This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Da Flipp: Not sure if this is worth a Justifying Edit, so I wanted to put it up here instead. On the note of Angel/Archangel in the X-Men Animated Series, to be perfectly fair: Angel has wings. Archangel has badass metal razor wings of doom. Which would /you/ rather feature in your adaptation?
Ecliptor Calrissian: If it was only about the metal razor wings of doom, that would be one thing. But his return appearances are all about hunting down Apocalypse. Comicverse Angel/Archangel is a multifaceted character, but show-verse Angel/Archangel is that guy who Apocalypse turned into a Horseman and now wants him dead ever since.
lollerkeet: If anyone has a copy of the Harvey Birdman DVD, there is a perfect quote for this page on the commentary of the Flintstones episode. The makers observe that it is very hard to find an Velma saying Jinkies!
Working Title: Rename Jean Grey Escalation: From YKTTW
Tzintzuntzan: Isn't this the same as Flanderization, except for comic-book characters instead of TV characters? I'm thinking we should lump the two.
Seven Seals: No, it's not the same. A Jean Grey Escalation is where a character becomes (in)famous for something that happened or was established way, way back, and it keeps coming back because writers (and/or readers) just won't let go of it. Flanderization is when a single aspect of a character is made bigger and bigger until the character is almost a parody of themselves. Speedy's former heroin addiction and Pym's wife-beating keep coming back, for example, but Speedy hasn't been turned into a perennial drug addict and Pym isn't someone who habitually abuses women (well, at least not in most depictions of the character...), which would be Flanderization. Likewise, Aquaman's image as a useless guy whose only power is the ability to talk to fish (mostly inspired by the Super Friends adaptation) keeps haunting him, but the character hasn't actually become the perception.
Ununnilium: Flanderization is more character-based and Jean Grey Escalation is more plot-based, as well, not to mention that the former is more comedic and the latter is more dramatic.
Your Obedient Serpent: ...more dramatic in INTENT, anyway, if not in execution.
Phartman: Cut:
- The Bush Government and various Conservative groups vs. Janet Jackson's right breast. And they're still at it at the time of this writing, in early 2009. You'd think that there's nothing more important than a woman's exposed nipple...
Framed the way it is, it's totally irrelevant. And it can't be framed any other way because A: nobody is still covering this, and B: if you ask your average schmuck what thing he most closely associates with the Bush administration, he's not going to say "Nipplegate."
Cassius335: Ultimate Collosus is gay? Man, Ultimate Kitty Pryde just can't catch a break, can she?
Does Scanners really belong in here? It's just known for that, right? It's not really like it's trying to live it down, or anything, correct?
Prfnoff: Removed this example, which I think would go under Ink-Stain Adaptation unless it is made more specific:
- For a long time, whenever anyone who didn't read comic books thought of Batman it was as the campy Adam West version from the TV show. It wasn't until Tim Burton's Batman in 1988 that this image began to fade.
Wanders Nowhere: Tweaked the Aerith example; she was 22 in the game (not a teen) and I kinda feel 'lover' implies a more...ah...mature relationship than she and Zack actually had (see Crisis Core XD)
Excise: What's the explanation behind Green Lantern's "One punch" thing?
Greenygal: Possibly the most well-remembered moment from the Giffen/DeMatteis JUSTICE LEAGUE run, in which Guy Gardner challenges Batman to a fight and Batman subverts reader expectations by calmly knocking him out with one punch. It's been homaged in the comics several times, most notably when Hal decks Bats in the REBIRTH mini.
Lord TNK: Moved this, because the old trope name was counterproductive. Wick kept mentioning the trope as though the characters mentioned here (especially Jean) were actually like this, not that they have been given an unfair association.
Took this out, since it's really more an example of Flanderization, if anything:
- Cartoon example, played for laughs: Grandpa Max from Ben 10 and his myriad strange and stomach-turning concoctions. It started with an obscure herbal remedy for the common cold, then as a believable survivalist-skill sort of thing including the eating of grubworms that happen to be there, but quickly found its way into the kitchen, resulting in a very Iron Chef meets Fear Factor sort of meal when he cooks.
- Actually, this was there from day (and episode) one. The very first meal Grandpa serves Ben and Gwen on the summer vacation trip where the vast majority of their adventures take place is a huge bowl of worms. The obscure herbal remedy was probably one of the tamest of his established attempts.
Feetman: removed * Adolf Hitler, after becoming the leader of Germany, helped create the Volkswagen brand of cars, thus creating the third largest car company. Of course, we all know what Adolf Hitler is famous for... Because I think we can all agree that starting WWII and murdering millions of civilians is hardly a minor aspect of his character that was later blown out of proportion.
Caswin: Regarding the original Trope Namer, Jean Grey, I'm curious. If we do count "fake-outs, clones, androids, [and] shapeshifters" — especially ones where it was sold as THE DEATH OF JEAN GREY — how many times has she "died" in total? Because, speaking as someone largely on the "outside", it still feels like she must've earned that reputation somehow. (That, and I'm honestly curious.)
Dragon Quest Z: The thing is that her false reputation is coming Back from the Dead. That requires being Killed Off for Real. None of those extra count. Those are just thrown in as justification, ignoring that those are common to all superheroes.
Where it started was when fans of early 1980s Marvel started running the place, not before. Then they started having characters talk about how she always does, not because it actually happened in the comics, but by them just assuming it was so (note those same writers often make other false Continuity Nods).
Her coming back might have been a big deal, but that is still ONCE, not the many times they claim it is.
This troper recalls a running-joke between himself and friends along these lines - supposedly, the X-Men will eventually tire of re-re-re-burying Jean... so then they'll just wrap her in tinfoil, stick her in the back of the fridge next to the leftover turkey loaf, and wait for her to dig her own way back out in a few days...
Ecliptor Calrissian: Hmm. I think it should be counted as the number of times she was considered to be dead for an extended period instead of "appeared to be blown up, but really got out through the back door," etc. After all, the fans thinking she dies all the time aren't playing by exact trope title definitions. For example, Tony's death in 24 was retconned into a fake-out, but that wouldn't make a fan who mentions the time Tony died and was brought back dead wrong.
In which case, we have the Phoenix thing as one death: her 'dying' to become Phoenix happened between issues, after all, so I'd be considering the death at the end of Dark Phoenix Saga as one. She comes back after it in X-Factor and... to my knowledge, never really gets a serious death (or serious "you're supposed to really think she dies so we can surprise you with her return later") again until, as mentioned before, the Running the Asylum thing.
BritBllt: This whole thing about Jean Grey's reputation strikes me as Complaining About Comic Books You Don't Like. Yeah, yeah, Running the Asylum and all that. Still, how can her canonical fake deaths be ignored simply because you don't like the person who wrote them? And if clones, aliens, and narrow escapes are not being counted... well, that rules out Dark Phoenix, because that's how she was brought back from it too! If the only definition of Back from the Dead being applied here is literal death, then you can probably count the number of comic book heroes on one hand who actually died, went to the afterlife, and then came back. It just seems like there's a serious disconnect when most fans, and Marvel themselves, are playing off Jean's revivals as a joke while TV Tropes is littered with Serious Business entries about how all those people are wrong.
Dragon Quest Z: The copy was a Retcon. She was actually Killed Off for Real that time. The other clones and alternate versions were not her being killed off anymore than Stryfe and X-Man were Cable being killed off. And the fact that the "joke" is being used to hose the character and strip away everything she did other than that is the problem. And we do count the other comic book deaths. That's why treating Jean as though she does it more than others is false. It's not complaining about comics we don't like. It's complaining about slander of characters we do like.
Rebochan: Pulled the 4Kids entry because it's not like they only did one Macekre. This is their entire business model. Shifting to European shows doesn't really change this either except that they don't mangle anime much anymore. They still did this to tons of shows - Tokyo Mew Mew, Yu Gi Oh, Pokemon, One Piece, Shaman King, and most recently, Magical Do Re Mi. This is not a Never Live It Down, this is a reputation they have earned and a practice they have continued to this day.
- Veto! I say that they did Never Live It Down because their defining feature is excessive editing. Now we don't see the same degree of editing, yet the Internet still thinks they do I say it stays. Also I bunch it up into class-action Mackere, a collective Mackere. One very big, yet very trivial, mistkae by the company.
- They still heavily edit their shows and continue to do this, especially in comparison to pretty much everyone that localizes anime for television. And let's not forget that those anime I listed aren't one-offs from the past, they're extremely recent. Top that off with their openly dismissive attitude, and they're never going to live this down because they're still doing it. I just gave you how many examples of shows they've done this to including very recent example. I'm not seeing where your veto has merit.
It seems to me that more than a few of these examples are really reaching. I mean, even if you only kill one person, you're always gonna be a murderer. And in the Haruhi example, even if she only rewrote reality once, the whole show is about people trying to keep her from doing it again. It's like complaining that Batman parents are dead in every incarnation even though they only died one time in the comics.
Dragon Quest Z: Then we clean them up.
Shotgun Ninja: Is that last Ctrl Alt Del example supposed to be showing the idea that Buckley alters his Wikipedia article is an example of this trope, or is it just a random flame? For the record, it isn't really accurate either way: he doesn't defend himself so much as he deletes anything negative and pretends it never existed.
Ettin: I deleted the existing Ctrl Alt Del example earlier as neither example really struck me as related to this trope: one was the miscarriage arc, which doesn't really fit with the trope description at the top of the page as it was a major event, both in and out of the comic, and the other was something about the Only Six Faces argument levelled at Buckley despite his recent Art Evolution; in that case I removed it because Never Live It Down relates to "one action or event", and Only Six Faces plagued the comic for years before Buckley started experimenting. Also, we already acknowledge the art has improved on CtrlAltDel's page anyway.
It returned earlier with a new "there used to be an example on this page about..." description which linked to Edit War for some reason, so I just cleaned up the irrelevant parts and left the miscarriage part in, even if it is a bit of a reach. This trope has gotten a little vague anyway.
Thoughts?
Prfnoff: Removed this example for being weakly argued and long-winded. It seems that she does leave planets/space stations destroyed often enough it shouldn't count as an example of this.
- Samus Aran of Metroid fame has a reputation for having any planet or space station she steps on destroyed by the time she leaves. The actual truth of this has varied over the years, but here are the facts:
- In Metroid, she visits Zebes (or Zebeth). Technical limitations make it really unclear the extent of the Load Bearing Boss's destruction, but later games make it clear it survived.
- Metroid II takes place on SR-388, which survives.
- The ending to Metroid II does imply that SR-388 is destroying itself — that, in fact, as Samus kills the evolved Metroids, their deaths cause the planet to destroy itself. It isn't until Metroid Fusion that it is clarified that the cataclysm was on a much smaller scale.
- Super Metroid starts out on a space station which gets destroyed (through no fault of her own). Samus then goes back to Zebes, and blows it up via Load-Bearing Boss.
- Metroid Fusion takes place on a space station orbiting SR-388. She ends up having to Colony Drop the space station into SR-388 to stop the X parasites, destroying the colony, the X parasites, and SR-388. This is the only point where this association was literately 100% true, though Metroid Prime below was released almost concurrently with Fusion.
- Metroid Prime starts on an enemy space station. Samus defeats the Parasite Queen which had fled to the ship's reactor core, and upon its death, it fell in - not technically a Load-Bearing Boss, but the same effect. Ship crashes to Tallon IV, planet is fine. Ship is wrecked and underwater and becomes another area to explore later in the game. Tallon IV is saved from destruction by Samus' intervention.
- The Temple sealing the Impact Crater, however, catches on fire and explodes multiple times as Samus runs to her ship.
- Zero Mission is a remake/update of Metroid 1, replacing it in Canon without changing anything relevant here.
- Although she does explore a Space Pirate mothership, which later explodes due to Load-Bearing Boss yet again.
- Metroid Prime 2: Echoes is set on Aether, which has a recently formed Dark World that Samus destroys, saving the regular planet.
- Metroid Prime: Hunters has four planets and/or space stations, none of which are destroyed, despite the fact that you have to escape from the planets for no reason other than that there's an escape timer. The Can of the Sealed Evil in a Can does explode after the Sealed Evil is destroyed, however.
- Metroid Prime 3: Corruption also has multiple planets and space stations which survive. The thing that gets blown up is Phaaze, which is some sort of evil radioactive planet spaceship thing .
- She does Colony Drop a segment of a floating city as a part of a ploy to drop a bomb onto a Phazon Leviathan Seed in order to eliminate its shield.
- The conclusion is that Samus is present when a lot of worlds explode (Zebes, Phaaze, SR-388, a couple of space stations), but she's only been responsible for four (SR-388 and the BSL space station in Fusion, Dark Aether in Echoes, and Phaaze in Corruption). So, it's not so much her fault as shoddy design and some really lousy timing. Still, if Samus comes knocking at your door, it might be a good idea to evacuate the planet just as a precaution.
- The general trend is that the planets, space stations, etc. that explode are the ones that Samus is not expressly trying to save. If Samus wants the planet to survive, it will. If she doesn't much care or intends to kill everything anyway, it will explode. This holds true to everything except Hunters, but those self destructs are obviously faulty.
