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A belief persists among television writers that if the audience takes a liking to a real badass character who fears nothing, has infinite confidence and even carries off defeat with panache, it must mean that what they most want to see is that character reveal a vulnerable side and all manner of inner demons. After all, viewers can't deal with a truly dark character, so we have to water him down.
Note that this isn't the same as Character Development, where extra dimensions are added to an existing character. In this case, the original characterization is stripped away, to be replaced by a thinly-veiled woobie.
The greatest risk to the Magnificent Bastard.
Named after the the slow and merciless emasculation of Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
See also Character Derailment, The Woobie. Compare Freudian Excuse, Flanderization.
Examples:
Live Action TV
- Spike from Buffy The Vampire Slayer which is this trope's namesake. He really became a mere shell of his former self at the end of the series (but luckily regained his cool in the spin-off Angel even if he never fully retained the title of Magnificent Bastard).
- Archie Bunker from All in the Family. Once a bigoted, sexist, angry as hell magnificent bastard, by the end of Archie Bunker's Place, he was a kindly-grandfather-with-an-adopted-kid, treated his multi-ethnic gang of employees with respect, had way too much angst over his wife's death, and lost everything that made him funny in the first place.
- To an extent, Irina Derevko from Alias. Even Sark from that show showed unwelcome hints of humanity. Derevko was given the Villain Ball in season 5. Sark at least stayed believably unredeemed.
- Lionel Luthor from Smallville, who -- like Spike -- was once the Magnificent Bastard. But it has recently appeared that his Spikeifcation might be a clever version of the Xanatos Gambit in itself.
- Spikeification of Loveable Rogue Captain Jack seems to be the entire premise of the first series of Torchwood, especially "Small Worlds" and "Captain Jack Harkness."
- Logan Echolls on Veronica Mars spent the first 3/4 of the first season a Magnificent Bastard extraordinaire. His credentials as a manipulative jerk even managed to survive the first throes of a somewhat arbitrary romance with the protagonist, but sure enough, before long we were learning about how badly he hurt, deep inside, and how much he truly madly deeply loved Veronica, and his father issues and mother issues and sister issues and long-lost-brother issues and before long the character was just insipid. It didn't really get out of control before the second half of the second season; before then, he was still somewhat of a Magnificent Bastard, just a more understandable one. He even stole the cell phone of someone who had just kidnapped and beaten him so he could threaten the The Man Behind The Man.
- Arthur Fonzarelli, "The Fonz" from Happy Days, is first Flanderized and then Spikeified through the course of the series, but especially after it Jumps The Shark. He ends up being more like a Boys' Club leader than the aloof, antisocial cool guy he started the show as.
Western Animation
- Helga Pataki from Hey Arnold! bawled out her problems to a psychiatrist in one episode. Notably, she was not Spikeified after that, much to the disappointment of some fans, who had been expecting some level of Character Development.
- Stewie from Family Guy started the series as an aggressive, psychotic, evil genius plotting to take over the world and kill his mother, but by the fourth season, he inexplicably became much more effeminate and petty and occasionally overly naive and immature, seemingly abandoning his evil ways. Now his evil-ness is only occasionally mentioned, for a quick joke.
- Who can forget Skeletor, a classic two-dimensional villain with no previous redeeming qualities whatsoever, abrupting turning good for no apparent reason other than "the Spirit of Christmas" in the He-Man and She-Ra Holiday Special?
- In Ben 10, the titular hero's nemesis and Evil Counterpart is Kevin 11, an 11 year old with superpowers who was never portrayed as anything other than a murderous sociopath (with a degree of moderate genresavvy-iness, the show and characters even treated him as irredeemably evil instead of trying to redeem him due to his young age). In the new series, Ben 10 Alien Force, after a 5 year Time Skip Kevin is one of the 3 main heroes, and has inexplicably calmed down to a level somewhere between Anti Hero and Loveable Rogue, going so far as to have his own attempted Heroic Sacrifice / Redemption Equals Death moment by the 3rd episode.
Professional Wrestling
- Professional Wrestling has a most bizarre example in John Cena. In 2004, he was a street-wise fighter who never backed down from a challenge, and fought rich bastard John Bradshaw Layfield while espousing "battle raps" which basically mocked anyone in a 15-mile radius. In 2005 and 2006, his overwhelming popularity led the writers to turn him into a Hoganesque superhuman with an inferiority complex who openly admitted he was inferior as a technical wrestler, therefore taking away everything that made him popular in the first place. It eventually got to the point where fans would cheer his opponent out of spite, no matter how evil that person was. Fortunately, the release of his movie The Marine allowed him to get back his never-say-die attitude, and he appears to be recovering from the setback. Slowly. The fact that WWE seems to be implying that he really is a marine based on his role in the movie doesn't help matters. In fact, most heels who became anti-heroic faces in the Attitude era generally fall under this trope.
Literature
- Happened to Hannibal Lecter in Hannibal and Hannibal Rising. Many fans considered this so uncharacteristic that they do their best to pretend those two books/movies never existed.
- Spike was neither the first nor most famous vampire to suffer from this trope; Count Dracula himself has been steadily derailed since his eponymous appearance in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel. In the book, he is a cold, ruthless monster with no redeeming qualities save Magnificent Bastardry. Since then, he's been Spikeified in each new appearance, going from a vile, diabolical arch-fiend to a Large Ham in a cape and tux, tragically searching the oceans of time for his lost love by biting the necks of fainting, gasping and all-too-willing females. Counting down...
- Nosferatu, depicted chillingly as the monstrous 'Orlok' by Max Shreck.
- Dracula with Bela Lugosi, light on the horror but still magnificently evil.
- Horror of Dracula with Christopher Lee, perfectly vicious but now with the added sexual twist - his victims want him.
- Dracula with Frank Langella - the start of his transformation from monster to lover, a tragic figure (with poofy 70's hair and a partly-open poet's shirt) searching for his lost love.
- Dracula: Dead and Loving It with Leslie Nielson. Pretty much just an ordinary, irritable guy with super powers. But no angst.
- Bram Stoker's Dracula with Gary Oldman, does the lost love angle again and wrings every drop of blood (and Wangst) out of it...
Dracula: Nooo! I love you too much to condemn you!
- Seems to be reversing lately, with Dracula back as a villain in Blade Trinity, the Dracula 2000 trilogy and Van Helsing - but the character's so diluted by caricature by now that every new movie either makes him basically come off as Fabio in a black and red cape (I'm looking at you, Buffy) or attempts to Re Tool him into something only barely recognisable as "Dracula" (He looks like a wrestler in Blade: Trinity). In this troper's opinion, the most faithful version in modern pop culture is Castlevania - and even that still has him pining for lost love. At least he has One Winged Angel powers to replace the magnificent bastardry.
- Then again, Hellsing seems to be taking Dracula in a proper direction; he's still a cold, ruthless bastard with a psychotic streak a mile wide. However, he's also the good guy, and the real villains of the story are even nastier than Dracula himself.
- Satan. Went from being the Big Bad of Christianity to the hero of every Darker And Edgier Rage Against The Heavens God Is Evil novel, comic book and movie. This was largely thanks to the Misaimed Fandom surrounding Paradise Lost, which gave him actual motivations for rebelling.
Film
- The Thin Man (Crispin Glover), an eccentric mute assassin/supporting villain in the first Charlie's Angels film, proved so unexpectedly popular that he was brought back (despite having been previously blown up) for the sequel, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. This time, however, he had unaccountably become a good guy; he was provided with a philanthropic background (raised by nuns, he donates all the proceeds from his contract killings to their orphanage) and fell passionately in love with the lead angel, Dylan, despite having tried his damnedest to kill her the last time they'd met.
- The Star Wars prequel trilogy did this to Darth Vader, who was an iconic badass in the original trilogy.
- While that might be more about building a character (and most of Vader's deconstruction really occurred later in the original trilogy), no one can deny the preposterousness of many an Ensemble Darkhorse's absurd past detailed in the EU, some of which have even managed to infect the prequel series.
- The biggest example, Boba Fett, especially in the Legacy of the Force series. However, Karen Traviss manages to pull it off pretty well.
- Davy Jones from ''Pirates Of The Caribbean" went from being a threatening and invincible monster to a Woobie between the 2nd and 3rd movies.
- A great deal of Davy's Spikeification results less from giving him a tragic backstory (that was already hinted at in the second movie and was much closer to Character Development), and more from almost totally emasculating him as a powerful villain by placing him completely under the power of Smug Snake Cutler Beckett. The scene where Beckett acidly reminds him that he forced Jones to kill the Kraken and the later one where Will smugly mocks Jones while sipping tea nearly made this editor cry, as did the line -
Beckett: The immaterial has become...immaterial.
- ...he was hoping to see Jones break his leash and regain his dignity at least two hours earlier than it actually happened.
VideoGames
- In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Naesala takes advantage of the Begnion senators' greed by looting their ships and selling the swag to the others. He also sells his best friend for a nice sum. Whether or not he's being truthful when he says he planned to rescue him is up to you. In the sequel Radiant Dawn, it turns out Naesala is just the poor victim of the blood pact. It is never explained how he was able to swindle the senators while being forced to obey their will.
- Notably, he gets ordered around by a thirteen-year-old girl.
- Actually,you do.
 Scroll down to Naesala vs. Lekain
- Arguably, Bowser has gotten a bit of this over the years, turning from the regular villian in every Mario game, to being a hero-helping turtle who worries about his image and really only wants a little Princess lovin' is all. Some people prefer this image of Bowser.
Anime
- Both Vegeta from Dragonball Z and Hiei from Yu Yu Hakusho start out as evil and downright sadistic badasses but as time went on and their number of friends increased, so did their overall morality (more so with Vegeta than Hiei, even though it is arguable with both characters).
- Even Vegeta seemed to realize he'd been defanged and had made a much better villain than a hero, and purposefully had one of the later villains try to turn him evil again. It didn't seem to quite take; after killing a nameless crowd and brawling a little with Goku, he was back to fighting baddies and topped it off with a Heroic Sacrifice. Of course he got better. This is Dragonball Z, almost nobody of importance dies - permanently.
Exceptions:
Live Action TV
- On Deadwood the Magnificent Bastard, Al Swearengen, did (in a series of scenes fans christened the "Blowjob Monologues") reveal a vulnerable side and all manner of inner demons (as a child, he was abandoned by his mother, and apparently pimped out by an orphanage keeper)... and, incredibly, remained a Magnificent Bastard.
- Shark does everything they can to avoid having this happen to their Magnificent Bastard protagonist, like the time he framed a Serial Killer. On the other hand, he gets to Pet The Dog by having meaningful conversations with his teenage daughter.
- Then again, the first episode showed that he believed in his methods, just that he realized the wrong people were benefiting from them.
- Lilah Morgan on Angel started the series as a scheming, immoral employee of evil law firm Wolfram and Hart. At the end of her run on the series she was still scheming and manipulating despite being dead even after the audience sees her more human side through her growing relationship with Wesley and even earns her sympathy when she is brutally and shockingly murdered. This editor considers her one of the best written "grey" characters in a series filled with moral ambiguity.
Literature
- Voldemort and Snape in the Harry Potter books are likewise given reasons and explanations for why they are the way they are -- but remain dark and sinister none the less.
Web Comics
- Author of The Order Of The Stick, Rich Burlew, specifically mentions this as a problem he faced when writing the Start Of Darkness prequel. Here's the full quote:
"Writing a story centered around your main antagonist is sort of difficult, because you risk "devillainifying" them. Yes, I just made that word up. What I mean though, is that once an audience has read all about a character's life, with all of their personal struggles and trials and tribulations and such, it's more difficult to see the character as the Big Bad. My challenge here was to tell the story of Xykon's life without making Xykon even slightly sympathetic. I mean, he's wholly and unapologetically Evil, but more to the point, he's kind of a dick."
Anime
- Gendo Ikari of Neon Genesis Evangelion is revealed to want the Apocalypse as a means of bringing his dead wife back. It doesn't soften his image.
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