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Remember this? No? Good.
There's a very strange relationship between character/plot development and maintaining the status quo. Changing said status, if done poorly, may result in a Dork Age. A Dork Age is a period in a franchise, especially Long Runners, where there was a dramatic change of concept or execution, usually to stay current, and it simply did not work.
It could be an ill-advised "new direction". Or a costume change that was dated the instant it premiered. Maybe it's a timely gimmick that was dated five months before it premiered. Perhaps the character lost their trademark powers and went through a run of very different ones. Or there was a Retcon that revealed something that didn't quite gel, or attached a completely new mythos that came off as completely at odds with a character's history and overall mood. Sudden Genre Shifts. Clones. Scrappies. Many and unsubtle are the forms of the Dork Age.
While this trope is most readily associated with fictional characters, note that musicians and other performers can enter Dork Ages as well. Especially when they try (and fail) to form a new and radically different onstage persona, experiment with a very different genre, or attempt to dramatically alter their entire image permanently, or a band loses a key member. You know a band is in its Dork Age if you, as a fan, are wholly unaware that they're still around and releasing albums.
This fundamental change is often an attempt to attract new fans. Unfortunately, that usually does not work. Worse, the change does not go over well with the established fans. Generally, the more dramatically something diverts from its basics, the more likely it's the beginning of a Dork Age.
Now a Dork Age isn't necessarily a bad idea - not in theory at least - but depending on how deep a legacy runs, it can make for a strange detour. It's much easier to spot in hindsight. The main clue that a Dork Age has happened is that it's mentioned as little as possible by newer writers. You can bet a series with Adaptation Distillation will never mention it.
That said, often there will be a group of fans who remember the Dork Age with affection, and every so often there may be a Continuity Nod about it. Once enough distance has been put between the readers and the offending material, it'll usually be considered "safe" and people will start referring to it again, often in a self-deprecating jest.
And much like Jumping the Shark, this is most evident and should be supported upon retrospect. A Dork Age can sometimes be a Franchise Killer, and also a result of Seasonal Rot, but quite often those involved learned their lesson and things will change upon recognizing the dork age. It's They Changed It, Now It Sucks when it really does suck.
This trope's name evolved from the Wiz Kid Time Skip of BattleTech, which they called Mech Warrior: Dark Age. You can see what the fans did there.
Not to be confused with The Dark Age of Comic Books or The Dark Age of Animation, though anything that earns the label "Dark Age" is likely to overlap. Definitely not to be confused with Dogbert's condescending name for one of Dilbert's inventions
See also Fanon Discontinuity, Canon Discontinuity, Running the Asylum. If the causes of the Dork Age are visible in earlier, good installments (if to a much lesser degree), we can point to that as the Franchise Original Sin. Often happens because a Long Runner feels the need to say " We're Still Relevant, Dammit!", or because the creator had a Tough Act to Follow. See Dead Horse Genre for the musical era equivalent. This can be a lucky case of Jumping the Shark and surviving later. Speaking of sharks, see Voodoo Shark for a similar trope applied specifically to plot devices. For the network equivalent (though it is somewhat more akin to Jumping the Shark or Seasonal Rot) see Network Decay.
Examples
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Comic Books - The DCU
- The 1980s "Justice League Detroit" incarnation of the Justice League of America. It got rid of almost all of the previous Justice Leaguers and replaced them with hip, angsty teenagers in an attempt to rip off DC's own Teen Titans. The run ended with the team being destroyed by one of the "real" Justice League's more powerful foes, with some of the cast dying. Years later, when it became "safe" to talk about the period again, the team was sometimes cast as "lovable losers". For example, a flashback showed that during Crisis on Infinite Earths (an event that changed the DC Universe on a grand scale and destroyed entire planets of characters), one of the Detroit Leaguers was too busy admiring the breasts of a superheroine to listen when the plot was being explained, and subsequently went through the entire event clueless.
- The '80s version of the Doom Patrol. Another attempt to profit off Teen Titans and X-Men-style angst, probably the only reason people know it exists now is that the surreal and successful Grant Morrison run is known to have started with issue #19, so there must have been something in the previous 18 issues.
- Pictured, Superman Blue. For those who missed this (or who have it nicely repressed): for a thankfully short time in the comics, Superman was given a major overhaul, and turned into a bright blue Energy Being - and later split off into another energy being, Superman Red - and comics covers said "he would be different forever." Massive protest resulted in an Author's Saving Throw and he was changed back.
- The whole idea came from a one shot Silver Age "imaginary" (read, non-canon) story published in 1963. In the story, Superman is accidentally split into two Supermen with a hundred times the intelligence of the original. The twin Supermen successfully enlarge Kandor, recreate Krypton, produce an "anti-evil" ray which cures not only comic book villains, but Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev as well, and finally, the existence of two of them means that one can marry Lana and one Lois, ending the love triangle. Why they thought it would be a good idea to re-visit this in the freakin' 90s is anyone's guess.
- Here's a guess: in the late '80s and '90s, that "imaginary tale" from the '60s was cited in virtually every single interview with a comics professional in any capacity, to the point that Wizard Magazine must have had a "The Strange Case of Superman Red/Superman Blue" macro programmed into every computer in their employ. That story was getting almost as much press as "The Death of Superman" (which sparked a lot of those interviews in the first place), and DC had been looking for some time to milk that particular cow.
- Of course to some, Superman Blue was an improvement over Superman's hideous mullet hairstyle he wore from 1993-1996.
- Pretty much every single time Chuck Austen gets his claws on a mainstream comic, one of these results (skip down to the Marvel section for what he did to the Uncanny X-Men). A particularly egregious one, though, was probably his run on Action Comics, where he seemed to really want Superman to be a violent asshole somewhat like the Golden Age Batman. And he was loudly adamant that Clark Kent should dump Lois Lane because she was a gold-digging, power-hungry whore who was only sleeping with him because he was Superman... even though Lois fell in love with and became engaged to Clark long before she ever found out he was Superman, leading to loads of Derailing Love Interests in favor of Lana Lang, who came off as a pathetic sociopathic stalker and made the elder Kents into jerkass Meddling Parents. Needless to say, the entire run was hustled into Canon Discontinuity faster than a speeding bullet when Austen got booted off the title.
- This article argues that Superman Grounded was a thankfully short-lived Dork Age.
- Let's not forget Black Canary's infamous late-80s "Jumpsuit and Headband" costume, complete with bizarre wing epaulets and pirate boots. A later run of the character in Action Comics Weekly even featured her back in the original costume, burning the jumpsuit and grinning wickedly.
- An issue of Birds of Prey featured her horror at seeing scores of action figures of herself in this costume... and then emphasized the point by saying the reason the toyshop had so many was that they couldn't get rid of them.
- And then Dinah entered a second Dork Age when she married Green Arrow, left the Birds of Prey and was reduced to a Faux Action Girl and Distressed Damsel of the Green Arrow books. Ironically, she was the leader of the Justice League at this time.
- Wonder Woman has gone up and down over the years. In the 1970s, DC tried having Wonder Woman depowered to make her a feminist hero like Emma Peel of The Avengers. This move backfired completely, considering it angered real feminists like Gloria Steinem, who denounced it as a profoundly sexist move to remove the power of one of the greatest female superheroes. As a result, DC scrambled to repower Wonder Woman as fast as possible, although it took the Post Crisis Reboot by George Perez years later to get the spirit of the character right (despite what he did to the other Amazons to get her there). However, after her recent post-Infinite Crisis sabbatical, Diana Prince re-emerged with a white jumpsuit that playfully recalled the non-powered period. This, along with Wonder Woman losing her powers when not transformed, and the truly excremental Amazons Attack miniseries (which basically turned her entire supporting cast into crazed murderers), left some fans fearing another Dork Age; these fears seem to have been allayed by assigning Gail Simone as writer, whose run was Made of Win and Talking Gorillas.
- Well, that's debatable. Sales took a pretty sharp decline during her run and she ultimately got replaced by a new writer in order for DC to pull a high profile revamp of the title.
- The subsequent writer's run was not particularly well-received by critics or fans, nor was the controversial new costume that was designed for Wonder Woman. The title was relaunched under Brian Azzarello as part of DC's post-Flashpoint revamp, with the first issue drawing massive acclaim from critics.
- Superhero Tim Drake (Robin to Batman) and his girlfriend Stephanie Brown have suffered this to some degree: Tim was the only Robin who didn't have both parents dead, and tended to be more well adjusted with a complex personal life. Of course, this had to be fixed, so Tim's father and best friends were killed to make him Darker and Edgier, and so he lost his entire supporting cast, and it led to a very boring and angsty run by Bill Willingham, and him becoming a huge Wangster in all DC Books. In addition, Tim's Badass Normal, fun and lighthearted girlfriend Stephanie Brown (the Spoiler) replaced him as Robin briefly, which looked like it could be interesting; however, it only lasted for three issues and she was then written to cause a gang war, be tortured by a villain called Black Mask in sexualized positions, get shot, blamed for everything and then die... all to make sure Tim got angst and Batman remained a loner. Tim promptly forgot Stephanie ever existed, but the fans didn't, and raised a big stink about her treatment. Original Robin writer and creator of Stephanie, Chuck Dixon, started writing the title thanks to this and revealed Steph had never really died and is now back and kicking ass as her usual lighthearted self, and Tim seems to be heading in a less self-destructive direction as well. He's also brought back Tim's geeky best friend Ives, albeit with a bit more Wangst himself than he had originally.
- Recently, Tim admitted he'd been in a bad place, apologized for his behavior, and reconciled with Steph. There was much rejoicing.
- Due to an editorial mandate, Batgirl Cassandra Cain turned evil after her series was canceled. During this time, she became significantly more articulate (the character was supposed to be illiterate, dyslexic, and almost mute) and Wangsty. Even worse, DC then went and handed her miniseries to the same writer who turned her evil. He not only failed to fix the problems he created, but added even more. Fans are still skeptical about her future.
- Since she's been replaced as Batgirl by Stephanie, it's pretty safe to say that this one's going to be a fairly lengthy Dork Age until the smoke clears. Although to clarify, Stephanie's turn as Batgirl is not itself a Dork Age, being relatively well written — the mechanism of Cassandra's sidelining is the dork part. Usually when one of the bat-identities changes hands, it's with the implication that the previous holder is graduating or being promoted to a more important role, not being discarded like garbage.
- Cass was eventually appointed Batman's representative in Hong Kong, under the name "Blackbat". Not the starring role she had before, but at least there's a place for her.
- And as of the 2011 reboot, Stephanie lost the title of Batgirl to the original, Barbara Gordon. It's a toss-up whether this will be a Dork Age or not (the new series will be by well-respected writer Gail Simone, but Steph's getting the shaft and uncrippling Babs has Unfortunate Implications), but it's definitely not helping the Broken Base that's developed.
- The first issue of the new Batgirl series was a massive sales success (outselling Stephanie's first issue), with a lot of positive reviews. And a lot of mixed and negative ones, with many reviewers noting along the lines of 'average to good, just not as good as what it replaced'. Make of that what you will.
- Flash's revamps in the past few years have been very poorly received, and for good reason. The first problem was Fun Personified Kid Hero Kid Flash being hit with forced aging and, worst of all, increasing amounts of Wangst, finally resulting in the decidedly Not-Fun adult that starred in the first The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive revamp. Both series and character proved to be short-lived, as both were unexpectedly killed off in issue #13. This resulted in the return of not only the previous, popular Flash, Wally West, but the return of popular '90s Flash writer Mark Waid. The Silver Age Flash, Barry Allen, would be revamped by the return of popular '00s Flash writer Geoff Johns. This has met with mixed results, with the book being frequently late and complaints of slow pacing. Johns has since departed the relaunched Flash comic. The new, re-re-re-booted Flash book is focusing exclusively on Barry (Wally? Jay? Never heard of 'em.) Oh yeah, and Barry and Iris West aren't married in the reboot. Meanwhile, Kid Flash has come back to life and is in Teen Titans, which means at least he's been spared this nonsense.
- During The Silver Age of Comic Books, "helpful alien"-type characters were becoming popular with writers, with Superman battling Mr. Mxyzptlk and Batman putting up with Bat-Mite. So the decision was made to retcon the lightning bolt that gave Barry Allen his powers, revealing that the imp-like "heavenly help-mate" Mopee had been its true source. Cue massive backlash in the "letters to the editor" page. So hated was this development that it has never been mentioned since, at least in-continuity. However, once enough time passed, it became a curious bit of nostalgia, and has shown up several times in out-of-continuity works like Ambush Bug.
- The year-long, weekly book Countdown was originally promoted as "the spine of the DCU", for its pivotal importance to the DC Universe. About halfway through, it was even renamed Countdown to Final Crisis, in order to promote the Crisis Crossover that would follow. However, Countdown became increasingly unpopular with fans thanks to its wide-sweeping character changes. One of the most glaring examples is the sweet, innocent Mary Marvel, who inexplicably finds herself abandoned by her usually caring family. She asks for power from constant adversary Black Adam, and he actually gives it to her, the power turning her usual white costume black. Then she decides to go evil, partnering with the villainous Eclipso (note that we've been told that it's not Adam's power that makes her go evil. Bad Powers, Bad People is averted, but at the price of logic or proper characterization.) Having learned the heavy price of her Face Heel Turn, she eventually reverts to good... only to almost immediately accept Big Bad Darkseid's offer of power and thus go evil again (and if you liked that, look into the group of heroes who doomed an entire alternate Earth to the ravages of a major disease and merely walked away, among other unlikable things...) Then there is also the related mini-series, Captain Carrot And His Amazing Zoo Crew: Final Ark, where the senior editors order the furry heroes to be exiled from their world and horrifically trapped as regular animals on the primary Earth. In response to fan outcry, DC has recently downplayed this story's importance, even disconnecting it from Final Crisis by making the true lead-in a comic called DC Universe #0. Thus "the spine of the DCU" became "the appendix"...
- The brief period at DC Comics where the Blackhawks became superheroes. The writer hung a lampshade on this in JLA: Year One; all of the Blackhawks put on their old, proper costumes with a general feeling of relief and an attitude of "What were we thinking?"
- A Supergirl writer tried to make her 'Darker and Edgier', but just gave 75% of the readers a giant headache. Another writer tries to do a Author's Saving Throw, but that gets the other 25% of the readers angry at this because they like 'Darker and Edgier' characters - creating an Unpleasable Fanbase.
- Supergirl's Post-Crisis life is basically defined by her Dork Ages, due to DC Comics wanting to leave Superman as the true last son of Krypton... there's been maybe a good half-dozen different versions of the character, with increasingly convoluted designs and backstories (let alone trying to fit in where Power Girl went), eventually leading to the reintroduction of the essentially Pre-Crisis "Superman's Cousin" version of the character... for now.
- When Batman's back was broken by Bane, Azrael replaced him, essentially becoming a Darker and Edgier version of Batman who ended up using lethal force. Very few people liked him, although arguably they weren't supposed to, a la John Walker as Captain America.
- Word Of God confirmed that AzBats was a giant Take That to readers who were crying for The Punisher-As-Batman. But it was immediately followed by an even more gritty, but awesome, version of Bruce Wayne (the Kelley Jones/Doug Moench run).
- AzBats was introduced in issue #500, too. People will be remembering him for a while as a cautionary tale.
- It needs to be pointed out that AzBats, the Darker and Edgier Dark Knight (!!) was in the end defeated by blinding light. Surprisingly subtle Take That on the part of the writers, that.
- Batman suffered a massive Dork Age during most of The Silver Age of Comic Books. The campy 60's Batman show starring Adam West was actually Adaptation Distillation of the stories published during this period, and was far superior to its source material because it didn't take itself seriously. This was the ONLY period when Batman wasn't the "dark creature of the night" most know him as. His first appearances in The Golden Age of Comic Books had him as a gothic figure; he was brought back to this in The Bronze Age of Comic Books, became really dark in The Dark Age of Comic Books, and flip-flopped between "mellowed-out" and "hardly any better than Azrael" during The Modern Age of Comic Books.
- Firestorm, under the watch of John Ostrander in the late '80s, became Darker and Edgier, leading up to the big revelation... that the character was meant to be Earth's fire elemental. Oh, and the power plant sabotage that brought Ronnie Raymond and Martin Stein together in the first place? Not an accident. In an attempt to make Firestorm's origin more deep or something (see also: the first of the JMS/Quesada Spider-Man offenses listed below), it was later explained that Martin Stein was always meant to be Firestorm/the fire elemental. Ronnie just got in the way (which was "rectified" in Firestorm (vol. 2) #100, when Stein replaces Ronnie and Mikhail "Pozhar" Arkadin in the Firestorm Matrix).
- This was likely an attempt to tie Firestorm into the Swamp Thing mythos, with a similar revelation having happened to that character - rather than a brilliant scientist turned into a plant-monster by a Freak Lab Accident, he was actually a mystical plant elemental, who as a result of said Freak Lab Accident, ended up thinking he was said brilliant scientist. DC went on to incorporate a number of characters into similar roles (for example, in addition to Firestorm, Red Tornado was revealed to be a mystical air elemental, rather than a robot who could manipulate air via superscience). Sadly, what worked for a horror-based Swamp Thing written by Alan Moore lead to mass-dorkageness in Lighter and Softer works written by anyone slightly less talented than Alan Moore.
- Green Arrow is currently in a rather painful Dork Age itself. Lian Harper dies in a building collapse as a lame excuse for Roy Harper (Lian's father, formerly Speedy) to once again become Arsenal, a dark anti-hero who kills. Green Arrow murders the man responsible and turns himself in, and he is then exiled from Star City, despite the fact that the jury found him not guilty. The writer of this mess, J.T. Krul, is claiming that things will get better in June; whether he's telling the truth or not doesn't matter, because until he can put up or shut up, the comic is still in a Dork Age anyway.
- Then again, it's not like Roy hasn't spent most of the last two decades as Arsenal (he hasn't been Speedy in forever and the Red Arrow thing is relatively new) and been something of an angst magnet since his Very Special Episode in the 1960s. The exile thing is pretty lame, but since this story is still ongoing, calling it a Dork Age is a tad pre-mature, as these things are usually done after the story has worked through its dorkiness; Roy has yet to, and may never, escape.
- In the '90s, Guy Gardner had his own solo series. After losing two separate rings to a Parallax-influenced Hal Jordan, he rechristened himself "Warrior" and somehow became the last descendant of an alien race, which gave him the power to turn his arms into guns... for some reason. Writers ignore this era at their peril, though: despite the gawdaful concept (apparently submitted as a joke), and equally bad '90s art, Beau Smith's run on Warrior is responsible for much of Guy's development from Jerkass to Boisterous Bruiser.
- The Spectre had a storyline about Uncle Sam, starting with the basis that, as he was the Anthropomorphic Personification of America, he hadn't always been Uncle Sam, instead being the Minuteman, or Brother Jonathan, or split in two as Billy Yank and Johnny Reb, depending on the era. All very reasonable. Somehow, that led to him being reinvented as The Patriot, who wore a white bodysuit with red stripes on one shoulder and a blue patch with stars on the other, and a golden space helmet with an eagle on top. Eventually somebody realized that, by their own rules, he should keep being Uncle Sam until a new "Spirit of America" image took root naturally, and he reverted to his old look.
- Captain Marvel and the rest of the Marvel Family underwent one not too long ago. Essentially, Dan Didio has systematically destroyed everything related to the actual heroes of the Marvel Family, while letting their villains like Black Adam, Dr. Sivana, Mr. Mind and Captain Nazi prosper. Shazam was killed off, Captain Marvel had to assume the mantle of Wizard (which effectively removed him from the DCU, trapping him in the Rock of Eternity), and every Marvel not named Black Adam (because the DC writing staff has a massive mancrush on him) was depowered. Then Freddy Freeman, the former Captain Marvel Junior, then undergoes a series of trials that involves him saying that he blames Captain Marvel for ruining his life, taking the name Shazam as a code name, and dedicating himself to fighting only mystical threats, because why would a person with the powers of the gods fight crime and save people from mundane threats? (Answer: Because it's the right, heroic thing to do, YOU MORON.) Then, poor Mary Marvel gets turned evil, redeems herself, but then willingly chooses evil again. Then Captain Marvel gets de-powered, he gets turned evil along with Mary, the Wizard Shazam comes back and depowers EVERYBODY, turning them good again; however, he then claims that Billy had failed him, turns Black Adam to stone, and leaves in a huff. Meanwhile, Freddy Freeman hasn't done anything even remotely relevant in over a year, suffice to say, and fans of the characters are NOT happy with the situation. Ironically, while the last few years have been horrible for the characters in the comics, they've been doing very well in other media, with the classic Captain Marvel appearing in video games (Mortal Kombat Vs DC Universe) and cartoons (Batman The Brave And The Bold, DC Showcase - Superman/Shazam: The Return of Black Adam, Young Justice). Hopefully this will inspire a return to a 'back to basics' for the characters soon.
- Freedy Freeman has finally shown up and done something relevant — he apparently got his power drained by Osiris, who is to Black Adam what Freddy was to Captain Marvel. Whoopee. At least he and Billy & Mary are still alive.... without powers... WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO FIX THE MARVEL FAMILY!!??
- As of the time of this writing, the Curse of Shazam mini-series is about to start, which will reboot the Marvel Family mythos entirely (AGAIN), and in the process, change the hero's name from Captain Marvel to Shazam. Another Dork Age ahoy?
- During the DC Universe's One Year Later event, someone on the editing staff decided that the Catwoman comic series needed to be Younger and Hipper — and the best way to do that, they decided, was to replace the main character entirely. Selina Kyle had a daughter with Sam Bradley Jr. (much to the upset of many Selina/Bruce shippers), and retired to motherhood before passing on the Catwoman mantle to sidekick Holly. The fans were not pleased, and it wasn't long before DC sent in Zatanna to magically retcon it all away.
- Though it wasn't REALLY retconned until the 2011 reboot, where it was confirmed that Catwoman's daughter had been wiped from existence.
- Then you have the occasional holdouts who argue that, Sinestro Corps War be damned, the entire DCU is and always has been in a Dork Age since Identity Crisis. Flashpoint has only exacerbated this.
Comic Books - Marvel
- Speedball, a Fun Personified character who after causing a disaster that killed 600 people and going slightly nuts, renamed himself "Penance" and donned an iron-maiden-like costume that somehow activated his powers via injury. Fans knew this "secret identity" the moment it came out which, coupled with the totally cheesy new outfit and the change of a cheerful character, put Bleedball firmly in the Dork Age the moment he returned.
- This was acknowledged, unsurprisingly, in a Squirrel Girl appearance where she points out all the flaws in this; superheroes indirectly causing the deaths of people isn't a new occurrence, and, as revealed in another book, he himself wasn't even actually responsible for it. Penance responded to this by banging his head against the wall and snarling "You don't get it! I'm deep now!" Fans had the same reaction.
- Recent developments indicate that Speedball's come out of his Emo Teen phase; in his own miniseries, he tracked down the supervillain truly responsible for the disaster and locked him in his spiky suit so that he feels the pain of all the deaths he caused. That, and he's going through therapy with Doc Samson over in Thunderbolts.
- The Punisher was once hired by the forces of Heaven to become a supernatural force of vengeance rather than a mafia-hunting anti-hero. This was undone with a Handwave by later writer Garth Ennis.
- This event, the idiot demon hunter loop, pretty much killed the Punisher. Ennis didn't just Handwave it, he completely resurrected it.
- How about Franken-Castle?
- He will be remembered fondly as a brief period of lunacy in Frank's life. There's no way the powers that be intended for a magic/SCIENCE half robot Frankenstein's Monster Punisher to be a new cutting edge status quo. Even in the Heroic Age.
- The "Clone Saga" in the Spider-Man titles was so maligned that fans nearly went into apoplexy when a version was announced for Ultimate Spider-Man. Basically, they tried to replace Peter Parker with a Suspiciously Similar Substitute because they thought that a married superhero couldn't sell and fans went livid with rage every time they tried to kill off his wife (you'd think this would clue them in that they might be wrong, but noooooo). But at the last second, they chickened out because Peter Parker had become too synonymous with Spider-Man to turn him into a Legacy Character franchise and the whole thing became a muddled mess. The fact that they kept on drawing out the story to try to sell more crossovers and tie-ins didn't help, either.
- Happily, the Ultimate Marvel version of the Clone Saga has been much better received.
- And now Marvel is bringing the Clone Saga back in a six-issue miniseries, penned by original architects Howard Mackie and Tom DeFalco. Apparently, it's supposed to be more in line with the original, much shorter version they had originally intended to do. Ben Reilly, the clone who briefly took over as Spider-Man and was also known as the Scarlet Spider, may or may not be coming back in an upcoming story.
- Heck, just enjoy this list of the twelve worst, most bizarre, and most inane Spider-Man storylines (aside from the infamous Clone Saga... No, wait, here's the Clone Saga.) One highlight: #3 and its villainess who had "tapped into a part of human DNA that connected us to the point where we split from insects on the evolutionary tree!" (Hey, do you hear Stephen Jay Gould weeping quietly?) Oh, never mind the bit where Spidey turns into a giant spider — a pregnant Giant Spider — who gives birth to himself (?!?) and... it's basically a convoluted introduction to the organic web-shooters from The Movie.
- And speaking of Spidey, by all means, let us (not) forget "One More Day", another attempt to abort the marriage (by now twenty years strong), this time by Deal with the Devil. In fairness, only the relationship mess is the Dork Age; other changes from the accompanying Re Tool tend to be judged more fairly.
- Probably because a lot of the stuff implemented post-"One More Day" could have easily been implemented regardless of whether or not the protagonist was married, leaving a lot of people scratching their heads as to why the thing was necessary in the first place.
- Every Incredible Hulk issue with the Red Hulk. First, it leads off from the well-written and epic (albeit misleading in its title) World War Hulk, where the green giant finally received some Character Development, in the arc prior leading it all the more meaningful what happens and its ultimate climax, and out of nowhere, this asshole of an Evil Counterpart comes, trounces every one of the Marvel heavyweights, including the Hulk and even when a hyped rematch is given, he is downed by a single punch. Made worse by writer Jeph Loeb's constant teasing on the true identity of Red Hulk, which many fans can assure you that they've stopped caring past Hulk #3, and the fact he's written to be everything the Hulk isn't. Apparently, Loeb seems to think this equates to using the Hulk's infinite potential for power, write it in that crimson counterfeit, and use it for him randomly appearing to beat up everyone and laugh about it. It has recently gotten better however. First, Pak is back writing Incredible Hulk, so fans can now go there. Also, since the Code Red arc, Red Hulk has become less of a Villain Sue. Mainly because Code Red and then Fall of the Hulks (co-written with Pak) actually had a plot and we learned more about Rulk (he was finally identified as Thunderbolt Ross - someone who had been explicitly ruled out earlier in the story). It also helps he's no longer fighting people at random. Getting a decent writer has also helped a lot.
- Also in the 1970s, Marvel rebooted literally the entire universe to turn Doctor Strange into a more conventional superhero with a spandex outfit, secret identity, crossovers, and energy-blasting powers. The change was very unpopular and soon dropped, though the character makes occasional rueful references to it.
- Or the mid-90's period when he was changed into a young, long-haired business executive who didn't have any of his previous supporting cast with him.
- In the 1990s Avengers: The Crossing, it was revealed that Iron Man had been brainwashed into secretly working for Kang the Conqueror, years earlier. The Avengers defeated him with the help of his teenaged self, who remained in the present to become the new Iron Man. The "Teen Tony" story was undone by Heroes Reborn, and the years of brainwashing was retconned into months in Avengers Forever. However, he has since entered a new Dork Age, along with most other characters directly involved in Civil War, becoming a Jerkass Villain with Good Publicity that the writers insist should be treated as a hero. To be fair, the Civil War arc was originally supposed to show valid justifications for both sides. However, the multitude of different titles involved, as well as numerous cases of a Writer On Board depicted Stark and the pro-Registration side as incredibly negative. Plus, Stark did genuinely feel pretty bad about all the stuff he did during the war.
- Much of Civil War resulted in Dork Ages for other characters too, mainly because the idea of a Super Registration Act has always been derided by all Marvel superheroes, and therefore the segregation of characters into their opposing positions was pretty much at random, since none of them had ever shown pro-reg sympathies before. This caused many changes for many of the pro-reg heroes throughout the event. For example, Reed Richards was inexplicably shoehorned into the pro-reg side despite the fact that when a SHRA back in the early '90s was debated, he single-handedly torpedoed it with an issue-long Character Filibuster explaining (and demonstrating) to Congress just how stupid, dangerous, and ineffective their idea was, and had not so much as wavered from his opposing position since.
- Xorn. Initially Magneto, after masquerading as Xorn for so long, was doped up on Kick and went totally Ax Crazy and pretty much destroyed New York, herding humans into crematoriums. Some argue Magneto, a Well-Intentioned Extremist, would never go that bad, so three different creators had three different "remedies" for this continuity glitch.
- Chris Claremont had it revealed Magneto had been in Genosha since his death and was quick to scold the impostor. All very well and good but the identity of said impostor was revealed to be...
- ACTUALLY Xorn who was quite mad and believed he was Magneto. According to the convenient introduction of his good twin brother also named Xorn. Thank you Chuck Austen.
- The worst offense was Bendis. People were just starting to forget it ever happened, but some writers just can't let go.
- Behold the craptasticity that is NFL Superpro! A Dork Age for Fabian Nicieza, who admits he whored himself out for Super Bowl tickets.
- Which is at least a better reason than most of the stuff on this page.
- Ultimatum, The Ultimates 3 and the upcoming Ultimates 4 were already considered as a Dork Age, to the point some people have tried to tie them into the same "Loebverse". How do you treat a well-respected Alternate Continuity that caused one of the biggest shake-ups to the comic industry in the last decade, and has produced three well-written and top-selling series (Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate Fantastic Four)? Simple. Hire the ill-regarded Jeph Loeb, have him assume writing duties for your big event series, and kill off two-thirds of the superheroes in said universe as a ploy to increase readership. Out-of-character moments, gratuitous violence, strange plot twists and a total lack of respect for the Ultimate superheroes were just the start of the problems with this series. Ultimatum was so poorly received that, over the course of its run, the book sold more and more poorly (to the point that over 25,000 people stopped buying it). Marvel acknowledged this by resetting the entire franchise, canceling the three aforementioned series and hoping no one would notice that they shot themselves in the foot.
- Let's not forget the majority of Chuck Austen's run on Uncanny X-Men, which fell into Canon Discontinuity almost immediately after the author left the series, especially in regards to the changes he made to Nightcrawler's personality and background. First he's involved in a plot by religious fanatics to make the demon-looking mutant the friggin' Pope, then the poor teleporter finds out that his real father is actually a demonic mutant named Azazel, and at the end of the story Nightcrawler gains a few half-brothers who are promptly never seen again.
- Many X-Men fans would argue that some or all of the period between mid-2005 and mid-2011 was a Dork Age. In the aftermath of House of M (itself often considered something of a misstep, since it was a big X-Men Crisis Crossover and yet it was given to the Avengers writer for whatever reason), mutants had been rendered a Dying Race and the books took a nosedive off the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, with various supporting characters having bridges dropped on them or turning evil left and right (The characters hit worst by this? The teenagers) and the "struggle for the survival of the species" theme being Anviliciously played up. This culminated in the school being blown up and Cyclops establishing an Egopolis in San Francisco Bay, which even those who think the entire period wasn't so bad consider a Dork Age (the writer of this, Matt Fraction, is generally considered the second-worst to have ever had the book, after Austen). Thankfully, this was fixed into 2011 with the ReGenesis Bat Family Crossover, which saw half of the X-Men head back to New York to rebuild the school (appeasing those who thought the new direction was a Dork Age) and half stay on Cyclops's island and given a better writer (appeasing those who were comfortable with the new direction).
- There's time in the 90s when Captain America suffered seizures because the Super Soldier formula in his body was breaking down and he ended up being so paralyzed that he could barely even talk, relying on armor just to move. He ended up being cured by the Red Skull, of all people. People tried to forget about it.
- Before that, there was a storyline where Cap gets turned into a werewolf for reasons unknown. And even before that, there was the time where he fought an evil group of female supervillains who wanted to sterilize the Earth's female population just to eliminate men from the planet.
- Then came Liefeld!Cap. And oh, how harmless and endearing those stories seemed.
- Another Dork Age came for Cap just after 9/11, where his comic became an all-encompassing commentary on the post 9/11 America and the nation's role in it. Watch, as Captain America angsts at length about the War on Terror and the U.S.'s role! This lasted for about 16 issues before getting back to Cap beating up villains the way he used to.
- Cap dropping his identity and adopting the name "Nomad" after becoming disillusioned with America wasn't a Dork Age in and of itself... but his costume change◊ was a sort of isolated mini-Dork Age within the plotline.
- Howard Mackie's Mutant X (not the TV show). And arguably his run on X-Factor leading up to it.
- It was goofy that X-Factor of that era actually SOLD BETTER than fellow X-Book Excalibur at that time!
- For a while, the mighty Thor was replaced by a bumbling 90's sitcom family dad by day, bumbling 90's antihero cliche at night. He had a mini-Mjolnir in a mace called Thunderstrike, fell short at Spider-Man's snark and genre-savviness, and wore a ponytail and a leather jacket in battle. None of the Asgardians took him seriously, and most of the Avengers hated him; even Captain America constantly scolded and told him to shape up and fly right.
Comic Books - Other
- Spawn had a dork age after he killed his former boss Malebolgia. He teamed up with demons Ab and Zab, a Catchphrase Spouting Duo, and fought vampires and British cannibals. Fortunately, it ended after he returned to Hell and lost his status as king.
- Zé Carioca comics (Brazilian comic series based on the character Jose Carioca that appeared in the Disney film Saludos Amigos) suffered from its own Dork Age, where they just took Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse stories that hadn't been released in Brazil and replaced the main characters with Jose. It didn't work very well.
- They did something similar in Europe after the American material was running out; the European artists took American stories and switched the characters around.
- Parodied in an issue of Planetary, where a superhero who went through a Darker and Edgier Dork Age during The Dark Age of Comic Books blames the resident John Constantine Captain Ersatz for it. Ironically, the hero has more than a passing resemblance to Tom Strong, who, along with Constantine, was created by Alan Moore.
- There's not one iota of Tom Strong in it; the caped character in that issue is an obvious Expy of Moore's famous Cerebus Retcon to the Miracleman/Marvelman franchise. Unlike the Pulp-y, earnest Tom Strong, the masked, caped man is rather clearly an example of The Cape whose origin turns out to be far seedier than originally presented. That was precisely what Moore did to Miracleman in the 1980s.
- Deconstructed by JLA-Avengers. The heroes have had their two earths and timelines fused, and the entire cosmos keeps warping as a result. When they finally meet the Gamemaster, a cosmic being who was nearly killed by the other organizer of the event that led to the universes fusing, Krona, he tells them to stop Krona, which would separate the worlds and put the timelines back to normal. The heroes ask him, basically, "What kind of worlds are we going back to?" The Gamemaster, with the last of his power, shows them the events of their lives. The Dork Ages end up sticking out more than anything else; about half the examples on this page are seen. The most notable becomes Hal Jordan - at the time of the comic's writing, he had gone crazy, killed off all the other Lanterns, tried to destroy and remake the universe, died, and become the host for The Spectre. And yet, when they debate, he decides to restore the old time.
- For many fans, the Aliens comic books were mostly this. While some were appropriately themed, the majority ignored the Lovecraftian elements of the source material in favour of macho muscles-and-guns action influenced by the second film entry in the series. The second film itself doesn't qualify as an example because it was a subversion of the high expectations placed on the combat unit involved, neatly allowing for heavy action elements without subverting the horror. Obviously, the writers of the comic books weren't mindful towards this distinction and neutered both the horrifying monster and the interesting, medium-tech, hypercapitalistic space exploration setting.
- This, arguably, may not count as Dork Age as it hasn't ended yet. While many fans of the films consider the comics horrendous, comic writers themselves are completely happy to continue the trends if the 2009 and 2010 entries into the series (of both Aliens and Aliens vs. Predator) are any indication. Being a cross-media franchise, however, makes the dorkageness difficult to measure, as some examples in some media may avert the trope and others may play it straight.
- It depends on who you talk to, but the Sonic the Hedgehog comics are either still in or have left their Dork Age. It's easy to see when their Dork Age began - post-issue 50, when Big Bad Dr. Robotnik was killed off. For the next 100+ issues, fans watched as the writers made at least three attempts to disband the Freedom Fighters, end the Will They or Won't They? that was the relationship of Sonic and Sally, only to cruelly subvert it not even a year later, cause a major Chickification towards said female member and render the replacement Robotnik (who now went by his game name of Dr. Eggman) utterly ineffectual. When former writer Ken Penders left and current writer Ian Flynn came in, Ian sought to fix up all of those Dork Age moments, with him finally focusing on the Sonic and Sally problem. Though time will tell if it works for the fans, for Ken Penders, he's gone on record saying that this is his Dork Age and that he'll do a complete Retcon if he ever gets back in. Sadly for Ian, while most of his stuff pre-issue #200 is hotly debated among fans as Love It or Hate It, even hardcore fans of the writer throws his "Iron Dominion" arc into the Dork Age bin, and it doesn't sound like many of his stories after that are gaining much favor, either.
- The comic version of WITCH has either entered its Dork Age (or at the very least, turning into a very boring comic). After its New Power arc and gaining new powers, the girls were retooled from "super-powered guardians of the universe" to "super powered teachers" who are set to train other magic users around their town. It also doesn't help that a lot of the stories have devolved into uninteresting slice-of-life stories that rarely have the girls in action.
Anime and Manga
- Anime series in general tend to hit Dork Ages when the anime overtakes the manga and as a result, goes into a filler arc.
- Once Yoshida Reiko left the Tokyo Mew Mew project, Ikumi Mia tried to write a sequel incorporating the Ret Cons made in the TV show and replacing Ichigo with a new character named Berii. Ichigo herself lost her powers except as a living accessory to the new heroine, her origins and family life were completely ignored in favor of sending her to Europe, and she became a washed-up hero. It's no surprise Tokyo Mew Mew a la mode has a high degree of Fanon Discontinuity amongst fans who also really dislike Berii.
- For some portion of the fanbase, Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha FORCE has becoming this for the main continuity of the franchise.
- There's a probability of Bleach entering this recently, with The Lost Agent arc, with a new set of characters we've never seen before, whole new kinds of powers, a plot that is almost completely unrelated to everything we've seen before, and the overall feeling of the filler arcs from the anime.
- To be fair, all the new stuff got added because just about every big plot point up until got resolved except for two, the fact that Aizen's still alive, and Ichigo losing his Shinigami powers. One of them is being handled in this arc, and the other one fans do not want to show its face again for quite a while.
- Lupin III has the pink-jacket era, which consists of the third anime series and the Legend of the Gold of Babylon. Both the series and the movie had Lupin wearing a pink jacket, most of the adult themes downplayed and the slapstick brought Up to Eleven. Today, it is widely ignored by both the anime producers at TMS Entertainment and most fans in general.
Film
- Highlander II started a Dork Age from which the Highlander film series would (arguably) never recover. The TV series did all right until the end of the fifth season alienated many fans by introducing a demonic entity into the series (when no previous episodes foreshadowed it, or implied that such things existed in the Highlander universe), and killing off a popular character abruptly and anticlimactically in an Idiot Plot.
- The Godzilla movies are claimed to have undergone a dork age during The Seventies, though one is hard pressed to explain exactly how the 70s flicks were any sillier than the films that preceded them, given that Godzilla was already setting Kong's crotch on fire, chatting up a storm with Mothra and Rodan, playing volleyrock, dancing in outer space and adopting a child during the 60s.
- Star Wars, due to an Unpleasable Fanbase and having so many different projects going at one time, goes into a constant rotation of dork ages. In the mainstream stuff The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones were lackluster in how they were received. It was when Star Wars: Clone Wars re-established a cool factor that the franchise has managed to recover. Even still, many people feel over-saturated in the merchandise and that is what has led to the Critical Backlash of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Although that show appears to have grown the beard in Season 2, so hope springs eternal.
- Batman was in it deep during the late '90s. Tim Burton left the franchise, as did leading actor Michael Keaton. Executive Meddling caused Batman Forever to be campier and more toyetic than its predecessors. Following that film, the new lead actor Val Kilmer left as well, and then the camp factor went Up to Eleven and we got Batman & Robin. That so-called "film" killed the Batman movie franchise for eight years until Batman Begins came out.
- The Roger Moore James Bond era is usually considered a Dork Age among movie fans. Plots became weaker and campier, with more focus on gadgets and locations than characterization or action. Although this era did have its highlights (The Spy Who Loved Me) it also had its dark abysses (The Man with the Golden Gun, Moonraker). The Timothy Dalton Bond movies weren't much better, with Licence to Kill becoming gory and violent so much that it barely resembled a Bond film.
- Granted, some believe The Man with the Golden Gun is Moore's equivalent to Goldfinger and much better than made out to be.
- And the Dalton movies now play out like prototypes for the Craig era. They just had the bad luck of hitting about twenty years too early.
- In fact, the Bond that Dalton portrays is much closer to the Bond that Fleming wrote: a stone killer and a womanizer (well, all the Bonds are like that, but whereas Connery is the archetypal Bond-As-Playa and Roger Moore's just... well... Roger Moore, Dalton comes across as a sexual predator) with a hinted-at lust for violence.
- As for music fans, the Roger Moore era is most often fondly looked at as the golden age of Bond themes, from "Nobody Does it Better" (Carly Simon) to "Live and Let Die" (Paul McCartney/Wings) to "A View to a Kill" (Duran Duran).
- Mae West lost a good chunk of her sex appeal when the Hays Code was imposed, but her movies remained passable. Myra Breckinridge and Sextette, made after she was convinced to come out of retirement in old age, are not.
- Myra Breckinridge was a terrible film in its own right and only featured Mae in a single scene— basically playing herself— as a man-hungry talent agent-type who gives the eponymous hero/heroine (don't ask) lessons on mistreating the menfolk, and frankly Mae is not the grossest thing in it (not after you see the strap-on scene). Sextette... well, it was based on her 1926 play Sex, and having her be a Memetic Sex Goddess back then was quite a different matter from having the movie treat her like one when she's a frail, overly made-up 84-year-old woman paired with men young enough to be her grandchildren (such as 32-year-old Timothy Dalton, for whom this is a major Old Shame). Most people's reactions to the film are somewhere between a Primal Scene reaction and profound Squick.
- Depending on your opinion, either Alien 3 or Alien: Resurrection. While in popular culture, Alien 3 is considered the turning point of the franchise, many fans of the franchise appreciate the Assembly Cut's character drama (with an Alien...) approach, leading some to believe that the latter example is true turning point. To support its quasi-popularity, many fans saw Alien 3 as a return to the themes and atmosphere of the first film, where the second was a subverted gung-ho action flick.
- The Crow pretty much went into one after people realized that there was money to be made after the first film was successful. City Of Angels was poorly received by most (it didn't help that Dimension cut out at least 20 minutes worth of character development and important plot points, causing the film to feel rather disjointed at times), Crow: Salvation was considered a definite improvement, while most people see Wicked Prayer as So Ok Its Average. And now there's a remake in the works, and most people have very low expectations for how it will turn out.
- Friday the 13th lost its edge around the time Jason turned out to be a demonic entity capable of Body Surfing. In terms of actual horror, the film where he went to space marked the lowest point in the decline (though some claim that's when the series became So Bad, It's Good.)
- The Halloween series had the extremely poorly explained Curse of Thorn storyline from the fifth and sixth films, which tried to tie Michael to prophecies, an ancient cult and the like.
- The Disney Animated Canon has seen at least two Dork Ages: The first happened between the late 1960s and the early 1980s due to the death of Walt Disney, and ended with the Disney Renaissance, while the second happened just recently, during the early 2000s. In the case of the latter era, the only true successes released at that time were Lilo & Stitch, The Princess and the Frog, and Tangled.
- Some argue the Marx Brothers after their switch to MGM. Zeppo got tired of acting and the studio forced the brothers to go from completely anarchic Rapid-Fire Comedy to more good-natured characters helping out a forgettable romantic lead between increasingly tedious musical numbers (Groucho called The Big Store's "Tenement Symphony" "the most godawful thing I'd ever heard"). Granted, there was still plenty of CMOF, it was just more restrained than during their years at Paramount.
Live-Action TV
- The 2007 Flash Gordon TV series has been viewed as a Dork Age by many fans, particularly for the extent to which it toys with the characters' mythos and familiar aspects (to cite one example, Ming the Merciless is white, has a full head of hair, is clean-shaven, wears a western-style military uniform, is only rarely called "the Merciless", and derives his authority over Mongo from owning the water company.) Some things benefit from a clearer, more PC and more realistic interpretation, but Flash Gordon is not one of them.
- Mention a Dork Age to a Doctor Who fan at your own peril. No matter which Doctor, no matter which writer, no matter which era, someone is going to consider it a Dork Age, and probably expostulate (at great length) why. Even David Tennant's run isn't entirely immune.
- Frequent targets include the Paul Mc Gann movie, which incorporated such elements as The Doctor being half-human, or the Colin Baker era, when the producer attempted to create a darker, grittier Doctor by having him be a complete douchebag half the time and a homicidal maniac the other half.
- The G4 Network seems to be pretending that the first month or so of Los Angeles-based X-Play episodes don't exist. The recent G4 Replay block of reruns skipped from the last San Francisco eps to the L.A. eps with the dark green set, completely skipping the early L.A. eps with the hideously bright-green set.
- Happened twice in Charmed. After a great first season the creators decided to focus on the melodrama of the sisters' lives and whole episodes were devoted purely to their personal lives often with supernatural subplots added in as afterthoughts in, you know... a show about witches. The show was saved by its awesome third season however.
- The show's fifth season, while still quite good in quality, changed the tone slightly to make things more light hearted and the structure shifted to have more stand alone episodes instead of an actual story arc. They introduced magical creatures such as mermaids, leprechauns, woodnymphs etc which had never been heard of in the show's mythology. The sixth season took it Up to Eleven with girlish and childish storylines such as King Arthur's sword, the sisters creating a Mr. Right for Piper and a demonic reality show. The seventh and eighth seasons became darker in tone and developed interesting story arcs to rectify the problem.
- It should be noted that the lives of the Charmed Ones was always supposed to be the focus of the show. There was a quote that said that "The show isn't about three witches who happen to be sisters, it's about three sisters who happen to be witches." It was intended to be more of a drama with elements of sci-fi (it was produced by Aaron Spelling, after all.)
- The infamous sixth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is frequently regarded as a Dork Age for the titular heroine, in which her traumatic resurrection from heaven is explored so realistically that she loses all her (previously characteristic) warmth, passion, sense of humor and interest in the world around her, becoming a pale and often unwatchable imitation of her former self. The supporting cast doesn't get it much better, either: Willow's magic addiction metaphor is simultaneously Anvilicious and a lore trainwreck given that it was never portrayed as such in prior episodes, Dawn's constant complaining made you want to strangle her, the dissolution of Xander and Anya's marriage was forced, and Spike reached the depths of his Bad Ass Decay, and the Trio's actions were just... stupid. At least Buffy had an excuse. Even the beloved "Once More with Feeling" couldn't save it.
- Some fans would argue full-on Seasonal Rot with Season 7 as well, considering the change of Buffy into a full-fledged, unlikable Knight Templar, Willow's inability to use magic for the better part of the season, Xander, Dawn, Anya and Giles getting virtually no character direction, having a textbook Generic Doomsday Villain as the Big Bad, the arrival of the insufferable Potentials, and Spike's total eclipse of the whole show. Joss Whedon has admitted that everyone working on the season was exhausted, and it shows.
- Season 4 is sometime mentioned as a Dork Age, given the awkward Initiative storyline, the introduction of the widely unpopular Riley as Buffy's rebound love-interest, and above all the episode about a beer that turns people into cavemen and cavewomen. On the other hand, this season also produced the Emmy-winning "Hush" episode.
- Power Rangers Turbo tried to shoehorn extremely goofy source material into a not-so-silly story. It also had the series' biggest Scrappy. And then Power Rangers RPM comes along, uses goofy source footage for the darkest and edgiest story PR has ever done, and is brilliant.
- For a brief time on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Odo had his powers taken away by the founders, as one of those vehicles-for-exploring-the-Human-condition that Star Trek is so fond of. In this case, it didn't turn out well; Odo got his powers back in a very contrived way and the whole incident was referenced precisely once (in the very next episode) and then never again.
- This came about during an effort late in season 4 to make major changes to the characters, with Sisko's girlfriend being imprisoned, Dukat becoming a terrorist, Worf being dishonored again, Quark also getting cut off from his people, and Kira first getting into a relationship with the First Minister of Bajor, then becoming a surrogate mother for the O'Brien's baby. As it turned out, every single one of these changes misfired badly with the fans, and Kira's becoming a surrogate mother was the only one that wasn't undone by halfway through season 5.
- Possibly because her actress, Nana Visitor, was actually pregnant during production, which is why the arc was included in the first place. She delivered during production of a season 5 episode, and the plot was fairly quickly wound up thereafter.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation was tonally very similar to the original Star Trek—which turned out not to work as well with such a large cast. However, seasons 2-7 found their own style.
- Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (and, to a lesser extent, Xena: Warrior Princess) started to drift into dorky territory sometime after its first two seasons. People tend to forget that the series was a spinoff from a string of successful made-for-TV action-adventure movies that were more or less played straight, sometimes brutally so. And while the TV show itself always had undertones of campiness (particularly in its attempt to shoehorn Hercules into every ancient legend that had not featured him in the first place), at least that was a level of camp that made sense within the series's universe. Where they really dropped the ball is adding way too many self-indulgences: grossly stereotyped characters, gratuitous slapstick, and especially Anachronism Stew (relying on the Rule of Funny, of course). It became really hard after a while to enjoy Hercules as a serious action show. Arguably even more damaging was the decision to introduce the concept of monotheism in both Hercules and Xena; while this allowed the writers to cook up intriguing Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot scenarios (such as bringing in the story of David and Goliath), it violated the original polytheistic mythology that Christian, Jewish, and Islamic viewers could take as pure fantasy.
- Apart from the Ending Fatigue that plagued seasons 5, 6, and 7 of The West Wing after the departures of principal character Sam Seaborn, writer-of-almost-every-episode Aaron Sorkin and stylistically-influential director Thomas Schlamme, season 5 was especially derided for being just plain bad and having terrible storylines. One of the worst of these was a contrived character arc for Josh Lyman that relied on simultaneously making him into a complete moron and having all his friends inexplicably distrust him in order to set up a "hero rises from the ashes" story that failed miserably since it was never wanted or needed in the first place.
- Survivor has had several:
- The first one was encountered around seasons 3-5. Season 3 didn't do as well in the ratings compared to its predecessors, partly because the players were so hot they sat around all day and didn't do much interesting. Season 4 had a bunch of boring people and a Diabolus ex Machina that screwed someone doing very well in the game, and Season 5 was full of people who were outright irritating. They all had their moments, granted, but the show got better around season 6 and then gradually got better.
- Then we had Fiji (Season 14), a cast full of dull people, a twist that was more or less an Epic Fail and resulted in a Can't Catch Up scenario pre-merge, had a couple moments, and even the host says isn't very memorable.
- In all fairness to the producers, Jeff Proust mentioned that Fiji season was supposed to be Cook Islands part two with a similarly racially segregated theme. Unfortunately, one of the twenty contestants leaving at the very last minute forced the producers to throw a new twist to the game they didn't plan to do. It's debatable on whether Fiji would've been better or worse if the season went according more to the initial plan, but that was definitely a factor.
- Then from Tocantins (Season 18) to the present, it became highly obvious that the editors were having WAY too much fun accentuating certain players they like, turning them into Creator's Pets and everyone else into Living Props; these favorites were usually crazy and delusional or just arrogant Jerkasses. In a couple of these seasons, the other tribe members were Too Dumb to Live, giving the Creator's Pet an easy ride to the finals. It's gotten so bad that fans sometimes wonder if there were backstage shenanigans, either purposely casting bad players to make things easy for the Weslies, or setting up challenges that play to their strengths. On top of that, some of these seasons had twists that did nothing to add drama and suspense, and in the case of Redemption Island may have even undermined it by causing conflict between the players that were already out instead of the ones still subject to the vote.
- The sixth season of 24 tried to shake up the previously-established formula with a number of surprising changes - while still keeping the status quo. On paper, the season's plot probably seemed like a good idea - Jack Bauer, who has been released from Chinese custody, spends the season trying to atone for his past sins while embroiled in a battle against Middle Eastern terrorists and duplicitous family members. In practice, the season turned out to be a mess - Jack was working with CTU again (for a reason that stretched believability after five seasons of the same thing), characters dropped in and out of the plot, potential season-long storylines (the effects of a nuclear bomb detonation in California) were never capitalized on, several returning characters got a "X goes through Hell" storyline" and the entire affair was bogged down in ridiculous family drama involving Jack's brother's wife and her child, as well as Jack's father (who was a corrupt executive). Following this season (and the lowest ratings in the show's history), FOX "rebooted" the show, moved it to the other side of the continent and jettisoned most of the previous cast and locations.
- Oz, the terse, taut HBO drama about, shanking, prison rape and the impossibility of redemption, started off mightily strong for its first few seasons, kickstarted a few careers and got a lot of attention... and then, following the murder of Big Bad Simon Adebisi, completely ran out of ideas. New characters were introduced only to be unceremoniously murdered and forgotten, relationships sparked up and died out abruptly, characters were wildly derailed, and carefully crafted storylines were trashed and hurled away until the show's fans were almost begging for the poor show to be put down. And then the formerly gritty and realistic show started to introduce elements like pills that caused Rapid Aging...
- The Price Is Right started to get a little tired in Bob Barker's last few seasons (increasing senior moments from Bob, sudden insurgence of idiotic contestants and a butt-ugly set didn't help). Once Drew Carey took over, he began bringing back many of the elements from the peak of Bob's tenure, such as the Showcase skits and host-announcer interaction, and the show once again has the same "fun" feel.
- The middle part of the second and final season of Twin Peaks: the episodes following the resolution of the Palmer case and predating the introduction of Windom Earle.
Music
- One example of a band that tried for a new, Darker and Edgier image and just... shouldn't have is demonstrated in the video and song, "Dirty Dawg". Let's just say, it really didn't go over well with New Kids on the Block's established fandom.
- Similarly, GarthBrooks' experimental pop album and pre-release soundtrack for a movie that never was, The Life of Chris Gaines, did not go over well with his fandom. Not only was the Out-of-Genre Experience unwelcome to his country fans, but taking on a new look, and the identity of the title character just made it worse. Even still, while the album bombed, failure is relative. The album itself peaked at #2 on the U.S. charts, went double platinum, and had a top 5 single.
- And then there's Jewel, who, for a thankfully brief period, abandoned her trademark sensitive folkie singer Lilith Fair poet persona in order to become... a clone of every crappy pop singer of the noughties. She claimed that her violently-impossible-to-like song, "Intuition", was meant as a satire of interchangeable pretty blond pop singers. Sadly for her, that's a little hard to believe, considering she made a bunch of money off said song being used to launch a women's razor line called "Intuition".
- Does it count as a Dork Age if it only alienates established fans? Bob Dylan grew tired of being viewed as "the spokesman of a generation", and decided to record the country music album Nashville Skyline specifically to alienate people who viewed him as such. This continued with Self Portrait and Dylan, which were popular with critics but sold very poorly. Then Dylan recorded some albums that his original audience liked (including Blood on the Tracks), and then he converted to Christianity and changed his style again, losing most of his original fans over a quarter of a century (and gaining a few back after 1997's Time Out of Mind.)
- Actually, EVERYONE hated Dylan. Few records have been so universally attacked or attracted furiously scathing reviews all round. This, though, was a result of Executive Meddling as they were outtakes released by his old record label as revenge.
- Many fans consider that everything The Who did after Keith Moon's death as an extended Dork Age. Even more will agree that it started with John Entwistle's death in 2002.
- The Dave Matthews Band came off of a creative peak with Before These Crowded Streets, only to shelve the promising work of The Lillywhite Sessions for the mainstream-pandering Everyday. This album was made solely by Dave and pop songwriter Glen Ballard, to the dismay of the bandmates. Don't even discuss Stand Up amongst the fan-base unless you're willing to withstand high amounts of flames. Thankfully, Big Whiskey and the Groo-Grux King has improved things.
- Black Sabbath went through a Dork Age in the last half of The Seventies, with their two last albums with Ozzy being 100% crap after a run of six mind-blowingly awesome albums. Ronnie James Dio saved them from that, but he left after two albums. Ian Gillan hopped onboard for a horrible album, then various more lineups got assembled, that nobody can agree which one is good and which one's a dork age.
- Again, all phases of the band's career have their fans; including the late-'70s period, "Blackmore Sabbath", and the Black Sabbath In Name Only late '80s Tony Iommi solo albums.
- Fans of The Smashing Pumpkins, despite differences in opinion on the recent material, universally would like to pretend that Zeitgeist never happened.
- Except "Tarantula".
- Billy Corgan's assertion that the existing concept of a band releasing an album is a dead one leading to his current Teargarden by Kaleidyscope releases may well prove to be a Dork Age in progress. Time will tell.
- Actually, Billy, as stated doesn't like the current state of the Record Industry. Until a new standard appears, he's going this route. In actuality, Teargarden by Kaleidyscope is supposed to be listen to as one piece of music when it's all released. The dork age in question is actually EP I. Fans who have heard the songs from the upcoming EP's actually like the stuff.
- The whole of David Bowie fandom seems to consist of various factions who love and hate different phases of his decades-long career, due to his frequent sound/image makeovers. Still, there are three periods usually brought up as dorky:
- His 1967 self-titled debut, which he has since disowned as Old Shame. His second album, now known as Space Oddity, was originally a self-titled reboot.
- In his "canon" career, even he admits that he's ashamed of 1987's Never Let Me Down and just must not have cared, though "Time Will Crawl" is a great song (and actually all the singles rode high on the charts — they were just quickly forgotten, unlike his other '80s hits). His previous album Tonight (1984) is often counted in this age as well, save for its two hits ("Loving the Alien" and "Blue Jean"). Getting out of this dork age led him into...
- The Tin Machine years of 1989-1992. (However, his solo Sound+Vision tour during this period went over well.)
- Never Let Me Down has gotten some attention and even some good reviews lately thanks to the DVD release of the accompanying concert tour ''Glass Spider''. Tonight has enjoyed no such upturn as yet.
- It can be argued that the post-Tin Machine dork ages of the 90s could be found during his Black Tie White Noise and hours... phases. The former was a flirtation with electronic lounge pop that also doubled as a dedication to his then-new wife Iman. The latter occurred towards the end of the 90s, which showed a softer, more introspective side of Bowie. This prompted Reeves Gabrels, a guitarist who collaborated with Bowie in Tin Machine and his 90s works, to leave due to the fact that it was not as edgy as anything they had done prior to that. Luckily, Bowie managed to escape both dork ages and produce Heathen, which was seen as a comeback album by both critics and fans alike.
- Van Halen's recruitment of Gary Cherone (formerly of Extreme) after Sammy Hagar's departure is currently regarded as "never happened" by the band, having been excluded completely from a two-disc greatest hits collection put out years after the release of Van Halen III, the only album featuring that singer. The second album they had planned to release with him was scrapped after they realized how unpopular he was. Ironically, he's also the only singer of the band that doesn't hate Eddie Van Halen.
- Hey, remember KISS? When they first started they were regarded on the same level as the other two pioneering metal groups, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. They realized the potential for making a profit, but overplayed their hand with a video game, a comic book series, and a universally-panned film. The whole thing culminated in the group attempting to cash in on the disco craze of the late 1970s, and they are today blamed for the downfall of the first generation of metal, leading to the rise of punk, hip-hop, and disco.
- People often forget that KISS was a fairly obscure group for their first year or so of existence. Fans were already getting tired of glam rock by 1974 (Alice Cooper was starting to move away from it), and KISS's debut album was notably more popular in Japan than in the United States. Dressed to Kill was their true breakout album, as it coincided with the beginning of the "showman" period in which (with a few exceptions) they have since spent their entire career.
- Likewise, their attempt at a Concept Album / Rock Opera.
- And there was their attempt in the '80s to drop the facepaint and sci-fi costumes and reinvent themselves as a "hair" band in the Twisted Sister mold.
- Nevertheless...it worked. The "Unmasked" period coincided with the revival of metal: KISS took an honored spot as patriarchs among the newer bands, and their career was revived. Notably, KISS' great achievement is considered to be combining rock with theater, and it should be considered suspicious that they're appreciated for something that actually has nothing to do with music.
- The Elder, the hair metal period, Psycho Circus not actually being an original KISS album, Eric Singer and Tommy Thayer performing as psuedo-originals.. Now that I think of it, everything is a dork age except for the original lineup albums, Creatures of the Night and Revenge.
- Pat Boone, icon of whitebread, mocked this trope once by appearing at an event with Ozzy Osbourne's family in leather and with pierced nipples.
- He even released an album of metal covers, called In a Metal Mood: No More Mister Nice Guy, performed in his signature whitebread style. His take of "Crazy Train" was used as the theme for The Osbournes (He and Ozzy were next door neighbors for many years until Ozzy and company moved shortly before the series' run). He's since claimed that his fanbase views that album as not just a Dork Age, but a Devil Age, and it actually resulted in him getting kicked out of his church for a while.
- There's argument over whether AFI entered this or left it by switching its sound from hardcore punk to new wave glam rock.
- There's also MC Hammer's gangsta rap album — with the possible exception of the single "Pumps and A Bump" (as long as you ignore the video).
- And Dee Dee Ramone's rap album.
- Many Queen fans hate the disco album Hot Space with a passion. Ironically, it contains "Under Pressure", the famous duet with David Bowie.
- Not only Queen fans hate it: both John Deacon and Roger Taylor expressed their dislike for it several times. On the other hand, Freddie virtually wrote its sequel for his debut solo project, and Brian still claims that without it, there'd have been no 'Thriller' (ridiculous as it sounds).
- Michael Jackson himself said that Hot Space was a huge influence on Thriller, though.
- Moreover, while most people tend to acknowledge 'The Cosmos Rocks', some of the other activities Taylor have been involved with (e.g. recording with Britney Spears and 5ive) are treated as if they'd never happened. If only...
- The Nineties were this for Heavy Metal in general. Pick any metal band which was reasonably succesful and well-known at some point between 1976 and 1990. Now read their article on The Other Wiki. Odds are good that there will be a paragraph or two about their "decline" in the Nineties due to line-up changes, a Genre Shift Gone Horribly Wrong, etcetera. A large number of them "came back" in the early Noughties, though. Some specific examples:
- Iron Maiden helmed by Blaze Bayley. Even though some songs of those albums remained in the setlist after he left.
- The band continued to write good material during this time, though Blaze's singing is strictly from hunger.
- Let's put this simple: the post-Black Album period of Metallica (Load, Reload, St. Anger) doesn't exist for many fans. Well, maybe Death Magnetic can be Rescued from the Scrappy Heap, but anyways...
- The death of Cliff Burton/introduction of Jason Newsted is often cited as the cause of these problems. Whilst unfair on Newsted, since replacing him with Rob Trujillo, they have improved, though that may simply be coincidence.
- Many fans include the "Black Album" as well, particularly for It's Popular, Now It Sucks.
- There's often a tendency among fans to want every album by that band to sound the same, and when somebody like Kirk Hammett has an adventurous streak and wants to experiment with sound, it alienates part of the fan base. This also happened to Motörhead when Brian Robertson of Thin Lizzy joined them for Another Perfect Day. Robertson's insistence on wearing disco shorts and refusal to play older Motorhead songs didn't help his case any, but the songwriting on that album pretty much defines well-written metal of the early 1980s.
- For Helloween, it was the period between Kai Hansen's departure (after Keeper of the Seven Keys Pt. 2) and Andi Deris's arrival (before Master of the Rings). This period comprises the Michael Kiske-fronted albums Pink Bubbles Go Ape and Chameleon, which left the band near dissolution.
- Megadeth has a brief decline with Risk, and sometimes Cryptic Writings and/or The World Needs A Hero as well.
- Hell, even Slayer wasn't immune to the crippling power of The Nineties. They lost their drummer Dave Lombardo, and experimented with Nu Metal for a while. The horror! However, since the mid-Noughties, Lombardo is back, and Slayer is making straight Thrash Metal again.
- Some fans of Rush look at their mid-80s output as this, due to heavy reliance on sythesizers. Although there are still some songs from this period that are considered classics.
- Ween's 12 Golden Country Greats was probably a deliberate attempt to create one.
- Neil Young's early to mid-'80s output. (You know you're in a Dork Age when your label gets fed up and sues you for your albums being "not commercial" and "musically uncharacteristic of previous recordings.")
- Well, no, that's also just indicative of having a shitty label. There's nothing wrong with being "not commercial" or doing something new.
- Neil made those albums that way on purpose because he was fed up with David Geffen and wanted out of his contract.
- The metal community has come to regard Cold Lake, Celtic Frost's one-off shot at glam rock, to be synonymous with "total fucking disaster".
- Fleetwood Mac has had two. The first one was the period between Peter Green's departure and the addition of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. The second was the period between Buckingham's departure and the reformation of the Rumours-era lineup in 1997.
- Techno/rave music went through a bit of a dork age between its initial surge of popularity in the early 90's and the 'electronica' explosion of the late 90's. At least in North America, Eurodance, Garage House and the Handbag genres were largely forgotten once Daft Punk, The Prodigy and Underworld became popular.
- Your Mileage May Vary, but the period between original frontman Syd Barrett's leaving Pink Floyd in 1968 and the band releasing either 1971's Meddle or 1973's The Dark Side of the Moon is sometimes considered one of these. Understandable, since Barrett was responsible for virtually all of the band's material before he left. There is also a vocal part of the fanbase that considers the two albums from after Roger Waters left to be a Dork Age, though again, opinions differ considerably (generally, somewhat more bile is spewed at A Momentary Lapse of Reason than at The Division Bell).
- Billy Idol went through one of these in the early '90s, when, faced with waning popularity and flagging album sales, he attempted to reinvent his image (and cash in on the emergent hacker subculture) in 1993 by replacing his bleached-blonde spiky haircut with bleached-blonde dreadlocks and releasing the album Cyberpunk, a fusion of glam rock and electronic dance music. With the exception of the single, "Shock to the System" (which was closer in style to his earlier work), the album's songs consisted of overwrought synthesizer riffs, pretentious monologues, and lines lifted directly from William Gibson novels. The album flopped, hard: critics universally panned it, Billy's old fans were left feeling betrayed, and real cyberpunks saw him as nothing but a hopeless poser. It's pretty much universally agreed that the cover of The Velvet Underground's "Heroin" that appeared on this album is the absolute worst version of the song ever recorded.
- When irreplaceable guitarist Michael Schenker left UFO in the 1970s, a sizable portion of the fan base considered them to have ceased existing, despite a resultant run of albums that were more consistent than the ones during Schenker's difficult tenure.
- Prince's phase of replacing his name with a symbol and insistence on being called "the artist previously known as Prince" resulted in his being labeled as a Cloudcuckoolander.
- The insane popularity of disco in the late 1970s resulted in many artists facing a tremendous amount of record company pressure to jump on that bandwagon. This caused dork ages for many artists of the time, including the aforementioned KISS, and the Rolling Stones. Even established jazz artists weren't immune, with Freddie Hubbard, Sonny Rollins, and Herbie Mann, only a few of the artists who produced albums that they later regretted.
- Duran Duran, contrary to myth, did continue its popularity in the wake of its "Fab Five" lineup being whittled down to Simon, Nick, and John, but the one album where their future was in serious jeopardy was with 1990's Liberty, which while containing such fan-beloved songs as "Serious" and "My Antarctica", was the one moment when the band were at the brink of falling apart. Then they came back with 1993's The Wedding Album. More recently, their post-"Fab Five" reunion (which was short-lived) period brought forth a loathed element of Dork Age with Red Carpet Massacre, which not only contained no songs of any musical merit but had Justin Timberlake getting involved with the production of the album, which many die-hard fans simply could not stomach. Thankfully, they've gotten back their mojo with 2010's All You Need is Now, produced by the much more appropriate Mark Ronson.
- Tears for Fears lived its Dork Age with one album — 1995's Raoul and the Kings of Spain. While Roland Orzabal managed to score a hit album minus Curt Smith with the preceding release, 1993's Elemental, and the 1995 album contained solidly good music, Raoul was a little bit too conceptual for some people and it basically flew under the radar.
- Some fans argue this trope is what best describes legendary post-punk band Wire's late 1980s descent into more traditional song structures, after making a name for themselves for performing avant garde music with somewhat atonal elements.
- Those Gang of Four fans who preferred their rougher, harsher, punkier edge in albums such as Entertainment feel this way about their 1984 album Hard, which was funkier and poppier than anything they'd released before. Others see Hard as a catchy, logical extension of the musical themes explored in their previous album, Songs of the Free (which included their most famous song, "I Love a Man in a Uniform").
- Much of the Japan fan base is divided between those who preferred their glam rock era (Adolescent Sex, Obscure Alternatives, et. al.) and those who preferred their New Wave/New Romantic era (e.g. Gentlemen Take Polaroids and Tin Drum). David Sylvian himself considers the debut album (1977's Adolescent Sex) "old shame" and his whole solo career has been an extension of the musical themes first explored with Tin Drum, from the Eastern musical elements to the esoteric lyrics about such things as inner pain and loneliness.
- On a lighter note, some fans feel that "Weird Al" Yankovic entered an aesthetic Dork Age after he got LASIK surgery, got rid of his glasses, grew out his hair, and shaved his mustache. *GASP!*
- John Cale was a drug-addled, overweight, mentally-unwell shell of his former self for a period in the early to mid-eighties. Fortunately, he cleaned himself up, but not before filming some very embarrassing live performances.
- Tokio Hotel with the Humanoid Album. Arguably, that is. The band both lost and gained fans with this album, though it seems to be more on the lost side.
- KMFDM tried to break away from its long history by switching record labels and changing their name to MDFMK. While the "new" band's album was well received, fans were incensed that they refused to play any of their old songs in concert. The band relented, going back to their old name and playing selections from their entire catalog.
Newspaper Comics
- For a while in The Sixties, classic comic strip Dick Tracy tried to capitalize on the ongoing Space Race by sending its characters TO THE MOON! One character even got married to a "Moon Maid". After the moon landing, however, the moon, and most of the sci-fi elements, were dropped from the strip, and Dick Tracy went back to old-fashioned crimefighting....
- ....only for the strip to almost immediately stumble into a second Dork Age with its faux-blaxploitation/"streetwise" '70s style, including Groovy Grove, a "cool" sideshow freak with a body literally shaped like a corkscrew. (His body was a groove, see?)
- For Better or for Worse is widely considered to have ended on one of these. Then restarted on another.
Professional Wrestling
- In the early '90s, Hulk Hogan had retired to try acting — then came back to wrestling for the competition, The Ultimate Warrior had decided that he was bigger than wrestling and disappeared, and Vince McMahon was on trial for steroid trafficking. Given all of this, one could forgive the WWF for dropping the ball a bit — but with a failure of the scope of the "New Generation" era, which gave us Lex Luger as a main-event Face, Doink the Clown, Wrestling Doesn't Pay in full effect, Doink the Clown, horribly bad Take Thats at WCW in the form of the "Billionaire Ted" sketches, some of the worst pay-per-view events on record, and Doink the f'n Clown, there's an awful lot to forgive. These days, it only gets brought up if somebody wants to mock or embarrass Vince and/or the WWE.
- Hey, Doink was freaking awesome as a Monster Clown. Doink's Heel Face Turn, on the other hand? Oh, does that ever qualify.
- Also, compared to the PPVs of say, the height of the Vince Russo era in 1999, there were some GREAT shows / matches in the mid 90s. They may have been less successful than during the Hogan era, but this was also the time when you were guaranteed a great Bret Hart and / or Shawn Michaels match on every show.
- Although 1995 would probably be a big Dork Age, since that was supposedly the year the company was at it's lowest in losing money. For most of the year, Kevin Nash was WWF Champion, and was the worst champion ever at both a critical and financial success.
- It wasn't Nash's fault; he really didn't have much to work with as far as main event feuds went. The only three wrestlers people wanted to see challenge Diesel were Shawn Michaels, Razor Ramon, and Bret Hart. Problem is, Diesel-Bret III didn't occur until November (after being subjected to the Diesel-Sid and Diesel-Mabel feuds), Razor was saddled with Jeff Jarrett (and then, the 1-2-3 Kid), and Diesel-Shawn II was held off until April 1996.
- Not to mention that as a face they ruined his character by turning him from a badass into yet another overgrown boy scout goody two shoes babyface. when audiences had already grown tired of them.
- The guys at WWE are known for having photographic memories, acknowledging as canon almost everything that has happened in pro wrestling (in their own promotion and those promotions that intersected extensively with theirs, at least) since the early 1960s, and sometimes even events before then. So according to WWE's bible, as it were, every age (even if it's a dorky one) is considered legitimate, with more recent eras having precedence. (This means that Doink is still a face, no matter how much that might rankle.)
- WCW was also in the same state as WWF back in the early 90s. At that point in time a much smaller company, they tried to emulate WWF's overtly cartoonish characters, coming up with characters such as Arachniman, The Juicer and the Dynamic Dudes. Then there were the infamously terrible skits that TBS helped produce, such as the one where Sting and Jake "The Snake" Roberts shot laser beams out of their eyes.
- Don't forget about Oz*
Nash dressed up as the Wizard with a fake beard and gigantic puke-green robe , although that was probably more TBS wanting to cross-promote than anything else.
- Fans of the WWE have been complaining about the new "PG" rating since it's been erected, claiming that it's neutering the product for the sake of being "family-friendly" again (as well as claims that it's all a deluded attempt to aid Linda McMahon's hopeless run for the US Senate). Then, the NXT riot on Raw happens and fans are buzzing about what is the most exciting and freshest angle in years. Then, WWE decides to release the most "over" of the rioters, indy darling Bryan Danielson, because he choked out Justin Roberts with the man's tie on camera. Despite the fact that ten years ago, dropping Stone Cold Steve Austin off a bridge and lighting Kane on fire was standard fare Danielson's actions were deemed too menacing and too violent for the project. Fandom now has even more ammo to proclaim that the PG Era will kill WWE.
- This turned out to be premature, as Danielson was brought back a few months later and then given the United States Championship. As of January, he still has the belt and appears to be pushed as the "ladies man" of Monday Night Raw.
- It Gets Better with Daniel Bryan winning the Smack Down Money in the Bank match at the eponymous 2011 PPV and announcing he'll cash it in at WrestleMania 28 (assuming nothing goes wrong, of course). And the Fandom Rejoiced...
- Ring of Honor had a big one from October 2008 to September 2009, right when Adam Pearce took over booking duties from Gabe Sapolsky. This change was most evident with the line between the big shows (PP Vs, TV Tapings, Anniversary shows, Supercards of Honor, etc.) and everything else. Most of these "B-shows" (even said so by Austin Aries, which did not sit well with many people) had traded quality for a more streamlined approach. As good as it sounded on paper, being stuck with a B-market label turned fans off from the product. The Final Countdown Tour in September 09 helped ROH regain fan confidence (along with the Austin Aries, Kenny Omega, and Davey Richards de-facto round robin in October and November), ended the dork age and set the stage for their bounceback in 2010.
Radio
- In late 1999, despite its well-earned reputation as a family show for the past sixteen years, Adventures in Odyssey was re-tooled specifically to appeal to younger listeners. This was apparently interpreted to mean "water everything down." Simplified stories with morals more anvilicious than ever showed up, peaking with a wave of ten-minute "twofer"-style episodes. Characters stagnated, continuity dried up, and some of the series' most interesting characters (including Katrina, whose appearances had been rare enough to begin with, and Whit's son Jason) dropped off the map altogether. While a few good episodes still got by, the listener backlash was strong enough that the series got back on track by the same time next year.
- British radio is undergoing this stage, notably with:
- Global Radio rebranding Galaxy to Capital and attempting to make a national station out of it (well, according to Digital Spy, which has lampshaded this on multiple occasions. "Local radio" Capital, done in the same way as Minster FM, Stray FM or 96.4 The Eagle (UKRD) would work. However, their digital presence (websites etc.) have not yet fell into a Dork Age; they're well-designed and easy-to-use, with understandable schedules and nice DJ photos.
- GMG Radio, their competitor, has fell into this trap too; Ryan Seacrest has a syndicated show, Monday - Friday 11pm-1am, which does not fit in with their image one bit.
Sports
- Michael Jordan, the famed basketball player playing professional baseball. Even he admits he wasn't that good and that it was mostly a chance to clear his head after his father's death. Tin-foil heads have a great conspiracy theory that states he was secretly suspended for a year for a gambling problem. There's no proof, but man, few people would be surprised.
- NBA Commissioner David Stern refuses to even comment on that theory, not even to refute it. Please ignore the black helicopters...
- Any relevance to Space Jam poking fun at this?
- Also, Washington Wizards MJ, tragically immortalised in the otherwise outstanding NBA Street 2. What's worse, they even included Jordan 'Classic', from his Bulls days, who's a much better player than the Wizards Jordan.
- Speaking of Michael Jordan, there was the seismic collapse of the Chicago Bulls after their second threepeat. Michael Jordan retired for the second time. Phil Jackson sat out the next season and resurfaced as the new head coach of the Lakers. Luc Longley, Scottie Pippen, Steve Kerr, and Dennis Rodman all left as well. Chicago wouldn't see the playoffs again until 2005.
- Due to its extremely small market, the Edmonton Oilers have had this trope invoked often. The rare aversion in their history came, oddly enough, when Wayne Gretzky was traded to the Los Angeles Kings in 1988. At first, it began as a textbook Dork Age when the Kings beat the Oilers in the 1989 playoffs, but Edmonton brutally averted it by winning the Stanley Cup the following year with Mark Messier as the face of the franchise. The year following the Oilers' Cup win, Messier was traded to the New York Rangers, beginning one of two Dork Ages.
- Beloved forward Ryan Smyth was the centerpiece of the second Dork Age. Just like Gretzky and Messier, the Oilers could not afford to keep Smyth, who was set to enter free agency at the end of the year. At the 2007 trade deadline, a year after he was the centerpiece of an improbable Cup run, Smyth was sent to the New York Islanders for prospects. The Oilers finished the 2006-07 season on a 2-16-1 slide, knocking them out of playoff contention. In the three ensuing seasons, the Oilers have missed postseason play each time, culminating in their 2nd worst record in franchise history.
- In 1995, Montreal Canadiens goalie Patrick Roy demanded a trade after a major falling out with coach Mario Tremblay after Tremblay refused to pull him in a 11-1 loss to the Detroit Red Wings. Roy would end up winning two more Cups with the Colorado Avalanche, and the Canadiens still have significant goaltender issues.
- Many NHL teams hit extreme slumps after success. For example, the Detroit Red Wings were better known as the "Dead Wings" after Gordie Howe retired (until Steve Yzerman took over...15 years later), the Chicago Blackhawks took two rebuilds to get back to mediocrity, and the Washington Capitals spend several years as a bottom feeder team before rebounding.
- Following a disappointing 1992 season, the Chicago Bears decided to fire longtime head coach Mike Ditka and replace him with Cowboys offensive coordinator Dave Wannstedt. A word to the wise, never bring up the Wannstedt era in a conversation with a Bears fan.
- It didn't help Wannstedt when Jim Harbaugh walked after the 1993 season.
- Nor did it help when Ricky Williams walked, ten years later. Still, his popularity among Miami Dolphins fans is likewise rather low. To be fair, Jimmy Johnson's desperate attempts to destroy Dan Marino and find a franchise running back resulted in several wasted drafts, and left the team's talent level thin.
- If anything, the entire Jimmy Johnson era and legacy could be considered a dork age. Johnson's popularity resulted in legendary coach Don Shula's (wink) stepping down. Johnson's insistence that it would be his team, built his way, meant neutralizing Marino, the team's best player; and Johnson repeatedly wasted high picks on unworthy running backs such as John Avery and James Johnson. Not to mention, he brought in Cecil "the Diesel" Collins, who went to prison for probation violations before even playing a season. Then Johnson quit on the team, and hand-selected Wannstedt as his successor. And the Dolphins have been ordinary (at best) ever since.
- After David Cutcliffe's first and only losing season at Ole Miss (the year after Eli Manning went to the NFL), he was pressured to fire his assistant coaches. Cutcliffe refused, so AD Pete Boone fired him and made Ed Orgeron the new head coach. Orgeron's overall record in three years was 10-25, including a putrid 3-21 in SEC play. In Coach O's final season, the Rebels did something no other team had done in over two decades: go winless in the conference.
- The Toronto Blue Jays followed up on their back-to-back wins in the 1992 and 1993 World Series with four consecutive losing seasons (55–60 in 1994*
strike-shortened season , 56–88 in 1995, 74-88 in 1996 and 76-86 in 1997). Longtime coach Cito Gaston was also fired by the management, and replaced by relative unknown Tim Johnston (who tried to motivate the players by lying about his service in the Vietnam War). Coupled with a severe attendance drop during those years (from which the franchise has never truly recovered) and the fact that they haven't even returned to the playoffs since then, it wasn't a good time to be a Jays fan in the late 90's.
- The MLB in general suffered one after the 1994-95 strike.
- In Football, any time a team is relegated or nearly falls (double if it occurs due to cheating instead of team incompetence).
- Liverpool is currently experiencing one: Having been a Top 4 team in England (considered by many to have the best league in the world; that is saying something) for a long while, they finished 7th in the 2009 - 10 season. The 2010 - 11 season ended on a little lighter note when club legend Kenny Daglish took over managerial duties and made a late surge for 6th, but awful cup performances are a reminder that the club's 2005 Champions League victory is just a memory by now.
- Most notable however is River Plate, an Argentinian club which got relegated for the first time in their 100+ year history (and 33 titles) after massive debt trouble and a sporting crisis which has plagued the club for the last 3 years. The fact that the club has housed many famous Argentine players and that rioting was the result of the whole thing speaks volumes.
- The first five years of Jerry Jones owning the Dallas Cowboys netted two Super Bowl championships. Then Jones fired coach Jimmy Johnson for daring to demand credit for the championships, thus establishing Jones as the only man in charge - and the Cowboys have suffered ever since. They had enough talent for one more championship in 1995, but have won two playoff games since, with the wins 13 years apart.
- When Tim Sylvia held the UFC Heavyweight Championship, it was considered to be the lowest point for UFC's heavyweight division. Not helping matters was the fact that all of the premier heavyweights (Antonio Rodrigo Noguiera, Josh Barnett, Mirko Cro Cop, Fedor Emelianenko, Fabricio Werdum, and Heath Herring) were all in PRIDE during the majority of his reign, while Randy Couture had dropped down to light heavyweight and then retired. Eventually, Couture came out of retirement and ended the dork age, winning the unanimous 50-45 decision against Sylvia.
- The Toronto Maple Leafs had the Harold Ballard era. Ballard made a habit of trading off popular players in exchange for dirt nothing, firing coaches frequently, and generally pissing everyone off within earshot. Ballard went off the deep end by canceling a youth game at the Gardens because his grandson was slated to play in it. By the 80s, the Leafs were the laughingstock of the league all because of Ballard's actions.
- Green Bay was known as "NFL Siberia" in the 23 years between the Vince Lombardi and Mike Holmgren eras which saw the Packers make the playoffs exactly twice and win only one playoff game. To give some perspective, they won five championships in Lombardi's final seven years and, after Holmgren's first season, made the playoffs six straight times including two NFC titles and a Super Bowl.
- The Mike Sherman years definitely qualify as their latest Dork Age. In addition to being their coach, he was also given the mantle of general manager after Ron Wolf retired. To say this was a colossal mistake was an understatement; Sherman's scouting abilities were virtually nonexistent and resulted in such stellar draft picks as Ahmad "Highway 28" Carroll, Cletidus Hunt, and B.J. Sander. The latter was taken in the first round, and he was a punter. That Sherman traded up to get. In addition to that, photos surfaced of him asleep at the player combines, which only fueled the fire against him. While they posted decent records under Sherman and won the NFC North three times, they struggled in the playoffs. The Packers suffered their first home playoff loss under his tenure, a 27-7 asskicking at the hands of the Atlanta Falcons, and also their second, a 31-17 loss to the Minnesota Vikings in 2005. The 2005 season resulted in a 4-12 record, the first losing season for the Packers since 1991, and resulted in Sherman's firing. Some argue that the seeds of Brett Favre's diva attitude were sown here as well; whereas Mike Holmgren wasn't afraid to smack him upside the head when he did something stupid, Sherman's coaching philosophy seemed to be "Brett Favre can do whatever the hell he wants." It's no coincidence that his interceptions trended higher in this period, culminating in a 29-interception season in 2005. When Mike Mc Carthy was hired, everyone rejoiced.
- The Tampa Bay Buccaneers may be the kings of this trope in sports. Their image was cemented when they were winless for their entire inaugural season and part of the second, an NFL-record 26-game losing streak. This was partially due to a horrendous rash of injuries, as they were not provided medical information on players prior to the expansion draft, but also largely due to coach John McKay's decision to use younger players with potential, rather than older players who would be ready to retire by the time the team was good. McKay's strategy was successful: they made the playoffs in their fourth season, the quickest of any American major professional sports franchise to that point. But the 1982 players' strike divided the team and destroyed McKay's enthusiasm for coaching. Then a series of unproductive drafts coincided with the veteran players' aging and the emergence of the USFL, so the team went very quickly from being a championship contender to the worst team in the league. They finished with losing records for each of the 14 seasons from 1983 to 1996, and their constant coaching turnover resulted also in a constant turnover of players, with nobody ever in place for long enough to finish the rebuilding job. This streak included selecting Bo Jackson with the first pick in the 1986 draft, only to see him refuse to sign with the team and instead sign a baseball contract; and trading a 1992 first-round pick (which became the second-overall pick in the draft) for Chris Chandler, who played for less than one full season with the team. It was not until Rich McKay and Tony Dungy improved the team's personnel selection and coaching in the mid-1990s that their situation improved.
- The New York Yankees in the 80s. Despite having the highest winning percentage in baseball for that decade, they failed to make the postseason after 1981 (in a two-division league; they once made the postseason eight times in 10 years out of a single-division AL) and were mostly known for owner George Steinbrenner's antics - mainly giving huge contracts to players who didn't perform and firing managers left and right. They finally hit rock bottom finishing dead last in 1990, with Steinbrenner getting banned from baseball for two years for hiring a con man to try and dig up damaging information on one of his own players. The suspension, however, allowed the front office to finally turn things around, unload the bad contracts and focus on player development, making the Yanks a playoff team by 1995 and champions again a year later.
- The Washington Redskins are enduring one right now, and have been ever since executive meddler extraordinaire Daniel Snyder took over. Despite being the most profitable team in the league, the team has perenially underperformed due to Snyder's interference: the team has had 7 head coaches in 12 years, posted a losing record through 2000-2010 (86W-106L) and has constantly favored flashy style over substance on the field. Moreover, Snyder's moneygrubbing and intolerance of dissent has definitely rubbed fans the wrong way; Washington fans are the only fans in the nation charged to see their team in preseason, and since 2009 banned all signs from the stadium. Many Redskins fans eagerly await Snyder's departure, to put it lightly.
- When the Walt Disney Company took ownership of the then-California Angels in 1997 (on the heels of owning/creating the Anaheim Mighty Ducks), they changed the team name to the Anaheim Angels (in order to carve a niche for Anaheim being the home of Disneyland and Disney's sports) and ditched the signature halo logo for a periwinkle blue color scheme with an angel wing tip for its symbol. This lasted for only a few seasons before reverting back to an updated form of the old red-and-white/halo template as Disney phased itself out of its sports experiment in the early 2000s. (And as for the Mighty Ducks, they won the Stanley Cup the first year Disney relinquished ownership and the organization had rebranded itself as the Ducks, removing all logos and references to the Disney property.)
- Not to be outdone, the Los Angeles Dodgers also had a late-90s Dork Age. They had been a crown jewel of baseball along with the Yankees and Cubs, having been a family-owned operation under the O'Malley family for fifty years dating back to their days in Brooklyn. They were also the ultimate sign of stability in baseball, having only going through one managerial change in 46 years. In 1998, the team was sold to FOX, who operated the team for six years. Among the moves made during that tenure was
- Having more managers in the fold (Bill Russell, Davey Johnson, and Jim Tracy) than the previous 46 years combined
- Trading away face-of-the-franchise Mike Piazza, who continued his career as arguably the greatest offensive catcher in baseball history with the New York Mets and will undoubtably be elected to the Hall of Fame as a Met.
- Adding another color (silver) to their color scheme and alternate uniforms, something that the other "classic" franchises (New York, Boston, St. Louis, Chicago) had not done.
- Giving away huge free-agent contracts that became incredible busts; they made ace starter Kevin Brown the first $100 million man in baseball despite being 33 and having a history of injuries (which would derail his Dodger career) and gave large deals to an aging, injured, and ineffective Andy Ashby and unproductive Darren Dreifort, who would suffer a career-derailing shoulder injury shortly after his new deal.
- Possibly entered another one in 2011. After the team made the playoffs in 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2009, the divorce and antics of their owner, Frank Mc Court has appeared to derail the franchise. Attendance down significantly (first time in almost twenty years they did not draw 3 million fans), most of the 2011 season spent in the basement, filing for bankruptcy. It is definitely not a good time to be a Dodger fan.
- A late-season Miracle Rally saw the Dodgers go from last-place and 14 games under .500 to a winning record and almost catching the Giants for 2nd, on top of monster seasons by Matt Kemp (who grew the beard and nearly won the Triple Crown) and ace pitcher Clayton Kershaw that could see both players sweep the coveted NL MVP and Cy Young Awards. This on top of the team not folding in the dog days of summer with nothing to play for while under new manager Don Mattingly (meaning they're on board with the skipper). Considering the Dodgers were once on-pace for the second-worst record in their LA history, the late flurry has actually turned the season into a modest success considering how much worse it could have been on top of their financial woes. With some promising young talent in Dee Gordon and Jerry Sands on top of their established core, hope may spring for 2012 for the Dodger faithful...
- The Boston Red Sox after their infamous sale of Babe Ruth's contract to the Yankees in 1920. The team was awful throughout the 1920's and 30's, essentially serving as a farm system for New York, making several other one-sided trades to help strengthen the Yankees' dynasty. Even the most die-hard Sox fans would probably have trouble naming any notable players in the 20's. They didn't have another winning season until 1935, and didn't win the American League pennant until 1946. Another Dork Age occured in the first six years post-Ted Williams. One could argue it lasted until they broke the "Curse of the Bambino", but the Red Sox were relatively successful overall, just couldn't get a championship.
- The NFL's St. Louis Rams' downward spiral can be seen as a Dork Age for some. 2005 started the decline with a 6-10 season. After Mike Martz was fired following the 2005 season, the Rams hired Scott Linehan to be their head coach. They quickly jump to a 4-1 start, only to finish with an 8-8 record. However, things went sour. They finished the next two seasons with 3-13 and 2-14; with the defence dead in last both seasons. During the 2008 season, the Rams fired Linehan and replaced him with Jim Haslett after an 0-4 start. The architect of part of the Rams' Dork Age, Jay Zygmunt, resigned before the 2008 season was over and Billy Devaney takes over and eventually becomes GM. Steve Spagnuolo, hyped as being the next best head coach ever, was hired. Despite a dreadful 1-15, they kept Spags and drafted Sam Bradford to replace Marc Bulger, (who was released on April 5, 2010). They struggled early on in the 2010 season, going 0-2, then going 7-7 afterwards. However, they lose the key game against Seattle on the road, finishing 2010 with a 7-9 record. Offencive coordinator Pat Shurmur is hired by the Cleveland Browns and is replaced by Josh McDaniels. Fast forward to the 2011 season, they're picked to win the NFC West. They proceed by losing their first six games. Fan Dumb claims the dead-last numbers in offence is Bradford's fault. When in fact, the maligned O-line is to blame for not protecting him. They neglected to pick up any wide receivers, except for signing a washed-up Mike Sims-Walker (who they recently waived). Seems they built the team around Steven Jackson instead of Sam Bradford.
- No one had it worse in the 1990s than the Dallas Mavericks - as in, no one had a worse wining percentage in that decade among all the major pro sports franchises. They missed the NBA playoffs for 10 straight years, in a league where eighth place gets you in. They were most known for trying to build around the trio of Jason Kidd, Jim Jackson and Jamal Mashburn and it failing due to them bickering over who got to date Toni Braxton. The owner who traded them off, Ross Perot Jr., cared more about building real estate around their upcoming new arena than winning. Finally, one Mavericks fan decided he could run the team better - and realized he had the money to back it up. The Dork Age ended when Mark Cuban bought the team from Perot in January 2000; the Mavs returned to the playoffs the next year and have not missed out since, finally winning it all in 2011.
Tabletop Games
- The Vampire: The Masquerade Sourcebook known as Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand presented the True Black Hand, a secret society of vampires devoted to fighting "Soul-eaters", spirits that were infecting the rest of vampirekind. Fans scorned the entire concept as a complete 180 from the game's mood, dubbing the idea "Vampions" (a portmanteau of "vampire" and the superhero game Champions). White Wolf eventually took advantage of a major event in the World of Darkness, the "End of Empires", to wipe out the True Black Hand, and subsequently revealed that the group got everything wrong.
- The Old World Of Darkness, despite its good parts, did have quite a few Dork Age moments. Take, for example, Gypsies, a game book that tried to replicate the Victorian trope of the mysterious, magical gypsy... in the 20th century. Apparently, no one realized it was stupidly racist until it actually went to press. Most White Wolf fans just pretend it never existed.
- When it comes to Dork Age moments in the oWoD nothing can beat Sam Haight. Originally written as a mistreated kinfolk (one who has werewolf blood but can't change forms) who skinned five werewolves in order to become one himself and be corrupted by evil, White Wolf decided that it would be a good idea if he became a main villain for the rest of their gamelines as well. As a result he became a horrifically overpowered character who had powers from all the game lines at the time. After he was finally killed there was talk that he could come back as a super powered Wraith, at which point the writers said that he had his soul forged into an ashtray, and was promptly ignored save for a single line about a screaming ashtray in one of the last novels.
- To make the "Soul-Eaters" bit even worse, they were alien space parasites and in every way appeared to have been swiped whole cloth from Necroscope. The Tzimisce had always appeared to be a mashup of Necroscope's Wampyri and Dracula, but Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand's Soul Eaters made it pretty clear things with Vicissitude WERE the Wampyri with the Serial Numbers Filed Off (but still not as nasty as actual Wampyri). This was even more obvious because there was a Necroscope RPG by West End Games released a year before Dirty Secrets was published. Both the Necroscope RPG and WoD system used D10s for their dice, so while not using identical systems, it wasn't particularly difficult to port one system into the other (and with the timing, may explain what happened).
- Warhammer 40,000 2nd edition is considering somewhat of a dork age. Rampant character cheesiness, vortex (black hole) grenades taking out dozens of regular troopers, and some extremely basic models combined to make it almost a version of past shame.
- Vortex grenades are back, but since they're used only in Apocalypse games (i.e. absolutely huge ones), their lethality isn't really that overstated.
- Most veterans found Warhammer 40,000 3rd edition a big Dork Age, where they stripped the setting of almost all of its background with pamphlet sized army books, dialed up the grimdark in the little background that's left while simultaneously dialing down the clever things about it. On top of this, the rules were oversimplified to the point where in each army book they had to introduce more and more special rules to differentiate the different statistics which were previously represented with something like a single number (like movement). Also, characters became MORE cheesy in 3rd edition than 2nd edition.
- On top of this, they introduced the Tau (who many at the time didn't feel like they fit) and the Necrons who were inserted as a sort of Mary Sue race. Luckily the Tau have been made to fit better in recent times and the Necrons are not so infallible anymore.
- Unfortunately, the Fifth Edition seems to be going through a Dork Age for the Space Marines. Mostly due to the horribly bad writing, utterly ignoring the most basic parts of the canon and incredible favouritism towards the Ultramarines. Also repeatedly invoking the Worf Effect upon the Sisters of Battle, scaling down their force and repeatedly featuring stories of them being horribly butchered. All of this can be blamed upon a single author, Matt Ward, who has fans screaming for Games Workshop to fire him.
- After FASA was shut down, ownership of BattleTech passed to WizKids. The result was an attempted a continuity reboot of sorts with "Mechwarrior Dark Age" under the WK "Clix" system. The net effect of this was to piss off a lot of long-time players, who dubbed the game "Dork Age".
- Fortunately for Shadowrun fans, though, they handled that license pretty well.
- With that beign said, the rection could be seen as both Fan Dumb and They Changed It, Now It Sucks; by releasing Dark Age, WK Games kept Battletech alive after FASA's demise and paved the way for the revival of the game under FanPro and later Catalyst Games labs
- Part of the problem had to do with a serious lack of communication. WizKids strongly promoted Mechwarrior: Dark Age while simultaniously not promoting standard Battletech early on, giving the impression that they were killing the original game in favor of Mechwarrior. Then, when the Dark Age game was actually released, fans found that none of the original factions were represented, instead we had a bunch of new groups with rather silly, Saturday Morning Cartoon style names fighting in something called "The Republic of the Sphere" which was built singlehandedly by some new character after most of the original factions were nearly destroyed by the Word of Blake, a group that had, before the time shift, been a small group of techno-religious fanatics notable only for being in control of Earth. This, naturally, turned out to be quite a turn off to many older fans, who left before it was revealed that all the facts had really been Republic propaganda and the original factions were still very much around and the Jihad hadn't actually been quite as bad as it was originally portrayed, though it was a pretty major event.
- The less said about Mega Traveler and Traveler: The New Era, the better. Games Designer Workshop decided that somehow it was a fantastic idea to set fire to one of the best-realized sci fi settings in all of gaming. Players stayed away in droves, and GDW paid the price when it went bankrupt several years later.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! may have just passed its own Dork Age just recently; after years of trying to bring the game in sync on both sides of the Pacific, and making it as unified as possible, UDE chairman Kevin Tewert suddenly decided he could make the game much better than the guys at Konami who made the game in the first place, and nearly destroyed everything he had helped build up, up to then, in the process, driving the OCG vs. TCG Internet Backdraft across an even further chasm than it was. Never mind, It Got Worse; turns out UDE was selling counterfeit cards to a secondary distributor for sale at local Toys R' Us', striking a legal battle with Konami that had Konami taking back western distribution rights. While it's still ongoing, rest assured that this will instantly be treated as Yu-Gi-Oh's Dork Age by the fans.
- Blizzard has also recently announced that they are ending the production of the Warcraft TCG under UDE's helm. Any chance there's a relation?
- Considering that they also had members of the World of Warcraft team split off to form their own company specifically to produce the TCG themselves, I'd say so.
- If you want to talk about specific sets listed here, well...
- Before the ban list, Dark Crisis was not well received, due to the lack of "good" cards and the mehness of the Archfiend archetype.
- Cyberdark Impact is almost universally mocked for being full of useless cards, including the unfortunate putting-down of the LV monsters with Allure Queen and Dark Lucius.
- Tactical Evolution is similarly reviled due to its limited useful card pool and the lukewarm reception to the Gemini monsters (as well as being the set that introduced the "TCG-Only" cards that helped started the UDE Dork Age above).
- For the more "elitist" duelists, most of the GX sets are classified as this, for one reason: the over-pimping of the near-universally reviled Elemental Heroes.
- The Gold Edition sets weren't very well received, either, thanks to them being generic reprints of rather old cards with the "gold" rarities that the sets were named after only adding a little foil along the edges.
- Depending on whom you're talking to, any given edition of Dungeons & Dragons.
- There are valid complaints about each one: 1st edition had all the flaws that the 1st edition of anything could be expected to have. AD failed to fix many of them. 2nd edition was needlessly obtuse and complicated. 3rd had extreme variation between power levels in classes, as well as some cumbersome skill rules (need both hide and move silently). 4th edition suffers from notoriously poorly written math (-4 to -7 on a roll of 1-20 is a pretty devastating gap written into the core rules), reverse power creep, as well as feeling a bit too much like a video game. And yet D&D (any edition) is still the best selling Tabletop RPG in print - except for the fourth, which is overtaken by Path Finder, a third-party continuation of the third edition. So now a fifth edition is being worked on, which will undoubtedly be considered a Dork Age by some.
- Likewise, 5th Edition of Paranoia.
- The HERO System arguably went through one of these with the infamous Fuzion System in the late 1990s.
- Magic: The Gathering had two genuine Dork Ages, during the Urza's and Mirrodin blocks. In both cases, a handful of Game Breaker cards led to a tournament scene in which all decks in Standard (the primary tournament format, using only cards from past 2 block and most recent base set, making for a low barrier to entry compared to formats where $500 cards are essential staples) were either "Obvious Top Tier Powerhouse.dec" or "Counter-Deck to Obvious Top Tier Powerhouse.dec." Both blocks led to extensive bannings (which Wizards of the Coast only does when absolutely necessary, under the logic that selling a product and then refusing to let the customer use it is an excellent way to discourage the customer from repeat business). In both cases, the issues was exacerbated by the powerful blocks being followed by underpowered blocks, meaning that the dominant cards stayed dominant for the full two years of their legality, rather being displaced in their second year. While the years since then have not been free of cries of "They Changed It, Now It Sucks," there haven't been any bannings in Standard since.
- It appears that Magic: The Gathering is going through another Dork Age due to a recent change in the rules, coinciding with the latest core expansion. The removal of "player unfriendly" rules for the purpose of a "more fun experience for beginners", along with the implementation of a truly horrendous combat system (Seriously, ask a Magic Player about "The Conga Line of Doom" and watch them twitch.) caused a substantial number of long-time players to quit when they were just announced. Granted, it could just be a severe case of They Changed It, Now It Sucks, as the changes are still relatively new, and there is always something about the latest sets that are going to bother somebody. Only time will tell...
- The loudest complaint seems to be the removal of combat damage from the stack, and it's largely from players who used to do the old "sacrifice it to itself!" trick to pump Nantuko Husk and the like, which has always seemed like an abuse of loopholes anyway. Either way, most players don't seem bothered enough about the changes to stop playing.
- Many of the "longtime players quitting" rumors have shown to be unsubstantiated, seeing how the last two sets have sold record amounts and has had significant shortages.
- Trading card games, like MMOs, receive violent backlash at the announcement of any change. The most recent rules change to Magic was relatively minor in scope, mostly boiling down to changing one rule a fair amount and removing another rule that came up in hardly any games, to no great effect when it appeared. Depending on who you ask, the answer to "When did Magic enter its Dork Age?" will be anywhere from Sixth Edition to Beta.
- Most fans of R. Talsorian's Cyberpunk 2020 prefer to vehemently deny the existence of Cyberpunk 203X (also known as v3), the game's third edition, for a number of reasons, the most prominent being the rejection of William Gibson-style cyberpunk themes in favor of Neal Stephenson-inspired Post Cyberpunk elements, a reworked rules system that solved few of the issues of the old rules while creating several new problems of their own, and foregoing hand-drawn art in favor of badly Photoshopped images of action figures dressed in strange costumes and stuck in ridiculous action poses.
Theater
- Cirque du Soleil has had a few missteps in tour itineraries and miscellaneous projects (such as entertainment for the Celebrity Cruises line) that went over poorly. However, when it comes to for the live shows that serve as the company's backbone, the company generally works hard to improve troubled productions and refine good ones, so even a rocky start can pay off later. But in doing more and more shows and trying to put new twists on their usual fare, they've hit Dork Ages of late.
- Criss Angel Believe is a magic show collaboration with the illusionist. With high expectations as their sixth resident show in Las Vegas (facing locals fatigued with their omnipresence), their first magic show, and their first show built around a specific performer, it opened to almost universally negative critical reviews and even nastier audience response in 2008. It's still running — the contract stipulated a ten-year run — and two years on professional reviews have improved, but that was due mostly to the bulk of Cirque-typical elements being dropped, so...
- Banana Shpeel was a Vaudeville-inspired variation on Cirque's house style (with much more time given to comedy acts than the norm) that was also their first show for "legit" theaters, doing a tryout run in Chicago before hitting New York City in the spring of 2010. Heavy retooling in the wake of poor reviews for the tryout delayed the N.Y.C. opening by three months...which meant that it opened after their traditional tent tour OVO arrived in the city for a two-month run, instead of before. While reviews were better in New York, they weren't as good as OVO's, and Banana Shpeel wound up closing two months sooner than planned. A New York Times article detailing what went wrong is here. A North American tour was planned even after the closure in New York, but scuppered after its opening engagement in Toronto flopped.
Toys
- LEGO arguably, according to AFOLS had it from about 1997-2002 during the advent of "juniorizaton" - sets from that era were generally simpler and more crude than previously, using large, single-purpose parts as opposed to more complex subassemblies. Examples include Town Jr. and City Center (which replaced the regular Town line) - the cars were made of single-piece baseplates, and the headlights were usually just slopes with headlight texture printed on them (as opposed to using "washing machine" bricks with transparent plates on them". Castles were also simplified by using premade wall pieces. The era also had many poorly-received series - such as the Insectoids or the Time Twisters. However, starting in 2002 the situation started to become better - by 2005 the new City line was a complete antithesis to Town Jr.
- LEGO's "Constraction" subline (Slizers, BIONICLE, Ben 10, Hero Factory) arguably also went though such a period from '06-'10, beginning with the introduction of the "Inika" body-built, named after the Toa Inika sub-line of Bionicle, which basically consisted of an easily buildable torso with snap-on limbs, each made up of very few pieces. This type of construction hiked with the '08 Matoran, '09 Agori and '10 Ben10 sets, figures whose torsos, upper and lower arms and legs (or in the Matoran's and Agori's case, their entire limbs), hands and feet were made up of huge, single pieces and offered very little in the way of construction, focusing more on being "just" action figures. The Hero Factory 2.0 line in '11 thankfully ended this dork age with its radical design overhaul, that, although gave up on using the traditional LEGO Technic pin and rod connectors, made its figures pleasingly complex and incredibly well articulated again. Needless to say, though fans were generally happy, they were disappointed to find that this shift was so groundbreaking, it's bound to stay for a while, threatening with the notion of an "Inika 2.0".
- My Little Pony's toy line suffered this in the late 90s, when Generation 2 came along. They scraped their previous chubby designs in exchange for a design that resembled Horses instead of Ponies, and that generation was the only one not to get its own cartoon.
- Another, short lived dork age occurred in 2009 with the G3.5 toy line, which limited the ponies to just seven characters alone (dubbed the "Core 7") and changed their designs to having large heads and hooves, but small bodies, this dork age ended in October 2011 when Hasbro switched to Lauren Faust's designs, although your mileage may vary with the Generation 4 toys...
- G.I. Joe arguably had its dork age in the early-to-mid 90s, when the line introduced more outlandish subsets like the "Eco Warriors" (basically, G.I. Joe meets Captain Planet), and the Ninja Force. Not helping was the decidedly bright and blatantly neon colouring for certain figures, as well as the overabundance of spring-loaded weaponry, among other gimmicks. Plus, there was the added competition from lines like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the coming of a certain morphenomenon, all of which spelled the end for the "Real American Hero" line by 1994. This was followed by a rather short dork age in the form the Sgt. Savage line, which introduced a Captain America-esque*
the eponymous Savage didn't dress in red-white-and-blue, but his origins shared a lot in common with Cap's, including the Super Soldier angle, as well as being frozen for an innumerable amount of years. - And following on Sgt. Savage was G.I. Joe Extreme, where the toys had Liefeldian proportions and designs and articulation was reduced down to five points. While Sgt. Savage changed the scale somewhat it still kept most of the traditional Joe articulation and sculpting style intact, while Extreme was a blatant Follow the Leader to The Dark Age of Comic Books.
Video Games
- The console gaming industry in North America as a whole entered its Dork Age in 1983... over-saturation of the market, crappy games, rising prices of consoles that failed to deliver, the last straw being the critical failure of the ET The Extraterrestrial game... That Other Wiki has all the details. It's not called The Great Video Game Crash of 1983 for nothing.
- Since around the mid-2000's, the Japanese developer community is considered to be undergoing one. Lack of innovation, insane development costs and excessive focus on the casual gaming boom has resulted in a severe shrinkage of the once-dominating Japanese gaming scene and a serious rise of Western developers. In fact, in a recent Tokyo Game Show, Keiji Inafune himself said that Japanese gaming is dead and that Western developers are now the dominant scene in game development. A momentary glance at the big releases of 2009 would confirm his statement. This has also resulted in many Japanese developers hiring Western development teams to handle some of their franchises, with mixed results.
- The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is widely believed to have gone through a dork age between 2007 and 2008. Once a Mecca for gamers the event was made invitation-only and attendance dropped from 60,000 down to a low of 5,000. As a result E3 went from being the ultimate expo in the video games to a low key event. It didn't help that the E for All trade show ment to replace it turned out to be a dud. Also to make things worse the anouncements and game demo's E3 is know for were rather lacking in comparison to previous years. Fortunatly the event has since been reopened to the gaming audience and recent E3's have been much more well received.
- Nintendo fans try not to remember the Virtual Boy, an allegedly portable clunker of a gaming platform that was supposed to deliver the cutting edge of 3-D virtual reality gameplay but instead gave us eye strain, neck strain, and hideous graphics in only two colors: Red and black. To add insult to injury, damn few of the games put out for it (there were less than 20 in all) made any use of 3-D and could just as easily have been produced for a better gaming platform. Gumpei Yokoi, the victim of executive meddling, ended up Kicked Upstairs before quitting Nintendo (the only game for the system that gets a pass is Virtual Boy Wario Land, which managed to be genuinely fun despite the headache-inducing graphics).
- Nintendo fans also have the Zelda CD-i games to forget about, due to this and general unplayablity. Well, it hasn't been forgotten by YouTube, by way of So Bad, It's Good-ness and by extension, YouTube Poop.
- The early Nintendo 64 era was something of a Dork Age for Nintendo. The overly long development of the N64 caused some Super NES gamers to jump ship to PlayStation, and the decision to use expensive proprietary cartridges instead of discs caused developers to jump ship, too (most infamously Squaresoft, whose Final Fantasy series was a Nintendo mainstay until Final Fantasy VII). While Nintendo's first-party games on the N64 were as awesome as ever, there simply weren't enough of them to go around. The system launched with two games total, and it only had about one new release a month. So if you were tired of playing Super Mario 64 for the umpteenth time, your choices in early 1997 were Pilotwings and Cruis'n USA. That was pretty much it. The Nintendo 64 gained something of a reputation for releasing three unique and groundbreaking games a year, and absolutely nothing else.
- This wasn't helped by Nintendo's historic lack of support for third parties; one big selling point of the N64 hardware was custom microcode, but Nintendo never released information on how to use it, fearing it would be copied by their rivals. Among other groin-punches, they also patented using the N64 pad's C-buttons to control an in-game camera, meaning every non-Nintendo game had a shitty camera system, and continued in their usual habit of meddling with in-game content to be more 'family friendly'; for example, forcing Perfect Dark's 'Adrenaline Pills' to become 'Combat Boosts', and Duke Nukem's steroids powerup to become 'Vitamin X'.
- The Silent Hill franchise is notorious for its horribly Broken Base, but most fans will agree that the series peaked with Silent Hill 2, and the existence of a franchise Dork Age is nearly-unanimous. The general summation of this is a reverence for "Team Silent" and a mistrust of the games in which this development team was not involved. The general consensus is that Silent Hill 4: The Room is where the slide began, however, even though it was the last of the "Team Silent" entries. The recent Silent Hill: Shattered Memories has broken the fanbase further, between those convinced that the series remains mired in suck, and those who believe this new entry was fresh and compelling enough to possibly signal a revival of the franchise.
- Twisted Metal 3 and 4 were developed by 989 Studios rather than series' original developers, Singletrac. When the former staff members of Singletrac formed Incognito to develop the newer games in the franchise, it elected to wipe the events of those two titles from continuity.
- While it is true Warcraft fans are quick to hate almost any new development, the Burning Crusade's plot deserves a mention for the sheer amount of frustrating and blatant retconning and character changes.
- Wrath of the Lich King is seen as one as well, but due to gameplay-based reasons rather than story-based reasons.
- With Cataclysm both of these are now being stated as Golden Ages and the current expansion is the Dork Age. There are already people people claiming the next expansion is a Dork Age for having Pandas, and proclaimed to be great expansion because of the Pandas.
- A variant: Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge ended in such an impenetrably baffling fashion (The last part of the game takes place in the maintenance tunnels of an amusement park, and the undead antagonist turns out to be Guybrush's brother in a mask, and the whole escapade was All Just a Dream - Or Was It a Dream?) that its sequel, The Curse of Monkey Island, retconned the previous game's final confrontation into something a bit easier to follow. However, status quo wasn't necessarily restored because Monkey Island 2's ending was bad - it's more that after Ron Gilbert left the series, no one knew where he was planning to go with this revelation, and he has no intention of telling anybody.
- It's far more likely that it was just the final absurd twist in a game full of them than any sort of deep statement about the characters.
- The makers of the MMO Star Wars Galaxies decided it wasn't successful enough, so they came up with the New Game Experience, which involved massive changes to the game mechanics, combat system, character classes, and pretty much everything else, in the hope of attracting a whole new demographic. The result was an existing player base that was thoroughly (and vocally) pissed off, a new player base that never materialised, and a huge drop in subscriptions (not officially admitted, but confirmed by user-written in-game surveying tools before the company caught on and disabled the tools). Other MMOs have dome similar things on a less spectacular scale, but SWG's NGE is the infamous example everyone points to.
- One of the major reasons for this is that the developers changed the way one becomes a Jedi. Originally, players had to find holocrons and master whatever class tree it said to master, then the player may luck out and become a Jedi, or would receive another holocron. This, naturally, would be a grind. The New Game Experience let players start as a Jedi. Not only did this mean that everyone picked to be a Jedi and avoiding every other class, it also futzed with the canon and royally pissed off those people unlucky enough to have had to master every class to become a Jedi. You had many thousands of Jedi when there were no Jedi other than Yoda and Luke at the time it takes place in the official storyline.
- Just how bad is it? A new Star Wars MMO handled by Knights of the Old Republic developer Bioware and set in the KoToR timeline has since been announced.
- In Final Fantasy XI, the Chains of Promathia expansion is considered to be a Dork Age by many, many, many players. Reasons included; grueling boss fights that required very specific party combinations and a fair amount of luck to win, storylines that were left hanging between updates, Notorious Monsters that were amazingly gimmicky with incredibly low drop rates for gear AND pop items for further Notorious Monsters. The era was also known for the infamous "Ranger Nerf" that, while somewhat justified in the fact that the Ranger job was severely overpowered compared to other jobs, went way too far and made it into one of the weakest jobs in the game. (This nerf was partially countered years later after Samurai became the new over-powered pet-job of the Dev Team.) Combined with the first unbeatable boss of the game, the Jailer of Love which was then nerfed to make way for the new unbeatable boss Absolute Virtue, quite a lot of mid to end-game players left FFXI to play World of Warcraft. Not that Chains of Promethia was completely terrible; the mission storyline is among the longest and most interesting in the game (and better than some of the storylines of the main games), created systems and fights that are still popular years later like Limbus, ENMs, Bahamut, and Ouryu, and included many in-depth optional side quests such as Adventuring Fellows. (Your own personal NPC.) Changes to the mission fights were made to help players, such as making the fights easier, removing the experience penalty if they fall during battles, rewarding players with experience if they help people with the battles, and easing the restrictions of special items that help to make the battles easier- but these were made after the next expansion, Treasures of Aht Urhgan, when most players will agree that the Dork Age ended with a vengeance with a completely new philosophy in game design. (That it shouldn't be terrible to do things in the game.) This is a Your Milage May Vary situation, many people look fondly at the Chains of Promathia expansion, mainly because time has passed and people don't quite remember the original controller throwing difficulty of the unnerfed missions, or they had only played the missions after they had been nerfed. Also, not losing thousands upon thousands of XP to the then unnerfed Jailer of Love and the still-to-this-day unnerfed Absolute Virtue may well help to keep those glasses rose-colored.
- The Leisure Suit Larry series entered a Dork Age with the games starring Larry Lovage (Magna Cum Laude and Box Office Bust).
- Worth noting that Al Lowe, the series' creator, isn't involved with either of them. Judging by his site, he'd be more than happy to give them advice, and is also more than happy he wasn't involved when the games bombed.
- In the late 1990s, Konami farmed out the development of the Contra series to Hungarian developer Appaloosa, resulting in the creation of the series' two PlayStation installments Contra: Legacy of War (which also saw release on the Sega Saturn) in 1996, and C: The Contra Adventure in 1998. Both games were critically panned when they came out and Konami even canceled plans to localize the first of the two titles in Japan after the negative reception it received, which makes one wonder why they would give Appaloosa a second chance.
- Made all the worse by the fact that Legacy of War was relying on a 3D glasses gimmick for sales. We're talking '50s B-Movie red/blue cardboard glasses here. Oh, and massively derailing existing characters and canon, considering these followed on from Contra: Hard Corps, one of the more story-heavy Contra games, it did not go well.
- Backyard Sports, with the games from 2006 onward. There have been numerous character changes and removed characters, and the announcers are incredibly boring.
- King of Fighters fans generally look at the period of time Eolith was handling the games (KOF 2001 and 2002) as a Dork Age. The way 2001 plays is in general more glitchy and gimmicky than any other incarnation of the series, and is in general a mess. The music for these games has been compared to the sounds of robots farting among other things and Eolith introduced a few of their own character designs. When SNK reclaimed the wheel as SNK Playmore, among the first things they did was to wipe several elements from 2001 right out of the canon, including a whole character (also a blatant Captain Ersatz of Tetsuo) and one death.
- To give 2002 some credit, it's still one of the most played versions in the series competitively, and even after the release of 2002: Unlimited Match you'll still see some original 02 tournies being played. Now, 2001 on the other hand? Uh...
- Street Fighter actually inverted this. When the Street Fighter III series came out, many people were turned off by all the changes and many dropped the series altogether. As time has passed however, many looked back and were able to view the SF III series, specifically the third iteration 3rd Strike, much more favorably.
- Deus Ex Invisible War was Warren Spector's entry into a Dork Age, and immediately lost his accumulated industry and fan respect. He's managed to bounce back some, which is better than other developer/producers have been able to do (anyone remember John Romero?) but still hasn't regained his former stature. Because of lingering rancor, Thief 3 received less fair critical reviews than it deserved, and Spector hasn't been invited to return for Thief 4, currently in pre-production.
- He may have found a rehabilitation of his image in the unlikely vessel of a Mickey Mouse game, though its mixed reception (and Spector's claims that negative reviewers "misunderstood" the game) didn't make for the reputation resurrection that was hoped for.
- Metal Gear Solid 2 is widely considered the weakest of the franchise, centering mostly around a Replacement Scrappy and featuring an ending that had a Cthulhu-like effect on most gamers' sanity. Whether or not it came perilously close to killing off the entire franchise, however, is debatable given that the game was still a critical and commercial success. The widespread belief that Hideo Kojima made it bad on purpose because he wanted to quit making games is also perpetuated by MGS2's Broken Base - Hideo has repeatedly insisted on stepping down as director, only to return time and again of his own volition to and turn out a spectacular effort like Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.
- A non-canonical example could be the game, Metal Gear 2: Snake's Revenge, an American follow-up to the original Metal Gear game for the NES. The game not only completely changed Snake's character and his relationship to the franchise but also took the game that introduced the concept of *stealth* gameplay and turned it into a generic shoot-em-up.
- Sonic the Hedgehog's history from November 2005 to January 2007 might be this with the releases of Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic The Hedgehog 2006 and the GBA port of the original Sonic game. Shadow's game was a spin-off that aimed for the Darker and Edgier crowd, with So Bad, It's Good results. Sonic '06 was hyped to be the Blue Blur's big comeback, but instead turned out to be a glitchy mess topped off with yet another unintentionally hilarious and convoluted storyline. Thankfully, the game's events are not part of Sonic canon and we never have to speak of it again.
- The Sega Saturn period was the dark ages for Sega in the West, along with the late Genesis era. In Japan it is a well-known and loved console but in the West it is considered a failure due to poor marketing, a lack of exports, no Sonic the Hedgehog main games, and fierce competition. The Sega Dreamcast out shined the Saturn, but in the end it faded too in the West.. In Japan it went on until around 2007.
- SEGA's dark age as a whole really began with the Sega 32X. While the Sega CD could be considered just as bad, it's more of an Ensemble Darkhorse nowadays due to a few gems (Sonic CD, Snatcher, Lunar) among massive amounts of shovelware, but the 32X really kicked off Sega's mismanagment in the west. Then the Saturn's surprise launch came along with Sonic Xtreme stuck in Development Hell, and then Sega hired Bernie Stolar...yeah, things didn't really go well for them at all until they went third-party, considering the Dreamcast was Too Good to Last.
- While Warhammer40000-based games made by Relic Entertainment (Dawn of War 1 & 2, Space Marine, etc.) have been generally well-received, the Dawn of War expansion that was farmed out to Iron Lore has received nothing but rancor. Canonically, the storyline of the previous expansion was a rousing success for the Spess Muhreens, while the campaign of the Obvious Beta that was Soulstorm is considered an embarrassing defeat that is spoken of only with great reluctance.
- Sony had a little dork age in the mid-late 2000s, though they've appeared to have grown out of it recently. It started with the PSP, which, while being a success, never lived up to its expectations and was massively trounced by the inferior-seeming Nintendo DS. Then came the PS3's launch at five hundred and ninety nine U.S. dollars, its strange Dada Ads, a controller that lacked rumble functionality, and limited exclusive games (most which turned out to be mediocre, anyway). It got so bad that Sony actually lost all its profits from the PlayStation and PS2's success. The PS3 eventually tossed away its growing pains around 2008 and is now finally catching up to the Wii and Xbox360's sales — and with the PS2 still selling after eleven years on the market, Sony could finally regain trust.
- The Tony Hawk's Pro Skater franchise fell into one hard with its final two games, RIDE and SHRED, which attempted to revive the franchise by using a skateboard-shaped motion controller to simulate boarding movement. This failed to address any of the problems the series had been going through, and introduced several new ones. Both games failed as a result, and the Hawk franchise appears to be down for the count for good.
- About to be revived by Tony Hawk Pro Skater HD.
- There are ten years between Black Isle's Fallout 2 and Bethesda Softworks' Fallout 3. There are two Fallout games between them—Microforte's Fallout Tactics and Interplay's In Name Only Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. Tactics was a competent game that had severe issues with staying within the established continuity (in a world where World War III was brought on by a crippling energy crisis, many bases of have full drums of fuel just lying around more than a hundred years later, etc.); the same cannot be said of Brotherhood. Bethesda has proclaimed Tactics to Broad Strokes canon, while Brotherhood is full-on Canon Discontinuity.
- The Need for Speed franchise had one. While some fans claim the entire Underground era to be Fanon Discontinuity, most generally point to Carbon in 2006 as the beginning of the series' downward slide (especially coming on the heels of Most Wanted, generally regarded as one of the series' high points), and ProStreet and Undercover in the ensuing years as the nadir of NFS' dork age. In any event, it ended with the release of the very well-received Shift in 2009 and Hot Pursuit in 2010, which brought the series back to its focus on exotic cars and away from the burned-out "tuner" culture.
- There was a time where, to save on bandwidth costs, the site for hosting custom content for Garry's Mod forced its users to download addons via torrents rather than getting them directly off the site. It lasted for about two months.
- The Valis series had lain dormant since the early 1990s, until its reputation was stained in 2006 by a series of H-Games titled Valis X, which Telenet Japan published in a desperate and failed attempt to avoid bankruptcy.
Webcomics
- The "Haley speaks in cryptograms" story arc of The Order of the Stick was largely regarded as a Dork Age while it was transpiring, given that it took the only female protagonist and eliminated her ability to deliver the verbal humor for which the strip is known for over 100 strips. The climax of the plot may have made up for it in the minds of some fans, however, as it ushered in the Haley-Elan relationship and gave crucial character development to both characters. Still, the actual aphasia hasn't been mentioned since it disappeared.
Western Animation
- Season 7 of Family Guy, at least according to TV Tropes. Luckily every season afterwards was able to step away from (and even poke fun at) the nadir of quality that was "Not All Dogs Go To Heaven".
- See The Dark Age of Animation for information on the Dork Age of animation as a whole. This was when animation first moved from the movie theaters to the television, and Animation Age Ghetto was born.
- In general, classic cartoon characters hit Dork Ages when their owner studios tried to make them cuter and "safer" - visually symbolized by the once Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal (or human) gaining a full middle-class wardrobe. Mickey Mouse and Betty Boop are the best examples.
- When you see Mickey fully dressed with a hat and long pants, you know he's not going to be any more interesting than your neighbor. Disney historians fully admit the increased emphasis on Donald Duck and Goofy was partly caused by Mickey's iconic fame making him slightly inflexible and too 'sweet' to put funny cartoons or as anyone's foil. Earlier — and thankfully, more recently — he was a mischievous adventurer (Kingdom Hearts, ironically, is fairly close to this depiction). Dork Age Mickey sits at home and gives Pluto orders like a bossy, boring parent.
- On the other hand, when Goofy was retooled into a middle-class everyman (starting with "How to Fish"), the result was some of the studio's best and most enduring cartoons. And Donald did just fine when he was retooled for the DuckTales comics. So maybe the real problem is that Mickey - to be frank - isn't a terribly interesting character.
- Though Mickey is a compelling character in the comics (which in the U.S. aren't as well known as the cartoons), where he acts mostly as a detective or adventurer.
- In 1995, they released a new Mickey theatrical cartoon, Runaway Brain, where Mickey was seen for the first time in years as a flawed (lazy, forgetful, running head first into things), but kickass hero. The dark themes of the cartoon horrified parents and Moral Guardians though, particularly a monstrous Mickey Mouse, and Disney's been trying to bury it ever since. Some of the qualities of this Mickey stuck around for House of Mouse, but generally all that's taken a step back to make way for... Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
- Disney has never tried to deny Runaway Brain's existence. The short got nominated for an Academy Award, and was even proudly included on Mickey Mouse in Living Color Vol. 2.
- A New York Times article in 2000 described how boring Mickey was. Disney's overly restrictive guidelines prevent writers from doing much with him. Disney tried to inject some creative juices by having Mickey redrawn by various artists (big fan of Mickey with "M-shield" a la Captain America) but they haven't moved ahead until recently, with Warren Spector's upcoming Epic Mickey video game. Said game takes advantage of Video Game Caring and Cruelty Potential, where you could either let Mickey remain an everyman, or go back to his original personality of a mischievous and reckless troublemaker.
- Not to mention a little bit of High Octane Nightmare Fuel. Observe.
- Lampshaded in the Disney Vault TV Funhouse sketch ("You're supposed to be funny?"). That line came about from Robert Smigel's puzzlement of Mickey Mouse being such an iconic kids character when most kids can't actually name a defining trait or characteristic for him.
- What happened to Betty Boop, who used to be a sexy chanteuse, was that the Moral Guardians forced her to be Bowdlerised. This led to a serious drop-off in the quality and popularity of her shorts, since her character is a sex symbol (yes, even with her big, giant head). When you see Betty dressed like a businesswoman, you are in for a boring cartoon.
- Popeye had this happen as well, after the shorts became headed by Famous Studios. Granted, it didn't get too bad until 1950 or so, when Seasonal Rot set in and the writers just didn't know what else to do with Popeye, ending up resorting to Recycled IN SPACE! plots.
- Woody Woodpecker fell into this during the 50's—apparently, Walter Lantz wanted Woody to appeal more to kids, so he slimmed down his design into a pinty, stiff looking "cute" design. On top of that, Woody was completely derailed as a character - whereas earlier he was a selfish heckler who only stood for himself, this Woody was watered down into a bland hero type character. On top of that, from the mid 50's and onward, Paul J. Smith took the directorial reigns and brought the series down even further with sloppy animation, and not to mention lousy jokes and timing (surprising, considering his earlier efforts such as "Hot Noon" were among Lantz's best cartoons). It's a wonder the series was able to last all the way up to 1972 in theaters.
- Warner Brothers' shorts suffered in the Sixties as well (you know something has gone terribly wrong when they have Daffy Duck chasing Speedy Gonzales around for some reason) after the original animation unit was shuttered and work was turned over to DePatie-Freling Enterprises. Fortunately, this Dork Age comes with fair warning: if you catch a cartoon that opens with a weird version of their theme song set to trippy graphics spinning around, and the cartoon is not Chuck Jones' "Now Hear This", you're going to get to see their Dork Age.
- Hmm, what about the Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons of that time?
- Rudy Larriva, who had animated for Warner Bros. in the 1940s (but hadn't worked on anything Looney Tunes-related for about 15 years), took over the series from Chuck Jones. Larriva's character designs were very Off Model, the loss of Maurice Noble robbed the desert landscapes of all their scale and range, and the less said of William Lava's music, the better. The more complex schemes were replaced with sluggishly-paced crude gaggery, and to accommodate them the Roadrunner was completely derailed into actively fighting back against the Coyote, firing cannons at him and so forth. Watch "The Solid Tin Coyote" for a good look at how far off-base the series got. Better yet, don't (and just so that you know what we're dealing with here, keep in mind that "The Solid Tin Coyote" is pretty much universally regarded as the best of Larriva's efforts in this series).
- Incredibly enough, It Got Worse. If you ever see a cartoon with the opening described above, except with a company credit that reads "Warner Bros.-Seven Arts" instead of just "Warner Bros." then you should run for the hills. Because there is absolutely nothing good that will result from the cartoon that you are about to watch.
- Although at least the "Seven Arts" era did start improving somewhat towards the end, when Looney Tunes veteran Robert McKimson took over directorial duties from the horrendously incompetent Alex Lovy, and made the cartoons at least watchable again.
- Which reminds me, you all should start running up those hills right about now, because nothing introduces wonky effort better than a wonky opening!
- Tom and Jerry a la Hanna-Barbera's television studio in The Seventies. AKA, whenever Hanna and Barbera didn't directly make them.
- Put it this way: maybe you've seen reruns of the Gene Deitch shorts, the Chuck Jones shorts, the 1992 movie and Tom and Jerry Kids on Cartoon Network or Boomerang? How often (if at all) do you recall the television shorts from the 70s?
- To someone who never saw the seventies shorts (which, yes, does say a lot in and of itself), the Gene Deitch shorts are the Dork Age.
- If you see Jerry wearing a red bowtie... run, just run.
- Interestingly, CN Asia now airs the 70s TV shorts every now and then... as well as the 1980 Filmation era shorts (though they no longer run Deitch's shorts). Now that is a Dork Age.
- The 1996 Flash Gordon animated series, in which Ming was green and Flash and Dale rode hoverboards.
- Then there's the second season of the 1979 Filmation series, also known as The New Animated Aventures of Flash Gordon. The first season is frequently considered to be both the best screen version of the character and the best Filmation cartoon. The second season gave us Gremlin the Dragon.
- Someone at Turner Broadcasting must really dislike the 1980s episodes of The Jetsons and Jonny Quest, because Boomerang's rerun rotation of the shows go up to the last episodes of their first seasons, but then goes back to the beginning like nothing happened afterwards. Yet they still show the Jetsons' Christmas Episode every December. Thankfully (or not, depending on how you look at it), though, this contempt for the later years of The Jetsons and Jonny Quest isn't shared by the rest of Time-Warner, because the episodes are being made available in every other place where one can watch the show.
- While each new incarnation of the Transformers franchise brings its haters, the Beast Wars sequel Beast Machines is almost universally loathed by the fandom. For one, the writers were told to not actually continue any story threads from Beast Wars because they wanted there to be its own story. They also brought in the idea of Cybertron as an originally organic planet, a state that the Maximals were fighting to return it to (never mind that the dominant race of Cybertron has been robotic for millions of years), and a number of spiritual aspects that were never present in any of the previous series. This was compounded by the fact that Beast Machines supposedly exists in the same continuity as Generation 1.
- Beast Machines has gained ground with many fans in recent years. Compared to the dodgy storylines and iffy animation quality of Armada, Energon and Cybertron, the writing and certainly the CGI animation of Beast Machines looks pretty good in comparison.
- One might also argue this of Generation 2, though never to the face of a Generation 1 fan.
- How about the fact that in Beast Machines the robots transform by magic. I'm frankly surprised that not only did this particular issue not cause a cacophony of fan outrage, but seems to go mostly unnoticed by the fandom.
- Beast Wars? Generation 2? None of them can hold a candle to the monstrosity that is Kiss Players.
- Let's just say this; Beast Wars saved the franchise from dying out, in the west, and renewed interest in "organic" Transformers after the Pretenders of G1 fell flat; by contrast, not only did Beast Machines completely kill off the concept of "organic" Transformers, but it also ensured that the West never made another Transformers series for almost a decade. When the only thing that kept the series from being a Franchise Killer was Japan, you know it rightfully deserves a spot as a Dork Age.
- During the late 70s and early 80s Scooby-Doo went through one. The addition of Scrappy, the removal of the entire gang except for Shaggy (himself no longer a hippie) and with every episode featuring "cousin so and so", well, there's a reason that the original 60s version is the most well known.
- Flintstones has that show where they get new neighbors - the Frankenstones, who were basically a prehistoric version of The Addams Family — only with an unsympathetic Frankenstein's Monster as a head. Most of the episodes were about Fred having a fight with Mr. Frankenstone. Yes, in the original cartoon some monstrous neighbors were mentioned, but only episodically and never as major characters. It didn't help that the show also featured shorts that were ripping off other shows, so we could watch Captain Caveman imitating Superman (he was even Clark Kenting) with Betty and Wilma as two Lois Lanes, teenage Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm solving Scooby Doo Hoaxes with Dino, as well as Fred and Barney in a Buddy Cop Show, patrolling the streets with a goddamn Shmoo, which was constantly molesting Fred.
- The My Little Pony cartoons had a dark age that lasted for nearly two decades. It stared the My Little Pony Tales series, the Lighter and Softer Generation 3, or the Spinoff Babies Generation 3.5. Tales was a short lived Slice of Life series which threw the rest of the continuity out the window and was set in a world where the Ponies were essentially humans in Horse bodies. Generation 3 lacked essentially everything the original series had (action, villains, a plot, etc) in exchange for a somewhat Slice of Life version of the series that Tastes Like Diabetes. Generation 3.5 was essentially deformed "chibi" versions of the Generation 3 cast as Babies, though it didn't even try to make sense in the series continuity. Eventually the series got out of this dark age when My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic came along and restarted the franchise, being more like the original show.
Real Life
- Apple's product range during the tail end of the 1980s and early 1990s had degenerated from the insane greatness of the classic Macintosh to the extraordinarily bland Performa range; although the Powerbooks sold well, and the Power Macs and Quadras got good reviews, none of the company's products were particularly exciting. Strapped for cash, Apple even took to licensing clones of the Mac hardware, which raised money in the short term whilst eating into long-term Macintosh sales. The company was in pretty bad shape before Steve Jobs came back in 1997 and the original iMac was released in 1998. And it took them a few more years after that to finally get rid of the mess that the classic Mac OS had become.
- The Ford Mustang II, 1974-78. Basically a Pinto with a fancier body, no V8 option and enough mid-70s chrome, vinyl and fake wood for a much larger car. Even after it got a V8, never before or since have so many car guys been so disappointed to see their favorite sports car get lighter and more nimble...
- Specifically, Ford was returning the car to its roots as basically an economy car with a big engine after the previous car had gotten larger and become decent road racing platform. Sales for the Mustang II were actually much better than the late 60s/early 70s Mustangs, but it alienated enthusiasts.
- In The Eighties, Coca-Cola decided to change its secret formula that most of the world had been drinking for the better part of a century. Ironically, the "New Coke" as the media dubbed it, tasted more like Coke's chief rival, Pepsi (part of the whole point, actually). Die-hard Coca-Cola drinkers said "They Changed It, Now It Sucks" and Pepsi drinkers kept on drinking Pepsi. This new formula actually made Pepsi the number-one selling soft drink for a while, partly because most of its advertising during the period was "hate the New Coke? Drink Pepsi!" Pepsi actually saw the New Coke blunder as such a major win, they gave all their employees a day off in celebration. New Coke was actually rebranded (quietly) as "Coke II" but quietly faded to its death in the late 1990s and finally perished in the early 2000s. This debacle became a running joke for years. Even in Futurama, the "Slurm" episode poked fun at it.
- Of course, if they knew this would happen and that their sales would skyrocket once they re-released the formula in the form of Coca-Cola Classic, this would be one of the most successful Xanatos Gambits of all time. Considering all the other dumb ideas corporate executives have, it wouldn't be the one bit surprising if it were true; eventually a dumb idea has to pay off, right?
- When questioned about that very possibility, an executive cryptically replied 'We're not that smart and we're not that stupid.'
- It's not cryptic. Coke based its decision on one of the most heavily researched marketing investigations they could imagine, and everything came back saying that people preferred New Coke. As it happens, it became an object lesson that market research can't always get it right no matter how certain it seems. Coke did what pretty much everybody would have done in its place. Then, when they realized their mistake, did an about-face and restored the product. In fact, in many ways, it's the pinnacle of a good management team: smart enough to make the rational choice based on evidence and smart enough to change that when the evidence changes.
- Dave Barry lampooned this in one of his books with a "test your business IQ" question that went something like "You are the world's largest manufacturer of soft drinks. You are using a tested and proven formula that has remained the same for nearly a century. Your product's name is virtually synonymous with 'soft drink' in many areas. You should:" Of the choices, one of them was "Immediately change your formula" (another, aimed at a more or less contemporaneous Pepsi PR disaster, was something like "Set a celebrity on fire").
- New Coke's failure may have been averted had Coca-Cola made the decision to keep Coke-Classic and New Coke on the market at the same time, thus avoiding the backlash of Classic Coke drinkers and keeping fans of New Coke happy.
- Actually they did keep New Coke around after the reintroduction of Classic, it became Coke 2 and stayed around for awhile before fizzling out.
- CBC (the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) has one of these every five years or so, always as a result of network/government bigwigs trying to draw in new audiences by making it more "relevant". This naturally turns-off long term fans (who watched CBC precisely because it doesn't typically trade in Lowest Common Denominator fare), while "mainstream" audiences get their entertainment elsewhere.
- Of course, one of those examples most frequently cited is The Hour, which not only is a high-quality show, but usually outdraws the major U.S. late night shows... combined.
- In the early 1990s, Misaimed Marketing reared its ugly head in Las Vegas and the infamous attempt to expand its appeal to tourists by rebranding the city as a destination for family vacations resulted. Every Strip hotel built over 1990-93 had at least one theme park-esque attraction — the new MGM Grand had an actual theme park — and theme. Adult tourists who preferred to gamble and party without dodging kids were upset; hotel-casino staffs couldn't handle the unique needs of families; cases of parents rushing off to the gaming tables and leaving their kids to fend for themselves made the news (one abandoned child ended up kidnapped and murdered); and the theme park turned out to be a bomb. This age firmly ended with the debut of the very adult, classy Bellagio in 1998; while the hotels that opened to serve families are still around, they have had their interiors progressively dethemed in recent years and their entertainment mix mostly excludes families.
- Disneyland had one in the mid-90s through 2003 when it was run by Paul Pressler. He thought people came to the parks for shopping and dining, cut off a lot of the upkeep budget, closed down classic yet expensive to maintain rides (like the Submarines, Skyway and Motorboats), an ugly, rusty and brownish redo of Tomorrowland and the poor replacement of the Main Street Electrical Parade with Light Magic. This was also the era in which California Adventure opened... fortunately, after the merger of Pixar and Disney — and the appointment of Pixar creative head John Lasseter as Principal Creative Advisor of theme parks — things appear to be turning around. California Adventure may even be Rescued from the Scrappy Heap!
- Jack in the Box (the restaurant) had one between 1980 and 1994. Read more about it on Wikipedia. In short, what happened was originally Jack in the Box had a typical West Coast hamburger stand feel to it: you talked into the clown's mouth to order, and advertising featured an early version of Jack as well as several other characters. But in 1980, the chain ran a series of commercials where Jack was destroyed. New marketing was toward the "affluent yuppies". The menu expanded at an alarming rate of two new items a year. They even tried to rename the restaurant to "Monterey Jack's". After the e. Coli disaster of the early 1990s, the company managed to get back in place and relaunch Jack in 1994. It's been successful since.
- Remember all those great cars Detroit came out with in The Seventies? No?
- Food preservation technologies developed during WWII spawned a wave of food production emphasizing price and speed over quality. In America this nearly destroyed drip coffee's reputation and spurred the organic and slow food movements. Entire websites like Lileks Gallery of Regrettable Food show some of the awful recipes to come out of this era.
- Many believe this is happening with newspapers. It doesn't help that many of them go through a version of the process described by Dave Barry above - they change their format to attract younger readers. The people who already read the papers don't like the new version, and the people the papers are trying to attract don't notice because they don't read papers.
- You've probably seen an old picture of yourself and thought "Oh my God, I can't believe I thought that looked good."
- Many people during their teenage years experiment radically with different lifestyle choices, only to feel regret for them later in life.
- Orion Media's rebranding of radio stations. What an Idiot doesn't even describe this. Heritage branding is important.
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