Regarding the removal of Julie Andrews' entry from YMMV.Saving Mr Banks, would it affect anything if I pointed out that Disney did go through the trouble of casting a look-alike of her, but had her do nothing but wave during the Mary Poppins premiere? The Troper who suggested removing it falsely stated that Andrews doesn't appear in the movie at all.
https://youtu.be/e1ShF0EFvtY?t=1m43s
Forget it; someone who saw Saving Mr. Banks might try to invalidate the entry by pointing out that the movie completely skips over the filming of Mary Poppins.
Edited by dsneybuf on Jan 2nd 2019 at 2:24:28 PM
Bringing up these examples from The Greatest Showman:
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
- The fascinating people in the circus, save for Anne (whose Maligned Mixed Marriage with Phillip warrants a subplot), are sidelined in favor of Barnum and Carlyle. Ironic considering how Barnum is praised in-story for celebrating them and the whole film is framed and promoted as a celebration of diversity, yet the story sticks with the White Male Lead who takes them for granted until Act Three.
- Many reviewers have commented that the actual historical personages in the movie are all entirely worthy of movies as they were complex, fascinating individuals. Carlyle replaces James Bailey, for instance, despite the fact he was Barnum's partner. Hell, even PT Barnum himself is arguably a more fascinating individual Antihero than the character he's portrayed as.
Ultimate Marvel has those two listed under They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot, but they are about characters.
- Carol Danvers as head of S.H.I.E.L.D., given she was an air-force officer not used to running an intelligence agency, but she's far less morally compromised than Nick Fury. And then the writers proceeded to do absolutely nothing with that idea, and she was eventually booted out in favor of having Fury back in charge. She also never became Ms or Captain Marvel.
- After Ultimate Power, Zarda of Supreme Power travels over to the Ultimate universe to "keep an eye" on the Ultimates. She proceeds to do nothing of any real value, before leaving again at the end of New Ultimates. Making this all the more baffling was that Jeph Loeb was the one who brought her there and then wrote her out again.
Carol Danvers is a big character, showing up frequently. And Zarda is just a guest character, but was a main character in the contemporary "Supreme Power" series, so isn't an example either.
Ultimate Secret Wars
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
If the complaints aren't about lack of screen time, cut as non-examples.
YMMV.My Little Pony Equestria Girls
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
- There are many fans that believe that Sunset Shimmer isn't being utilized properly by the Equestria Girls series, and that she should be transplanted to the series proper instead of Starlight Glimmer joining the main cast.note
- The Dazzlings from Rainbow Rocks are some of the most popular antagonists in the entire franchise. Yet the powers that be don't seem to have realized this, as they have never returned or appeared anywhere else beyond a short flashback cameo (in their siren forms) in the main series' seventh season finale.
Sunset's now the main character of the EG series and the Dazzling's were the Big Bad for their movie. That sounds like enough role to disqualify them.
Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on May 4th 2019 at 7:00:17 AM
Honestly, I'm still inclined to my position previously articulated in this thread - there really needs to be a concerted effort to redefine this (or really, give it a definition) in order to do a cleanup, because literally any character can be considered 'wasted' by people who want to see more of them. Just saying "main characters can't count" doesn't work here, because 'main' is a slippery concept in a lot of multi-work franchises and works with lots of central characters.
This should be about lack of screen time or development. If they get plenty of that in a spinoff or in one of the works, that sounds like crossing into complaining about how the character is handled which is misuse.
So cut EG examples?
Showtime!
Would it be acceptable for me to add the three later Endbringers on YMMV.Worm? They're already listed under The Scrappy for reasons that overlap with this trope.
Absolute destiny... apeachalypse?
This was added as an In-Universe example on WebVideo.Some Call Me Johnny as an example of a criticism he had with a game:
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Found it really disheartening that Wes, the protagonist of Pokemon Colesseum, wasn't explored at all outside of the intro. Since the intro establishes him as being a former criminal who blows up his boss's base while smiling and stealing there equipment, Johnny was hoping for a more fleshed out and darker take on a Pokemon protagonist. Instead, he ends up being the standard silent protagonist that Pokemon has always had.
Since Wes is the protagonist, he can't fall under this reaction by definition and this example is more about him not being portrayed the way Johnny wand him to be.
A very spicy memer.
From the GTA section of the videogame page:
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Ryder is one of the major characters who is a member of the Grove Street Families gang and one of CJ's friends from childhood with the charisma and attitude to be well liked by many fans of the game in spite of his jerkassness. When he is revealed to be a traitor along with Big Smoke, CJ shows genuine shock of Smoke betraying him and never once mentions Ryder's name, even when he tells Sweet. In the mission "Pier 69", CJ kills Ryder without much of a dramatic scene between the two and only mentions him once after his betrayal. Since then, Ryder is never brought up again, and Sweet never even asks about Ryder's whereabouts by the time he is released from prison. It made Ryder seem more like a minor character who suddenly became less important half way through the game and his death scene isn't any more different from Kane's death earlier in a Los Santos mission. It also doesn't help that he has the least amount of backstory of the main cast.
This seems more like complaining to me. Ryder doesn't have any interesting storyline that could be explored, apart from betraying the GSF, which is properly solved by the mission where he dies.
Hello, my old chums! I'm gnot a gnelf, I'm gnot a gnoblin... I'm a gnome, and you've been GNOMED!
Cut that one, because it sounds like complaining.
The whole YMMV subpage of Pokemon is full of misuse, because it just complains about how a character that was handled, not a character that comes and never appears again.
Said examples on the page were: Gary, Steve, Iris, Giovanni, N, Team Plasma, Trip, and Ash's Charizard.
I feel as though that whole page should be cut and the examples should be put back on the YMMV page.
Edited by messy432 on Aug 23rd 2019 at 4:15:37 AM
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
I've been meaning to post this for a while, but the They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character section on Persona5 is getting really long and is attracting complaining, as if people are just putting any character up there. Even Joker is included among them, and he's a player insert/the main character.
- Some fans viewed the Confidants as wasted opportunities as a whole. With a few exceptions such as Sojiro, the game seems to treat the Confidants on a more professional level rather than as friends and feel less personalised than the Social Links of the previous games. Rather than focusing on the relationship between the Confidants and Joker himself, the focus instead shifts to the relationship between the Confidants and some out-of-nowhere side character. Afterwards, the player has to go to the Metaverse and change that guy's heart in order to progress, rinse and repeat.
- As always in Persona games, fans like to speculate about the supporting characters gaining personas and becoming playable, but Hifumi Togo stands out, as she was originally planned as a party member. In addition to this, despite enrolling in the same school as Yusuke, they don't interact at all, and Yusuke simply mentions her once while Hifumi never talks about him at all. Instead, it's Makoto who can interact well with her due to both being smart and bookish girls and showed more concern to her when Hifumi's mother becomes a Mementos target.
- Shiho. The opening hour of the game sets her up as a fairly important, or at least a reoccurring side character, what with her status as Ann's best friend and the conspicuous amount of voiced lines she gets. However, her primary role is to show how terrible Kamoshida's physical and sexual abuse are, and as a motivation to let Ann join the Phantom Thieves. She basically disappeared from the plot afterwards, with Ann only mentioning her in passing a few times. A lot of people wish Shiho were a confidant outright, but her only role in the plot after Kamoshida's arc is resolved is a brief appearance in Ann's ninth-rank conversation. To rub salt in the wound, said event where she reappears reveals she's leaving Tokyo for good.
- Some fans feel that Lala Escargot should have been a Confidant. She averts the tendencies of making Gonk characters jerks by being a legitimately nice person and a Benevolent Boss for Joker as well as trying to keep Ohya in check. She is also mentioned as the best example of LGBT representation on the game, which is a touchy subject for western fans.
- Many feel so much more could have been done with Goro Akechi, especially given he outright disappears from the story after the events of Shido's Palace and is completely absent for the final battle against Yaldabaoth. A common example of this is that many viewed his Bolivian Army Ending scene as being poorly written, leaving those who were expecting Akechi to redeem himself and rejoin the Phantom Thieves disappointed.
- To some extent, Haru. While she has a significant role in the plot and receives a fair amount of Character Development, she only becomes involved late into the game, giving her character less room to develop (especially with how steep requirements are to progress in her social link). By comparison, Naoto joins in early October (shortly after Haru), but had been a recurring character since May. Moreover, the rewards her link yields is access to the only other source of free SP curatives in the game (the other being Sojiro's coffee and curry)- but her method is a garden which takes a few days at the very least to grow the items; meaning that by the point she can be accessed, this potential source will never be able to be used to its fullest potential. It also pales in comparison to using the coffee and curry made from Sojiro's Confidant, which the player can have Kawakami make for them, freeing them up to do more tasks that night, and improve at a good rate.
- As an extension of Haru, there also comes Sugimura, Haru's fiance and an early antagonist during the Okumura Palace. He's introduced being Haru's abusive fiance and is the catalyst behind there needing to be a deadline to complete Okumura's palace. And then he largely disappears from the remainder of the story. He also appears early in Haru's confidant but again disappears from the remainder of the game with his engagement with Haru being resolved entirely off-screen. A lot a players felt that Sugimura should have, to the very least, been a Mementos Target given how much attention he was given early in the game.
- In a surprising way, Joker himself. Unlike the previous two main characters who were working to save people without really an end goal in mind, Joker pushes forward with the bigger picture constantly in check, not only managing to be the most calculating and proactive MC in the series, but also the first to desire change at a social level rather than just individually. Unfortunately, him being another self-insert Heroic Mime as per series tradition has not gone well with many fans (particularly series' newcomers), since he is also a surprisingly tragic character with a more fleshed out personality than the previous protagonists, leaving much of his character as well as his reactions to all the terrible things that happen to him through the entire game up to interpretation. Thus, many fans agree that giving him a consistent voice would have been incredibly tantalizing to anyone who enjoys character analysis and development.
- Toranosuke Yoshida. Considering that the late-game centers largely around Shido's attempts to run for prime minister, and that early in his confidant line his entirely-earnest rhetoric is unfairly called a rehash of Shido just saying what the people want to hear, he very easily could've been given some sort of role in the actual plot.
- Ichiko in terms of her ability in relation to the story. Her Confidant role was to be a rumor monger yet all her ability could do is reduce the Alert level in Palaces. Those who remembered the rumor system in Persona 2 felt that she could have had an ability that would have affected the cognitive world in a similar way to said games. Furthermore, her job as a reporter could've been used as a good way assist with the Mementos requests, as she could be the one who finds out rumors going around and whose causing problems, then report it to the heroes.
- While Futaba's confidant is often sighted to be one of the best Confidants of the game, many fans felt that her subplot with Kana was slightly rushed and felt underdeveloped as some fans prefer if Kana were to make an appearance in her Confidant.
- Many Mementos targets are just as bad, if not worse, than some of the main story villains. Targets such as Shiro Asakura, a producer and talent manager who forces his female clients to have sex with him under threat of being blacklisted, or Kana's parents, who have been forcing their daughter to do pornography ever since she was in kindergarten.
- The woman who accused the MC. It was Shido targeting her that kick-started the plot, it was her testimony that got the MC arrested, and she's found by the team to testify against Shido at the end. She only appears in the same scene she's introduced in, and the MC never gets an opportunity to speak with her. She's never even named.
- Junya Kaneshiro. He's all but flat-out stated to have his fingers in Human Trafficking and sex slavery, and the game could have easily used this to drive his villainy home considering this basically makes him Kamoshida on a mass-scale, but it's never elaborated on beyond a few stray remarks (and the bad ending for his Palace).
- Astonishingly, Masayoshi Shido himself. Despite his role as the Big Bad as well as his research on Mementos, his role somehow winds up being underutilized. For one thing, unlike previous antagonists, he can't enter the cognitive world or use a Persona, not to mention despite said investigation, that doesn't benefit him in his palace as the only thing he could do is take a temporary death serum that accomplished nothing. A major issue is how much of a flat Card-Carrying Villain he comes across as.
The only characters on the list I've actively seen people lament about are Haru (her lack of screentime despite being a major character is even a meme within the fandom), Akechi, Hifumi and Shiho. Even then their examples could do with some rewriting.
I'm illiterate. Superman 64 has a better characters than The Last of Us Part II.
I'd forgotten that there was a cleanup thread for this particular audience reaction, so I thought I'd bring up a question I originally posted in the "Is This an Example?" thread.
One troper mentioned that it should be removed, but I'd like a few more opinions just to be safe.
Edited by dragonfire5000 on Sep 25th 2019 at 5:25:02 AM
I personally agree.
I found this in Rocko's Modern Life: Static Cling.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
- None of Rocko's love interests from the original show (Alicia from "S.W.A.K.", Claudette from "I See London, I See France" and Sheila from "Wallaby on Wheels") make so much as a cameo, when it would've been interesting to see how they'd react to Rocko disappearing for 20 years and just now returning to Earth. And nothing is said of Melba Toast.
All of them were one-shot characters in their respective episodes (if I remember right), and I don't think their inclusion would have changed that much the special.
I'd just cut this "trope" alltogether, it attracts too much complaining. Even if there are some salvagable examples, sorting out this mess is probably not worth the effort.
It's not even a "trope," it's an audience reaction.
Speaking of this, I recently found this on Luigi's Mansion 3. It's related to my post above where I asked if characters that are only mentioned but never actually appear can qualify for this.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Rather a lack of thereof. Many thought the game's setting would be a perfect opportunity to least include Daisy in an adventure for once since the story has most of the Mushroom Kingdom crew all on vacation. A nice chance to likewise have her interact with the others, develop more of her personality and maybe even include her as a player 2 character. But alas no, she's left out of the fun as usual and it's still just solely Luigi's quest with the number 2 player being the Gooigi seen in the 3DS port of Luigi's Mansion. All this, despite her playable appearance in Super Mario Run breaking the unspoken rule of her not appearing in any games outside of sports/party spin-offs.
Leaving aside that the game officially comes out tomorrow (at least here in the West, I'm not sure if it's out in Japan yet), I'm fairly certain "this character could've been in but wasn't" is misuse since you can't waste a perfectly good character if said perfectly good character doesn't show up in the work in the first place, right?
Edited by dragonfire5000 on Oct 30th 2019 at 11:17:29 AM
That seems radical...not that I would be agaisnt it.
It certainly seems that most examples are of the complaining variety, along with the They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot.
From The Flash (2014)
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
- In some ways, Barry himself, largely since instead of being a plucky Science Hero, he's often an angsty moron who needs a pep-talk or assistance to win a fight. A major problem is Barry is played as being Unskilled, but Strong, the show repeatedly opting to have him increase in speed, instead of having him learn how to use the speed he has, making him remain ineffective in actually handling a situation without assistance. While the show has made him more powerful (in the comics, Wally West is the fastest among the Flash, and Barry was unable to time-travel without outside help), Barry in the comics was Weak, but Skilled, using his scientific intelligence to creatively apply his Super Speed and Required Secondary Powers to defeat enemies, while in the show, despite being explicitly an intelligent scientist himself, Barry seemingly knows nothing about how to use his powers, and often actually forgets things. On top of that, the show takes aspects of comics Wally, who was also Unskilled, but Strong (lacking Barry's knowledge of super-science and so limited in what tricks he could do, such as being unable to phase, but compensated by being much more powerful with a wider range of abilities), but he was still far more competent than TV Barry, and didn't just have the speed upgrades handed to him, but earned them through character growth, something the show hasn't done for Barry, opting instead to just gift him upgrades to his speed note . In a way, the show combines both Barry and Wally, but fails to make use of either of their character strengths, and as a result the Flash of the TV series ends up being an idiot with too much power and no idea how to use it.
Again, this is a rant about Barry being a terrible character (which I agree) but he's still the main character who appears in every episode and therefore isn't "wasted".
I don't think "attracting complaining" is innately a bad thing. On the topic of subjectivity, I've often found that one person's "complaining" is another person's "legitimate critique", and we'd be in a very bad place if we only ever acknowledged positive reactions to things.
That said, there is definitely a ton of misuse here, even with a vague definition. I agree that something like "Character I wanted to see in a story that was never even planned to be involved" isn't really worth documenting. On the other hand, I think there's room to expand this beyond simply "this character had no screentime" without being a real problem.
As it is, I'd rather keep this around broken, and work on it when we have time, than cut it because the clean-up is too difficult, because I think the concept is legitimate enough and I don't think the misuse is really causing any actual harm (though perhaps it could use a less judgmental name). I've been seeing more complaints about complaining on the wiki, but I'm not sure it's that big of an issue. I've run into the occasional harshly worded example (that I usually try to soften, if not remove), but the Flame Bait tag exists for the stuff that's really risky, and it seems to do a good enough job of that.
Back to the definition though, I actually think Post #60 is a legitimate expanding of the concept. I think it's fair to say that starting a story with what appears to be an Establishing Character Moment that gives them a strong characterization, and one that contrasts with the rest of the series, and then never references it ever again because they're suddenly treated as a Featureless Protagonist when put in the player's hands, certainly follows the spirit of the screentime thing, because the characterization never gets any further screentime even if the character is technically there.
Edited by Jokubas on Nov 27th 2019 at 8:25:31 AM
I haven't changed my position from six (!) months ago: this is just straight up not a tropable concept as it exists today, because there's nothing to stop people from listing any character that they wanted to see more of or done differently.
Completely agree. Both this and They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot are just random people rewriting stories, not useable tropes.
Edited by TheMountainKing on Nov 27th 2019 at 1:35:36 PM
Thirded.
Short-Term Projects herald
Fourthed. In fact, that's exactly what I see on pages like TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot.The Emoji Movie.
Edited by MasterHero on Sep 1st 2018 at 7:41:10 AM