[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/Lunalatic]

Heck, more people fawned over Ingo and Emmet when BW released than Burgh, and they look like this:

I'm serious. They did a popularity poll of all the human characters in Black and White when they first came out in Japan. Ingo and Emmet got second and third place; Burgh got 14th.

[u/yimmit303 → u/Lunalatic]

Who? I have never seen them before in my life. I at least know who Burgh is.

[u/Quillbolt_h → u/yimmit303]

They're train conductors who run the battle subway. They got extremely popular due to train nerds. Trainspotting is super big in Japan.

They got even more popular when Ingo appeared in Pokémon Legends Arceus, which is set in the last. He mysteriously got sent back in time and lost his memories. Which made for lots of tragic fanfic material.