History Main / BadassDecay

* Skulker in ''DannyPhantom'' (Ghost Zone's Greatest Hunter) is able to take down nearly any ghostly beast--big or small--without any fear. [[TheMostDangerousGame He hunts for sports]] and Danny Phantom is his only real challenge, otherwise, he's competent. Then by the last season, in one episode, it's spurred away: his motivation to hunt Danny is just to impress his one-time girlfriend (who points out how horrible he does said job despite no evidence of such), and despite handling a giant ghost monster in the same episode, is unable to fight back against a ''regular teeny bird!'' A latter episode had him running away from mutant unicorns instead of combating. Other episodes seem to depict him back to his BadAss self, but they're often minor.

** It's also worth noting that Sylar's decay is unique because it is not self-inflicted. All of his 'good' moments seem to be the result of systematic brainwashing by Angela Petrelli, who needs Sylar to behave himself so that she can use him as her morally gray world-saving tool (as she did with Nathan Petrelli in Season 1.) Angela Petrelli is a renowned [[ManipulativeBastard Manipulative Bitch]] and [[MagnificentBastard Magnificent Bitch]], after all; perhaps Sylar is simply being out-badassed rather than in active decay.

** With AJ Styles, his roller coaster rides of badass to non-badass status usually depend on which former big name WWE/ECW wrestler TNA happens to hire at the time. Whenever a big name wrestler from WWE enters the scene, AJ Styles will either be made to play second fiddle to them(Christian Cage and Ric Flair) or be made to job to them(RVD).

** King Ghidorah may be one of the fastest examples of BadassDecay in film history. He went from being the ultimate evil in his film debut (''Ghidorah: The Three Headed Monster'') to being, quite literally, TheDragon in the very next film.
*** Also, he went from being a genuine threat that took three monsters to defeat and over six to kill in the Showa era to being ''easily'' dispatched by Godzilla alone with a single blast.
*** Showa Ghidorah: Probably one of the toughest opponent's Godzilla ever faced. Hesei Ghidorah: Pretty tough, managed to strangle Godzilla until soap suds came out (Watch the film). GMK Ghidorah: Completely owned. Three times.

*** With AJ Styles, his roller coaster rides of badass to non-badass status usually depend on which former big name WWE/ECW wrestler TNA happens to hire at the time. Whenever a big name wrestler from WWE enters the scene, AJ Styles will either be made to play second fiddle to them(Christian Cage and Ric Flair) or be made to job to them(RVD).

* [[TheNeverEndingStory The Neverending Story III]], among its many other flaws, did this to the Old Man of Wandering Mountain. In the original book, he was portrayed as an [[TimeAbyss ancient]], [[TheOmniscient omniscient]] ''[[ThePowersThatBe force]]'' of Fantastica who recorded all the events that ever existed in all of the boundless realm and penned the Neverending Story itself as it happened. No one could meet with him except by chance or destiny. He was the also the only character in the series who stared down the Childlike Empress without flinching or instantly obeying like everyone else. He was so powerful that he could invoke an infinity time loop by reading the story he had written, thus [[AndIMustScream trapping every being in the Neverending Story in the Circle of Eternal Return for all eternity.]] He was, in all respects, a being of the same class as the [[GodEmperor Childlike Empress]] and an equally powerful constant of Fantastica. However, in the film, he was portrayed as an eccentric, doddering old man, his book wrote itself, he considered a bunch of high school ruffians who called themselves, "The Nasty" to be a severe threat to himself and Fantasia, and what happened when he encountered the Empress? [[CharacterDerailment He groveled before her, like every other creature of Fantasia]], seeing it as an honor that she would visit him in the first place. ''[[SoBadItsHorrible Holy Crap.]]''

* {{Unicorn}}s in 2 and 3 were badass beasts with menacing eyes, fiery golden manes and badass goatees. In 4? Baby blue ponies that have rainbow colored hair and shed glitter while galloping. In 5? They regained their original color scheme, but the shape of their hair made them look like those toy horses little girls play with. Not that they ended up less effective, just very hard to take seriously.

* Agrael from ''{{Heroes of Might and Magic}} V''. He looks like a scary and wicked demon lord, but almost immediately he degenerates into sweet and cuddly and "I never meant to hurt anyone".

* {{Unicorn}}s in ''HeroesOfMightAndMagic'' 2 and 3 were badass beasts with menacing eyes, fiery golden manes and badass goatees. In 4? Baby blue ponies that have rainbow colored hair and shed glitter while galloping. In 5? They regained their original color scheme, but the shape of their hair made them look like those toy horses little girls play with. Not that they ended up less effective, just very hard to take seriously.

* A rather insignificant example of this is when it turns out Abe Sapien from {{Hellboy}} gets seasick in ''Drums of the Dead''. Abe remarks, "Being in the water is different from being on the water" or somesuch

* Duncan of the [[TotalDramaIsland Total Drama]] series started out as a bad boy [[JerkAss jerkass]] from juvie who was able to intimidate most of the other campers. Come the next two seasons, he starts to lose the intimidating aspect of him and occasionally gets his ass handed to him by some of the other campers.

-->''I was once a badass vampire. But love, and a pesky curse, defanged me. Now I'm just a big fluffy puppy with bad teeth.''

-->''Wolverine gets airsick. Ladies and gentlemen, the pussification has begun.''

[[BuffyTheVampireSlayer http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/plushspike.jpg]]
[[caption-width:234:Spike of ''BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', after a few seasons.]]

*** Yeah... evolved to someone really vulnerable to being thrown {{Distress Ball}}s at. All those unnecessary JamesBondage moments began AFTER he lets go of his vengeance tendencies, which marks his decay. He may be a complete person now, but in turn, he sacrificed his {{Badass}} points.

*** In all fairness, this was also the series that had Mace Windu single-handedly take on thousands of droids with little effort. It's not so much {{Badass Decay}} in his case as it is a badass being wounded by a ''greater'' badass.
*** The point is that it looks like BadassDecay because when he finally shows up in Episode 3, you wonder why they're setting up this wheezy useless guy as a major threat.
** And let's not forget, [[TheDogShotFirst Han]] [[MemeticMutation shot first!]] A rare case of ''retroactive'' BadassDecay, as the controversial change occurred in the 1997 re-release of the original trilogy.

*** Not to mention that it's been two years since the military found what weaponry works on Transformers. The cast was much better prepared this time.

*** This was more of a case of Optimus Prime no longer holding back. In the original Series, Optimus was almost exactly powerful as Megatron. During the fight in the city in the first movie, Optimus is concerned with minimizing both human casualties and collateral damage. In the forest battle, Optimus was free to move around and no longer carried the burden of trying to avoid harming humans.

*** This was, though, far more due to the fact that once he became the White Ranger, the PRU began revolving around Tommy, and everybody else looked worse in comparison. Even Billy (the weak, unskilled anime super-genius) managed to beat Goldar in hand-to-hand several episodes later. Tommy's skill levels went up at the same rate that Goldar's skill levels went down.
* Sylar is in danger of suffering from this in volume 3 of ''Series/{{Heroes}}''. It's one thing to be a KarmaHoudini. Giving him an [[InTheBlood excuse for killing people]] is approaching the border. Demonstrating that [[WellDoneSonGuy all he really needed was a hug]] in order to be a productive member of society and you're crossing the line.

*** The writers managed to handle it quite well. It seemed like they took a look at how [[HeelFaceRevolvingDoor they had]] [[CharacterDerailment treated Sylar in]] [[SeasonalRot Volume 3 and 4]] and decided they had screwed up his character so much that it was a lost cause to make him a villain again, so they just decided to run with making him a good guy while keeping him badass.

** They seem to have regained some of their badassery in the new series, despite being all but extinct.
*** More like ''because'' they were almost extinct. Overuse was the whole problem with the Time Lords, but the new series fixes that problem handily.

*** And now he's feuding with Mr. Anderson and lost the World Championship to Van Dam, now RVD is good, but RVD got the belt like a month after joining TNA, Styles didn't get a rematch, and is being upstaged by Kazarian.

*** It should be noted, however, that most of their weapons and troops are still in stasis, including some of their stronger weapons. Potentially, this opens up some new possibilities to making the army more interesting on the game board, end their Worfing once they get a new codex, because while it may have been fair to make the necrons less Mary Sue-ish, suddenly turning them from nigh impossible to kill monsters into standard target practice for Imperial Guardsmen is just too far. If Games Workshop only put some energy into making them more interesting to play (and cheaper too, the elites are about $120 for a full unit due to the lack of plastic models), making them about on par with Chaos or Tyranids in the fluff would probably not be taken so badly by the players.

** A thirteen-year-old-girl who ''happens'' to be [[LittleMissBadass The Empress Sanaki]] mind you.
*** For the unaware... Sanaki takes PlayingWithFire to the degree that her personal spell looks like ''she is dropping a fucking sun on her enemy''. [[FullMetalAlchemist Eat your heart out, Homunculus!]].

*** To elaborate, the leader of the Mages' Guild ''rips out his own soul'' and puts it inside a colossal black soul gem, functioning as a protective talisman against Mannimarco's ''enthrall'' spell, which instantly turns whatever it hits into a mindless zombie under his control. All he had as a backup plan was a silver dagger, mages in general are horrible melee combatants, and it's very hard to cast spells when someone is hacking you to pieces with a longsword.
**** Still, you'd think that ''one of the world's most powerful wizards'' would have ''something'' powerful up his sleeves, no matter what the situation...

*** ''Stitch!'' (the anime) took him down even further than the series did. He was indeed rather comedic and most often failed, but he was at least dedicated to his duty of capturing experiments, and he would rather spend time attacking the enemies than eating sandwiches. In ''Stitch!'', his first 'formula episode' appearance has him arguing with Reuben over flavours of sandwich, he cries uncontrollably after a sad moment in a television show (and is upset when Hamsterviel switches it off so that he can try to get Gantu to do something), and can hardly ever be said to attack. He doesn't even use his blaster even with it in the holster. But here's the doom sign; when Hamsterviel is the one who's reprimanding Reuben all the time, you know you've fallen pretty dang hard.

** The same can be said of ''GoingSane'' in which the Joker, thinking he killed Batman, regains his sanity, becomes an upstanding citizen, and becomes engaged to a woman, only to return to his old self when Batman is revealed to be alive. Amazingly this story made him even more terrifying. If the Joker's insanity isn't an unchangeable absolute in the DC Universe, nothing is certain.
*** The Joker puts the 'chaotic' in ChaoticEvil. He'd never be as consistent as to be evil ''all'' the time.

*** [[spoiler: And he ''still'' manages to be the most badass character on the show all the way to the end! Aversion indeed.]]

** More recently, Belkar has completely turned this trope on its head by learning that he can garner sympathy and influence by ''pretending'' to have a case of Badass Decay, after a vivid delusional debate with the only character in the series he's ever given much respect. Pretending to turn over a new (Bitter)leaf, Belkar has risked his life to save Haley Starshine--even though she abandoned him when he was in a similar situation--but only so that he could mock her about it afterward. He also ''selflessly'' refused to kill Haley's treacherous former friend, and convinced his companion to do it instead.
*** Of course, one could argue that this itself is a case of BadassDecay, or at the very least CharacterDevelopment. To say nothing of the potential for BecomingTheMask...
*** Alternatively, once could see it as HeroicSociopath decay, rather than as straight BadassDecay. He can still be as {{Badass}} as before, just slightly more moral (outwardly at least).
**** CharacterDevelopment? Yes. You'll never convince me that his HesBack moment around when he refused to kill Crystal (Haley's [[TheRival personal nemesis]]) was an example of BadassDecay; the jury's out, waiting for more evidence.
***** It seems obvious that if anything is more badass than murdering someone in revenge for betrayal, it's ''teaching someone else to do it in the spirit of education''. Belkar is so badass that it rubs off on spineless, helpless NPC priests.

* Stewie from ''FamilyGuy'' started the series as an aggressive, psychotic, evil genius plotting to take over the world and kill his mother, but by the fourth season, he [[CharacterDerailment inexplicably became]] much more [[AmbiguouslyGay effeminate]], petty, [[PingPongNaivete occasionally overly naive]], and immature, seemingly abandoning his evil ways. Now his evil-ness is only occasionally mentioned, for a quick joke. Though this is unlike most examples, as this was probably because they didn't think it would be funny for much longer.
** The two-parter "Stewie Kills Lois"/"Lois Kills Stewie" addresses this FailureIsTheOnlyOption issue. The ending reveals most of it was [[spoiler: a virtual reality simulation he was viewing to see what things would be like if he ''did'' decide to commit himself to his ambitions right now. It turns out that though he ''could'' pull off world domination, in the end he'd be killed.]] (There's some funny LampshadeHanging with Brian's comments on this story thus being a big tease.)
*** Now, he's pretty much full-on gay. He practically openly admits to Brian on several quick occasions of his homosexuality and he's picked up a lisp that's hard not to imitate.
*** And now, a recent Adult Swim bumper revealed it: in a Playboy magazine issue, the series creator confirmed Stewie is officially a homosexual. [[http://www.bumpworthy.com/bumps/1682 Adult Swim's reaction: And people in Paris speak French!]]
*** Did we mention that Stewie is only a year old?

* Kim from KimPossible goes from a GodModeSue to a regular BadAss with actual flaws.
** Which sounds a lot more like a [[CharacterDevelopment good thing]] than most of the examples on this page.