Old Shame - Television Tropes & Idioms

The original Suzumiya Haruhi manga, based on the light novels and written before the highly successful anime, was disowned by its publisher, most records of its existence erased — they didn't even try to capitalize on the series' newfound immense popularity from 2006 on by bringing it back. Instead, another manga was commissioned to another author in order to capitalize the phenomenon. It's said that the first author did some Hentai Doujinshi about the very same series he was drawing, and firing him and disowning his work was the only way the publishers got to manage the affair.
- Controversey aside, the first Haruhi manga was apparently so bad it was horrible. Just compare the art quality of the two: First manga◊, Current manga◊.
Referenced in Excel Saga: In the opening to one episode, the production staff of the show confront Rikdo Koshi (the writer of the original manga) and toss down several doujinshi in front of him, causing him significant embarrassment. Those doujinshi are actual ones Koshi wrote before he did Excel Saga. Guess what the plot of that episode is based on?
The Beach Episode of Sailor Moon R seems to have been disowned, not even appearing on the "uncut" English boxset. Their excuse was that Takeuchi Naoko hadn't liked the episode anyway. Then again, who did? Dinosaurs, people...
Similarly, Mobile Suit Gundam is famous for having a "lost episode" which was removed from all home releases at the request of Yoshiyuki Tomino, who felt it wasn't up to the standard of the rest of the series. People who have seen the episode are split on the issue.
- Ironically, said episode is tremendously popular in Gundam video games, with entire stages revolving around it and the episode's one-shot villain becoming a (sometimes major) playable character.
  - Under Tomino's orders, the Compilation Movie version of the original series had the more Super Robot-y elements excised, including the Gundam's less realistic weapons and the more Monster Of The Week-like mecha such as the Zakrello and Gyan.
The Japanese producers of Pokemon seem to like to pretend that "Electric Soldier Porygon" never existed. This is the infamous episode that featured flashing colors, causing over 800 viewers to go to the hospital with seizures. When news broke of the story in Japan, they aired the same clip again, sending even more people to the hospital.
- Apparently because of this, Porygon and its evolutions have never been featured in the anime again, even though it wasn't the source of the seizures.
  - It was an extremely embarrassing event that caused massive problems in the anime industry (apparantly something like this could have happened at any time in the previous decade due to animation techniques, they just didn't pay it heed until then) in general. It also nearly killed the franchise. Of course they want no reminders of it and that includes Porygon itself. Note that no major characters in the games use Porygon either (although that may indicate that Porygon is meant to be rare).
  - What's bad about it is that the cause of the seizures wasn't Porygon at all.
  - What's funny is that the cause was an attack from the most seen and famous Pokemon before and after, Pikachu himself, using his most famous and often used attack, Thunderbolt.
Yuki Kaori had an entertaining way of describing her first published manga (a one shot about vampires): "I wrote this story while I was still dumb- I mean young." She laughs at its narmfullness now.

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Even Tintin creator Herge was guilty of this. The first, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, is ripped off wholesale from a single book condemning the Communist regime, and, while it's very heavy-handed, there are some bits of decent artwork in there. The second, Tintin in the Congo, is flabbergastingly racist and caused a furor in the UK when it was reprinted. Tintin's psychotic maiming of wildlife (blowing up a rhinoceros with a drilled hole and a stick of dynamite) is pretty hard to take as well. Much as this troper loves Tintin, she can't help wishing these two books never existed. Herge recognised this in retrospect and begged for them to be left out of print. Unlike the Soviet adventure, Tintin in The Congo has been published in color. The rhinoceros was spared in the Scandinavian edition and the English colour edition. There is the argument that Land of the Soviets was vindicated in retrospect as the West gained further knowledge of life in the USSR (Hergé's book came in the midst of the Stalinist purges, and two years before the Holodomor killed seven million Ukrainians)... But then, just because bad stuff happened in the Soviet Union around that time doesn't mean Land of the Soviets accurately portrays it (it doesn't, by a long shot).
- Herge actually redrew a number of scenes in Tintin in the Congo, one of the few instances where a creator has voluntarily censored his own work.
- 'Shooting Star' had the American villains (the comic was created during the Nazi occupation of Belgium) become generic villains, and the terrorist attack in 'Land of Black Gold' vanishes altogether. (Although in the latter case it was because it was no longer topical, not because there was anything shameful about the way he portrayed the scenes.)
In another subversion, Scott Adams released a series of Dilbert strips that are really contrived to give Dogbert an arch-nemesis named Bingo the Cow Herding Dog in order to give Hollywood some material to work with, and it would have turned the strip into something only other cartoonists like. This was during strip's early years that focus more on Dilbert's antics at home than at work. You can read them here.
- In a twentieth anniversary collection, Scott Adams included some comics he wrote for Dilbert as practice before trying to find a syndicate. Before listing the examples, Adams wrote "At the time, I thought puns were the highest form of humor. Forgive me."
Charles M. Schulz frequently said he was somewhat embarrassed by the first few years of Peanuts. As a result, several hundred strips from the early 1950s were never reprinted in book form during his lifetime, only seeing the light of day via Fantagraphics' Complete Peanuts series. They're not so bad (although the term "fuss-budget" doesn't get any funnier on the 100th use), but the characters are less well-defined and Snoopy is dull.
Although most of his Grendel stories have been reprinted time and time again both in graphic novel and comic format, Matt Wagner has never reprinted the black and white issues that introduced the character, rather letting Devil By The Deed stand as the character's official introduction and writing new stories around it.
- This may no longer be true with the printing of the "Grendel Archives", which appear to have the very early comics printed in it. Honestly, Wagner has improved a lot since then.
Some of today's most popular artists got their start drawing less-than-stellar comics. Tony Daniel, for instance, began with various Evil Ernie comics amongst others; now he is better known for his runs on Teen Titans and Batman. Jim Cheung, artist on Young Avengers, was one of the artists who drew the infamous "Teen Tony" storyline in Iron Man. Notably, both have changed their styles since the mid-90s, definitely for the better.
Jhonen Vasquez, author of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, Squee, and co-creator of Invader Zim put out a single-issue "throwaway" comic called the Bad Art Collection, which was exactly what it says on the cover. This troper managed to embarrass him by bringing it to a signing event at a convention. He responded with his usual good grace and humour; and commented, laughingly, "Oh my god, someone actually bought this thing," while signing it.
Mexican cartoonist Rius published many comic books in the 60-70s. Being a firm believer in Marxism, many of them are dedicated to socialism/communism and prophesized the fall of capitalism. One of the most famous examples of this is the book he made under orders of the Cuban government about the Cuban Revolution. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, he admitted that he had to eat his own words and that he never drew anything negative about the socialist states of the time because, in his own words: "Didn't want to provide ammunition for the Imperialism."
No entry about Old Shame in comic books could possibly be complete without mentioning Super Dickery, a site that grew out of an older page that showed multiple vintage comic book covers in which one of the most typically Lawful Good heroes, "Superman is a Dick!" Literally; most of the covers show him trying to kill Lois Lane. The site then branched into showing vintage comic covers of all sort, displaying embarassing examples of outdated propaganda, blatant attempts at Fanservice and Sexual Innuendo, and covers that are just stupid, period.

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Pretty much every fanfic writer in existence has written such a fic at the start of their career (if they're lucky). The vast majority feature Mary Sues.
- Linkara of That Guy With The Glasses and Atop The 4th Wall, had written "Web of Dimensions" A Self Insert Fic crossing Pokemon/Digimon/Sailor Moon under the name PsyWeedle.
- belmont2500 on Fanfiction.net has written a series of Land before time mega crossovers that a reviewer describes as "a clusterf**k of rushed plot, bad punctuation, and sheer stupidity. Seriously, it's pretty sad when events in a story are actually described by the words 'and then' over and over again." Belmont's more recent works have been better received.
- This troper knows of one such fanfic writer: notorious furry Sage Freehaven. As a teenager — and prior to entering the Furry Fandom — he wrote several awful Rescue Rangers fanfics called "The Dark Savior Saga", which saw various revisions over his tenure in the fandom and contained innumerable examples of bad fanfic tropes; he also made the mistake of writing them under his real name, only later changing them to bear his Furry Fandom pen name. Years later, he had the entire series — and anything else associated with both that name and his real name, including a MiSTing of the first fanfic in the series — stricken from the Rescue Rangers fandom's fan works repository. The only place you can read any of it now? Everything What Is Crap, where the MiSTing of the first story in the series (found under the "American Works" section) remains intact.

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Part of the plot of the movie Notting Hill, where the female lead is a movie star whose pornographic past turns up in the press halfway down the movie.
Probably belonging on this list is Arnold Schwarzenegger's first movie, Hercules Goes Bananas, AKA Hercules in New York, in which he appeared under the name of "Arnold Strong".
- And his voice was dubbed over.
  - According to an old interview with Arnie, both were the result of Executive Meddling.
Sylvester Stallone was in at least one softcore porn movie before he became beloved as Rocky, called Party at Kitty and Stud's. It was re-released after the movie and retitled The Italian Stallion.
- That's nothing compared to Kevin Costner's masterpiece (no not Waterworld). Tropers I present to you, Sizzle Beach U.S.A.
The Marx Brothers appeared in three Broadway musicals in the 1920s. The latter two, The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers, became their first two talking pictures. The first, I'll Say She Is, was produced under rather dubious circumstances; though it appeared before the movie studios introduced the talking picture, they were satisfied that it never was made into one.
- Then there's their first movie ever, Humor Risk, a cobbled-together silent mishmah of their vaudeville routines. Groucho apparently hated it so much that he burned it after viewing. At any rate it doesn't exist any more.
- Groucho also wasn't too happy with The Cocoanuts, saying of the film's two directors that 'one didn't understand English and the other didn't understand comedy.'
This is reportedly the case for Matthew McConaughey and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, which also starred Renee Zellweger. The movie is so stunningly awful that it makes Uwe Boll's films look like masterpieces by comparison. They were both struggling actors at the time and needed the cash, but McConaughey was reportedly so embarrassed at having appeared in the film he attempted to block its release.
- While not QUITE so shameful, it's doubtful that Renee will be mentioning Love And A .45 when she claims her Lifetime Achievement Oscar.
Robin Williams' real shameful first movie was an extremely un-PC 1977 sketch comedy film called Can I Do It 'Till I Need Glasses? (nice title). Notably, his scenes were cut out upon the film's first release; but just before Popeye came out, his scenes were restored and it was rereleased and he was promoted as the star (he really had only two scenes). Reportedly he sued them for wrongfully using his name and image, and subsequent video releases had him cut out again. It is now available on DVD uncut.
- FYI: The movie's title was an answer to the sketch comedy film If You Keep Doing That You'll Go Blind.
One of Peter Davison's (aka The Fifth Doctor) early jobs was a guest shot on The Tomorrow People, an episode known as A Man For Emily. Let's just say it opens with a nearly nude Peter sagging in manacles against a wall and goes downhill from there. Other fans told this troper that Peter expressed utter horror upon leaning that the episode had actually been broadcast in the US.
Paul Newman's acting debut was in a historical epic, called The Silver Chalice, which was a totalcommercial and artistic failure. When years later it was broadcast on television, Newman ran ads in Hollywood trade papers apologizing for his performance, and advising people not to watch the film.
Before being noticed by John Woo, Chow-Yun Fat was a porn actor.
Rob Morrow and Johnny Depp apparently swore a pact to eradicate every copy of Private Resort (1985) from the face of the planet. Given that it was recently released on DVD, it's clear that they have not yet succeeded in their quest.
Both director Tinto Brass and writer turned politician Gore Vidal would like to forget about the horror that was Caligula. In fact, pretty much anyone who was involved with that production would like to forget all about it.
Stanley Kubrick was embarrassed about his first feature film, Fear and Desire; he called it "a bumbling amateur film exercise", and tried to get all known prints, to prevent it from ever being seen again.
Brad Pitt would probably like to forget one of his earlier gems called Cutting Class.
Jason Segel revealed in interviews that the Dracula puppet musical his character is writing in Forgetting Sarah Marshall is, in fact, based on a real Dracula musical which he began writing in his youth, and the song he sings in the karaoke bar is a real song from that musical. He claims to have played a demo tape for Judd Apatow, whose only response was "You can never let anyone hear this tape." Listen for yourselves.
Before his award-winning role as Salieri in Amadeus, F. Murray Abraham's first big break was as a bundle of leaves in a series of Fruit of the Loom commercials.
- Is that what that's supposed to be?
Allegedly, Matthew Broderick was so horrified by The Road to Wellville that he demanded to have his name stricken from the movie's credits.
In 1980, following the success rival gag magazine National Lampoon had had with Animal House, William M. Gaines, founder and then-publisher of MAD Magazine, allowed the magazine's name to be used in MAD Magazine Presents: Up the Academy. Gaines, upon the film's release, was so disgusted with the finished product (which included the non-ironic use of racist jokes, as well as coarse language and sexual content Gaines would never allow to be published in his magazine) that he paid $50,000 to have all references to the Magazine removed, including a statue of Alfred E. Neuman that was prominently featured in the academy square. Gaines even parodied the film in his magazine as MAD Magazine Regrets Throwing Up the Academy (the spoof lasts just two pages before ending with a series of memos between Gaines and the editors (whose names are intentionally scribbled out) who agree just to stop the article, even though they had only covered the first 20 minutes of the film).
James Cameron's first credited directing gig was Piranha Part Two: The Spawning, although it's not clear how much of the finished product Cameron really created. Cameron's been quoted as saying it's the finest flying-piranha movie ever made.
- A bit of good did come out of it: the mechanism for the piranhas was reused for the crawling facehuggers in Aliens.
Naomi Watts has outright called some of her pre-Mulholland Drive films (which include the film adaptation of Tank Girl and Children Of The Corn IV) "pieces of shit".
- Some of us who loved Tank Girl didn't necessarily love it for Naomi Watts. So maybe that's an Old Shame she should take personally and keep close to her heart.
While he has not been famous long enough for it to technically count as Old Shame, Robert Pattinson has made no attempt to hide how little he thinks of Twilight or its Misaimed Fandom.
I read once that George Clooney actually wants to put his role in Batman And Robin on his obituary.
I don't think Jack Black would like people to remind him of The Neverending Story III...
The Weird Al Yankovic movie UHF is a touchy subject for Michael Richards, who played Stanley the Janitor. Though, he was a good enough sport to do the commentary on the DVD.

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Franz Kafka himself suffered from this. Very little of his writing was published in his lifetime; he left his papers to his friend Max Brod upon his death and instructed him (in writing) to burn them all unread. Needless to say, that's not what Brod did with them.
There is some debate over the literary value of the "juvenalia" of Jane Austen and the Brontes, making this Older Than Radio. Some of it's pretty good...some of it not so much. In the Brontes' case, the subject matter is wildly immature, a sort of proto-fanfic that embodies the same melodramatic stereotypes they would later be lionised for rising above. In Austen's case, almost all of the stories are unfinished, breaking off abruptly just as they start getting interesting. Even the best of it all probably would have needed a few more drafts before publication.
- This is, at the very least, Older Than Steam. Ever read Titus Andronicus?
  - A number of scholars feel Titus Andronicus was Shakespeare giving Marlowe (whose works tended to be rather violent) a poke in the ribs.
  - Like many of Shakespeare's plays, critics that don't like it have gone as far as saying someone else wrote it, but audiences then and now love them anyway. At least, audiences who are inclided to like Shakespeare in the first place.
- H.P. Lovecraft averted this trope by burning virtually everything he'd written when he was young. While notoriously dissatisfied with even his published works throughout his life, this one might've been a good call, as the few fragments which escaped the fireplace probably didn't deserve to.
Robert Heinlein's first novel, For Us, the Living, was written around 1939. It was not published, and Heinlein attempted to destroy every copy of it. He failed: it was published posthumously in 2004. Some people think it would have been better had he succeeded.
- In this case, it was his younger self's politics that he was ashamed of, not his writing. Compared to his early work that was actually published, For Us, the Living wasn't all that bad.
- Of the short stories Heinlein published under the pen-name "Lyle Monroe," Heinlein requested that the "stinkeroo three" of "Beyond Doubt," "'My Object All Sublime'," and "Pied Piper" not be reprinted.
Terry Pratchett wrote The Carpet People in his non-PC youth. His approach to this Old Shame was to re-write and re-publish it to be in line with his current morals.
- Pratchett also feels that someone who started at the beginning and started reading Discworld from The Colour Of Magic would get a really bad idea of what the series is like. Many fans would agree: The Colour Of Magic is great, but by no means matches up to the likes of Night Watch.
A gem from Thomas Pynchon's introduction to Slow Learner, a compilation of his early short stories: "My first reaction, rereading these stories, was oh my God, accompanied by physical symptoms we shouldn't dwell upon."
Diane Duane has said that she will probably not finish her "Tale of the Five" series, originally projected to be five novels, stuck at three currently for a very long time, because after doing some other work, she went back and read them and discovered "they were everything I ever hated about fantasy." (Quote approximate, as I can't find the original source.)
This was George Orwell's attitude toward his novels Keep the Aspidistra Flying and A Clergyman's Daughter, which he wrote for mostly contractual reasons. He also destroyed several unpublished novels he wrote in the 1920's, before he adopted the pen name of "George Orwell" (his real name was Eric Arthur Blair).
The Eye Of Argon by Jim Theis is an unusual example in that it is far and away the author's most well-known work. He gave an interview in 1984 expressing his disappointment at being remembered for something of such famously poor quality, but reportedly embraced his notoriety later on by participating in readings of the story at a local convention up until his death in 2002.
Nasu Kinoko refuses to re-publish Mahoutsukai no Yoru - Witch on the Holy Night despite fan pleas to do so (since only five copies were ever made), mainly due to embarassment over "bad writing". His feelings about other old works seem to be similar.
- Apparently, he's finally ready; it was announced in early 2008 that TYPE-MOON is releasing the story.
With several acclaimed (and pre-decline) series under his belt, Piers Anthony decided to push for the publication of his first written novel, a sci-fi/psycho-drama vanity piece called Ghost. Written in 1969, the kind of Brave New World Anthony envisioned would've been sketchy and out there by the standards of the day and absolutely do not stand the test of time. (Imagine a world where interracial marriage was statutory, as a way to foster racial understanding. Yeah...) And that's not even including the heap of cliches, plot holes, and general WTFery within those pages. He's not ashamed of it, but everyone else around him is.
- This is true of most of the old crap that Anthony got republished, such as Bio Of A Space Tyrant.
  - That's actually lack of shame with a healthy splash of respect for history. He's willing to own up.
- Er, weren't the "miscegenation laws" really a population-control mandate in drag?
Neal Stephenson was fine with letting his first novel The Big U stay out of print until people started spending hundreds of dollars for copies on eBay. He let it be republished because he felt the only thing worse than people reading the book was paying that much to read it.
This Troper still makes fellow Neil Gaiman fans crack up by telling the story of how at a Sandman convention in 2004, Neil was the guest auctioneer for a charity auction. One of the items was his first book ever written, a biography of the group Duran Duran. He grew so embarrassed and ashamed of it while he was up there that he temporarily passed the auctioneer duties over to Charles Vess because Neil simply couldn't sell it in good conscience. Vess quickly declared that Neil would sign it if the bidding got over $1,000, which drew quite a horrified reaction from Neil himself.
- This Troper actually had Gaiman sign her copy of that book in 2008. He remarked that he was a little less ashamed of it after a chance encounter with Simon le Bon, who had exclaimed "Oh, we liked that one!" when Gaiman confessed to having written it.
  - This Troper had a similar experience: when she presented her copy for autographing, Gaiman noted that he spent the money he earned from that book on his first word processor.
Edward ("The Monkey Wrench Gang") Abbey's first novel, Jonathan Troy, was published in 1954 in an edition of 5000 copies; he repudiated it at once, and it has never been reprinted. The cheapest copy currently available at Advanced Book Exchange is priced at $1300.
Dr Seuss was said to have destroyed the majority of his work because he was displeased with it. One notable book that was published posthumously is "Daisy-Head Mayzie" which really wasn't up to par with some of his other work.
Acclaimed hard SF writer John Ringo once wrote a blatantly pornographic, over-the-top testosterone-laden action story filled with misogyny and pointless violence, as a way to deal with stress and inner demons before getting back to his real work. He made the mistake of mentioning its existence to his fans and, more importantly, his publisher, who after reading the manuscript demanded that he let them publish it. That manuscript, Ghost, became a raging bestseller and the first book in the phenomenally popular "Paladin Of Shadows" series.
- To his credit, John Ringo himself has warmly embraced the Internet meme that has grown up around the rather shocking excess of prostitution and sex slavery in Paladin of Shadows. Google "Oh John Ringo No".
The Spy Who Loved Me was an experiment on Ian Fleming's part; unlike the other James Bond novels, the book focuses on the Bond Girl. Fleming grew to regret that move; when the producers of the film series sought the rights, he only let them have the name, preferring Adaptation Decay to having it brought to the screen.
Philip Pullman states on his website that he hates the first novel he ever wrote and refuses to even name it so people can't track it down.
- You mean The Haunted Storm? Pullman had better hope people forget how to use Google.
Lynne Cheney, wife of US vice-president Dick Cheney, tried to convince the publisher of her 1981 novel, Sisters, not to reissue it in 2006. Given the alleged sexual content (including a lesbian affair) of the book, her political opponents attempted to stir up controversy.
Sergej Dowlatov, an emigrant from Russia, forbade all his work made in USSR from being reprinted. He then wrote a novel, Compromiss, to show why (basically all of his previous writing was heavily modified by Soviet censorship).
Stanislaw Lem said that his first sci-fi novel, The Astronauts lacks any value. He had this opinion about most of science fiction though.
Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell of Hipgnosis, a British design studio who created famous album covers for bands such as Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin between the late 60s and the early 80s, deal with this trope imaginatively in their retrospective book For the Love of Vinyl: The Album Art of Hipgnosis. In the introduction to the (nearly) complete list of their covers at the back of the book, they admit that "There are some designs we would rather like to forget altogether"; within the list, these are marked with an icon of a turkey.
There are the early Harry Potter manuscripts JK Rowling has given fans a glimpse into but has stated she'll never release because of their quality.
- In an interview, she mentioned that at one point prior to writing Harry Potter she was working on a couple young adult novels, which she says she abandoned after realizing they were terrible.
Alastair Reynolds included an afterword in Galactic North admitting that his Revelation Space novels are derived in part from a much more space-opera-ish set of unpublished novels which he devoutly intends should never see print, although he regards them as a valuable learning experience.
Dean Koontz spent the seventies writing straight science fiction under his real name, and several other genres including romance under various pseudonymns. Since becoming a bestselling author, he has refused to let many of these early novels be reprinted.
- One of the most infamous of these is The Funhouse, a novelization of a decent but forgettable slasher flick, written under the pseudonym Owen West. The book was so terrible, that when he was unable to prevent it from being republished under his real name, he wrote a lengthy introduction decrying how terrible the book is and about how he likes to imagine the life that particular pseudonym took on after its publication ending very violently soon after its completion (namely, trampled by wildabeasts while on safari).
After 14-year-old Michael Carneal shot up his school in 1997, Stephen King asked his publishers to take his novel Rage (written as Richard Bachman), about a high school kid who holds his class hostage at gunpoint, out of circulation, fearing that other young people would get ideas. King's book was connected with three other school shootings between 1989-1996.
- Though the problem certainly wasn't the quality of the work.

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MST3K refused to re-air KTMA episodes after they left that station and requested Comedy Central cease airing Season 1 episodes shortly before Season 4. While some of these (especially the KTMA eps) had to do with the legal issues surrounding the movies in use that has plagued the series to this day, they admitted to this very trope in the Amazing Colossal Episode Guide, likening it to becoming a famous writer and then having an old classmate publish one of your shameful high school works.
- Late in the series' Comedy Central run, the station cycled a few episodes from Season 1 back into reruns (along with an embarassing ad campaign which flatly dismissed the contributions of performer J. Elvis Weinstein and Joel Hodgson, who created the show to begin with.)
  - And even if KTMA had wanted to rerun those episodes, it would not be possible, as Jim Mallon took the master tapes with him when he left (read: got laid off from) the station.
In Brazil, famous children's television hostess Xuxa tried at all costs to retrieve old pornographic material involving her, which is understandable. After the advent of the Internet, Xuxa successfully sued a big auction website to stop sales of a soft-porn movie with her, as well as a widely circulated newspaper for showing a half-naked picture of her.
The earlier Iron Chef episodes (Generally up until Iron Chef Morimoto came on board) were different in look and tone to the shows best known in America. After an awkward experiment in two contenders competing first to take on the Iron Chef, the familiar 60 minutue head-to-head battle format was adapted, with the prelims dropped. And frankly, Chairman Kaga seemed quite insane in those early eps, as opposed to the eccentric, but dignified Large Ham we're most familiar with. And for some reason, even the Food Network finally started airing (heavily edited) episodes of the early seasons, Iron Chef French I, Yutaka Ishinabe, and Iron Chef Japanese II, Koumei Nakamura, aren't even mentioned. (Sakai and Morimoto are listed on air as the French I and Japanese II, respectively). All of which makes things doubly baffling, when someone refers Rokusaburo Michiba (Japanese I) as the Iron Chef of Iron Chefs. We (Western audiences) never really get to see why.
- Reversed by the Australian broadcaster. They seem content to show episodes starting from some time after Sakai's introduction to up to Nakamura's term as Iron Chef Japanese but before the introduction of Masahiko Kobe. Morimoto's only appearance has been on the introductory specials for the US version. Which flopped. New Shame perhaps?
Early episodes of The Price is Right offered fur coats and, in at least two instances, live dogs as prizes. Obviously, this was long before Bob Barker became an animal-rights activist, and none of these episodes have ever been (intentionally) re-run per Bob's orders.
This post from Jack Coleman of Heroes, a.k.a. Noah Bennett, may utterly define this trope.
Tina Fey apparently feels this way about the first episode of 30 Rock, saying "if I never see that pilot again, it will be too soon".
- Her character Liz appeared in an ad for sexy singles.
In-universe example: In a 3rd Rock From The Sun episode, Mary discovered a thesis she had written years ago and which she had thought was brilliant at the time. She read it again only to find it was crap.
Amy Jo Johnson had a recurring role on the hit show Felicity, and a critically acclaimed series called Flashpoint is now her day job. Her first big role? The Pink Ranger on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. (She has, however, said at one point that she'd never live it down, and at another that it was a great first job.)
- Couldn't both apply? Great first job because she played a major role on a popular TV series... never living down the fact that she was the PINK RANGER.
  - It's difficult to gauge what AJJ actually thinks of Power Rangers, because from 1997-2003 or so she had a flat memorandum refusing to discuss the show in interviews. By all accounts she's never been anything but gracious to MMPR fans who have approached her after concerts, however.
Don't forget Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Joss Whedon has made every effort to make sure the unaired pilot is never seen (though as with Lucas and the Holiday Special, the internet has thus far won the conflict.)
- Speaking of poor Whedon, the Alien Resurrection movie was this for him as well. Reportedly, he can't talk about it without bursting into tears.
In several episodes of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart refers to his previous film career in this manner. He seems particularly regretful over Death To Smoochy. He said in his opening speech at the Oscars: "Tonight is the night when we celebrate excellence in film - with me, the fourth male lead from Death to Smoochy."
- Supposedly, the audio commentary of Death to Smoochy starts with Danny DeVito (the director) saying "Well, I guess the mourning period is over"
One episode of the Japanese TV series Ultra Seven featured Monsters of the Week who resembled atomic bomb radiation victims, complete with scars and welts. Oh yeah, and their plot was to suck blood from women and children in order to rejuvenate their polluted bodies. In the only country in the world to have nuclear weapons used on it, this sparked an obvious backlash (especially from real radiation victims, who were already suffering severe discrimination). Similar to the Pokémon incident above, the producers' reaction was to strike the episode from the canon and act like it never existed. But then again, this episode showed up in Turner's English dub of the show...
In the early nineties, a group of amateur filmmakers called BBV, headed by Bill Baggs, thought they'd make some straight-to-video movies featuring actors from Doctor Who. One of these, The Airzone Solution, is an enviro-thriller featuring Colin Baker, Sylvester Mc Coy, Peter Davison and Jon Pertwee. This isn't the Old Shame however, it was a bit of fun done by people who all got on well. But in a tiny role as Evil Company Woman's Sidekick you can see... ALAN CUMMING! I mean, seriously....
Another in-universe example can be found in the Robin Sparkles "Let's Go to the Mall TODAY!" tape from How I Met Your Mother.
- And its sequel Sandcastles In The Sand.
Season 1 of Elvis and Slick Monty was an attempt to parody the sitcom show format. Then came the Season Finale, where the Laugh Track was retconed into coming from voyeurs from another dimension, the Drop In Character was abducted by aliens, and Elvis revealed that he became pregnant. All of this set up Season 2, where the show grew the beard considerably while remaining a Refuge In Audacity.
The Re Cut of Stargate SG-1's pilot was the result of Brad Wright viewing it again and realizing how much Old Shame was in it.
Los Angeles news personality Chuck Henry has specifically requested that GSN never rerun the 1989 revival of Now You See It which he hosted. GSN has complied, though many game show fans think that Henry did a rather good job.
Brannon Braga, the writer of the infamous Star Trek Voyager episode Threshold, acknowledges it to probably be the worst Trek episode he ever wrote, referring to it as a "royal steaming stinker." Despite this fact, the episode did win an Emmy... for make-up.

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Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley had a band before KISS called Wicked Lester. They recorded a self-titled debut album, but before it could be released internal strife in the company and Wicked Lester dissolving blocked it. Once KISS began to take off, Gene and Paul purchased the rights to the Wicked Lester recordings to prevent the album from being released as a cash-in. According to them, it was out of embarrassment about how bad they were. In one interveiw Stanley, shows a picture of them in bad glam make up and says "This is when Lily Tomlin was in the group!"
- The 1981 Kiss Rock Opera Music From The Elder is often dismissed as an embarrassment and a misstep by Simmons and Stanley, as well as guitarist Ace Frehley, who departed the band after the album's release and commercial failure, and producer Bob Ezrin. In spite of this, the Simmons ballad "A World Without Heroes" was performed at the band's MTV Unplugged appearance.
- There is also the case of Carnival of Souls, recorded in 1995-1996 with the lineup featuring Bruce Kulick and Eric Singer and released with no serious promotion in the middle of the band's successful reunion tour with original members Frehley and Criss in 1997. The album is hardly ever spoken of by band members and holds the distinction of being the only full-length release in the KISS catalog to have never had any of its songs played live.
- The 1980 album Unmasked (AKA The Other KISS Disco Album) may also fall under this category, as of three band members involved in its recording (drummer Peter Criss did not participate in recording sessions and departed the band soon after the album's release), only Frehley seems to have anything good to say about it.
- And then there's KISS vs the Phantom of the Park, which is either So Bad Its Good or So Bad Its Horrible. I would not recommend mentioning it to them.
The Fugees released one of the greatest hip-hop albums in history, The Score, in 1996; it earned them Grammys, critical acclaim, and massive sales, and made household names out of members Wyclef Jean and Lauryn Hill (not so much Pras). Less than a year later, the group disbanded. Fans desperate for more soon discovered that the Fugees had recorded their debut, Blunted on Reality, in 1994, and over two million copies were sold before everyone realized that it was actually pretty terrible.
David Bowie's So Bad Its Good 1967 novelty single "The Laughing Gnome." He thought about letting fans choose his playlist for his Sound + Vision tour until NME started urging them to "Just Say Gnome" - he quickly pulled out.
American songwriter Irving Berlin, known for classics such as "God Bless America," wrote an antiwar song called "Stay Down Here Where You Belong." However, a few years later, the United States entered what was then known as "The Great War" and Berlin wrote his more well-known, patriotic songs. As a result, Berlin was so openly ashamed of his earlier song that Groucho Marx repeatedly antagonized Berlin by performing "Stay Down Here Where You Belong" in his presence.
- It was also performed by Tiny Tim in 1968 on his debut album "God Bless Tiny Tim".
Desperate for work, The Beatles reluctantly served as the backup band for a Liverpool stripper in July 1960. Mark Lewisohn, in The Complete Beatles Chronicle, refers to this one-off engagement as "the nadir of the Beatles' career."
- There are also the Beatles' repeated efforts to keep "The Star Club Tapes" off the market. Now, those tapes were homemade, low-quality, and possibly violating EMI's copyright. This is noted here because it was never EMI itself trying to stop the Star Club Tapes...
- Then there is the sole Quarrymen record, with "That'll Be the Day" on the A-side and "In Spite of All the Danger" (the only known McCartney/Harrison work) on the B-side. Only one copy was made. When the fella who had that copy tried to auction it off, Paul McCartney halted the auction, since his corp. MPL owned the copyright to "That'll Be the Day." He, as head of MPL, said that the Quarrymen's version of "That'll Be the Day" was unsuitable for release. The problems turned out to be fixable with digital remastering tricks once the record was in Apple's hands.)
In 1970, before launching his solo career as a singer-songwriter, Billy Joel formed an acid rock keyboard-and-drums duo, Attila, with former Hassles bandmate John Small. They released only one self-titled album before breaking up. All Music Guide critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine has described it as "the worst album released in the history of rock & roll — hell, the history of recorded music itself." Joel himself later called it "psychedelic bullshit." Joel fans who have heard the album (who aren't many; it's quite a rarity) tend to consider it So Bad Its Good.
Pantera's first four albums, recorded during their eighties "hair metal" phase (though 1988's Power Metal, the first featuring lead sing Phil Anselmo, is somewhat close to their trademark sound), have been kept out of print since their initial vinyl release. The band's website does not even acknowledge them, starting the discography with 1990's Cowboys From Hell. This policy is also followed by most of the fanbase.
- Interestingly, they did license a song from this era, "Proud To Be Loud", for use in Donnie Darko. To avoid having their name attached to it, it was credited to The Dead Green Mummies.
- Some metalheads instead pretend that Pantera's discography ended with Cowboys from Hell, due to 1992's Vulgar Display of Power and later albums being important milestones of the Groove Metal subgenre that is widely derided by hardcore metalheads.
Before becoming famous as the primary producer and creative figurehead behind the Wu-Tang Clan, RZA performed under the name Prince Rakeem and released a 1991 single, "Ooh We Love You Rakeem", that had none of the raw production or abstract lyricism he'd later be known for. Instead, he rapped in a somewhat comedic, almost Biz Markie-esque style about the difficulties of being a casanova: "I've got too many ladies/I've got to learn to say no". (The female-voiced titular hook is a long, long way from "Protect Ya Neck".)
- RZA's cousin and fellow Wu-Tang member GZA had a similarly embarrassing first album that year with the Cold Chillin' subsidiary of Warner Brothers. He appeared as "The Genius," with conventional boasts and lover-man material over generic early 90's production by Easy Mo Bee. In his Wu-Tang career GZA's lyrics would often refer back indirectly to this experience with major label commercialism (such as in "Protect ya Neck").
Speaking of early 90's hip-hop embarrassments, Jay-Z first appeared on video as mentor Jaz-O's hypeman in "Hawaiian Sophie." Nas would later use this as ammo against Jay-Z in the dis track "Ether."
Industrial/Metal icons Ministry disowned their first album With Sympathy. Their frontman calls it an 'abortion' and says the record label forced him to go for an 80s synth-poppy sound.
Piano-rock chanteuse Tori Amos fronted a synth-pop band called Y Kant Tori Read (also featuring Cult/GNR/Velvet Revolver drummer Matt Sorum) that released a single self-titled record in 1988. The record label stopped promoting it after two months, Tori had fired the entire band except one member by the time the first video was shot, and Tori has acted like it never existed, with good reason.
- Actually, Tori seems to have reconciled herself with the album, to the extent that she occasionally plays songs from the album live (particularly "Etienne" and "Cool on Your Island"). This may be an example of an artist reconciling with Old Shame. As for the badness of the album, opinions differ widely; some folks think it's abysmal, while others find it kind of charming in a synth-poppy, "80s hard rock meets Kate Bush" kind of way.
Polish singer Ewa Sonnet first got famous for her nude modeling, a fact she tried to downplay when her singing career took off.
Michael Longcor's "Privateer" is the only thing that survived from a bad space opera novel he wrote in college. The song itself is rather good.
In the late '60s, Rock/Soul icon Van Morrison recorded an entire album of deliberately, unreleaseably awful songs (The Big Royalty Check, Ringworm, Here Comes Dumb George) in order to get out of his contract with Bang Records. This ended up backfiring on him in the early '90s, when the cash-strapped rightsholders began licensing them out...on "Greatest Hits" compilations, no less.
Alanis Morissette once was a bubblegum-pop idol singer of sorts, releasing two albums named Alanis and Now it's the time. Later, when she became famous with Jagged Little Pill, she wasn't amused to see her other works were still around.
- Indeed, many Canadian music fans and journalists were dumbfounded when she was nominated for a Best New Artist Grammy for her third album.
Dr. Dre of N.W.A. fame helped to found the gangsta rap genre. But that didn't erase his earlier work with the "World Class Wrekin' Cru," where he was pictured on the album insert in mascara and lipstick. Eazy-E was kind enough to remind everyone about it on a diss track.
Peter Furler of the Newsboys has said that when he first listened to the finished Boyz Will Be Boyz album, he actually cried because "it was crap". This was actually New Shame at the time, but these days, any mention of the band's songs before the Not Ashamed era will generally be met with embarrassment.
Most members of dc Talk choose to ignore their first two albums, which were mostly rap-driven and quite a contrast to their later pop/rock work. They're also fairly reluctant to discuss the band now that they've gone off to do their own solo careers, but that's more because they're tired of being asked to reunite than because of actual shame.
Trent Reznor, the brains behind the dark, artsy, industrial music of Nine Inch Nails, started his music career in several '80s New Wave bands (most notably Option 30). It's bizarre to hear him singing "Der Kommissar", but it's even weirder to see him sporting spiky hair and dancing in a geeky suit.
- If you really want to see it, towards the end of "Light of Day", he's the keyboard player with the 80s hair playing "True Love Ways".
The reclaimed and renowned Nobuo Uematsu originally started work writing music for porn. Supposedly, he was let go by his manager because his music was 'too beautiful' for porn, whatever that means.
Shock rocker Alice Cooper's early psychadelic period of 1969-70 and his bizarre experimental years of 1977-83, as well as his "hair metal" years of 1986-91 (except for "Poison", his biggest post-seventies hit) are largely ignored by the man himself as well as most fans.
My Bloody Valentine do not think much of their non-shoegazing period (everything they released before the Strawberry Wine EP).
Most of Weird Al's early stuff is not considered particularly shameful by him, so much as "not fit for release as it was recorded in his dorm's bathroom". Still, he has expressed displeasure with his parodies "It's Still Billy Joel to Me" and "Girls Just Want To Have Lunch", keeping the former off his Dare to Be Stupid album, and deciding against including the latter on his Food album.
Juan Luis Guerra and his group 4:40 released their first album around 1984, which was very experimental and quite different from the poetic merengue and bachata songs they would be known for later. Said album didn't sell well, and they also didn't like to mention it, beginning their official discography with the one where they first get their characteristic sound, released in '86.
Genesis's first album, From Genesis to Revelation, was an attempt to appeal to their producer, Jonathan King, by mimicking the Bee Gees. As the next three albums were released (Trespass, Nursery Cryme and Foxtrot) a line was rapidly drawn under that part of their career. The songs from it were rarely, if ever, performed. Most of the fans agree with this policy and many disregard the album altogether.
Mike Oldfield's 1975 recording of Don Alfonso, an early 20th century comedy novelty song, falls into this trope. The single was pulled worldwide before many copies were sold, and the accompanying video was rarely seen until it appeared on a 2004 DVD. Apart from that, and the early Virgin Records compilation V, the track has never appeared on any other compilation. This is especially notable considering some of the musical skeletons-in-closets that were dusted off and presented in Boxed (e.g. Mike Oldfield and David Bedford's attempt at a duet in Speak Tho' You Only Say Farewell).
Alice In Chains began as a hair metal act. After Facelift was released, they began to deny this and avoided answering questions about it in interviews. While they were never officially published during that period, there are a few demos floating around the internet.
After releasing their first EP and breaking into the early '80s hardcore scene, Bad Religion then went on to make Into the Unknown... a prog-rock album. Everyone in the band widely regards it as one of the worst mistakes they've ever made.
- Don't forget that it has never had a second printing, two of the members walked out during the recording of the first song, and they followed it up with an EP titled Back To The Known. Curiously, Allmusic gives it four and a half stars.
Pink's 2000 debut Can't Take Me Home caused critics to label her as Fiona Apple SINGING R&B! She took the hint, and her next album combined her tough-girl appeal with a more appropriate rock flavoring, while keeping her soulful voice (and still doing the occasional R&B/hiphop track), and the rest is history.
Cee-Lo, the singing half of Gnarls Barkley, was originally in a group called Goodie Mob, who were in league with Outkast and had a similar style. However, he hated the group's overly-pop third album, World Party. He left the group as a result, to record two solo albums before forming Gnarls Barkley with Danger Mouse.
In 1992, Randy Travis recorded an album called Wind in the Wire for a TV series of the same name. It is widely considered to be one of his weakest albums, and it got no push whatsoever at radio (at least in the US; one single went Top 10 in Canada).
All of Sawyer Brown's albums for Capitol Records were largely composed of bubblegum country-pop. When they switched to Curb Records in 1992, they went for a much more substantial sound, and with a couple exceptions (most notably a late-80s cover of George Jones' "The Race Is On"), most of their earlier works are long since forgotten and out of print. It should also be noted that the earliest albums don't even credit the producer, musicians, or songwriters.
Bob Seger refuses to allow his early albums to be reissued on CD. This is somewhat of a trope subversion in that many fans regard titles like Mongrel, Back in '72 or Seven to be as good as, if not better than, Seger's more commonly-available later stuff.
Before the band Hurt released their first album "Vol. 1," they released two more albums prior to that: Their self titled album and The Consumation. The latter was eventually released in 2008 under the name "The Re-Consumation," while the former will most likely never see the light of day again because as J. Loren (the band's singer) put it, it was "poorly done and actually diminishes from the intentions behind the songs." Some of the songs from said album were released between Vol. 1 and Vol. II, however, they've confirmed that the songs from both albums are drastically different from the early songs. (an interview with the singer states that the self titled album's Summers Lost and Abuse of SID is different from Vol. II versions)/
This trope is often misaimed at Marvin Gaye's Here, My Dear album, as people considered it an intentionally bad album so it would sell poorly and give as little money to his ex-wife (who was to receive any and all profits from Gaye's next album after the divorce) as possible. In reality, the divorce had taken an extremely bad toll on Gaye emotionally, physically, and mentally, so he intentionally threw his old sound out the window and created a concept album dealing with the emotional roller-coaster his life had become. As a matter of fact, Gaye spent so much time on it that he sincerely thought it would be one of his biggest sellers, broaden his audience, and keep his ex comfortable enough to leave him alone. Many music critics now consider it if not one of his best albums, certainly a noble failure.
This trope is probably the reason progressive-power metal band Kamelot doesn't play any songs from the terrible albums before 2000's The Fourth Legacy.
- Either that or A) Khan's radically different singing style from Vanderbilt's "singing" makes them difficult to perform or B) Khan doesn't feel comfortable singing songs that weren't written for him to sing. Most likely either the singing style difficultings or the first two or three albums are old shames.
Celtic Frost - Cold Lake. Considered one of the worst metal albums of all time (along with St. Anger), the band refused to re-issue it.
Perhaps some of the most infamous examples are the infamous "racist" freestyles that a teenaged Eminem recorded, after being dumped by a black girlfriend. This caused a backdraft when The Source found several of these while Eminem was starting to get real mainstream success after the release of The Slim Shady LP. Whether or not these tapes actually are racist is open to interpretation, but the hip-hop community was not happy with him for dropping the "N-bomb" as a white guy with no percieved N Word Privileges. To this day, he hates the fact that those tapes ever saw the light of day, and even made a song to officially apologize for ever creating them.
- There was also his first album "Infinite". Man, what a stinker.
Sergei Rachmaninoff's 'Prelude in C-sharp minor', written early in his career, became his most famous piece. He detested it, and often would refuse to play it when he performed. However, unlike many of the other examples on this page, it's a pretty good piece, although it has all the musical subtlety of a sledgehammer to the forehead.
Industrial artist Al Jourgensen — member of Ministry, Revolting Cocks (aka Rev Co), and Lard — has been known to physically destroy any copies of Ministry's With Sympathy and Twitch albums that he encounters at clubs or signings. Both albums are considered by fans and critics to be decent, if not exceptional, synthpop/darkwave albums (much closer to Kraftwerk and Front242 than to his later work), and Twitch in particular has a strong following; but he's developed a substantial hatred for them.
Older Than Radio example: Richard Wagner insisted that the first three operas he wrote didn't count as his work. The third, Reinzi, is still played today, but the first two are generally considered to be pretty bad.
Metallica has completely disowned their St. Anger album; not only do they refuse to perform the songs from the album at shows, but drummer Lars Ulrich has openly mocked how the drums sound on the album. It's rather unsurprising that they wouldn't be too keen on it, though, since, in addition to being So Bad Its Horrible, the album is essentially the soundtrack to the band's Creator Breakdown, which they almost didn't come back from.
This trope might apply to country music Joe Nichols' 1996 debut album. While 2005's III was his third album for Universal South, it was his fourth overall, and by naming it III he effectively disowned the 1996 album, which he recorded at age 20 — either out of shame or out of the fact that it was on a small indie label and produced no chart singles whatsoever.
Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus seem to regard most of their early songwriting efforts this way. Mostly the Hep Stars and Hootenanny Singers efforts, as well as the ABBA songs written before they knew what kind of band they were going to be. (Ever heard "Hey, Hey Helen", "I Am Just A Girl", "Watch Out", and "Man in the Middle"? There's a reason they weren't crammed into Mamma Mia...) Benny seems especially embarassed, though, going so far as joking about making a "Worst of" album for ABBA.
The French composer Maurice Duruflé was such a perfectionist that he only managed to publish 14 works in a career spanning 60 years, and still felt enough Old Shame about the first one that he withdrew it from publication.
John Linnell, before They Might Be Giants, played keyboard for The Mundanes. If the music itself isn't an old shame, that bleached hair probably is.
Composer Hector Berlioz was taken to "burning" compositions of his that he disliked, though often the manuscripts were not actually destroyed but filed away. One of these works, the Messe Solennelle, was not rediscovered until 1991.

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Warhammer 40000/Warhammer isn't immune. GW regards the Squats and Zoats as "things better left forgotten". However, hints of them do pop up in new material from time to time...
- In the now-defunct official Games Workshop webboard, posting anything about the Squats would typicaly result in the thread being deleted, and the thread-starter banhammered.
Later editions of Vampire: the Masquerade did their damnedest to sweep everything from the Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand supplement under the carpet.
Giant Vampire Frog. That is all.
Gary Gygax has said that he regretted a number of rules that he felt pressured to put in various versions of Dungeons And Dragons, singleing out psionics, the monk class and weapon speeds and effects versus armor as egregious examples.

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William Shakespeare's first tragedy was the absurdly violent Titus Andronicus; apologists argue that Elizabethan society, more familiar with bloody public punishments, wouldn't have blinked at it. But it's still not a good play by any means. Not a true example of an Old Shame as Will had already written two classics: the history Richard III and the comedy The Comedy Of Errors. As it was, Titus Andronicus was Shakespeare's most popular play during his lifetime.
- Is there a trope like Old Shame where other people want to forget all about it? Because Titus is a case of Your Mileage May Vary, along with many of Shakespeare's plays - while a few snobbish critics claim it cannot be performed seriously, audiences don't always agree.

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Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima has went on to state that he felt the original two MSX 2 games in the series, Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2, did not age very well since the original Metal Gear Solid is essentially (gameplay wise) a remake of them and even went on to state that he regretted that he made Metal Gear Solid a sequel to those games instead of a reboot.
The original Hitman: Codename 47 seems to have — most would say quite deservedly — become this. It's the only game in the series not to have been released on a console — a more typical platform for stealth games — and is not included in the Hitman Trilogy collection, whose very name implies that there are only three games in the series. IO and Eidos haven't yet publicly disowned it, but that may be out of a desire not to acknowledge it even exists.
- Not to mention that Contracts - the third (if Codename 47 counts) entry in the series - is essentially somewhat of a remake of the first title.
Persona was one of Atlus' first attempts to localize an RPG in the North American market, but the end result was hopelessly screwed up. As Atlus USA has gotten much better over the years, the company eventually made an announcement that they were going to attempt a proper localization of the game for its PSP Updated Rerelease, more than a decade later.
Hudson Entertainment, creators of the Bomberman franchise, have all but disowned the utterly atrocious Bomberman: Act Zero, making fun of it in a promotional video for Bomberman Live.

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In-universe example: Strong Bad of Homestar Runner refers to his first attempt at drawing a dragon as the "S-is-For-Sucks" Dragon.
- However, in the Trogdor's 5th birthday toon, he sings a song about the S is For Sucks Dragon, then indicates that he's sick of Trogdor, claiming that "you Internet types" ruined him.
- An out of universe example would be "Marshmallow's Last Stand", the very first cartoon featured on the website. Once the quality of the shorts began to noticeably improve, the Brother Chaps removed "Stand" from the live version of the website and moved it to the museum (the area of the website where they archive old stuff for historical purposes), and then later removed it from the museum as well. Their reason: "The characters are completely different. Saying and doing things they'd never do now."
  - They removed the Jumping Jack Contest, too. But, both the toons are archived on the HR Wiki and are on the DVDs.
Egoraptor has said that when he posted the first episode of Metal Gear Awesome on Newgrounds, he thought it would get blammed (deleted for sucking).
of Ill Will Press, producer of Neurotically Yours has had a rather odd relationship with his work. For quite some time, he's consistently denounced and attempted to suppress much of his earliest work; typically citing the heavily Fanservice-oriented nature of it. However, much of his more recent work pushes the fanservice envelope much farther; the only difference being that it's now done "ironically" instead of straight. This appears to have happened concurrently with the Flanderization of Germaine into a Straw Feminist.

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Although Doug Walker (AKA The Nostalgia Critic) may be slightly embarrassed by one of his first works, starring himself as a cowboy, he had the guts to upload it to That Guy With The Glasses.com for us all to laugh at, so you have to give him credit for that.

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Megatokyo author/illustrator Fred Gallagher is known for his self-deprecating remarks about his earlier work. His detractors once tried to use this to stain his reputation by revealing fanservicey early drawings of possible precursors to the comic's female characters; in response, he publicly revealed the whole "hidden" site, showing that he wasn't hiding anything - he was just embarrassed about his old art.
Although Order Of The Stick has always had simple art, it has gotten significantly better and more detailed as the series has gone on. Enough so that Rich Burlew has admitted that he hates having to draw the characters in their old styles (necessary for continuity purposes) when making bonus strips for the book collections. One design choice he particularly hates is the jagged lines that used to separate panels, so much so that he straightened them for the books.
Webcartoonist David Willis ("It's Walky!", "Shortpacked!") appears to have no shame, having released original crayon drawings◊ drawn when he was 11 showing three (if you count the arrogant talking car) of the characters that would one day appear in his strips.
- He did, however, go back and re-draw (and rewrite) a large portion of the beginning of "It's Walky!" recently.
- Additionally, he tends not to mention the series of Walky video games he made unless someone on his forum brings them up first.
  - On top of that, his earliest Shortpacked strips (from before Ethan and the gang were introduced) have apparently vanished off the internet.
Raving loon/webcomic critic (you decide!) John Solomon wrote a parody of Dominic Deegan, which he later attacked, as he did to Deegan and so many other comics.
Before his explosive popularity as a games critic, and even before his modest popularity as the creator of the Chzo Mythos series, Yahtzee ran several shortish webcomics on his site, which he has now gone on to disown completely along with every game he made before The Trials of Odysseys Kent, as well as every work of fiction he wrote before the age of 20, as he doesn't want people thinking he actually cares about said work.
Exterminatus Now is mainly based on mocking the daylights out of a setting that attempted to make Sonic The Hedgehog Darker And Edgier by adding Warhammer 40,000 themes. Eastwood has gone on record as saying something to the effect of "...made something good out of, in retrospect, the worst idea I ever had."
Most webcomic artists get better with practice (thus you can see the quality of the art improve as the strip continues). Some hate their own early work so much that they completely re-draw it and remove the "old" version from their websites.

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The Daily Mail would rather forget the fact that it used to be Oswald Mosley's mouthpiece, but its critics (who argue that it hasn't strayed far) aren't going to let it forget the headline "Hurrah for the Blackshirts" in a hurry.
Jimmy Wales, owner and co-creator of That Other Wiki, originally made money on the Internet with a site for what he calls "glamour photography", now downplayed for obvious reasons.
This trope is not limited to the media. Air Forces and Navies worldwide routinely run wargames where the greenest pilots are thrown into heavy, and often lopsided engagements to get their most egregious mission failures out of the way, while only risking the pilot's ego.

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Eyrie Productions Unlimited's first work was Undocumented Features, a work they are still continuing 18 years after it started. However, their second work was (Ben and Zoner get) Hopelessly Lost, something that the original authors would prefer to have you forget. They are reworking it starting from the roots as Bubblegum Crisis: The Iron Age.
Mark Mac Kinnon's Shadow Chronicles, a Ranma One Half fanfiction, is still going strong despite being his first story.

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George Lucas' first movie, THX-1138, created as a film school project, is regarded as a classic and an early indicator of his creative genius despite its enduring obscurity. Some even go so far as to say it's the only truly good film he's ever made.
- On the other hand, there's also the Star Wars holiday special.

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Orson Scott Card's very first published story was a short story. Its title: Enders Game. Not only did it spawn a novel series, but it seems like a recent habit is to come up with new, "creative" ways to republish the original short story.
- Although the short story was quite a good piece of work, it doesn't hold a candle to the full-length novel into which Card revised and expanded it a few years later.
- Card also seems to be quite proud (or at least unashamed) of his early nonfiction writings written for the same Mormon magazine that would ultimately go on to publish Ender's Game for the first time.
  - On the other hand, his first novel, "The Worthing Saga" pissed him off so much he rewrote it.
Agatha Christie's first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles is a very confident, accomplished novel, full of all the twists and intricate plotting she would come to be known for.
Henry Roth's first novel Call It Sleep, though largely ignored upon its 1934 publication, later gained critical acclaim as one of the greatest achievements in American Jewish literature; it's even been ranked with Moby Dick as one of the greatest American novels, period. It went on to sell over one million copies. However, Roth wouldn't produce another novel (or much writing altogether) for another sixty years. When he finally returned to novel writing in 1994 with a planned six-part series, Mercy of a Rude Stream (of which he only completed four volumes before his death), critical opinion was mixed at best and sales were poor.
Harper Lee produced To Kill A Mockingbird right off the bat. She disappeared from the writing scene just as quickly.
The Outsiders was S.E. Hinton's first work, published when she was still in high school.

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Though he wrote scripts for other shows prior to that, Gene Roddenberry's (of Star Trek fame) first show he had a major impact on as a writer, Have Gun Will Travel (sometimes marketed and aired as The Paladin, after the protagonist) is widely regarded as a classic in its own right.

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Richard Thompson's first solo writing credit for Fairport Convention was 'Meet on the Ledge' - a song so powerful it's used today as their unofficial anthem.
Every single one of George Strait's albums, from 1981's Strait Country onward, has consistently gotten rave reviews from everybody. To this day, he still performs some of his earliest songs (including "Unwound", his first single) in concert.
In the late 1970s-early 1980s, David Allan Coe released Nothing Sacred and Underground, two vulgar albums with songs like "Cum Stains on the Pillow", "Nigger Fucker", etc., which were out of character even given his outlaw image. However, he doesn't appear to have spoken about the albums negatively, and still sells them on his website.
- I'm not 100% certain on this, but I had heard that Coe intentionally made those two albums incredibly vulgar (and racist) because he wanted to see if people were more interested in his music or his "outlaw" persona.

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Eugene Jarvis and the "Vid Kidz" group in the early 1980s. Their first game was the legendary Defender, followed in quick succession by Stargate, Robotron, Joust, and Sinistar, all classics. Their later efforts were the weaker ones: Bubbles, Inferno, Splat!, and Joust 2: Survival of the Fittest.

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Drow Tales ' first few chapters were redrawn and rewritten, but just to clean things up, and 'fit' Ariel to the personality she's now known by more. They are still available for download, and still pretty nice as far as webcomics go.
Scarcely a webcomic out there older than one year (and some which are even newer) is immune to this trope. The ones that haven't redrawn their early pages for the website use redrawn versions as buyer bait for the printed edition.
- One exception to this is the furry webcomic Las Lindas: despite artist Chalosan having improved his skills quite a bit over the years, the older strips have remained untouched, years after their original publication.

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