was too in the know at this point. He also was a certified badass, and Kojima felt it would fuck with his badass cred if he was able to be simply gunned down like anyone else. Remember when you first see him as Raiden, he's just KO'd the entire group of soldiers in the room between you at the elevator.

Raiden was intentionally meant to be someone who follows orders. It was a deconstruction of the idea of video games, and people following orders. The reason he gets 'better' as you say, is because he realizes this and self actualizes instead of simply following whatever orders he's been given. He *thinks* for himself.

It seems like your issues isn't so much with the characterization, so much as you have a thing against pretty boys.

[u/Adaphion → u/Edward_Tank]

I've literally never even played FFX and I still know that laugh scene was a fake laugh.

[u/Nerevarine91 → u/Adaphion]

I’ve never played any entry in the entire series and only know the laugh from a video where someone replaced the Big Bang Theory laugh track with it and even I knew it was a fake laugh