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So you've got the new game you've been wanting for so many years. You've watched all the trailers, read all the articles, and are looking forward to spending a good fifteen more hours playing as the Bad Ass from the last game who was your hero when you were ten. Now you're thirteen, and you're better at games, and you're ready to relive that childhood nostalgia...
And then you play the damn thing and your brain turns to mush and justified rage, rage, rage. Turns out that the main character died or got Put On A Bus or something (you're too livid to really care), and now you're stuck playing as some girly-looking blond with a naggy girlfriend when all you really want is the old guy back.
They might try to seduce you with character development. I mean, this new guy plays exactly like the old one, maybe even seems a little stronger. He has new and badass weapons to use, and the plot about him's kind of interesting and he's not a two-bit Jonas Quinn, at least.
But that's not your problem. You'd rather have a two bit Jonas Quinn. At least he'd be as cool as the old guy. Every time you see your new player character in a cutscene, you're reminded of what might have been; who he might have been; who he should have been.
The new guy did nothing — or very little — to invoke your ire. If he'd been there from the start, maybe you could have loved him, or at least respected him. But no — he's a replacement, he's not even a Jonas Quinn who at least shared some character traits with the other guy, he's a totally different guy, and so every flaw - every trait that makes him not like the character you want him to be — drives you crazy with longing and disgust, and all you can do is get angrier and angrier.
Time to troll some message boards about how 'stupid' and 'gay' the character is.
Don't worry, we don't hate you for it. Everyone, someday, will find their own Replacement Scrappy — a character doomed to be The Scrappy mostly because they're the new protagonist and you liked the old one.
In short, They Changed It Now It Sucks, but with the main character. If lucky, he may be Rescued From The Scrappy Heap.
Examples:
Video Games
- Metal Gear Solid 2's Raiden is a textbook case. Maybe he would have been more liked if he hadn't, to make his inherent not-Snake-ness worse, also been a distinctly Bishounen You Suck character who spent a lot of time Narming at his girlfriend over the Codec.
- This is made even worse in that he remained practically hidden away by Kojima until the Prologue section of the game ended. The opening introduction even goes as far as to either show none of the Plant chapter, or when they had to, only show the villains, or to superimpose Snake in Raiden's place...
- At least, this trope was the case til he gave the fans something to talk about in Metal Gear Solid 4. Now there are people bemoaning the fact that he's not properly playable. Bonus points if these are the same guys who bemoaned his main character status in MGS 2!
- Apollo Justice Ace Attorney attracted a lot of ire from fans of the old main character, Phoenix Wright; partly because Apollo simply wasn't Phoenix, and partly for necessitating Phoenix to become arguably Not As He Was Known in order to allow him to shine. No one can quite seem to decide what the problem with him is, though; depending on who you ask, the complaint is that he's "almost a carbon copy of Phoenix" or "not enough like Phoenix".
- The unexplained absence of well-liked support and secondary characters important to Phoenix's character (especially the Feys, Gumshoe and Miles Edgeworth) also upset many fans, which means poor Apollo gets even more dislike directed towards him.
- Devil May Cry 4 and I'm-not-Dante Nero. He also had a girlfriend who he Narmed at.
- Possibly made worse by the revelation that he's actually supposed to be "Not-Vergil" rather than "Not-Dante."
- Not to mention he pretty much looks exactly like Dante, except much younger. It's like the character designers didn't even try.
- That's not especially fair. Nero's outfit and demeanor are much more "angry skater boy" than Dante's "fun-loving Badass Longcoat" vibe. The similarities primarily boil down to a similar hair color and style, and wearing the same rough types of clothes; the way those clothes actually look is quite different. Then there's the Devil Bringer...
- The title character of Mega Man X7 was demoted to Optional Party Member so the apparently 13-year old robot Axl could steal the lead role.
- Also, the reason Stinkoman87 avoided Battle Network for two weeks before getting Star Force is because he didn't want this happening to Geo Stelar.
- Midori from Guitar Hero III, as noted above. She was added to the series' third installment while Clive Winston, Eddie Knox, and Pandora were removed. While Midori is a perfectly fine character and the player's choice of avatar has absolutely no effect on the actual gameplay, this troper is still bitter about the removal of her beloved Pandora.
- Strangely enough, Eddie Knox and Lars Umlaut could both be seen as replacements for Clive Winston (who got shoved into being an unlockable character in the second game before being removed in the third), but neither got anywhere near that much heat.
- Rectified in Guitar Hero 4.
- Bowser Junior had the misfortune of being a Replacement Scrappy for an entire team: The Koopalings.
- Johnny from the third installment of the Shadow Hearts series was a poor stand in for Yuri, the protagonist of the previous two entries.
- However, any fan of the series would realize Yuri is unavailable for the non-trivial reason that he's dead, damnit. He's not coming back. No one found the body. He's got his Stable Time Loop and he's happy.
- On the other hand, the fact that Halley is never even mentioned at all is a little harder to rationalise. Particularly since he moved to the USA after the events of the first game, and would seem a fairly reasonable choice for a cast member given his psychic powers and prior experience of fighting at least one Cosmic Horror.
- Joshua, your partner for Week Two in The World Ends With You, is a Replacement Scrappy on both sides of the fourth wall. The players hate him for being condescending, smug and having all the self-defense skills of a rock for quite a while, in addition to replacing Shiki; Neku hates him for... exactly the same reasons. But some forgive him.
- This troper thinks the above statement is unfair to rocks, which are pretty difficult to destroy. Joshua's early defense skills are more like soft cat food.
- This gets levied against all the Jonas Quinn additions to Super Smash Bros Brawl in some circles, although most of the removed characters were just duplicates of other characters who remained. Perhaps the one who gets the most heat is Lucario, though, as he replaced Mewtwo, who didn't have any clone in the game. The fanbase still has arguments as to whether Mewtwo was a hopeless character that got replaced by a superior character in every way, or replaced by someone meant to hype the latest versions of the Pokemon games and abandoned instead of retooled.
- On a side note, Lucas was thought to be a Replacement Scrappy for Ness until Ness was confirmed to return.
- R.O.B. has gained honorary Replacement Scrappy status for essentially confirming an early leaked roster for Brawl (being the least obvious character to appear), thus "replacing" all the characters people wanted in the game who didn't get in.
- In The King Of Fighters, lots of people hated May-Lee for replacing Jhun Hoon. And lots of people hate K' and Ash Crimson for not being either Kyo or Iori. K', however is less Scrappy than Ash because he only links himself with Kyo's story once (in 1999, whereas actual Kyo clones appear, but even they don't play much to the story/main fighting) and doesn't bother with him much. Ash, on the other hand, had it worse due to his extremely flamboyant style, as well as him becoming a Wesley by starting to actually UPSTAGE Kyo and his crews by stealing Chizuru's powers, and later Iori's, in EVERY game he's in.
- In the Soul Calibur series, rabid Hwang fanboys (and Hwang x Mina fangirls) just won't stop bashing Hong Yungsung for replacing Hwang in Soul Calibur II.
- Von Bolt from Advance Wars: Dual Strike, the Big Bad replacing Sturm. Being a crippled asthmatic old man in a hovering wheelchair, and a subpar CO that was ludicrously easy to defeat on top of it, rankled somewhat when compared to Sturm; Sturm being essentially Darth Vader with a paint job who dropped meteors on people and had a leitmotif with an electric guitar solo.
- In the Donkey Kong games so far, Tiny in Donkey Kong 64 (for replacing Dixie) and Kiddy Kong in Donkey Kong Country3 (for taking Diddy's place) have been seen as this.
- Tiny is an interesting case - she was actually designed before Dixie, while Dixie was a stand-in for Tiny until Donkey Kong 64 was finished. This makes her a replacement for her own replacement.
- A lot of Naruto fans hate the latest Wii game, Clash of Ninja Revolution 2, because the creators decided to give North America some exclusive characters like Kurenai, Asuma, Yugao, Baki and Bando (the last one being an Expanded Universe character created solely for the game, the others ((save for Asuma)) have never been in the Clash of Ninja series, even in Japan). The thing is, in order to add these characters, they removed some old ones like Iruka, Kimimaro and the Third Hokage. The thing is, if they kept those characters, the fans would just accuse TOMY of being lazy. Unpleasable Fanbase at its finest, people.
- A lot of Drakengard fans regard Nowe, the hero of the sequel, as a Replacement Scrappy for Caim... and even most of Nowe's fans admit he just can't compare as a character.
- Inverted in Knights Of The Old Republic 2 with the Exile. While fans of the game don't outright hate the character, the characters in the game certainly seem to! Just being present at the site of a major catastrophe will cause everyone to blame you for it and even doing good deeds (incidentally, one includes fixing the problem that you didn't cause but were still blamed for) still fails to earn more than a smidgen of respect. Instead every character in the game seems to want the protagonist from the original back.
Live Action TV
- Mike or Joel? Plenty of people on the 'Mike' side have this trope as their reasoning.
- In Doctor Who fandom, plenty of people have commented on the disappointment and sense of loss felt around a regeneration from one Doctor to another; even though it's basically the same character, the changing actors makes it easy to feel that 'your' Doctor is gone and has been replaced by some interloper instead. Fortunately for the show, for the most part each Doctor has managed to put his own stamp on the show and maintain the fans of the previous Doctor (or at least pick up some new ones).
- To say nothing of the New Who Rose fen who took violently against Martha for being the new Companion. And the Martha fen who took violently against Donna for being the new Companion.
- Star Trek The Next Generation used to (and still does) take a lot of a flak simply for not being the Original Series.
- It also had a character who suffered from this same trope, Dr. Beverly Crusher's one-season replacement Dr. Kate Pulaski. A lot of it has to do with the shady circumstances surrounding the brief departure of Gates McFadden, and there's never been a clear reason for why she left and whether it was due to conflict with the producers or not. Regardless, the show itself treated Dr. Pulaski as a "guest star" despite her role as a major character and after season 2, her character was never mentioned again, stopping just short of canon Dis Continuity.
- Every Star Trek series has suffered from this to some fans. And the more recent the series, the Scrappier it seems to get.
- Although she's not really The Scrappy, some lonelygirl15 fans have complained that Emma "replaced Bree".
- When Chappelle's Show ended prematurely after Dave's Creator Breakdown, Comedy Central quickly filled his time slot with Mind of Mencia, a show that is supposedly similar in content (though Mencia makes it obvious in the first episode he hates the idea of being "A Hispanic Dave Chappelle"). Boy, did the Chappelle fans go ape-shit over this one.
- Everybody remembers Steve from Blues Clues, right? So where'd this "Joe" guy come from?
- It didn't help that the show underwent some major retooling not long after he was cast. Naturally, the actor took the brunt of the backlash despite having nothing to do with, say, live-action puppet sequences.
- Then there's Jonas Quinn himself, in Stargate SG-1 — to the point when a massive Internet campaign
 was organized to bring Daniel Jackson back.
- And then in Stargate Atlantis, there was a bit of a backlash when Dr. Beckett was replaced with Dr. Keller. But because Dr. Keller was Kaylee, the hate was restricted to "No offense, Jewel, but..."
- Of course, a lot of this had to do with the Wall Bangerific death of Dr. Beckett. If his death had been handled in a slightly less What An Idiot way, perhaps Dr. Keller wouldn't have had a stigma to her.
- This troper thinks Colonel Cameron Mitchell should be this Trope Namer. Although the site calls him a Jonas Quinn; he filled the same job as Jack O'Neill but minus his angst, disdain for science, etc. A well-thought out, unique character, and well-liked character played by a very good Ben Browder. But he was never EVER gonna be Jack O'Neill.
- Tara King (Linda Thorson) replacing Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) in The Avengers.
- It is in this Beakmans World aficianado's experience that the majority of fans who don't like Liza and Phoebe (especially Phoebe) is summed up in the fact that they're not Josie.
- Brilliantly averted when Colin Quinn replaced Norm Macdonald in the Weekend Update sketch on Saturday Night Live. He started his very first segment with a properly sentimental Lampshade Hanging speech that turned the replacement ire into perhaps one of the show's most notable quotes. (Of course, this was neither the first nor the last time Saturday Night Live had a major cast change, and some have been more successful and well-received than others.)
Colin Quinn: You know how you go to your favorite bar, and your local bartender isn't there? You ask, "Where's Jeff?" "Jeff no longer works here, I'm Steve." Then you're thinking, hey, who's this idiot? I like Jeff. But you still want your drink. And even though Steve doesn't mix your drink the same way you're used to, like Jeff, you still like the bar. You don't want to have to go to a different bar. And even Steve might feel kinda bad because Jeff trained him. Jeff showed him how to work the cash register, where the tonic was on the soda gun, who tips, who doesn't. Well, I'm Steve. What can I get you?
- Kennedy was both the Replacement for and the Antithesis of Tara in Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
- The whole last season.
- On Angel, Wesley joined the cast right after Doyle died. Doyle's popularity with fans, combined with the fact that fans weren't exaclty eager for Wesley to come back, led to some serious anti-Wesley backlash. By the end of the season, however, he was generally accepted by fans.
- Carmen Electra replacing Jenny McCarthy on MTV's Singled Out.
- An earlier MTV gameshow, Remote Control, had a fan backlash (mild— this was pre-Blog) when the first hostess, Marisol, was replaced first with Kari Wuhrer and then by a string of lesser lights.
- In-story, one of the most cringe-inducing part of the Mexican telenovela Carrusel was when a bunch of third-graders hostilized their sweet, clever and well-intentioned new teacher for just replacing their Team Mom of a teacher. It was very petty from them, VERY badly-acted, and this troper actually cheered when the old janitor of the school, usually the gentlest person in the world, bitched the brats out for treating the poor girl like crap.
- In the PBS show Wishbone, the original main characters were three kids (Joe, Sam and David) and Wishbone, the titular character (a dog). When they were suddenly renewed for a second season years later, the three "kids" had gotten too old for little kids to relate to anymore, so they were replaced by a couple of background character kids from earlier episodes. This troper felt the show very much Jumped The Shark after that.
- Richard Roeper as Roger Ebert's partner in film critiquing, following the tragic death of Gene Siskel.
- And of course, the age-old question: Dick York or Dick Sargent? (This troper calls this phenomenon "Dick Sargent Syndrome" because of this.)
- Edward Tudor-Pole replacing Richard O'Brien as the presenter of The Crystal Maze.
Film
- Star Wars Episode 2. Hayden Christiansen was hated for (among other reasons) being whiny - but it's suspected that many people who cite this reason actually resent him for not being (or rather, for being) Darth Vader.
- Even Hayden Christiansen himself apparently complained about his character being whiny and not being Darth Vader!
- George Lazenby, the second James Bond - and arguably Timothy Dalton, the fourth. Daniel Craig (the sixth) was heading towards this, but his overall performance was good enough to have him Rescued From The Scrappy Heap.
- Michael Gambon as Dumbledore. In all fairness, the death of Richard Harris made a replacement unavoidable.
- Indiana Jones: Several fans of the series have complained about the love interests in Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade in comparison to Marian in Raiders of the Lost Ark. In Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, this is given a Lampshade Hanging that produces a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming.
- Detective Clifton Sleigh (Ted Wass) in Curse of the Pink Panther. The plot sets him up as investigating Inspector Clouseau's disappearance, as established in the previous film, Trail of.... Clouseau did a Face Heel Turn and got Magic Plastic Surgery to resemble Roger Moore. Sleigh was an New York City detective who was similarly incompetent, but not as arrogant and more acted upon than acting. The character's a bit bland, but what sank him was a combination of the film itself coming off as lazy and cheap compared to its predecessors and the fact that not only was Peter Sellers' Clouseau a beloved character, but Trail of... used outtakes of Sellers - who had died two years prior - to create an Invisible Darrin; essentially, writer-director-producer Blake Edwards was accused of grave robbing just to set up a Replacement Scrappy! Edwards tried again at this 10 years later with Son of the Pink Panther, retconning the events of A Shot In the Dark to bring us Clouseau's illegitimate Italian son (Roberto Benigni), but it also bombed.
Anime and Manga
- Daisuke/Davis from Digimon Adventure 02. Inflated by the English dub, as Executive Meddling made them add a bunch of other jokes at his expense. In his defence, he does have a Raiden-like underground of firm fans who found his ultimate personification of You Suck endearing. This troper thinks he was actually a very clever intentional Scrappy, as the fans all took great pleasure in affectionate mocking of the boy.
- One of many, many reasons that Shirayuki Berii of Tokyo Mew Mew a la mode is so unlikeable. What's more, Ikumi Mia took it all the way — Ichigo's powers mysteriously mutated so she functions as Berii's powerup item and nothing more.
- Also the initial reaction to Saki and Mai of Futari Wa Pretty Cure Splash Star, although this didn't last long.
- This happened to the Retooled versions of Kei and Yuri in Dirty Pair Flash.
- YMMV, this trooper goes way back with the Angels and didn't much care for the designs. On the flip side, the new episodes were overall better written and MUCH better plotted.
- And also to the new versions of the Knight Sabers in Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040.
- Ironically, this troper far prefes 2040 Sylia than the original one.
- Shinn Asuka being a poorly developed and wangstier version of Kira in Gundam SEED Destiny was thought to be a major contribution to the show's unpopularity, among many other issues. Ironically, its one of the most popular Gundam shows as a whole, just behind Gundam SEED and the original Mobile Suit Gundam.
- Such a complaint has been lodged at Arika from Mai-Otome, especially since the person she replaced was the main character of her own eponymous series. Mai only shows up in the last four or five episodes (not counting the Mai-Otome Zwei OVA).
- Near in Death Note is hated by many fans because of this reason.
- Sai, who replaced Sasuke Uchiha on Team 7 in Naruto, was hated by two groups of fans. Sasuke fans that hated the idea of someone replacing him. And Sasuke haters who didn't take to the character and even saw him as worse than the guy he replaced.
- In the Pokemon anime, some people disliked May and Dawn because none of them was Misty, while some disliked Dawn because she replaced May and/or Misty. A good number of fans hated Tracey for replacing Brock, some even making up reasons like "he's a fat pervert" to justify this. Also, a somewhat odd case of people hating the entire cast after the 4Kids voice actors' contracts expired and were not renewed, leading to new voices for the entire cast.
- Pet Shop of Horrors: Tokyo, which follows Count D at his new Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday in Tokyo, introduces Wu Fei to fill the role held by Leon Orcot in the original. Many fans who are less than pleased about Leon's absence from the new series are rather disenchanted with Wu Fei as a result.
- In regards to Gundam 00, Lyle Dylandy aka the second Lockon Stratos might become an in universe case, at least in regards to Tieria Erde, who has to remind himself that this Lockon isn't his dead
first love friend and teammate Neil Dylandy, the first Lockon *and* Lyle's older twin brother. And fandom sees to be prone to bitch him out a bit as well... We'll have to see how it goes, though.
- After he drops his nonchalant facade and shows genuine emotions as he witnesses the destruction of the Kataron HQ, people are a bit more forgiving...
Music
- In music there's the fans reactions to the many incarnations of Queens of the Stone Age - "What happened to Nick Oliveri?", "Dave Grohl was a way better drummer than this guy", "Mark Lanegan should be the singer", "Josh should just reform Kyuss..."
- Before the worldwide phenomenon that was Beatlemania, a fair number of their O.G. British fans resented the fact that Ringo Starr replaced Pete Best on drums.
- Many Metallica fans (including this troper and the other band members themselves) are guilty of heaping unnecessary scorn on Jason Newstead because he had the misfortune of replacing the late, lamented Cliff Burton on bass.
- Sammy Hagar. There's a reason people refuse to call the Hagar-era band Van Halen...
- Many entries in Discontinuity/Music deal with Replacement Scrappies.
Comic Books
- Green Lantern Kyle Rayner had it even worse than most of the above-mentioned characters — not only was Hal Jordan, one of The DCU's longest-running and most respected heroes, disposed of in the stupidest, most demeaning way possible to make way for him, but pretty much the entire Green Lantern Corps was killed off too. So he wasn't just Replacement Scrappy for one (well-known and popular) character but a whole organization. No wonder he was one of the most hated characters in the DCU for some time. That said, he's become a good character on his own merits, and when Hal and the Corps were inevitably brought back Kyle was kept around in a major role.
- Quite a few Kyle fans acknowledge that is was Grant Morrison's writing on JLA that saved him. Kyle was painted as a basically decent twenty-something with an incredibly powerful weapon trying to get used to the fact that he was now seated amongst, well, gods.
- This troper tends to hang out in a forum where John Stewart is treated like this by some of the members, who squirm every time John is cast in an adaptation and not Hal.
- Frankly, before the DCAU reimagined Stewart, the comic version was kind of annoying.
- DC Comics loves the Replacement Scrappy. There's the new Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes), the new Firestorm (Jason Rusch), the new Atom (Ryan Choi), the new Aquaman (Artie Joe - who comes dangerously close to a Jonas Quinn, with a similar name and look to the well-known previous Aquaman), the new Question (Renee Montoya), and the new Judomaster (Sonia Sato).
- These are just the NEW ones. There was the 2nd female Dr. Midnight, the female Wildcat, and more recently, the Cassandra Cain Batgirl. The first two died, and the other has a bad case of Character Derailment. Jason Todd, the 2nd Robin, may have also suffered from this.
- This may have been a factor in the failure of Robert Kirkman's very well-written Irredeemable Ant-Man series. Insofar as Ant-Man has fans (every character is someone's favorite, right?), they would presumably be fans of Hank Pym, the original Ant-Man, or Scott Lang, the second to use the name; Irredeemable was about a third, brand-new character, Eric O'Grady. Of course, it didn't help that Eric O'Grady was an unlikeable dick... but that was intentional (the clue is in the title).
- And Lang had died recently...ish, and Pym has been getting a bad deal since Busiek left the Avengers, with people ignoring everything other than "He hit his wife once." Still, the asshole thing was probably the big factor.
- When Daniel replaces Morpheus near the end of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, this reaction is inevitable and instinctive for readers and characters alike. The shock is gently muted as the final arc deals with the other characters - notably the raven, Matthew - coming to terms with the replacement. This openness, combined with Daniel's dignified humility and the knowledge that he had been carefully hand-picked by his predecessor, helps the reader to accept him.
- It probably helps that the series ends at this point, since one of Daniel's positive qualities is the absence of some of the original character's inner turmoil. He is an easier character to like, and we never really see him in action enough to compare how he drives the plot.
Western Animation
- When Transformers: Beast Wars started airing, this was at the exact magnetic center of much of the controversy, better known as Trukk not munky.
- Before that, there was Rodimus Prime, formerly Hot Rod, who took over as leader after Optimus died in The Movie. The fact he was partly responsible for the death of his predecessor didn't help his case in the least.
- Hell, Transformers in general suffers from this, as every new series, new character, new toy, and so on inevitably gets compared to GEEWUN. The recent Classics and Universe lines have taken it to whole new levels, with Astrotrain and Powerglide's color schemes receiving Replacement Scrappy status.
- A case of this happening in-series is in Re Boot when Enzo has to replace Bob as guardian. Despite being just as competent at saving the day, the people think of the most inane reasons to dislike him. Like being green instead of blue.
- Also, in a bizarre case of meta-trope, certain Bootniks hated Matrix for "replacing" Enzo, despite him being the older version of Enzo. The abrupt transformation was just too much for some oldschoolers to parse.
- Toonami gets hit hard with this, it probably would have been better if they kept more than the name TOM, or at least not change it from TOM 3 to TOM 4.
- The Batman could more or less be considered this for an entire series, as many hated it not being as good as Batman The Animated Series. There's also the fact that it's existence prevented Batman villains from appearing on Justice League Unlimited, even though the writers said that didn't mean that much.
- The New Paper on Homestar Runner... at least to Strong Bad.
- The other boys certainly thought Butters was this when he replaced Kenny on South Park. His replacement, Tweek, is "okay, but he's certainly no Kenny". Incidentally, since Kenny's return, Butters has been elevated to main character status, and has become the show's new chew toy.
- Parodied in the second Re Boot movie where Bob is believed to be a copy when another Bob, who looks and sounds more like the original shows up. This is particularly highlighted in the opening scene which takes place in front of a live audience. The audience cheers when any other character enters, but when Bob arrives, all we hear are the crickets chirping.
- Many Super Mario Bros greatly dislike Oogtar the caveboy from the Super Mario World cartoon, who was essentially an obnoxious replacement for a major character from the games (Toad).
- Pinky, Elmyra and the Brain replaced Elmyra's old Tiny Toon Adventures co-stars (Montana Max, Furrball, and Byron) with newly-made characters (Rudy Mookich, Mr. Pussy-wussy, and Mr. Shellbutt), whose very presence suggested that the writers had somehow forgotten everything else about ''Tiny Toons''.
Literature
- The short story "Johnny Come Lately" by Marc Singer tells the story from the Scrappy's point of view; based heavily on the Green Lantern furor outlined above, it tells the story of a young man picked at random as the replacement for a well-admired superhero after his death and the destruction of his entire league by the sentient hourglass that was his symbol, who finds his every effort, no matter how sincere, sneered at and put down by ingrates for no other reason than he's the new guy. Needless to say, the replacement isn't best pleased at his new lot in life.
Real Life
- This troper recently had a band teacher replace one who quit his job. The new teacher worked just as hard as the old one and did just as good a job, picked great pieces to play, and was just generally a nice person. But said troper just couldn't bring herself to like the new guy, mostly because the old teacher was the same one she'd had for six years.
- One of the reasons Heather Mills is so hated by Paul McCartney fans is that she and Paul got married very shortly after the death of Paul's long-time spouse, Linda Eastman.
- One of the hundred reasons...
- Way back in the late 1960s, there were people who hated the Lovely Linda because she wasn't a classy Brit like Jane Asher, Paul's previous significant other. It took decades for fandom to learn her good points.
- Way way back in the beginning, Yoko Ono got a similar reception due to being Japanese, not being John Lennon's old flame, and the fact that she appeared while the Beatles were in the middle of breaking up (contrary to popular belief, she didn't break them up). By now, all she's remembered for is breaking up the Beatles, which, once again, she didn't actually do.
- This troper's school had a fantastic Theater teacher, but my senior year he went to become an Assistant Principal. While the replacement teacher was somewhat capable, she didn't have any of the respect everyone else had for the old teacher, and everyone gave her a hard time. She probably still has the problem.
- This is part of the reason why Ancient Rome became so Royally Screwed Up — each Emperor wanted to make sure they were remembered favourably, so they usually picked someone worse than they to succeed them.
- The American Presidency is an especially apt example of this (could be the Trope Namer for this and/or Jonas Quinn) Many Presidents are judged less on their policies and more on comparisons to their predecessors. The current one is very good example as he is a Jonas Quinn to his father and a Replacement Scrappy to his more popular immediate precedcessor.
- The new history teacher at this troper's school seems to be getting a lot of flack, even though he's a really sweet guy, simply because the previous history teacher was so well-loved by so many of the seniors (though that's contested). Also because he has an odd way of speaking which is rather hard to understand.
Sports
- Aaron Rodgers, new starting quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, has it really rough, since he's got to fill the shoes of fan favorite and potential Hall-of-Famer Brett Favre (who retired, came out of retirement, had a contract dispute, and now plays for the New York Jets).
- This troper's favorite hockey team went through this kind of situation. For one year, the San Jose Sharks' long-time and fan favorite TV color commentator, Drew Remenda, left the team to be closer with his family. In came Marty McSorely, a former Sharks player and aspiring entertainer, to replace him. Though McSorely wasn't too bad of a commentator (and even had a few supporters including this troper), he gained a lot of hate from most Sharks fans simply because he wasn't Remenda. At the end of the year, though, McSorely had a falling out with team management, and soon enough Remenda returned to his place in the Sharks TV booth.
- This troper's high school's football team, one season, had the best season in years, losing only one game in the regular season and shutting out several teams. It switched coaches and lost a lot of good players going from one year to the next, and promptly tanked.
Web Comics
Tabletop RP Gs
Professional Wrestling
- Jonathon Coachman and, to a lesser extent, Joey Styles got this when they replaced Jim Ross as the play-by-play announcer for WWE Raw.
- Michael Cole seems to have avoided this as Ross has been moved to Smack Down rather than simply taken off TV.
- And Mike Adamle got this for replacing Styles (who retired play-by-play announcing out of the blue) on ECW. When he became Raw's General Manager (ironically, the previous GM William Regal returned from suspension on the same day), his replacement of Todd Grisham is probably seen as an improvement.
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