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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141

u/UrzaAntilles 18d ago

Magic the Gathering had a similar thing. The character of Loot is widely considered an attempt by WotC to manufacture a cute mascot type character. Unfortunately the general consensus is that Loot is a lame Pokemon wannabe.

The fans naturally gravitated instead to Fblthp the homunculus, Fleem the whatever in all hell he is and Tinybones

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u/centauriproxima 18d ago

Wotc has squandered so much good-will with their fans that even the most devoted players instantly clocked Loot as a corporate-mandated mascot. I'm convinced that his roll in Jace's story was largely rewritten in response to the overwhelmingly negative reception Loot recieved.

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u/CunningClanker 18d ago

They have absolutely killed the game. Commander is the worst thing to have ever happened to Magic. And now it's all memes and super hero bullshit. Absolute trash like of a game now..

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u/Correct-Squirrel-162 18d ago

why do you think commander is bad? recently got into the game and want to try building a commander list as it's the most popular format

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u/Ryanookami 18d ago

Commander isn’t bad, they’re just being salty. If it were a bad format it wouldn’t have taken over the game space.

Universes Beyond, however… yeah, I can’t fault them being salty with. They’ve prioritized other company’s IP over their own in recent years and it’s frustrating. Not every property is a good fit for mtg and they’ve created a bunch of mechanics that are just one-shots and create confusing play. I however must admit, when they released the Final Fantasy set I fangirl’d super hard, I wanted those cards super bad. I’m not immune to the propaganda.

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u/Correct-Squirrel-162 17d ago

yeah I don't fw playing against ninja turtles in my technofantasy card game but commander seems to be straight up a lot more fun and interesting than 60 card formats

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u/MofuMofuMonhan 17d ago

Having a combo piece always available (your commander) opens up a lot of avenues for Johnny players (players that enjoy combos over big single casts (Timmy) or competitive optimization (Spike)) to do goofy stuff. But being stuck to a single copy of any card that isn't a basic land (unless the card says otherwise!) forces a degree of creativity in your deck building and inconsistency in gameplay. Those both mean that the same deck used over multiple games will probably play differently. Sometimes, dramatically so. 

Commander is also on the cheaper side to get into. Kilukpuk here seems extremely salty for some reason, and seems to be focusing on Competitive games of the format. Which can get very expensive, yes. The lands alone can run 300 dollars altogether. But you know what's free? 

Cockatrice. It's an emulator of sorts for TCGs, though i really only ever see it used for Magic. You can play against other people, be they friends or strangers, without paying a cent. So if you really want to play, but balk at the price of a preconstructed deck, give that a try!

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u/Ryanookami 17d ago

I like both formats, they each give a unique feel to the game. I tend to play standard online and commander in person. One problem with standard is the cycling of sets. I can’t always afford to stay up to date. Commander is great because you don’t have to. My current commander deck only has a few recent cards, notably from the Final Fantasy set. I used to be able to keep up with standard rotation, but being an adult and having bills and a mortgage sucks. Commander just lets me keep playing and having fun without having to break my budget.

With the way things are going in the tcg space I don’t know how anyone can really keep up. The prices on the preorders are insane now. It’s probably the only thing stopping mtg from becoming dominated by the scalpers though, like what’s happened to Pokémon. Too many idiots trying to ruin hobbies by turning everything into a for profit transaction. That’s the thing we should all be salty about, not what format we like best.

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u/SenLune 17d ago

I immediately bought all my Final Fantasy pretty boys. Because..... I am a simple woman.

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u/Kilukpuk 18d ago

It's a meme format that involves you spending way more money than you would on a regular deck and with considerably less strategy involved in deck building/playing.

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u/centauriproxima 17d ago

Casual commander is one of the cheapest formats to play and it doesn't rotate. What the fuck are you talking about?

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u/Kilukpuk 17d ago

Casual formats in anything are cheap to play. Try building an actual competitive deck with 100 in demand and useful cards.

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u/centauriproxima 17d ago

That's not the way 99.9% of people play commander. You're making up a problem and then getting mad at it, it's honestly really pathetic

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u/CunningClanker 17d ago

For one, the game was never designed for a multiplayer format. Wo commander plays like absolute ass.

Two, when EDH first became a thing, it was an off shoot goofy way to play the game. It was not meant to be center of the entire game.

Three, now everything is designed specifically around commander and it's ruined the 60 card formats.

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u/centauriproxima 17d ago

The game was also never designed to be a constructed format with a rotating list of legal cards... until it was.

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u/CunningClanker 17d ago

The game was explicitly designed to be a constructed 60 card format.

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u/centauriproxima 17d ago

With ante and with all cards legal yes

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u/CunningClanker 17d ago

And?

That doesn't change that the structure of the game is intended for a 60 card 1v1 play setting.

The game mechanics do not work well for a multiplayer format.

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u/centauriproxima 17d ago

Which part of the mechanics don't work? Be specific

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u/Arturius1 17d ago

Commander has all the trappings of a party game and a competitive game. It's fun as long as you like playing with other people in the pod (like any other party game) and as long as entire pod is roughly on the same level. If you don't have an established pod it's really hard to organise a fun Commander night simply because people tend to have vastly different expectations from the game.

Also personally I think it's a terrible place to start playing magic - 4 player games are exponentially more complicated than 2 player ones so it's a lot harder to improve as a player, you can't really discuss which decisions were wrong and what you should have done after an hour long game with lots of things happened like you can after a competitive 1v1.

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u/Kilukpuk 18d ago

The sheer rage of arranging a game of Magic with someone, sitting down, setting up, then they ask you where you commander card is.

Sir commander and Magic are two different games, it's like arranging to play Monopoly and setting up a snakes and ladders board. Why ask for a game of Magic if you wanted to play Commander instead? Infuriating.

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u/Physical_Holiday6140 17d ago

You're telling me you arranged a whole game without once specify the format you were playing? That's kinda on you.

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u/Kilukpuk 17d ago

When someone says they're looking for Magic players you assume they actually want to play Magic. This person specifically said Magic, not commander or anything else. If you say you're wanting a game of Magic you can't be surprised when people show up looking for a game of Magic when in actuality you wanted players for a spin off version with different rules.

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u/Wooden-Lake-5790 17d ago

"Magic" isn't s specific game or even format in MtG. You didn't ask if you're playing standard, modern, whatever when you picked your deck? Were you just planning on busting out your timeless deck against a standard pile?

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u/centauriproxima 17d ago

He showed up to a Pauper event with his Canadian Highlander deck and started screaming and shitting when they wouldn't let him play

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u/Physical_Holiday6140 17d ago

commander is magic. it's also more popular than standard, so you're the one more in the wrong here

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u/thePsuedoanon 18d ago

Hell Yargle makes a better mascot

10

u/KaioKennan 18d ago

The Yargle that is all legs in Reality Fracture is an incredible addition to the set even if the card is utterly unplayable.

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u/Big_Arachnid_4784 18d ago

I mean, you could arguably make a toughness matters deck, where you use toughness to deal damage, but I agree

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u/Unable_Deer_773 18d ago

Fblthp is PEAK, I recall in my youth we had about 100 of his cards glued to the wall of the garage where we would play magic.

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u/GrimDallows 18d ago

I have no idea how Fblthp did not became Magic The Gathering's mascot. Like even his whole deal is getting lost, so him appearing in any plane would make sense.

He is like the snail from Adventure Time.

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u/Mrfish31 18d ago

Like even his whole deal is getting lost, so him appearing in any plane would make sense.

It works now because the omenpaths exist and allow travel across planes, but at the time he was introduced the lore was very strict in that only Planeswalkers could... Planeswalk, and he wasn't one, so he couldn't.

Of course the solution is that they should've made him a planeswalker immediately.

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u/Frans4Life 18d ago

honestly it would be even funnier if he wasnt and still inexplicably showed up in the backgrounds of different planes.

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u/GrimDallows 17d ago

I mean, the Omezawa guy did it before the Omenpaths

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u/Mrfish31 17d ago

The Umezawas being on Dominaria happened a thousand years ago or so in the story, when there were still a few non-planeswalker avenues to moving between planes (he was exiled from Kamigawa somehow by the Myojin of Night's Reach). That became basically impossible after The Mending (~60 years ago in universe and ~2007 IRL)

1

u/GrimDallows 17d ago

God I am so tired of the "multiverse" rules being rewriten time and time again.

The weatherlight plane-travels, the mending, the eldrazi, the desparking post-new phyrexia, the planar bridge. I don't even know what omenpaths are.

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u/Deias_ 18d ago

I want to skin this stupid fucking rat alive

1

u/qucari 17d ago

may this card satisfy some of your urges: https://scryfall.com/card/sch/51/thought-scour

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u/screwnewreddt 18d ago

I was hoping to see this little fuzzy funko here. They really tried hard to force it and Kellan on us, while they already had so many other banger characters fans love. Fblthp will always be my favorite, and with his always lost-ness they could easily just have him randomly pop up in the background of cards here and there, kinda like the unluckiest planeswalker or whatever his name is.

I was happy with reality fracture though, we got more tinybones, fblthp, syr ginger, yoshimaru, A Mowu(screw jace), yargle with all that thicccness, mabel, and honestly that evil black loot is pretty alright

3

u/RhesusFactor 18d ago

just bring back Squee.

3

u/echelon_house 18d ago edited 17d ago

Loot was an especially embarrassing example, since WotC built up an entire multiversal reality-rewriting multi-set story all about how cool and important he was. And no one fucking liked him at all, but they couldn't just let him quietly sink into the background and be forgotten, the story demanded they keep on referencing their failed corporate mascot.

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u/Flat_Teach_4438 18d ago

Squee is the only mascot i need for Magic.

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u/jumolax 18d ago

While Loot was for sure an industry plant, Fleem was 100% a community plant by people who hate universes beyond. Artificially liked to hype up the Spider-Man cards that were used in Arena since the rights were messy.

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u/Low_Appearance_796 18d ago

I dont have any prior knowledge because I've played MTG once in my whole life with a premade deck, but I just looked it up and these guys are all much better mascots

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u/BigPoppaStrahd 14d ago

Wotc, the company behind D&D should know that a forced favorite npc never works, the players always gravitate towards Boblin

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u/CLUCKCLUCKMOTHERFUC 12d ago

Not to mention Squee the immortal goblin philosopher

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u/Cocoatrice 17d ago

How is this character even compared to pokemons, while it doesn't look anything like pokemon at all? Pokemon fans being toxic? Not surprising.

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u/shadowman2099 17d ago

You're distracting from the core complaint. How much Loot appears to be from Pokémon matters less than how out of place it looks in the Magic world. If you really need a better comparison, then Loot looks like a little goober from League of Legends, which is no surprise since that's literally where the person who designed Loot primarily did work in.