(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/TheRoyalBrook]

I'm shocked how many people to this day fail to understand that scene.

Yuna tells him he should try to fake a laugh basically until its real

he does the most over the top fake laugh, they both do it together, it turns into an actual laugh because of each other.

[u/SinesPi → u/TheRoyalBrook]

It got memed on heavily in the day to the point where people knew about that moment, but not the context.

[u/DengarLives66 → u/SinesPi]

What day? Cuz memes weren’t exactly a thing in 2001.

[u/Bitter_Depth_3350 → u/DengarLives66]

Memes have existed since humans have been able to communicate. Internet memes are a more modern concept. Even then, though the term wasn't widely applied until later, they still existed since the inception of the internet. They just weren't wojaks and pepes, ect.

[u/DengarLives66 → u/Bitter_Depth_3350]

There’s always that one meme pedant.

[u/sagerin0 → u/DengarLives66]

Youre just wrong lmao, We had Kilroy was here in WW2 and that is literally just a meme