r/TopCharacterTropes • • 3d ago

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

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.

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u/Due-Ingenuity9803 3d ago

Ready Player One is Vrchat the Movie

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u/L3XAN 3d ago

I think that's why I find the Iron Giant criticism kind of dumb. The characters don't make any claim to be faithful to the spirit of the original story, it's literally just a skin made by a modder.

Like if you needed to win a fight to stop your favorite game from being bought by Meta, then sure, mod in Superman and have him kill the bad guys.

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u/popcorn_kurnal 3d ago

It can’t be because you can argue that VRChat is actually good

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u/Due-Ingenuity9803 3d ago

Ah yea true true