Ensemble Dark Horse / Web Original

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• Ellen Baker became an overnight sensation on Pixiv and Twitter, an especially impressive feat considering she originated from a textbook. Her internet presence first went viral when a Japanese user tweeted pages from his brother's 2016-19 edition of New Horizon (a long-running English language textbook series for junior high classrooms) and commented on its surprisingly animesque illustrations and attractive character designs, most particularly of its blonde English tutor. Being a dorky Gorgeous Gaijin, moe teacher, Ellen Baker proceeded to lead an explosion of fanart and R34 images, and many overseas fans professed a desire for similar characters on their own textbooks. Even the original artist took notice, appreciating Ellen's newfound popularity but worrying that her purpose as an instructor would be derailed.
• Mabaka! has Maruchi, Rokuro's magic teacher. He was almost certainly designed to be a major prick, yet most readers can't help but love him.
• New Guy, from this webcomic has garnered a large collection of fans, painting him as an All-Loving Hero and a symbol of positivity and empathy. Most people saw him as far more sympathetic than the protagonist.
• The Queen of Rogues and Robbers was originally supposed to be a one-shot villain in The Questport Chronicles, but has been brought back every year due to her popularity.
• The Ruins of an American Party System gives us FBI Special Agent Richard Nixon. His plot, of leading the fight against religious extremist terrorists and political corruption, is by far one of the most popular in the timeline.
• SCP Foundation:
  • SCP-811, a swamp-dwelling female humanoid who has become incredibly popular with the online fandom, likely because of her creepy abilities, an oddly endearing and unique personality and a backstory that makes her genuinely sympathetic.
  • Other than SCP-053, some of the other child SCP items, such as SCP-134 and SCP-040, are also quite popular, likely due to being Creepy Cute.
• For Tumblr's 2016 April Fool's prank, they held a parody of the year's elections. Decision 2016 had users vote between four lizards for...something. Each lizard had a basic personality and a blog to use as their platform. The candidates were Ricky, Deborah, Mop, and Wretched Tooth. Mop and Deborah were instant hits with the users, who quickly provided tons of posters, speeches and ads for their favorite candidates. By the end of the event, Ricky had about 6 million votes (though the counter jokingly edited it to 2 votes), Wretched with 8 million, and Mop and Deborah having about double that. Mop ended up winning, with over 14 million votes.
• Originally just a mention in the Whateley Universe, Aquerna has become this trope. She's one of the least powerful students at Whateley Academy, and became popular enough that one of the Canon authors is now writing Aquerna stories, too.
• In Worm, a character appears once, in the midst of a crisis, a fat superhero who is named only in passing as Chubster, as the casualties are tallied. He remains unconscious throughout his appearance; the protagonist tries her hand at CPR, fails, and she abandons him to die. Despite his unglamorous nature (or because of it?) and lack of dialogue or action, he is repeatedly referred to in the site's comments section, appears or gets a mention in numerous pieces of fanfiction, and is part of several in-jokes among fans.
  • The character of Mouse Protector, a hero who deliberately acts like a campy Silver Age goofball to embarrass villains who lose to her, is only slightly more developed than Chubster, but you'd never know it by the number of fanfics that portray her as a very prominent character, usually depicted as a full-blown Cloudcuckoolander but nonetheless awesome. Some fans really took to the idea of such a silly and hammy character existing in the Crapsack World of Earth Bet, and wanted to run with it, in-spite (or probably because) her canon fate was so abysmally dark.

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