Hetalia: Axis Powers has a case that's odd in that it's based on an event that hasn't even been shown in canon. As the series' characters are Anthropomorphic Personifications of nations, their characterization in fanworks are often based to some extent on real-life historical events that their representative nations, which is pretty much inevitable as it's impossible for canon alone to delve completely into the nations' histories. But sometimes certain writers may dwell on these events too much to strain the relations between characters who get along fine in canon, or worse, even if the event in question no longer affects the real life nations in question. Though canon Hetalia has been known to do similar things (e.g. England and the Revolutionary War), it gets especially noticeable and even somewhat jarring when neither the canon characters nor the real life citizens of the countries care anymore.
- APH fanon in general tends to be inundated with this. Especially in the Japanese fandom. As many fans got into the series through the anime and may not keep up with the comics, or merely read only the early strips, they often tend to use outdated characterizations, despite the fact that Characterization Marches On may have phased them out.
- France being a Quagmire-esque rapist/pedophile. He is indeed shown doing... unsavory things towards younger characters in older strips and borderline to actually sexually assaulting many others (in the Hetalia Gakuen game, he even drags poor Seychelles away with the game heavily implying he’s going to force himself on her), but this has largely been phased out, in favor of him being a somewhat melancholy romantic who likes to flirt a lot and values consent deeply in his sexual conquests. The fandom has also largely moved on from it... well, the western fandom at least. A lot of the Japanese fandom meanwhile tends to still cast him as a creep or even as a straight-up stock Hentai protagonist.
- Spain also gets this too. Fanon likes to think he's a yandere or a Cute and Psycho because of unpleasant elements of Spanish history and the fact that Hidekaz Himaruya said in his notes that he was originally going to be a two faced character like Russia that was only kind toward Romano. Himaruya mostly discarded that idea many years ago, but decided to play upon it on the 2011 Fool's Bath where Spain seems to snap at France when he revealed who the culprit was (which was indeed Spain, who sent the threatening letters to everyone and if they didn't come to this location at a certain time, he would reveal their most embarrassing picture of them). However when Spain appears to take his anger out on America and England, he switches back to his cheery self and explains that he just wanted to hang out with everyone and France twisted the words of what he really wanted. It was obvious that his anger was because he was drunk, but the fans now declare that he is officially yandere / Cute and Psycho despite it being Played for Laughs.
- Another popular perception was that Spain is a pedophile due to the fact that in older strips he acted rather... oddly towards Child!Italy/Chibitalia (and common perception was he acted like this towards Romano as well due to the popularity of the Spamano ship), in one comic strip even anally penetrating the poor kid with his finger, though it’s implied that he didn’t fully know what he was doing. The comic has been deleted, and Spain doesn’t show this questionable behavior anymore, but it still lives on in Fanon, even if to a lesser extent than it used to.
- Poland; he crossdressed all of three times in the entre webcomic, none of which were recent and one of which was deleted from the site due to Old Shame, but fandom seems to love putting him in skirts near-constantly.
- A couple older strips and the anime had jokes involving Canada being unnoticeable, with only one of them making him explicitly invisible. He does not bring this up that much. In his vast majority of appearances, everyone sees him just fine, even if they occasionally think he is America (and even that only seems to really bother him when he gets beat up because of it). Recent strips, in fact, show him as being popular even; in the 2011 Halloween event all the other nations saw and recognized him just fine and cheered for him. Yet fandom still portrays Canada as the poor little nation nobody ever sees or even remembers the existence of, he is always whining and angsting about that (often to super-emo extents), and it's sometimes mixed with different degrees of America bashing.
- Taiwan is a Plucky Genki Girl who gets along with almost everyone but China and even then she helps China when needed (though her methods are... unorthodox.) People only seem to remember that she once told China "leave Japan ALONE!" in a single-panel sketch, however, and thus they tend to believe that either she's a Clingy Jealous Girl to Japan (when she has never clung to him in the canon strips) or that she truly loathes China (when their relationship is actually much, much friendlier than it would be if Hetalia was super close to history).
- Ukraine and Belarus's song Carrots and Sticks plays the Yandere archetype for laughs and makes some throw-away allusions to Ukraine possibly also loving Russia in a way similar to Bela's, only more passive-aggressively. Now some people seem to think that Ukraine is 'totally a super obsessive yandere, despite how this supposed "darker side" of her never really arises in the strips/series.
- Because of being an obscure character, Bulgaria will always be remembered as that guy who smacked Italy with a stick in his anime debut, purely because he he felt like it.
