YMMV / The Velveteen Dream

• And You Thought It Would Fail: Fan response to the Velveteen Dream persona ranged from mixed responses to outright mockery of the mere idea of the gimmick, earning negative comparisons with Adam Rose and Orlando Jordan's infamous TNA gimmick. Mere months later and Velveteen Dream would be receiving genuine cheers and fan support against Ensemble Dark Horse supreme Aleister Black, despite being a heel. When Black subsequently acknowledged Dream the fans almost cheered the building down.
• Broken Base: His return to NXT since being named during the #SpeakingOut movement. Is it enough that no criminal charges have actually been filed against him? Or is the seemingly open-and-shut nature of the accusations (along with WWE appearing to cover it up) too much to look past? (Not so broken were the NXT crowd in the building, who skewed heavily to the latter).
• Harsher in Hindsight: Aleister Black's words after defeating Velveteen Dream became this, even ignoring the #SpeakingOut accusations, when shortly after a return was speculated with Triple H becoming the new Head of Creative following Vince McMahon's retirement. It would be revealed that he had since been arrested for battery and trespassing and later again for possession of drug paraphernalia, though fortunately for Dream, the charges were dropped, but his stock is still heavily damaged...for now.
  "Enjoy infamy, Velveteen Dream."
• Ho Yay: Dear Lord, the man has chemistry with everyone. Especially his enemies.
• Memetic Mutation: "The Dream has no memory of that."
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: When he first debuted on NXT as Patrick Clark, he wasn't exactly given much attention, partly due to his background of coming from the most recent season of WWE Tough Enough. Despite his indie wrestling background, his relative youth and inexperience made him stick out among a sea of hardened veterans. It got worse when he started acting effeminate, which led to him becoming repackaged as "The Velveteen Dream" with the promos reminding people in a negative way of Orlando Jordan in his disastrous run in TNA. As the gimmick persisted however, fans realized this would be nothing like Jordan, with Dream being less Depraved Ambiguously Gay and more flamboyant in the vein of Rick Rude. What really rescued him from the heap, however, was his feud with Aleister Black built on the premise of the latter refusing to say his name, leading to a fantastic match between the two culminating in Black finally acknowledging him as a Worthy Opponent by saying his name, and the fans being behind all of this. Any remaining doubters would be silenced come 2018, with him putting up spectacular performances at the NXT TakeOver: New Orleans' Ladder Match and against the likes of Ricochet, Tommaso Ciampa, and Johnny Gargano.
• Shocking Elimination: On Tough Enough Season 6. He consistently placed among the top rankings week after week... and then was eliminated for failing to learn the value of humility. No less than Mick Foley and Booker T argued that it proved the contest was based more on popularity than any other merits.
• X-Pac Heat: Gained this upon his return as he was among those named during the #SpeakingOut movement, accused of having indecent online interactions with underage boys, to the point where #FireVelveteenDream would be trending on Twitter each time he appeared. It didn't help that one of his accusers stated that he was not contacted when WWE did their investigation, which cleared Dream, making it seem as if they just swept the issue under the rug. Though it was revealed his accuser was 19, thus a legal adult at the time, meaning that, at least in regards of potential child sexual abuse, there were no charges possible against him.

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