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And the amazing thing is, this parody dialogue is actually less out of character than the canon its replacing.
When an established character becomes largely different, exhibiting behavior contrary to what has been previously shown. This is not a matter of organic growth.
Note that organic growth does not necessarily mean 'benign growth', and it is perfectly possible for a previously good natured character to end up embittered or depressed without falling victim to this trope. This is rare however, and often unpopular. Also note that the degree of this varies.
Fans motivated by Die For Our Ship will use Character Derailment in their fanfics to remove the character from the Official Couple which is in the way of their OTP (or just because they dislike them).
Superdickery uses this trope as an advertising technique. The actual amount of decay may be anywhere from an aversion to full on character derailment in a different direction.
In other words, to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential parts of characterization for a story idea, deserve neither the characters nor to write a story."
Note that if this is a result of adaptation, it should fall under Adaptation Decay. It only counts as this trope if it happens in canon. Trope Decay is when this occurs for trope examples.
Specific types:
If in Fan Fics, it can involve Canon Defilement, Ron The Death Eater.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- .hack//Legend of the Twilight did this with Silver Knight, who acted more like Crim rather than The Stoic he's known to be.
- The Flanderization of Shugo and Rena's relationship. A single joke in the manga, largely centering on how Rena's Blackrose PC looks completely different from her offline self and is also scantily clad suddenly translates to all-but-stated Twincest in the anime.
- In the first anime version of ''Fullmetal Alchemist'', Ishbalan alchemist-assassin Scar goes from Edward's sworn enemy to indifferent ally in a single episode when he witnesses Ed refusing to use his alchemy if it means another will die. Considering how much bad blood exists between alchemists and Ishbalans, it doesn't seem likely the two would drop their differences so quickly. When you count the number of military officers and enlisted men Scar killed just trying to get to Ed, you also have to wonder why Ed would forgive him in exchange.
- Scar didn't really have much against Edward, but knew to hate him from the job. He'd actually had a history of conveniently failing to finish the job against people not directly associated with the Ishbal Massacre. He'd also shown an amicable respect for Al before, so his actions are really a case of Your Mileage May Vary.
- A fairly significant charge laid at the feet of the last third or so of Neon Genesis Evangelion, especially surrounding Shinji and Rei. To detail the common arguments:
- The crux of Shinji's story over the first 20 or so episodes (and, in the long view, the purpose of the show) is his coming out of his shell, overcoming the "Hedgehog's Dilemma" of growing close to people yet risking pain by being close. During most of the show Shinji does slowly become more confident despite setbacks, actually gains some friends, makes (small) progress with fellow EVA pilot Asuka Soryuu, etc. It all comes to a delightful, dramatic head during episodes 18-20, where Shinji is forced to nearly murder his friend and newly-drafted EVA pilot Toji and then still has to return to his EVA to save everyone from the next Angel despite considering himself a monster. The problem then, however, is that in the last six episodes this all comes crashing to a halt. Aside from one appearance each, all of Shinji's classmates inexplicably drop out of the story and in episode 24 are completely written out of the finale with practically a single penstroke, rendering the last twenty or so episodes nearly pointless. He becomes as reclusive as he was in episode 1 (or even moreso), seemingly just for the reason that he needs to be a useless marshmallow for the events of End of Evangelion to occur. Most people don't take issue with Shinji losing friends; it's that they simply get yanked away from him by the director because Shinji was evidently getting too close to actually solving the dilemma before the end of the show and that wouldn't allow director Hideaki Anno to address the concept directly.
- Another specifically complained about situation in the 'End of Evangelion movie is the infamous "Shinji masturbates over an unconscious Asuka" scene. General reprehensiveness aside, a great many fans and critics have called foul on this scene; even after the possible derailments detailed above, Shinji is practically the embodiment of the Chaste Hero throughout the entire series. There's obvious sexual tension between he and Asuka, but he never acts on it not only due to shyness but because he is fundamentally a polite young man. Anno may have intended to try and show Shinji's repressed sexual urges, but the action seems blatantly out of character to anyone who's watched the previous 24 episodes and comes off as simply being done for shock value, to the detriment of the production. The scene is notably absent in the manga version of this event, produced some years later.
- Note, however, that Anno was not directly involved in the manga and it's version of events is at best an authorized alternate universe, canon to itself but not to the show.
- Rei grows close to Shinji in both the anime and manga versions of the show (the manga even moreso); and in both, Rei is forced to detonate her Evangelion to prevent Shinji from being attacked, which results in her "death". Rei actually lives since she can be cloned and her "essence" can be transferred from one clone to another, but this also seemingly neatly erases all her characterization built up over the entire show since the death occurs in episode 23, allowing Rei to also simply slide into place where Anno requires it. Note that even though this can look like a plot twist on the surface, a fair number of fans consider it blatant character derailment, as it suddenly means that Rei and Shinji are no longer friends during the finale, which means like the above example the past twenty-plus episodes of character development are rendered utterly pointless and moreover it hamhandedly means that Rei will not instinctively come to Shinji's aid directly during the finale, which is just as Anno requires it.
- The infamous island/Africa arc in Nadia The Secret Of Blue Water is notorious for distorting the characters' personalities and relationships with each other. Nadia herself suffers from this the most. While she is a troubled character in the central plot of the story, the filler arc changes her personality from a Not Good With People sort of character to a totally unlikeable, selfish, psychotic, cartoonish buffoon. It is hard not to watch any of these episodes without noticing how many times the writers press "reset" on the characters' personalities and relationships with each other. (The Lincoln Island and Africa arcs are especially insulting, for sidestories that feel very out of place with the main story arc, not to mention poorly thought out.)
- Daichi Misawa of Yu-Gi-Oh GX, whose Teen Genius personality became grotesquely twisted out of shape until he began acting directly contrary to what had previously been shown. (Then again, a drastic personality change is justified if he really was raped by a love-crazed Amazon.) He eventually snaps/has an epiphany and runs naked through the school grounds a la Archimedes, and then gets Put On A Bus. He eventually returns but does little before deciding to live in another dimension with said love-crazed Amazon. This was arguably a minor attempt to return his character to its roots as he made this decision partly because he felt more appreciated in the other dimension than he did in his native one and acceptance/recognition was what he had sought from the start.
- Aki Izayoi of Yugioh 5D's was a similar such victim of character derailment; hey kids, you like the badass psycho chick whose character arc involves coming to a realization of self-love and take responsibility for what she's done? Well too bad! Season 2 sees her degenerate into a helpless damsel who can't think for herself, and everything is done to make sure that she is not responsible for anything bad she did as the Black Rose Witch and all of her agency is compromised, thereby destroying her entire character arc. And in season 3, she's now a student at Duel Academia along with Rua, Ruka, and the other children, with not even a shred of her old characterization remaining. Alas Aki, we hardly knew ye.
- What? That's not right at all. From her first unmasked appearance it was obvious the very point of Aki was that she was incapable of thinking for herself, and that Divine was manipulating her to do his bidding. One might also argue because of this that she was not responsible for her actions, but that's more of a case of Your Mileage May Vary. You could also, perhaps, argue that she's still not truly thinking for herself, but, that would still go along with her previous characterization, no? This is less Character Derailment, and more Character Development, with perhaps a bit of Badass Decay thrown in.
- A major complaint regarding Gundam SEED Destiny was the feeling that the crew of the Minerva were derailed from heroes to misguided puppets, simply because their opponents were the extremely popular main characters from the previous series. Take, for example, Shinn Asuka's shift from an angry but well-intentioned soldier into a barely restrained berserker and Rey Za Burrel changing from a calm, self-assured young man into acting exactly like his nihilistic genetic source material, Rau Le Creuset. The latter case is especially criticized, as it occurs within two episodes of the finale, leaving the impression that Rey's personality was derailed simply to make him look evil. Despite this, director Mitsuo Fukuda insists to this day that Shinn and his allies were the heroes throughout the story.
- In Transformers Generation 1, Cyclonus and Scourge were a pair of dangerous, cunning, devious warriors. In Transformers Headmasters, they suddenly became a pair of bumbling idiots who kept getting in Sixshot's way, and wondered why Soundblaster lost all respect for them. They were quietly dropped from the show soon after.
- Rodimus Prime after the movie also suffered derailment, turning from 'plucky youth' into 'useless jerk' over the third and fourth seasons. It's like they completely screwed up the chance to show a less invulnerable, more three-dimensional Prime.
- Nina Wang got hit with this hard after Episode 16 of Mai-Otome. Before, she was a somewhat friendly rival to Arika and a more-than-competent fighter on track to become one of the greatest Otome ever. Afterward, she underwent a Face Heel Turn and killed tens of thousands of people to prove her loyalty to/love for her "father", and her rivalry was thrown on the back burner for all but one or two episodes during that period, and her position was snapped up by Tomoe for reasons unknown to Arika.
- At least the writers TRIED to show some of the manipulations and motivations Nina was beset with before things went south. It may be said that in fact, Sergey's the one with Character Derailment, like cruelly manipulating his own daughter, even stringing her along with her romantic feelings for him into committing atrocities.
- Lampshaded in the Deadman Wonderland manga when the timid, quiet, slightly cowardly and shy protagonist Ganta managed to win his second superpowered potential-deathmatch by knocking out his opponent, a girl. The spectators start screaming for him to finish her off, only to get this response:
*sticks middle finger in the air* Ganta: SHUT YER TRAPS! LIKE I'M GONNA KILL A LITTLE GIRL! DIPSHITS! I WON, DIDN'T I? LETS GET THIS SHOW ON THE ROAD, FOUR-EYES!! *walks away, hand over his mouth* Ganta: Shit... did I just change my character?
- This occured in Tytania, and it happened to, of all people, Estrades- the man turns from a calm, devious schemer who was perfectly fine being ordered about by his brother Ajman to a wild, rabid, hateful person who despised his sibling with every fibre of his being. To top it off, his derailment is combined with a severe case of a mixture of the Idiot Ball and Too Dumb To Live when he offs himself by shooting himself after tumbling down a flight of stairs.
- Another example where adding positive traits constitutes Character Derailment, we have Raoh from Fist of the North Star. Originally portrayed as a Badass Complete Monster who wouldn't think twice about branding children with hot irons or locking martial artists (including his deathly ill brother) and their families in a concentration camp to learn techniques from them and then let them starve to death, the story comes to insist that he is in fact a Noble Demon and alters his personality and reactions of others accordingly.
- Reiji from Kodomo No Jikan derails pretty bad. When he's first introduced and his backstory given, it's explicitly stated that he loves Rin as a daughter. It's shown as a very tender moment where he cares for her like his own daughter and as the legacy that her mother left behind. Then, a few chapters later, seemingly out of nowhere this is switched to him actually seeing her as a replacement for her mother, and he's just waiting for her to be sixteen before he consummates it. The longer the manga goes, the more derailed he gets, until he's eventually plotting out her diet to make her grow up more beautiful for him and leaving hickies on her neck. At this point he's steadily on his way to going Ax Crazy.
- Then he seems to have second thoughts as far as Chapter 50 shows.
- ...and now we still don't really know what happened when Reiji and Mimi went to the bathroom.
- In Bleach Uryuu seemingly has forgotten about how Mayuri tortured his grandfather to death. Instead of displaying open hatred for Mayuri when they meet up again, he only seems mildly annoyed with Mayuri, and his reaction is Played For Laughs. The show seems to be glossing over the first time they met and what Mayuri did to his grandfather and his entire clan.
- Dumas from Kiba starts off as the strong, quiet champion of Tempura/Templer, then makes a shocking Face Heel Turn and would have lead Jimoto's invaders to overtake Tempura had not Zed's Spirit gone on a rampage and stopped them. The really interesting part was that Duma's reasons for this were pretty reasonable: because of his family history, he basically wanted to shape his own destiny. However, after those events, he became a regular psychotic baddie whose sole purpose in life was betraying Tempura in ever way possible and becoming royalty.
- In the Ouran High School Host Club anime, Tamaki's father gives Tamaki the cold shoulder in order to drive home Tamaki's woobieness, while in the manga he's shown to be a pretty nice guy who gets along well with his son. Then he hits on Haruhi.
- Brock from Pokemon used to be the voice of reason with occasional attractions towards girls. Now he's a super freak with raging hard ons everytime he sees things with two legs and a vagina.
- And his voice of reason status has apparently been reduced to just explaining to his comrades (and the audience) every single move that gets made during a battle.
- Considering that Ash has battled various opponents in the past with impressive feats, you'ed think he'd be able to beat Paul once with getting his ass handed to him. Though no matter what, Ash seems to fight like an inept beginner, especially considering his impressive victories in the past, and don't get anyone started on the ass whipping he gave to Fantina in a rematch.
- Hell, Ash's love for pokemon and battling seem to be his only defining features now. Didn't he used to have a goal? Like becoming a pokemon master or something?
- Hell, remember when pokemon used to have a plot? And a plausible character to pair the main character off with? And interesting side characters? And actual character development? And comedy that's actually funny? And decent art?
- Most recently, Ambipom was literally Put On A Bus, for incredibly contrived reasons that made no sense given the Pokemon's previously established character. From the beginning Aipom/Ambipom was shown to love contests, which eventually led to it getting traded to Dawn, the contest cordinator of the group. DP 124 has the characters participating in Pokemon Ping Pong, and Ambipom suddenly decides to leave her trainer and the contests she loved so much to go off with a complete stranger and train for an activity she didn't even know existed before the previous episode. Many fans are not happy.
- Suzaku Kururugi's actions in Code Geass R2, particularly past Turn 14 (though there are general things before that) are either this or negative Character Development. Over the season break, Suzaku goes from Wide Eyed Idealist to a much more ruthless character whose plan basically amount to conquering the entire world for the Emperor in the hopes that he'll be given control of Japan. Once Turn 14 comes along, he further violates his ethics by trying to use an illegal drug on Kallen to get information out of her (he doesn't go through with it, but his reasons for doing so have absolutely nothing to do with her, only being like his enemy). Even taking into account the tragedy that motivated it, it's quite jarring. Then he gets convinced to carry a nuke into battle, which inevitably he uses through a combination of Geass and his own stubborn pride. Once that happens, he completely abandons his former ideals and starts doing exactly what he was so staunchly opposed to for the rest of the show. This could be considered character development because slowly but surely he was falling into the system and becoming the things he hated to get ahead. Rather than try to turn back, repeated failure taught him how much of a hypocrite he was being and he decided to try something that worked.
- The official English translation of Mahou Sensei Negima managed to derail a ton of characters in the first few volumes by rewriting entire conversations, replacing the characterization with bad jokes. Fortunately, the translations improve after the first few.
- The anime adaptions generally derail Negi (along with the series as a whole), making him into a Inept Mage, primarily because they focus on the Unwanted Harem antics of the first few volumes. In the manga, he appears to be like this, but he grows out of it.
Comic Books
- Most characters in the Marvel Universe Crisis Crossover Civil War.
In a way, Captain America was one of the lucky ones Time will tell if he'll still be invulnerable to derailments after his return Captain America Reborn.
- While his ideals and so on were kept intact, Cap's being forced to marry the Idiot Ball probably counts as derailment. The writers forced him to adopt a strategy that had literally zero percent chance of achieving any lasting peace or useful result, because otherwise the storyline wouldn't have had the ending they wanted.
- Luckily, there's the Marvel Adventures line. It pretends that Civil War, World War Hulk and House of M never happened, and picks up where the 90s left.
- Iron Man. Just a special mention for getting the worst. Going from a hero (albeit occasional jerk) to Nazitron, the armored superhero who doesn't mind throwing his best friends in jail for life. It took a over a year and The Movie to undo much of the derailment and there is still a very vocal Hatedom. Unfortunately, most of the people who decided to check out the comics because of the movie quit reading out of disgust, so the Hatedom is still the primary chunk of readers.
- Wouldn't Spiderman count? Pardon This Troper's ignorance, but she was under the impression that he took such care to keep a secret identity for the protection of Aunt May and Mary Jane and everyone else he loved and who angry villains would possibly come after in revenge. And he then proceeds to yank his mask off in public, giving every criminal who ever disliked him his identity.
- Two things. One, at the time Aunt May and MJ were safe in Stark Tower under the protection of Iron Man and the best security his company has to offer. Two, it's Spider Man, not Spiderman.
- This troper thinks the worst Character Derailment from Civil War would have to be Slapstick, by far. From a living cartoon
 Deadpan Snarker powered by the Rule Of Funny to a docile Ax Crazy drone who murders guards, this is a textbook example of why Civil War has garnered the Hatedom it has.
- This was a slow process with Batman. From the mid-nineties until early 2006, the cool, gruff, Badass Batman slowly moved from "aloof and driven" to "frickin' jerk". DC eventually fixed this by having him realize how he was acting, and go on a year-long trip around the world with Dick Grayson (the first Robin) and Tim Drake (the current Robin). Note that this change was a reflection of the general comic book slide towards Nineties Anti Hero characters, and his change back is part of a general return to more positive heroes.
- This was merely the most recent incarnation of a storyline that's been recurring since the early 90s. Batman would become more aloof than ever before due to some sort of crisis, only to eventually realize that he should be nice to his friends and swear that he would never go down that road again - until next time (See "Prodigal," "No Man's Land," "Batman:Murderer/Fugitive"). The only difference between this storyline and its precursors is that writers seem determined to stick to it for a change.
- Though the work is well-regarded, almost all of these character derailments have their genesis in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns: i.e. Batman as a brutal angry fascist who turns groups of street thugs into his personal army, Superman as a government dupe who goes to kill Batman because Ronald Reagan told him to, and Catwoman as a WHOREWHOREWHOREWHOREWHORE.
- Conversely, the switch of Batgirl III/Cassandra Cain from one of the better examples of Rising Above Her Past (raised from birth as an Assassin, but horrified enough by her first kill to become a Technical Pacifist) to a Stereotypical Cackling Dragon Lady Mastermind was abrupt enough to induce whiplash. Nerfing her enough for Robin to force a stalemate was simply adding injury to insult. The efforts to retcon the whole mess as brainwashing by Deathstroke came off as more than a bit slapdash, and did nothing to explain the improved language skills.
- The latest mini series about her derailed her character even more. Her improved language skills were taught (she learned to read English, and speak and read Navajo) by Albert, off screen. And she became good with using a computer by herself. Her deep rooted refusal to kill anyone was removed in order for her to kill her dad and Deathstroke. Her body language (which was used by her to know that Batman was Bruce Wayne) was nerfed in order to let an old man lie to her right in front of her face. And if that wasn't enough, her past was changed from loving her father but escaping from him because her first kill was the first time she saw someone die which made her realize how wrong her life was, into hating her father during her entire life and actually having to watch him kill people right in front of her eyes without her caring at all. And on top of that, the series even managed to derail Rose Wilson, the daughter of Deathstroke.
- Many readers felt that Dr. Leslie Thompkins was derailed in the "War Crimes" plotline (following the "War Games" crossover), when it was revealed that she had intentionally withheld care from Stephanie Brown, a.k.a. Spoiler (and one-time Robin) so that she would die in order to teach Batman a lesson. Considering her previous saintly devotion to saving lives, this was a bit of a Wall Banger and subsequent comics have quietly ignored it.
- However, in a recent story, it was revealed that this was a fake-out on Leslie's behalf, as Stephanie wasn't actually dead but smuggled out of the country. It's blatant Ret Con, of course, but given most people see it as an Authors Saving Throw on Leslie's characterisation, there are few complaints.
- And now Tim Drake is following in Batman's footsteps, as after his recent Trauma Conga Line he's apparently decided to just give up on having any of those human emotion thingies and be a closed-off manipulative bastard to everyone.
- More character development than anything else. Tim has gone through more tragedy in the past TWO YEARS than Batman has in his entire life. (Father? Dead. Best friend? DEAD. Girlfriend? Thought dead but then, oh no, turns out another of his friends, with his girlfriend's help, FAKED HER DEATH, leaving him to grieve and suffer horribly. Another best friend? Has CANCER. Dumped by his new girlfriend Wonder Girl because she can't get over the loss of her first boyfriend, HIS best friend. Tries to clone his friend Superboy? FAILS. OTHER best friend Kid Flash? DIES. HORRIBLY. Batman, his adopted father? First reveals he has a psychotic son who he gives more respect than he gave Tim when he started out, then DIES.) Let's be honest here, it's a bloody miracle Tim isn't a psychopath to rival the Joker after all he's been through. His metamorphosis into a more "Batman" like individual is perfectly understandable. Then again, the past two years being an extended train wreck on an epic scale is the derailment, in the eyes of many fans.
- One, Tim IS SUPPOSED TO end up being a psychopath, at lease according to the future seen in "Titans of Tomorrow". Two, Tim's assholeness is the sad result of DC fixing Nightwing, who was forced to carry the asshole ball as far as turning into a huge asshole of epic proportions during the period of 1998-2002 ala the equally assholey Batman. They took asshole ball away from Dick and gave it to Tim, saving Dick in the process at the expense of Tim.
- Counterpoint: the general rule of glimpses into dystopian future in the DCU is to avert them, and Dick and Tim were a cheerfully non-asshole duo from 1990 to 1998, with regular team-ups and a cheerful sibling interaction and everything. So, thinking it was necessary to give the asshole ball to Tim to "save" Dick is another example of Dan Didio Completely Missing The Point.
- The occasional writer has portrayed X-Men's Magneto, typically a Well Intentioned Extremist, as a looney who is interested only in racking up as high a body count as superhumanly possible. In fact, Magneto probably goes through more (and more varied) character derailments than possibly any other non-main-character in the MU.
- Writer Grant Morrison tried to defend his decision to make Magneto a raving drug-addict who rounded humans up into death camps by saying that "What people often forget, of course, is that Magneto, unlike the lovely Sir Ian McKellen, is a mad old terrorist twat. No matter how he justifies his stupid, brutal behaviour, or how anyone else tries to justify it, in the end he's just an old bastard with daft, old ideas based on violence and coercion. I really wanted to make that clear at this time."
- Neither the fans nor the other writers were convinced by Morrison's explanation, and the latter group very quickly retconned the story. Despite the overly convoluted result (The whole thing was Xorn pretending to be Magneto pretending to be Xorn. Oh, and there's more than one Xorn.) This is generally considered (barely) preferable to letting Morrison's characterization of Magneto stand. It should be noted that Magneto, as originally written, was indeed an anti-human terrorist—it was his transformation into a baby (by his own creation, Alpha the Ultimate Mutant) and his later being aged up again, that cured him of his more extreme tendencies. So Morrison was right in his assessment of him— he just failed to consider all the character development Magneto had since then, or did not properly explain the reversion.
- Not that "stopped being a terrorist because he was turned into a baby then aged again" is particularly organic character growth. The fact that Morrison clearly threw in a Ret Con Authors Saving Throw (Magneto's addiction to a drug that had its basis in alien mind control spores) that went unused doesn't help.
- He was such an extremist in the '60s only. And, frankly, superhero or supervillain, if you were a comic book character in the '60s, you probably were a Jerkass or carried the Idiot Ball all day long. Or both. Magneto's real character development starts in the '70s with Claremont, and that's the actual personality of the character (opposed to not having a realistic one, before). Not all future writers managed to understand who Magneto really was, and many even believe that the Well Intentioned Extremist should be considered the same as the Complete Monster, anyway. As for Morrison, he is a great writer: his only mistake during his whole X-Men run was not doing his homework. He didn't know the characters, Magneto being just the biggest example among many.
- Special mention must go to his sudden reappearance in Uncanny X-Men #500. Not only does he show up and attack the X-Men with apparently nothing resembling a plan or motives (something ill befitting a character who's always been best portrayed as a Well Intentioned Extremist), but it's revealed that not only was he taking orders from the High Evolutionary, he was actually using a mechanical device to replace his lost powers, something a proud believer in mutant supremacy over the "inferior" humans would never do. Compare his appearance in X-Men Legacy, mere months earlier, where he was portrayed as having no loss of dignity or pride whatsoever post-depowering, and even managed to beat his still-powered former Acolytes without any powers at all, in defense of Xavier. All the while refusing to concede to his former second-in-command's claim that as a human he was no longer the worthy leader of the Acolytes he once was.
- Joseph the Clone was a very different example of a Magneto derailment that just didn't work. Originally, Joseph was a younger, regenerated Magneto, but he was so much of a loser that he was retconned into a clone...which was rather pointless given that for almost his entire existence, it was hinted that Joseph could easily revert to villainous form if he ever fully recovered the memories of his previous life. Given how overdone clone plotlines are in the Marvel Universe in general and X-Men in particular, that would've been a better and simpler way to go.
- If you want to keep an X-Men fan happy, don't talk about the way Storm's being written in Black Panther. Having her declare her strong love for one of Marvel's few other black characters out of Reginald Hudlin's desire to
get a Token Romance going snag a hot black babe for his badass black Canon Sue was bad enough. Throwing away most of the strong characterization that made her a leader of the X-Men many times over to turn her into a love-struck woman whose major concern is her marriage and her husband? Gah. (At least she's back with the X-Men, having grown bored with queening.)
- Not to mention that Storm is someone who was once so into female empowerment that she defied all stereotypes by getting a mohawk... and is now content to play the good wife to a man who is still keeping his royal harem. Or that she once berated Dr. Doom for the sheer amount of helpful technology he was keeping from the world, but seems perfectly content to let Black Panther hoard every bit of technology, including cancer cures, from everyone that's not Wakandan. Would "pot and kettle" be a little too edgy a punalogy to invoke?
- The Punisher has had to brush with character derailment ever since he was created. Although his exact quirks and personality vary slightly from writer to writer, in his heyday in the early nineties he was generally portrayed as sincerely wanting to help people and keep them from going through the same things he did, would occasionally question his actions and show mercy if the situation warranted it. Even a few traditional heroes considered him a good man at heart. Other writers would instead portray him as a complete amoral psychopath who didn't care about anything except killing criminals, and never ever questioned his actions.
- Garth Ennis seems to have struck a fine balance, portraying him both as a complete amoral psychopath who doesn't care about anything except killing criminals and who never ever questioned his actions, but also as a man who is extremely diligent, going to huge lengths to ensure absolutely no innocents are harmed while he's "working". And on rare occasions, the plight of those around him do get through - just read The Slavers.
- Quite possibly the ultimate derailment was Punisher: Purgatory, which set Frank up as an avenging angel. In fact, that was the last Punisher story until Welcome Back Frank, wherein Ennis promptly undid that idiocy.
- Attempts to break away from their own title for the stars of Power Pack have led to baffling character derailments, such as when eldest boy Alex stole his brother and sisters' powers and became the laughably-monikered Power Pax, alienating fans for years after the event. Eldest girl Julie Power also changed from a book-reading, highly-articulate redhead (her character was based on her creator, Louise Simonson) in the original comics to a bumbling, dumb blonde actress in the pages of Runaways and a later spin-off series, Loners, where she was notable for magically appearing in one scene without explanation merely to be brutally stabbed so that a male character could be shown to feel guilt at her situation, and having a solo story that somehow convinced several thousand readers to stop buying the book with only two issues to go.
- Captain Atom has been turned into a villain in a manner completely inconsistent with all his prior characterization and for absolutely no reason other than that DC had wanted to derail him even earlier and were prevented when it leaked in advance.
- Most fans of Young Justice thought the entire team went through this when they transitioned to Teen Titans. Kon suddenly having Cloning Blues and generally being a too-serious jackass when before he even made jokes about his clone status, and wearing a new costume that consist of Jeans and a T-shirt! Impulse suddenly grew grim and studious (and became Kid Flash, abandoning every last trace of his fierce individuality) after Deathstroke kneecapped him and he was forced to endure painful surgery. And Robin was Batman Jr, without a trace of his Deadpan Snarker attitude, his geek hobbies, or the fact he does have a sense of humor.
- Ironically, in the very first pages of the first issue of Young Justice, Superboy, Impulse, and Robin had nightmares about, respectively, becoming "holier-than-thou", losing his identity until nothing remained of his original personality, and turning into a Darker And Edgier version of himself. And those exact things all happened when Teen Titans was relaunched.
- Cassie has become very ill tempered and cold towards her teammates after One Year Later. Her character has downgraded into a self-righteous, holier than though ice queen who is obsessed with bringing Conner back and wants to change the team back into Young Justice.
- While we're on the subject of Young Justice, Inertia, Impulse's Evil Twin. Originally, he was a rebellious teenager who secretly resented Impulse for having something he never had: a family. In fact, that eventually drove him to abandon the people who were using him to try to make his own way in the world. Then he became a generic, crazy eeeeeevil and sadistic version of Kid Flash. I don't even think I have to tell you how much less interesting this is than the original characterization.
- Not to mention a psychotic baby-killer as well, which was done to justify why a craaaazy bastard like him HAD to die.
- This troper would argue that Superboy's transition from upbeat to serious and broody could have been considered genuine character development (perhaps as he matured he began to realize the full implications of what it is to be a clone and became progressively depressed) if only the transition hadn't been so incredibly fast. The transition was so jarring that at first this troper (who hadn't followed Young Justice) was utterly convinced that the Teen Titans Superboy was an entirely different character.
- This is actually somewhat justified by the discovery of his true (read: retconned) genetic heritage: instead of being a straight human clone of moderately evil former Project Cadmus director Paul Westfield, he found out that he's a hybrid Human/Kryptonian clone created from Lex Luthor and Superman's DNA. Given the diametrically opposed natures of his two genetic fathers, it's no wonder he's constantly worried about what the future holds for him.
- Judd Winick's run on Green Arrow and Green Arrow/ Black Canary derailed quite a few characters.
- Despite having moved on from a troubled past which included alcoholism, rampant womanizing and generally irresponsible behavior and evolving into a loving, responsible father and boyfriend under Kevin Smith's pen, Winick wrote Oliver Queen back into the clueless, womanizing, limousine-liberal stereotype many comic fans wrongly saw him as.
- It is also worth noting that - despite Winick's portrayal of Queen as an unrepentant ladies' man - Oliver Queen never cheated on long-term girlfriend Dinah Lance(aka The Black Canary) before Judd Winick started writing the character. He did father a child with Dragon Lady Shado, but that was the result of Shado raping him while he was drugged. In Winick's first story arc, Oliver Queen had a one-night stand with the niece of fellow superhero Black Lightning and later tried to lie about the affair to Dinah Lance. Interestingly enough, the two had never been shown to have officially reestablished themselves as boyfriend/girlfriend until Winick chose to break them apart.
- Dinah Lance (Black Canary), as written by Winick, changed into a Shallow Love Interest after years of being a confident, independent Action Girl.
- To the astonishment of fans everywhere, the title has actually managed to get worse since Winick left, highlights of new writer Kreisberg's work including Ollie going off the rails about how useless nonlethal crimefighting is (despite having dealt with the whole killing thing decades earlier in what's probably his single most famous story and subsequent run), and Dinah's nurturing hero-focused childhood amongst her JSA 'uncles' being retconned into a Wangsty life of ignorant normality until the day she accidentally permanently deafened a friend with her emerging superpower. In order to mirror her incompetent adult use of said superpower, wherein Kreisberg caused her to deafen an innocent bystander in a fight so he could give her a new supervillain. Reactions have been fairly uniform.
- Jefferson Pierce (Black Lightning) went from being a Technical Pacifist of such strong ethical fiber that he retired from superheroics when he thought he couldn't used his powers safely into a man who could easily strike down the corporate raider indirectly responsible for the death of his niece.
- After taking flack from numerous fans as well as Black Lightning creator Tony Isabella, Winick retconned that last one in Outsiders #45-47, where Jefferson turned himself in for the murder. More, he was revealed to be innocent of the crime, thanks to super-assassin Deathstroke just happening to be in the area, just happening to guess what Jefferson's internal conflict was and just happening to have the perfect Deus Ex Machina to kill the man and have it look like death by electrocution.
- In the original Inodoro Pereyra comics, Eulogia was beautiful and nice. During the 70s, she became fat and cranky.
- Agatha went from being Gaturro's girlfriend to his unattainable love interest.
- The in the original stories of Paperinik (aka Phantomias), Paperinik was the Chaotic Neutral alter-ego that Donald Duck used for punishing those who would annoy him. His victims were mostly his own relatives. He was a shameless outlaw who was hunted down by the police and never had a motive to help others, unless he'd get a large reward. Now, in the later versions, he has turned into a Lawful Good superhero who fights crime and unconditionally helps the authorities.
- Consider that Donald Duck, while very flawed, deep down is still a genuinely good guy with a sense of justice, and that he originally acted as an "avenger" because his relatives had wronged him.
- Blue Beetle (Ted Kord) and Booster Gold over the twenty years that these two have been friends and thought of as a duo they have been so MASSIVELY derailed that they practically switched personalities. Booster was originally a Fish Out Of Temporal Water Mr Vice Guy who screwed up once in a while but learned from it, while Ted had Jumped At The Call and was basically Batman with a sense of humor. By the time of Super Buddies, Ted was now a I Just Want To Be Normal slacker who was letting himself go and was now The Straight Man. Booster got it worse as he seemed to have permanent ownership of the Idiot Ball and was the one who wanted to have fun all the time and was such a screw up that they coined the term "Boostered" after he accidentally sent the team to hell. Needless to say those comics make many fans flinch.
- The Flanderization that took place before that was retconned into Obfuscating Stupidity. Beetle was killed in Countdown to Infinite Crisis and Booster has a new series where he's treated more seriously. Some fans, however, greatly enjoyed the Superbuddies and were greatly disturbed by the Character Derailment of characters such as Max Lord, Fire, Mary Marvel, and a number of the others.
- Maxwell Lord was never the "nice guy" on the team, he was certainly a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold...but was it ever a question about the heart of gold part? No. He even thought and believed he was doing the right thing most of the time and showed genuine concern for his team, back when he headed off the group. He even got into an argument with Martian Manhunter about how they needed to get "big guns" on the team to make sure no one would get offed. It's not like it was all dialogue, some of this was in thought bubbles, so that means he thought he was a hero, not a villain. So is there any reason...AT ALL...why he should suddenly become a cliched villain two-steps above strapping Penelope Pureheart to a train track? Or any reason why he would blow Blue Beetle's head off, or claim he was lying all those times (even to himself apparently!) he said he was a good guy? The writers actually admit they know they derailed him but don't care because they needed a villain...the writers knew they were doing something that flew in the face of his prior characterizing and did it anyway! Jesus. I mean...wow. Just wow.
- There are two explanations for this, a fan one and an "official one". The fan one is that Max was still under the influence of Kilg%re, even when he became fully human again. The "official" one is that Superboy-Prime's punching of the Source Wall retroactively influenced Max; while he was sincere before, during his many surgeries and procedures to become human, he gained a hatred of superheroes, presumably because the community at large was responsible for him being a cyborg in the first place.
- With Scott Summers, aka Cyclops of X-Men, it's hard to decide where to begin. First off, Cyclops had always been a more or less admirable hero, and the contrast to, say, Wolverine (the X-Men's resident Anti Hero during the 80s). Aside from that, he was romantically involved with Jean Grey until her death in the Phoenix Saga. Since Jim Shooter wouldn't allow them to bring her back as a mass murderer, Madelyne Pryor was used as a substitute and he married her. So what does Scott do when he finds out Jean is back? He suddenly forgets all about his wife and baby son, and joins Jean in X Factor with the rest of the original X-Men, and comes across as a complete jerk. The baby was eventually sent into a Post Apocalyptic Future and grew up to become Cable. Madelyne, meanwhile, went with the X-Men to Australia, and then suffered Character Derailment of her own, eventually changing from a noble and courageous young woman to an evil psychotic wearing bondage gear (though it didn't take much to turn Phoenix into the Black Queen either). From there, she became one of the principal villains in the Inferno crossover, and then was killed off. Scott fortunately didn't marry Jean until years after that (despite what some trying to demonize their relationship claim). This lasted until his further derailment during Grant Morrison's run on New X-Men, where he ended up cheating on Jean with Emma Frost (who herself was derailed into a Spoiled Brat, when she spent the 90s as The Atoner), and in the final issue of Morrison's run Cyclops ended up kissing Emma at Jean's grave site (and Jean is derailed by her now wanting nothing more than "Scott to live"). Then after the mutants are depowered, he's now "suddenly" willing to kill his enemies off.
- And FIRE Professor Xavier.
- That's 'cause Xavier's recently been derailed into a Magneto-esque "I'll run over anybody I have to for my good cause and you're supposed to forgive me because I look sad for a panel or two when called on it" guy. The Danger Room was sentient and he deliberately left it in And I Must Scream condition than go back to the previous version? And using Mind Rape to cover up his recklessly assembling and losing a half-trained second team between the original X-Men and Storm, Wolverine, and company? That is... almost as crazy as a silent Deadpool. But if you don't assume it's all a bad trip and accept that it happened, it's not hard to see Scott not trusting the Prof after that.
- The So Bad Its Horrible Amazons Attack! miniseries afflicts Wonder Woman and the entire Amazon people with character derailment by way of Idiot Plot.
- Infinite Crisis saw Superboy Prime move from one of the guys who saved all of reality to a Knight Templar obsessed with finding the perfect Earth. Later stories moved him all the way into Omnicidal Maniac territory as he crushes entire planets because he happens to think they're lame.
- Just think of it this way, the only appearances of Prime are in Crisis On Infinite Earths, Infinite Crisis, Green Lantern (especially the "Sinestro Corps War" arc), and Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds. Prime's appearance in Countdown to Final Crisis never happened, just like the rest of ''Countdown''. This at least gives him a relatively stable character transition: Multiversal hero to Knight Templar to The Dog Bites Back to frustrated semi-Omnicidal Maniac who wants to destroy Superman's legacy and show he is superior.
- While the Ultimate Marvel Universe at times bears only a passing resemblence to the main continuity, and most characters have had an added layer of Jerk Ass grafted on, there are still some characters' actions that are so bewildering that they invoke this. Emphasising Nightcrawler's religion to create a rift between him and Colossos because of the latter's homosexuality: understandable, if not thrilling. Turning Nightcrawler into a creepy Stalker With A Crush who hangs out in a comotose Dazzler's hospital room: What. The. Hell.
- On the other hand, in Ultimate continuity Nightcrawler was also abducted by Stryker at a young age and forced to go on highly dangerous and horrific assignments (usually assassinations) all while being kept in a cell with his head wired to explode should he try to escape. Thus, he already had issues and went off of the deep end when the girl he loved hooked up with someone else.
- Okay, I know it's only a story about a possible future and, arguably, not in the main continuity but Bruce Banner in the climax to the Wolverine story Old Man Logan who is revealed to have become a sociopathic, redneck cannibal who is now head of a family of in-bred Hulklings. For added squick it's revealed that this family resulted from Bruce breeding with She-Hulk, his cousin - "The only woman out there who could take the damn pace" (emphasis as original). There's also a strong implication this was not consensual. Ugh, just, ugh. Compare this with Banner's actions in Incredible Hulk 602 which came out the same week to understand exactly what's wrong with this picture. Naturally this is another Mark Millar special.
- Ed Brubaker did this to Black Tarantula in his Daredevil run. Black Tarantula was created as an elegant boss of criminal empire who put himself above everybody else, is a heir of ancient power and Implacable Man who gets toe to toe with Humongous Mecha. Brubaker completly changed his character, gave him father issues, turned his empire into ordinary gang and weakened him a little without giving any reson. Hoever, because in Spider-Man stories Black Tarantula was really close to Villain Sue teritority (he defeated Spidey twice and spared his life because he didin't found him as a real threat), while now he is street-level Badass, we can assume it was 'good this happened to him.
- Countdown To Final Crisis does this to Mary Marvel in a very annoying fashion. If not her character arc of accepting Black Adam's powers, going a little nuts and joining up with Eclipso before learning the error of her ways and helping to rescue the Greek gods, then it certainly counts when she, after this long storyline of turning evil and being redeemed, joins up with Darkseid AGAIN! Fortunately for all of us, these events were retconned out of existence.
- Anybody written by Matt Fraction. Thor acting like stupid redneck who thinks only about having sex with as many women is possible and be a jerk all time? Check. Maria Hill from Badass Normal Action Girl turned into The Chick for Iron Man? Check. Charles Xavier suddendly acting like he was never friend with Magneto and shows to everybody how much he hates him? Check. Weapon Omega, guy who was always afraid of using his powers and never wanted to hurt anybody, becoming a psycho who likes killing people? Check. Bullseye from Complete Monster turned into most sane member of Dark Avengers? Check. Ares, master strategist and badass god of war turned into stupid brute who says only Aye? Check. Pixie drained from all her character and transformed into Fetish Fuel Station Attendant for all Lolicon fans? Check. Do a number of fans think Matt Fraction just doesn't understand the characters he's working with? Hell yeah.
Fanfiction
- Given the general quality of 90% of all fanfiction, it should go without saying that this happens a lot in fan-made stories, but even the good ones do this to their characters sometimes. In the Harry Potter fandom, the two most common victims of this are Dumbledore (typically flanderized from a well-meaning Obi Wan into a sadistic Manipulative Bastard) and Ginny/Hermoine (whoever's on the wrong side of Die For Our Ship this week), but other characters aren't immune to this either. Tragically, Luna Lovegood seems to be a frequent target of authors who don't know (or don't care) how to keep her unique personality intact. Typically, these stories wind up revealing that Luna's Crazy Awesome Bunny Ears Lawyer personality is a "mask" used to conceal a much more normal (read: boring) character underneath.
Film
- In the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Padme Amidala starts out as a strong, levelheaded woman who becomes weaker and less intelligent as the prequel trilogy progresses, culminating in her being a woman utterly lost to denial and despair who then passes away from lacking the will to live.
- Let's forget her death for a second (although, to quote Dr. Ball: "She's lost the will to live?! What is your degree in, poetry?!?"); what's really unbelievable is that this (supposedly) "wise beyond her age" and highly moral woman would fall for a wanna-be fascist, a creep displaying all the romantic panache of John Wayne Gacy. Yeah, he's a good-looking young man, and yeah, All Girls Want Bad Boys... but that was really a stretch considering the characterization she had received so far.
- One could possibly argue that this is all Palpatine's doing, given everything - and everyone - else he was manipulating at the time.
- Cyclops in the X-Men Films. He's been The Hero and Unlucky Everydude since day one of the comics. But, oh, wait, there's Darker And Edgier Anti Hero Wolverine instead, who everyone loves, so let's make him the star of the show and shove Cyclops back into a secondary role in which he does nothing but declare his love for Jean and maybe blast one or two things with his optic blasts. And then we'll just add insult to injury by randomly killing him off half an hour into the third movie, and never mentioning him again afterwards. Then again, considering the Wall Banger-laden third movie, that's probably a mercy killing.
- Of course, that's nothing compared to the Derailment his character has gone through in the comics. See the comic book section for more details.
- And yet another FOX example: Dragonball Evolution.
Literature
- The original Sir Kay in Arthurian Legend was a Badass enchanter knight, but because the character was not romantic enough, later writers downgraded him to a joke character. This change even happens within certain written works. The initial uncouth character trait may make this a Flanderization.
- This is sometimes justified as giving Arthur more of a chance to prove himself by being better than his supposedly higher-class "brother". Disney's The Sword and the Stone is one example.
- Similarly, Sir Gawain started out as the Best of the Round Table, getting to be the subject of stories like The Green Knight... until the French got involved in the writing process, Lancelot was promoted to supplant him as the noblest knight of them all, and Gawain acquired Lancelot's prior position as the comic relief. At one point, Mallory provides a helpful list of all the knights who had ever defeated Sir Gawain.
- Well, the list was only six names long: Launcelot, Tristram, Bors, Gaynes, Percivale, and Pelleas. And these were all big names (except perhaps Gaynes). Gawain may not have been Number One in Malory, but he was no slouch in a fight, either. More telling is that he screwed (up) his first quest.
- Perhaps one of the most severe examples from Arthurian Legend is Morgan Le Fey, who started out a a benevolent enchantress before being derailed first into a vindictive yandere, then into the mother of the Big Bad, and finally into the Big Bad herself. Incest also gets added for good measure. This Troper suspects that Die For Our Ship was involved.
- In a 1940 essay on Charles Dickens, George Orwell noted that Dickens derailed his characters all the time, and is "never better than when he is building up some character who will later on be forced to act inconsistently."
- Lise, Madame Khokhlakov's mysteriously sick daughter from The Brothers Karamazov, eventually recovers from her affliction late in the book, right before Dmitri's trial. She goes from being a perfectly happy person in love with the protagonist to contemplating torture and murder, completely out of sync with her established character, as if just to hurt the protagonist. Most people ignore that chapter of the book.
- Tom Sawyer started in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as a boy who is a little too interested in pirates, but yet still very smart, genre-savvy, and compassionate. But when we meet him again in the Adventure of Huckleberry Finn he becomes a one-dimensional mockery of himself; every single of his character traits has been jettisoned except for his obsession with swashbuckling epics, which has been cranked up to twelve. This led to him hiding the fact that the captured slave Jim has already been freed just so that he can live out his twisted fantasies of a proper escape (leading to Jim being imprisoned for an extra month, being shot at, and almost lynched).
- This Flanderization may be a result of Mark Twain's Creator Backlash against Tom's popularity.
- His presence is so corrosive that he derails virtually all the character development that Huck underwent on the river. I only kept reading because I'd heard Tom gets shot.
- In a clear case of Writer On Board, in The Land of Mist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has his ultra-rationalist hero Professor Challenger (who has always denied the existence of the supernatural) convert to Spiritualism. The novel is an Author Tract written following Doyle's own conversion to Spiritualism and is easily the least well-regarded (but longest) of the Challenger novels.
- I don't know if this necessarily counts. For it to be derailment, it has to be implausible, and an Author Avatar mirroring their writer's religious conversion is nothing if not realistic.
- Straddling the line between Film and Literature is the only canonical sequel to the film ET The Extra Terrestrial: The Book Of The Green Planet. Any ET fan who reads it will immediately wonder why the heck ET now wants to immediately return to Earth once he's aboard the ship (the novel begins right after the film's end credits), for what reason, exactly, does ET want to get back to Elliott so bad, and why in the world is ET behaving like a jealous ex every time he gets in telepathic contact with Elliott — who, in two character derailments for the price of one, suddenly has a crush on a girl classmate.
- "Suddenly" is the wrong word there: there's some kind of time dilation thing going on with the ship's space drive, so that several years pass on Earth during the time it takes ET to get back to his home planet (thus making the human characters the same age the actors would have been if it had been made as a film). ...should I be worried that I remember that?
- Jacob Black is introduced in the first Twilight book as a boy with a crush on Bella, fleshed out as a nice, likable guy in New Moon who becomes Bella's best friend and just wants her to be happy, and then derailed in Eclipse into a love-crazed person who sexually assaults Bella and breaks her hand. It's almost as if Meyer feared that she had made Jacob too sympathetic a Paolo and did some canon Die For Our Ship in the succeeding book to sink the Bella/Jacob ship. Jacob's characterization in Breaking Dawn is better... until he's trapped in a squicky Cleaning Up Romantic Loose Ends scheme.
- Deconstructed in Maus. The story continually compares the generous, brave, resourceful character who survives the Holocaust to his present self, who has inexplicably devolved into a cranky pain that makes life miserable for everyone. Part of the story deals with the author's issues and incredulousness of the difference between his father's behavior then and now. The story also rejects his Freudian Excuse of behaving the way he does, noting that other Holocaust survivors didn't become the bitter shell he is now.
- Count Hasimir Fenring in the Dune prequel trilogy books. He goes from the only friend the emperor has and actually a fairly decent (though very dangerous and plotting) guy to a huge jerkass with no loyalties or real redeeming characteristics. He is also rather incompetent, and apparently in the later sequel books tried killing Paul Atreides for no real reason when you consider he could have done so in the original book easily enough himself. Also the Emperor turning from a slightly vicious but competent Emperor to a rather stupid tyrant in the same prequel books. These kind of changes are why the books not written by Frank Herbert are the poster child for books that should not have been written.
- The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Nightfall by L. J. Smith was a trainreck. She changed the universe of the story mid series, and ruined the Ensemble Darkhorse. It's worse than it sounds.
- Warrior Cats: Partially subverted in Twilight when some of the characters are confused about how Onestar became such an ass overnight. It's at first dismissed as him asserting WindClan's independence, but it's still ongoing seven books later. In fact he's even worse now.
- Remember when Anita Blake Vampire Hunter was a tough, sarcastic but interesting young woman who hunted vampires and played in the sandbox with various preternatural critters like werewolves, wereleopards and the like? Up until The Killing Dance, she was also a Celibate Hero. Then she slept with a vampire. And then she slept with a werewolf. No big deal, she just had to choose between the two of them and—oh no, there's this thing called "the ardeur" that means she has to have sex every few hours or she will in fact die. And then she began an insufferable, short-tempered God Mode Sue who wants everything to go her way all the time or she'll kill you.
- Karen Traviss loves to tell readers how Jedi are incompetent and evil and Mandalorians are awesome. Since the Star Wars EU is a shared setting and characters established by other authors are fair game(though it's apparently considered bad form to handle them without permission), Traviss cameoed Scout as someone who the Jedi disliked and rejected because her powers were weak, heavily implying that she became a Mandalorian. One problem: Scout's powers were weak, but she was inventive and ridiculously determined to overcome that, which the Jedi and especially Yoda respected. Traviss has said herself that she doesn't read anything from the EU; she gets people to provide characters to use and basically ignores anything she doesn't like.
- Two glaring examples from Legacy Of The Force were Jacen Solo and Tahiri Veila. Jacen went from being an intelligent and highly moral Jedi to a raving mad Sith Lord seemingly for no other reason than because he learned from a very questionable source that one of his teachers had once been Sith herself (said teacher's philosophy was rather darker than that espoused by most Jedi, true, but Jacen himself had never shown any real sign of buying in to her more brutal teachings himself). This was intended to be an example of Jumping Off The Slippery Slope, but it's so abrupt and the resulting character so different from the Jacen EU fans were familiar with that it was very jarring.
- Tahiri Veila, Jacen's apprentice, had it if anything worse. At the end of the New Jedi Order Tahiri was a damaged but strong young woman who had clearly passed through her trials a stronger person. In LOTF she's suddenly regressed to how she was immediately following the death of her love, Anakin Solo, and is willing to do anything for Jacen (up to and including murder) if he'll use the Force to show her visions of Anakin from the past. Also, the fact that Tahiri was effectively half-Yuuzhan Vong thanks to a Shaper's experiment was greatly played up in New Jedi Order, but ingored almost completely in Legacy Of The Force.
Live Action TV
- Degrassi The Next Generation had various degrees of character derailment in season 7.
- Alex went back to being a slacker without ambition despite readmitting herself back to Degrassi to get higher marks and pursue a health profession the season before. Her lazy, judgmental, and unreliable attitude caused her second breakup with Paige as well as her character being put on a Long Bus Trip to Ajax where she has "options".
- Marco was feeling so lonely without Dylan, that he used that as an excuse to steal money from his father in order to gamble. He also got a rabbit to fight off his loneliness as well as spending time with the wrong crowd in order to feel happy and a sense of belonging. He almost prostituted himself in order to get the money to hang out with said wrong crowd.
- There was another bit earlier involving Marco - a late season five episode goes to the trouble to say Marco still loved Dylan and wanted to be with him. This is despite Marco having caught Dylan in bed with another guy, being the one who calls it quits, and beginning to date someone else. And then only to date Dylan for another season - which was about six months in-show.
- Marco's gone from being an effiminate gay teenager to a flaming young adult whos only two reasons for existing are gayngst and being the token gay friend to the straight protagonists...Marco is character derailment personified
- Ashley wanted so badly not to be seen as Craigs' sidekick but a musician in her own light, she ended up accompanying Craig on a European Tour after Spring Break. This is made worse and confusing because she wasn't there to take her final exams so it's unknown if she graduated high school. And considering that Craig now lives in Hollywood further pursuing his music career, it is unknown if Ashley even got hers off the ground during her time in Europe with Craig.
- Not to mention her behavior beforehand, which consisted of erasing then-boyfriend Jimmy's rap track from a demo they were collaborating on without his knowledge or consent—because she was jealous that he had upstaged her.
- Quinn Mallory on Sliders went from being a likable boy genius to a cardboard action hero who had a different girl each week.
- Cheers starts main character Sam off on almost-equal footing with co-lead and love interest Diane, and sometimes portrays him outwitting her thoroughly (as he does to stunning effect in the pilot). If nothing else, he is more hip to whatever is happening around him than the book-smart but somewhat oblivious Diane. When it comes to women, he is the chased as much as the chaser. Rebecca's entry into the show after Diane's departure turns him into a grovelling puppy entirely dispossessed of this aplomb, chasing in vain after a single woman who can't be bothered. In the show's final episode, Sam has gone from being a much beloved and street-smart guy with a knack for the ladies to a lonely buffoon, whose last words cap the series with, "Well, I'll be a son of a bitch.".
- The arc dealing with Olivia's discovery of her half brother on Law And Order Special Victims Unit, an until-then realistic show with realistically sensible characters, reduced Olivia to possessing all the common sense of your average soap opera character. She and Cragen even note later that she was Not Herself.
- Amy in Buffy The Vampire Slayer went from being an everyday witch to being a cartoonish bad girl for no reason at all. Shortly afterward, Willow inexplicably became addicted to magic (an effect not been shown in the series before) and started doing morally dubious things like wiping her girlfriend's memory of an argument they had had. Additionally Buffy changed from a happy-go-lucky vampire killer to a mopey, emotionally distant whiner, which could be generously labeled unpalatable Character Development, until Spike inexplicably tried to rape her. Man, those last two seasons sucked.
- Giles also seems to have completely lost his mind in the last episodes of the show especially. The last two(ish) seasons were completely devoted to Spike and Giles' only role was to hate him. Actually, all the Scoobies really did was hate Spike.
- The early S3 episode 'Dead Man's Party' was, by Word Of God , a bit of a rush job to exit the Buffy-in-exile storyline and get into the Mayor Wilkins arc. So all the emotions wrought up by Buffy's sudden departure after Killing Angel to stop Angelus' plans were amped up to an awkward degree. Buffy was mopey and uncommunicative. Willow was dagger-tongued and utterly unforgiving, calling Buffy out on things with her own glass house not quite in order. Xander was a huge bag of bitter jerkass. Joyce regressed to her S1-didn't-know persona except now she does, confiding in a relative -not to mention talkative- stranger how bad Buffy was. Oz was good, as was Cordelia, actually one of the few voices of 'Hey! Friends here!' in this mess. The non-demon climax had the normals in a living room argument taunting the super into a physical confrontation, which Willow later said she was kidding about, but remember, such a thing could not end well for either side, and tempers were flaring. While it led into possibly the best season ever, almost all the signs of the weakness of the later seasons were on full display.
- On Lost, Charlie had a Freak Out in the middle of season two for no adequately explained reason (it was suggested that he had started using heroin again, but it was never really confirmed). He then proceeded to, in order, show an obsession with baptising baby Aaron, eventually leading to his briefly kidnapping the infant, get himself exiled from the main beach, take revenge by faking a kidnapping on poor Sun (it's a long story, but it was part of a scheme with Sawyer, see below), and generally be a prick the rest of the season. He rebounded, but his character never quite recovered until he died in a badass Heroic Sacrifice.
- Soon after (the very next episode, in fact), Sawyer suddenly went back to being a manipulative, lying jerk, tricking his way into possession of the gun hoard (with Charlie's help, see above) and then threatening everyone. Why? He was upset everyone took his stuff while he was briefly away. What made it all the more jarring was that in the very next episode he was actually wondering why everyone avoided him like the plague! Unlike Charlie, however, he was able to get fully back on track and his character developed further.
- Kelly Bundy on Married With Children began the show as a bratty teen, albeit one with an active sex life. Halfway through the second season, her IQ inexplicably plunges and she suddenly turns into an empty-headed bimbo, an abrupt character change that gets more extreme as time goes on.
- In Casados Con Hijos, Florencia Peña's character matches the original portrayal of Kelly.
- In an odd example where adding positive traits constitutes Character Derailment, Peggy Bundy, during the mercifully short time when Seven appeared on the show. Whereas before Peg didn't give a rat's behind about her children, and cheerfully left them to starve while she scarfed down Bon Bons all day, Peg somehow acts as a responsible parent to that little rat Seven, feeding him and taking him to the doctor. Fortunately, once Seven disappeared, Peg went back to the lazy, self-centered, nagging shrew the fans knew and loved.
- In Family Matters, one of Steve Urkel's redeeming traits was originally that he was a personification of the aesop "just Be Yourself." The original appearance of his alter-ego Stefan Urquelle was merely a vehicle for Anvilicious preaching of this aesop. Unfortunately, then someone on the creative team decided that Stefan should become a regular part of Urkel's bag of Mad Scientist tricks; not only did this result in a Broken Aesop, but the entire point of his character was lost. Many considered this when the show Jumped The Shark. The end of the show did try to shoehorn the theme back in, but by then most of the storylines were beyond silly.
- Character Derailment at that point is arguable. This Troper feels the true Character Derailment came long afterwards. If Stefan Urquelle is his own character, and Steve Urkel already has a girlfriend who accepts him for who he is (and loves that he's that way, no less), then why did the final season of the show feel the need to have him break up said girlfriend and change almost everything about himself just to be with the other girl?
- A case of Real Life Writes The Plot. The actress who played said girlfriend was dying of stomach cancer at that point and had to eventually leave the show.
- Early episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond had Ray simply play the kind-hearted guy who wanted to please people, while Debra was the more "real" of the two (that is, not afraid to step on a few toes). By the time the series ended, Ray was out-and-out spineless, and Debra would get onto him for the smallest thing.
- In the pilot and first few seasons of Threes Company, Chrissy was an innocent but reasonably savvy and intelligent young woman. By the third or fourth season, she had become the living stereotype of the Dumb Blonde—completely naive and illogical, with asymmetrical platinum ponytails.
- Dwayne Wayne from A Different World went from being a nerd with a crush on Denise Huxtable, to a super hip and cool teacher other students looked up to within a short period of time. Likewise with Whitley Gilbert, who was the stuck-up, snobbish, rich southern princess, and then turned into a compassionate teacher and love interest of Dwayne. This is likely due to the fact that Lisa Bonet left a huge hole in the show when she left (the show was originally built around her character), so the writers was forced to make Whitley do a unconvincing Heel Face Turn in a short amount of time.
- Adam's decay from gentle, caring, and "all about" Joan, to just another horny teenage boy, in the second season of Joan Of Arcadia. Actually, "decay" would suggest there was some time between "gentle, caring" and "horny". The Reveal was literally dropped in out of nowhere in the middle of an episode.
- Ghostwriter replaced the actress who played Gaby with a much younger actress, altering her relationships with the characters drastically. So now, instead of being Tina's best friend, she's suddenly closer to Casey's age, and was thrown in with Hector and Casey in the opening. And to add insult to injury Gaby, a character who lived in Brooklyn all her life, suddenly developed a heavy Hispanic accent that she'd never had before. And what finally did the character in was the fact that her personality was completely unlike the original Gaby.
- More of a concept derailment, but you can point to the exact episode where it was decided that the Prophets in Star Trek Deep Space Nine went from being uncaring aliens who happened to be worshipped by the Bajorans to being 'of Bajor' and caring deeply, in their own inscrutable way, about what happened. It didn't ruin the series, but it certainly changed things quite a bit.
- True, but in this case the change arguably made a lot more sense. If the Prophets are merely uncaring aliens who unintentionally inspired the Bajoran religion, why did they send so many prophetic visions to their followers?
- Dukat in the late season 6 and season 7 of Star Trek Deep Space Nine, since the start of the Pah-wraiths storyline. Also an example of Obviously Evil and Viewers Are Morons tropes (see the comments of show-runner Ira Steven Behr on the matter).
- The Office seems to be coming close to this trope in the fourth season, making previously sympathetic characters much less likable. Ryan's change from average guy to suave douchebag is at least a somewhat believable Character Development, resulting from his huge promotion. Although Jan was never nice before, she was about as pleasant as you could expect anyone having to deal with Michael Scott to be. After being fired, she transforms into a total bitch. Toby was originally just a guy who got picked on excessively by Michael, but it's strongly implied now that he's jealous of Jim's relationship with Pam, and passive-aggressively taking it out on Jim.
- All of those changes sound reasonable to me, unless you truly believe that Status Quo Is God.
- JD on Scrubs. He starts the series as a nervous, somewhat needy young doctor who also displays genuine wit, intelligence, charm and sensitivity. At this point, he's something of a second Butt Monkey, has had his emotional neediness become a classic example of Flanderization and has, quite frankly, degenerated into something of an idiot. An inability to locate Iraq on a map or explain the difference between a Senator and a Congressman are the two most flagrant examples of that, but are far from the only ones.
- The sixth season wreaks havoc with other established characters as well, going even so far as to have Turk state that he finds all women JD sleeps with automatically disgusting (and this is confirmed with a brief POV shot), when this is not only contradicted in previous seasons by various moments he shares with Elliot (including a sex dream that provides the crux of an entire episode), but just a few episodes later when JD makes a big deal of Turk sleeping with one of his former college girlfriends. Of course, this inconsistency is just for a throwaway joke that's never followed through on, while JD's behavior with Kim concerning her pregnancy and his brief flirtation at infidelity with an engaged Elliot completely rewrites his character to provide fodder for a seventh season that almost didn't happen.
- Between the first season and later seasons, one aspect of Elliot's character was noticeably changed as well; early on in the series, Elliot is not particularly fond of children or babies and shows little to no desire to interact with them. For example, in the first Christmas episode, Dr. Kelso makes a very sexist remark to her about how almost all female doctors end up in women's specialty, and she later tells him that she is completely uninterested in babies, doesn't coo when she's around them or melt when she sees them, and has no desire to make them her life's work. By the end of the episode, she does feel some affection toward a baby born to a teenager in the care of her hospital, but it seems clear, and it would make sense, that she still has not completely changed her views. Contrast this against the Elliot of later seasons, who is extremely jealous of any pregnant women around her and wants her boyfriend, Keith, to pretend they're not wearing a condom while they're having sex so that she can fantasize about getting pregnant.
Elliot: Oh my god Turk, I am so sorry, I just love babies so much.
Keith: It's true. Sometimes she makes me wear a diaper.
Elliot: Keith, private!
- The third season finale of Bones revealed that Zack, the team's gentle, kind lab-rat was a serial killer with no build-up or explanation whatsoever. The writers admitted they wanted to make one of the main cast a killer and didn't know or care who it would be and decided at the last minute to shock people.
- This isn't as glaring an example, but what on earth happened to the deep, emotionally intelligent Booth of earlier seasons? And why do the characters - and writers - treat Fratboy Booth the same as they did his good twin?
- This could be explained by his brain tumor, which did cause problems with his behavior. The fifth season premier seems to establish that, since his coma dream, he's returned to his emotionally intelligent ways.
- Arnold Spivak from Murder One was portrayed in the first season as somewhat socially awkward but skilled and mature lawyer. In season two, he becomes a whiny brat and approaches full-on butt monkey-dom in the final episode when he completely blows a job interview.
- The Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager started out as gruff but cool-headed and efficient, seeking ways to expand his horizons and learn about the world outside his programming. Toward the end of the series, however, he was frequently portrayed as an egotistical Jerk Ass so narrow-minded as to be incapable of seeing anything outside his own wants and needs. Unsure if this counts as Derailment, as there were still episodes at that point that stuck closer to his original character.
- Forget the doctor. What about Janeway? She started off well, but got more unstable and increasingly messianic about her own infallibility as the series went on, with no real explanation. Kate Mulgrew has publically stated that she believes her character was suffering from some sort of mental disorder. Chakotay, by comparison, increasingly lost his spine.
- A lot of Voyager's retroactive, out-of-the-blue attempts at character development might count as this, but none of them ever lasted more than one episode.
- American Gothic has the most obvious candidate of Gail Emory, Chickified from an Action Girl and Determinator into a Distressed Damsel, but some might term Dr. Crower's descent into madness, Merlyn's turn as an avenging angel, and Caleb's descent into darkness as examples of Character Derailment as well rather than Character Development. At times Merlyn could also appear Flanderized and Selena seemed to suffer from Villain Decay. The only character who could (subjectively) be said to grow and develop normally is Ben Healy...while Buck always stayed true to his roots.
- People who grew up watching Sesame Street have balked at Cookie Monster's change in attitude; throwing away "C is for Cookie (That's Good Enough for Me)" to "Cookies Are a Sometimes Food" goes against the very definition of his character, and is seen as a ham-handed healthy lifestyles promotion.
- To be fair, much of the backlash over Cookie's supposed attitude changes was hysteria whipped up by some spectacularly clueless Cowboy Bebop At His Computer reporting by the media. To wit: the song was sung to Cookie Monster, not by Cookie Monster.Muppet Wiki sums up the situation pretty well. And any lingering doubts were removed by Cookie's appearance on The Colbert Report where he A. compared his cookie situation to Robert Downey Jr. and B. ate some friggin' cookies.
- Heroes. Circling the drain on its third season has derailed virtually all of its characters.
- Mohinder Suresh went from a curious, intellectually hopeful scientist, whose lack of conventional superpower brought complexity into his dynamics with other characters, to an aggressive superpower-junkie with hardly a personality beyond his amplified ego. This is also the result of plot derailment, when the show went from being an exploration of accelerated human evolution to a simple display of Mad Science.
- Claire went through an interesting character arc in the beginning. She had a Cursed With Awesome phase, found out her dad works for a secret company. That was all good in season one, made sense. Season two onward, it seems like she never resolved any of those issues and bitches more than any other character about her power, including the ones that kill people by feeling an emotion. The details change every Volume, but Claire's story arc always basically boils down to "I can't trust my father!", regardless of whether or not it makes sense.
- Season One - finds out Noah hunts down people like her for a living but reconciles when she realizes just how much he risked to keep her and her powers safe from his bosses.
- Season Two - gets angry that Noah lied to her and her mother, continuing to work as a secret agent trying to bring down The Company. This was especially hypocritical since Noah was riding Claire hard about the importance of not doing anything to attract attention. So joining the cheerleaders at her new school is too risky but his globe-trotting and killing his old teachers is okay?
- Season Three - after going through what amounted to Mind Rape with Sylar, wants to start using her powers to fight bad powered people like Noah does. Noah wants her to live a normal life.
- Season Four - Claire takes Noah to task for working with Nathan and the government-run Company and allowing all the decent people he knows who have powers be illegally imprisoned while making deals to keep her safe.
- Season Five - Claire and Noah actually seem to be reconciling... until the new Big Bad tells Claire that Noah once killed a man in front of his young daughter and Claire suddenly goes back to being convinced her dad is a monster...
- Oh, Hiro — the first two seasons were all about him trying to reconcile his noble, comic book-based ideas of what a hero's supposed to be with the way the real world works, as well as coming into his own powers (which was pretty much the entire point of the Kensei storyline). Season 3 starts with him as a man child who's bored of running his father's company, so he decides to open a safe containing a plot device because his father told him not to. And it's only gotten worse, with Hiro literally having his mental age reduced to ten years old. Not enough? He was smarter and more effective as a mental ten year old than as his regular 28 year old self. Naturally this was reversed ASAP.
- Sylar, the original villain and recurring Bad Ass since season one, arguably got the worst treatment in season 3, which is really saying something. He turns into a good guy simply because Angela falsely told him she's his mother, naturally he believes her for no apparent reason. He dresses like a nerd and starts working for the company with the help of Noah (the only character to actually behave in character throughout the season). That is, until Arthur tells Sylar that he's his father and Angela was an abusive mother. Again, all lies and no evidence at all to back up his claims, and Sylar believes him again, and works for Pinehearst, Arthur's company, instead. Noah finally lets the cat out of the bag and somehow this puts Sylar back on track, he no longer believes he's a Petrelli, and finds a way to prove it. Of course, not before one last punch to his character, he kills Elle on the beach for no apparent reason. This was so close to adding to him being a Magnificent Bastard, until it was revealed it was never a trick or a trap, he truly believed all the lies.
- Also, throughout the entire season he went from good to bad like flipping a light switch. No this wasn't duality or being morally ambiguous, this was going from a saint to a Complete Monster at the drop of a hat with absolutely no middle ground at all.
- I don't wish to justify the bad storyline, because it was bad, but I have to say that Sylar definitely would believe that Angela and Arthur were his parents, because his entire character is based around wanting to be special, and resenting his parents, so naturally he would love to be a part of the completely superpowered Petrelli family.
- Elle. In Season 2 she's introduced as a murderous, sociopathic Company agent whose mental issues were caused by experimentation on her at an early age conducted by the Company under her father's orders - a cautionary tale of what could have happened to Claire if her father had given her up to the Company instead of protecting her. In Season 3, she seems the same in the first episode, and in her return in "Eris Quod Sum" her personality seems unchanged. Then in the flashback episode "Villains", one episode later, she appears to be almost completely normal, aside from being a superpowered person working for the Company. When asked to explain what happened to Elle's insanity, the writers said that helping turn Gabriel Gray into Sylar had at least helped to mess her up more - which is nonsense, as it was already established that she went insane from Bob's experiments on her as a child. So now the point of Elle's character has completely changed - in fact, she doesn't say two words to Claire again after "Eris Quod Sum". It got worse in the next three episodes, as the writers abandoned her personality so Sylar could have a relationship with her. Then he killed her for no reason.
- Adam Monroe, who transforms from Magnificent Bastard to sniveling coward in a single scene, all as a pathetically transparent attempt to build up the new Big Bad, Arthur Petrelli.
- As if the individuals weren't bad enough, they did an episode that derailed all the characters at once; Villains, it played like a piece of bad fanfiction by somebody who never even heard of the show. Sylar was the good guy nerd, even though this was supposed to be after his fall when he started acting like a serial killer. Elle was gentle and kind, and hated that she had to feed somebody to Sylar. Agent Thompson released Meridith out of pity that she lost her daughter, even though he was likely the same person that took her away in the first place, and is the same Agent Thompson that nearly killed Matt simply because Matt wanted to be left alone, the same Thompson who tried to take Claire away from Noah. Nathan's line in the episode "Thank God Dad never found out what his sons were about to do to him," despite the fact he yelled precisely what he planned to do to Arthur to his face and that Nathan hates his father, all in the same damn episode. Linderman feels sorry about Angela not knowing that Arthur plans to kill Nathan, despite just coming back from trying to kill Nathan himself. Speaking of which, they turned Angela into a fucking housewife.
- On Happy Days, Fonzie was originally a minor side character, who was a genuine juvenile delinquent. He had dropped out of school, and in one episode went back to school, before dropping out again because he decided he couldn't be bothered. He was also shown to "date" multiple women, often without them knowing about each other. Once Fonzie became a major (if not the major) character, this changed. A few years later, suddenly he is able to graduate high school with Richie and the gang after all, because he went back to school (for a second time?) and took night courses or something. He is also seen to be preaching to Chachi that he should be honest with the women he dates and let them down easy, etc. I once saw this character transformation referred to as "Father Knows Best in a leather jacket and sideburns" and I think this accurately describes it.
- Similarly, Hawkeye of M*A*S*H went from being a mischievous goof-off obsessed with women to an unfailingly moral Marty Stu preaching at us.
- General Hospital has Damian Spinelli, who went from the pot-smoking lecherous surfer guy who happened to hack computers, to a shy, anti-social, sad little geek who had no self-confidence and acted as a prop for Maxie Jones, through massive woobification.
- How about the massive character derailment in Maxie to prop Spinelli? The pairing ruined them both. Maxie went from a bitchy, snarky, basically a Jerk Witha Heartof Gold who, while still sympathetic, actually enabled a married man's drug addiction by carrying on an affair with him, to a shrill-voiced, hopeless, stupid harpy who constantly spouts that Spin is her "essential person" and how OMG LOST she'd be without him.
- Doctor Who* This was largely responsible for making Adric so unpopular - somewhere between Castrovalva and Four to Doomsday, he became a gullible chauvinist (the latter is particularly odd seeing as he's spent so much time with Romana without ever commenting, and one of the short stories about him mentions at least one female student on the Starliner, who he has no problem with, as well as a female Decider). Unfortunately, most fans of the show tend to act as if he was always that way.
- The Doctor himself in Season 21 and 22 behaves very out of character. There are frequent stories where the Doctor is uncharacteristically prepared to kill someone gleefully in cold blood, most notably Twin Dilemma and The Two Doctors. And his moral compass in Warriors of the Deep and Attack of the Cybermen is particularly off, with the Doctor seemingly turning coat and praising the 'nobility' of cold blooded killers like Lytton and the Silurians and doing more to save them than any of the innocents in those high body count stories.
- Infact a lot of Doctor Who stories from the 1980's feature characters doing uncharacteristic, inexplicable things out of the blue for no apparent reason. Most notorious examples being in Terminus where Nyssa removes most of her clothes and strips to her underwear simply as a treat for the male viewers, Warriors of the Deep where Dr. Solow gets confronted with the Myrka and makes the fatal and unfathomable mistake of deciding to karate-kick the beast, and in the first cliffhanger of Dragonfire where the Seventh Doctor spontaneously decides to climp off a ledge and dangle to his death by his umbrella.
- House has Cuddy, who went from a strong, sane woman (with a guilt complex) who could run her hospital well and still deal with House relatively well to an incompetent, baby-feverish, overly-emotional boss who acts like a child. She still has her moments but Cuddy, sweetie, when House is acting more mature than you, then I think that we've got a problem.
- Not to mention the way she's morphed into a woman whose sole obsession in life is being a mother, and she seems to resent her career for pulling her away from her adopted baby.
- This sort of happens with Wilson too, who went from being House's protective best friend, (He warned both House's ex-girlfriend AND Cameron not to break his heart) to a guy who is despised by everyone for selling House out to Tritter, and that was before the whole season Four fiasco, when he asked House to fry his brain to save Wilson's girlfriend, and then walked away telling they had never been friends.
- One episode of House stood out for me as incredibly stupid. I believe the title was "Alone". At any rate a woman is dying, House needs to bounce ideas off of people to do his thing, it's like his...superpower or whatever. So now, mind you, a woman may die any minute if House doesn't help her. So Cuddy and Wilson go about trying to stymie House at every turn, even so far as to play pranks on him and order everyone in the hospital not to talk to him (no, seriously...) because they—get this—they think he needs help. Oh ok, so here's an idea, why not HELP HIM YOU IDIOTS, A WOMAN IS DYING AND HE'S THE ONLY ONE WHO CARES? IS THAT NOT SINKING IN OR SOMETHING?
- Dr. Foreman was perhaps the earliest victim of Character Derailment. In the first season, he was ambitious and unsentimental, but had several Jerk With A Heart Of Gold moments to make up for it. One or two episodes into the second season, he stood back and did nothing while a patient's heart failed because he didn't like the guy. Later in that same season he pulled a professional dick move on Cameron, then when he was mortally ill, stabbed her with a dirty needle in a desperate attempt to get her to save him. To say he Took A Level In Jerkass would be an understatement.
- The second series of Robin Hood had character development from everyone, but most notably Guy of Gisborne, who, by the penultimate couple of episodes, is risking his own life to stand up for what he believes in and to defend others; something he would never have done back in the day. This is mostly because of his love for Marian, and he repeatedly defies the Sheriff for Marian's sake. Marian shows Guy friendship, despite working against him in secret, and is very very good at keeping her double-agent status secret. In the finale, Marian suddenly begins flailing about like a muppet, yelling "I LOVE ROBIN HOOD! I'M GOING TO MARRY ROBIN HOOD!" Guy then stabs her through the gut and rides off.
- Smartest thing he ever did.
- It seems to run in the family. The third season introduces Guy's sister Isabella, who seems intelligent, helpful and rational. Robin begins a relationship with her, but when she encourages him to run away with her, he tells her that his loyalties lie with England and the mission. She responds by picking up the nearest sword and trying to kill him. As you do.
- This, incidentally, is the smartest thing that she ever did.
- On Dirty Sexy Money, Lisa George is shown during the first season and first part of the second season to be a kind, reasonable woman — flawed, yes, but, you know. A human being. In the show's second season, the writers seemed to realize they could hardly justify Nick just leaving her and hooking up with first love Karen Darling. Thus Lisa became an unreasonable shrew who harped on Nick at every turn. Nick also suffered slightly.
- The Playboy TV series Boy Nexxt Door has the main character start off as a somewhat nerdy, goofy, naive guy who still had plenty of successes and quite possibly a bright future ahead of him in the adult film industry, and after a few seasons quickly derail into the biggest loser imaginable, who is going to spectacularly fail at whatever he tries no matter what it is, and who women find laughable and pathetic pretty much automatically... nevermind that the whole catalyst for the series was the fact that he had the ability to not only attract numerous hot girls, but actually convince them to let him film it. Apparently with Playboy magazine's decay into a Maxim clone, the network had to follow suit and make anyone even slightly uncool objects of total derision.
- As Dexter progresses, moving away from the novels and changing many of the character details in order to be a more palatable show, the main character has taken on a family, gotten married and had a kid of his own too. Not to mention his regular "fantasy moments" where he has open conversations with his foster father Harry, as if that character now serves as the link to Dexter of the first few seasons. Although he's still dark, and still kills occasionally, he seems a lot less driven than he was in past seasons. It's almost as if he is slowly being demoted from a serial killer to a troubled sociopath to bring in a wider audience, losing the substance that makes it such a unique premise. Not just character derailment but show derailment, especially if you count the fact the show now has a MUCH bigger focus on romantic relationships than it did in the first season and the increased reliance on stock plots/characters and the odd Cliche Storm.
Newspaper Comics
- Probably the most extreme example out of this page, Jerkass Amoral Attorney Steve Dallas gets kidnapped by aliens and Brainwashed into a touchy-feely, effeminate hippie. Ironic, because this is also one of the best cases of Tropes Are Not Bad. Avoiding Snapback and We Want Our Jerk Back typically associated with this trope for several years, Steve Dallas becomes a much more sympathetic character and even patches up his relationship with his mother during this time period.
- This character also a rare case of this trope being subverted, though arguably not for the better; at the end of Bloom County's run he ends up derailing himself again into exactly the same character before.
- Also another example of Tropes Are Not Bad, Opus from the same comic was derailed from a generic Funny Animal to the neurotic, politics obsessed, couch potato materialist we all know and love today.
- This happens again in Bloom County with Bill the Cat. For most of the comic, when he wasn't in a drug-induced coma or brain dead, he did nothing but spout gibberish. Toward the end of the comic's run, he was kidnapped and had Donald Trump's brain transplanted into him.
Professional Wrestling
- Mick Foley publicly stated that he was proud of the way that his character Mankind had started off very dark and ended up essentially a children's character who wore a sock puppet named Mr. Socko and did things like come to the ring with balloons or with "Yurple the Clown".
- In one particularly egregious case, WWE wrestler Muhammad Hassan started out as an Arab-American who was sick of being stereotyped as a terrorist; as time went on, he gradually became a stock Evil Foreigner who just happened to be from Detroit, in the process becoming everything he was originally trying to convince people he was not.
- The unmasking of Luchadors, particularly when WCW did it, was character derailment. Juventud Guererra maybe got some decent mileage out of his unmasking. Rey Mysterio Jr., who without his mask looked about 10 years old, was put into a Mexican hip hop gimmick? Not so much. But at least he got a gimmick. Psychosis just lost his mask, and... you know what, just read the Pro Wrestling section on Wall Bangers.
Close Professional Wrestling
Video Games
- Originally, Knuckles had displayed a cunning and intelligent ability to outwit Sonic and Tails back in the 90's era, and in Sonic Adventure 2, displayed a calm and cool-headed ability to get his job done. However, as soon as Sonic Advance 2 was released (along with the anime Sonic X) and onward, Knuckles is now portrayed as the village idiot, who has a horrible temper, and appears to be technologically inept, despite being able to operate over ten devices on Angel Island in Sonic the Hedgehog 3.
- Amy Rose...at first, she was a cute Genki Hedgehog Girl with a crush on Sonic, but somewhere between Adventure games, her infatuation with the blue blur almost entirely took over her character. (Again, Sonic 2006, Chronicles and Unleashed appears to have undone some of the damage in Amy's case.)
- This has happened a lot in World Of Warcraft. Cynical or embittered players point the finger at the transition from a storyline-driven RTS to an MMO and the need to supply players with new and interesting things to kill. More charitable ones blame the inherent restrictions upon storytelling presented by a game where the player's perspective on NPC Character Development is limited.
- The leader of the Blood Elves, Kael'thas, once a hero driven by the survival of his people and their honour in his initial appearance in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. He remains loyal to the Alliance up until the moment his people were about to be executed en masse (to satisfy a warlord's racism) and joined with Illidan Stormrage (whose only motive at that time was to take over the demon-dominated Outland and be left alone) because he believed it was the only way to save them from magic addiction. In World Of Warcraft he is an Evil Overlord without any redeeming qualities, willing to sacrifice his entire people away to summon the very demon lord in charge of the forces responsible for the destruction of his homeland. When confronted for the final time, a horrifically warped Kael claims that he never was loyal to Illidan in the first place and calls Kil'Jaeden (the fore-mentioned demon lord) "master" with almost a loving voice. An often-cited explanation for the change is fel magic, which he keeps slurping down like water, but it's arguable whether or not it can entirely change a person's core being into its complete mirror image in six years or so. The game itself seems to consider Kael was always like this.
- Illidan Stormrage was a very multi-layered character in Warcraft III. He wanted power, but seemed to still have a heart to himself. However, in WoW, he's just "the Lord of Outland" and doesn't seem to possess any goals in his life except to pose a challenge to players between the levels 58 and 70. In WC3, he treated his minions with respect, but now he uses demons to keep them as slaves. He even attacks Shattrath City for no reason at all, even though they were both enemies of the Burning Legion.
- Arthas + Nerzhul = Lich King, total Badass and possible VillainSue right? Well we can't have that, if this story made sense and he retained his clear competence (even Arthas was a pretty good general, even if he was way too rash and emotional) he would have beaten us down hard. So they appear to be have decided it's just Arthas in there now, and Arthas at his stupidest. And stupid in a way different than normal, sitting around and not actually doing anything. And more!
- Garrosh Hellscream. Let us demonstrate: Link
- Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks is full of departures from what the characters were like in the second fighting game (which Shaolin Monks is a remake of), from Kitana being under a spell (when she wasn't in the fighting game) to Scorpion randomly attacking the protagonists for no apparent reason. The worst offender, however, has to be Kung Lao; up until then, they made it very clear that he preferred to not be in the spotlight, and purposely kept out of the MK tournament to avoid competing with his friend Liu Kang. In Shaolin Monks, he's turned into a cocky SOB with a constant and heated rivalry with Liu for glory, which became canonical in Armageddon.
- Raiden was originally built up as the sympathetic God who protects humanity, even when the other Gods are pretty much ignorant... then in Deception, he becomes a sadistic Knight Templar who goes to the extreme to protect humanity. One attempted explanation is that after his Heroic Sacrifice, he was corrupted when he was remade.
- Duminuss in Super Robot Wars OG Gaiden is clearly different than herself in SRW R. In R, albeit cold hearted, she still shows love to her creations, showing strong family dynamic that is rather moving. In OG Gaiden, though, that family dynamic is thrown out of the window and Duminuss acts like a complete ass who only sees her creations as pawns, and orders them to do things they don't want. This is later justified, when Dark Brain declares this Duminuss to be a failed product, which means this is not the same Duminuss as in R. On the bright side, though, one of her creations (Despinis) is now more eligible to join you, due to an improvement to her personality from this derailment, and she does join you.
- Would you believe Guitar Hero displays this? In Guitar Hero II, Judy Nails was a perky Alt-Rock/Punk girl who was non-ironically described as "always bringing a smile to the stage." For Guitar Hero III, almost every aspect of her was changed to better conform to the violent and aggressive "Punk Grrl" stereotype, including having a permanent pouty scowl and a reference on one of her outfits to being kicked out of Catholic school... not to mention the dramatic wardrobe change itself. And gaining two cup sizes. Her change into a surly punk grrl is made even more inexplicable by the fact that "rudeness" was previously listed as one of her "dislikes."
- The same thing happened to the grunge/country/alternative rocker Casey Lynch, retooled into a leather-wearing, jiggly rocker chick in Guitar Hero III. Her description lampshades this, though, with an anecdote about how she attacked a reporter who accused her of selling out before coldly adding, 'I'm sorry, I can afford to pay the medical bill'.
- Xavier Stone changes dramatically both in personality and physically in Guitar Hero II and III; III is especially obious. Not only is his "cocky virtuouso" personality dropped in favor of "zen master", he appears to have lost all of his copious muscle mass and turned into a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of Jimi Hendrix. It's to the point that it's nearly impossible to believe that he's the same character from previous games.
- Judy Nails was largely reverted back in Guitar Hero: World Tour. She's been almost totally reverted in Guitar Hero V... but this is accompanied with her character bio being turned into a mean-spirited Take That against everyone who was bothered by the change in the first place.
- Spyro: A Hero's Tail in its entirety. To elaborate, Gnasty Gnorc goes from being a competent Big Bad who detests dragons to an annoying Harmless Villain who's willing to work for one, as well losing his trademark crystallisation spell, the Dragon Elders bear no resemblance whatsoever to their previous selves apart from their names, Bentley, formerly a Genius Bruiser, loses the 'genius', Hunter goes from being dim but good-natured to an irritating Ted Baxter who never gets his comeuppance and Moneybags gets a ridiculous accent that nobody has a clue about what it's supposed to be.
- The Original Trilogy wasn't immune to this either. In Spyro 2: Gateway To Glimmer (Ripto's Rage in the USA) Moneybags, although he was quite greedy, was one of the good guys and was trying to restore Avalar. In Year of the Dragon, he's working for the villains and is the local Butt Monkey. This is emphasised by Spyro's responses to his questions changing from 'Yes' or 'No' to '...fine, I'll pay you' or 'Bite me, fatso'.
- Moneybags was never trying to restore Avalar, he was merely taking advantage of the situation. In fact, the manual says he was trying to collect enough treasure to buy a ticket out of Avalar.
- The Prince in Prince Of Persia: The Sands of Time was a somewhat cocky, but likeable hero who sets out to reverse his mistakes. In Warrior Within, the in game story had the Prince have a falling out with his father as he is chased by a demon who cannot be killed or stopped. This new characterization was a downright arrogant Jerkass who acted entirely on his selfish intentions. While the game was praised for the new combat controls and sandbox-like gameplay, the common complaint was that you just didn't care about the character you were playing. The Two Thrones was originally set to be just as dark as Warrior Within, but after the criticism, they actually set up the Prince to confront his actions of the previous games, culminating in a World Of Cardboard Speech.
- Mega Man X to some degree. He usually complains about fighting but does it anyway. Then comes X7 and he's a hyper pacifist. Though it's at least understandable given that he wanted to stop fighting in the first place.
- Then there's Command Mission, where he's only 1/4 of what his original character was. He has no problems kicking ass and blowing up mavericks. Some would say it's an improvement though.
- Zero displays this. Usually he was just a guy who wanted to complete the mission and somewhat a fun loving guy. Now he's somewhat of a jerk ass, who doesn't act like he's X's friend at all. Though he tried to comfort him at the end of X8.
- The entire Rayman cast in Rayman 3 were changed to be more hilarious.
- Dr. Neo Cortex from the Crash Bandicoot series started his transformation from occasionally goofy, yet still seriously threatening mad scientist to a completely negligible goofball who only occasionally even gets in Crash's way at around the third game in the series (where he was revealed to be the Dragon to the real Big Bad of the series), and was extremely deep into this territory by the time Crash Twinsanity rolled around, where he basically turns into a human club, frisbee and snowboard, in that order.
- Cortex's boss Uka Uka also became much less menacing, although in his case it seems to be in part due to bad writing. In Crash 3 and Crash Bash, Uka Uka was a diobolical force of evil who gave an evil first impression just by being feared by Cortex. In the Wrath of Cortex, the Huge Adventure and N-Tranced, Uka Uka seems more like a Pointy Haired Boss who does nothing but complain about Cortex's failures and make empty threats of killing him. Uka Uka's evilness was arguably somwhat improved in Crash of the Titans, where he actually DOES get rid of Cortex and battle Crash by himself, but in the sequel, Mind Over Mutant, Cortex finally does something that by that point was long overdue: He betrays Uka Uka and uses him as a source of Bad Mojo to power his N Vs while feeding him cake.
- This of course is due to the fact that the Naughty Dog (creators of Crash Bandicoot - CTR) had nothing to do with Crash Bash or any subsequent games. When the original creators of something are no longer involved it is almost inevitable that things will go downhill.
- From Tales Of Symphonia, Yuan went from the snarky, grumpy, Manipulative Bastard leader of La Resistance, who was almost always a step or two ahead of the party and seemed to have a plan for everything in the original game... to a minor Mister Exposition NPC with almost no personality in the sequel. La Resistance disappeared entirely, although, given that what he was resisting was literally leaving the solar system at escape velocity, perhaps he was just mellowing out.
- It's only for one moment, but if you bring Bastila with you in Knights Of The Old Republic while exploring Tatooine, you will come across Tanis, a man who's wound up in a death trap set up by his wife. After learning that it was because Tanis was a huge jerk to her, Bastila recommends leaving him there. Granted, he is a dick, but out in the desert like that, he wouldn't have long to live and considering this is coming from someone who earlier told you that no-one deserves execution, no matter what their crimes...
- Ironically, Bastila is actually much less sarcastic after turning to the Dark Side for real.
- Erol in the Jak And Daxter series starts out as The Dragon to Baron Praxis, Jak's opponent in Haven City's races and his rival for Keira's affection. He seemingly dies when he tries to run Jak down with his vehicle, only to crash into a large stash of Eco and explode. Sure, he may already have been evil in that game, but in the next game, he returns from the dead as a cybernatic Omnicidal Maniac who wants to Take Over The World. What the heck?
- Considering that the colour of the explosion when Erol left the building in Jak II was definitely Dark Eco, it's probably the same condition that affected Gol and Maia: Dark Eco-induced insanity. Remember that G&M had exactly the same goal as Erol did, and it begins to look more like it's Dark Eco that's the problem.
- In Metal Gear Solid 4, Liquid Snake's character was single-handedly derailed by a single line: "I am Liquid's Doppelganger"
- Was that really Ocelot though?
- Clarification of your question, please? Did you think It was still Liquid or are you suggesting that Ocelot got character-derailed too?
- It was just Ocelot. He was using nanomachines, hypnosis and damn good acting to make it seem like he and Liquid were still sharing a body. There was no character derailment. Ocelot was, by a certain stretch of the word, Liquid's doppleganger.
- It manages to happen in the same game in Fallout 3. Clover, despite having a slave mentality that makes her do absolutely anything her owner wants will not activate the Purifier in your place if you ask her during the ending, for no obvious reason except that the game is coded to only allow you or Sarah Lyons to make the Heroic Sacrifice here. Charon at least has the excuse that the "contract" his slave mentality is tied to only requires him to perform combat-related duties.
- An even worse example is Fawkes. Despite being portrayed as intelligent and morally upright, despite owing his life and freedom to the Vault Dweller, despite having already performed a similar service in the past, and despite being naturally immune to radiation, he refuses to activate the purifier because it's not his "destiny." This is the same Fawkes who, earlier in the game, single-handedly assaulted Raven Rock to rescue the Vault Dweller. Fortunately this illogical and out of character decision is eliminated once the Broken Steel DLC is added to the game. The final scene is rewritten, and now Fawkes will gladly activate the purifier in the Vault Dweller's stead. He even hangs a little lampshade on the fact that there's no reason for him not to.
- Cranky Kong from the Donkey Kong Country series hasn't been living up to his name much in recent years outside of the Rare-developed ports/remakes. Quite possibly the worst example? Encouraging DK and Diddy to practice so they'll get better at the beginning of Donkey Konga after they demonstrate how horrible they are at drumming. This coming from the same character who would've previously seemed all too ready to hurl insults at them for their lousy performance, tell them they're horrible and may as well give up, or at least berate them for not trying hard enough to improve.
- Happens to Prometheus in the Age Of Mythology expansion campaign. It's based on All Myths Are True (well, most of them anyway), and Prometheus is a trickster figure in Greek mythology who is, at least on some level, on our side (see also: fire). So how does he appear in Age Of Mythology: The Titans? As a fifty-foot clay monster who seems to have no goals besides smashing stuff and generally ruining people's days, and not only isn't a trickster figure, he doesn't even speak.
- One of the problems some Chrono Trigger fans have with its pseudosequel Chrono Cross is its treatment of the characters from the first game. In Trigger, Lucca joins her friends in their quest to avert an apocalyptic future using time travel, and end up rewriting the past in the process. In Cross, she mentions in a letter "what was meant to happen will happen," causing her adopted little sister to react in shock. "You're the one who always laughed about how there's nothin' 'definite' or 'certain' in this world..." As if killing her off wasn't enough...
- Originally, Vicki Kawaguchi of Backyard Sports loved ballet, which helped her play games. In Backyard Baseball 2007, Vicki is just a superstar athlete. Pablo Sanchez also no longer speaks Spanish, which made him loved. But he speaks English anyway.
Web Original
- Dark Elf Drizz'l of Eight Bit Theater fame went from a Ralph Wiggum who got outwitted by even Fighter of all people to a competent Deadpan Snarker with no reason or justification whatsoever, just so the author could shoehorn in humor that required the necessity of an Only Sane Man.
- No reason? He lost his swords!!
- Unlike most examples here quite a few people prefer the later characterization of Drizz'l.
- Survival Of The Fittest character Vesa Turunen went from an upbeat jock concerned for the wellbeing of his best friend to a deathseeking psycho almost entirely lacking in empathy, devoid of any real Character Development to get to this point.
- Coach Z, Homestar Runner's coach. Originally, he was a well-meaning coach with a speech impediment. Now... well, the Homestar Runner fan wiki has a list of his "more than two praeblems".
- As said elsewhere on this wiki, though, this is arguably for the better.
- The protagonist of the webcomic The Lounge, Italy Ishida, seems to get a pretty large dose of this, cross pollinated with No Bisexuals.
Western Animation
- Like the Kelly Bundy example, Luanne from King Of The Hill started out as a somewhat promiscuous teenager who didn't take any guff from anyone. Later episodes turned her into a shy moron who was afraid to stand up for herself. The promiscuity, however, was given a proper episode when it disappeared.
- Also, I'm pretty sure Bobby wasn't ALWAYS an effeminate idiot.
- This could be argued as Character Development though if you didn't take well to his original characterization as slow, akward and not "right" as Hank would say. Sure he got effeminate, but he got also got some charisma and charm, even if it was limited to trying to be a class clown and entertainer.
- Transformers: Beast Machines did this to pretty much everyone, via a poorly done mass Freak Out, turning Rattrap from a sneaky-but-reliable Jerk With A Heart Of Gold into an annoying Dirty Coward, Optimus Primal from a competent and inspirational yet down-to-earth and approachable leader into a spiritual guru who bordered on fanaticism, Dark Action Girl Blackarachnia into the Shallow Love Interest deprived of her boyfriend, etc, etc. Especially bad regarding Megatron who got no explanation as to why he became obsessed with eliminating individuality and hated Beast Modes.
- Although that's a fair cop for Megatron's uprecedented manias, it's arguably justified for the Maximals, given the impact of the massive shock of rapidly going from having won the Beast Wars with Megs as their captive to suddenly finding themselves mode-locked, downgraded, amnesiac and on the run from a massive army of drones amidst the newly post-apocalyptic landscape of their homeworld after Megatron arrived ahead of them at an earlier point in time and conquered Cybertron before they ever got there, and realising that the entire population have had their sparks ripped out and stockpiled. Planetary genocide is a pretty good motivation to shake your personalities up a fair bit, so for some viewers this was more a case of justified (if not necessarily welcomed) Character Development.
- Honestly, people have turned into religious fanatics over much, much less than what Primal had to deal with (not only has his entire race been wiped out, he's indirectly responsible).
- A textbook case of derailment happens to Tankor, who is actually Rhinox. Granted, he had been reprogrammed by Megatron. But even after he regained his old memories, he still seemed intent on destroying organics, conquering Cybertron, or whatever his miserably failed Magnificent Bastard plans were. In much the same fashion, when Jetstorm turned out to be Silverbolt, he was suddenly completely different than he was during the Beast Wars with little reason other than being brainwashed for a while.
- Really, it was Tankor's motive for being evil that needed work (it basically worked out to Doing It For The Evulz, iirc). His actual behavior was pretty consistent with the way he behaved in Beast Wars that time Megatron turned him into a Predacon...
- Cheetor was, arguably, the one who actually had some really good character development that continued his maturing from Beast Wars. Near the end of Beast Wars he reached what Rattrap called "Cyber Puberty" and just seemed to grow more and more during Machines.
- Shaggy and Scooby Doo Get a Clue is pretty much based on this with the show's change from pseudo-paranormal mystery to high-action, high-tech spy flick, Shaggy and Scooby were also altered to be more tech-savvy, and less cowardly than in other adaptations.
- Many of the characters in Thomas The Tank Engine have suffered from this. Edward, previously an old, kind and wise engine, became younger and ruder in later seasons.
- It's not just Edward that this has happened to. Percy went from a mischevious Cloud Cuckoo Lander to a naive, forgetful moron who can't pronounce simple words, Toby was a kind and confident Cool Old Guy but later became a wimp with self-esteem issues, and Skarloey, previously one of the oldest and wisest engines on the island, is now childish and afraid of everything (from thunderstorms to the incline yards to the wharf). Thomas himself was once depicted as friendly and helpful, if somewhat cocky and brash. He's now a poorly-written Wesley Stu that is obligated to make appearances in every single episode (even episodes about the narrow gauge engines!) and dispense advice to everyone.
- Johnny Bravo was, in the first season, a largely unflappable jock who tried a little too hard to impress the ladies, and who wasn't too bright but could occasionally be quite clever. In seasons two and three, in a case of Depending On The Writer, he turned into a childish, idiotic Jerk Ass who Screams Like A Little Girl.
- Ben 10's Darker And Edgier sequel, Ben 10 Alien Force, has Ben and Gwen exhibit different personalities than before, but that's excusable since it's been five years and they've matured. However, there is NO explination for the change in Kevin, who not only has suffered massive Badass Decay, but is now a good guy for poorly constructed reasons and shows no signs of the sociopathic cruelty he did in the original series. Now all he can do is be blunt (especially about his crush on Gwen, which came out of nowhere.), demonstrate The Worf Effect, drive them around in his beloved car, and occasionally thrive off of his reputation from back when he was an actual threat.
- The Simpsons messed up Judge Snyder to the point where someone who has only watched newer episodes would be confused by the ominous tone of voice the first time his name is mentioned. (Which isn't the name he had on his first appearance. So Yeah.) It seems to be linked firstly to a personal dislike he has for Lionel Hutz (after Lionel kinda ran over his dog... except replace "Dog" with "Son" and "kinda" with "repeatedly"), but eventually made him just a hanging judge.
- Quite a few characters in Family Guy have also warped considerably since their first appearances, especially after the show's return to production in 2004 . Among the many examples, Stewie, previously a humorously sociopathic Enfante Terrible with matricidal tendencies, now seems to simply be Brian's effeminite sidekick, while Brian has changed from a snarky intellectual ironically portrayed as vastly more intelligent than his owner Peter, to mainly a preacher for Seth MacFarlane's liberal political views and The Chew Toy concerning his inability to hold a relationship. Lois, while at first as the down to earth one of the family, albeit with a healthy sexual appetite, has become pretty much an insane nymphomaniac. Meg has evolved from merely a unpopular high-school girl, to a Butt Monkey of epic proportions. Peter himself, while always a bumbling idiot but with slightly good intentions, has become quite the irritating Jerk Ass lately. The fact that no real straight man remains is to the show's detriment.
- Not to mention recurring characters like Cleveland who often dispensed simple wisdom and often kept Peter in check during some of the wilder schemes. Quagmire became nothing but a sex obsessed freak (but we all knew that was coming), Joe became macho overcompensation man as opposed to his original character which was more like a good cop who happened to be crippled, and Mort who just became every Jewish stereotype you could imagine.
- And that's only if the characters bother to appear in an episode. Brian and Stewie get about 14 minutes or more of the screen time out of an average 22 minute episode. Lois and Peter usually appear for a while and the rest of the time is filled with cutaways and side characters. Chris and Meg are almost nonexistent.
- A Valentine's Day 2009 ad for a U.S. AT&T phone showed Pepe LePew Sending love texts to his perennial love victim cat. And she was swooning over them.
- Who knows? Maybe its not Character Derailment, but Character Development, and our old friend Pepe LePew has finally calmed down, matured a bit socially and romantically, allowing him to grow into the suave charmer he always claimed to be. And after seeing the kind of skunk he's become, the cat has actually fallen for him. Notice that's she intentionally painting her skunk stripes on, instead of being an accident, so it being Pepe can't be a surprise for her.
- Nah, it's just marketing. Message: "Use our product, and the girls who once fled at the sight of you will swoon over your every word." The subversion of the classic shorts' formula is the point: it's like if a Ford commercial showed Wile E. Coyote getting into a Mustang and catching the Roadrunner.
- In the original cartoons, it was primarily the smell that drove off his would-be conquests, not necessarily how he acted. There was at least one cartoon where he lost the smell somehow (perfume was involved), and all of a sudden it was the cat that was chasing him down.
- Bloo in the Pilot of Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends and Bloo during the main show are practically two different characters.
- To elaborate, Bloo in the pilot and some of the earlier episodes is a friendly and well-meaning but mischievous imaginary friend who likes to have fun. In the rest of the series he's just a Jerkass who will do anything to get what he wants and loves being stupid and breaking the rules.
- Trent from Total Drama Island to Total Drama Action. Trent started out in TDI as the closest thing to a normal teenager: sweet, smart, nice, and talented. He develops a thing for Gwen and they end up going out on the last episode. By the fifth episode of TDA, his crush on Gwen has turned him into a desperate loser who has to please her since he's so worried about her feelings dwindling since she has more in common with her fellow teammate Duncan. It gets so bad that he starts throwing challenges for her and Gwen has to convince his team to boot him off.
- Go watch Cosmo in the earlier seasons of The Fairly Oddparents. It was established in the first season that he ran away from home to marry Wanda. In another episode he broke down from having to be away from her overnight. It was very clear they enjoyed their relationship. Then, suddenly, in seasons four and five he was drooling over every attractive woman that came onscreen, repeatedly calling Wanda a nag and more, and acting like she had Bound And Gagged him at the altar.
- To be fair, Wanda has been seen drooling over muscular and "handsome" men in later seasons as well which could make you believe she'd by now would rather be with her ex boyfriend Wandicimo Magnifico.
- Considering all of its faults, Most agree that one of (If not THE) the greatest atrocity committed by The Secret Of NIMH 2 was entirely derailing the character of Brutus; changing him from a white-eyed, silent, spike-wielding gatekeeper into...a blundering, idiotic side-kick to the also-somewhat-derailed Justin.
- Also, Martin got tortured into becoming inexpilicably evil, complete with a hammy British accent performed by Eric Idle.
- Or Aunty Shrew scolding Martin for badmouthing Nicodemous and insisting that he was a great oracle or something - despite the fact that she clearly was shown in the first movie distrusting the rats (though it's possible she thought better of them after they helped the Brisby family, there really isn't any mention of this).
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