Never Live It Down / Video Games

Current works with its own pages:

• Final Fantasy
• Fire Emblem
• Persona

The rest:

B-K

• BlazBlue has an extensive colorful cast owing to its many entries. However, some of its characters have been suffering perpetual cases of Never Live It Down which may fling each into Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • The Hero Ragna The Bloodedge is squarely a Jerk with a Heart of Gold. However, due to his past history of singlehandedly destroying several NOL bases and leaving no survivors, something he hasn't done as of late (or at least shown in the game), some people makes it clear and never let the fandom forget that he was a mass murderer and always will be. Ragna's also derided by people who haven't played the game as being a painfully edgy character (due to his design, the "Bloodedge" title and his darkness-themed attacks) despite being a rather dorky person who doesn't get a whole lot of respect in-universe, partly for those edgy elements in the first place.
  • Jin Kisaragi started out as a psychopath yandere of the brother-complex variety who only had his sights on fighting Ragna. As the overall story progressed, his relationship with Tsubaki Yayoi was revealed and showed that he tremendously cared about her. In fact, post-CS, he made it his mission to save Tsubaki, making him look heroic. Fandom reaction? He's still and always will be the brother-crazed psycho Yandere. This impression is reinforced by the characterization Continuum Shift gives him. While it's in the non-canon gag storylines, it's in at least three gag storylines. And in Teach Me Miss Litchi, too. So, not entirely the fault of the fans that Arc Systems keeps milking this Running Gag for all it's worth, and kept doing so for further gag storylines later on in the series. And Jin seems like he'll never live down the fact that during the time of Calamity Trigger, he's a murderous jackass with little redeeming qualities. It's been revealed that it was his weapon, Yukianesa, that was exerting an overriding influence that amplifies his darker thoughts and made these flaws more extreme. But as the series progressed, Jin learns to control it, and as such, while he's definitely still an asshole, he's been toning down the 'murderous' part so that the only person he'd try to kill outright is just Ragna (he will still insult Noel though), so he's just a jackass. But there's still a bunch of people who thinks that his true self is that 'murderous jackass' CT self and that has never changed.
  • Litchi Faye-Ling is quite probably the most egregious one. She is all nice and caring to everyone she comes across, provided they're not evil and she does try her best to save Arakune. But after the one moment where she unwillingly joined NOL as the situation practically forced her to if she wants a shot in saving Arakune, fans practically considered that "obsession with saving Arakune" to be her whole personality, forgetting all the good things she did before (and thought they were just to facilitate her obsession) and mere association with the NOL dooms her to be a heel in many fans' eyes. Litchi never living it down can be adhered because there's one thing NOL as a whole never lives down: their one rule of 'Anyone opposing us will receive swift, immediate execution' is the one thing everyone would remember them as and deems the organization as a Palpatine-esque Empire where someone needs a degree of asshattery if they even want to think of joining... forgetting the fact that without them, the civilized world of the setting would fall into utter anarchy, as well as any lies they adhere to aren't because of the rank and file being villainous jerks, but because of the manipulations of Hazama and Relius at the top. It didn't help that the rule was established after they trounced the Ikaruga Federation, home of fan favorite hammy ninja of justice Bang Shishigami, thus always considering Ikaruga to the side of justice, forgetting that Ikaruga started the rebellion in the first place and in war, there's no such thing as 'righteous and villainous'.
  • Bang Shishigami also got a minor one going. Yes he once used to hate Jin Kisaragi for his actions in the Ikaruga rebellion. But in CS, he's shown to have unconditionally helped Jin and despite knowing that he killed his master, as he realized that Jin wasn't truly to blame and the true enemy is the system within NOL. So how does the fandom answer when asked on who is Bang's Arch-Enemy? Always will be Jin Kisaragi.
  • Resident Mad Scientist Relius Clover is probably most remembered for the buckets and buckets of subtext he has thanks to his Astral Finish. And then there's what he did to Makoto in one of her Bad Ends. It was bad enough that to some, Relius' greatest crime was defined with that very moment he had his hands on Makoto, forgetting what was supposed to define him: His utter abuse to his family members, especially Carl.
• From Crash Bandicoot, Ripper Roo. Apparently the one thing fans always thinks he does is just laugh. What is ignored is that he got a PHD in Psychology, the fact that even other characters in the series laugh, and even the fact he is a Kangaroo and not any other species of animal or a hybrid thereof, because some fans think he is despite evidence to the contrary. Also, fans tend to forget that he was intended to speak in some of the games and the fact that his cameo in Crash Twinsanity he didn't laugh, nor speak at all shows exactly that fans make a flanderization of him for a few traits.
• Haiji Towa in Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls is meant to be hated for many reasons, such as being a Big Brother Bully and advocating for death to a Brainwashed and Crazy group of children incapable of understanding what they did, but the only one you can expect most of the fandom to recall is his comment about the teenaged Toko being too old for his tastes.
• Combined with Shrouded in Myth in Dragon Age: Inquisition with Fen'Harel, remembered by the Dalish as an amoral Trickster God. Turns out he was a noble leader of a slave revolt, he just never lived down a Nice Job Breaking It, Hero moment and his reputation had snowballed from there over the centuries. Though there are some strong hints that his version of events paints him in an overly altruistic light and that his actual motives were decidedly more selfish.
• Bianca Whitaker from Dragon Quest V's DS remake is remembered for having a habit of reminding you how she and the hero went on a ghost hunt when they were kids. She only talks about ghost hunting a few times after she and her childhood friend reunite, and will only talk about it more along with other things when you're revisiting her places of memory in a party chat. Of course, some fans ignore this, resulting in Bianca being a lot less dateable for them.
• In HuniePop, while a lot of players understand why Tiffany is hostile towards her mom, she gets a lot of this. HuniePop 2 has made this worse with her cutting off social media ties which Jessie is clearly saddened by.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Kairi only gets properly kidnapped twice in the series (both in II, and in the first instance she actually escapes on her own; the first game had her lifeless body held captive by Riku but her heart/essence safe with Sora, and Riku was protecting her body), yet most of the fandom apparently will forever deem her a Damsel Scrappy who "always gets kidnapped" regardless. And sadly, since Nomura likes to write characters how the fans see them, Kairi becomes a more legitimate Damsel Scrappy in III, with far worse consequences. Thankfully, the backlash towards that led Nomura to course-correct her in the Re Mind DLC.
  • In Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Terra has the unfortunate tendency to meet villains before meeting heroes whenever he travels, and those villains take advantage of the fact that he doesn't know they're evil to manipulate him. Usually, he figures it out partway through and foils their schemes, and in the one case he did majorly help a villain, he had to be mind-controlled into doing it. However, he has garnered a reputation among the fans for being easily duped and believing anything a villain says, cheerfully helping them out to the detriment of everyone else. His trust in Xehanort is also held against him, despite the fact that at that point in the timeline, nobody knew Xehanort was evil, and he was still a highly respected Keyblade master.
• No matter how many times Kirby heroically and selflessly saves the world from evil forces in, thanks to Kirby: Squeak Squad he will always be known by some people as the "hero" who went on a murderous rampage over a slice of cake.
• Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords: The Disciple is already a bit of The Scrappy, since his Distaff Counterpart on male playthroughs has a much more developed backstory while his own story was rushed in at the last minute, and he's the non-preferred member of the quasi-love triangle between himself, the Exile, and Atton. He has a major moment of Sarcasm Blindness on Nar Shaddaa, which is all that most players seem to remember apart from being a "Jedi fanboy". This leaves out the fact that he was smart enough to figure out Revan's real plan for the galaxy, that he makes several criticisms of the Jedi, and the one he's fanboying is the one they kicked out. Nor does he accept the Council's decision that she's a menace to the Force.

L-N

• In The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel, fans - at least Western ones - will never get over the fact that Alisa reacted to Rean's Accidental Pervert moment when she lands on top of him, boobs to his face, with a violent slap and not apologizing for three whole weeks after all of Class VII fell on a trap door with Rean trying to save Alisa. Never mind her toning down her Tsundere moments later in the game, her bonding scenes with Rean, and her getting over it.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Zelda is known for being kidnapped constantly and being a helpless damsel-in-distress, and saving her is the plot of every game. This is not the case. Zelda admittedly has been kidnapped, enchanted, turned to stone and whatnot for half of the games she's been in, but even in those games, her capture is usually just part of the villain's scheme. The main goal is the Triforce or some other powerful relic, and she's captured precisely because she's a powerful mage who would cause a lot of trouble if getting rid of her weren't Step 1. For example, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has is indeed trapped by Ganon for the whole game... but she's so powerful that he's trapped as well and they've been engaged in a century-long standoff.
  • Ganon(dorf)'s tendency to be behind a newer villain has become Common Knowledge, to the point that he names that exact trope. The twist was actually only used in four games: A Link to the Past, the linked Oracle games, Four Swords Adventures, and Twilight Princess. Even then, only the latter two play it straight; A Link to the Past has Agahnim actually be Ganon all along, while the Oracle games instead have Twinrova be behind the plot while Ganon only shows up as a Came Back Wrong zombie as the final boss.
  • If one happens to run across a page that makes an example of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and isn't joking at Link's expense, then it'll be gushing about him stabbing Ganon through the head.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has Fi. Many fans loathe her for effectively taking the Annoying Video Game Helper factor up to eleven, even rivaling fellow Exposition Fairy Navi. While she can get rather annoying, by the way some people talk about her, she constantly interrupts gameplay every five seconds and always reports information shown right in front of your face. The fact that Tatl, the King of Red Lions, and Midna were fan-favorites didn't help, and Fi's comparatively cold and sometimes creepy disposition only made it worse.
  • For that matter, Navi's annoying nature itself is often exaggerated. While she does interrupt gameplay often in the early portions of the game and sometimes calls you during gameplay to give you pieces of advice or refreshers on where to go next, you don't actually have to listen to those pieces of advice unless she does interrupt you, and even then, she does it far less often starting from the second dungeon. However, listening to some fans, you'd almost think she interrupts the game often enough to be near unplayable, and goes out of her way to annoy you.
  • If you ever find an online reference to Teba from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the one thing that people will bring up about him is that he says "Dammit!" in a Zelda game.
  • Princess Ruto is the only one of Link's Ocarina of Time love interests who actually makes her feelings known. Unfortunately, a lot of people were soured by how she ordered Link around and made him carry her through Jabu Jabu's belly. She has since been portrayed as completely obsessed with marrying Link, even though when Link meets her again at the Water Temple, she's not as brash as she used to be and realizes that both she and Link have bigger things to worry about than their relationship (her duties as a Sage and him saving Hyrule).
  • Ilia from Twilight Princess snaps once at Link for accidentally injuring Epona's leg. Her hatedom, and especially some of the Zelda/Link and Midna/Link shippers, interpreted it as Ilia being a short-tempered Jerkass who cares more about Link's horse than him. Ilia actually apologizes for this a few minutes later and even admits that she was being too harsh on him (and in Ilia's defense, she thought Epona got injured because Link did something stupid as opposed to what actually happened). Also, Link shrugged this incident off as it was nothing.
• Matt Furniss is a composer who was active throughout The 16-bit Era of Console Video Games, and contributed to many well-regarded soundtracks across multiple consoles and home computers. He also, as a joke, included a hidden message in the files for the Amiga game Mad Professor Mariarti in which he called the reader a fucker and threatened to break their legs if they tried to hack the game. Guess which of these things he's more well known for across the internet.
• Mass Effect:
  • A sizable majority of the fan base will never let Ashley or Kaidan live down what happened on Horizon in Mass Effect 2, in which they angrily call out Shepard for working with the pro-human terrorist Cerberus (which, while manipulating Shepard for their own ends, is among the few taking action against the Reapers) largely thanks to a severe case of Fourth Wall Myopia.
  • Ash gets a whole lot of online flack for being the "racist" of the group. In reality, all she does is ask if letting non-Alliance personnel walk around their fleet's prototype ship is a good idea; individually, she treats her non-human teammates the same way she does everyone else. Compare Garrus's interactions with Wrex and Tali, or Tali's assertion that her people were perfectly justified in firing the first shot of their Robot War.
  • In Mass Effect 3, Ashley and Kaidan, assuming Shepard tries to bury the hatchet, question Shepard's loyalty at three separate points: when Cerberus is attacking an Alliance base during their first mission fighting with Shepard again, when they find a Cerberus soldier that looks like a husk during that same mission, and when Shepard is pointing a gun at one of the leaders of the galaxy during a terrorist attack. In the final incident, when Cerberus stages a coup in the citadel, those trust issues may finally be resolved, or end up in the Virmire survivor's death, if the player cannot, or doesn't want to convince them. To hear some fans talk about it, they spent the entire first half of the game, or in Ashley's case all of it, harping on the issue.
  • One of the only things Liara is known for in Mass Effect 3 is always being in Shepard's cabin every two or three seconds or always fawning over Shepard.
  • Kai Leng has yet to live down eating Captain Anderson's cereal. He is an assassin, and has done many far worse and important things, yet this is what he's most known for.
  • The Turian councilor, Sparatus, will always be the "Ah, yes, Reapers" guy to the fandom at large. It doesn't matter that he becomes a crucial ally to Shepard very early in 3. It doesn't matter that he's a critical factor in the Alliance and the Turians working together to stop the Reapers. It doesn't matter that he's the only Councilor who doesn't wind up making Shepard's job harder in a very significant way. The second most fans see him, they're making air quotes.
• Mega Man:
  • Zero is known in the fandom for dying and resurrecting at the drop of a hat, which isn't exactly fair. He's only died canonically 3 times, and only technically came back from it twice; the third time was as the Model-Z biometal, where it's debatable if he's the same Zero anymore. Zero's first two deaths were meant to stick, but he was saved by fan popularity the first time, and Capcom refusing to let the X series end the second time.
  • X himself isn't much better. Zero was supposed to die in X5, but it was retconned to a near-death - and X himself also nearly died. Zero died later on when the Ragnarok Satellite fell, and by then X was already dead and even his 'cyber-elf' spirit had vanished from the physical world. And X was also brought back as a biometal same time as Zero. Discounting the retconned death, Zero has died twice, X once, and both have a close-call each. And then, there was X's severe Badass Decay in X7, whining "Why must we fight?" among other things. Mega Man X: Command Mission and Mega Man X8 attempted to rectify this by making X more no-nonsense and willing to fight, even stating in X8 that the present conflict can only be resolved through fighting.
  • Alia will always be the X series' Annoying Video Game Helper thanks to her unskippable, often common sense advice in Mega Man X5, even as later games in the series made listening to her optional and tried to make her advice more useful (though X7 backslid a bit by giving her a very annoying voice and having her constantly chime in whenever she has something to say, even repeating herself if you switch characters.)
  • Axl made a terrible first impression in X7, effectively being the game's whiny fanboy kid version of Raiden, and gameplay-wise being largely an inferior version of X. Even after Mega Man X: Command Mission and Mega Man X8 gave him more of his own identity, a more mature voice, and didn't have him hogging the spotlight from X, it took some time for fans to warm up to him.
  • Guts Man of Mega Man, believed to be a Dumb Muscle mostly thanks to his portrayal in the animated series, and certainly not helped by his incarnation in Mega Man Battle Network. Mega Man Powered Up tried to correct this, by explicitly showing that, while Guts Man really isn't a genius, he's not that dumb, either.
• Metal Gear:
  • Metal Gear Solid: Otacon pisses himself when being attacked by an insane Blood Knight Undead Cyborg Ninja who had just murdered a corridor full of armed soldiers and was trying to squeeze some information from Otacon that he genuinely didn't know. Fandom (and Snake in an MGS2 Codec call) is mocking him for this to this day. Particularly weird when three other characters piss themselves in the series (Emma, Sokolov, and even Big Boss), without the reputation for incontinence sticking; then again, two of the three are dead before their game ends (although Sokolov is revealed to be alive in Portable Ops), and the third is Big Boss (who it must be noted, pissed himself because he was undergoing Electric Torture, not out of simple fear).
  • Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty has this with Rosemary. A certain Codec call topped off with an argument with her emotionally distant boyfriend launched her status as one of The Scrappies of the series, with plenty of Die for Our Ship sentiments on the side and even causing some people to virtually ignore her in Guns of the Patriots.
• Apparently, "I're stain mah hends with your bra!" and "You cannot escape flom dess!" are the only things Geese Howard ever says according to some fans. Those phrases originated from Capcom vs. SNK. Also, it appears that for anything in regards to SNK characters, the only artwork or voice samples they will ever use of them is from CvS1 or CvS2, invariably.
• Metroid:
  • Despite the fact that only five planets Samus has ever been on exploded (one of which wasn't even her fault), fans still joke that every planet she sets foot on is doomed to be blown up by her at the end of the game.
  • The infamous "Samus breaks down crying after seeing Ridley" scene in Metroid: Other M is what fans usually bring up to mock the game or showing the game's worst bits. While it is universally agreed upon that the execution of Samus's PSTD reaction towards Ridley was executed poorly, it doesn't even last that long and she quickly gets over it, though fans would make it sound like she never stops crying about her nemesis.
• Neverwinter Nights has an example in the fan-made continuation of the main campaign Aribeth's Redemption: everyone (even Aribeth) seems to forget about her years of invaluable contribution to the city of Neverwinter and the fact that she barely damaged the city's surrounding territories at all during the Luskan war, all because she was mind-controlled into leading an enemy army to attack the city. Then again, this might be justified.

P-S

• Ahh, PAYDAY 2. A great game at heart, but it will be more-or-less remembered for two things; Cloakers who have quite vulgar things to say to their kicked-down victims and alongside Bo Andersson's treatment of the community, those infamous safes and drills from the Black Market update. Although the latter was removed as of Update #100, and even the development team has sort of mocked their inclusion (which, to be fair, was more Executive Meddling than anything the developers did).
• Pokémon:
  • Professor Oak will never be able to live down the fact that at the start of Pokémon Red and Blue, he couldn't remember his own grandson's name, allowing the player character to potentially give him a quite unflattering one. Ditzy Genius indeed.
  • Furthermore, Oak is infamous for his words echoing whenever the player character tries to ride a bike indoors.
  • N's childhood room in Pokémon Black and White plus his sheltered upbringing has led fandom to characterize him as a Manchild who still plays with toy trains and doesn't know where babies come from.
  • Silver from HeartGold and SoulSilver strips the player character of their Team Rocket disguise. For a long time after, fandom treated him like a Memetic Molester.
• Resident Evil: Chris Redfield will never be allowed to forget his narmiest moment, punching a boulder in Resident Evil 5. ProtonJon viewers in particular get to see the moment whenever they trigger a certain stream alert, which sees Chris punch said boulder at his nemesis Albert Wesker. Chris's boulder punching moment gets mocked in Resident Evil Village where one of the villains calls Chris a "boulder punching ass hole".
• In Resonance of Fate, Vashyron calls a well endowed woman's boobs "Bunker Busters" and gets a rather strange dance to go along with it. While he does make innuendos throughout the game, he only uses that line and dance once. Cue Project × Zone where he spouts that line every time he encounters one of the more fan-servicey characters, and will say it when paired with KOS-MOS and T-elos as their solo unit. His dance will very frequently pop up too, again if he's paired with KOS-MOS and T-elos.
• Silent Hill 2:
  • James Sunderland has done many impressive things, like fight Pyramid Head and win, but the one of the things he is most remembered for is jumping into a large, dark abyss with no prompting towards the end of the game. From then on, any time a Silent Hill protagonist encounters a hole, players ask "What would James do?"
  • There's also the scene where James, without any hesitation, plunges his hand into a clogged-up filthy toilet to get a wallet. It's metaphorically meant to show his suicidal and self-destructive behavior. And even the game developers can't resist mocking him for it.
• Shin Megami Tensei: While YHVH is undeniably bad news, most of the games give both Law and Chaos good points along with their bad, and the Big Guy is commonly given a more nuanced portrayal despite his relative antagonist status. That being said, it's unlikely the fans will forget his depiction in the second game anytime soon. Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse only goes further with this, completely ignoring any nuance He had and making Him a fairly standard petty Card-Carrying Villain.
• The Sims 2:
  • Strangetown premade Vidcund Curious is well known for his Potty Failure that resulted in him being dumped by Circe Beaker. Some circles have even dubbed wetting one's pants a "Vidcund Moment".
• Sonic The Hedgehog:
  • Shadow has had his own reputation ruined by his own self-titled game. In his debut in Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow's personality was not too different from Sonic's; while he conducted himself more seriously, he shared Sonic's cocky and confident attitude and saw him as a respectable Worthy Opponent. Shadow's game however marketed him as a '90s Anti-Hero who swears and uses firearms and suddenly he's far less friendly to Sonic (and in some endings, desires to defeat him to prove his superiority). Despite his character reverting to Adventure 2 levels in the aforementioned Sonic 06, it didn't stick and Shadow has since been labelled a moody, angsty, and brooding "edgelord" and later adaptations usually adopted that personality onto him, long after Shadow the Hedgehog released.
  • Vector the Crocodile, who will always be best remembered for four infamous words he shouted in Shadow the Hedgehog: "FIND THE COMPUTER ROOM!"
  • Silver the Hedgehog is remembered for incessantly screaming "IT'S NO USE!" in his infamously hard battle. It's somewhat understandable that the phrase would get stuck in players' heads after repeatedly hearing it, but it gets a bit silly when people think this is his catchphrase when he only says it in one game.
    • If there's one moment people tend to remember about the forgettable Sonic Rivals series, is the scene in the sequel where Silver mugs Tails off his hard-earned rings while insulting him like a petty bully.
  • Amy Rose actually has two instances on never living it down: one, for confusing not only Shadow, but also Silver for Sonic, despite them looking nothing alike. This leads to the fans joking how Amy always confuses people for Sonic. It certainly doesn't help when she finally finds Sonic, she mistakes him for someone else, although it could be justified since Sonic was in his Werehog form at the time, with that form drastically changing his physical appearance. And two, despite this trait being toned down in later forms of media, Amy may also be known as a raging psycho stalker who will go into extreme measures to make sure that Sonic will be hers, and hers alone.
  • Princess Elise may never live down kissing Sonic into order to revive him in Sonic 06, which disgusted most, if not all of the players who saw it, ultimately resulting in not only setting her own Scrappy status in stone for the fans, but also led them to joke around Sonic kissing humans. Even after the Cosmic Retcon at the end that rendered this specific event non-existent, it still wouldn't be able to repair the damage the scene has done to the franchise and its fanbase (let alone the character).
• Patroklos gets hit with this hard in Soul Calibur V. No matter how much Character Development you go through, when your first major onscreen action is to brutally murder an innocent on the suspicion of being Malfested, all with a deranged, psychotic grin on your face, people tend to hold that against you.
• Spyro the Dragon:
  • Spyro: A Hero's Tail: Ember, a minor dragon character, flirts with Spyro for most of her very few lines and is the only character in the original games that explicitly expressed romantic interest in him. Fans cranked up her crush to the point that she was completely obsessed with marrying Spyro and would do anything to get him. Things only got worse for her when Cynder was introduced.
  • The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night: In the beginning, Cynder leaves the Dragon Temple out of guilt for her actions while she was corrupted. Fans then acted like she does nothing but angst about her past afterward, even though she only does so whenever someone brings her past up.
• Stardew Valley: No matter how much character development she gets, Abigail will always be remembered for the one line she says that implies she likes to eat gems.
• Star Fox 64: Peppy Hare does say "Do a Barrel Roll!" a few times, but only two or three times in the entire game. Thanks to Memetic Mutation, a lot of fans think that Peppy shouts this infamous quote all the time during the game.
• In Third Super Robot Wars Z: Tengoku-hen, Sumeragi, has a one-off line excusing a bunch of nonreturning characters by way of saying "nah, let's split our force to keep the enemy busy", and /m/ turned that into "Sumeragi gets rid of everybody".
• Super Mario Bros. has several examples:
  • For Game Theory fans, the folks at Dorkly Originals and very few other people, Mario will be forever thought as a psychopath and the real villain of the franchise due to the "Mario is Mental" theory and its very big Ron the Death Eater supply.
  • Mario also gets a hard time from some fans, mainly Luigi fans because of Luigi's status in the franchise, but mostly because of his victory scene from Mario Power Tennis, where Mario ends up stepping on his brother's foot, which is heavily disliked because of what happens, people often talk about it, and it's also part of the Mario is Mental theory. Luigi is very popular with the fanbase, possibly even more than Mario, but in-universe, he's overshadowed by Mario even though they are just as heroic, he's much less popular than him in the Mushroom Kingdom, struggling to stand out from him, he doesn't get the same amount of credit as Mario for what they do and he is the designated butt of the joke when it comes to the franchise's humour or with people getting his name wrong and not remembering it. Because of this, he is nowhere as respected as his brother, no matter what he does, being treated as a borderline No-Respect Guy by several characters, including many Toads, who treat him rather coldly and are unimpressed by him. Not all Toads think this of him, but many don't think that he is a true hero. Luigi's status in the franchise causes his fans to feel for him and be defensive of him, and especially with the combination between this and the scene from Mario Power Tennis, some accuse Mario of being a bad older brother who dominates and humiliates Luigi to make him seem inferior on purpose, wants to be in the spotlight all the time, which got worse from 2013, not only because of the "Mario is Mental" theory, but many animations, fanworks and videos on Youtube like the Dorkly animations have the tendency to portray Mario as an unlikeable jerk who often doesn't give a flying fig about his brother, making comments and jokes at his expense at best, which most characters in the franchise do, and being an abusive brother at worst. Because of this, many Luigi fans hate Mario and blame him for how Luigi is treated. However, this is a load of misconceptions. While he is competitive with Luigi and teases him a bit on occasion, those are minor things, and in the scene fo Mario Power Tennis, Mario compliments him and what happens next is more him teasing his brother than being unlikeable. Mario is also one of the few characters in the franchise that is consistently respectful of Luigi, is protective of him, often rescued him when he's in danger, and the brothers love each other deeply.
  • There was a period of time where Nintendo hinted at Luigi having a dark secret, as well as having him be mind-controlled into a Face–Heel Turn by the main villain of Super Paper Mario, spurring on a deluge of ROMhacks, mainly of Super Mario World, and a lot of fanfics portraying him as being driven to villainy by his jealousy of Mario. However, he's generally portrayed as a Reluctant Hero who would rather just stay at home and let his brother save the day instead, but he loves him very much and is loyal and heroic despite not being as outwardly brave, putting his life on the line when he's in danger (his battles with King Boo were because the ghost kidnapped Mario). And no, Luigi doesn't whine about his inequality of fame compared to Mario, he barely even complains about it in the course of the entire franchise, if at all, and he's not the kind of guy that would betray his own brother just to be respected by everyone else. Also, the dark secret turned out to be a reference to the fact that he is overshadowed by Mario, that's all.
  • Even though she's shown in many spinoff games to be a total badass (including slapping Bowser so hard that he becomes a Twinkle in the Sky in Mario Party 3), the only thing that Princess Daisy will ever be known for is her appearance in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, where one of her most prominent quotes is "Hi, I'm Daisy!", which she says when switching drivers with her or when she wins a race in first place, which can potentially lead to it becoming a bit repetitive. Double Dash is the only game where Daisy says the line in, but in spite of this many people act as if "Hi, I'm Daisy" was the only thing she ever says.
  • Yoshi is often thought of as a mindless monster who eats people, gets ridden on all the time, and speaks like a Pokémon. However, the earlier games have shown that he is kind, intelligent, and perfectly capable of speech, and ever since the GameCube era, he has stood in a pose that makes him practically impossible to ride.
  • Princess Peach has taken many levels in badass over the years, but is still treated like a Damsel Scrappy who never does anything but get kidnapped and bake cakes. Granted, the gamemakers do rely too much on her classic role as The Artifact, but that doesn't erase the existence of her contributions in the RPGs and utter badassery in her own game and in Super Mario 3D World. There's also her hesitating before denying she's Bowser Jr.'s mother in Super Mario Sunshine.
  • It seems Peach may not be able to live down what happens in the end of Super Mario Odyssey. Many paint her as an Ungrateful Bitch for rejecting Mario and Bowser's proposals, leaving them in tears and seemingly ditching them on the moon while hijacking the Odyssey, even though Peach can be heard calling out "Let's go home!" with Mario and Bowser following her command, and in her defense, she only really rejected their proposals due to their brash methods of proposing to her literally amounting to them shoving flowers in her face. Conversely, this also puts Mario and Bowser at blame for acting very selfish in regards to their affections for Peach: Bowser is being unfeeling, egotistical and possessive as usual, kidnapping her, forcing her in an unwanted marriage, but Mario was no better because he got into a fight with Bowser for ruining his marriage proposal. Unlike her, however, they're in the process of living that down, though Mario will have to carry the stigma of getting friendzoned for a long time despite Peach's rejection not being anywhere nearly as terminal (this very game shows in the postgame that the two are still on good terms and she forgave him for the messy situation on the moon, and the Ship Tease is resumed in the ending of Super Mario Maker 2).
  • The Piantas in Super Mario Sunshine also suffer from this due to their lack of hesitation in arresting Mario on suspicion of dirtying Isle Delfino, despite that the ones who hold it against him are limited to a few of them scattered throughout Delfino Plaza. The majority of them throughout the plaza and the game’s other areas aren’t shown to bear him any ill will for his supposed crimes, yet the Piantas as a whole are usually written off based on the actions of only a few.
  • Bowser himself also counts, when Paper Mario revealed he wants Princess Peach for himself (instead of having the will to endanger her), turns kidnapping her into his Achilles' Heel and helps cause another defeat in the hands of Mario, arguably doing more damage to Bowser than her, but he never cares about that. Even as a greater threat, kidnapping her to make her rule alongside is still a noticeable misstep for a Knight of Cerebus. Let's face it, the best way Bowser will rule the Mushroom World is either getting over Princess Peach or choosing to fully focus on destroying the Super Mario Brothers before kidnapping her. In addition, making him a greater threat in the Galaxy games doesn't exactly erase those few times Bowser put his own selfish desires (like reclaiming his castle) above what card-carrying villains and evil overlords are all about, by choosing to help Mario instead of Smithy, Cackletta, or Dimentio. Despite what he thought, doing that doesn't make him more evil the way helping those villains. He might've even had a deal with Smithy to help destroy Mario, and even agree to have Smithy make "Machine Made" duplicates of him like Smithy's actual minions Mack, Bowyer, Yaridovich and the Axem Rangers did (and they were definitely evil ''before'' joining the Smithy Gang) to destroy our heroes.
  • In Mario Power Tennis, Mario steps on Luigi's foot in a mildly OOC act of Sibling Rivalry. This scene is always brought up when people try to paint Mario as a Big Brother Bully, or a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, even though the evidence to the contrary more than outnumbers it, including another victory scene from the same game, Koopa's victory scene, where he gets worried about his brother after Koopa slips onto a banana peel left by Diddy and accidentally kicks him in the face.
  • Thanks to The Runaway Guys (especially Chuggaaconroy), Wario is best known especially in the Mario Party fandom for saying "D'oh, I missed!" (a mishearing of the German "So ein Mist!") any time something goes south for him. Keep in mind that he only says this in three early games.
• Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle has Beep-0 swearing THREE times in Spooky Trails. And the only two characters the game is ever known for are Rabbid Peach, and the Phantom.
• Chrom got hit with the trailer for his companions Robin and daughter Lucina in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. He lays on the ground unconscious after a brawl with Captain Falcon, which is where he ends up for almost all of the trailer until he wakes up and quips that he might get another chance to fight in Smash another time. He was then shown later in the video- as a Final Smash for Robin. Fans ran wild with this revelation, and jokes about Chrom and his in-game status were immediately spread out across the internet. It doesn't help that Viridi makes fun of this in Robin's Palutena's Guidance segment in the Wii U version. With Chrom's addition as an Echo Fighter of Roy in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, this case finally died out.

T-Y

• Tales Series:
  • One has to really pity Dhaos. He was a fairly badass villain with a reasonably understandable motive and tragic backstory, but thanks to the Game Boy Advance port of Tales of Phantasia having poor English voice acting, he is never ever going to live down reacting to Edward D. Morrison's Indignation with a poorly delivered "What the heck is that?!" Apparently that's all he can ever say or do. Dhaos and Indignation in itself is also a case as, yes, in his original game it did force him to retreat and in the first boss battle with him it can end the battle early if his health is low enough, but in the fandom its gotten to the point where it apparently can kill him in one hit. In most games he's in (As well as his expy Sekundes) it only merely does a lot of damage to him and will only trigger a special scene if his health is low enough (for example, see Rita's Thunder Blade on him in the PS3 version of Vesperia.)
  • Veigue of Tales of Rebirth is only remembered by the fandom as "that guy who screams his girlfriend's name a lot."
  • Cheria of Tales of Graces is best remembered as a Damsel in Distress, even though the kindapping was very brief - the quest to save her takes maybe ten minutes out of a 60+ hour game - and Cheria herself fought off the attackers by the time the party arrives.
  • Jude Mathis in Tales of Xillia had a moment where he gave some of his Mana to Muzét, a spirit who was in bad physical condition at the time, and it was turned into a joke that he 'tethered' with her and filling her up with lots of mana. The sequel turned this into a bit of a running joke, with a skit of Muzét bringing this situation up and one other scene of another spirit Aska, in a fractured dimension mentioning that Jude 'tethered' with it, too. The only time Jude 'tethering' with a spirit was actually shown, was with Muzét in the first game and the rest was off-screen, so technically didn't happen. But according to the internet, Jude really, really likes tethering with all sorts of spirits, even with fans going so far as to state that it's a fetish of his.
• With Lara looking at her hands and wondering why she killed Larson in Tomb Raider: Anniversary, people will only remember her just for that one scene and think she's full of Wangst whenever she kills someone. This is ignoring the fact that Larson is the only person she killed in the game and she mostly got over her killing by the end of the game.
• Touhou Project has several:
  • Almost all Catch Phrases are actually not catchphrases due to them coming from a single occurrence, as there's limited amount of text in the actual games.
  • Cirno is indeed The Ditz, but ever since she was labeled "(9) Baka" in the 9th game's instruction manual, her stupidity has become her defining trait in fandom. Her other claim to fame is her "Icicle Fall" spellcard on Easy, which has a safe spot directly in front of her. This has led some to believe she is an easy boss, only to find out that on Normal and harder, she still has some pretty nasty attacks, and "Icicle Fall" on Normal doesn't have that safe spot anymore.
  • An even worse case from the same series is Mystia Lorelei. After defeating her in the eighth game's second stage, Yuyuko Saigyouji made a joke about having eaten her. Ever since then, fanon basically made her into the cast's emergency food ration (with Yuyuko being her most frequent predator), with plenty of eating and chicken (she's a bird girl) jokes at her expense. In short, a bird version of Mince.
  • Yuyuko herself would become known as a Big Eater because of this, as well as her comments about the game's events being a "wonderful midnight snack tour," with Flanderization taking her appetite to Extreme Omnivore levels. Aki Eda and ZUN turned Yuyuko's appetite into a Moment of Awesome when, at the end of Silent Sinner in Blue, Yuyuko prioritizes stealing a simple jug of Lunarian sake over advanced Lunarian technology and weaponry. It's too trivial for retaliatory action and can be consumed in a single sitting so it can never be recovered, but it perfectly broadcasts "We win."
  • There's also Keine, the unfortunate were-hakutaku who will forever be known for all the CAVED people left in her wake.
  • Meiling, the guard at the Scarlet Devil Mansion, is often portrayed as always sleeping on the job thanks to a few lines from the sixth game, despite various official media suggesting that she's actually a rather reliable, if not laid-back, worker.
  • Let's just say that Flandre Scarlet will never live some of her unpleasant traits and very light Cute and Psycho moments down and let the Memetic Psychopath page provide the rest.
• Undertale:
  • In an early scene in the game, Sans takes the player out for lunch. During this scene, there's a moment where Sans offers you ketchup for your food (setting you up for a prank). If you decline the offer, Sans instead downs the whole bottle like it's soda or beer. This is the only time ketchup is ever brought up, he makes no comment about liking it, and given his personality, he may have only done it to troll you. Because of this joke, though, in fanworks he's about as associated with ketchup as Papyrus is with spaghetti, elevating it to a Trademark Favorite Food.
  • the fallen child/Chara will never live down a single comment where they complain about there being no chocolate in a fridge you inspect. This is exaggerated by the fandom as them having chocolate as a Trademark Favorite Food.
• In the fandom, Tsukasa Sagawa of Yakuza 0 will never live down the offhanded, teasing implication he made to Majima that he once drank piss. Nor will Ryuji Goda live down his short career as the Bontan Hunter, stealing the pants off of high school bullies.

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