History YMMV / ADifferentLesson

** The Vault of Heroes, an underground cavern shrine to ancient kung fu masters filled with giant 100-foot statuary and housed beneath the Jade Palace steps, was originally going to be the site of Po's FinalBattle with Tai Lung, complete with statues of a snow leopard and panda. Here it is where Chao was imprisoned, and where the FinalBattle between his forces and the Jade Palace crew takes place. (Another form of it appeared as the states surrounding the stairs to the Jade Palace in ''WesternAnimation/KungFuPanda3''.)

* RomanticPlotTumor (averted): Though Tai Lung and Tigress’s romance is important, particularly to his development as a character and his ability to resist the BigBad, and quite a bit of time is devoted to it, it was always planned to be so. At the same time, there’s much much more going on in the story than just this, as the length of the main page can attest.

-->'''Tai Lung''': Just what d'you suppose would happen if you used the ultimate ''chi'' move on the ultimate master of ''chi''? The least that would happen is it blowing up in your face and doing absolutely nothing. Worse, you might just make him stronger...or allow him to turn it back on you, corrupt you, vaporize you...

** [[spoiler:Any scene where Monkey is feeling guilty for killing Mantis.]]

** The aforementioned [[PsychoForHire Xiu]] is Chao's death-loving PsychoSupporter who desires to be the best assassin in her empire. She [[{{Patricide}} killed her own father]] for being "weak" and framed it on her sister, Jia, making making her a wanted criminal. Xiu twisted and manipulated Jia into serving her as an assassin who believed her father's death was her fault. She poisoned countless soldiers who had been fighting the Huns and caused others to abandon or betray China just to avoid that fate. Upon being discovered as a traitor, she murdered her kung fu master and fled. She tried to manipulate Tai Lung into joining her with lies about his family, including planting doubts regarding Shifu and Oogway's love and pride in him. She kidnaps and traumatizes Ping, kills Zhuang and frames Tai Lung for it, and makes multiple attempts to kill Po and Tigress. She is willing to let her sisters die to achieve her goals, and after they start having second thoughts and try to resist her, she is determined to kill them when [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness she no longer needs them anymore]].

** The aforementioned [[PsychoForHire Xiu]] is Chao's death-loving PsychoSupporter who desires to be the best assassin in her empire. She [[{{Patricide}} killed her own father]] for being "weak" and framed it on her sister, Jia, making making her a wanted criminal. Xiu twisted and manipulated Jia into serving her as an assassin who believed her father's death was her fault. She poisoned countless soldiers who had been fighting the Huns and caused others to abandon or betray China just to avoid that fate. Upon being discovered as a traitor, she murdered her kung fu master and fled. She tried to manipulate Tai Lung into joining her with lies about his family, including planting doubts regarding Shifu and Oogway's love and pride in him. She kidnaps and traumatizes Ping, kills Zhuang and frames Tai Lung for it, and makes multiple attempts to kill Po and Tigress. She is willing to let her sisters die to achieve her goals, and after they start having second thoughts and try to resist her, she is determined to kill them when [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness she no longer needs them any more]].

* CompleteMonster: Both Chao and Xiu take this trope and run with it gleefully, enjoying every bit of what they do, with no remorse or regrets, and no sign they could be redeemed or ever would be. In detail:
** The acts Chao perpetrates are especially, and truly, unforgivable, and they only get worse as the story goes on. His very first act as a villain was slaughtering the entire class of young kung fu students at the Jade Palace, then killing all of his fellow masters and former friends (leaving only Oogway alive, who is the one that defeated and imprisoned him). Of note is the fact [[DemonicPossession he used his dark chi to take control of several of them]], or [[MoreThanMindControl inflame their rage to the point they lost control, and thus made them kill each other, too]], and that he got sexually aroused by some of this. In the present day, when he is free again, he possesses both Vachir and [[spoiler:Monkey]] (the former is shown completely onscreen and is a particularly horrific MindRape). Vachir's body, [[AndIMustScream with his soul in helpless residence]], is then forced to commit countless murders ([[WouldHurtAChild including of children]]), leaving behind all kinds of bloody, mutilated bodies that are crucified or otherwise displayed in gruesome ways, all just to get Tai Lung to go and face him. The story says the number of victims is anywhere from 50 to 100, possibly more, and what is done to them is actually shown without a discretion shot for four victims. He incites a HatePlague through [[spoiler:Monkey]] that causes the rest of the Five to start becoming suspicious, argumentative, and eventually turning on each other. He corrupts and poisons the Sacred Pool so as to cast his shadow over the whole Valley and [[spoiler:[[PeoplePuppets possess everyone in town]]]], which leads to a rather monstrous KangarooCourt for Tai Lung when he's put on trial for a murder he's been framed for and everyone becomes a mob out for his blood. He raises [[spoiler:the Anvil of Heaven]] from the dead to fight the heroes, and later unleashes demons from the spirit world. He forces [[spoiler:Monkey]] to try to kill both Mantis and Tigress, and the former would have actually died if not for Oogway's spirit. (And [[spoiler:Monkey]] believed he was dead, so he suffered from the guilt for that.) He hangs a couple of victims on grappling hooks from the ceiling of their own basement, with their son's dead, gutted body between them, and leaves them there for a month and a half to slowly bleed to death and enrich his chi with their fear and agony. (One of them suffered EyeScream too.) He nearly ages one character to death, hires the Wu Sisters to kill Po, and while he was imprisoned his soul, wandering by astral projection, helped corrupt and twist Tai Lung, thus pushing him into committing his rampage and keeping him insane and focused on revenge while in Chorh-Gom. He even betrays Xiu in the end despite her unwavering loyalty, trying to draw out all her chi to power himself. And all of this was done so as to [[ImmortalityImmorality live forever]] and [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans force his vision of perfection on the world]]...
** Xiu, meanwhile, [[{{Patricide}} killed her own father]] just for being "weak" and good, and then [[{{Frameup}} framed her sister Jia for it]]--making everyone (including her half-sister Mei Ling and her stepmother) believe she was guilty so they would turn on her, as well as making her a wanted criminal; by these acts she [[ManipulativeBitch twisted and manipulated]] Jia into [[ForcedIntoEvil obeying and serving her implicitly as an assassin]], keeping her broken and pitifully under her thumb for years by making her believe it was all her fault. She poisoned countless soldiers who had been fighting the Huns, and made others so terrified to be put under her care as a nurse that they deserted or betrayed China just to avoid that fate; when this was discovered, she murdered her kung fu master and fled. She tried to manipulate Tai Lung into joining her with lies about his family (and also helped plant doubts regarding Shifu and Oogway's love and pride in him so he would fixate on the Dragon Scroll to earn them). She kidnaps and traumatizes Ping, kills [[spoiler:Zhuang]] and frames Tai Lung for it, and nearly kills Po and Tigress on several occasions--the former despite the fact Po's parents had made the Wu Sisters promise to look out for him. She is willing to let her sisters die to achieve her goals, and in fact after they start having second thoughts and try to resist her, she is determined to kill them [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness when she no longer needs them any more]]. And she longs to have the same powers Chao had so she could do the same things he did, all because she loves death, wants to be the best assassin in the empire, and to have the power to control life and death, determining at her whim who would survive and who wouldn't. Most disturbing of all, while everyone else (even her sisters) is sickened and disturbed by Chao and the things he does, Xiu loves them and gleefully supports him in everything he does; in fact [[EvilFeelsGood the feeling of Chao's dark chi actually causes her ecstasy so that she wants to bathe in it]].

* HarsherInHindsight: According to WordOfGod, an appropriate voice for Hai the elephant would be Creator/DianneWiest. This is the woman who, as the Evil Queen of ''Series/TheTenthKingdom'', spoke the line, "If I hear one whisper, one rumor, that anything is amiss, I will kill your children in front of you." [[spoiler:This is precisely what happened to poor Hai herself.]]

** The acts Chao perpetrates are especially, and truly, unforgivable, and they only get worse as the story goes on. His very first act as a villain was slaughtering the entire class of young kung fu students at the Jade Palace, then killing all of his fellow masters and former friends (leaving only Oogway alive, who is the one that defeated and imprisoned him). Of note is the fact [[DemonicPossession he used his dark chi to take control of several of them]], or [[MoreThanMindControl inflame their rage to the point they lost control, and thus made them kill each other, too]], and that he got sexually aroused by some of this. In the present day, when he is free again, he possesses both Vachir and [[spoiler:Monkey]] (the former is shown completely onscreen and is a particularly horrific MindRape). Vachir's body, [[AndIMustScream with his soul in helpless residence]], is then forced to commit countless murders ([[WouldHurtAChild including of children]]), leaving behind all kinds of bloody, mutilated bodies that are crucified or otherwise displayed in gruesome ways, all just to get Tai Lung to go and face him. The story says the number of victims is anywhere from 50 to 100, possibly more, and what is done to them is actually shown without a discretion shot for four victims. He incites a HatePlague through [[spoiler:Monkey]] that causes the rest of the Five to start becoming suspicious, argumentative, and eventually turning on each other. He corrupts and poisons the Sacred Pool so as to cast his shadow over the whole Valley and [[spoiler:[[PeoplePuppets possess everyone in town]]]], which leads to a rather monstrous KangarooCourt for Tai Lung when he's put on trial for a murder he's been framed for and everyone becomes a mob out for his blood. He raises the Anvil of Heaven from the dead to fight the heroes, and later unleashes demons from the spirit world. He forces [[spoiler:Monkey]] to try to kill both Mantis and Tigress, and the former would have actually died if not for Oogway's spirit. (And [[spoiler:Monkey]] believed he was dead, so he suffered from the guilt for that.) He hangs a couple of victims on grappling hooks from the ceiling of their own basement, with their son's dead, gutted body between them, and leaves them there for a month and a half to slowly bleed to death and enrich his chi with their fear and agony. (One of them suffered EyeScream too.) He nearly ages one character to death, hires the Wu Sisters to kill Po, and while he was imprisoned his soul, wandering by astral projection, helped corrupt and twist Tai Lung, thus pushing him into committing his rampage and keeping him insane and focused on revenge while in Chorh-Gom. He even betrays Xiu in the end despite her unwavering loyalty, trying to draw out all her chi to power himself. And all of this was done so as to [[ImmortalityImmorality live forever]] and [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans force his vision of perfection on the world]]...

* HarsherInHindsight: According to WordOfGod, an appropriate voice for Hai the elephant would be Dianne Wiest. This is the woman who, as the Evil Queen of ''Series/TheTenthKingdom'', spoke the line, "If I hear one whisper, one rumor, that anything is amiss, I will kill your children in front of you." [[spoiler:This is precisely what happened to poor Hai herself.]]

** Thanks to the species of the characters involved, any time Tigress is facing one of the Wu Sisters it's a literal CatFight. However, every single one of those encounters is taken absolutely serious and is a deadly, legitimate battle rather than fanservice or amusing bickering (although a bit of the latter does precede the Tigress/Xiu combat in the birch forest). The same also holds true for Mei Ling vs. Jia during the FinalBattle. Objectification of women defied!

** Xiu, meanwhile, killed her own father just for being "weak" and good, and then framed her sister Jia for it--making everyone (including her half-sister Mei Ling and her stepmother) believe she was guilty so they would turn on her, as well as making her a wanted criminal; by these acts she twisted and manipulated Jia into obeying and serving her implicitly as an assassin, keeping her broken and pitifully under her thumb for years by making her believe it was all her fault. She poisoned countless soldiers who had been fighting the Huns, and made others so terrified to be put under care as a nurse that they deserted or betrayed China just to avoid that fate; when this was discovered, she murdered her kung fu master and fled. She tried to manipulate Tai Lung into joining her with lies about his family (and also helped plant doubts regarding Shifu and Oogway's love and pride in him so he would fixate on the Dragon Scroll to earn them). She kidnaps and traumatizes Ping, kills [[spoiler:Zhuang]] and frames Tai Lung for it, and nearly kills Po and Tigress on several occasions--the former despite the fact Po's parents had made the Wu Sisters promise to look out for him. She is willing to let her sisters die to achieve her goals, and in fact after they start having second thoughts and try to resist her, she is determined to kill them when she no longer needs them any more. And she longs to have the same powers Chao had so she could do the same things he did, all because she loves death, wants to be the best assassin in the empire, and to have the power to control life and death, determining at her whim who would survive and who wouldn't. Most disturbing of all, while everyone else (even her sisters) is sickened and disturbed by Chao and the things he does, Xiu loves them and gleefully supports him in everything he does; in fact the feeling of Chao's dark chi actually causes her ecstasy so that she wants to bathe in it.

* CompleteMonster: Both Chao and Xiu take this trope and run with it gleefully. The acts Chao perpetrates are especially, and truly, unforgivable, and they only get worse as the story goes on. Countless murders (including of children), DemonicPossession, MoreThanMindControl, forcing friends and loved ones to kill each other, unleashing demons from the spirit world, necromancy, corrupting people's souls and intentions, pushing Tai Lung into committing his rampage, planning to make PeoplePuppets of the whole world, all so as to live forever and force his vision of perfection on everyone else... Xiu, meanwhile, killed her own father just for being "weak" and good, framed Jia for it so she could twist and manipulate her into obeying and serving implicitly as an assassin, longed to have the same powers Chao had so she could do the same things he did, poisoned countless soldiers who had been fighting the Huns, murdered her teacher, tried to manipulate Tai Lung into joining her with lies about his family (and also helped plant doubts regarding Shifu and Oogway's love and pride in him so he would fixate on the Dragon Scroll to earn them), nearly killed Po and Tigress, [[spoiler:did kill Zhuang]], loved the feeling of Chao's dark chi and wished to bathe in it when everyone else was sickened and terrified by it... And both of them enjoyed every bit of what they did, with no remorse or regrets, and no sign they could be redeemed or ever would be.

* MagnificentBitch: Xiu, in the extreme.

* BadassDecay Averted: While Tai Lung does become kinder, gentler, friendlier, and an all-around good guy and hero, trading his villainous tendencies for snark, he remains as awesome and incredible a fighter as ever--not to mention he’s still quite able to unleash his rage and temper on the true [[CompleteMonster Complete Monsters]].

* StrawmanHasAPoint: Most of the naysayers, from Tigress to the various villagers, have rather good points regarding the possibility of accepting Tai Lung back into the Valley, either based on him [[KarmaHoudini truly having done reprehensible things which need to be acknowledged and punished]] or by raising very legitimate fears that [[ChronicVillainy such a thing could happen again]] if he did not learn to [[FatalFlaw control his temper]] or [[CivilianVillain wasn't truly attempting to redeem himself]]. While Chang and Xiulan fill such roles, Vachir in particular has a number of points since not only did he lose family members as the others did, he was actually the legitimate authority in charge of imprisoning and punishing the snow leopard. Even the fact that Chang was a misogynist, Xiulan a rather self-righteous and narrow-minded shrew of a wife, and Vachir was revealed to be a [[ColdBloodedTorture torturous]] bully (and that the latter two both got possessed and manipulated into truly heinous acts by Chao) did not change the ultimate sensibility of some of their points--something which Tai Lung himself acknowledged as he struggled to change, prove himself, and remain true to his new path. Deliberate and intentional by WordOfGod as part of the fic's GrayAndGreyMorality.

** The BigBad is a dark master of chi who used to be allied with Master Oogway, but was eventually corrupted by his lust for power, leading Oogway to seal him away until he finally made his return centuries later, after Oogway's death. Sounds an awful lot like [[KungFuPanda3 Kai]], doesn't it?

** Another more minor point of amusement: In the author's about me page, they note that the voice they had in mind for Bao (Po's Father in this fanfiction) was Bryan Cranston. Out comes Kung Fu Panda 3, and guess who Po's canon father is voiced by?

* HarsherInHindsight: According to WordOfGod, an appropriate voice for Hai the elephant would be Dianne Wiest. This is the woman who, as the Evil Queen of TheTenthKingdom, spoke the line, "If I hear one whisper, one rumor, that anything is amiss, I will kill your children in front of you." [[spoiler:This is precisely what happened to poor Hai herself.]]

** The third movie also has a moment where a panda dons Master Flying Rhino's armor (and which Po himself admitted to fantasizing about), and the statues of the Vault of Heroes appearing uncovered and open on the mountain around the stairs... And considering both Heian Chao and Kai are spirits, it's surely the case that Chao was also [[spoiler:immune to the Wuxi Finger Hold]], which makes Tai Lung warning Po not to use it incredibly prescient.

** The third movie also has a moment where a panda dons Master Flying Rhino's armor (and which Po himself admitted to fantasizing about), and the statues of the Vault of Heroes appearing uncovered and open on the mountain around the stairs...

** In Chapter 38, Tai Lung's thoughts: "No one needed to know he'd been so caught up in romancing Tigress he might not have noticed if Po had started dressing up in a ''cheongsam''. ''Oh gods...why did I have to go there? Someone kill me now, please...or at least murder my imagination.''" Well it may not be a ''cheongsam'', but we have gotten to see Po dressed as a woman in "[[WesternAnimation/KungFuPandaLegendsOfAwesomeness Ladies of the Shade]]". And Tai Lung's reaction is pretty apt. On a related note, Song herself being a violet-eyed snow leopardess who is nominally on the side of the bad guys, performs a HeelFaceTurn to help fight her former allies, and has a ShipTease with Po sounds a lot like Jia.

** In Chapter 38, Tai Lung's thoughts: "No one needed to know he'd been so caught up in romancing Tigress he might not have noticed if Po had started dressing up in a ''cheongsam''. ''Oh gods...why did I have to go there? Someone kill me now, please...or at least murder my imagination.''" Well it may not be a ''cheongsam'', but we have gotten to see Po dressed as a woman in "[[WesternAnimation/KungFuPandaLegendsOfAwesomeness Ladies of the Shade]]". And Tai Lung's reaction is pretty apt.

* HilariousInHindsight: Two moments.

* ProtagonistCenteredMorality: Aside from the experiences of Xiulan and Chang noted on the main page which can seem like this (although no one in the story calls out Po and the rest of the Jade Palace crew for their early treatment of them, in the end it's clear their sufferings are as much their own faults and the villain's, not the heroes', everyone actually ends up treating them both much more sympathetically later, ''and'' they receive some happiness by the end), there is the backstory of [[spoiler:Po's father]] and his actions as a highwayman vs. how everyone (including Emperor Chen) reacted to what was done to him to set him on his path. It should be noted that the emperor did still agree punishment for [[spoiler:Bao]] was warranted, he likely would never have done the things he had if he hadn't been forced to desert, and there was much more going on with that bigoted general than it seemed on the surface. (Needless to say, having a general who would a) disobey direct orders b) mistreat the lower classes and c) use a particular troop's bloodthirstiness [[ItsAllAboutMe for his own ends]], no matter [[CreateYourOwnVillain what this might later turn him into in war (or civilian life!)]] with the excuse that "[[IDidWhatIHadToDo it was the only way]] [[CombatPragmatist to win]]" and "[[HeWhoFightsMonsters we have to win no matter the cost]]" is not something you want if you intend to be a good ruler without rebellions on your hands. And simply exiling the general while stripping him of his rank would not only have punished his innocent family, it would have left him alive and wanting revenge, likely to gather his own army and come to usurp the throne--[[TruthInTelevision something which actually happened]] [[ShownTheirWork fairly often in Chinese history]].) The author has gone on in his sequel vignettes to show [[spoiler:Bao]] not only hasn't gotten off scot-free but knows he did wrong and regrets it (so he isn't being forgiven [[spoiler:just because he's one of the heroes' fathers]]), and has also promised to show more insight into him and that general.

* BadassDecay (averted): While Tai Lung does become kinder, gentler, friendlier, and an all-around good guy and hero, trading his villainous tendencies for snark, he remains as awesome and incredible a fighter as ever--not to mention he’s still quite able to unleash his rage and temper on the true [[CompleteMonster Complete Monsters]].

* FridgeBrilliance: Chao is the perfect antagonist for Tai Lung. Why? [[spoiler:Through corrupting and manipulating his chi, he intends to ‘take Tai Lung’s self away’. Not only is that at the heart of kung fu philosophy, it’s the problem Tai Lung had all along, not believing in himself so that he felt he would be nothing without the Dragon Scroll. Ergo, take away his self, and he’d immediately be back to the monster he was before.]]