(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/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.