[Hated Trope] Crossovers that fundamentally don’t understand the source material

[u/Calvinball08]

When a crossover basically does the exact opposite of what the source material clearly lays out because the creators clearly just don’t care about the source material at all.

Emil - Dead by Daylight

The one that inspired this post. Emil as a character is the most hopeful, optimistic, and kind character in the entire NieR series, maybe in all of Yoko Taro’s games (maybe aside from Yonah). His goal is to help as many people as he possibly can and even when he goes through immense suffering he always comes out the other side ready to keep on helping people.

Then Dead by Daylight adds him as a killer skin, because “he looks creepy.” You know, the aspect of the character that’s his biggest struggle, that causes him to be scared of how people will judge him, and that makes him hate himself. That’s what we’ll base our entire concept on. Genius idea.

Iron Giant - Ready Player One

Technically you could argue that it’s not an example because it’s just a part of the game and Wade is the one misunderstanding the source material. To that I raise you that this is actually an in universe example of the trope, with the game including the Iron Giant as a crossover where you can use him as a weapon, thereby misunderstanding the source material.

Also it’s probably the filmmakers completely misunderstanding the source material/not caring as well.

[u/Ok-Scientist-2111]

What’s odd about the Dead by Daylight one is that if you look at the cosmetic description, it only talks about The Legion’s backstory with barely any mention of Emil’s

[u/First-Shallot947 → u/Ok-Scientist-2111]

Thats because its not actually emil, its a killer doing a crossplay, the legion is a group of edgy teenagers who committed a murder and wandered into the entity realm. They are the exact kind of people who would use emils face because its creepy

[u/bonelees_dip → u/Ok-Scientist-2111]

Dbd cosmetic crossovers can be divided into legendaries and cosplay.

A legendary is the character itself, as such the description is about the character (Geralt, James, Lilith, etc)

Cosplays are the original dbd cast using, for whatever reason, clothes of the licensed characters, as such the description will try to explain how they ended up with them (Emil Legion, Ciri Sable, 90% of Yui's cosmetics, etc)

[u/EcnavMC2 → u/bonelees_dip]

Yeah, so the Emil thing isn’t a good example of this trope. It’s literally just a guy in a costume. 

[u/Horrorfan55555 → u/bonelees_dip]

Oh hi Boneless

[u/Grand_Chadmiral → u/bonelees_dip]

Boneless just creeping up when DbD is mentioned lmao

[u/Grand_Chadmiral → u/bonelees_dip]

Yeah but then don't forget when it ain't a legendary but it's still a separate character like The Krampus, Grid Alien etc

[u/Calvinball08 → u/Ok-Scientist-2111]

So does it just exclusively talk about him as a weapon created to fight legion? If so I feel like that makes it even worse if they decided that’s the most important part of him to highlight

Edit: oh you meant legion as in the dbd killer, not legion as in the army of semi-zombies that Emil was genetically modified to fight

[u/First-Shallot947 → u/Calvinball08]

Its not emil at all, its just Joey dressed as him