[Interesting Trope] Attempts at fanservice/virality that failed not because they were hated, but because nobody noticed them or cared at all.

[u/mp3help]

1) Hoopy the Hoop, Portal (2007) When you defeat GLaDOS and her room is destroyed at the end of the game, debris rains down in the final cutscene, including a big metal hoop that bounces around a bit. Developer Erik Wolpaw said the team dubbed it "Hoopy the Hoop" and expected it to become the big meme of Portal. Of course, none of the fans paid much attention to the hoop since "The Cake is a Lie" became the biggest meme of the game, and overall one of the biggest video game memes of all time.

2) Burgh, Pokemon Black and White (2010) When designing Burgh, developer Yusuke Ohmura said Gamefreak had many of their female employees give input on his design to create their ideal handsome man. However, as someone who's been in the Pokemon fandom for almost 3 decades, in the 15+ years since Pokemon Black and White released, I have personally never seen any fans swoon over Burgh, or even mention him in general. If anything, characters like N and Colress are far more well-known within the fandom as the most handsome and beloved male characters of Pokemon Gen 5.

[u/GeekStudios_Official]

Another possible reason why Burgh failed is because there was already a contender to the sexiest Gym Leader in Unova

[u/Cyberbug7 → u/GeekStudios_Official]

Getting the behind the scenes stuff leaked and finding out they designed her to literally be “a sexy Latina with big tits” was wild.

[u/SadRobotPainting → u/Cyberbug7]

Wow you really weren't kidding; unrelated but "...which Relfects her ethnicity" is a wild line lol

[u/Cyberbug7 → u/SadRobotPainting]

People tend to forget that game freak is well aware of their older demographic. I mean look at salazzle. There’s no way she wasn’t design for the express purpose of attracting scalies.

It is still funny to get a confirmation of something you always assumed.

[u/Just_A_Normal_Snek → u/Cyberbug7]

Why do you think the company is called Game Freak

[u/Coral2Reef → u/Just_A_Normal_Snek]

Yo, what if instead of Game Freak it was Game Freak and instead of making sexy Pokemon, they—...wait...

[u/Trzlog → u/Cyberbug7]

scalies

what

[u/strawberrycreamdrpep → u/Trzlog]

Like Furries, but the cold-blooded variety.

[u/Cyberbug7 → u/Trzlog]

Some times I forget not everyone is terminally online

[u/LoopStricken → u/Cyberbug7]

look at salazzle

Too try-hard, that and the pink thing from Palworld.

Now, Splatterina... :)

[u/Auctoritate → u/SadRobotPainting]

Ok, so those are design concepts/proposals, which isn't the same as what the final design ended up being. Like, Iris is the dragon type 8th gym leader and she did end up being black but rather than being a 'full-figured' 22 year old famous musician, she's a young teenager at most and did not end up having a musical theme. And it goes without saying that they didn't go for the whole 'racial tensions' topic for her town and character. The intent of the design changed as they came up with new ideas.

Likewise, you can see some of the surviving initial design elements with Skyla where she ended up being a pilot with a light brown complexion and an outfit showing some skin, and even with her town being tucked away in the mountains, but her final design definitely drifted away from the early concepts. The idea of the town being ethnically separate from the rest of the region due to being descendents of immigrants and therefore communicating with the player in their non-native language and having speech quirks from it, didn't make it in- and that includes with Skyla. Her outfit also didn't match those concepts because she doesn't wear casual clothes, they instead went with a more revealing take on a pilot's jumpsuit with it being covered in straps/a harness and gloves.

So to say that Skyla was designed to be a sexy Latina is not quite accurate. It would be more precise to say that it's a proposal they started from, and what they ended up with is a design with probably different ideas and intent behind it- it did not necessarily keep 'sexy Latina with big boobs' as a core design intent.

[u/Ok-Chest-7932 → u/Auctoritate]

Fine, Skyla evolved from a sexy latina.

[u/Gosuoru → u/SadRobotPainting]

My favorite part about the concept leaks is Clay, the fucking cowboy, is the only one meant to be Japanese

[u/Ok-Chest-7932 → u/SadRobotPainting]

I like how they did 3 iterations and the only change was to keep making her shorter.

[u/Tljunior20 → u/Cyberbug7]

Wait what?!😭

[u/Cyberbug7 → u/Tljunior20]

A year or so ago a bunch of data got leaked and one of them was the design document for Skyla.

She was apparently built from the ground up to be a sexy Hispanic with Jennifer Lopez being an inspiration. Her appearance even lists “slim with a large chest”

[u/Sum1nne → u/Cyberbug7]

TBH after Olivia's design, behaviour, and intro cutscene in Sun/Moon I can't believe anyone still thinks Game Freak isn't entirely deliberate in designing sexy PokeWaifus for their teen and older audiences. She was completely without pretence, they even had to tone her design down hard when the cartoon got around to the Alola region a little later.

[u/Low_Palpitation_3743 → u/Sum1nne]

Didn't the anime team said that they changed Misty with May, Dawn, etc, because they wanted new "eye candy" for the young male viewers? I'm 100% sure they are aware of it.

[u/Kitselena → u/Cyberbug7]

Sonic Team has said that the original design for Rouge is also based on Latinas

[u/VinChaJon → u/Cyberbug7]

She is so pale she's pretty much just white.