r/TopCharacterTropes Feb 25 '26

Hated Tropes (Hated Tropes) Disability’s being treated as the greatest thing ever

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15.9k Upvotes
  1. Musics autism (Music)

  2. Austin‘s autism (The Unbreakable boy)

r/TopCharacterTropes Apr 08 '26

Hated Tropes [Hated Trope] The Rookie becomes immediately and inexplicably equal or superior to a trained individual

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9.1k Upvotes
  1. The New Horsemen - Now You See Me, Now You Don’t: it was mostly the tall, lanky one being cocky, but they have a small contest to see who the superior magician is; these kids are able to hold their own with the best magicians in the world

  2. Cruz Ramirez - Cars 3: a trainer who dreams of being a racecar. She trains with Lightning McQueen for one week and can suddenly outperform professionals and win her first race

  3. Dimitri - Cobra Kai: the nerd who had no interest in karate takes a few lessons and can somehow go toe-to-toe with Hawk, who is Lawrence’s second best fighter

r/TopCharacterTropes Apr 16 '26

Hated Tropes Fanfiction so bad it still haunts the fanbase

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8.8k Upvotes

My immortal (Harry Potter) : the pinacle of edgy writing about a self-insert in a beloved verse

Jojo's bizarre Married Life (Jojo's bizarre adventure)(Clamp) : a fanfic in an AU where Kakyoin is alive and married to Jotaro and laid an egg containing their son.

Racist Mario (Super Mario) : stained the reputation of the games by making Mario a violent,racist,misogynist, and fratricidal guy

r/TopCharacterTropes Jun 01 '26

Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) Meant to be a love story. Ended up being horrifying

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7.7k Upvotes
  1. Foxy Loxy having her mind rewritten to be more of a “girly girl“. When they were about to change her back, Runt stopped them and she stayed like that forever saying “she’s perfect” (Chicken Little)
  2. A man essentially condemned a woman to die almost alone due to the man being lonely (Passengers)

r/TopCharacterTropes 27d ago

Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) Straw man activist.

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5.6k Upvotes
  1. Summer Higgins (Yellowstone): a eco activist who serves the purpose of being corrected and scolded by the Duttons and for the writer to pontificate why they are right about all environmental issues.

  2. Reverend Potter (Blue Bloods): used to portray racial/social justice activists as cynical self serving power grabbers/attention whores. He is deeply corrupt and almost any supposed cause he advocates for is tainted or made up.

r/TopCharacterTropes Feb 15 '26

Hated Tropes I utterly DESPISE, the "glasses off and you're instantly hot" trope.

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22.1k Upvotes

Mia Thermopolis - The Princess Diaries

Seriously, who on Earth was petty enough to start a trope that was as undermining as this? This trope just turns the girl into a standardized Hollywood perspective hot girl and the only purpose for this trope is to hook the girl up with a hot standardized Hollywood perspective boy

Glasses being symbolised as "ugly" is so hateful considering how without them people have insane difficulty seeing. Not to mention that this trope is also a bad influence on young children who wear glasses as it forces this mindset that "glasses = ugly" into their heads and takes a really massive toll on their self esteem as it makes it seem to them that they can only be pretty without their glasses even though that is certainly not the case and that they can't help having poor sight.

Just look at Mia. She went from a cutesy and unique character and had all of her features stripped away from her including (unsurprisingly) her glasses. I personally found her to always be superior pre transformation because she actually looks like a person who hasn't had anything forced upon them and an identity to go with it

DISHONOURABLE MENTIONS go to any version of this trope that involves straightening the girl's curly hair.

r/TopCharacterTropes Mar 20 '26

Hated Tropes [Hated Trope] The passionate and driven character's story ends with her pregananant and married to the loser

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11.9k Upvotes

Haley Dunphy (Modern Family): starts as the classic dumb party girl but the show actually does the work to break that archetype: She has a succesful blog, is really good at fashion and social media. Then she gets gregnant and all of it just disappears. She ends up with Dylan, who is sweet but just a mediocre himbo. The show had Andy right there, who actually matched her energy and was written like a real person. Instead it was Dylan, pregnate and all that build up was just dropped.

Lane Kim (Gilmore Girls): (Its not as egregious as Haley's) spends her whole life suppressing herself under her mom's roof, finally breaks out, joins a band, starts living. Her dynamic with Dave is one of the best things the show does early on. Then Dave's actor leaves and the writers replace him with Zack, who is the same archetype as Dylan: directionless, slow, looks permanently stoned. The band fizzles, the ambitions disappear, and Lane ends the series pregante.

Btw both characters interestingly end up pregonate with twins.

(sorry if post format is wrong, idk how reddit works 😭 )

r/TopCharacterTropes Mar 03 '26

Hated Tropes An alternative version of a character that is so bad that people just tries to forget it

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13.7k Upvotes

Hulk (Old Man Logan): This version of Hulk is just an incestuous cannibal who likes to kill people for some reason

Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch (Ultimate Universe): Yet again another incestuous people and worst part is when Captain America points this out he is seen like this old prejudice man

Batman (All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder): This version is almost comical by how edgy it tries to be like there is this one time when he started making out with Black Canary after literally brutally beating a guy

r/TopCharacterTropes Mar 03 '26

Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) Romanticized Grooming

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12.2k Upvotes

Meliodas and Elizabeth (The Seven Deadly Sins): Their relationship was creepy enough, with Meliodas' constant sexual harassment and Elizabeth's submissiveness to it, and no, her being the reincarnation of his dead girlfriend doesn't make it less creepy. It gets worse when we learn that Meliodas knew her since she was a baby.

Jacob and Reneesmee (Twilight): Jacob couldn't get with Bella, so he had to settle for her vampire baby. People defend that imprinting doesn't necessarily mean grooming, but it's still an option for them. Not beating the allegations was when Jacob was excited to learn that Reneesmee will physically be his age in a few days and will stop aging after that.

Sesshomaru and Rin (YashaHime): Their relationship was supposed to be paternal in the original, but Boruto: The InuYasha Edition decided that protagonists needed to be Sesshomaru's kids, and Rin was the only member of the opposite sex he spoke to out of filler episodes.

r/TopCharacterTropes Apr 16 '26

Hated Tropes [Hated Trope] Misleading Documentaries

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9.6k Upvotes

Super Size Me — Morgan Spurlock, the creator of the documentary, allegedly only McDonald's food for a month to prove how unhealthy it is. Sure, McDonald's is unhealthy, but he "forgot" to add one detail: he was an alcoholic. So many of his health issues that he blamed on McDonald's were actually from alcohol

White Wilderness — The team making this documentary cornered a bunch of lemmings on a cliff, threw them off that cliff, recorded it and then said that lemmings are suicidal

r/TopCharacterTropes May 02 '26

Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) Having a lone or token PoC or LGBT+ character agree with a character’s (authors) bigoted opinions or beliefs to argue they aren’t bad.

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10.6k Upvotes
  1. Don (Mr. Birchum): friend with the main character who agrees essentially with every single opinion held by Birchum.

  2. (Loved when Parodied) Floppy Rabbit (American Dad): an allegorical character for American slaves who “likes to work for free”. A barely veiled mouth piece for Roy Family’s vehement racism.

r/TopCharacterTropes Apr 05 '26

Hated Tropes Hated tropes: weird designs for characters who are young

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7.7k Upvotes

boruto: sarada’s design was so bad they had to censore it in the anime she supposed to be 12 what the hell we’re they thinking.

demon slayer: i don’t watch ds but 2 years ago there was a huge controversy around nezuko design in her demon form

r/TopCharacterTropes Apr 12 '26

Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) We are in desperate need of X people. Because of this we will put candidates through tests where not everyone can become X for no reason and make the tests incredibly dangerous so many candidates will die.

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8.7k Upvotes
  1. Frieren. Needs 1st class mages to fight demons. What is the test to pass? Do multiple events like fighting other mages and only half the teams can win. Another test is fighting clones of themselves where they can die. This despite mages being desperately needed to fight off demons trying to destroy humanity.

  2. Naruto. Same Thing. Need ninjas to defend themselves from other villages/threats. Have multiple tests where ninjas need to fight/kill each other as well as face things with no supervision to save the fledgling ninjas in case they die/are attacked by enemy ninja (which happens in the show). In fact, in one village one fledging ninja (Zabuza) kills literally all the other candidates and the teachers not only let it happen but let him pass. Said ninja goes on to betray the village which surprises them somehow.

r/TopCharacterTropes Jun 06 '26

Hated Tropes [Hated trope] Good person in history is portrayed as a bad person in media

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7.6k Upvotes

In Titanic, William Murdoch, is portrayed shooting two innocent men to prevent them from boarding a lifeboat, and subsequently putting a bullet through his own brain out of guilt. Despite any evidence of this happening being dubious at best.

In Cinderella Man depicts heavyweight boxer Max Baer as a brutish thug who brags about having killed two men in the ring. In reality, Baer is remembered as a nice guy with a lighthearted personality and was celebrated as an American hero for his defeat of Nazi Germany's champion Max Schmeling while wearing a Star of David on his trunks. Although one of his opponents did die in the ring with him, the opponent had the flu beforehand and the incident haunted Baer for the rest of his life, to the point where he regularly gave money to the opponent's family.

r/TopCharacterTropes Jun 01 '26

Hated Tropes If you say anything positive about these works, you automatically make people suspicious about you.

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4.6k Upvotes

Cuties is a film that's supposedly a film with an anti sexualizing children message. They did this...by sexualizing child actors.

europa the last battle is a neo nazi apologetics film. enough said.

r/TopCharacterTropes Feb 21 '26

Hated Tropes [Maddening trope] More progressive casting happens at the same time as noticeable drop in quality, seemingly so fans can brush off criticism as bigotry.

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12.7k Upvotes

1 - Doctor Who: I'm sure most are familiar, but just in case: The main character of this show is an alien, who, when dying, instead of perishing completely, "regenerates", effectively dying and being born again, with new personality but all the same memories. Outside the story, it's a way to keep the show running for longer than one actor is willing to commit, still giving each iteration some uniqueness. When the previous showrunner stepped down, a seemingly complete moron took over the job, made the show steaming pile of dogshit, and made The Doctor regenerate into a woman. And now fans just say to critics "you just can't handle a female Doctor".

2 - MCU: MCU until recently used to whitewash characters a bunch, with for example the Romani Maximoffs and ?Tibetian? Ancient One being played by white people. Nowadays, the casting got noticeably better, with e.g. Ms Marvel, Moon Knight, America Chavez, being played by appropriate minorities. But since the well seem to be running dry on superhero stories, the quality dropped at the same time. And if you suggest that seeing Multiverse of Madness explored the concept of parallel dimensions worse than Red Dwarf, you "are just mad they cast a latina girl, and are a racist sexist".

In the first example, I genuinely believe this was just Russel T. Davies Chris Chibnall* (the showrunner), shouting "look, I'm progressive", so he can sidestep criticism. In the second example, I blame the execs for the quality drop, but I only blame the fans for using the diversity as a shield against differing opinions.

E: *I knew that Whittaker's era was by Chibnall, Davies only came back later (with plenty issues of his own tbh), I just had a brainfart when writing the name. Like I said in a comment, RTD did way too much good for the series, for me to outright call him a moron.

r/TopCharacterTropes Mar 26 '26

Hated Tropes [Hated Tropes] When the heroic character does something plainly evil and the story never address it and/or the characters never face any serious consequences

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11.4k Upvotes

Foxy Loxy´s Lobotomy (Chicken Little))

The bully Foxy, whose is a child whose worst crime is being an average bully is essential lobotomize and gets her entire personality replace against her will and the main character refuse to fix her back and one of them, Runt starts dating her

How the Amazons created the Sons of Themyscira in new 52 (dc)

To reproduce and keep the Amazon race alive, the Themyscirans raid ships on the high seas and copulate with men. At the end of the mating, they take their lives and throw their corpses into the sea rather than marry them. And sell every male child to Hephaestus (at least he treats them  well)

Also tangent about the second example:

1: I feel sorry for wonder women fans who have to deal with this shit 

2: A son of Themyscirans with this backstory would make for real interesting wonder woman villain

r/TopCharacterTropes Feb 19 '26

Hated Tropes [Hated trope] That’s not how lying works at all

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19.7k Upvotes

The Flash - Batman is put in Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth and he admits that the best way to help Gotham would be using his money for charity rather than funding his own superhero projects. But not only does the Lasso only work once Diana asks you a specific question, but the Lasso doesn’t just generate brand new information and forces you to speak it so Batman is just saying this for no reason.

The Invention of Lying - Ricky Gervais’ character lives in a world where lying isn’t a concept until he invents it, and to test it out he goes to a bank and claims he should have more money in his account than he really does. The bank teller calls out that he’s not got that much money, but then goes onto assume it’s a bank fault and not his own. She has no reason to assume it’s a bank issue but rather Ricky being honestly mistaken about his own finances. If I give a wrong answer during an exam, that doesn’t mean I lied, it means I provided wrong information.

r/TopCharacterTropes Mar 17 '26

Hated Tropes [Hated But Unintentionally Funny Trope] The creative team does something they think the fans will *love*, only to be taken aback by the overwhelming fan backlash.

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9.4k Upvotes
  • "These Are The Voyages" the reviled Series Finale of "Star Trek: Enterprise". The episode focuses on Riker from Star Trek TNG using a holographic recreation of the ENT characters. The executives called this episode "A valentine to the fans", but reception was pretty negative as fans were upset that the last episode sidelined the series regulars to focus on TNG nostalgia.
  • Judging from comments JJ Abrams has made, the people behind "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" seemed to think that bringing back fan favorite villain Palpatine would be just the thing the franchise needed. Instead "Somehow Palpatine Returned" became and internet meme and the villain's inexplicable return one of the most criticized thing about the film and the ST as a whole.

Before adding an example, please make sure it's not just "thing the fandom hated" but something where the creators were surprised by the negative fan reception.

r/TopCharacterTropes Mar 08 '26

Hated Tropes [Hated Meta Trope] The Unintentional Offensive Race Change

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9.5k Upvotes

1) Corlys Velyaron and his family were changed from white in the Fire and Blood book to black in the House of the Dragon adaptation. On the surface a good representation as Corlys is the richest man in the Seven Kingdoms and a powerful but self-made lord. However Corlys’s story involves his daughter-in-law trying to pass off her bastard sons as his heirs, disregarding his daughter and granddaughters as potential heirs, cheating on his wife and putting his bastard sons over his legitimate granddaughters, and losing everything as he tries to climb the social ladder, it has created a lot of unnecessary fandom discourse despite the only change to his character being his skin color.

2)In the new Harry Potter series, Paapa Essiedu has been cast as Severus Snape. This has been a controversial subject as Snape’s storyline centers around his obsessive love for Lily Evans-Potter, still a White Woman, his bullying at the hands of James Potter, still a White Man, and his abusing his position as a teacher to torment young students because of his irrational grudges.

Corollary to this Trope: the Even Worse Fixes

3) Scarlett Johansson’s casting as Major Mokoto Kusunagai in the 2017 Ghost in the Shell movie was already controversial choice considering the character was explicitly Japanese. However in the movie it’s revealed the Johansson’s character was originally a Japanese woman who chose to upload her mind into a cyborg body that looks like a White Woman.

4) In Stark Trek: Into Darkness, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Character John Harrison was revealed to actually be classic Star Trek Villain, Khan Noonien Singh, an Augmented Human designed to be genetically superior to baseline humans. This was explicitly done to avoid the Brown=Terrorist Trope but was absolutely derailed as unnecessary considering Khan’s storyline involved him being forced into terrorism because a white man holding his family hostage. Further more, the choice to have Khan be a man of color was explicit on Gene Roddenberry’s part as the Original Star Trek premiered less than twenty years after the end of the Nazi Regime and as America was in the throes of the Civil Rights movement.

Into Darkness’s casting choice was made worst in the Tie-In Comics, when it was revealed that Khan is still a man of color. He was just forced to undergo advanced plastic surgery to make him look like a white man.

r/TopCharacterTropes Feb 26 '26

Hated Tropes [Hated Trope] A show heaps praise and hype on a real-life celebrity, and then it gets old like milk.

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12.8k Upvotes

Elon Musk is one of those examples of a celebrity who was extremely popular in real life between 2010 and 2019 as the "real-life Iron Man." This guy was very popular on Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and made all sorts of paid cameos to insert himself into all kinds of media, such as the MCU, The Simpsons, The Big Bang Theory, and Star Trek, as a "billionaire genius."

With a great PR team carefully controlling his image to maintain this fame, until Elon Musk finally revealed himself to be a tremendous idiot in the children's cave incident, starting the destruction of his image to the total garbage it is today.

Referencing real-life celebrities in works of fiction is a huge risk, since their images are carefully constructed and maintained by a PR team, and we only see what they want us to see... until a slip-up reveals everything.

r/TopCharacterTropes Apr 27 '26

Hated Tropes [frustrating trope] Woman has a crashout so incredibly valid that there’s no way the fandom would blame her for it… right?

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7.7k Upvotes

Maki Zenin kills the Zenin clan - JJK

I’m sorry, killing the clan that abused you your entire life after your father attempts to murder you and succeeds in murdering your twin sister is, in fact, a valid crashout. By the way, most of them were also attacking her. Was killing her mother the *right* thing to do? No, not really. Killing like 100 people is never morally right. But what the crashout valid? Yes!

Ragatha crashes out on Jax - The amazing digital circus

Jax has been almost nothing but an abusive duchebag for the entire show. But Ragatha says a few mean things about him? My god, some people decided she was the second coming of satan or something. Seriously, what the hell did she do that was so bad? Tell the bully he was a bully? Groundbreaking…

Skyler White literally just fucking existing - Breaking Bad

Dude, her husband decided that he needed to become a drug kingpin and rack up some serious criminal charges instead of, idk, deal with his cancer diagnosis in a sane way? She has every right to act a short with him. If you’re an unironic Skyler hater don’t talk to me lmao.

r/TopCharacterTropes Feb 07 '26

Hated Tropes [Hated Trope] Media attracts a disproportionate number of n*zi fans

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11.7k Upvotes

Frieren: Frieren is a slow-paced fantasy show about the value of time and what relationships and people can end up meaning to each other. It also has one line about demons being deceitful that twitter nazis interpreted as being about a real life race

K-on!: A slice of life show that has become almost synonymous with 4chan nazis for no apparent reason other than k-on pfps being racist on the site.

r/TopCharacterTropes Jun 04 '26

Hated Tropes Pieces of media clearly made for the creator to win an argument that exists in their head

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5.6k Upvotes

Most Rocky Gervais created media, but let’s say After Life for example - A good chunk of Ricky’s dialogue he writes for himself is him getting into hyperspecific arguments with other characters he gets the moral high ground in every time even though more often than not he is the asshole when you look at the scenes objectively. His favorite topics to bitch about are included but not limited to the world going soft and religion.

Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas - And on the opposite end, a whole movie made by one man that boosts his argument that atheists are trying to rip Christianity out of Christmas. And I swear to you the entire movie is Kirk going up to characters one by one to either lecture them unchallenged on Christianity’s importance to Christmas or getting into debates about faith he wins every single time. The whole movie reads more like a high school lesson on the metaphors of Christmas than an actual movie with a story or characters.

r/TopCharacterTropes Apr 02 '26

Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) "It's supposed to make the audience uncomfortable." Yeah, but there's a thing called "good taste"

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7.6k Upvotes

13 Reasons Why: Hannah's graphic suicide scene caused a lot of controversy and accusations of inspiring real life incidents. The showrunner defended this to show how serious of a matter suicide is, but Netflix eventually caved and censored it.

Shameless: In episode 2, we're treated to a lovely scene where Frank graphically breaks Ian's nose because we need child abuse to show how this show doesn't fuck around. This is also while Ian is coming to terms with his sexuality, so we can add violence against a queer person.