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openDerailment misuse (too brief)?
CharacterDerailment.Western Animation
- Madame Foster in the infamous Season 3 episode "Foster's Goes To Europe". Normally, she's the sweetest and coolest grandma ever and an absolute saint of a human being. Here, she ruins a European vacation which the gang planned to go on (and spent the entire episode struggling to get ready for) by stealing Mac's tickets at the very last minute. The episode ends with Madame Foster, her bowling buddies, and a homesick imaginary friend called Eurotrish going on the vacation instead, while Mac is wrongly and unfairly blamed by everyone else for missing the trip. In the same exact episode, Madame Foster also unties a group of defenseless imaginary balloons which sends them flying into the sky for no reason at all.
I deleted this as it seems more like Jerkass Ball as it's not long enough to count as Derailment if they are back to normal next episodes (which doesn't sound like not the case here). But I have seen other per episode CD examples on a per episode basis. How long does Derailment have to last to count as opposed to being just Out of Character or a Ball trope?
And why does Character Derailment not have a cleanup thread despite being Flame Bait meaning it's more contentious than items that do? Should it?
Edited by Ferot_DreadnaughtopenCharacter Derailment misuse?
CharacterDerailment.Video Games
- Erol in the Jak and Daxter series starts out as The Dragon to Baron Praxis, Jak's opponent in Haven City's races and his rival for Keira's affection. He seemingly dies when he tries to run Jak down with his vehicle, only to crash into a large stash of Eco and explode. Sure, he may already have been evil in that game, but in the next game, he returns from the dead as a cybernetic Omnicidal Maniac who wants to Take Over the World. Though it could be argued his sudden character change from Jak 2 to Jak 3 might be due to either suffering serious head trauma from the accident(half his head is missing!), the dark eco he crashed into badly affected his mind like what it did to Gol and Maia Acheron or the Dark Makers were actually using him as a puppet and had some kind of control over him. Unfortunately the game never gives us an explanation to why Erol's sudden change in character and Jak kills him for good right at the end so we never get to know.
Is it really unexplained if he's been through such a clear sanity destroying event? Half the entry argues it's explainable by the circumstance. I believe Came Back Wrong is a separate trope as it explain the change?
I asked Is this an example?, twice, but haven't heard anything.
openDerailment Misuse
From Film:
- Star Wars: The Last Jedi received an awful lot of flak from certain fans for its portrayal of Luke Skywalker. When we saw him in his last appearance in Return of the Jedi, he was an idealistic and hopeful Jedi Knight who refused to kill his father on the chance that there was still good in him, loved his sister Leia and best friend Han Solo, and was never afraid to battle the evils of the Empire. However, by the time Rey comes to his island to recruit him, we find he's become a bitter old man who believes the teachings of the Jedi are toxic and need to go extinct, who abandoned Leia and Han to hide out on Ahch-To while the First Order ravaged the galaxy and now refuses to leave, arguing in a deleted scene that trying to stop them might only make things worse, and who in the glory days of the New Republic was apparently willing to seriously consider killing his nephew in his sleep for having dark side tendencies. Some fans reacted poorly to these changes, while others argued it was perfectly natural character progression, considering how much of Luke's victory over the Empire had been overridden by the time of the Sequel Trilogy. And that's all we have to say about that.
There was a lot of debate on this wiki overthis. Unless anyone objects, I'm gonna remove it since the cause of the changes is explained in-story (if they're done well is a separate issue) while this trope is about unexplaind changes, and the last part admits it's arguable.
openCharacter Derailment misuse
From CharacterDerailment.Film:
- Loki became somewhat of a caricature of himself in Thor: Ragnarok. Though he had chronic backstabbing disorder and an overblown need for people to worship him in previous movies, these traits were flanderized in the last Thor film. Thor's character was also somewhat derailed, though not to the same extent. Though he wasn't entirely humorless in his previous appearances, in the most recent film he was constantly joking around about things that he would have previously been a lot more serious about. Both cases of character derailment seem to have been to change the tone of the series to make it more popular.
Exaggerating character traits is not a drastic enough change to qualify for this trope to my knowledge. Misuse?
Luke Skywalker from The Last Jedi was added back to CharacterDerailment.Film despite it having a commented out note at top of the page not to add them.
I first deleted it and added the note per ATT as it was objectively misused. Derailment is about unexplained, not unpopular changes and TLJ clearly showed and explained why he did such, so the complains around that fall under other items. Also Luke nearly killed Vader in a similar Moment of Weakness in ROTJ (why that was uncontroversial is a separate thing) so the the argument behind the Derailment entry is factually incorrect.
Have to ask here before re-removing. Derailment can still apply if fans see the reason as objectively insufficient to explain the change so might that apply here?
On the subject:
Besides the last part arguing against, he got a sub-plot building up to/explaining why he did so. I'll cut this unless I hear anything.