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alt title(s): Flanderized; Flanderisation The act of taking a single (often minor) action of a character or event within a work and exaggerating it more and more until it's huge and cartoonish and almost entirely consumes the character or work in question. Sitcoms and 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), in other words, the archetypical example of the American family-man who went to Church on Sundays, before becoming the meek super-religious guy most people know him as.
See also Never Live It Down for when the character is more associated with something than the character actually changing, 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. For examples specifically involving comedic aspects developing within once-serious villainous characters, see Villain Decay and Goldfish Poop Gang. If it's more of a flanderization of lifestyle than personality, it may be Corrupt The Cutie. When this makes early behavior seem odd in retrospect, that is Characterization Marches On.
See also Took A Level In Dumbass, Trope Decay, Flanderized Tropes. Not to be confused with Stupid Sexy Flanders.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Azumanga Daioh has a veritable boatload of flanderization in the manga. The anime versions of the characters are the end result.
- Kaorin's crush on Sakaki, 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, but it's still plenty discussed enough to get a shade creepy.
- Osaka starts out as a somewhat slow-witted and eccentric, yet generally still well-adjusted girl, but becomes weirder and creepier as the episode count goes up. Most people agree this is an improvement.
- Mr. Kimura the Classical Japanese teacher, in the manga, started out as being regularly drawn, but his trademark shocked expression was used so much, that by the time the manga grew, and the anime was made, this became his default expression!
- Yuuna's jealousy in Maburaho got Flanderized to the point that, though she was originally very bland, she actually became an entertaining character.
- 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.
- Maybe to a small degree with Mikuru in Haruhi-chan, when comparing her appearance in the regular The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya. In the original plot arc, even though Mikuru is portrayed as a shy Moe Moe, she still ends up showing rather blatant interest in both Kyon AND Itsuki. She has sexual interests, just doesn't like getting Cosraped By Haruhi. But in the Haruhi-chan shorts? Mikuru now seems so terrified of anything sensual that she breaks down into tears when Kyon/Itsuki burst into the room dressed like Host Club guys.
- Debatable. Mikuru's personality really changes in accordance with the skit introduced. In one episode she was cosplaying in an attempt to outdo Nagato in sexuality.
- While on the subject of Haruhi vs. Haruhi-chan, Itsuki Koizumi has a case of this himself, turning from a handsome bishounen with some underplayed sexual tension with Kyon into a flaming homosexual in Haruhi-chan.
- Also the fact that the Haruhi-chan shorts are just gags, so the exaggeration is almost certainly intentional.
- 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.
- Minako from the Sailor Moon anime went from being a bubbly and cheerful but otherwise more mature version of Usagi to being a hyperactive Genki Girl with a loose (at best) grasp on reality and silly schemes. Likely this was done to make her more distinct from Usagi, but by the end of the series they seemed to be on the same development path, just in different directions.
- This was ironically the reverse of the original manga, where Minako started out incredibly ditzy and goofy in the Codename Sailor V manga. Since that manga took place before Sailor Moon and in fact had been running first, Minako was basically the proto-Usagi. The events of the last chapter of the Sailor V manga show her maturing drastically into the more balanced and responsible character she became for the Sailor Moon series.
- Interestingly, the live action version of the story emphasizes Minako's early (and subsequently lonely) career, portraying her with a heroic but distant personality. Character Derailment or not, it might have been done to avoid the traditional overlap.
- Ranma 1/2: Kasumi went from a normal Yamato Nadeshiko to an unfazeable near-parody. Considering how comparatively dull she was before, it could be considered an improvement.
- Similarly done to both Nabiki's love of money (elevated from merely opportunistic and mercenary to an easy rival for David Xanatos) and Shampoo's role as The Ditz.
- In Nabiki's case, she started out materialistic and shallow, but smart and sarcastic. Some would say, she was unique in that she was a normal person among all the loons. She'd amuse herself by selling risque, but inoffensive, pictures of her sister and Ranma to Kuno, and then abusing the latter's generosity. As the manga went on, she became so interested with self-gain she's now perfectly willing to physically sell her sister and Ranma themselves (or her family's property) to pay for her own debts, happily sells nude pictures of Ranma to the entire school (and, indeed, briefly mentions international sales,) dates guys for the explicit purpose of fleecing them for all they're worth (and blackmailing them when she becomes bored of them) and would rather hightail it than face Kasumi and apologize to her.
- Shampoo isn't played as the ditz, she's always crafty cheerful and barbaric, just kept more busy with her work, and Nabiki starts off very bad from the beginning. She simply turns better and more amusing about it.
- The first time Akane's cooking made the scene, it was merely bad, and she realized why immediately after tasting it (packing the vinegar instead of white wine in her supplies, an honest enough mistake.) She knew she had screwed up and was contrite over it, even if she was mad at Ranma for running away. For that matter, Ranma and Genma simply ran off after the first bite and berated each other for bringing her along, but neither of them insulted Akane over it. Later on, Ranma even forced himself to eat it to prove he liked it as much as Ryouga did. Fast forward a few chapters, and her cooking has become all but poisonous, she doesn't care what she throws into it, she refuses to taste it or to acknowledge that it tastes bad, and everyone else treats it like toxic waste (even to her face) and runs away at its mere mention. Then the fandom went overboard with the concept...
- Lady Of War Kan'u Unchou (Guan Yu) from Ikki Tousen is originally one of the more interesting characters, which gets fueled by her passion for her schoolmate and reincarnation of her leader in her past life, Ryuubi Gentoku (Liu Bei), whom she has vowed to protect. In the first episodes of the third anime season, her feelings for Ryuubi transform into a full-blown lesbian crush; while this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it does dangerously eclipse other traits of her personality, so she comes dangerously close to Psycho Lesbian territory.
- Thankfully, that full-blown crush immediately stops after the 4th episode. Afterwards, their relationship more or less went back to normal like the previous season.
- Pokemon, and how. By season seven several characters (I'm looking at you, Takeshi/Brock) are little more than walking collections of running gags.
- Team Rocket (Yes, that Team Rocket) certainly falls under this. They went from somewhat goofy, yet very competent and dangerous criminals to joke villains who are more pathetic than threatening.
- Their first appearance had wanted posters! Since then it has been a slippery slope of fail.
- A non-in anime flanderization may just be the fact that in the flashback "Training Daze" episode( mostly the Japanese version), they were very different.
- A surprising example from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. In an anime where all the girls are made out of stereotypes, Kitsu Chiri starts out as a girl obsessed with everything being perfectly divided and distributed. She seeks to set things straight, often by rather violent methods. However, somewhere in the "story", the focus on perfection dulls a bit while her violence is upped to such a degree that she is often shown as a sadistic murderer.
- Pani Poni Dash: Just about everyone ends up having one of their traits exaggerated to extremes; three obvious examples are Mesousa's uselessness, Himeko's super-high level of hyperactivity (maho), and Kurumi's plain-ness.
- Lina Inverse of The Slayers has suffered this severely, especially with regards to her greed. She started out as a bad-tempered Black Magician Girl who enjoyed going out and mercilessly destroying bandit camps for their treasure, but by the latest season (Slayers Revolution) has become something of an inhuman monster, going so far as to rescue a fishwoman, then immediately seek out a chef to sell her to him despite pleas not to! In the past, while Lina was definitely shown to be a mercenary, almost invariably refusing to help somebody unless they paid her for it, she never came across as so evil that she would sell a person whom she had just rescued.
- Jakken, Sesshomaru's henchman from InuYasha, started out as a sadistic and very competent evil sidekick who was an okay fighter and later on became a goofy weak klutz who often messed up his master's plans.
- Mahou Sensei Negima has Tsukuyomi. Her first appearance saw her treating Setsuna with a decent amount of respect, and she was more of Punch Clock Villain than anything else. Then a bunch of chapters later, she shows up again, in total Stalker With A Crush Psycho Lesbian mode with a psychotic obsession with Setsuna, essentially moving from a somewhat ditzy minor minion to the only character in the series who is obviously and undeniably evil. She's also creepy as hell.
- It can be hard to believe, but Sanji from One Piece wasn't always quite such a loser when it comes to romance and women. Early on, he was actually a Chick Magnet (20 at once one time, in fact), his attention to the main females more often seemed kind of sweet, and he didn't quite come off as a dorky pervert like he does now. However, Oda gradually turning him into a full blown Chivalrous Pervert (coupled with epic Butt Monkey tendencies) was actually a really positive change. In retrospect, there was a period of time where he seemed a little too perfect compared to other main characters, and was in need of a serious personality flaw in the same vein as Luffy's flakiness and stupidity, Zoro's lack of sense of direction, Usopp's cowardliness, and Nami's greed.
- Higurashi makes rather entertaining use of this. When the show takes a break from all the drama and horror, more comedic and lighthearted moments often make characters act in a hilariously different way from their usual selves. Keiichi, usually a positive, optimistic charismatic boy who cares about his friends, becomes either Keiichi the Overreacting Prank Magnet or Keiichi the Brainless Perv. Dutiful, level-headed Mion becomes Mion the Tomboyish Leader. Rena, who is affectionate and friendly if a little... dangerous, gets all obsessed with things she considers cute (and taking them home). Satoko becomes a hyena-like prankster and Rika is just cute and helpful.
Comic Books
- 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.
- More monstrous? He looks WAY scarier the first time we see him. His look became softer and kinder though at least the beast didn't character wise.
- 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 a 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-Flanderization:
- Poison Ivy went from a gimmicky plant-themed villain to having full-blown control over wildlife and an unkillable immune system after getting in touch with "The Green". This arguably made her character more interesting.
- Killer Croc was originally a somewhat intelligent gangster with a medical condition (a very severe medical condition), whose misanthropy was the result of being tormented by everyone (family included) for his freakish appearance. This was eventually downplayed, with Croc becoming more beastial and less intelligent as time went on (this was typically explained that his condition was worsening, further separating him from humanity). By the time of Hush, Croc could probably pass for a bulkier version of Marvel Comic's Lizard (explained away by Hush infecting him with a virus that further increased his mutation).
- 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 Canon Sue. And he's still the most popular character of the whole franchise. Because being Bad Ass is the only thing he seems to need.
- The "Enemy of the State" and "Wolverine: Origin" (Along with the following "Wolverine: Origins" book) stories elevated Wolverine's character to new heights, making him much more interesting again.
- Both Cable and Deadpool have gone through fluctuations of Flanderization. Both were originally very simple characters (Cable=Old soldier, Deadpool=Merc sent to kill the hero). Then they were both given overly complicated back stories (Why Liefeld, WHY?!). Then they devolved back to cliches. Then they became interesting again, and so on.
- Deadpool has both progressed and fallen at the same time in different books. While in his own series (Formerly shared with Cable. At the time it served a a "Team-Up" style book) he was becoming a hero, he was playing the ruthless morally ambiguous merc in "Wolverine: Origins." Of course, like everything else involving Deadpool, much of his Flanderization was for comedic effect.
- The Hulk's raw power has been exaggerated to the point that he might as well just be a super saiyan.
- Hey, has Dr. Light told you how much he likes rape lately? It's like it's his power now. It finally got to the point where other villains refused to work with him and the Spectre turned him into a candle and lit him on fire — as he was about to do some nasty things to hookers dressed as the Teen Titans.
- Magica DeSpell's obession with Scrooge McDuck's Number One Dime. In her first story, she was just looking for coins touched by rich men to use in a spell, when she accidentally gets Scrooge's Number One Dime, she realizes it would be the best Dime for the spell and refuses to give it back. Barks didn't use her that much, because he didn't really want Magica's obsession with the Number One Dime be her only shtick. Other authors had no such qualms, to the point where Magica's spell now specifically requires the first coin earned by the richest man in the world to work.
- Earlier stories usually had Magica simply wanting to become rich, and would often have her working on schemes completely unrelated to the dime. Nowadays, she's completely psychotic about that coin, and you rarely, if ever, see a Magica story without it as her prime goal anymore.
- The dime itself went through a sort of Flanderization. In the original story with Magica the dime had no initial magic powers, rather Scrooge's success and massive wealth gave it magic powers (according to Magica anyway). Later writers seemed to have missed this point, as there have been numerous instances where Scrooge has lost the dime due to things like theft and his financial luck and cunning were negatively affected too much to be simply psychological.
- The flanderization was addressed in one story where Magica remembers that she technically doesn't need Scrooge's dime for the spell to work, and completes it without the dime, becoming the richest person in the world. However she's been hunting the dime for so long she's become obsessed with it, and is unable to enjoy her riches. She ends up giving up her money in order to continue pursuing the dime.
- Squirrel Girl begun as an Ascended Fangirl in training, but nowadays her single most defining trait is her victories over Marvel's who's-who of the most powerful super villains.
- Booster Gold started as a well-meaning hero whose love of money often got him in over his head. Over the course of the '80s and '90s, writers forgot about the "well-meaning" part and turned him into a money-grubbing jerk. Thankfully, over the course of Infinite Crisis and 52 in the mid-'00s, DC built Booster back up, and now he's a genuine hero again—though the lure of fame and fortune still occasionally tempt him.
- Comic strip example: While most of the Fox Trot characters had their personas taken to the extreme at times, Andy was quite literally Flanderized, going from a simple caring and concerned mother to the Granola Girl Moral Guardian of the strip who serves her family earth-friendly fare like "wheatmeal" and braised zucchini every meal, keeps the thermostat so low that it flash-freezes the steam from a cup of coffee, and throws a fit if she catches the boys playing a violent video game. Unfortunately, since the series became Sunday-only, there's little chance of her changing.
- Alan Moore's Top 10 has Shock Headed Peter who comes off at first as simply a prejudiced working class cop who actually has some character depth to a 2-D Straw Robo-Racist when a Robot character gets introduced to Precinct 10.
- Archie's ''Sonic the Hedgehog comic'': Sonic's attitude has been cranked Up To Eleven, to the point where he's making wisecracks during a battle with Enerjak, a being with seemingly limitless energy (though this may have been more for Comic Relief than anything, it was a tad excessive). To be fair, though, it seems to have slightly boosted his Badass-ness—at the cost of emotion (again, though, to be fair, he never really showed much emotion anyway).
- The part about emotion is slowly being subverted as of #200; ever since Sonic's apparently driven Robotnik totally, droolingly insane, he seems to actually regret having broken down the guy so completely.
- Dupond et Dupont (the Thompsons in English IIRC) in Tintin start as fairly tough cops. For instance, in Le Sceptre d'Ottokar they are unafraid in tight situations and quick to use their pistols, even though they are clumsy and prone to draw bad conclusions. (They are skinny, too.) Whereas in later albums, they become cowards; see for instance the Skeleton Sequence in Objectif Lune. (And chubby.)
Fan Works
- Most parody and trollfics usually have more deliberate misspellings as the chapter number increases.
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 dialogue 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, flanderizing 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.
- Jack was a late addition in the story and was always supposed to be a classic trickster, (read a certain amount of compulsary weirdness). The screenwriters who created him, Elliot and Rossio, described Depp's portrayal as being everything they'd intended but nothing like they'd anticipated. So technically, Captain Jack was realized, not flanderized.
- 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 mispronunciations 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.
- And then there's Son of the Pink Panther, in which Clousseau's son (written to be exactly the same as his father, so it may still count) talks that way not from an accent, but because he actually thinks that's the way those words are supposed to be pronounced.
- And don't even mention the Steve Martin movies.... Especially regarding hamburgers.
- It's also important to note that, in the very first movie, Clouseau was a fairly competent, intelligent detective who did successfully solve the mystery (though nobody believed him at the time). It's only with each subsequent sequel that he gradually becomes an outrageously accented walking disaster zone... though he's admittedly funnier that way.
- Actually, the villain of the first movie, The Phantom, was intended to be the main character, but everyone loved Peter Sellers more, so he got the sequels.
- In the first two films in the A Nightmare On Elm Street series, Freddy Krueger was a fairly serious, scary character. By the third movie, the dream deaths had become more..."creative" and Freddy started to make some wisecracks and puns. By Freddy's Dead, the character was so cartoonish that it was hard to believe that he actually used to be scary.
- Reversed in Wes Craven's New Nightmare and Freddy VS Jason, in which Freddy returns to form, becoming the dark, sinister, freakishly scary monster from the original film. (And even WORSE in the former...THAT Freddy is truly terrifying.)
Literature
- In Discworld, the characterisation of Rincewind shifted from sensible fear of the unknown to full-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.
- Yeah. Remember that a significant amount of time passes for him over the course of those books, and it's strongly implied that for almost all that time, things are running around trying to kill him. That would be enough to make a devoted coward out of many people.
- Plus he's been to Unseen University where, despite his being ragingly incompetent at both the theory and practice of magic, he may well have learned a little — just enough — about the narrative nature of life on the Discworld. That's enough to fuel an entirely justified paranoia.
- Every character in the series mutates over time, although most of it is more Characterization Marches On.
- The Xanth series got this way with puns. The first couple of books featured some puns in the book, but was mostly unique. For instance, the tangle tree was never a pun, just a common plant. Now, the author's note features 4-5 pages of reader suggested puns. The placement of the puns is getting forced too. In book 27, characters being forced to walk through a "petrified forest" filled with puns, and needing to correctly identify the pun to move on.
- While she was originally just an aversion of the Model Minority stereotype, Claudia Kishi from the Babysitters Club, despite being in eighth grade for about ten years, eventually gets to the point where she can't even spell her
freinds friends' names (or her own!) Despite being able to spell them perfectly well in seventh grade, mind. Most of the other girls' quirks (Kristy's bossiness, Dawn's environmentalist soapboxing, Mallory's geekishness, and Jessi's anxiety about her race and dancing skills) suffered this to some degree, as well.
- This is how self-will destroys the damned in The Great Divorce. If one embraces a sin and never lets it go, it overwrites the rest of one's character, and sometimes the rest of one's self.
- Hannibal Lecter was originally just a very intelligent and cultured man, whose expertise in his chosen field of psychiatry made him a particularly dangerous (and somewhat ironic) insane killer. By the (book) sequel, Hannibal, he's apparently a world-class genius in pretty much any field he sets his mind to, from Renaissance art to particle physics.
- Zoey Redbird in The House Of Night series went from a somewhat more advanced vampyre who happened to have a boyfriend in the first book to The Chosen One with an Unwanted Harem by the third book.
Live Action TV
- Saved by the Bell: Screech was originally a quirky genius, but his growing stupidity was epitomized when he became an assistant principal in Saved by the Bell: The New Class.
- Friends: Monica Geller's shrillness, competitiveness, obsessive-compulsive disorder and in the flashbacks, her attachment to food. Remember when she was the smartest and most mature of the gang?
- Joey's stupidity. He started out simply shallow and vacuous but still had witty lines ("Yeah, keep rubbing your head. That'll turn back time."), and in the episode where the radiator in Monica's apartment was stuck at "tropical" due to a broken knob, was the only one smart enough to turn it off from underneath. By the end of the series he can't do simple math, takes several seconds longer than anyone else to react to sudden surprises, and can't even imitate sounds when trying to learn French, something that an infant can do.
- Chandler's effeminacy. In the first season, he likes sports, beer and pizza as much as the other guys but had to fight the popular misconception that he was gay (because he had a "quality"). By the end, he has two copies of the Annie soundtrack, can identify the film Miss Congeniality through a wall and has had it revealed that he made out with a guy in college.
- Phoebe's quirkiness, which later manifested as an extreme dark side that turned her from a happy-go-lucky, spacy girl into a vicious, pushy woman with extreme sexual fetishes.
- Ross' nerdiness, failure with women and general failure at life. Seriously, for a PhD graduate and successful college professor (he gains tenure in one of the last seasons) an awful lot of bad and horrible things happen to him, most of them not even his fault.
- Married... with Children: Kelly Bundy's stupidity (she was originally merely Book Dumb), 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. However, 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.
- Agent Seeley Booth from Bones. Booth went from merely being more intuitive and emotional than Dr. Temperance Brennan to becoming functionally retarded, merely to highlight how different he is from Brennan. Lampshaded in at least one episode when someone suggests that Booth acts this way on purpose, so that Brennan can comfortably "be the brain".
- While "functionally retarded" might be taking it a bit far, "socially retarded" might not be taking it far enough in Brennan's case. You'd think she spent the first fifteen years of her life being raised in a closet instead of in a relatively normal home in normal America. She's consistently portrayed as so completely out of touch with basic human manners, emotions, and common culture (she doesn't know who the Grinch is, just for starters) and so obsessed with pure rationality and exacting reality that it eventually seems practically impossible that she could have written a fiction novel, let alone the steamy thriller her book is said to be. A more subtle wrinkle of this is that on the one hand she's supposedly an enthusiastic student of global cultures yet on the other hand she's presented as demonstrating exceedingly little respect and courtesy for the cultures of the people directly around her (particularly monogamy and anything hinting of the supernatural).
- 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 Flanderized. 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.
- Of course, there is a point when Brainiac downloads its intellect into her, pretty much super-Flanderizing her computer skills.
- 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.
- Subverted with Corporal (later Sergeant) Max Klinger, who slowly stops his attempts to get out of the army as a crossdresser. He comes up with some pretty creative alternatives, however, including attempting to eat a jeep, threatening to set himself on fire, and pretending that he's seeing the camp as Toledo, Ohio (Jamie Farr's hometown).
- Also on M*A*S*H, Frank Burns started out as a sanctimonious, hypocritical Bible-basher who spouted off on the sanctity of marriage while engaged in an adulterous relationship with Margaret Hoolihan. He went from that sober, unremarkable (BORING!) character to a manic paranoid hebephrenic moron within just a few episodes.
- Missy on Neds Declassified School Survival Guide was originally just The Libby who happened to have a crush on the protagonist, who escalated into a persistent Stalker With A Crush, and then escalated even more 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.
- Tobias Funke also was to some degree Flanderized. He began the show as a satire of "sensitive new-age dad" types and his seemingly obvious closeted homosexuality was only part of his character; over time, it became the crux of his personality.
- Gob Bluth begins the series as a magician with no stage presence and unexceptional magic skills. But as the series progresses, his ability to do simple magic tricks diminishes more and more ("Yes, but where did the lighter fluid come from?"). Insecurity and need of his father and brother's acceptance also became ever more pronounced as the show progressed.
- 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 three 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 (despite initially being perfectly willing to refer to her 'homeland', something she later would not tolerate jokes about, as Chicago), 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).
- Look at how the Janitor starts as being an honest bad guy / Heroic Sociopath for whatever reason. Then, his insanity is played up, to the point where half of his jokes draw on it, instead of being The Pesci like he used to be.
- Same goes for Kelso's goofiness, Ted's sad existence, The Todd's frat-boy antics...
- You could also say Elliot gets more neurotic with each season, as stories of her upbringing grow still more disturbing.
- Dr. Lisa Cuddy from House underwent this kind of treatment. In season Two, she was taking fertility meds to get a baby. As seasons progressed, her baby obsession became worse and worse, until she turned into a weepy wannabe mom whose biggest ambition in life was to bring up a kid.
- But in "Mirror, Mirror," in Season 4, isn't she taking birth control pills? To get back at House in one of their ego battles, she switches his Vicodin with laxatives— or attempts to— and in return he implies that he's switched her birth control pills with an unknown substance.
- Thirteen suffered a similar fate. She was a fairly well-rounded, moderately deep character on her introduction, just right for a little Character Development. What she got, however, was having her entire personality and character changed into "I'M DYING OF HUNTINGTON'S" as soon as it was confirmed. Perhaps Truth In Television and a Justified Trope, and it was expanded on surprisingly well, but it took over her character remarkably quickly.
- 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 Watson... 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. Afterward, he'll go back and forth: you have episodes like "The Warrior," where he's as awesome as ever, and episodes like "Birthright," where every line is a childish joke and the others have to pick up the slack.
- 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.
- Ronon Dex seems to have become O'Neill's Stargate Atlantis counterpart, to the point of it being Lampshaded by another character:
Todd: [explaining his plan to destroy Michael's facility] I was going to write an elaborate program designed to slowly create a fatal error in the primary capacitor, but I doubt there'll be time for that now.
Ronon: I was just gonna blow it up.
Todd: [exasperated] Naturally.
- 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...ahem...Lab Rat 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!
- In the first couple of seasons, Potsie and Ralph were actually somewhat sharper and more worldly than Richie. They soon devolved into a huge nerd and a compulsive lame jokester, respectively.
- 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.
- By Ashes To Ashes, either Chris has improved drastically, or most of the characters have flanderised to reach his level. Take your pick.
- 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. As Dean is an admittedly very attractive male, some might not think of this as a bad thing. The Flanderization has gotten so bad even the actor Jensen Ackles teases that Dean might act like a hooker to pay the bills.
- Another one from Supernatural: Dean's eating. Originally started with Dean eating a couple of cocktail franks at a funeral, it has now evolved into Dean becoming a compulsive member of the Clean Plate Society, including eating a ham he recently "cooked" with an electrified joy buzzer.
- 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 went to prison. He was then released, settled with a girlfriend, and had become somewhat calmer... for a while, until he reverted back, lost his girlfriend and added stalker ex-boyfriend to the mix in the process.
- 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.
- The title character of MacGyver originally started out as a reasonably intelligent, inventive field agent who lives a fairly clean, active lifestyle and was generally a nice guy all around. As the series progressed, his inventiveness started warping reality to facilitate it (although, due to the series also phasing the improvisational inventions out at the same time, this probably started happening because they needed to make sure that one aspect counts each time it gets used), his clean living became almost pseudo-hippie, and him being a nice guy somehow mutated into being the only refuge of sanity who has to deliver Anvilicious Aesops by the truckload. By the last two seasons, he was pretty much just a shell for which the writers could insert their filibusters.
- Robert Hewitt Wolfe's original plan for Seamus Harper on Andromeda was for him to mature and get over the constant sexual innuendos. After Wolfe was booted, the character became all about childishness and innuendos.
- MST3K's Professor Bobo, introduced in the eighth season, started as a slightly dim but basically competent Planet Of The Apes spoof who chastises his colleagues for their simian behavior, but over his run became progressively more idiotic and bestial until by the end of the series he's literally flinging his poo and wearing a dog tag.
- Bobo was actually flinging his poo and getting tick baths as early as mid-season eight (the first season in which he appeared). The flanderization seems to have happened to emphasize the contrast between him and Observer.
- The contrast between Bobo and Observer stayed mostly constant, as Observer was Flanderized at roughly the same rate and in roughly the same direction as Bobo. When first introduced, the Observers are kind-of-omnipotent, maybe-not-really-superior beings; within a few episodes, Brain Guy is just a super-powerful bozo.
- Arnold Spivak on Murder One was a very competent and mature lawyer in season one, with the worst you could say about him being that he was somewhat socially awkward, but in a mostly endearing way, and would occasionally get a bit petulant over not being given more responsibility in the firm. In season two he became a complete Butt Monkey, existing only for a running gag about never being assigned second chair on a case.
- Judge Judy used to play it straight, only occasionally losing her temper with the most thick-headed litigants. The popularity of her scathing wit turned her into a prejudicial psycho-bitch.
- Merton Dingle from Big Wolf On Campus went from someone who considers himself relatively handsome and talented (both academically and in the various entertainment arts) to someone with an ego the size of Texas.
- In the early seasons of 30 Minute Meals, host Rachael Ray was quite calm, comparatively quiet, and did not use many acronyms in her speech. There were only a few hints to her underlying quirkiness. Over the run of the show, she transformed into a hyperactive, noisy, acronym-using parody of what she once was.
- The Big Bang Theory has a case of good Flanderization. Sheldon started as a less assertive/more arrogant version of Leonard who was nervous around Penny and competed for her attention. A couple of episodes in and he had evolved into the asexual narcissist whom we all love to hate. Penny on the other hand went through a reverse Flanderization. The first episode establishes her as a ditz with low intelligence (she's a vegetarian who eats steak), but those elements faded as the show focused on her being a more normal person around the geeks.
- Although Penny's apparent change in personality can also be attributed to her being a bit uncomfortable around the others at first and trying to be nice and make a good impression on them nonetheless.
- Two Pints of Lager & A Packet of Crisps has multiple examples, such as:
- Donna goes from a snarky, somewhat sardonic individual to one who is incredibly bossy and sometimes violently angry in later seasons. This was pushed to increasingly high levels in the seventh season, to the point where she was almost a caricature of her former self.
- Then there's Louise, who started the series as a naive, narcissistic, somewhat manipulative, not particularly intelligent girly-girl, with a touch of quirkiness about her. By the seventh season, she is incredibly manipulative, sometimes very spiteful and bitchy, very snobby, and incredibly self-centered - to the point where she names her newborn child "Louise Louise" (after spending an episode not wanting the child because of her fears that it would be "prettier" than her). She also goes from not minding Jonny at all (and not showing a hint of disgust when he kisses her in the episode 'Lard', and stating that she actually likes him "in a way"), to outright despising him for the most trivial of reasons (she even gets him shot by the police, after she gets a job at the Office for National Statistics and changes his profile to that of a serious criminal).
- Jonny's "feminine side" being exaggerated in later seasons is another example.
- Happened to virtually the entire cast of the French Canadian show Le Coeur a Ses Raisons as the show moved further away from being a parody of American soaps and more toward comedic absurdity: Ashley started out as a slightly ditzy nurse, and later became a few steps away from mentally retarded. Criquette began as spoiled and melodramatic and became downright hysterical about the slightest things later on ("You left the toilet seat up! This proves you have a mistress!"). Characters introduced in later seasons came along already flanderized.
- Dan Fielding of Night Court started out as a relatively straitlaced prosecutor, but quickly turned into the narcissistic, skirt-chasing faux-jerk we know and love.
- Eric, Kelso, Donna and Fez on That70s Show: from a relatively normal teenager, Eric turned into an absolute nerd; Kelso went from awkward and indecisive to plain stupid; Donna became so aggressive that she was a borderline Straw Feminist; and Fez, formerly a classic desperate virgin, turned into a pervert. Also, Red was a somewhat stern, but no-nonsense parent in the first season, but as seasons went on, he became a constantly angry introvert that borderline terrorised and bullied Eric.
- Pretty much everyone on The Office, but Michael is the most prominent example, going from being an obnoxious boss who really did mean well to being a total spaz who couldn't handle being shown up.
- Jan went from being the Straight Man and voice of reason to Michael to a mean spirited loser in record time after they officially began a relationship.
- The Daily Show has been almost entirely focused on riffing on National Political stories, whereas The Colbert Report has picked up covering the quirkier science and entertainment news that was once the former's purview. Arguably, this has been to both shows' advantage.
- Somewhat averted by the character of 'Sidney Balmoral James' in Hancocks Half Hour. In the radio show, he was a CMOT Dibbler whose dodgy schemes generally had the luckless Tony Hancock as their victim. In the TV show, his criminal tendencies were played down and he became more of a Deadpan Snarker deflating Hancock's ego.
- Seinfeld's main cast Flanderizes greatly over the course of the show, as do many of the minor characters. Kramer is perhaps the most noticeable, going from a quirky but ordinary fellow into an eccentric mastermind who regularly breaks the law, social expectations, and maybe even the rules of physics. Elaine goes from a forward-thinking woman into a short-tempered, neurotic, extremist-feminist. George goes from being a relatively unsuccessful but otherwise mature individual into a bastion of failure who explodes at the smallest lack of success; of the three, only George's Flanderization is lampshaded or mentioned in-universe. Jerry is perhaps the only main character who stays unchanged, although his finicky tendencies toward cleanliness and girlfriend-perfectionism surface pretty regularly.
- The build team on Mythbusters was Flanderized over time. Nowadays, Tory is the one who always gets hurt or abused, Grant is the one obsessed with robots, and Kari is reduced to ditzy token female who rarely ever actually contributes to anything. The cast members suggested that the producers request this by popular demand, mentioning that they requested that Tory do something reckless in one episode.
- Likewise, the presenters on Top Gear have self-Flanderized into Clarkson (aggressive loud boor who likes power and shiny things), Hammond (small hyperactive hamster who wants to go really really fast) and May (slow, cerebral pedant who can't be bothered with any of that).
- See Family Matters, where Urkel went from a standard-issue nerd to THE Urkel.
- Bob from Teachers started off as a stern boss in the first series before turning into a more easy-going, if awkward character. This later was Flanderized into him being the Butt Monkey, with his wife leaving him in the third series and reaching its peak in the fourth, with his new Thai bride (who refuses to have sex with him but does so with his replacement as head of English) and his wearing of an ill-fitting toupee.
- Most of the characters from Buffy The Vampire Slayer were Flanderized over time. Originally Buffy wasn't much stronger than a vampire, and particularly old or strong vampires generally gave her a lot of trouble. By Season 5, she could effortlessly wield a hammer that Spike, a master vampire who had killed two slayers (and fought Buffy to a draw in Season 2), couldn't even lift. Willow was already extremely smart in the early seasons, but there were other students at Sunnydale High who were smarter (her science project came in second every year). As late as Season 4, her magic use was still endearingly incompetent much of the time. By Season 6, she was the strongest magic user in the Western Hemisphere, and it was heavily implied that she was the strongest on earth by the end of Season 7. These examples might be due to the fact that Willow and Buffy simply got smarter or stronger over time, but that fails to explain why Giles, a middle-aged man who has already spent most of his life training to fight vampires, went from being a trainer who himself could do little in combat to slaughtering vampires en masse by Season 5. Xander went in the opposite direction. Originally he was a semicompetent fighter whose academic problems were primarily caused by laziness, but by Season 4, he had been rejected even by the low-ranked University of California at Sunnydale, and his "slap fight" with Harmony was played for comedic effect.
- In Giles' case it could be argued that he wasn't permitted to fight by the Watcher's Council and only started fighting after his firing. Also, his torture at the hands of Angelus might have spurred him to take a more active role.
- Almost all of the characters in Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia were Flanderized after the first season. Charlie was simply slow-witted in the first season, and now he's an illiterate idiot-savant. However, since tropes aren't necessarily bad, this has worked to the show's favor. Most people would agree that the "current" characters are a hell of a lot funnier than they were starting out.
Mythology
- Gods originally portrayed as Chaotic Neutral or even mostly good are frequently reinterpreted as evil by competing sects/religions historically. Modern media does the same and removes the character flaws of "good" gods in retellings of mythology in order to simplify them, making them fit modern good/evil dichotomies better.
- Virtually every mythology in modern day media is subject to the latter. Hades and Set are victims of the former: the Greek god of the Underworld is frequently interpreted as the villain of the Greek pantheon, while the Egyptian god of chaos and some aspects of death apparently became evil rather than a scary enforcer for good due to Egyptian religious political wars.
- In the old polytheistic days, gods weren't characters in anthologies, they were everyday gods that you'd pray to when you needed something, or just as part of your daily ritual. So when you'd hear "Zeus," your first thought would be "king of gods, god of hospitality, law, civilization," not "Depraved Bisexual who'll do Anything That Moves in Whatever Shape He Likes." Similarly, "Hera" would inspire "goddess and protectress of women, the home, family, and domestic life" not "Clingy Jealous Goddess Bitch In Sheeps Clothing." However, because now all that we have left of these gods are the stories they left behind (and what stories!), we tend to picture pretty much all gods as caricatures of their original, er, selves.
Real Life
- This is how extremism comes to be. Errors come in pairs, but with most people, circumstances and the association of ideas cause them to be more off-put by one error than the other. If left unremedied, this imbalance expands until they embrace the opposite error.
- Alzheimer's disease, at some stage, may also bring some traits out of its victims and exaggerate them to the extreme.
- Remember when the Internet was this nice idea to allow serious research to be done between colleges? The undergrads created the modern Internet.
- Actually, AOL users created the modern internet. Sad, isn't it?
- Political strategy in general tries to Flanderize politicians to more easily accomplish shifts in popularity. All it takes is just a few incidents, repeatedly referenced, to put a politician into the desired "frame". Choose your own example.
- The It Just Bugs Me page. At first, it was mainly for questions concerning Fridge Logic, but has now turned into a place where you complain about shows you don't like. Albeit, tropers tend to prefer this.
Tabletop RPG
- The Imperium of Man got hit with this hard. The exterminatus was once used only if there was no other choice. A Commissar's job wasn't to shoot their solders, it was to keep morale and discipline up; the Tech Priests knew what they were doing, their prayers were really just standard maintenance; and the Obstructive Bureaucrat was due to the sheer size of the Imperium, while the Bureaucrats at subsector levels were pretty quick. It Got Worse... as the naming of Grim Dark shows...
Video Games
- 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; 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).
- 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.
- This was averted in the Battle Network series and the Zero series. In Battle Network, he's got a (semi) justifiable reason for being such a homicidal maniac, but his plans vary enough that he avoids the trope. In Zero, Weil is just a Complete Monster with absolutely no redeeming qualities, eventually unifying himself with his Super Weapon in 4 to kill Zero, even though he'd die in the process.
- 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 Plucky Comic Relief character as the series went on. This was likely a Take That directed at Daniel Pesina, the actor who originally played Johnny Cage, after he was fired by Midway for posing in character as Cage to promote another company's fighting game (Blood Storm).
- 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'.
- The Judge also. In the first game he is still rather dim, but this is mostly an excuse to have the lawyers explain the facts of the case in great detail so the player can keep up. On the whole, the Judge in the first game is fairly level and keeps a stern voice of authority within the courtroom. As the series progressed, the Judge's stupidity and short attention spand was played up more and more. By the fourth game, he is almost child-like in his naivete, often brings up personal issues or problems during the trials, and lets blatant lies slide right by him, whereas before he might have noticed.
- Considering his age and the progression of time throughout the series, he seems to be getting progressively more senile and out-of touch with the world.
- The Ace Attorney franchise has also been flanderized. In the first game, the reactions were simple: foaming at the mouth, people cringing, eye twitching, Breaking a smoke pipe, and banging your head against the wall. By Ace Attorney Investigations, we've already seen people getting beaten up by bubbles, people summoning lightning, people tearing their faces off, An excorsism, someone going Super Sayin, someone's hair flying off, and someone's hair spazzing out.
- 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 Jerkass levels.
- 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.
- However, it is important to note that the Lara Croft of Tomb Raider: Legend onwards is basically a different character to that of the previous games in the series, as Crystal Dynamics completely rebooted the franchise, and changed Lara's backstory and personality along with it.
- There are also Lara's funbags. In the first game, they were noticeable, but still realistic, though the publicity material for the game made them enormous. They kept progressing in size to the point that the only way they could possibly be realistic is if Lara decided to break the world record for most silicone in one rack. The reboot dropped her cup size back again, though they're starting to get bigger again as of Underworld...
- 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.
- Master Vrook of Knights Of The Old Republic. In the first game, he is just distrustful of you at first but will come around if you do good deeds. But in the sequel, he seems to hate your character with an absolute passion and never misses a chance to criticise you, even when you do something right.
- Um...this is because you play two different characters in the two different games. In the first game, he once admired your character, later grew to despise you for your evil deeds, and later grudgingly respects you for saving the galaxy. In the second game, he already has a history with your character, who thoroughly disliked him from the first time you met; the fact that the arc involving him basically consists of your character revealing his presence to his enemies and then ruining his carefully laid plans doesn't help either.
- And worse still, his unpleasantness seems contagious: when you meet Masters Kavarr and Zez-Kai-El on the planets that they're hiding on, they are welcoming and friendly, and both of them show regret for what they did to your character in the backstory. But in the Light Side path, when they arrive on Dantoiine and team up with Vrook, they automatically see you as a threat and try to cut you off from the Force without even giving you a chance to defend yourself.
- Also a good example of Executive Meddling, as the designers were forced to cut a huge amount of story off the end of the game.
- In Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, one could potentially argue that HK-47 was somewhat Flanderized. In the original, he was calmer and tended to display his sociopathic tendencies only in isolated situations, like during certain "aggressive negotiations". Outside of combat and negotiations, he was a perfect gentleman, though he spoke with a disturbing flippancy/eagerness about death and destruction. In the sequel, he became a straightforward Killer Robot, speaking boldly and constantly about slaughtering all meatbags. This, however, worked in his favor, as without it, the now-famous line, "Definition: Love is making a shot to the knees of a target 120 kilometres away using an Aratech sniper rifle with a tri-light scope," would never exist.
- Also done with his unusual speech pattern. In the first game the "Definition:" or "Statement:" or "Query:" before his dialogue was relatively simple, there weren't that many of them (maybe five or six at most) and they served to logically categorize the things he said. In KotOR 2, the prefixes start becoming increasingly specific. The HK-50s take it to the next level by adding descriptive adjectives to the mix, to the point that they often serve to ironically undermine the following statement completely, a la Stephen Colbert's "The WORD" (i.e. "Hasty Retraction:", "Condescending Explanation:" or even "Fabrication:".)
- The whole Command And Conquer: Red Alert has undergone this. While some people complained that Red Alert 3 was ridiculously over the top compared to the previous games, it had already drifted dramatically starting with Red Alert 2. Red Alert had time travel, an Action Girl, and some over-the-top technology and characters, but it was about as serious as the Tiberium Series. Red Alert 2 expanded on this with much more over the top stuff (Giant mind controlled squid?) and much more cartoonish units and scenarios. Red Alert 3 is par for the course after this.
- Mega Man X: As Executive Meddling forced the series to go beyond the creator's planned ending, X5, some of the main characters had certain aspects of their personality stretched out to artificially create conflict for the next few games. While Zero always stayed friendly to X, he became rather gruffer and more stereotypically badass as the series went on, especially when Axl was introduced. Sigma degenerated just as badly as Dr. Wily, if not worse, as he went from very nearly destroying the world and being a truly Magnificent Bastard...to a shivering pile of zombie-animated debris in just one game, and by the next game explained his final boss status as simply "because I'll never stop until you're dead!" It was X that the fans complained about the most, though: while he had always been more pacifistic and less violence-inclined than Zero, this was expanded into the defining aspect of his personality, so that rather than being a reluctant cop, he was a stereotypically annoying whiner who kept advocating non-violence even when the situation had clearly gone south. This led to him abandoning active duty at the beginning of X7, so we started off playing a Megaman X game not playing as Megaman X. He does return, though.
- Speaking of the X series, even words can undergo Flanderization. The term Maverick initially referred to a Reploid who attacked and killed humans as a result of Wily's Maverick virus, but starting with X4 the meaning started to become warped as a political tool, usually with the purpose of sending the Maverick Hunters after the designated targets. The distortion of its meaning remains long into the Zero series, where the Resistance are (mostly) law-abiding Reploids just trying to keep themselves operational amidst an energy crisis. Most of the damage has been reversed in the ZX series, but with Albert dead and Mikhail (likely) soon to join him, it's only a matter of time before Thomas makes history repeat itself.
- There's still some debate to this, but Kratos of God Of War could be considered to fall into this. In the first game, his bloodlust is a facet of his deeper personality - he channeled the memories of what he had done into his rage to become more brutally efficient. In the second game, Kratos lost that, and became simply bloodlust and badassery in human form.
- In Pikmin, the pikmin were inmmune to their respective elements. Now, in Super Smash Bros Brawl, they have elemental powers.
- Sodom from Final Fight was originally a samurai-themed underground wrestler with a somewhat misguided fascination with Japanese culture. In the Street Fighter Alpha series (especially in the Japanese versions of the games), this fascination became more of an obsession, with Sodom usually speaking in mangled Japanese, writing his gang's name in kanji, and going as far as to travel to Japan to recruit sumo wrestlers for his gang.
- When Mai Shiranui was first introduced in Fatal Fury 2, she was simply a female Ninjutsu master whose relation with Andy Bogard (being the granddaughter of his sensei, Hanzo Shiranui) was barely mentioned in her back-story. In later games (especially in the anime adaptations), she became so fully obsessed with Andy to the point that she yells his name whenever she gets K.O.ed in The King of Fighters games and most of her endings revolve around her trying to get Andy to commit to her.
- Captain Qwark from the Ratchet And Clank series has become an increasingly unintelligent character in recent games. In the first game, he wasn't portrayed as being particularly stupid, but was shown as being cowardly and rather incompetent. In the second game, Qwark successfully takes control of the Megacorp corporation and executes a Xanatos Gambit that only fails when he puts the batteries of the Helix-O-Morph in backwards (it's a long story). In the third game, Qwark goes completely bananas (literally) when he for some reason is acting as the chief of a monkey tribe on a tropical planet. After his subsequent Heel Face Turn, he has been portayed as exceedingly vain and in Size Matters and Tools of Destruction he borders on Ralph Wiggum territory.
- Achmed Khan from Backyard Sports was originally a great athlete who simply listened to rock music (although he had his headphones on everywhere). This quirk was run into the ground by later games, making him a guitar-wielding crazed fan, down to the fact that he could not focus due to loving music.
- The Ar Tonelico series features an in-universe example. Any part of a Reyvateil's problems, desires, or what-have-you get blown to spectacular proportions in their Cosmospheres. Outside of the Cosmospheres, however, the changes in character after you go in to their Cosmospheres are much more subtle.
- All the Harvest Moon 64 characters were flanderized for Back To Nature. They, well their descendants, were flanderized even more, along with the Wonderful Life series decedents. But that's justified due to them not being the same person and having more boring lives.
- Arguably, this has happened with Team Fortress 2 as a whole (not just one character - the entire game all at once) and its recent addition of character hats: all the updates in the last two months have been either adding more hats or allegedly tweaking the system through which they are obtained (but no amount of tweaking will ever improve the setup because it is broken by its very nature). The addition of character weapons and upkeep of balance in the old ones, as well as fixing bugs in existing maps (several of which are game-breaking if exploited), have apparently taken a backseat position, despite being, you know, what the actual gameplay revolves around. At least as many people spend all day idling in the hopes of getting hats as actually play the game proper anymore.
- To clarify how this fits this trope: The game started out being about the actual multiplayer FPS action it was intended to be based upon, but has in recent times very quickly shifted to be MUCH more about collecting the hat items via random drops and seeing who can get the most or the "best." Perception of the change is quite subjective, but a large number of people feel that the game has Flanderized the hats quite a bit.
- There have been some back-end additions and modifications done in the past month or so, mostly at the request of mappers, and some of the more major map bugs have been fixed. Still, these have been done with absolutely no fanfare whereas anything regarding the hats will be extravagantly played up upon its unveiling...
- Now you have to pre-order Left 4 Dead 2 in order to get one of the hats (and a rather plain/ugly one too). That's right - you have to pay $50 for an additional game just to get an aesthetic item in this one. Pretty sad for a game that previously prided itself on its major game updates that provided free added content that would cost a pretty penny for an equivalent amount of added content in many other online games.
- Let's not forget the character known as Saxton Hale: originally just a joke character appearing in a small logo in the lower corner of a faux magazine page in a promotional bit for the Sniper/Spy Update, he now has more of an established personal history story than any of the characters in the game, despite never appearing in the game itself or even having his existence acknowledged in-game. The TF2 Blog now uses him in pretty much every blog post, cramming them all full of the same "manliness" jokes and bizarre speech/writing patterns that stopped being funny a month ago.
Web Animation
- The title character of Homestar Runner was Flanderized from The Fool into The Ditz. This was arguably for the better.
- Senor Cardgage has gone from a creepy old man who's a little hard to understand to being a second Homsar.
- Not true. Senor Cardgage speaks in malapropisms, often irrelevant to the situation. Homsar speaks in... um... Homsar speak.
- In Kirbopher's Super Freakin" Parody Rangers series, the Rangers themselves are basic Flanderized versions of the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Meat, the Red Ranger, is an extreme sports nut who continually flexes his muscles (and is surprisingly also Genre Savvy); Willy, the Blue Ranger, is a short and stereotypical nerd; Pinky, the Pink Ranger, is definitely The Chick; and in reference to the original Black and Yellow Rangers, Mace the Black Ranger and Chan the Yellow Ranger are, well, an African-American and a Chinese girl, respectively.
Webcomics
- Hannelore from Questionable Content, shortly after her first appearance, mentioned that she had severe OCD. Over time, she developed more and more quirks and phobias to the point of being essentially a female Adrian Monk. It wasn't long before they had to Hand Wave the fact that she even has piercings, and the circumstances of her first appearance — loitering in a public restroom, nonchalantly talking to a man peeing in the sink — have become absolutely inconceivable.
- This was finally dealt with in Comic 1046, where Hannelore reveals she's always had these problems; it just varies by the drugs she takes.
- Considering the things she's freaked out at, that should tell you something about just how hopped up she was.
- Also from QC is Raven. At first, she was a little bit of a Genki Girl with rare flashes of wisdom and occasional casual sex. As of her most recent appearance on QC, she was a flat out bizarre Cloudcuckoolander (Even by the standards of Cloudcuckoolanders), and has probably gone around the block an innumerable number of times.
- 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.
- Likewise, Black Mage was just an insensitive asshole with a slight sadistic streak at first, but is now so over-the-top evil that he'd be appalling if he wasn't so funny.
- Also, while his overall intelligence has declined, Fighter's moments of intelligence seem to have become more and more frequent.
- Thief's skills in intrigue and his general competence have grown by leaps and bounds since his first appearance.
- Pretty much EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER in 8-Bit Theater has been Flanderized ridiculously.
- You're kidding, right? Black Mage was murdering old men and orphans by page 30, and Fighter was saying "I Like Swords" before that. The characters never change. That's the point.
- 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. (And he was recently put in a mental institution in the animated version...)
- 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.
- Richard from Looking For Group was always intended to be an Always Chaotic Evil insensitive dick and main comic relief, but his antics as of late have done nothing but break the pace of the story.
Web Original
- Most of the characters in Red vs Blue suffer from this, and this is a good example of Tropes Are Not Bad. Donut starts as mildly effeminate and becomes very obviously gay, Caboose's childish incompetence becomes insanity, Simmons changes from occasionally kissing ass to displaying extremely sycophantic behavior ("You're not only a wonderful leader but also a handsome man, sir!"), Sarge's dislike of Grif progressed to actually trying to kill Grif on a fairly regular basis, and Tucker, who talked about "picking up chicks" in the first few episodes, became a literal font of innuendo by the series' end. Church, however, remained roughly as grouchy and cynical throughout, perhaps actually becoming more complex as time passed.
- Caboose's is the only one of those justified by in-story events: he began to suffer a mental breakdown following the destruction of Sheila, his only friend, which was compounded when Church, Tex and O'Malley got into his mind and started blowing things up, after which he became noticeably more unbalanced.
- Grif's apathy in regards to the conflict could also be considered Flanderization. Compare him early on in his argument with Sarge over the Warthog, where he effectively disproves Sarge's argument using plain logic, to the later episodes where he's so apathetic that he messes with his gun just so he doesn't have to fight.
- Open Blue's Espartano unit went from ostensibly unisex Tyke Bomb training program to Amazon Brigade factory. Has a bit of Never Live It Down due to the main contributor just happening to prefer badass lolitas, thus inadvertantly bringing the other players assume the factuality of said flanderization. They in turn started making Espartano characters using said assumption, resulting in the concept's flanderization.
- A lot of people probably don't realize that the original "Caturday" pictures (now known as LOLcats) were captioned in proper English. They were still funny, because the photos were inherently bizarre, like photos you might see in magazine caption contests. Now it's escalated to the point where any photo of a cat combined with bad enough English is supposedly hilarious.
- Team Monkeywrench, Josh Palmer's go-to characters for OCB Ts, have Flanderized rather quickly, also crossing over with Took A Level In Dumbass. In their original incarnations, Shrike was maybe not the sharpest spoon in the drawer but he could at least think his way out of a problem, Mini-Mel was a childish mechanic savant, and BB was, in fact, rather dim but there was a certain coherence to his thought processes. Now all three are out-and-out retarded and basically interchangeable-they're less distinct personalities and more one personality at different energy levels, BB relaxed, Shrike manic, and Mel even more childish than ever.
Western Animation
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