History CreatorsPet / Other

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[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Fanfiction]]
* ''Fanfic/MyBravePonyStarfleetMagic'':
** Rhymey, whose [[RhymesOnADime constant rhyming shtick]] has led many readers to declare him the most annoying character in the series, not helped by him getting disproportionately large amounts of dialogue that don't contribute anything to the plot. He even gets [[TakeThatScrappy chewed out]] for talking this way by UnintentionallySympathetic ex-Wonderbolt Ace Ray. Unusually, Rhymey's sour reception only led to the character receiving ''more'' creator favoritism, leading to the author ramping up his screentime [[TrollingCreator to piss people off]].
** Lightning Dawn and Grand Ruler, being {{Author Avatar}}s and the main characters, naturally get a lot of attention and shilling; however, readers quickly noted that the characters themselves contribute very little and come off as much less sympathetic than the author intended.
** The sequel adds Goldwin, an {{Expy}} of Jeff from ''Series/TodaysSpecial''. Several episodes in ''My Brave Pony: Star Fleet Magic II'' (which plagiarize entire episodes of ''Today's Special'') are made specifically to involve Goldwin, even when they add nothing to the overall plot whatsoever.
** Ironically, while the author is willing to shout at everyone who makes fun of his characters, he doesn't care for the majority of them at all, ignoring them completely if he thinks that they serve no purpose for him anymore outside of battle scenes.
* ''FanFic/ReactWatchBelieveYikes'' introduced a character named Noire, who is the subconscious manifestation of Blake's perverted side. At first, she just makes lewd jokes and breaks the fourth wall during season 3, but becomes much more prominent to the point of replacing Blake entirely for season 5. The creator also got upset at people who didn't like her and had the characters in the story sympathize with her over a fake backstory. From season 7 onward she is her own separate entity. The only reason fans didn't [[TheScrappy outright hate her]] is that she continually got comeuppance for her actions and the other characters stopped liking her after they learned the truth.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Role-Playing Games]]
* In ''Roleplay/DinoAttackRPG'', Snake and Firecracker come across as being Creator's Pets, most tellingly because [[DesignatedHero we're supposed to like them]] and their creator, Atton Rand, had little intention of letting them be anything other than {{Karma Houdini}}s in the end when everyone else wanted to see them locked up.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Sports]]
* One year, FOX's coverage of UsefulNotes/{{NASCAR}} races added a "Digger Cam"--a ground-level camera in the infield that showed cars coming around a turn. The "digger" part comes from [[RogerRabbitEffect an animated gopher]] named Digger, who would pop up out of a hole, look behind him, notice the cars, scream, and then frantically get back into his hole. It was kind of funny the first time... before they decided to do it repeatedly, every single race. This was the signal for FOX to render Digger in CGI, give him his own prerace cartoon, and offer Digger merchandise. The response escalated to three words: kill the rodent. Digger was so beloved by FOX, they gave him a speaking cameo in the film ''Film/AlvinAndTheChipmunks: The Squeakquel'', which was hated in its own right. It doesn't help that NASCAR actually ''ordered'' Fox to stop using Digger, blaming him for a decline in attendance of NASCAR races.
* ''Series/SportsCenter'' had the Mark Sanchez "Butt Fumble", which the network refused to let be beaten in its "Worst of the Worst" competition. The hosts got sick of it, but the competition it went against was usually something it could easily beat when there were funnier fails in the lowlight reel. It was eventually retired after 40 undefeated weeks.
* The Big 12 conference and the Universities of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. The favoritism of those three schools (the former two for having lots of money and strong football programs, the last for their basketball program and the former Big 8 headquarters being in Kansas City) has more or less (combined with front office instability) led to the near-collapse of the conference and four schools leaving; the conference barely survived by bringing in two new schools, one of them West Virginia—more than ''700 miles'' from its nearest conference opponent (Iowa State). The conference defending Kansas' {{Jerkass}} attitude over the University of Missouri leaving (who had good reasons, such as the athletic department losing money due to the loss of football rivals Nebraska and Colorado) and the formation of The Longhorn Network (which is considered nothing more than a recruitment tool for Texas) only makes things worse.
** It should be noted that most of the other big conferences had the same Pet attitude toward Texas and Oklahoma, as evidenced by the Pac-10's attempted recruitment of both schools AND their willingness to take any other schools they wanted to bring with them (Texas Tech and Oklahoma State). Not so with Kansas, as, had the Big 12 broken up, they would have been one of the remaining Big 12 schools with no conference despite the aforementioned highly successful basketball program, which could ''possibly'' justify their aforementioned attitude (Missouri's departure meant the end of Kansas' longest standing rivalry in basketball). In fact, the game of [[UsefulNotes/CollegiateAmericanFootball college football]] could be looked at as the Pet of the NCAA and universities as a whole, given how it alone has driven the massive [[UsefulNotes/CollegiateAmericanFootballConferences conference]] realignments in the past few years and how all the other sports programs must bend over backwards to accomodate them (college football's huge popularity with US sports fans is the only thing keeping it from being a true Pet).
* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Cosmos_(1970-85) The New York Cosmos]]. While some pro sports leagues get accused of giving certain teams preferential treatment, the North American Soccer League was upfront in saying they wanted the Cosmos to be the league's best team, since they felt the fate of the entire league depended on having a successful New York franchise. So the league didn't object to the Cosmos pursuing the world's top talent, famously luring the sport's biggest star, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pel%C3%A9 Pelé]], to New York for three years. Instead, the Cosmos' InvincibleHero status ended up alienating fans of the other teams
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Theatre]]
* Arachne in the first version of ''Theatre/SpiderManTurnOffTheDark'' was [[CanonForeigner Julie Taymor's original creation]] and responsible for creating Spider-Man and giving him his costume, got no less than three songs of her own (including one devoted to shoe shopping), supplanted the Green Goblin as the main villain of the show in Act Two, was designed in-universe to be unbeatable as she was an immortal illusion master, competed with Mary Jane as Peter's love interest, and technically won in the end by regaining her humanity and being able to die like she wanted. Julie Taymor insisted that not making Arachne's redemption arc the main focus of Act Two would ruin the artistic merit of the play and compared cutting any of her songs or scenes to a mastectomy, while general audiences were much less receptive to her and how her story took focus away from Spider-Man, was too dark for a family-oriented show, and undermined the highlights of Act 1. After Taymor was fired, much of Arachne's role was cut out via an extensive Retool, reducing her to TheArtifact.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Theme Parks]]
* The Ride/DisneyThemeParks have Duffy the Disney Bear. The main problem most people have with Duffy is that he isn't ''from'' any of the Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon and/or Creator/{{Pixar}} films, the rides, shows, or live-action movies (compare him to [[EnsembleDarkhorse Figment]], WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb, and [[Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean Captain Jack Sparrow]]). He simply exists [[MerchandiseDriven to sell merchandise of himself]], TastesLikeDiabetes, and yet has more presence in the parks than {{ensemble darkhorse}}s like [[WesternAnimation/BigHero6 Hiro and Baymax]], [[WesternAnimation/{{Tangled}} Flynn Rider]] and [[WesternAnimation/DuckTales1987 Scrooge McDuck]], [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome long-gone]] characters like WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}}, [[WesternAnimation/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame Quasimodo]] and WesternAnimation/{{Tarzan}}, and most of the Disney villains (who usually only appear for Meet and Greets at the Halloween parties). He even managed to outlast a character from a [[Franchise/KingdomHearts popular and ongoing video game series co-created by Disney]]. This is mostly a result of Duffy being a [[CashCowFranchise cash-cow]] in the Tokyo parks with desperate efforts to re-create the success abroad without realizing the cultural differences.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Toys]]
* Same-character redecoes. It's common, in any action-figure line, for the later waves to feature an already-released character (usually the protagonist) with [[PaletteSwap a different paintjob]] and sometimes a different accessory. This is generally meant as a cost-saving measure, since it's much cheaper than remolding an entirely new figure. Collectors and fans hate these things from the start: they're rereleases of something they already own, most of them are [[http://i.imgur.com/lyZ9Bhm.jpg inaccurate in appearance]] to the actual character, and they tend to look... well, [[http://jericosmotureviews.tripod.com/samuraiheman/samuraiheman.jpg stupid]]. This would be fine - just ignore them and move on - except stores tend to not be aware of this. Most of the time, stores decide the figures that'll get put on shelves, and have a lot of power in determining case assortments. Stores place much more stock in the most recognizable names, so they tend to request lots of same-character redecoes, which leads to [[EnsembleDarkhorse more minor characters]] getting shortpacked or going completely unreleased. As an example, one ''Franchise/SpiderMan'' line features, in one case, three Superposeable Spider-Mans, three Hydro Blast Spider-Mans, three Dual Web Swinging Spider-Man, and one Sandman. This has the paradoxical effect of turning characters who are normally popular in fiction into Creator's Pets on the toy shelves, with many fans bemoaning their local store containing nothing but a solid wall of Spider-Man in tacky outfits. In the case of [[WesternAnimation/HeManAndTheMastersOfTheUniverse2002 one series]], the Creator's Pet status of the main characters in this regard is often blamed for the line's cancellation - it turned out kids didn't want to buy three Claw Grabber Skeletors any more than the collectors did.
* ''Toys/{{BIONICLE}}'' has Vezon, [[BrokenBase to one half of the fanbase]]. Greg Farshtey admitted that Vezon was one of his favorite characters to write, and in the web serials, ''it shows.'' Despite actually having very little to offer in terms of advancing the plot, Vezon is usually there to offer his PluckyComicRelief antics, especially after he fused with the Kanohi Olmak and gained dimension-hopping abilities.
* ''Toys/{{Bratz}}'' has Cloe and Yasmin, two dolls that were in nearly every single line, with most other dolls being slight variations of them. They're even considered one of the main reasons the franchise is dead.
* The legendarily-bad ''Anime/TransformersArmada'' Side Swipe mold. When it arrived in stores, it was reviled as a fusion of every negative stereotype about the Unicron Trilogy: boring vehicle mode and a badly proportioned, overly gimmicky, and poorly articulated robot mode, with even the Minicon getting some hate. Hasbro listened to fans and never used the mold again... is what would be written here, if the mold wasn't reused ''twice'' in the ''Universe'' line, ''[[http://static.seibertron.com/images/toys/files/32/runamuck106.jpg and]]'' given a heavy-but-unhelpful remold into Runabout. The last of these earned particular ire for an EnsembleDarkhorse receiving the mold (and for having the wrong name, and for [[ThoseTwoBadGuys his partner]] not getting a similar release). It took three years for the mold to disappear from shelves... until Botcon 2012 offered a new version of him at premium price. Fortunately, ''Shattered Glass'' Treadshot finally [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap broke the curse:]] he's the well-loved ''Reveal the Shield'' Jazz mold with the color scheme and head of Side Swipe.
[[/folder]]

----

* Arachne in the first version of ''Theatre/SpidermanTurnOffTheDark'' was [[CanonForeigner Julie Taymor's original creation]] and responsible for creating Spider-Man and giving him his costume, got no less than three songs of her own (including one devoted to shoe shopping), supplanted the Green Goblin as the main villain of the show in Act Two, was designed in-universe to be unbeatable as she was an immortal illusion master, competed with Mary Jane as Peter's love interest, and technically won in the end by regaining her humanity and being able to die like she wanted. Julie Taymor insisted that not making Arachne's redemption arc the main focus of Act Two would ruin the artistic merit of the play and compared cutting any of her songs or scenes to a mastectomy, while general audiences were much less receptive to her and how her story took focus away from Spider-Man, was too dark for a family-oriented show, and undermined the highlights of Act 1. After Taymor was fired, much of Arachne's role was cut out via an extensive Retool, reducing her to TheArtifact.

* ''Toys/{{BIONICLE}}'' hasVezon, [[BrokenBase to one half of the fanbase]]. Greg Farshtey admitted that Vezon was one of his favorite characters to write, and in the web serials, ''it shows.'' Despite actually having very little to offer in terms of advancing the plot, Vezon is usually there to offer his PluckyComicRelief antics, especially after he fused with the Kanohi Olmak and gained dimension-hopping abilities.

** Rhymey, whose [[RhymesOnADime constant rhyming shtick]] has led many readers to declare him the most annoying character in the series, not helped by him getting disproportionately large amounts of dialogue that don'r contribute anything to the plot. He even gets [[TakeThatScrappy chewed out]] for talking this way by UnintentionallySympathetic ex-Wonderbolt Ace Ray. Unusually, Rhymey's sour reception only led to the character receiving ''more'' creator favoritism, leading to the author ramping up his screentime [[TrollingCreator to piss people off]].

** Rhymey, whose [[RhymesOnADime constant rhyming shtick]] has led many a reader to declare him the most annoying character in the series, not helped by him getting disproportionately large amounts of dialogue that doesn't contribute anything to the plot. He even gets [[TakeThatScrappy chewed out]] for talking this way by UnintentionallySympathetic ex-Wonderbolt Ace Ray. Unusually, Rhymey's sour reception only led to the character receiving ''more'' creator favoritism, leading to the author ramping up his screentime to piss people off ([[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment don't ask]]).
** Lightning Dawn and Grand Ruler, being {{Author Avatar}}s and the main characters, naturally get a lot of attention and shilling; however, readers were quick to note that the characters themselves contribute very little and come off as a lot less sympathetic than the author intended to readers.
** The sequel adds Goldwin to it, an {{Expy}} of Jeff from ''Series/TodaysSpecial''. Several episodes in ''My Brave Pony: Star Fleet Magic II'' (which plagiarize entire episodes of ''Today's Special'') are made specifically to involve Goldwin, even when they add nothing to the overall plot whatsoever.
** Ironically, while the author is willing to shout at everyone who makes fun of his characters, he does not care for the majority of them at all, ignoring them completely if he thinks that they serve no purpose for him anymore outside of battle scenes.
* ''FanFic/ReactWatchBelieveYikes'' introduced a character named Noire, who was the subconscious manifestation of Blake's perverted side. At first, she just made perv jokes and broke the fourth wall during season 3, but became much more prominent to the point of replacing Blake entirely for season 5. The creator also got upset at people who didn't like her and had the characters in the story sympathize with her over a fake backstory. And then she became a separate entity for season 7 onward. The only reason she didn't hit Mary Sue status is that she continually got comeuppance for her actions and the other characters stopped liking her after they learned the truth.

* In ''Roleplay/DinoAttackRPG'', Snake and Firecracker came across as being Creator's Pets, most tellingly because [[DesignatedHero we were supposed to like them]] and their creator, Atton Rand, had little intention of letting them be anything other than {{Karma Houdini}}s in the end when everyone else wanted to see them locked up.

* One year, FOX's coverage of UsefulNotes/{{NASCAR}} races added a 'Digger Cam'--a ground-level camera in the infield that showed cars coming around a turn. The 'digger' part came from [[RogerRabbitEffect an animated gopher]] named Digger, who would pop up out of a hole, look behind him, notice the cars, scream, and then frantically get back into his hole. It was kind of funny the first time... before they decided to do it repeatedly, every single race. This was the signal for FOX to render Digger in CGI, give him his own pre-race cartoon, and offer Digger merchandise. The response has escalated to three words: kill the rodent. Digger was so beloved by FOX, they gave him a speaking cameo in their film, ''Film/AlvinAndTheChipmunks: The Squeakquel'', which was hated in its own right. It doesn't help that NASCAR actually ''ordered'' Fox to stop using Digger, blaming him for a decline in attendance of NASCAR races.

** It should be noted that most of the other big conferences had the same Pet attitude toward Texas and Oklahoma, as evidenced by the Pac-10's attempted recruitment of both schools AND their willingness to take any other schools they wanted to bring with them (Texas Tech and Oklahoma State). Not so with Kansas, as, had the Big 12 broken up, they would have been one of the remaining Big 12 schools with no conference despite the aforementioned highly successful basketball program, which could ''possibly'' justify their aforementioned attitude (Missouri's departure meant the end of Kansas' longest standing rivalry in basketball). In fact, the game of [[UsefulNotes/CollegiateAmericanFootball college football]] could be looked at as the Pet of the NCAA and universities as a whole given how it has solely driven the massive [[UsefulNotes/CollegiateAmericanFootballConferences conference]] realignments in the past few years and how all the other sports programs must bend over backwards to accompany them (college football's huge popularity with US sports fans is the only thing keeping it from being a true Pet).
* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Cosmos_(1970-85) The New York Cosmos]]. While some pro sports leagues get accused of giving certain teams preferential treatment, the North American Soccer League was totally upfront in saying they wanted the Cosmos to be the league's best team, since they felt the fate of the entire league depended on having a successful New York franchise. So the league didn't object to the Cosmos pursuing the world's top talent, famously luring the sport's biggest star, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pel%C3%A9 Pelé]], to New York for three years. Instead, the Cosmos' InvincibleHero status ended up alienating fans of the other teams

* Arachne in the first version of ''Theatre/SpidermanTurnOffTheDark'' was Julie Taymor's original creation and was responsible for creating Spider-Man and giving him his costume, got no less than three songs of her own (including one devoted to shoe shopping), supplanted the Green Goblin as the main villain of the show in Act Two, was designed in-universe to be unbeatable as she was an immortal illusion master, competed with Mary Jane as Peter's love interest, and technically won in the end by regaining her humanity and being able to die like she wanted. Julie Taymor insisted that not making Arachne's redemption arc the main focus of Act Two would ruin the artistic merit of the play and compared cutting any of her songs or scenes to a mastectomy, while general audiences were much less receptive to her and how her story took focus away from Spider-Man, was too dark for a family-oriented show, and undermined the highlights of Act 1. After Taymor was fired, much of Arachne's role was cut out via an extensive Retool, reducing her to TheArtifact.

* The Ride/DisneyThemeParks have Duffy the Disney Bear. The main problem most people have with Duffy is that he isn't ''from'' any of the Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon and/or Creator/{{Pixar}} films, the rides, shows, or live-action movies (compare him to [[EnsembleDarkhorse Figment]], WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb, and [[Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean Captain Jack Sparrow]]). He simply exists [[MerchandiseDriven to sell merchandise of himself]], TastesLikeDiabetes, and yet has more presence in the parks than [[EnsembleDarkhorse Darkhorses]] like [[WesternAnimation/BigHero6 Hiro and Baymax]], [[WesternAnimation/{{Tangled}} Flynn Rider]] and [[WesternAnimation/DuckTales1987 Scrooge McDuck]], [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome long-gone]] characters like WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}}, [[WesternAnimation/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame Quasimodo]] and WesternAnimation/{{Tarzan}}, and most of the Disney villains (who usually only appear for Meet and Greets at the Halloween parties). In addition, he's also managed to outlast a character from a [[Franchise/KingdomHearts popular and ongoing video game series co-created by Disney]]. This is mostly a result of Duffy being a [[CashCowFranchise cash-cow]] in the Tokyo parks with desperate efforts to re-create the success abroad without realizing the cultural differences.

* Same-character redecoes. It's common, in any action-figure line, for the later waves to feature an already-released character (usually the protagonist) with [[PaletteSwap a different paintjob]] and sometimes a different accessory. This is generally meant as a cost-saving measure, since it's much cheaper than remolding an entirely new figure. Collectors and fans absolutely hate these things from the start: they're rereleases of something they already own, they're generally [[http://i.imgur.com/lyZ9Bhm.jpg inaccurate in appearance]] to the actual character, and they tend to look... well, [[http://jericosmotureviews.tripod.com/samuraiheman/samuraiheman.jpg stupid]]. This would be fine - just don't buy them and move on - except the stores tend to not be aware of this. Stores usually decide the figures that'll get put on shelves, and have a good deal of power in determining case assortments. Stores place much more stock in the most recognizable names, so they tend to request lots of same-character redecoes, which leads to [[EnsembleDarkhorse more minor characters]] getting shortpacked or going completely unreleased. As an example, one ''Franchise/SpiderMan'' line featured, in one case, three Superposeable Spider-Mans, three Hydro Blast Spider-Mans, three Dual Web Swinging Spider-Man, and one Sandman. This has the paradoxical effect of turning characters who are normally very popular in fiction into Creator's Pets on the toy shelves, with many a fan bemoaning their local store containing nothing but a solid wall of Spider-Man in tacky outfits. In the case of [[WesternAnimation/HeManAndTheMastersOfTheUniverse2002 one series]], the Creator's Pet status of the main characters in this regard was widely blamed for the line's cancellation - it turned out kids didn't want to buy three Claw Grabber Skeletors any more than the collectors did.
* From ''Toys/{{BIONICLE}}'', we have Vezon, [[BrokenBase to the half of the fanbase that considers him]] TheScrappy. Greg Farshtey has admitted to Vezon being one of his favorite characters to write, and in the web serials, ''boy'', does it show! Despite actually having very little to offer to advancing the plot, Vezon is almost always there to offer his PluckyComicRelief antics, especially now that he has been fused with the Kanohi Olmak and has dimension-hopping abilities.
* ''Toys/{{Bratz}}'' has Cloe and Yasmin, two dolls that are in nearly every single line and most other dolls are just slight variations of them. They're even considered one of the main reasons the franchise is dead at this point.
* The legendarily-bad ''Anime/TransformersArmada'' Side Swipe mold. When it arrived in stores, it was reviled as a fusion of every negative stereotype about the Unicron Trilogy: boring vehicle mode, badly-proportioned, overly-gimmicky, and poorly-articulated robot mode, with even the Minicon getting some hate. Hasbro wisely listened to the fans and never used the mold again... is what would be written here, if the mold hadn't gotten TWO reuses in the ''Universe'' line, [[http://static.seibertron.com/images/toys/files/32/runamuck106.jpg AND]] a heavy-but-unhelpful remold into Runabout. The last of these earned a particular ire for an EnsembleDarkhorse receiving the mold (and for having the wrong name, and for [[ThoseTwoBadGuys his partner]] not getting a similar release). It took three years for this mold to disappear from shelves... until Botcon 2012 offered a new version of him at premium price. Fortunately, it seems as if ''Shattered Glass'' Treadshot has finally [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap broken the curse:]] he's basically the fantastic ''Reveal the Shield'' Jazz mold, with the color scheme and head of Side Swipe.

* Arachne in the first version of ''Theatre/SpidermanTurnOffTheDark'' was a HUGE CreatorsPet for director Julie Taymor. She got no less than three songs of her own (including one devoted to ''shoe shopping''), supplanted the Green Goblin as the main villain in Act Two, and [[LoveTriangle competed with Mary Jane as Peter's love interest]]. Julie insisted that not making Arachne's [[spoiler:redemption arc]] the main focus of Act Two would ruin the artistic merit of the play and compared cutting any of her songs or scenes to a ''mastectomy.'' After Taymor was fired, much of Arachne's role was cut out via an extensive ReTool, reducing her to TheArtifact.

* The Ride/DisneyThemeParks have Duffy the Disney Bear. The main problem most people have with Duffy is that he isn't ''from'' any of the Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon and/or Creator/{{Pixar}} films, the rides, shows, or live-action movies (compare him to [[EnsembleDarkhorse Figment]], WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb, and [[Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean Captain Jack Sparrow]]). He simply exists [[MerchandiseDriven to sell merchandise of himself]], TastesLikeDiabetes, and yet has more presence in the parks than [[EnsembleDarkhorse Darkhorses]] like [[Disney/BigHero6 Hiro and Baymax]], [[Disney/{{Tangled}} Flynn Rider]] and [[WesternAnimation/DuckTales1987 Scrooge McDuck]], [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome long-gone]] characters like Disney/{{Hercules}}, [[Disney/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame Quasimodo]] and Disney/{{Tarzan}}, and most of the Disney villains (who usually only appear for Meet and Greets at the Halloween parties). In addition, he's also managed to outlast a character from a [[Franchise/KingdomHearts popular and ongoing video game series co-created by Disney]]. This is mostly a result of Duffy being a [[CashCowFranchise cash-cow]] in the Tokyo parks with desperate efforts to re-create the success abroad without realizing the cultural differences.

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Cosmos_(1970-85) The New York Cosmos]]. While some pro sports leagues get accused of giving certain teams preferential treatment, the North American Soccer League was totally upfront in saying they wanted the Cosmos to be the league's best team, since they felt the fate of the entire league depended on having a successful New York franchise. So the league didn't object to the Cosmos pursuing the world's top talent, famously luring the sport's biggest star, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pel%C3%A9 Pelé]], to New York for three years. Instead, the Cosmos' BoringInvincibleHero status ended up alienating fans of the other teams

* The Ride/DisneyThemeParks have Duffy the Disney Bear. The main problem most people have with Duffy is that he isn't ''from'' any of the Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon and/or Creator/{{Pixar}} films, the rides, shows, or live-action movies (compare him to [[EnsembleDarkhorse Figment]], WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb, and [[Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean Captain Jack Sparrow]]). He simply exists [[MerchandiseDriven to sell merchandise of himself]], TastesLikeDiabetes, and yet has more presence in the parks than [[EnsembleDarkhorse Darkhorses]] like [[Disney/BigHero6 Hiro and Baymax]], [[Disney/{{Tangled}} Flynn Rider]] and [[WesternAnimation/DuckTales1987 Scrooge McDuck]], [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome long-gone]] characters like Disney/{{Hercules}}, [[Disney/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame Quasimodo]] and Disney/{{Tarzan}}, and most of the Disney villains (who usually only appear for Meet and Greets at the Halloween parties). In addition, he's also managed to outlast a character from a [[VideoGame/KingdomHearts popular and ongoing video game series co-created by Disney]]. This is mostly a result of Duffy being a [[CashCowFranchise cash-cow]] in the Tokyo parks with desperate efforts to re-create the success abroad without realizing the cultural differences.

[[folder:TabletopGames]]
* ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms'': Really all the Harpers, but Elminster in particular stands out. A lot of players were put off when they realized their character's greatest contribution to the setting's history would undoubtedly end up being something along the lines of "that time they held Elminster's beer while he single-handedly saved the world."
[[/folder]]

* ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms'': Really all the Harpers, but Elminster in particular stands out. A lot of players were put off when they realized their character's greatest contribution to the setting's history would undoubtedly end up being something along the lines of "that time they held Elminster's beer while he single-handedly saved the world."

[[folder:{{Fanfics}}]]

[[folder:RolePlayingGames]]

[[folder:{{Sports}}]]

[[folder:{{Theater}}]]

[[folder:{{Theme Parks}}]]

[[folder:{{Toys}}]]

* Same-character redecoes. It's common, in any action-figure line, for the later waves to feature an already-released character (usually the protagonist) with [[PaletteSwap a different paintjob]] and sometimes a different accessory. This is generally meant as a cost-saving measure, since it's much cheaper than remolding an entirely new figure. Collectors and fans absolutely hate these things from the start: they're rereleases of something they already own, they're generally [[http://i.imgur.com/lyZ9Bhm.jpg inaccurate in appearance]] to the actual character, and they tend to look... well, [[http://jericosmotureviews.tripod.com/samuraiheman/samuraiheman.jpg stupid]]. This would be fine - just don't buy them and move on - except the stores tend to not be aware of this. Stores usually decide the figures that'll get put on shelves, and have a good deal of power in determining case assortments. Stores place much more stock in the most recognizable names, so they tend to request lots of same-character redecoes, which leads to [[EnsembleDarkhorse more minor characters]] getting shortpacked or going completely unreleased. As an example, one ''SpiderMan'' line featured, in one case, three Superposeable Spider-Mans, three Hydro Blast Spider-Mans, three Dual Web Swinging Spider-Man, and one Sandman. This has the paradoxical effect of turning characters who are normally very popular in fiction into Creator's Pets on the toy shelves, with many a fan bemoaning their local store containing nothing but a solid wall of Spider-Man in tacky outfits. In the case of [[WesternAnimation/HeManAndTheMastersOfTheUniverse2002 one series]], the Creator's Pet status of the main characters in this regard was widely blamed for the line's cancellation - it turned out kids didn't want to buy three Claw Grabber Skeletors any more than the collectors did.

** Lightning Dawn, Rhymey, and the Grand Ruler, especially Rhymey, whose [[RhymesOnADime constant rhyming shtick]] has led many a reader to declare him the most annoying character in the series. He even gets [[TakeThatScrappy chewed out]] for talking this way by UnintentionallySympathetic ex-Wonderbolt Ace Ray.

* Arachne in the first version of ''Theatre/SpidermanTurnOffTheDark'' was a HUGE CreatorsPet for director Julie Taymor. She got no less that three songs of her own (including one devoted to ''shoe shopping''), supplanted the Green Goblin as the main villain in Act Two, and [[LoveTriangle competed with Mary Jane as Peter's love interest]]. Julie insisted that not making Arachne's [[spoiler:redemption arc]] the main focus of Act Two would ruin the artistic merit of the play and compared cutting any of her songs or scenes to a ''mastectomy.'' After Taymor was fired, much of Arachne's role was cut out via an extensive ReTool, reducing her to TheArtifact.

* The Ride/DisneyThemeParks have Duffy the Disney Bear. The main problem most people have with Duffy is that he isn't ''from'' any of the Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon and/or Creator/{{Pixar}} films, the rides, shows, or live-action movies (compare him to [[EnsembleDarkhorse Figment]], WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb, and [[Franchise/PiratesOfTheCaribbean Captain Jack Sparrow]]). He simply exists [[MerchandiseDriven to sell merchandise of himself]], TastesLikeDiabetes, and yet has more presence in the parks than [[EnsembleDarkhorse Darkhorses]] like [[Disney/BigHero6 Hiro and Baymax]], [[Disney/{{Tangled}} Flynn Rider]] and [[WesternAnimation/DuckTales Scrooge McDuck]], [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome long-gone]] characters like Disney/{{Hercules}}, [[Disney/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame Quasimodo]] and Disney/{{Tarzan}}, and most of the Disney villains (who usually only appear for Meet and Greets at the Halloween parties). In addition, he's also managed to outlast a character from a [[VideoGame/KingdomHearts popular and ongoing video game series co-created by Disney]]. This is mostly a result of Duffy being a [[CashCowFranchise cash-cow]] in the Tokyo parks with desperate efforts to re-create the success abroad without realizing the cultural differences.