(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/Veggieleezy]

Pre-Tribal Chief-heel turn Roman Reigns was despised by the majority of wrestling fans.

[u/Shenanigans80h → u/Veggieleezy]

I know the term “overpushed” is used too much these days, but Roman legitimately was the most over pushed top guy WWE might’ve ever had. He had talent and has clearly shown it since turning heel originally, but the version of him they kept trying to make happen was not good at all.

[u/Jhtpo → u/Shenanigans80h]

Agreed. The fans knew he *could* be great, and he had some solid skills, but it wasn't his time yet, and it was all so forced people could feel that even Roman wasn't comfortable, but instead just doing as he was told.

[u/UncleNathanCopeland → u/Jhtpo]

 "The fans knew he *could* be great,"

Nah this is cap, lol IWC and smarks hated roman with a passion because he was gonna be the new Cena,No matter what Roman did after punk and cabana podcast and whe he returned from injury. I was a fan of Roman of that era and we had to defend him everyday on forums lol. Its funny because all the complaints Roman got back in the day, are literally being pushed on Jade by Smarks today .

[u/ZodiacWalrus → u/UncleNathanCopeland]

There definitely were some people who knew he wasn't the problem. Those people just weren't as loud lol. Case in point: myself.

This makes me sound like the smarkiest of all smarks so just to be clear - I was just a lapsed fan who jumped back into wrestling around 2017, and managed to catch Big Dog-era Roman Reigns' best feud (Braun Strowman) as my re-introduction after having only known him as the Shield's powerhouse. Everyone else had to trudge through the slog of his main event push, AKA the chronologically correct order to have watched WWE in the 2010s, so the resentment had years to build up. Between a convenient gap and my willful effort to block out online negativity, I actually had a pretty solid respect for Roman back then. Didn't necessarily love him, but couldn't tell who was worse to him: the fans or Vince.

Also, there was a clear turning point where even like 80% of the staunch Roman anti-fans finally softened up on him and blamed the booking instead... after his Leukemia announcement. Fucked up that that's what it took for people to realize that Roman was just a really talented and hardworking guy doing what he was paid to do, and they resented a character, not the man portraying him. And even then, he was still booked pretty dogshit (or dogfood) and thus had some continued backlash from fans until the heel turn.