History Main / CCGImportanceDissonance

You've just run into CCG Importance Dissonance. This can crop up in other types of games, but it consists of an adaptation applying PowerCreepPowerSeep to the protagonists and extras to make the [[CompetitiveBalance game balanced,]] as well as giving just about everyone and everything on screen a card because they need a sizable amount of cards for a set. This can also manifest as {{De Power}}ing (or at times {{Nerf}}ing) main characters/ships/items into "okay" cards, while elevating several minor character in terms of power.

[[folder:Anime & Manga]]

** In general, the anime duel plotting tends to feature cards that block damage being far weaker (i.e. costing LP or resources, or not preventing destruction) and cards that draw cards being much stronger (i.e. "draw a card for each [X] monster on the field"). The real game places very harsh limits on draw power (anything above drawing one card is probably going to have heavy costs), while cards that can completely block damage at no cost for an entire turn are downright common and often barely see play.

* ''TabletopGame/YuGiOh'' has countless examples of this trope.
** The famous [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Blue-Eyes_White_Dragon Blue-Eyes White Dragon]] is a 3000 ATK monster that requires two Tributes (monsters removed from the field) and has no special effect; in the manga, it was powerful enough that [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney Seto Kaiba]] resorted to extortion and theft to collect every last one of them, but in the TCG that ensued, it's merely an expensive target. Likewise, Yugi's signature card, the [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Dark_Magician Dark Magician]], which requires two Tributes but has only 2500 ATK; arguably, it's received more support cards in later years than even the Blue-Eyes White Dragon could ever hope for, but it too is a white (black?) elephant, even if you're dedicated enough to theme an entire deck around him (and it's not even the strongest Normal Monster Spellcaster as his flavour text claims; Cosmo Queen has 2900 ATK). Not that ''all'' famous cards get this treatment, however; the very first duel featured in the manga included [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Summoned_Skull Summoned Skull]], a powerful and incredibly playable card for many years (2500 ATK, like the Dark Magician, but it only needs ''one'' Tribute), and [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Monster_Reborn Monster Reborn]], a powerful card that spent some time on the [[GameBreaker Forbidden List]]: it allows the player who uses it to bring back a monster from the Graveyard. ''Either player's'' Graveyard. Many of the most powerful cards, in fact, have either never appeared on the show or appeared only briefly. Nowadays it's not uncommon for each new expansion set to feature cards for an entire new deck archetype, which typically dominates the field for about 3-6 months before a new expansion renders it utterly moot: these archetypes are often based off of the decks of one-shot characters, or minor recurring ones, rather than the main protagonists.
*** Many of the more popular cards of the early anime, however, have instead become centerpieces to decently viable to near-staple level archetypes, meaning that while fairly weak on their own, they work well in a dedicated deck. Blue-Eyes and Dark Magician being the primary examples of this. A dedicated Blue-Eyes deck (with the release of new Blue-Eyes support in 2016), managed to win the [[TournamentPlay WCS]].
** A particular case of a minor character's deck becoming suddenly very powerful: Girag, in ''Anime/YuGiOhZEXAL'', was a secondary villain, and of his Main Deck monsters, we only ever saw a few even use their effects, only appearing for a few seconds to be used as material for his ace. Obviously, this made his cards a low priority, and so barring his ace, they weren't released until after ZEXAL had already wrapped up. But by then, PowerCreep had started to set in, and so the Hand monsters he used ended up getting significantly buffed to make them equal to the other cards in the set - leading to Girag's archetype having more tournament success than any of the other villains in his series!
** This is, of course, ignoring the cards that are straight-up {{Nerf}}ed from their anime counterparts. Pretty much every time the anime writers invent a card, when it gets turned into a real card, the designers tone it down to fit into the actual game... and then they tone it down some more. An infamous example was the [[Anime/YuGiOhArcV Pendulum Magicians]], every one of which to debut in the anime has gotten a ''massive'' {{Nerf}} to the point of unplayability, while the ones to debut in the game wind up being almost universally better. Which perhaps wouldn't be so irritating if they weren't the cards used by the main protagonist. In some cases, the card even bears almost no resemblance to its original form.
** If you play the card game as they did in the show originally (meaning, no sacrifices unless the card specifically says so), then Blue-Eyes is ungodly powerful in terms of straight beatdown. The rules of the real game are based on the second half of the Duel Monsters-era comic, the Battle City Arc; there's a reason that Kaiba relies less on Blue-Eyes White Dragon than on [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Blue-Eyes_Ultimate_Dragon Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon]], [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Obelisk_the_Tormentor_(original) Obelisk the Tormentor]], or [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/XYZ-Dragon_Cannon XYZ Dragon Cannon]] in that Arc, even though it's still his signature card and end-all-be-all answer to many duels.
** There is also something to be said about the lore of rarity in the comic. Originally, stars indicated levels of rarity, in a very overt PowerEqualsRarity way. Blue-Eyes White Dragon, for instance, is a level 8 monster, and only FOUR COPIES existed in the entire game. Level 7s were presumably also extremely rare, with probably only a handful existing in their own right (Kaiba was notably shocked when Yugi played Summoned Skull, at the time a Level 7 monster). This would explain why completing Exodia had "never been done before!" - if there were literally only a dozen or so "Exodia the Forbidden One" cards, and all the other pieces were equally as rare, the chances of ANYONE actually owning all five, let alone drawing them in a single game, was astronomically low. And, as most players were shown to only control level 1 through 4 monsters (which were presumably topped out at around 1200 attack, given the star levels originally shown), most would have only heard RUMORS of unbelievably rare cards like Red-Eyes Black Dragon, Summoned Skull, Dark Magician, and Blue-Eyes White Dragon, which could end the game in one attack (remember players originally had only 2000 LP, so one hit from a Blue-Eyes if you had a face-up 1000 Attack monster - a presumably otherwise-decent monster), and only a tiny cabal of people even knowing that something as gamebreakingly-powerful as Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon even existed. However, it's an ''abysmal'' business model. If there really ''were'' only four Blue-Eyes White Dragon cards in existence AND they were legal, they would each cost thousands upon thousands of dollars, because someone who had even one in their deck would have a monster that literally no-one else could actually beat in a head-to-head battle, which would quickly kill the allure of the game, not to mention the problem of only a handful of players being able to use the cards from the show. Instead, in real-life, such iconic and powerful cards were made commonplace.
** Cards that make cameos from other Konami franchises, which in their respective series are usually the BigBad or the hero, often find themselves dramatically underpowered. As an example, the [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Victory_Viper_XX03 Victory Viper XX03]] from VideoGame/{{Gradius}} and its counterparts, each of which is capable in-game of taking down an entire army including several nigh-invincible warships IN A ROW, are reduced to poor to mediocre monsters with decent effects that require them to have been powered up in the first place to use. Given that the game also includes an archetype capable of dropping monsters just as powerful as the aforementioned Blue-Eyes White Dragon, which are also an insta-nuke to the rest of the field.
** In Anime/YuGiOh5Ds, it's double-subverted with the Signer Dragons. In the series, they're treated as legendary divine servants, one of a kind and an ace in their own right. The in-game Signer Dragons vary quite a bit in power (Blackfeather Dragon is pretty lame, Red Demon's Dragon is a decent beatstick, Power Tool Dragon is an alright card [[PowerUpLetdown until it evolves]], Black Rose Dragon is a very nasty surprise, Stardust Dragon is a near-staple, and Ancient Fairy Dragon was banned), but bar maybe AFD (which is, ironically, treated as one of the weaker ones), none of them are quite the insane legendary cards they're usually hyped up to be. Their main advantages are [[BoringButPractical splashability and ease of Summoning]]; none of them have super-high stats, and none of them really have the firepower to win a Duel on their own (unless you count the [[SuperMode upgraded versions]] of Stardust and Red Demon's).
** In ''Anime/YuGiOhZEXAL'', all the Numbers have their "[[TakesOneToKillOne can only be destroyed in battle by another Number]]" effect removed. This is pretty obviously because the Numbers would be a bit too unbalanced otherwise. One card, Number Wall, even adds the effect back in while it's active.
** The Egyptian God Cards from the original series were eventually made into tournament-legal cards for the game. All of their effects were {{Nerf}}ed in some way, but the nerfing was done more than proportionately to the cards' power in the manga and anime, meaning that Obelisk the Tormentor, which was the ''weakest'' of the Gods originally, became the most useful in the real game, whereas the Winged Dragon of Ra, which was the most powerful originally, became the weakest, to the point that its main strategy in the anime was now straight-up unusable. Taken UpToEleven when Ra Sphere Mode was released as a separate card to support it. In the anime, Ra Sphere Mode was literally worse than useless, consisting of Ra being stuck in half-shift in the hands of an unworthy user and unable to do anything. On the other hand, the real Ra Sphere Mode is considered to be the only reason that the standard Ra is worth playing, since it initially summons itself to the opponent's field (eating up three of their monsters in the process), then switches control to you and turns into the standard Ra with a free attack boost. Many players even ignore Ra entirely and ''just run Sphere Mode.''
** Nerfing happens regularly between the anime and the game. The Eye of Timaeus is another infamous example; in the anime, it could potentially fuse with ''any'' Monster to create a game-winning super-dragon, though it was mostly used in tandem with Dark Magician and Dark Magician Girl. When its real-game counterpart finally came out, it could ''only'' fuse with those two cards, turning it from a universal support card to a pretty weak one for a single archetype. (Then again, expressing its anime effect in the real game would be completely impossible.)
** An odd case is in an individual ''character's'' Deck. In ''Anime/YuGiOh5Ds,'' one of the main characters, Crow, uses Black-Winged Dragon as an ace card and it's repeatedly emphasized that Black-Winged Dragon is the servant of a God and his best card. This is despite the fact that, prior to using Black-Winged Dragon, he often played Blackwing Armor Master, which was considered to be an extremely strong card for its time, while Black-Winged Dragon is a near JunkRare.
** Creator/KazukiTakahashi actually lampshaded this in the author's note of the twelfth volume of Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelist, saying "There's one problem when trying to express the fun of card games in manga form. In a real card game, the closer the players' skill levels are, the more fun it is... but in a manga, you need to show how the main character can beat overwhelmingly powerful opponents. So don't be mad if the score or effects of the cards in are different from the official card game version."
** The MagicPokerEquation is another factor that can make identical cards seem stronger in the anime and manga than reality; the fictional players don't have to rely on blind luck to draw the cards that make up their strategy, so cards and combos that are AwesomeButImpractical in real life can be more reliable in fiction.
*** This, then, results in the main characters' cards having a distinct lack of focus as opposed to the greater specialization in the decks of most other Dueling characters. Not helping matters is how the protagonists tend to use increasing numbers of [[NewPowersAsThePlotDemands cards that are specifically for a particular situation]] and never show up again. Yugi's Deck suffers from it worst: despite him being the King of Games and his Deck looking like a JackOfAllTrades to let him contend with any opponent, the contents of his Deck are a mishmash of cards that don't gel together very well outside of what can only be possible in the anime, putting the Deck ''hard'' into MasterOfNone territory in reality.
*** Jaden's Elemental Hero cards were also a pretty bad case of this -- many of his cards were ported from the anime to the card game without any adjustments made, and because he had so much dueling screentime and used a wide variety of cards that were wildly situational, a ''lot'' of these cards were viewed as pack filler or {{Junk Rare}}s. His Neos cards were worse due to the cards focusing on the level 7 Normal Monster Neos, an array of weak Neo-Spacians, Fusion Monsters that can't stay on the field without their special Field Spell, and ''loads'' of situational support cards that don't help the deck with making its plays.
** An odd case of this is with attack-blocking Traps. In the game proper, one of the first attack-blockers made was Waboku (can be activated at any time, protects all monsters from being destroyed and reduces all damage to 0 for the turn), and there are many cards that arguably beat it out since then (Threatening Roar, which prevents the opponent from making a singe attack for the turn, the Mirror Forces, which wipe out the opponent's monsters when they attack, and a mess of others). However, the RuleOfDrama dictates that it wouldn't be very interesting for the opponent's attacks to do absolutely nothing for a turn, so supposed masters of the game have an odd habit of using cards that are basically Waboku but worse, either [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Card_Defense only blocking one attack]], [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Half_Unbreak_(anime) not blocking all damage]], [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Hero_Spirit_(anime) not saving monsters from destruction]], or [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Soul_Shield possessing heavy costs]]. The inversion of this is with drawing-related cards, which tend to be a lot more common and powerful in the anime compared to the card game (for basically the same reason - if the character can draw a lot, they can pull off more impressive strategies). One of the most infamously banned cards is one that lets you draw two cards - imagine how overpowered something that lets you draw five or six cards would be!
** This is also the case for many cards and archetypes that, within the lore of the actual game, are supposed to be very weak or very powerful. Constellar Sombre and Evilswarm Kerykeion supposedly killed a creator deity and helped recreate the universe, but they're Level 4s with middling ATK stats and are used in their archetypes as play-extenders rather than game-winning aces. The Danger!s are just [[OurCryptidsAreMoreMysterious random cryptids]] with no apparent special abilities, but generated such consistent FTK plays that they saw a ton of cards limited. And then there's the many instances of a card's in-universe upgraded form being worse than the original--just ask Exciton Knight, who loses his ridiculously potent quick-effect field-nuke and very generic requirements upon becoming a chosen holy warrior in favor of a less potent destruction effect and being locked to a specific archetype.
** This has even had the game do it to itself at times. The release of ''VideoGame/YuGiOhDuelLinks'' saw a lot of cards and archetypes generally seen as worthless suddenly rising to the top of the meta due to the game's power ceiling being a lot lower. Bacon Saver, for instance, was seen as pack-filler in its time because its effect was just a crappier version of Electromagnetic Turtle or Necro Gardna, but when ported to a game where those cards didn't exist, it suddenly became quite viable.

** Averted in terms of rarity. The super rare foil cards are usually legendary monsters like Mewtwo and Zekrom.

[[folder: Anime & Manga ]]

[[folder: CCG ]]

[[folder: Comic Books ]]

[[folder: Film ]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

[[folder: Tabletop Games ]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

[[folder: Web Comics ]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

** An odd case of this is with attack-blocking Traps. In the game proper, one of the first attack-blockers made was Waboku (can be activated at any time, protects all monsters from being destroyed and reduces all damage to 0 for the turn), and there are many cards that arguably beat it out since then (Threatening Roar, which blocks all attacks for the turn, the Mirror Forces, which wipe out the opponent's monsters when they attack, and a mess of others). However, the RuleOfDrama dictates that it wouldn't be very interesting for the opponent's attacks to do absolutely nothing for a turn, so supposed masters of the game have an odd habit of using cards that are basically Waboku but worse, either [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Card_Defense only blocking one attack]], [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Half_Unbreak_(anime) not blocking all damage]], [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Hero_Spirit_(anime) not saving monsters from destruction]], or [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Soul_Shield possessing heavy costs]]. The inversion of this is with drawing-related cards, which tend to be a lot more common and powerful in the anime compared to the card game (for basically the same reason - if the character can draw a lot, they can pull off more impressive strategies). One of the most infamously banned cards is one that lets you draw twice - imagine how overpowered something that lets you draw five or six times would be!

** Charizard. While it's one of the most iconic Pokémon in the franchise, in the games it's a JackOfAllStats leaning towards GlassCannon; until its Mega Evolutions showed up, it was considered fairly unremarkable. In the TCG, it's consistently depicted as an extreme brute-force MightyGlacier with attacks that outdamage most Legendary Pokémon, and is designed to be AwesomeButImpractical akin to many "legendary" ''Yu-Gi-Oh!'' monsters with high stats.

* ''VideoGame/HearthstoneHeroesOfWarcraft'' both uses and averts this trope. Many of the most powerful cards in the game are very well-known characters such as Sylvanas Windrunner, Alexstrasza and Tirion Fordring. Many of the most powerful and famous characters aren't represented on a card, but instead represent a character class (Medivh, Garrosh Hellscream, Anduin Wrynn, etc.) However, there are several cards that have power way above or below the level that lore would appoint them. Some examples:
** Illidan Stormrage, one of the most powerful characters in all of Warcraft lore; rogue Demon Hunter who went toe-to-toe with Death Knight Arthas at full power and fought him to a standstill. In-game, his card is hilariously nonthreatening, and generally just makes a couple of tiny chump tokens before getting effortlessly killed. His original design was actually a lot more powerful and disruptive, but he turned out to be *too* good, so he was changed to his current form before the start of the Beta test.
*** Illidan was so poor, his minion was eventually removed from the game entirely and replaced with the mechanically identical but more lore-appropriate Xavius. Illidan himself was PromotedToPlayable as the representative for the new Demon Hunter class.

** Poor, poor Bolvar Fordragon. In the lore he's one of the coolest, most badass paladins of all time. Regent of Stormwind, commander of the forces that stormed Northrend, and so noble that he willingly chose to endure an eternity as the Lich King's vessel just to hold its evil in check. His card is hilariously bad, albeit very flavorful. He got a second chance in ''Knights of the Frozen Throne''... and isn't much better there.

** The famous [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Blue-Eyes_White_Dragon Blue-Eyes White Dragon]] is a 3000 ATK monster that requires two Tributes (monsters removed from the field) and has no effect; in the manga, it was powerful enough that [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney Seto Kaiba]] resorted to extortion and theft to collect every last one of them, but in the TCG that ensued, it's merely an expensive target. Likewise, Yugi's signature card, the [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Dark_Magician Dark Magician]], which requires two Tributes but has only 2500 ATK; arguably, it's received more support cards in later years than even the Blue-Eyes White Dragon could ever hope for, but it too is a white (black?) elephant, even if you're dedicated enough to theme an entire deck around him (and it's not even the strongest Normal Monster Spellcaster as his flavour text claims; Cosmo Queen has 2900 ATK). Not that ''all'' famous cards get this treatment, however; the very first duel featured in the manga included [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Summoned_Skull Summoned Skull]], a powerful and incredibly playable card for many years (2500 ATK, like the Dark Magician, but it only needs ''one'' Tribute), and [[http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Monster_Reborn Monster Reborn]], a powerful card that spent some time on the [[GameBreaker Forbidden List]]: it allows the player who uses it to bring back a monster from the Graveyard. ''Either player's'' Graveyard. Many of the most powerful cards, in fact, have either never appeared on the show or appeared only briefly. Nowadays it's not uncommon for each new expansion set to feature cards for an entire new deck archetype, which typically dominates the field for about 3-6 months before a new expansion renders it utterly moot: these archetypes are often based off of the decks of one-shot characters, or minor recurring ones, rather than the main protagonists.

** And then there is [[http://wiki.mtgsalvation.com/article/Gerrard_Capashen Gerrard Capashen]]. Plot-wise, he is a pinnacle of ages-long eugenics plan formulated by Urza, a powerful and very intelligent Planeswalker. Gerrard was specially engineered as a "Super-Soldier", to fight the denizens of Phyrexia, also known as ''The Nine Hells''. Gerrard also receives several whole sets of cards dedicated to his (and his skyship's) crew: Weatherlight Adventures (Which is the name of one of the expansions). His card? [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=209157 Utterly unremarkable]]. Bonus points for the card flat-out losing to every other card representing opponents that Gerrard defeated or overcame in the novels.

** The series' main villain of many years, Yawgmoth, also couldn't get a card printed depicting him because he was so powerful that a large group of old-style planeswalkers (mages powerful enough that they could create their own planes of existence if they wanted to-new-style planeswalkers are ''substantially'' weaker) armed with soul-powered nukes could only barely defeat him after hitting him with a weapon forged from Urza's thousands of years of [[ThePlan planning]] on Urza's part. Several cards depicting aspects of Yawgmoth have been printed over the years, including [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=15193 Yawgmoth's Bargain]] and [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=5629 Yawgmoth's Will]], which are well into GameBreaker territory. Given that WordOfGod states Yawgmoth is DeaderThanDead, it's unlikely the game's most iconic villain will ever be rendered in card form, even ''if'' it wouldn't be the equivalent of having {{God}} as a Top Trumps card.

** [[LightNovel/{{SwordArtOnline}} Silica]] is another example of this. While in the anime she barely appeared for more than a few episodes and only appearing as one of Kirito's possible love interests, there's a whole entire set of her in both volumes of the series' respective boosters, which has been shown in tournaments to be a [[GameBreaker Game Breaker]] sometimes. Her signed card is priced at [[http://www.ideal808.com/catalog/weiss_schwarz_singles-sword_art_online_en/silicas_unyielding_trust__special_parallel_sp__saos20e051sp_english_edition/110428 $75]], and that's just her Level 0 variant!

** Many recent sets have introduced multiple filler ninjas in order to try and give the decks more variety in what ninjas they can play.

** This is, of course, ignoring the cards that are straight-up {{Nerf}}ed from their anime counterparts. Pretty much every time the anime writers invent a card, when it gets turned into a real card, the designers tone it down to fit into the actual game... and then they tone it down some more. An infamous recent example was the [[Anime/YuGiOhArcV Pendulum Magicians]], every one of which to debut in the anime has gotten a ''massive'' {{Nerf}} to the point of unplayability, while the ones to debut in the game wind up being almost universally better. Which perhaps wouldn't be so irritating if they weren't the cards used by the main protagonist. In some cases, the card even bears almost no resemblance to its original form.

** For a time, one of the top figures was the Iron Pharaoh. An AncientEgyptian version of ComicBook/IronMan that never actually appears in any comic, just on one variant cover, once.

* ''TabletopGame/HeroClix'' has produced very many figures in various combinations of usefulness. Contrary to PopularityPower though, quite a few A tier heroes aren't as powerful as you'd hope, while a few B and C list heroes are pretty darn powerful and useful. Examples are:
* First generation Controller, a no-name villain who starts out super strong, but rather than get weak when damaged gains mind control.
** Fire Lord, a minor herald of Galactus who was super powerful and insanely cheap to play. At one point it was common to see teams composed of several big-name superheroes and a nameless Hydra Medic, or other cheap healer. ** For a time, one of the top figures was the Iron Pharaoh. An AncientEgyptian version of IronMan that never actually appears in any comic, just on one variant cover, once.

** Dr. Boom, a pop-culture parody character of Marvel Comics' Dr. Doom. In World of Warcraft he's a very easy joke boss that the player handles solo during some quests in a remote corner of the world. In Hearthstone, on the other hand, he's considered one of the most powerful and desirable cards in the whole game, since he has excellent value for his stats, is hard to cleanly remove and can easily go into almost any deck. For awhile it was just about guaranteed that your opponent was packing one of these bad boys. In fact, he was so infamous for his brokenness that he reached AscendedExtra status and got to be the star of his own ''expansion''.

* ''TabletopGame/HeroClix'' has produced very many figures in various combinations of usefulness. Contrary to PopularityPower though, quite a few A tier heroes aren't as powerful as you'd hope, while a few B and C list heroes are pretty darn powerful and useful. Examples are first generation Controller, a no-name villain who starts out super strong, but rather than get weak when damaged gains mind control, and Fire Lord, a minor herald of Galactus who was super powerful and insanely cheap to play. At one point it was common to see teams composed of several big-name superheroes and a nameless Hydra Medic, or other cheap healer.
** For a time, one of the top figures was the Iron Pharaoh. An AncientEgyptian version of IronMan that never actually appears in any comic, just on one variant cover, once.

** Illidan Stormrage, one of the most powerful characters in all of Warcraft lore; rogue Demon Hunter who went toe-to-toe with Death Knight Arthas at full power and fought him to a standstill. In-game, his card is hilariously easy to kill and nonthreatening, and generally just makes a couple of tiny chump tokens before getting effortlessly killed. His original design was actually a lot more powerful and disruptive, but he turned out to be *too* good, so he was changed to his current form before the start of the Beta test.
** Leeroy Jenkins, a goofy joke character from a viral video. For a long time he was one of the most dreaded finishers in the game, despite not even being a real character in the lore. He was actually so brutal that he received a nerf.

*** Incidentally, an expansion set contains a new version of some of the most iconic characters, including Deathwing, which is much better than its original version.

** Not to mention IRL, a stereo system is detrimental to racing, as it adds dead weight to the car and serves no useful purpose whatsoever. Unless you're trying [[Film/TheFastAndTheFurious to attract females.....]]

* The ''TabletopGame/StarWarsCustomizableCardGame'' not only has mooks but also gives cards and brief bios for very minor characters, such as those only seen in the Mos Eisley Cantina. It also averted the original PowerCreepPowerSeep problem by issuing new versions of major characters, each with different situational talents. FarmBoy / Vanilla Luke was good at flying; "Commander Luke Skywalker" was adapted to life on Hoth; "Son Of Skywalker" got bonuses when undergoing Jedi training; etc. (Amusingly, Decipher decided to treat "Senator Palpatine" and "The Emperor" as two separate people, one working for the Light Side and the other Dark, so opposing players can each control a version. But the game was cancelled before they could figure out how to deal with Anakin.)

[[folder: Web Comics ]]

* The strongest card in the ''Webcomic/PennyArcade'' deckbuilding game (and one of the strongest in any deckbuilding game) is Bat-milk, based on a one-panel gag in [[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/8/14 this comic]]. It's a cheap card that lets you reveal the next two cards from your deck, adding them to your hand if they're green (cash) or trashing them if they're red (combat). Since it is ''itself'' a green card, a few of them will very quickly leave you with a green-only deck that draws itself every turn for massive profit. The only real way to compete with a Bat-milk deck is with another Bat-milk deck, and the game is likely to just come down to who buys more before they run out.
** In the same vein, in the first product ever released for the Universal Fighting System, the Penny-Arcade Battle Pack, Tycho overclassed Gabe by a mile as one of the strongest characters in the game, where Gabe is largely considered one of the worst.
* Killer Robot Games' ''Legendary Showdown'' is a card game which draws material from three webcomics: ''Webcomic/TheAdventuresOfDrMcNinja'', ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'', and ''Webcomic/GunnerkriggCourt''. While the ''Dr. [=McNinja=]'' cards are relatively accurate in terms of their relative power, the second edition cards (GG and GK) are much less consistent with their source material.
** For example: Maxim, Oggie, and Dimo are all 5 point cards on a 0-10 pt scale (except for two 12-pt cards) despite being members of the super soldier race of Jaegars and shown to be much more dangerous than nearly every other Girl Genius character featured in the game.
** Meanwhile, Antimony Carver is a 9 point card, despite the fact that she is pretty weak compared to most other GK characters in the game as she is a rather thin teenage girl with little to no mundane combat training or experience using her fire powers in combat. She is very commonly shown to be outmatched when a fight breaks out in the comic.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]
* The short-lived ''[[WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' trading card game did this by flat-out ''inventing'' four different characters and then basing whole decks around them. Afiko, who betrayed the Airbenders in Aang's time, Malu, one of the last survivors of the Airbender purge, Kinto, a Waterbender who was banished for cruel pranks, and an earthbending bandit named Jojo were all created by Upper Deck and never appeared in any other media, despite early promotional material hinting they would show up in the TV series. All four have since been considered non-canon. In Upper Deck's defense, the card game was developed in the show's infancy and never went past season one, meaning some of the most popular characters never got introduced in time to make it into card form.
* ''WesternAnimation/DragonBooster'' had a CCG, among a ton of other merchandise which sunk. Every character was named-but only a few were ones from the actual show. The rest were mainly crew members who were made up to fill out the ranks of the various racing crews.
* Most of the powerful cards in the ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' CCG are the Mane 6 themselves, but a few background characters stand out as unusually prominent. Most notable is probably Lady Justice, the (implied) daughter of the Mayor of Ponyville, who appears for three seconds in one musical number, but is a prominent part of many, many powerful decks. It's also worth noting that Mr Beaverton Beaverteeth (a beaver) is evenly matched with either Princess Celestia or Princess Luna in a face-off (the closest thing the game has to combat), and Big Macintosh can usually defeat both of them simultaneously.

[[/folder]]

** Rina is a Game Breaker 12★, but in [[Anime/PhantasyStarOnline2TheAnimation the anime]], she's more or less a love interest who spends half of her important scenes as a DamselInDistress. Itsuki, who is TheProtagonist, and Aika, who is [[spoiler:a secret agent from Oracle and Itsuki's connection to ARKS]], don't hold a candle to Rina's Chip in ''es''.

** The gods of Theros are tremendously powerful semi-physical incarnation of concepts that can be truly killed only by a mystical weapon forged by Purphoros. In game [[http://magiccards.info/query?q=deicide&v=card&s=cname deicide]] is surprisingly trivial.

*** Many of the more popular cards of the early anime, however, have instead become centerpieces to decently viable to near-staple level archetypes, meaning that while fairly weak on their own, they work well in a dedicated deck. Blue-Eyes, Red-Eyes, and to a lesser extent Dark Magician being the primary examples of this. A dedicated Blue-Eyes deck (with the release of new Blue-Eyes support in 2016), managed to win the [[TournamentPlay WCS]].

*** Many of the more popular cards of the early anime, however, have instead become centerpieces to decently viable to near-staple level archetypes, meaning that while fairly weak on their own, they work well in a dedicated deck. Blue-Eyes, Red-Eyes, and to a lesser extent Dark Magician being the primary examples of this. A dedicated Blue-Eyes deck ( with the release of new Blue-Eyes support in 2016),managed to win the [[TournamentPlay WCS]].

** There is also something to be said about the lore of rarity in the comic. Originally, stars indicated levels of rarity, in a very overt PowerEqualsRarity way. Blue-Eyes White Dragon, for instance, is a level 8 monster, and only FOUR COPIES existed in the entire game. Level 7s were presumably also extremely rare, with probably only a handful existing in their own right (Kaiba was notably shocked when Yugi played Summoned Skull, at the time a Level 7 monster). This would explain why completing Exodia had "never been done before!" - if there were literally only a dozen or so "Exodia the Forbidden One" cards, and all the other pieces were equally as rare, the chances of ANYONE actually owning all five, let alone drawing them in a single game, was astronomically low. And, as most players were shown to only control level 1 through 4 monsters (which were presumably topped out at around 1200 attack, given the star levels originally shown), most would have only heard RUMORS of unbelievably rare cards like Red-Eyes Black Dragon, Summoned Skull, Dark Magician, and Blue-Eyes White Dragon, which could end the game in one attack (remember players originally had only 2000 LP, so one hit from a Blue-Eyes if you had a face-up 1000 Attack monster - a presumably otherwise-decent monster), and only a tiny cabal of people even knowing that something as gamebreakingly-powerful as Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon even existed. However, it's an ''abysmal'' business model. If there really ''were'' only four Blue-Eyes White Dragon cards in existence AND they were legal, they would each cost thousands upon thousands of dollars, because someone who had even one in their deck would have a monster that literally no-one else could actually beat in a head-to-head battle, which would quickly kill the allure of the game. Instead, in real-life, such iconic and powerful cards were made commonplace.