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Subjective Trope
Flanderization
The act of taking a single (often minor) aspect of a character and exaggerating it more and more until it's huge and cartoonish and almost entirely consumes the character. Sitcom characters are particularly susceptible to this, as are peripheral characters in shows with long runs.

This can become very annoying if the character's aspects were originally unique and subtle, only to become more stereotypical as the story progresses, to fit the requirements of more cliche plots. Especially dangerous if executives think doing this will appeal with their demographic better and boost ratings.

However, flanderization is not necessarily a bad thing. In some cases, viewers may find the over the top version of a character more entertaining than their original, subtler version.

Named for one of the examples in The Simpsons, Ned Flanders, who was originally just a clean and quiet-living, somewhat religious fellow (contrast to Homer), before becoming the meek super-religious guy most people know him as.

See also Jean Grey Escalation for when the writing gets broken up over time, and Fat Monica, when realistic quirks (usually weight) are mishandled by the writers. When this happens through adaptation, it's Character Exaggeration.

Contrast Hidden Depths.
Examples:

Live Action TV
  • Saved by the Bell: Screech's stupidity (originally a quirky genius, his growing stupidity was epitomized when he became an assistant principal in Saved by the Bell: The New Class)
  • Friends: Monica Geller's obsessiveness and competitiveness and her attachment to food in Fat Monica flashbacks, Joey's stupidity (he started out just shallow), Chandler's effeminacy and wit, and Phoebe's quirkiness.
  • Married With Children: Kelly Bundy's stupidity, along with Bud's geekiness. The latter ended up being a blessing in disguise when it led to actual intelligence, making him one of the few successful Bundys.
    • This arguably applies to all the characters in general, as their exaggerated, cartoony personalities are generally seen by many of the show's fans as more entertaining than their subtler, more down-to-earth versions.
  • Cliff Clavin's eccentricity on Cheers.
  • Stuart Bondek's sleaziness on Spin City.
  • Karen's shrillness and addictions, and Jack's shrillness and idiocy on Will And Grace.
  • Chloe from Smallville went from someone who was okay with computers to being able to trace a bug's point of origin, discover anything about anyone, and she even had a shot at decoding a Kryptonian virus on her PC... when all the power on Earth had been shut off. Basically she filled in any plot holes where the writers couldn't think of a way to get Clark to the place he needed to be, but she was far from the only person to be Flanderised.
    • Arguably this might be considered a more realistic example of the trope in action; people do, after all, get better at skills they use a lot in real life, and have been known to get a lot better very quickly if under sufficient pressure. (It must be granted that we never see Chloe taking night courses or putting in the long hours of basement practice real-world computer whizzes need, but then this troper doesn't recall ever having a scene with Oliver Queen at the archery practice range either.)
  • Corporal Walter "Radar" O'Reilly in M*A*S*H grew more and more infantile as the series progressed (while, ironically, actor Gary Burghoff's hair grew thinner and thinner). In the early seasons Radar, while certainly young and inexperienced, wasn't a total innocent; he drank, played poker with the guys, helped himself to Colonel Blake's cigars, and was clearly a sly and knowing individual. In later seasons he became so childlike that he drank nothing but grape soda and couldn't say words like "nudity" without stammering. Additionally, his literal telepathy -- demonstrated in more than one early episode -- eventually degraded to simply an ability to detect incoming helicopters before anyone else, a feat which Hawkeye was able to duplicate during his Temporary Blindness.
  • Missy on Neds Declassified School Survival Guide was originally just The Libby who happened to have a crush on the protagonist, which escalated into a persistent Stalker With A Crush, which escalated into a dangerously obsessive Clingy Jealous Girl.
  • Ann Veal, a recurring character first appearing in the first season finale of Arrested Development, was Flanderized in record time: in "Afternoon Delight", six episodes after her first appearance, her family was shown having a religious Christmas party (with three hours of silent prayer). The very next episode, "Switch Hitter", was the final appearance she would make without a subplot involving religion.
  • Who remembers when J.D. on Scrubs was just a little emotionally needy due to him wanting a father figure to replace his own dysfunctional family? Fast forward to season five where J.D. is a appletini (light on the tini)-swilling "feely" who can't hold on to his "man cards" (which would be taken away from him if he did something girly) for a full day, and it only got worse from there on.
    • Other characters don't have it much better. A recent episode exaggerated Carla's pride in her heritage to the point that she's scared if she doesn't dream in Spanish (rather than the content of the dream, which would be more worrying to anyone else).
    • J.D.'s preference for appletinis was a running gag starting in the second season, not the fifth. The third season is where he really started to get overtly "feminine" (JD: "I am having such a gay day..." Carla: "Day?"). Elliot is another prime example - she started off as nerdy, lovable character with some confidence issues, but quickly became a stew of neuroses.
  • Stargate SG-1: Colonel O'Neill starts out as the kind of guy who is definitely not unintelligent, but isn't interested in the technobabble of how some Applied Phlebotinum works so long as it does, or the details of some Human Alien culture so long as Daniel can speak their dialect of Ancient Egyptian. In season two, he becomes The Rick... but the things being explained to him for the audience's benefit stop being so complicated as time goes on (possibly as a result of Viewers Are Morons at work) so he starts to look a little dull. By season three, he has devolved into having all the knowledge and maturity of a mentally challenged four-year-old, becoming nothing but a joke character for years. He got his brain back slowly, achieving a full recovery much later... just in time to be Put On A Bus. You never know which version of him you're going to get in guest appearances.
    • It may just be this troper's rosy view of nostalgia, but Jack was hardly a joke character. 'This is a weapon of terror. It is made for terrorizing the enemy. THIS is a weapon of war. It is made for killing the enemy.'
    • SG-1's also got the Villain Decay of the Goa'uld: their factionalized status with Ra having bitten the dust in The Movie starts out as simply the writers' way of keeping the full might of The Empire from descending upon poor little Earth before we've got enough Imported Alien Phlebotinum to cope. However, from the fifth season onward (after the second-biggest Goa'uld, Apophis, was Killed Off For Real), Goa'uld politics becomes the point of all their appearances, and instances of a Goa'uld and/or his minions being a direct, showing-up-in-today's-Adventure Town-to-do-bad-stuff threat become vanishingly rare.
  • My Name Is Earl's Randy Hickey has gone from "simple-minded but occasionally quite deep" to "repeatedly attempting to stick extremities into a bug zapper".
  • Odd reality-TV example: Parthenon on the second season of Who Wants To Be A Superhero began as Straight Gay. By the time he left the show he had turned into a foremost example of Camp Gay.
  • Lester from Beakmans World was originally a down-on-his-luck actor forced to don a rat suit and be the guinea pig for most of the experiments. By the end, he was a big eating obnoxious farting Jerkass who gets everything ridiculously wrong.
  • Fonzie on Happy Days gradually evolves from a mysterious and vaguely threatening hood with a skill for mechanics to an almost superhuman paragon of coolness who can do literally anything...even jump over a shark!
  • Jack Bauer on 24 is an interesting case. In season one he was a somewhat cocky, "normal" federal agent with some elements of Cowboy Cop and a few badass scenes (the "towel torture threat" being the most famous). Then his wife is killed in the season one finale. In season two Jack, is reasonably hardened and antisocial and his badass quotient goes up. Character Development gets him into a better place, but he doesn't stop being badass. In the first season his badassery was more subtle, but in the later seasons he becomes Badass Incarnate, with writers trying to top each badass feat with the next badass one. It's almost gotten to the point where the show is less about intriguing thriller and more about "What Badass thing can Jack do next?" The reason it's interesting is because, unlike the other Flanderization examples, you won't find many complaints about this one.
  • In Life On Mars, DC Chris Skelton goes from being a well-meaning if slightly naive officer in the first series to a complete and utter twonk that leaves you wondering how he ever made detective in the second.
  • The title character from Leave It To Beaver went from an innocent, naive kid in earlier seasons to a borderline idiot toward the end of the show's run. Possible side effect of Not Being Allowed To Grow Up.
  • In Supernatural, Dean went from flirt-happy to being so slutty that he couldn't believe anyone would remain a virgin by choice.
  • David Platt on Coronation Street went from cheeky schoolboy to teenage tearaway to deranged, violent criminal who attempted to kill his mother, smashed up half the titular Street and is now serving time in prison.
  • Chelsea on Thats So Raven went from a an occasional (but still likable) ditz to a Ralph Wiggum who irritates even her best friends.
  • Boy Meets World's Eric Matthews went from a merely shallow, girl-crazy airhead to an Adult Child.

Western Animation
  • The Simpsons has this almost across the board, starting with Homer Simpson's stupidity, but his callousness even more so (though the latter was toned down later on). Just about all of the characters have begun to showed some signs of this, probably because the show's long run means that the subtler character jokes have been used up by now (and/or the show's sense of humor changes Depending On The Writer). Even worse than Homer is Moe, whose mild self-loathing has grown into outright suicide attempts.
    • And, of course, Ned Flanders.
    • And who can forget Smithers? He merely started out as an employee who had too much admiration for his boss. Now he's out-and-out gay.
    • One could say something similar happened to Lenny and Carl. Originally, they were Homer's best friends, and considered each other the same. Nowadays, they're still Homer's best friends, but between each other, that's another story.
      • Actually, it's been revealed that they're half-brothers.
    • Ralph Wiggum is probably a character that benefitted from this: he was originally just another generic classmate of Lisa's before becoming the unbelievably dense collection of non-sequiturs we all know and name tropes after.
  • Various characters of Family Guy; the most prominent being Lois, who went from a meek, caring housewife who appreciated a healthy sexual relationship in her marriage to #2 on Maxim magazine's list of TV's Best Nymphos, although this could explain why she can stand Peter...
  • While the jokes at the beginning of the series focused on his machismo and subsequent inability to attract women, Johnny's stupidity and immaturity were greatly exaggerated in seasons two and three of Johnny Bravo.
  • Numbuh Three (Kuki Sanban) and her obsession with Rainbow Monkey dolls in Codename Kids Next Door.
    • Numbah Four's (Wallaby Beatles) is a bit more noticeable. Originally a tough guy with a tendency for violence but was skilled in combat to compensate, he however quickly degenerated into a whiny dullard and has even begun to lose his combat prowess, thus making him, essentially, a needless character.
  • In The Fairly OddParents, much to the chagrin of longtime fans, Timmy's callousness and Jerkass tendencies, Cosmo's stupidity, and Wanda's nagginess have all been outlandishly flanderized for the sake of redundant gags, and that's just the main characters. Vicki the babysitter went from manipulative and bossy to a sadistic sociopath who lives to not only order around kids, but make them suffer.
  • On Ed Edd N Eddy, Ed went from a somewhat dim oaf to a non-sequitur-spouting Ralph Wiggum, Edd went from a somewhat obsessively organized boy who was the voice of reason protesting Eddy's crazier schemes to a borderline hypochondriac goody-two-shoes, and Eddy lost most of the "loveable" part of his Loveable Rogue personality and became more violent, manic, and surly. Again, that just covers the main characters.
  • In the Pilot movie for Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends, Bloo was only slightly mischievous. As the series has progressed, some fans have complained that Bloo has become progressively more anarchic, selfish, and obnoxious, reaching Jerkass levels in recent seasons.
  • Grimlock from Transformers went from being a canny, if brutish, brawler in the first two seasons to being a mentally challenged but powerful child for The Movie and season 3.
  • In Transformers: Beast Wars, Silverbolt began as an idealistic, over-the-top Paladin-type who followed chivalry and loyalty to often comedic extremes. His relationship with Blackarachnia nearly took over his character by the third season, though it was written with some level of competency. More egregious is Blackarachnia's overnight transformation from Dark Action Girl who, oh, had a boyfriend into a romantic who would stop at nothing, including disloyalty and downright foolishness to get her lover back in Beast Machines.
  • The Shredder from the original animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was always somewhat inept, but his incompetence was exaggerated to almost Cobra Commander proportions before the character was eventually phased out. Basically transformed into an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain without ever really garnering much sympathy from the audience.
  • In The Land Before Time, Petrie was cowardly and could be a bit of a jerk from time to time. As the series progressed however, his cowardice has been increased to the point of full blown superstition. In the TV series he refuses to fly over a volcano based on the theory that it would make said volcano angry and cause it to errupt. For the most part this is for comedic effect.
  • Spongebob Squarepants happened to put a lot of characters through this right as they changed all the voice actors and switched from "wacky humor" to "gross humor".
  • Saranoia in Yin Yang Yo. Initially, she loathed Yang and men and loved Yin because she was The Unfavorite compared to her brother Mark, and incorrectly projected that situation onto the siblings, even calling Yang "Mark". Over the course of the series... this backstory started to fade and her already over-the-top idolization of Yin and hatred of Yang was flanderized to the point that she started to come across more like a creepy pedophiliac lesbian Stalker With A Crush, peaking in the Made For TV Movie, where she posed as a popular girl to become "Sweat Sisters" with Yin -- everyone in the show even commented on how creepy that was. Since the movie, though, she's essentially reverted to her original characterization, in an unusual reversal of a Flanderization.
    • Actually that never was a movie but just another half of an episode.
  • Panini from Chowder -- yeah, you wouldn't think it judging from the short run, but... compare her actions towards Chowder in "Chowder's Girlfriend", where she was just simply clingy and overeager about her love, to "Shnitzel Quits", where she practically goes insane badgering Shnitzel for everything and anything Chowder-related under the sun. It's a little terrifying, to say the least.
  • In the Back To The Future trilogy, Marty McFly was a Book Dumb teen who was occasionally confused by the complexities of Time Travel, but could nonetheless be clever and resourceful. In Back To The Future The Animated Series, he became The Ditz with his whole personality more-or-less centering around his Berserk Button ("Nobody calls me chicken!"), even though he apparently overcame that in Back To The Future Part III.

Anime/Manga
  • Kaorin's crush on Sakaki in Azumanga Daioh, though the series is arguably too short and Kaorin's crush simply less-discussed in the early stages for it to be a classic case.
  • Yuuna's jealousy in Maburaho got Flanderized to the point that, though she was originally very bland, she actually became an entertaining character.
  • Exactly how explicit Setsuna and Konoka's relationship is in Mahou Sensei Negima adaptations seems to be a product of available screentime and fan expectation (i.e., the early manga merely suggested it over the course of chapters, while the short 'brain-candy' OVAs make Setsuna's attraction explicitly sexual). The current manga canon has at this point taken a moderate view somewhere between.
  • Shuichi's hyperness and Tohma's obsession with Eiri (which starts out as merely protective and gets creepier over time) in the Gravitation manga. The anime has more stable characterizations, though skipping over most of the character development in the later volumes.
  • Pretty much everyone in Tenchi Muyo, especially Aeka and Mihoshi. It Got Worse with each new series.
  • Takamura's not-so-sudden (de-)evolution from a skilled and respectable boxer into a Jerkass in Hajime No Ippo. He's always been portrayed as a Jerkass outside of the ring, but there's a limit...
  • Makoto in School Days transforms from a merely sex-curious teenager into an uncaring, womanizing bastard. Furthermore, the two main female love interests get reduced to only being known for their obsession with Makoto.
  • Kawachi from Yakitate!! Japan. He started out as a talented baker with "real person" problems and a tendency to need to have the hero's eccentricities explained to him (and thus the reader). Over the course of the volumes this degenerated into him becoming a total Butt Monkey, suffering any indignation or humiliation that the other characters were apparently too cool to have happen to them, and a tendency to shout disbelief at any tiny thing, causing others to mock and ridicule him. It finally culminated in even his beloved mother and younger siblings being dismissive of his abilities, and as the series went on he became the equivalent of Krillin hanging out with Goku and Vegeta... only without the abiding affection and/or small amount of respect those two gave Krillin, as Kawachi's "friends" took to using him to literally waste the opposing team's time.
  • Parodied in Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, where the entire cast comes pre-Flanderized. In fact, were any of them to develop any depth at all it would likely ruin much of the show. Still, they manage to Flanderize Kitsu even more, by changing her from a neurotic neat freak to a knife-wielding psychotic.
  • Minako from the Sailor Moon anime went from being a somewhat bubbly but otherwise more mature version of Usagi to being a hyperactive Genki Girl with a loose (at best) grasp on reality. Likely this was done to make her more distinct from Usagi, but it's hard to take her seriously when all the characters looked up to her and her maturity in the beginning when by Super S she's actively trying to have two dates at once (ironically, both with villains). The effect was the opposite, and Minako became even more like Usagi. By the last season of the anime, they would sometimes even deliver the same overly emotional outbursts in perfect sync, verbally and physically. Minako was basically Flanderized into Usagi II.
  • Ranma One Half: Nabiki went from a largely normal girl that once sold some pictures of girl-Ranma to a full-blown CMOT Dibbler. Kasumi went from a normal Yamato Nadeshiko to an unphasable near-parody. Considering how comparitively dull they were before, it could be considered an improvement.
    • Both the Anime and Fan Fic have taken Akane's short-fuse temper and tendency to smack Ranma for perceived slights, and turned them into a defining character trait. The Fan Fic community in particular has interpreted it as actual psychosis.
  • Kan'u from Ikki Tousen is originally one of the slightly more interesting characters, which gets fueled by her passion for Ryuubi, whom she has vowed to protect. In the third anime season her feelings for Ryuubi transform into a full-blown lesbian crush, which eclipses other traits of her personality, so she comes dangerously close to psycho lesbian territory.

Video Games
  • Originally, Mario and Luigi from Super Mario Bros were simply of Italian descent (originally from Brooklyn, as portrayed on the animated series and The Movie). Then when the Nintendo 64 came out, they became fully Italian, complete with stereotypical Italian-a accent-a.
  • Many secondary characters in Sonic the Hedgehog suffer horribly from this trope: Amy Rose started out with a perfectly normal crush on the titular character, only to quickly turn into a psycho stalker with a Piko-Piko hammer; Tails started out with a small affinity for mechanics before becoming the good version of Dr. Eggman (and, for some reason, becoming younger with each game, as part of his place as one of the younger Sonic characters); Knuckles' devotion to the Master Emerald and minor naivete when distinguishing between friend and foe eventually mutated into obsessive gullibility, etc.
    • Even Sonic's not immune to this, his 'tude starting out small before inflating into a superego (perhaps because this aspect of his personality was what differentiated him the most from Nintendo's mascot, the blander Mario).
    • Curiously, starting in Sonic Adventure, Robotnik's tendency for his plans going out of control and teaming up with Sonic to stop it has evolved into such a cliche, he's almost never taken as anything more than comic relief anymore, no matter how much the poor developers try. You know that you're a failure as a villain when one game introduces your Evil Twin.
  • The same goes double for the once ingenious and menacing Dr. Wily of the Mega Man franchise, who returned with the exact same plan for world domination (eight robots who were weak to each others' weapons, thematically appropriate stages, fortress, fight) about five times too many.
  • Johnny Cage from Mortal Kombat became so diluted he became a parody of what he strove not to be. In the beginning he was more serious (but no less arrogant) and a very competent fighter, but devolved into a silly comic relief character as the series went on.
  • In Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney, Larry Butz went from a loser with terrible luck in love into a lecherous, shallow pervert who thinks nothing of hitting on a nine-year-old girl. He also slid from a 'best friend' who often annoyed Phoenix, into someone Phoenix 'wouldn't call a close friend'.
  • Lara Croft started as a modest, down to earth woman in Tomb Raider. In Tomb Raider 2 she became more witty and slightly more threatening and bloodthirsty. Later on she was heavily Flanderized into a Hollywood-style tough girl for Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, and by Angel of Darkness this had become exaggerated to the point that she had reached Jerkass level.
    • Interestingly, this was taken from one extreme to another in the next game in the series, Tomb Raider: Legend, in which Lara became a slave to her emotions, which may be considered an improvement, because at least she now had more depth than a teaspoon.
    • Lara's emotions got even more influential to her actions in Tomb Raider: Anniversary in which Lara takes just one human life, after which follows a lengthy emotional moment in which she practically turns into Lady Mac Beth and constantly looks at her hands for the rest of the game.
  • Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII was an extremely menacing Big Bad - a phantom, unstoppable killing machine cutting a swathe of death across the world, always one step ahead of the heroes, and all while effortlessly manipulating Cloud into a Tomato In The Mirror from within his own mind; all so he can simply mind control him into giving him the Artifact Of Doom right after putting six feet of steel through his girlfriend's back. With a smirk. What a bastard! Unfortunately, the fanbase can't quite see past the Impossibly Badass White Haired Pretty Boy factor, and in subsequent appearances this has been Flanderized to the point that all he seems to do is appear out of nowhere with his theme song blaring to deliver a Hannibal Lecture and kick the hero's ass for a while before he gets owned. Again.
    • To be fair, he got a considerable amount of Character Development in Crisis Core, since his Start Of Darkness is a major subplot...however, this is a Prequel, so it technically doesn't count, and the focus is still on how much of a h4rdc0re fighter he is.
  • Axel Almer in Super Robot Wars Original Generation suffered from this in the GBA incarnation of OG 2. He is turned from a loyal, cold subordinate of the Shadow Mirrors with some slight dislike for Artificial Humans, into an overly headstrong man who is obsessed on beating his rival Beowulf (and that even surpasses his loyalty to Shadow Mirror, he even has to struggle about following superior orders if his rival is in front of his eyes), and being thoroughly disgusted when one of the dolls risks her life to save his own. In the remake, the writers and producers fixed Axel's personality for better, resulting in a more refined, respectable villain who later performs a Heel Face Turn.
    • Considering almost all of his dialogue is word for word from the game he originated, complete with his hatred of cyborgs/androids and his hatred of Beowulf (though only limited to a couple of lines, as Kyosuke Nanbu wasn't around to take it out on). His so-called 'good guy' persona if he's the protagonist is just as cruel and jerkish to Lamia Loveless.
      • That one was justified because if not picked as a protagonist, Lamia never learn about her own conscience, about what is good and what is bad, about what she truly wanted outside obeying orders, since she never interacted with the Londo Bell (which is VERY responsible of any of the protagonist's change in mind) which pretty much becomes as Axel thought: 'A lifeless, order-obeying doll'. If Lamia did develop into the protagonist self, and meets protagonist Axel, he'd probably have a better opinion on her. And in OG 2 GBA... he actually insulted Lamia more times than in Advance (as the rival version, of course).

Film
  • Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates Of The Caribbean. For the first movie he was written to be a cliche serious and tough bad-ass pirate dude, but Johnny Depp took that dialog and played it in a very comic way. The second movie took this to the extreme, going so far as to feature a scene where Jack becomes a pirate/fruit kabob with a posed reaction shot.
    • The third film manages to go further, flanderising Jack's loopy Obfuscating Stupidity to the point that he even seems to be working it on himself... literally, in the scenes in Davy Jones' locker. This troper liked it better when we weren't sure if Jack was mad or just playing it up...
    • He had better be mad, or else none of this would work. ... This troper wasn't aware that when Jack was alone in a white sanded Hades that it was a question of whether he was playing it up for anyone. Nor was there rum, so we couldn't blame that. Perhaps it isn't obfuscating. He's just weird.
  • James Bond, in the novels, was just simply a jaded undercover operative who had some basic idea of high society manners and luck with women. Right from the start of the film series, those two aspects were blown out of proportion, with only some minor bits of the less desirable traits showing through. The series has since had a back and forth over the "realistic" Bond (the closest to a completely straight portrayal of Fleming's original Bond is the recent Casino Royale) and the Bond that is about as likely to fail at stopping the villain's plot as he is to spill his martini.
  • Happened to Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther series. His French accent was originally straightforward, though A Shot in the Dark introduced odd accent-based pronunciation quirks ("beump" for bump, for example). When he revived the character in the mid-1970s, the accent was significantly thicker and the mispronounciations were more frequent ("minkey", "rheum", "leu"), etc. Other Shot in the Dark elements also became Running Gags: he donned more bizarre disguises with each film, and Kato's attacks grew increasingly destructive, as did the slapstick in general for the whole run of films. However, this went over like gangbusters with audiences and it didn't violate Clouseau's basic character, making it one of the less destructive examples of Flanderization on this list.

Literature
  • In Discworld novels the characterisation of Rincewind shifted from sensible fear of the unknown to fully fledged cowardice, and finally to having an entire philosophy based on the principle of running away from things. However, this is arguably Character Development since it's suggested Rincewind, who is somewhat Genre Savvy, really is correct about an inordinate number of things wanting to cause him trouble and harm.
  • While the Sherlock Holmes novels themselves do not do this, almost every adaptation of the source material has taken Watson from simply being Holmes' chronicler who is not nearly as brilliant as his mentor but still an intelligent man and a respected physician, to a blithering idiot played up for comic relief.
    • Oddly enough, the stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle are a rare subversion of this trope. In the earliest stories written by Dr. Doyle, the police inspectors of Scotland Yard are depicted as blundering fools who couldn't catch a cold, much less a criminal. Later stories, however, depict the police, particularly Inspector Lestrade, as being not so much stupid as simply lacking Holmes' Hyper Awareness, often gathering important facts for Holmes' use or otherwise helping in their own ways.

Comic Books
  • Power Girl of The DCU has grown (literally) from a standard example of the Most Common Super Power to the poster girl for the trope.
    • Actually, most mainstays of the Giffen-era Justice League International suffered heavy Flanderization; that was sort of the whole point of the books.
  • In a strange case of graphical Flanderization, Kingdok from Bone gets more monstrous each issue (compare his first appearance in ''The Great Cow Race''◊ with his look in ''The Eyes of the Storm''◊).
    • Not precisely Flanderization, but funny. In Bone, the Great Red Dragon has a distinctly pointy, somewhat equine face. In "Rose," a Bone spinoff written by Jeff Smith and drawn by someone else entirely, the Great Red Dragon's chin gets longer with each appearance until he looks not unlike Bruce Campbell in Army of Darkness after being sucked into one of the false Necronomicons.
  • Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four started off as a somewhat-conceited daredevil hero of the team. In the past five or ten years, though, he's become increasingly more stupid and narcissistic, to the point where he now appears to be an ditzy, Ambiguously Gay metrosexual completely in love with himself.
    • His sister Sue, however, went the other way; starting off as just another weak Damsel In Distress, she gradually evolved into a confident, capable Action Mom who is widely recognised as the most powerful member of the team.
  • Northstar of Marvel's Alpha Flight (later the X-Men) started off as an arrogant former athlete with an interest in politics and a devotion to his mentally ill sister. While John Byrne wasn't allowed to write Northstar as explicitly gay, he managed to work in a few hints. When Marvel finally got the bright idea to "out" Northstar... well, suddenly, it seemed like all that mature characterization vanished, and suddenly he was gay. Gay, gay, gay. So gay. Did he tell you how gay he is? Mind you, being handled by Chuck Austen probably didn't help matters...
  • Bruce Wayne was originally depicted as merely Comfortably Well-Off. Now, he's one of the two richest men in The DCU. Of course, that's hardly the only example of Bat-Flanderiziation.
    • Similarly, Poison Ivy went from the typical gimmicky plant-themed villain to having full-blown control over wildlife and an unkillable immune system...
  • Wolverine is a case study. During the '80s considerable Character Development evolved the character from a one-note Jerk Ass prone to Unstoppable Rage to a wise, intelligent, multitalented, and skilled warrior/mentor (with just enough issues to avoid Canon Sue status). Then he got popular and the lowest common denominator of Captain Fuzzity McStabStab won out with all the guest-shots even as they ramped his Healing Factor to Beyond The Impossible levels, making him pretty much the definition of a Marty Stu. And he's still the most pòpular character of the whole franchise.

Webcomics
  • Hannelore from Questionable Content, shortly after her first appearance, mentioned that she had severe OCD. Over time, this appeared to become worse to the point that the circumstances of her first appearance -- loitering in a public restroom, nonchalantly talking to a man peeing in the sink - become inconceivable.
    • This was finally dealt with in Comic 1046, where Hannelore reveals she's always suffered from the same level of OCD - it just varies by the drugs she takes.
  • Fighter from 8-Bit Theater was just a bit dim and gullible in the first few pages of the comic, but quickly got stupider and stupider as the comic progressed. It probably didn't help that Black Mage kept stabbing him in the head. He currently hovers somewhere between Cloudcuckoolander and Ralph Wiggum.
  • Ethan in Ctrl-Alt-Del began as The Ditz, but moved on to the Ralph Wiggum. More recently, he has surpassed this, and some fans are starting to suspect he is in fact clinically insane.
  • Szark Sturtz from Dominic Deegan was originally a master swordsman and a sadist. Following his Heel Face Turn and admittance to having a crush on the title character, he eventually became "Szark (who is gay)", according to one forum that follows the comic.

Web Animation

Machinima
  • Caboose from Red Vs Blue, who started as a mild case of The Fool, quickly switched to The Ditz after a tank, with a female voiced AI whom he had crush on, blew up. In the commentary, the creators acknowlege this, and stated it was due to the positive feedback they got about Caboose's dumber moments. He was then transformed into a full blown Ralph Wiggum after the ghosts of Church and Tex invaded his mind and forced O'Malley out.
    • And then there's Donut, who came in a Naive Newcomer, then spent a while arguing that his armor was "lightish red" before apparently embracing the pink, and finally becoming a Stereotype Gay. All the while suffering brain drain opposite Caboose, though not to such a high degree.
    • Well, Caboose "figured out" that Church was a gay robot in season one. He found his niche fast.
    • There's also Grif's laziness, Simmons' brown nosing, Sarge's violent tendencies (especially towards Grif), Tucker's perversion, and Church's snarkiness. Maybe there is something in the water ketchup.
    • Interestingly, Tex seemed to suffered reverse flanderization, since she was introduced into the series as a bloodthirsty mercenary that only cared for herself. As the series progressed she evolved into the closest thing the series has to The Hero.
      • I'd disagree on the Tex issue. A bit. She does develop, but Church is the one who really wants to stop O'Malley and is willing to give up things that are important to him. Tex cares more about "The War" than Church, sure, but church moves farest. Jerkass to guy who gives a rat's butt about Caboose's death. I'd say he's a little closer to a hero than Tex. Also, he gets more screen time.

Newspaper Comics
  • Arguably, this has been the fate of the entire premise of Dilbert, once its focus shifted from all aspects of Dilbert's life, to entirely office humor. Some former members of the cast, such as Bob the Dinosaur and Phil, the Prince of insufficient light, really don't seem to fit in any longer.
  • Similarly, For Better Or For Worse. Previously, a nice little Slice Of Life comic with real issues and family happenings. Now has pretty much degenerated into pure Writer On Board Author Appeal about the writer's morals, especially that you should go as little distance from home as possible and settle down to a nice, dull existence with the very first person of the opposite sex you ever noticed.
  • Funky Winkerbean started off as a straight-up gag strip about high school life. After a retooling and a time skip, it started to mix dramatic elements into the gag format. It's finally degenerated into being a miserable Crapsack World where nobody will ever be happy and humor almost never takes place.

Real Life
  • Oda Nobunaga and Yagyu Munenori are probably two of Japan's Warring States era figures that suffers this trope greatly. Almost every fictional works featuring them depict them as bastardly villains. The reasoning for Nobunaga was due to his brutality as a warlord, especially the burning of numerous Buddhist temples critical of him and the slaughter of its inhabitants. Naturally, it's somewhat understandable how this might overshadow his brilliance as both a tactician and a businessman, how he revolutionized how wealth was counted, encouraged trade with Europe and other Asian nations, allowed Christian missionaries into Japan, made social reforms, etc. Munenori suffers this due to the fact that he was a shrewd politician as well as a swordsman, and in fiction, political people are often evil, so depicting him as scheming and amoral has become standard. Even worse for Munenori is the fact that his son Jubei is one of the most romanticized samurai of all time and a hero to the people, (who was known to disdain politics and court functions) so many authors feel the need to use Munenori as an Evil Counterpart to Jubei. If a writer really wants to have Munenori Kick The Dog, then they cite the almost certainly untrue story that Jubei lost an eye during his life and make Munenori the culprit. (There are softer versions where it was an accident, a strike gone wild in a sparring session, but the most popular and 'dramatic' versions have Munenori doing it on purpose because he's either jealous of his son's potential or he wants to teach Jubei a lesson not to mess with him). Also, Munenori is often set up as an antagonist to another legendary and heroic swordsman that has no relationship with him: Miyamoto Musashi. Which he does entirely with underhanded tactics too. Munenori must have rolled over in his grave a few times at some of these depictions.
    • Not to mention that in Real Life, according to sourced quotes in The Other Wiki, Munenori cited stuffs that clearly defies evil. And yet, those who follows his Flanderization trend ignore them all for the sake of evilness, the very thing he defies in real life. Isnt It Sad, Munenori?
  • Similar to the Japanese examples above, the classic Chinese pseudo-historical novel The Romance Of Three Kingdoms Flanderizes many, many of its characters into over-the-top superheroes, while others are portrayed as moustache-twirling villains; for example, the 'three brothers' of the Shu kingdom (Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei) are the closest thing the story has to protagonists, and thus can do no wrong (with a couple of notable, even fatal, exceptions), while the Wei kingdom are Flanderized into the Bad Guys and the Wu kingdom are mostly inneffectual in the long term, despite possessing many excellent generals. Perhaps the most notable Flanderizing going on other than the Brothers' is as follows;
    • Lu Bu's combat prowess is exaggerated to the point of near invincibility, and entire armies flee from the sight of him. Seems to fade as the story goes on, though and his death is as anticlimactic as it comes; both Wei and Shu agree that the captured Bu is too treacherous to be allowed to live, and he's simply hanged while begging for his life. The wuss.
    • Zhuge Liang's tactical genius, to the point that he comes off as somewhere between a wizard and a saint, performs several acts that are only plausible if one considers him to have magical powers, and even manages to humiliate and terrify his Wei rival posthumously.
    • Cao Cao suffers the most from author Luo Guanzhong's pro-Shu-anti-Wei political viewpoint, descending rapidly from being an ambitious but shrewd and capable general to the aformentioned moustache-twirling, evil-cackling villainy once he rises to power. Notably, he performs a spectacular act of pooch-ravishing evil when he murders the entire family of his uncle by mistake, then upon encountering the uncle returning home from a hunt, Cao simply distracts him hilariously and kills him too. Historically, he was not only one of China's most successful Prime Ministers, but also a prolific writer, penning several treatises on military strategy, and highly-respected poet.
      • All of these characters are then Flanderized further in some of the many, many video games in which they appear - a Flanderization of a Flanderization. This probably reaches its peak in Kessen II, whose plot is almost completely fictitious, with Cao Cao kidnapping Diao Chan (here, Liu Bei's lover, not Lu Bu's) and an epic battle between Liu and Cao for the Mandate of Heaven. Not to mention the various strategists, who were only slightly mystical in the novel, being portrayed as flying Wuxia sorcerers capable of summoning meteors and fireballs to obliterate enemy troops.

Fandom
  • Mary Sue started out as a type of author avatar in fanfiction. Then it evolved into a certain archetype of fanfiction character. Then someone decided there were also canonical Mary Sues. The term has finally Flanderized into being used to describe pretty much any female character, canonical or fanfiction, that someone doesn't like.

TV Tropes Wiki
  • Even the term "Flanderization" itself seems to be undergoing the process, as tropers on this very wiki start to use it in broader and broader terms, until it now seems to apply to stuff that was intended as a parody/stereotype or exaggeration from the start.
    • Narm has gone through a similar process. It initially meant "means to be serious, ends up funny", but now it can mean "any scene that fails to invoke whatever the intended feeling was, even if it doesn't make it funny".
    • And the standards for "So Bad Its Horrible" have dropped considerably.
      • Indeed, it's been applied to stuff that is actually considered really enjoyable by a lot of people. This troper thinks they even saw someone call Ghostbusters 2 So Bad Its Horrible. Seriously, Ghostbusters 2? Apparently now it just means "I didn't love it, so it was So Bad Its Horrible."
    • Wangst too. If the characters are not well-adjusted happy people that have nothing wrong with their lives, they are Wangsty little girls.
    • Not just on this site, but was there ever a real definition of "emo"? Does it mean whiny? sad? angry? impassive? Those aren't the same things!
      • When created, the people that actually identified as emo apparently defined it as "being extremely in touch with one's emotions", thus emotional=emo. Since most of them were teenagers, most of those emotions weren't positive (IE, they came across as being sulky, whiny and depressed). Now it's a general-purpose insult, to the point that the very idea that it could be used in its original connotation, or even just used a bit tongue-in-cheek, is dismissed out-of-hand.
    • The Nightmare Fuel examples. Sure, most of it's acceptable, but there are things on there that toddlers can handle effortlessly.
    • Fat Monica originally meant any poorly written quirk. It seems to have metamorphosed into meaning exclusively 'overweight'.
    • Mis Blamed was originally just suppose to be about translation, but has been extended to many other thigns. This is probably a good thing though, as it's still cases of "Misplaced Blamed", and it's probably not worth splitting the article.
    • This list of Flanderized tropes may have become somewhat Flanderized, even. Not every change constitutes Flanderization.
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