r/TopCharacterTropes • u/mp3help • 18d ago

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

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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.

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u/LazyMarionberry9086 18d ago

Clod from the Pixar movie Elemental

A Pixar account on Twitter posted a video of fake cheers in a theater when Cold first appears in the film. Still no one went to see this film or really cared about the comedy character Clod

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u/Purple-Weakness1414 18d ago

they are calling the"first indusry plant Disney charater"

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u/lame_dirty_white_kid 18d ago

Ok, that's pretty funny.

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u/ParsleyBagel 17d ago

consider: baby yoda

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u/Purple-Weakness1414 17d ago

Yeah but Grogu was actually plot revelation, Clod is just in a single scene

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u/Heavy-Expression-450 8d ago

O L A F

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u/Purple-Weakness1414 8d ago

Olaf was actually plot revelant.

So we cant count him

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u/King_Dragonlord 18d ago

as someone who watched the movie and loved it: Clod only has like 2 minutes in the movie and does nothing except try flirting with the fire lady

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u/IWannaManatee 18d ago

Obnoxiously, might I add.

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u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 17d ago

I don't get why kids movie marketing does this, they always try find one "quirky" character and put them on all the trailers and teasers despite only about 2 mins of screentime

Transformers One marketing had only the lighthearted bits in the trailer

Puss in Boots promo kept shoehorning the "ohhh" cat who only speaks twice in the entire movie for less than a minute

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u/vodrake 17d ago

All of the Hoppers prerelease stuff was about Tom the Lizard. My girlfriend was obsessed with him. Constantly sending me memes and gifs of him being wacky. Then we went to see the film, and he has about 2 minutes of screentime and was just a very minor side character in the background of a few scenes.

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u/Purple-Weakness1414 17d ago

They gave the fucker an enitre Fortnite skin over the main character its insanse

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u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 17d ago

I was gonna include him but i haven't seen the movie myself so i wasn't sure if he fit

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u/spinningdice 12d ago

I mean, I guess it's one way to misdirect and not spoiler the film too much. Focus the trailers on an irrelevant side character.

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u/Heavy-Expression-450 8d ago

Who are they advertising to? Answer that question first. Forget the true audience of the movie. Who would they be advertising to, and what sort of commodity could clod become for who?

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u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 8d ago

Yes they're advertising for kids but there's no need to bloat the trailers with marketable characters

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u/Heavy-Expression-450 8d ago

What is a trailer, but a way to market those marketable characters before we meet then? You remember stitch? Blud was everywhere years before he hit the ground.

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u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 8d ago

Unlike the examples i provided, Stitch has well more than 2 mins of screentime

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u/Heavy-Expression-450 8d ago

Regardless of screentime, who's toys were they trying to sell? Cobra's.

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u/johnzaku 13d ago

What the absolute FUCK was with Disney for a short second there where a rambunctious and confident little boy would VERY agressively flirt with the main girl? Raya, Moana, Elemental, what else... I feel like I'm forgetting one.

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u/King_Dragonlord 13d ago

I dunno but yea no idea why they were advertising Clod like he had some major role. The air woman in the marketing also wasn’t in the movie that much she had like 3 scenes, but it actually made sense for her to be in the marketing as she had a small major role.

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u/Reverend_Lazerface 18d ago

I didn't see it in theaters but I have seen this movie a few times with my kid and enjoyed it. I still didn't remember Clod was a character until this picture sort of reminded me

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u/CommanderInQweef 17d ago

strangely, i haven’t seen the movie and this is the only character i do know from the movie. felt like every ad i saw was just him

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u/LightningFerret04 15d ago

Yeah that’s why he’s mentioned in this post, Clod was a character that was an attempt at virality, being in so many trailers for the movie, which ultimately failed to maintain traction because he was barely a character in the movie

Also, I watched Elemental and thought it was a bit overhated. My hot take is that I also think they marketed the movie somewhat misleadingly. It was marketed as this big forbidden romance story between a fire girl and a water boy. And that is the main plot of the film.

But what I really liked about the movie was actually the immigrant story about Ember (fire girl) and her family. The story was based on a mix of the story of Irish immigrants and the director’s own parents’ story of being Korean immigrants.

Ember’s family struggles to adapt to the new city, people struggle to adapt to them. They don’t speak the language at first which makes communication difficult. They face discrimination and have to work hard to build their shop and earn their place in society. As a descendant of immigrants, I imagine that my family must have faced similar things. There’s one moment where Ember’s father recounts the story of what happened when they left their homeland and I genuinely got a little choked up at that part.

I think they should have marketed more of the immigration story elements. Maybe it would have been remembered as a mediocre romance and decent immigration story instead of just a mediocre romance

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u/Munchkinasaurous 14d ago

Haven't it in a while, but that was my daughter's favorite when she was a toddler. I didn't know much about the movie going in, but I definitely enjoyed it. The story worked well for a kids movie, but also pretty impactful from an adult perspective 

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u/Lansha2009 18d ago

Actually…there is some chance that Clod’s industry plant marketing helped to get the film out there since after that marketing happened the movie started doing real well. Whether the marketing itself worked, or the conversation of confusion around whatever the fuck Disney was doing with the Clod marketing was what worked is debatable, but either way it worked somehow.

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u/RobertoSerrano2003 18d ago

Elemental ended up grossing 496 million tho

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u/LazyMarionberry9086 18d ago

Thats more than I thought, it had a slow opening so I thought it bombed. Still, the production budget was $200 million with advertising typically doubling it for a total around $400 million. Not the greatest profit but it also probably helped streaming services.

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u/SavageNorth 18d ago

The Koreans absolutely loved it lol

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u/Pet_Velvet 18d ago

What's weird is, this thing worked. It had a bad opening, but after they made this weird Clod campaign thing it started selling more tickets.

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u/bb-Kun-Chan 17d ago

Pixar did the inverse Sony and Morbius. They deliberately made a (failed) meme that somehow got people in theaters. 

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u/Pet_Velvet 17d ago

Yeppp. Oh god that Morbius fail was glorious

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u/xv_boney 18d ago edited 17d ago

Not only was elemental a textbook sleeper hit that made almost half a billion worldwide, the viral marketing for Clod worked.

Disney knew damn well the entire internet would mock them for their clumsy attempt at viral marketing, which had the knock on effect of increasing interest in Elemental and is arguably the reason it became a sleeper hit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elemental_(2023_film)#Box_office

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u/Subject-Recover-8425 18d ago

Wholly incorrect, Clod and Korea saved Elemental.

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u/Eclipsehedgie2010 18d ago

that's his name? I hate that guy. Easily my least favorite character of the movie.

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u/PepperTheBirb 17d ago

YYYAGAMIIIIIIII

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u/idiotkoifysh 11d ago

YAGAMIIIIIIIIIII

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u/StrikerJaken 17d ago

Dunno, saw the movie in theatres. Liked it. 

Don't remember that character, though

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u/Ronald-Mc-Daddy 17d ago

I think Disney wanted to cash in on the Fan Favorite Glup Shitto trend that happens every now and again where fans fall in love with a character that appears for 2 minutes on screen with no plot relevance.

The problem is that fans need to decide who the fan favorite is, and it can’t be forced.

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u/XMenPerseus56 17d ago

Ah yeah. That "act of Clod" bullshite was weird as hell

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u/AceOfCringe 17d ago

Legitimately almost tanked the movie with how much advertisement was centered around him, the movie was saved by strong word of mouth once people realize it's actually a pretty decent flick

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u/rawbface 17d ago

Who? I swear I watched this whole movie, but I can't remember this character.

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u/dizzira_blackrose 17d ago

The weird hype around this character made me not want to see it. He's so ugly to me.