[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/stevvvvewith4vs]

Arkham City teaser in Asylum. Fans had never found the secret room so Rocksteady themselves had to show this easter egg

[u/JBR_4025 → u/stevvvvewith4vs]

To be fair they hid it in the most anonymous place in the game. Nobody sane of mind would have ever found it unless they plastered every wall in the game with explosives, which probably explains why the Knight teaser was made slightly easier to find since all you needed to do was to stumble upon the right boat

[u/Swords_and_Words → u/JBR_4025]

So, did no Metroid players play the game? 

I thought blowing up every inch of every wall was just part of Easter egg hunting

[u/ThrogdorLokison → u/Swords_and_Words]

In a 2D environment is one thing, a whole city like Arkham is another. Not to mention the way the explosives work, it would be annoying as hell to do it to every wall

[u/twinsunsspaces → u/ThrogdorLokison]

You also had to get it on the exact spot on the wall. When I went to find it myself it took me about 20 tries to get the explosive gel placement correct, so I can easily see someone failing to blow up that wall 2 or 3 times and them concluding that there was nothing there.

[u/Swords_and_Words → u/twinsunsspaces]

Just made me go look at videos of people both succeeding and failing to open that wall 

Holy crap, that is some unforgiving criteria for finding an easter egg

[u/Swords_and_Words → u/ThrogdorLokison]

I was gonna bring up Metroid Prime, which os 3D and still encouraged lots of wall bombing

...but then I looked up how Arkham bombs worked and, holy hell, no wonder no one found that easter egg