"To me, all the fatal flaws fanboys bitched about in regards to the [Star Wars] prequels — stiff dialogue, wooden performances, a convoluted plot, and mindless spectacle divorced from human emotion — were there from the very beginning."
A Franchise Original Sin is anything that the audience takes issue with in later installments of a serial work which has been present since earlier installments or even from the very start.
Franchise Original Sins may be exacerbated by Protection from Editors resulting in Filibuster Freefall, or a result of a Creator Breakdown or other form of Troubled Production. It is possible for a story to recover from its sins if the writer experiences a Creator Recovery — or you might be looking at the point where the fans invoke Fanon Discontinuity. Or it might be regression to the mean; the work in question became popular because the early installments were above the quality the creators could normally produce, and when they returned to baseline, it was over for them.
This can be the result of creators not listening to legitimate criticism and/or concerns about their work. It may happen when the creators think to themselves "if we've done it once before, we can do it again", but with disregard to why the element in question was okay or at least forgiven in the early runs of the work. Or they may even think "if we got away with it once, we might get away with it again" when making sequels to a beloved work that had some minor flaws, and therefore now become more apparent.
Expect to hear statements like "It was all right when it only happened occasionally, but..." when this idea is brought up in fan conversations. Sometimes the 'sin' is an element that the fanbase initially liked, only to reject it after it became offensive or overused. Ironically, the Fan Dumb might use this to defend Seasonal Rot, invoking false equivalency with statements like "Well these elements were used back in earlier installments, and you weren't complaining about it then!"
If a Franchise Original Sin becomes problematic enough, it can cause audiences to re-evaluate older installments in a more negative light, which will likely cause a division between ex-fans who now believe that things had been going wrong right from the start and fans who believe that it only became a problem when it became overused, broke the Willing Suspension of Disbelief, etc. and still enjoy the older installments. If enough people agree that the work was never good because of its underlying flaws, it can be Condemned by History.
This takes its name from "original sin", the idea posited in The Bible that all of humanity's desire to do evil came from Adam's decision to disobey God in the Book of Genesis. Just replace Adam with "the first installment" and humanity with "all the sequels" and voila.
Rule of thumb: if you can imagine a reboot or spiritual successor without the element in question, then it qualifies. If you can't, then it doesn't. Secondary rule of thumb: If it wasn't visible in episodes prior to ones that garner complaints about it, it's an Ass Pull or a Retool gone bad, not a Franchise Original Sin.
Compare with First Installment Wins, Overused Running Gag, Discredited Meme (a more specific variety of this where a joke gets used so often that everyone gets sick of it) and The Artifact (which remains in place despite no longer serving its original purpose). Often goes along with Sequelitis. Contrast Seinfeld Is Unfunny, when overexposure makes the original seem less good in hindsight. See also Borrowing from the Sister Series, if the sin originated in a different series by the same creator and was copied over.
Please be careful you aren't Complaining About Shows You Don't Like. Please also be careful your examples doesn't sound like justifying a criticism of a show by saying it's always been an element from the beginning. Due to misuse, a cleanup and maintenance thread can be found here
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Example subpages:
- Anime
- Comic Books
- Fan Works
- Films
- Literature
- Live-Action TV
- Multiple Media
- Music
- Professional Wrestling
- Tabletop Games
- Video Games
- Web Animation
- Western Animation
Other examples:
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Fan Works
- A much maligned trend in Battlestar Galactica (2003) and Stargate-verse crossovers is the portrayal of the Colonials as religious fanatics and generally evil, despite little canon evidence. This can be traced all the way to Reunions Are a Bitch, but whereas that fic placed the blame on the leaders, with the average Joe Colonial being sympathetic, later fics simply made them Always Chaotic Evil.
- Transformers: MHA: The big reveal of Chapter 86 is that the Saiyan Race exists as an alien race that is included in the greater story 'verse caused some readers to bow out of the story entirely. Thing is, part of the author's Signature Style includes unexpected crossovers with various other properties (Ben 10 RWBY featuring Generator Rex and The Secret Saturdays, with Toku properties like Super Sentai and Kamen Rider having elements present in both this fic and Transformers: MHA). It's just that those IPs usually had some prior crossover or Friendly Fandoms going on between them that, along with the decent writing and worldbuilding, readers didn't usually mind their inclusion; the fic manages to integrate G.I. Joe and MASK, two Hasbro IPs that have a strong history with Transformers (particularly the former). The inclusion of the Saiyan race proved to be a step too far for many readers, as, unlike the previously mentioned series, the Saiyan race brought in a huge step up in power scaling, lore, and tone that clashed heavily with the existing narrative, all of which threw readers off Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Not only did it feel unnecessary, but it shifted the focus away from the simple premise of the fanfic that drew people in to begin with. For many, it marked the point where the story became more akin to a Fortnite-style mishmash with little regard for narrative coherence.
- Furthermore, the author's preferred addition of elements from various Toku series like Super Sentai and Kamen Rider attracted significant backlash alongside the addition of the extraneous elements. This wasn't that much of a problem in the earlier chapters and his earlier fic, Ben 10 RWBY, since most readers were fewer. However, when the author made the same approach and introduced Ace Ukiyo—the titular protagonist of his series to the fanfic, longtime and critical readers weren't as forgiving, seeing as the additions were jarring and out of place in a crossover dedicated to simply the core IPs (and some Hasbro IPs). And ironically, once the backlash hit, some of the readers revisited the older story and realized that such elements in Ben 10 RWBY were just as distracting as they are here.
- The main complaint about Nobody Dies is that it got too silly to be taken seriously, but silliness was always a part of the story. Just look at this version of Rei and what she pulls off. The difference is the silliness was mostly limited to her and balanced out by serious and touching events that made those moments of levity more appreciated. Arguably, the cracks began to show as early as season two, what with more ridiculous events, the goofy antics spreading even into more serious chapters and the introduction of the Ree, a gaggle of girls whose primary purpose was just to be silly.
- Prehistoric Earth is largely agreed upon by readers (as well as by Nathanoraptor, one of the fic's own writers) to have entered a period of declining quality once original main writer Drew Luczynski introduced Creator's Pet Cynthia Night into the story and subsequently tried way too hard to force the readers to like her for the character's (and story's) own good. But as much as the readers and Nathanoraptor agree that Cynthia's introduction was the point where things started briefly going to Hell for the story, Luczynski had previously shown signs of the two biggest complaints against him and his handling of Cynthia (specifically, his willingness to lionize his personal favorite characters in the narrative at the unfair expense of others he comparatively didn't like as much and his seeming difficulty in handling female characters) long before this point. For on closer examination, Luczynski had previously shown signs of similar favoritism towards one character at the expense of other characters in his handling of the main protagonist named after him via having him express a trait similar to the writer's own Real Life personality that didn't match up with Nathanoraptor's planned personality and characterization for him, provide explicit assistance to a character for a problem that said character he helped logically should have been smart enough to take care of on her own, and take part in an activity that his planned personality should have made him a bad fit for despite the activity arguably making more sense to be done by one of two other characters already introduced in the story that would have been far better suited for it. And as far as Luczynski's questionable handling of female characters is concerned, he'd likewise first shown signs of this difficulty long before Cynthia's introduction by virtue of giving one especially important female character a personality trait in her earliest appearances in the story that didn't match up with Nathanoraptor's explicitly planned personality for her that she ended up having throughout the rest of the story, accidentally making another important female character seem pointless and of no importance in another earlier round of chapters, and causing a third one to drastically deviate from the personality that Nathanoraptor had explicitly told him she was supposed to have for the sake of his own desires. A lot of these mistakes seemed relatively excusable at the time due to them occurring fairly early on in the story, both Luczynski and Nathanoraptor still having a few growing pains to undergo in regard to handling large ensemble casts like the one planned for this story, and the female characters that Luczynski had messed up on all being characters that had been created by other authors for the sake of the story with he himself only approving for their inclusion rather than playing any direct part in their creation. However, it wasn't until after both Luczynski's introduction of Cynthia (a female character created entirely by him) and his subsequent efforts at forcing her into a prominent role while also seemingly trying to prop up her and Drew's prominence at the expense of the vast majority of the other planned prominent characters in the ensemble even long after the earliest chapters of the story had already passed that the readers and Nathanoraptor began to severely complain about his seemingly forcing aside and unfairly handling several genuinely interesting and likeable characters in favor of one character that was considered likable but not as interesting and another character that was considered unsympathetic and unlikable.
- React Watch Believe Yikes: Back during the season one viewing, the author borrowed a joke that one of his reviewers made and used it in the story, giving the fellow proper credit. This gave other people the idea to suggest their own lines for use and it was good because it helped provide exposure and eased the writing process. The first signs of a problem were early into the season two viewing, when one of those jokes resulted in Blake taking injuries as a result, causing a suggestion to have significant, lasting consequences. As a result, when readers realized they could have some degree over the direction of the plot, the reviews became less substantial critique and more about thinking up funny ways to pull the plot where they wanted it to go. And because the author kept taking those suggestions, this caused some of the more inane twists and the increased importance of Noire that the story would be later criticized for.
- Robb Returns: Some reviewers of the later chapters of the story complain about the lack of stakes, the heroes easily winning all the time and suffering no losses, and villains who were formidable in canon being dealt with extremely easily. Those problems have been there from the very beginning. The difference is that, since both the books and especially the show were rather dark settings in which most heroic characters ended up dying or undergoing severe traumatic experiences, and in contrast, many villainous characters thrived and succeeded in their evil schemes led to a case of Too Bleak, Stopped Caring, reading a more optimistic story in which the heroes finally score the wins they deserve and villains get their karmic retribution felt very cathartic.
But as the story progressed, the sense of catharsis began to wear off, and readers started to notice that the story is too good to the heroes and that there are almost no villainous characters either alive or active to stir up some conflict. This results in many chapters featuring nothing but heroic characters that get along well with each other talking about the impending threat of the Others, which, unfortunately, feels too distant to induce any kind of tension or drama. Fortunately, the writers eventually addressed this with the introduction of Euron Greyjoy, who retains his warlock powers that were omitted in Game of Thrones and consistently proves a formidable opponent that does not get swiftly defeated early on after his introduction. - The Stalking Zuko Series gets some criticism for the third installment, Not Stalking Firelord Zuko, particularly how long it takes for Zuko and Katara to get together... but this extended amount of time for them to get together had been present from the beginning. The first installment takes place from just after "The Western Air Temple," to the end of "The Southern Raiders," so Katara doesn't officially forgive Zuko until the end, and ends up staying behind while Zuko goes on plot-related excursions with Aang and Sokka. The second installment, Not Stalking Zuko, takes almost half the fic to get up to "The Ember Island Players," and there's a fair amount of original story until the "Sozin's Comet" arc. The reason why the problems didn't get as much criticism back then was because readers had accepted that it wouldn't be reasonable for Katara and Zuko to hook up so quickly, since the author made a point of being canon compliant. When Zuko forgot Katara's Anguished Declaration of Love after nearly dying during his Agni Kai against Azula, and temporarily got back together with Mai for the sake of his honor, readers started getting frustrated.
- Embers (Vathara) always had a habit of making characters less sympathetic. The things is, it usually happened to minor characters like Arnook and Pakku; while the first major character to go through this, Katara, was still portrayed as a decent yet flawed person. It's only when the story applied this to Aang and the Air Nomads, however, that people started to complain, as the story had now turned the nicest character in canon into a selfish, immature child, and a bunch of peaceful nomads into a brainwashing cult. Now this story just comes across as a massive case of Too Bleak, Stopped Caring as a result of there now no longer being any characters considered worth rooting for.
- A case of "Author Original Sin" occurs with Coeur Al'Aran, a writer of multiple RWBY stories. His earlier works faced some criticism for having inconsistent themes (Professor Arc), making the characters more selfish and obnoxious than they are in the original (From Beyond (RWBY)) and using Deus ex Machina to conclude plots (Not this time, Fate). Most of these complaints, however, were limited to singular instances and rarely ruined the readers' enjoyment of the stories. Forged Destiny took all the above-mentioned flaws, multiplied them and combined them together, resulting in a story that is frequently accused of featuring Ass Pulls, enforcing messages that heavily contradict each other and having an entire cast of Unintentionally Unsympathetic characters.
- A Red Rose in the Blue Wind (a crossover between RWBY and Sonic the Hedgehog) had several flaws that have roots in the earlier works of Iron117Prime:
- The author's Signature Style of fanfic has characters from one franchise act as mentors to others from another franchise. In earlier stories like Worlds Collide (TMNT) and Code Prime, the people assigned to these roles were resonant and thematically appropriate: Leonardo helped Aang grow as a person without completely overshadowing him, and Optimus Prime offered guidance and moral clarity to Lelouch, reflecting on his past failures with Megatron/D-16. While Fairy May Cry's take on this formula bent the canon personality of one character (Modeus, the mentor) for it to work, it was less of an issue because he was originally a One-Shot Character that was flat enough to reasonably be used as an OC Stand-in.
A Red Rose in the Blue Wind, however, faced criticism for its choices for both halves of the partnership. Sonic's carefree, impulsive personality doesn't fit well with the traditional mentor role, not helped by him being more famous than Modeus and having a much more well-defined character. Meanwhile, Ruby is portrayed as being incredibly clingy towards him (especially after the Battle of Beacon), with her increasing reliance on his fighting style (particularly losing her trademark Crescent Rose and replacing it with Sonic's old sword) coming across as a sign of excessive dependence. Compounding the matter is that RWBY's existing mentor characters (Professor Ozpin and Qrow) are outright ostracized by the narrative in a disproportionately harsh manner. All of this makes the mentor/mentee dynamic come across as a forced gimmick this time around. - A key character archetype usually present within the fics is the "usually female general who gets beaten up by the new guys and switches sides later in the story", with Worlds Collide's take on Azula and Code Prime's take on Cornelia li Britannia being two prime examples. However, while they still take frequent losses under their belt from their respective enemies, they still exhibit their other villainous traits throughout the first portions of their stories before making the switch later. It also helps that their losses from those enemies (and from their allies) slowly highlight the redeeming qualities presented in the shows that fuel their respective redemption arcs. A Red Rose in the Blue Wind's take on Cinder Fall, who falls under this archetype, has caused some scrutiny among readers — she lacks redeeming qualities to fuel any sort of redemption arc, and the story never allows her to at least score some sort of personal win at her whims, with many of them being easily thwarted by the heroes. note From this, it's clear that the character archetype doesn't work if said characters don't exhibit some level of their canon villainous prowess and/or showcase positive Character Development.
- The author has a habit of taking characters with flaws that he felt weren't properly addressed in canon and taking them to task for them in his stories. Code Prime's depiction of Suzaku Kurunugi, a Base-Breaking Character, has several characters frequently and sometimes cruelly call him out for his behavior... specifically the Decepticons, the bad guys. While many of the heroes are also critical of him, Lelouch and Optimus — the main protagonists, who the readers are implicitly meant to agree with — never mistreat him outright, instead merely imploring him to reconsider his stance. In addition, the story still emphasizes many of Suzaku's better traits (such as his sense of honor and his desire to protect his loved ones) and his more positive relationships — even in the earlier parts of the story where he's an Adaptational Jerkass, he's shown to have limits and humanizing moments that lead up to a Heel–Face Turn.
A Red Rose in the Blue Wind, however, was far more controversial in its depiction of Qrow Branwen. He doesn't appear much, but his limited appearances grant him very little opportunity to show his more positive traits and have every attempt he makes to defend himself shot down harshly — this time by the heroes. The protagonists generally treat him markedly coldly, to point where Yang (one of his own nieces) threatens to kill him if he endangers Ruby — a very Out of Character move for her. Add that to him being consistently written as an Ungrateful Bastard throughout the story, even after Sonic and company help him tremendously, and it comes across as the author letting his dislike for the character unfairly color his treatment of him — especially since Qrow is nowhere near as divisive among RWBY fans as Suzaku was among Code Geass fans. It also didn't help that the story was released well after the author had established himself with Code Prime and other fics, during a period where character bashing was starting to receive far more scrutiny than before.
- The author's Signature Style of fanfic has characters from one franchise act as mentors to others from another franchise. In earlier stories like Worlds Collide (TMNT) and Code Prime, the people assigned to these roles were resonant and thematically appropriate: Leonardo helped Aang grow as a person without completely overshadowing him, and Optimus Prime offered guidance and moral clarity to Lelouch, reflecting on his past failures with Megatron/D-16. While Fairy May Cry's take on this formula bent the canon personality of one character (Modeus, the mentor) for it to work, it was less of an issue because he was originally a One-Shot Character that was flat enough to reasonably be used as an OC Stand-in.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series:
- While this abridged series was always a very funny and clever show, it did sometimes rely a bit too much on running gags and pop culture references, even if there wasn't necessarily a joke attached to the reference. Those who don't like the later seasons will usually say it's because the episodes became nothing but running gags and references to things that have nothing to do with the franchise.
- "Yu-Gi-Oh! DMX", a running gag of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX characters being depicted as rap artists, originated from one of the most well-liked episodes of the series. People liked it then because it was just a doofy one-off gag, and pretty funny at that. After that episode, nearly every single episode mentioning GX had a reference to it being a stupid show about rap — which, on top of being a Shallow Parody, resulted in fans of GX getting harassed at conventions and a backlash against the Abridged Series. It's one of the few jokes LittleKuriboh has outright apologized for.
Theatre
- One of the many criticisms suffered by the film adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen was how Ben Platt was simply too old to reprise his role as the teenaged titular character. As it so happens, Platt was already 21 years old when he first originated the role in the original stage play. However, Platt still looked young enough at the time to be realistically easy to mistake for a teenager in conjunction with his acting ability, and the Willing Suspension of Disbelief is much easier to maintain in the inherent theatricality of Broadway. In the film, on the other hand, not only is Platt much visibly older when he reprises the role at the age of 27, but the different standards for suspension of disbelief in live-action film compared to stage theater made it a lot harder for critics and viewers to take Platt seriously as a teenage character.
- Love Never Dies has been described as all of the bad parts of The Phantom of the Opera with none of the good parts:
- One major criticism is the score, which is padded out with slow, dramatic songs that keep going well after they've run out of steam. The same was something that most critics could say about the original Phantom of the Opera (not to mention for, as noted by Musical Hell, just about all of Andrew Lloyd Webber's work in general) to some extent or other. But by the time of Love Never Dies, old age, Creator Breakdown, and Protection from Editors had inflated this fault and made it a lot harder for critics and viewers to tolerate without the elements that had previously helped balance this flaw out.
- "The Beauty Underneath" is an out-of-place '80s-esque rock number with heavy sexual undertones reminiscent of the previous show's Signature Song. However, "The Phantom of the Opera" used its anachronistic instrumentation (electric guitar and a very '80s synth snare, contrasting the show's otherwise very classical-tinged score) to lend an otherworldly, ahead-of-his-time feel to the Phantomnote , and rock is often associated with sexuality, further driving in the idea of the Phantom seducing Christine. However, Love Never Dies portrays the Phantom with far less mystique than the first show, meaning that "The Beauty Underneath" does not have the same effect. Furthermore, it carries some of the sexual undertones with it as well, which, given that the Phantom is singing to a ten-year-old boy this time around, adds a layer of squick to the proceedings. Finally, while Webber's rock sensibilities were acceptable in the mid-80s, they are ridiculously dated by The New '10s standards.
- Phantom also made the title character somewhat more sympathetic than his literary counterpart. This was not widely objected to at the time — the Phantom remains a Tragic Villain, with a sufficiently intimidating presence and a body count (albeit reduced from the book), while having just enough focus that his final redemption feels earned. But by Love Never Dies, the narrative blatantly romanticizes the Phantom and downplays his outcast status by making him the owner of a successful amusement park, while giving him followers in the form of the Girys. The result is that the Phantom comes off not as a compelling Anti-Villain, but an Unintentionally Unsympathetic Karma Houdini who we're still supposed to side with over Raoul.
Theme Parks
- A common criticism of many new attractions at Universal Studios, especially the Orlando parks,note in The New '10s was that the parks' creative teams seemed to have a love affair with "screen" attractions, often to the exclusion of more traditional rides and shows, with virtually every new big-ticket attraction being a motion-simulator-driven, 4-D short film where the visual effects and the Excuse Plot took precedence over the ride experience.
- Few were complaining, however, in 2010 when they first opened Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey at Islands of Adventure. Boasting an All-Star Cast of actors reprising their roles from the Harry Potter films, Forbidden Journey also made use of innovative KUKA arm technology that moved riders around in a fashion comparable to traditional thrill rides. While there had been motion simulators and 4-D films at Universal before, the massive success of this ride, which helped establish Universal Orlando Resort as a serious competitor to Walt Disney World, caused Universal to embrace motion simulators and 4-D films wholeheartedly going forward. Despite its merits as a ride, however, it was the production values of The Forbidden Journey that seemed to have stuck in the heads of Universal's creatives, as later motion simulators toned down the thrills and placed the focus more on the CGI-filled action projected onto the screens surrounding the ride. The resulting complaint can be summed up as "whatever happened to being able to 'Ride the Movies' rather than watch them in rumble seats?", a complaint that reached a crescendo with the sharply negative reaction to Fast & Furious: Supercharged upon its opening in 2018. Since then, Universal's creative teams have backed off from screen attractions, building more traditional rollercoasters and dark rides that combine screen elements with practical props and theme park thrills.
- Universal's earlier screen attractions were few and far between as well, and like with Harry Potter, often combined elements of screens with physical rides (or in the case of 1996's Terminator 2 3-D: Battle Across Time, a live stage show). With Uni gutting its most beloved attractions left and right over the years while at the same time shoving screens in people's faces, it's understandable why there has been so much backlash over this creative decision.
- Disney Theme Parks:
- In the late 2000s, Disney decided to revamp Epcot's World Showcase pavilion and bring more Disney characters to what was primarily a permanent world's fair. The first addition of The Three Caballeros into the Mexico pavilion, while successful, was a mixed bag with die hard fans. Some felt that it dumbed down the cultural elements a smidge, but most forgave it given the characters' popularity in Latin America and that the attraction still touched upon different aspects of Mexican culture (didn't hurt that Disney was giving some more love to a rather obscure animated feature, either). But then Disney made the decision to close down Maelstrom, the ride at the Norway pavilion, and replace it with a ride based off of Frozen, a film that only has loose Norwegian connections in its art direction and costume design. Maelstrom, on the other hand, was a ride that was firmly rooted in Norwegian culture, touching upon all the different aspects of it. The direction eventually led to the announcement of an entirely new ride in the France pavilion based on Ratatouille, which has led to accusations that Disney is forsaking the original vision of the park in favor of IPs.
- Bringing IPs to Epcot in the first place goes back to the mid-1980s, when Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and the like arrived as walkaround characters in a park that originally featured no preestablished characters, with only Dreamfinder and Figment from the Journey into Imagination pavilion resembling traditional Disney park fare. Speaking of them, this happened around the same time as Captain EO, which replaced Magic Journeys, broke the stylistic continuity of its host pavilion (by being a Star Wars-meets-Music Video hybrid), and because that and its successor Honey, I Shrunk the Audience were more popular with casual visitors than Journey was, ever since then there have been periodic and unsuccessful attempts to, by way of replacements and revamps, tie all the attractions together into one style again.
- Regarding the above example, the shoving of existing IPs in a theme park that was mostly free from that stuff can be traced all the way back to Disney's California Adventure, which slowly began the year after its 2001 grand opening with the area "A Bug's Land". At the time this was accepted as DCA was regarded as a joke by many due to its lack of attractions appealing to children and its redundancy, being a Theme Park Version of the state that visitors are already in. This translated to success in the long run, with DCA hitting a record attendance of over 7 million visitors in 2012. Applying the same strategy to more beloved and long-standing attractions that stood on their own merit is bound to garner some backlash.
- Said lackluster reception of California Adventure at its launch is often tied back to Disney's decision to build a California-themed theme park in the already California-themed California, but the roots of this decision was a strategy that had worked for Disney in the past. When Disney expanded the Walt Disney World resort in Florida under Michael Eisner, many of the new attractions were specifically designed to keep guests on the resort property by directly competing with other attractions in Florida (MGM/Hollywood Studios was meant to compete with Universal Studios Orlando, the animal exhibits of Animal Kingdom were meant to compete with Sea World and Busch Gardens Tampa, the nightclubs on Pleasure Island were meant to compete with downtown Orlando's Church Street, etc.). For the most part, this worked in Florida, as the things that Walt Disney World were competing with were tourist traps in and of themselves, equally as kitschy and artificial. When Disney tried to do the same in California, build a park that had all the atmosphere and recreations of attractions in California, the reception was considerably more reluctant. Tourists visiting the park had no reason to want to visit the literal Theme Park Version of things like Hollywood and the boardwalks of the Pacific Ocean when the real deal was just a short drive away, while California locals (who make up the majority of Disneyland's visitors year-round) had no reason to want to visit a park that had very little attractions other than things they were already familliar with.
- Many of the complaints raised about Stitch's Great Escape! are traced back to its location's previous tenant, the better received ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter. As the title made clear, the attraction was horror-themed, and uncomfortable shoulder restraints, loud noises, and periods of darkness contributed to a chilling atmosphere. Re-using that in a more child-friendly and comedic manner for something based on an animated family film just didn't work, as small children were scared by the distressing elements, and older audiences were irritated by the unpleasant and gross humor.
- As explored by Jenny Nicholson in her breakdown on the failure of Galactic Starcruiser (a Star Wars-themed hotel, where guests would spend two full days taking part in a LARP-esque experience), Disney has always charged more for their attractions than other parks did, even as they cut corners in numerous places (for example, Galaxy's Edge being far smaller in scope than originally advertised and getting fewer live performers), and mostly coasting on quality, goodwill, and general great reputation. But with Galactic Starcruiser, not even Disney's brand image could make up for its ludicrously high price tag of six thousand dollars for a two-person weekend spent completely indoors, not helped by poorly-handed marketing that wasn't entirely clear on what Galactic Starcruiser even was. The hotel quickly shut down.
- In the late 2000s, Disney decided to revamp Epcot's World Showcase pavilion and bring more Disney characters to what was primarily a permanent world's fair. The first addition of The Three Caballeros into the Mexico pavilion, while successful, was a mixed bag with die hard fans. Some felt that it dumbed down the cultural elements a smidge, but most forgave it given the characters' popularity in Latin America and that the attraction still touched upon different aspects of Mexican culture (didn't hurt that Disney was giving some more love to a rather obscure animated feature, either). But then Disney made the decision to close down Maelstrom, the ride at the Norway pavilion, and replace it with a ride based off of Frozen, a film that only has loose Norwegian connections in its art direction and costume design. Maelstrom, on the other hand, was a ride that was firmly rooted in Norwegian culture, touching upon all the different aspects of it. The direction eventually led to the announcement of an entirely new ride in the France pavilion based on Ratatouille, which has led to accusations that Disney is forsaking the original vision of the park in favor of IPs.
- In terms of regional parks, Six Flags regularly had gotten complaints for excessively "cloning" rides during The New '10s. However, Six Flags has cloned rides for decades, going back to the chain's beginnings during The '60s. This was easier to overlook since the older cloned rides were generally well-recieved, like Batman: The Ride or the Mr. Freeze roller coasters, and were built in a time when the Internet wasn't mainstream and the company only had about eight parks, while their clones during the 2010s were mainly ill-recieved models like S&S Free Spins or Larson Super Loops, after the Internet made it obvious these were not unique and by this time, the company had about fifteen parks, almost double what they had in The '90s.
Toys
- One of the major complaints for American Girl products in the late 2010s and early 2020s was the overuse of solid molded plastic shoes with dolls, as opposed to the nicer, faux leather realistic shoes of the past; this is often pointed out as a sign of Mattel cutting corners to save money. However, the first three characters released in 1986 all had poorly made shoes themselves; Samantha and Molly both came with the same style of black plastic molded Mary Janes similar to other dolls of their kind, and Kirsten came with soft-soled pleather boots that were more like booties. This can be forgivable since they were the earliest characters and so simple designs were used for a new line that couldn't be guaranteed to take off—and later characters had much more elaborate shoes, which makes the return to molded plastic shoes appear cheap and cost cutting. However, there have even been complains when new starting outfit designs upgraded the shoes merely because they weren't the same as the classic design—for example, some collectors were displeased that BeForever Samantha came with velcro-closure pleather Mary Janes instead of her "original" molded plastic shoes.
Webcomics
- Sprite Comics in general are considered the trash heap of the internet, since there's the idea they were made with very little production value (usually only a few sprite sheets, MS Paint and a keenspace account). This, of course, is also true of the earlier, actually good examples of the sub-genre, like Bob and George and 8-Bit Theater. The big difference is, while those two used the sprites and the plot of the games they were parodying as the basis for the comic, they were much more interested in showing off the creators' style of humor, rather than "getting done with" the plot of the games in a visually-uninteresting manner.
- One of the problems Dominic Deegan faced as the strip went on was that Dominic was too manipulative and a bit too able to plan everything out. But in the beginning, the audience would at least be aware that he was up to something with some hints sprinkled about, so the reveal never came out of left field and made sense in hindsight. The schemes were also pulled on Hate Sink targets, so it was a satisfying beatdown on someone who deserved it. It was the "Snowsong" arc that it got out of control, as the hints Dominic was up to something the entire time were far more vague until the reveal and his target was a more morally gray character whom the point was redeeming instead of defeating. So when that arc neared its end and it took a week of exposition to recap all the information the audience wasn't shown to make sense of the story, that was when it was agreed things got out of hand and Dominic got called out on his actions. The sin was ultimately addressed by having Dominic be more morally conscious about the use of his powers, putting the focus on more of the cast so he wasn't in the middle of everything and having the Greater-Scope Villain simply be too alien and powerful to go up against in his usual manner.
- Homestuck:
- One of the most common issues readers have had with Act 6 was how it added more characters from its beginning, particularly the "player"-type characters that use an online chatting device. This led to a greater amount of dialogue and caused complaints that the plot was moving along too slowly or that the new characters were not as likable as the old. This was also present in Act 5 when the trolls were introduced, only they led to an explosion in the story's popularity while Act 6 has slowly driven readers away. A general opinion was that the new human characters of Act 6 were not as memorable or unique as the original trolls once were, that the new trolls being minor joke characters with the purpose of attacking sections of the fandom came off as a harsh waste of world-building, and that the cast expansion overall failed to re-capture the lightning in the bottle that the twelve initial trolls succeeded in.
- Homestuck has always had an interesting relationship with Character's Deaths and resurrection, to the point of death and rebirth being a Central Theme. Much of the world-building meant that characters could feasibly die and then be brought back. In fact, some characters (Nanna, Jasper, and Aradia) were introduced into the story as Dead to Begin With. While plenty of character deaths and rebirths happened as the comic went on, they usually were plot-significant and occurred during major updates. Additionally, some of these deaths did receive Black Comedy (such as the reveal of Jade's dreamself being taxidermied), it was usually more double-linecrossing, if anything. Starting around the "Murderstuck" arc in Act 5 Pt. 2, the tone started getting darker and deaths of significant characters became more common, with a few characters even getting Killed Offscreen. When they did receive dark humor, it often came off more meanspirited. Characters did come back, but there were occasions when it'd come off more like a plot contrivance than anything previously established. After a certain point, characters dying went from a central part of the story's theme to almost literally a joke.
- Homestuck's ongoing continuation, Homestuck: Beyond Canon, has been taking the series' characteristic exploration of narrative tropes even further, having split the narrative in two separate timelines exploring polar opposite extremes: One that takes the world and its characters far too seriously and dramatically (symbolized as "Meat"), and one that's constantly whipping them into the soap-opera-esque melodrama of fanfiction to a comical degree (symbolized as "Candy"). Although the entire affair has labeled itself as "Dubiously Canon" (meaning it's more or less an open invitation to consider it non-canon and leave the original comic's run wrapped up nicely), many fans are starting to have negative reactions, having become lost and confused by the exponentially compounded, seemingly self-diluted metanarrative. The epilogues (which are comprised of the aforementioned "Meat"/"Candy" timelines) had already started this trend, however with Beyond Canon being labeled as a direct sequel (or at least perceived as such by those who disregard its "Beyond Canon" subtitle or its official "dubiously canon" status) it has been drawing more criticism by those who either believe these elements to have stemmed from it or from those who classified the epilogues as strictly non-canon to begin with.
- Lil Formers: Even in the comic's early days, author Matt Moylan was open about his disdain for Michael Bay's Transformers movies and Transformers: Animated (then the newest entries in the franchise), particularly when compared to Generation 1. At the time, this was largely tolerated: even fans of the 2007 film were willing to admit that it had issues (and Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen was widely regarded as a significant step down overall), while Animated's art style was divisive because it departed radically from previous incarnations. Even without this, many fans stuck around simply because they were interested in seeing what characters Moylan would draw in his Super-Deformed style next.
However, as time went on, Transformers fans broadly became more willing to appreciate newer and/or different takes on the franchise (with Animated in particular becoming largely beloved by both new and old fans), leaving Moylan's continued insistence that the First Installment Wins increasingly out of step with general opinion. By the time the comic started branching out into other franchises, many began to view him (and by proxy his comic) as stuck in his ways, unwilling to accept anything new because it wasn't like what he grew up with.note (To whit: David Willis, creator of Shortpacked! and a fellow "old guard" Transformers fan, depicted Lil'Formers as the unfunny product of a nostalgia-blinded fanboy in a 2009 comic.) This eventually came to a head when Moylan released a strip criticizing the then-new character of Windblade, implying that he saw her as a Mary Sue because of her gender. This led to an exchange of words on Tumblr between Willis and Moylan that ultimately caused the latter to be less involved in the fandom.
- Sinfest became infamous in 2011 for its switch from a comedy strip to one built entirely around radical feminism, with a particular fixation on hatred of pornography and sex work. It became even more infamous when it switched in 2019 to a fixation on anti-transgender viewpoints, which marked the beginning of a pivot the following year into far-right politics. In the process, many characters had jarring personality shifts, and the political metaphors became convoluted and inscrutable. Many fans complained that the strip was getting political, but it actually had strips attacking commercialism as early as 2004. In 2008, Sinfest heavily endorsed Barack Obama and attacked imperialism. These attempts at politicization did not receive as strong a reaction as the more recent ones do because they did not totally derail characters or use lots of confusing mixed metaphors, and the stances taken were considered more benign than radical feminism or right-wing extremism.
- Sonichu:
- One of the biggest problems is the over-exposure of Chris at the expense of other characters. This can be seen in the earlier... less controversial issues, where Chris is heavily built up as essentially the god of the setting. However, Chris's appearances were relegated to side stories, with the main plot still being about Sonichu and the Chaotic Combo's adventures. As Chris the author slowly became more notorious and Real Life Wrote The Plot, Chris the character slowly became more prominent in the main plot to the point that the titular character was Demoted to Extra, and the tenth issue was solely dedicated to Chris eradicating all of the "bad guys".
- Chris also has a massive habit of shoehorning in references to shows that hold personal significance and Official Fan-Submitted Content. Indeed, the whole webcomic was born out of Chris's mutual like for both Sonic the Hedgehog and Pokémon, and earlier issues referenced Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pretty Cure simply because Chris and/or a real life acquaintance was interested in them at the time the issues were written. It was later on (especially after the end of the long hiatus between 10 and 11) that it truly became a detriment, with 12-9 over-focusing on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and turning Sonichu into an Artifact Title, and with the issue after that focusing on Hyperdimension Neptunia, with real life events making it obviously clear that Chris had been unwillingly coerced into adding the content.
- Survivor: Fan Characters: Most fans consider Season 10, the second All-Stars season, to be the series' worst season. The two biggest criticisms of it are that it turned many of its returning characters, including eventual winner and former fan-favorite Jackie, into one-dimensional caricatures and/or jerkasses and gave its villains like Bonnie way too much screentime and let them survive for far longer than they should have reasonably done. However, both of these problems had their roots in earlier, more well-received seasons:
- The first All-Stars season had also turned a character who had been a fan favorite in their original season (Bitsy from Season 2, in this case) into more of a jerk who ultimately won their season. While Bitsy taking a level in jerkass did get some divisive fan reaction, it wasn't as severe as the backlash that Season 10's Jackie got because it was intentionally done as part of Bitsy's Protagonist Journey to Villain character arc and it was shown how her new attitude alienated her friends and caused her a lot of emotional turmoil. In contrast, Jackie's increased jerkassery in Season 10 was never built on or acknowledged by the narrative and only served to flatten his personality into a one-note Jerk Jock who was the "hero" of his season only because he was up against even worse villains.
- Season 9, Bonnie's original season, was also guilty of giving her a massive amount of screentime and letting her get away with things that she should not have gotten away with. However, this all served as a huge build-up to her getting a thoroughly satisfying and cathartic downfall in the finale at the hands of Cherman, who had been the season's Butt-Monkey up until that point, that's widely regarded as one of the series's best moments. The series had also never had such an irredeemably evil, attention-hogging villain like Bonnie before, which made her character feel fresh and exciting. When Bonnie came back for Season 10, the novelty of her character had worn off and she was perceived by fans as a one-note villain with no depth or redeeming qualities who was taking screentime away from more interesting and likable characters. In addition, Jackie, the character responsible for Bonnie's downfall in Season 10, completely lacked Season 9 Cherman's underdog charm and likability which caused Bonnie's downfall to him to fall flat compared to her first one to Cherman. The creator even listed letting Bonnie survive for so long in Season 10 as his biggest mistake of the series and when he later brought her back for a third season, he made sure to give her much less screentime and eliminate her before she outstayed her welcome again.
Web Animation
- Red vs. Blue:
- Season 16 faced criticism for its Denser and Wackier approach, featuring outlandish elements such as gods and time travel and things like a live-action character. But as some fans, and even the show itself in the following season noted, there was always silliness, particularly in the earlier, more comedic seasons — season 3 had another time travel plot (albeit one that ended up retconned) and a robot reduced to just a head still managing to build other robots and operate a turret. The problem was that after more serious plots entered the show, turning back to weirdness was unexpected and more noticeable.
- In a bigger case, Season 18, Zero, had all of the concerns being expressed by fans ahead of its release (i.e., the season being focused on a different cast of characters from the Reds and Blues, an emphasis on drama and action over comedy, the quality of the new CGI animation and relatively fresh voice acting/writing talent, etc.) practically identical to those expressed prior to the release of The Project Freelancer Saga years ago. The main difference between the two is that while Zero introduced a whole new team, the Freelancers had already been introduced to the setting long beforehand, and were given time both before and during the saga to explore their characters and dynamics. Additionally, while action is a big part of both iterations of the series, Zero uses it more for spectacle in itself, whereas The Project Freelancer Saga uses it as a secondary element to the character driven nature of the story.
- RWBY:
- The show as a whole received a lot of backlash after Volume 5 due to awkward dialogue, stilted writing, and lackluster fight scenes. However, the show had rather awkward dialogue and stilted writing since it first debuted; it's just that the fight sequences were so over-the-top and downright enjoyable that no one really cared about these problems. Combined with the passing of the well-loved series creator, Monty Oum, very few people were willing to criticize the show. However, thanks to the declining quality of the fight animations in the fifth volume (to the point where several of them had to be done off screen) and putting a greater emphasis on lengthy scenes of exposition, these flaws became a lot more noticeable.
- The series has always made use of the Jigsaw Puzzle Plot as part of its appeal, with information about the world or important characters being sparse and revealed over time. For example, the series Opening Monologue is given by an unknown character revealed to be the Big Bad at the end of Volume 3. 3 volumes later, her and her main rival Ozpin's backstory, as well as the context of their war and the existence of the world of Remnant, were revealed to both the main characters and audience in a Whole Episode Flashback. But by later volumes, some of the remaining unanswered questions, like what said Big Bad actually wants, why she and Ozpin fight in secret, certain points in characters' backstories, or what the two unseen relics do have begun to grate on viewers, who feel that not knowing these hurts their emotional connection to the story. The show has seemingly passed up chances to answer these questions (the aforementioned Whole Episode Flashback left many unanswered), and some important characters have taken their secrets to their graves. The characters themselves also seem to rarely discuss these questions or ask them of those who do know more, making them seem disinterested in their own world and conflict. note The continued teasing and invention of mysteries in material released while the show was briefly cancelled but seeking a new producer came across as especially cynical. Even the answers that were provided sometimes involved Fridge Logic. note Still other answers disappointed fans. Word of God admitted that major elements of the world and story, such as the Gods existence, weren't even thought up until volumes in, so viewers felt taken for fools.
- Smash Bros. Lawl: Codecs were a fun distraction of the series since the very start, always putting a character next to the real Solid Snake in Brawl and seeing his peers comment about the fighter at hand in a much cruder way than you could with any of Smash's official fighters. Then when Snake got phased out from Smash altogether in the wake of Smash 4 replacing them in favor of Kid Icarus' cast with Palutena's Guidances, Lawl seemingly followed suit with J. Jonah Jameson bringing with him his own "Guidance-like" codecs alongside Snake's, who got upgraded to Codec Snake in order to keep the codecs as part of the moveset videos. While a welcome change to explain the earlier codecs, much more focus was getting granted to codec-heavy characters, especially with Codec Snake who appeared in almost all following skits in future movesets and a huge chunk of the videos getting claimed for more appearances from Snake and Jameson. Then in the last era of Lawl, yet another codec-heavy character with the introduction of Grimoire Weiss, whose entire moveset revolved around the usage of codec-esque conversations, with his moves weaponizing his convos and all his specials dedicating to buffing or nerfing effects during the conversations, creating a moveset so dedicated to weaponizing the codecs that many fans couldn't keep track of what effects they did. It didn't help that Weiss ended up taking a lot of the spotlight in the rest of the videos for that last leg of Lawl. It got so bad that when the last character, Pyron, got his moveset, there had to be a whole separate video just for his codecs since they would take so long of the moveset video's runtime if included, and it became a sure sign of how much attention the codecs had taken away from the actual Smash-like aspects of the series.
Web Original
- Many longtime followers of The Backrooms have taken issue with the entities, arguing that the Existential Horror of being trapped inside an endless maze of liminal spaces with no hope of escape was what made the titular Eldritch Location so unique and scary, and that shifting the focus to be about monsters only undermines that. The idea of monsters in the Backrooms has been around since the very beginning — the original 4chan post that started it all ended with a warning that should you hear something moving nearby, then chances are it's already heard you. However, this was just a vague warning following a paragraph describing the Backrooms themselves, and largely served to heighten the sense of paranoia you'd be feeling in that situation. Contrast this with the later entities, which would typically have whole wiki pages covering their appearance, behavior and lore in exhaustive detail, which many followers felt ultimately robbed them of their mystique and horror factor.
- Cracked has been criticized for its perceived shift away from a comedy-focused website to one that tries to take itself more seriously. Thing is, "serious" content has been around from very early on. It's just that said content, in addition to taking a backseat to more comedic stuff, generally still had a good deal of levity in it and tended to be more personal in nature (often offering some valuable insights and/or life advice in the process), rather than promoting (often political) ideas that many readers found divisive.
- Duolingo: A version of the now-reviled heart system existed before 2015. While it was criticized for making the lessons more stressful, it at least came across as a well-intentioned attempt to help you learn because it wasn't too tightly tied to Freemium mechanics, and the system was eventually removed. Cue the 2017 heart system, which not only made the stressful elements of the previous one worse, but doubled down on the Freemium aspects. However, it still had defenders who argued that it was intended to help you learn by making you regain lost hearts by doing practice lessons, even if was suspicious that Duolingo also sold subscriptions that granted infinite hearts. Then, in 2024, some users ended up in an A/B test where you can only do a practice lesson to earn hearts while out of hearts, effectively turning you into a One-Hit-Point Wonder unless you're willing to wait for an obnoxiously long Freemium Timer, pony up the gems for a heart refill or pay for Duolingo Super. It doesn't help that the creators have all but admitted they intentionally made the heart system more unpleasant so that more people would pay to get rid of it.
- John Bull has referred to this as a key part of the buildup to what he calls the "Trust Thermocline", the point where companies and content creators lose the trust of their customers and see a precipitous collapse that they never recover from. The road to the Trust Thermocline is often a long one, with many little problems slowly building up but being brushed aside by customers because they're too invested in the product to give it up. Eventually, however, something serves as The Last Straw that causes customers to switch to another product, even a long-existing competitor that they might never have considered before.
Web Video
- Newer videos by CinemaSins have received criticism for focusing less on actual flaws or plot holes in the film and more on making lowbrow jokes or minor nitpicks and examples of Take That!. Despite this, these were present in the earliest videos as well. For example, the very first video for The Amazing Spider-Man 1 included sins like "scene [with an attractive woman] does not include a lap dance" and "Peter Parker uses Bing." However, as the videos became longer, these became more numerous and more of a main focus.
- Epic Rap Battles of History:
- Stevie Wonder vs Wonder Woman received many complaints for the superficial nature of its premise, even though this easily applies as well to many older battles that based themselves off of just having similar names (Ghostbusters vs Mythbusters, Artists vs TMNT) or general occupations/roles (Lewis and Clark vs Bill and Ted, Wright Brothers vs Mario Brothers), if even that (Genghis Khan vs Easter Bunny).
- The accusation of biased rap battles. Blatant political bias existed back from the first battle, when Bill O'Reilly was portrayed as a Card-Carrying Villain who spent his whole second verse admitting to being a terrible person who only survives by stirring up controversies over non-issues. This is a rare case where the flaws were actually worse in the earlier installments, but were ignored because expectations were lower.
- Season 6 has had some people complaining about an overuse of meme joke/references in a lot of its battles, with some people calling them unfunny, "cringy" or out of place... despite the fact that they have been doing meme jokes/references since the start, most notably in "Abe Lincoln vs Chuck Norris", where most of Chuck Norris' lines were just a bunch of Chuck Norris Facts copy and pasted into the lyrics. Again, this could be a case where the flaws were ignored in the earlier installments because expectations were lower.
- Season 6 has also released a bit of controversy about an overuse of fictional characters and pop-culture related people over historical figures, with quite a lot of people wanting for them to "bring back the history"... despite the fact that not only has the season featured multiple historical figures, but that the series has never truly centered around only historical figures and has always featured fictional characters and celebrities as often as them, having had fictional characters since the second battlenote , and celebrities since the first one.note In fact, their first matchup that was undeniably historical vs historical was Gandhi vs Martin Luther King Jr., the twenty-ninth installment in the series. Though, if you only look at fictional characters, then the argument makes a bit more sense, with 5 out of the (so far) 9 battles of the season featuring fictional characters, 3 against each other.
- Thanos was criticized for how unconvincing his costume looked. But this was also the case with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in "Artists vs. TMNT", but it was easier to over-look since the rap itself was considered rather good (if a bit too short) and the costumes, considering they were on budget, weren't that bad as they at least resembled the characters. But Thanos looks too small and the mask looking too static and fake. It doesn't help that TMNT was mostly famous from the cartoons and comics, while Thanos had become popular from a rather popular live-action film series, making the ERB-version look like a bootlegged version.
- While still generally well-liked, "Elon Musk vs. Mark Zuckerberg" did attract some criticism for giving Musk a Historical Hero Upgrade and largely ignoring the many scandals surrounding his companies. Similar criticisms could also have been made of the battle's Season 2 predecessor, "Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs", which made no mention of things like Microsoft's long history of legally questionable anti-competitive behaviors or the infamous abuses of employees by Apple's East Asian contractors. The difference was that "Gates vs. Jobs" came out at a time when public and media sentiment towards Silicon Valley was generally broadly positive, so it was considered unremarkable that a battle featuring two of its most prominent figures would focus more on the positive sides of their work, whereas "Musk vs. Zuckerberg" came out at a time when SV's influence on society was considered more controversial. This may be why the next battle to feature a Silicon Valley billionaire, "Jeff Bezos vs. Mansa Musa", puts much heavier emphasis on scrutinizing the darker elements of Bezos's business practices.
- Many of the rap battles of Season 7 are criticized for having sponsors, with some fans accusing the crew of rushing production out of greed. This actually happened to two battles in previous seasons, namely "Blackbeard vs. Al Capone", which is sponsored by Assassin's Creed to promote Black Flag, and "Terminator vs. Robocop", which promoted Terminator Genisys. However, it wasn't criticized as much due to the sponsors being less intrusive. The modern sponsorships have someone directly talking or rapping about the sponsorship, while previously there were minor incorporations of the sponsor in the video (Edward Kenway getting name-dropped in a lyric in "Blackbeard vs. Al Capone", Arnold Schwarzenegger cameoing at the end of "Terminator vs. Robocop") followed by the sponsor shown prominently during the end slate without any words spoken of it. (Also, various Behind the Scenes videos on ERB2 have been sponsored with full spoken segments dedicated to them, but given the out-of-character nature of those videos in the first place, that's just seen as standard fare for YouTubers.)
- Discussed in History of Power Rangers. Both examples are tied to Lewis' perspective on how Power Rangers Ninja Storm added new franchise tropes.
- Linkara disliked the use of Ranger's "civilian powers" as it dilutes the need for morphing. But within Ninja Storm (where the civilian powers started) the premise is of Ninja students and thus having unusual abilities sort of works.
- He brings up in his Mystic Force video that the "villains must battle the rangers one at a time" excuse for both that series and this one is incredibly stupid, but Ninja Storm was actively trying to be comedic, so it could get by with that excuse compared to the darker and more serious Mystic Force.
- Discussed in an episode of Midnight Screenings. Brian mentions that he initially liked Transformers (2007) because it was different from the sequels, but after re-watching it admits that the movie has "the same shit [as the other films], just less of it".
- The Mysterious Mr. Enter has always been a polarizing reviewer for his highly controversial opinions and hot takes, as well as a generally cynical and unforgiving attitude, but those traits wouldn't significantly alienate his fanbase until much later on:
- Mr. Enter's first major brush with controversy came in 2014, when he stated very clearly that Breadwinners was worse than Allen Gregory and that "Nickelodeon needs to die" for the direction it was going in at the time — very extreme claims even considering the network's Audience-Alienating Era back then. On the other hand, Mr. Enter was willing to recognize and amend some of his other bad habits (namely his vicious creator bashing and tendency to flip his lid), so his reputation, while still spotty, was fairly positive. That would change when he began to turn his ire towards shows that, while not without their criticisms and detractors, had amassed much larger fanbases (such as The Legend of Korra, Big Mouth, and Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) without expressing much consideration as to why others would like them.
- On that note, Mr. Enter was no stranger to politics and the like, despite even admitting he wasn't the best educated in the area, dropping his two cents on subjects like standardized testing, gun control, overpopulation, and the double standards of society. The thing is, those videos tied into his prior reviews on Animated Shows that brought up the subjects, and were also motivated more out of concern for those affected rather than typical "World Gone Mad" griping. This reached its breaking point in his review for Turning Red, in which he criticized the movie for not mentioning 9/11 (for context, the movie was set in 2002), even though the movie is set in Canada, a nation that had less of an impact of where 9/11's aftermath was, and even the mere mention of it could clash with the light tone of the film. The rampant Memetic Mutation from the controversial review made sure that he was known as the "Turning Red 9/11 Guy" outside of the animation community, and even those within who already had a shaky trust with him broke ties afterwards. Even Mr. Enter himself realized that it was a bad faith critique and has expressed regret for bringing it up.
- Also related to Turning Red, this was not the first time that Mr. Enter has accused a work of not really being accurate to the time it was set in because it wasn't how he experienced it; it was just the time when it became most noticeable and when a large part of his audience felt that particular criticism was least accurate.
- Mr. Enter's rampant cynicism was already apparent in his heyday, when he was able to semi-consistently release Animated Atrocities, but sporadically released Admirable Animations, downright admitting that the latter required far more passion on his part. Unfortunately, and going hand-in-hand with everything detailed above, he would put Admirable Animations on indefinite hiatus and later end the series, meaning that his body of work would be devoted primarily (if not entirely) to negativity (although he has done some positive reviews as well). This would prove all the more glaring as it happened at a time when the Video Review Show genre had been growing away from its primarily rant-driven beginnings. Enter did stop using Animated Atrocities in the titles of his reviews due to this, but this caused many people to think he ended that series as well.
- The Nostalgia Critic:
- One of the most base-breaking aspects of the post-2013 videos are the Mid-Review Sketch Show cutaway gags, with many feeling that they take too much time away from the reviews. However, sketches are nothing new to the series and have been featured since the early days, and some episodes from what's considered the "classic" era like Home Alone 3 featuring recurring segments that wouldn't feel too out of place in the modern videos. The difference is that sketches in the earlier reviews were used more sparingly and not in nearly every episode; they were also much shorter, lasting around half a minute at most, and also only focused on Critic himself, while modern sketches are in most reviews, can take up to a few minutes, and focus on gags between new additions Malcolm and Rachel (later on, Tamara), which could often extend a review to over 40 minutes. With all this new focus on sketches, one could say that post-revival Critic is a Spiritual Successor to his now-scrapped show Demo Reel, which received a lot of backlash even from fans.
- Reviews of later films. The Critic did review films from the 2000s prior to the retool, plus one of his earliest reviews was of Pokémon: The First Movie, when the film was less than ten years old at the time, but the difference there is they were usually from the earliest part of the decade (2000-2002) with a few movies occasionally being from after such as Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (2004) or TMNT (2007). The other key difference was that these were either special requests or one-offs, or they were still relevant to "nostalgic" media, typically being reboots. He would also often talk about characters, films, and specials from later times in his countdown lists, but this was usually given more leeway due to still featuring nostalgic works as well being mixed in. Now in his modern videos, while there is still a bent on relatively "older" films up to at least the mid-2000s, and reboots and adaptations of nostalgic properties, he frequently talks about movies from the later 2000s and 2010s and even movies still in theaters (the latter of which he promised not to review, only to break it in protest of several video takedowns), which has made some people wonder why it's still called "The Nostalgia Critic" due to it being an Artifact Title.
- The weaknesses in the show's filming (bad special effects, amateur cinematography, cheap production values) are a weird case, in that they've undeniably improved from where they were when the series began. But when the series began, it was one guy in front of a camera riffing on movie clips; the humor came from the movie first, the guy's jokes second, and any sketches or stuff that required actual filming a distantly third bonus. If the special effects weren't good, it didn't matter because they were in keeping with the low-fi DIY aesthetic of the show. When later reviews, especially post-revival, upped the number and length of those sketches considerably (to the point of taking up the entire review in reviews of recent films, due to Doug's policy of recreating clips as sketches rather than waiting for the home releasenote ), while they did improve, their lacking quality became a lot more evident. It also became a lot harder to use Stylistic Suck as a defense when the Critic has become a more legitimate enterprise with a studio and an actual budget, but still uses the same cheap Halloween costumes and bad green screen.
- As pointed out by Dan Olson of Folding Ideas, Doug made his career on criticizing big-budget studio blockbusters and failed attempts at all-ages family entertainment, which have rigid narrative structures and little artistic ambiguity, so any flaws in Doug's analysis were less noticeable than those of the film he was criticizing. The problems came in when Doug decided to apply this same strategy to more artistic or mature films, culminating in his widely-panned review of The Wall, a piece of art to which the approach was spectacularly ill-suited due to its deeply personal nature, abstract imagery, and loose, freewheeling plot structure.
- While a lot of Doug's humor came from the Critic reacting to the movie, being based around a temperamental Manchild who hates any film he watches, it's only gotten a lot harsher since the revival. The Critic is also not the one mostly getting hurt, as he more causes pain to others rather than getting hurt himself. The Critic used to get a considerable amount of Laser-Guided Karma (or at least more than he currently does) for acting like an ass, but now other people suffer, including ones who probably didn't even deserve it. Considering most other review shows like his generally have the hosts being nice people that the audiences can latch on to, this only stands out further.
- The reboot's penchant for more offensive jokes isn't new, if you go back to 2007/2008 videos you can see a lot of casual rape jokes, homophobic jokes and sexist jokes (like the Hottest Women list calling sexual harassment fun). Thing is, the Critic was an Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist early on, so it could easily be dismissed as stemming from the character's prejudices and other flaws. It also helped that he got better with that – Patch Adams for instance spent a lot of time pointing out the misogyny of the film, Homoerotic Subtext increased, and there's even been reboot episodes like Fury Road that have abusive men as the villains – so people are really just confused why episodes like Catwoman and Sailor Moon took the tack they did.
- The jabs at things Doug Walker doesn't like. The Critic has always employed these jabs, it's just that the newer reviews use them a lot more often, and they tend to be much harsher.
- PieGuyRulz invokes this with his assessment of Adventure Time versus Steven Universe where he talks about the flaws of the former that were apparent since the beginning, but were ignored because there wasn't anything quite like it on TV at the time. He even compares it to breaking up with someone, then realizing the flaws that weren't there with the newfound perspective.
- Sequelitis (2011): From episode one, Egoraptor clearly favored old-school mechanics and gameplay with open loathing of modern ideas. But at least he was willing to attempt to understand other's points of view and not insult those who didn't agree with him. That can't be said for episode four, where he threw all restraint out the window and culminated in an unhinged rant against the Zelda series and Skyward Sword in particular for not being like the old games. This alone was the Franchise Killer for the show, as no new episodes were made since then, mostly because Egoraptor got too stressed from the hate others threw at him for that episode.
- Stupid Mario Brothers can trace a lot of the problems of Seasons 4-5 back to show's high points, specifically:
- The Darkness. When he was first introduced in Season 3, he was seen as an interesting, intimidating villain the audience could Love to Hate. However, that meant that when the storyline moved past him, the writers decided to bring him back, at which point they overexposed him significantly, meaning the audience grew sick of The Darkness.
- In Act II of "The Stupid Mario Brothers Movie" The Darkness gets back up off the ground after being seemingly killed by Wario, because of a counter curse that was never hinted at. It didn't screw up the movie's plot, even if it made no sense when you really thought about it, so it was tolerated at the very least. Also, Liquid Snake came back to life with no explanation given (though it's hinted that The Darkness had a role in it), but it worked since it lead to the face off scene between Solid and Liquid Snake. This lead to a major annoyance most fans had in the later seasons, where characters are revived for no reason (no good reasons, at least), simply to provide a villain in the laziest way possible. This even got Lampshaded by Snake when Vercetti came back, indicating that at least some of the cast and crew were sick of it as well.
- Many fans found it extremely hard to sympathise with Mario and Luigi in Seasons 4 and 5, seeing as how utterly isolationist they are. Said isolationist thoughts were present in the very first episode, and worked, since the idea was that Mario and Luigi were fed up with having to save the Mushroom Kingdom all the time and decided to have a vacation. In later seasons, Mario and Luigi do little to solve the problem of the beacon's destruction, which proved enough to make them come across as incredibly unlikable to a lot of viewers.
- Todd in the Shadows calls this a "delayed flop", a successful but underwhelming album recorded at the height of a musician or band's career that is propelled to the top by name recognition and momentum, but in hindsight contains all manner of warning signs that their next album would plunge them into an Audience-Alienating Era or worse. He specifically coined the term in his Trainwreckords episode on Katy Perry's album Witness, saying that her previous album Prism was her delayed flop. While Katy's popularity buoyed it, it wasn't the megahit that Teenage Dream had been, and most of its singles failed to leave an impact and were widely seen as pale imitations of what had worked for her before.
- The Warp Zone discusses this in Is "The Last Jedi" Bad? (Fanboy Court), when it comes to Supreme Leader Snoke's lack of backstory in The Last Jedi. The Fanboy defends Snoke by comparing him to the Emperor, who had no backstory when he debuted in the original trilogy, but ended up being a memorable villain. The Hater counters that when the creators introduce a new Suspiciously Similar Substitute for the Emperor after six movies, they should at least tell us who he is and why we should care about him. Basically, backstory-less villains were forgivable when the franchise was getting established, especially since the prequels showed Palpatine's rise to power, but trying to introduce new villains the same way later on doesn't work.
- YouTube Rewind: A lot of the elements that made the series go through Seasonal Rot (2016-2018) were present in the initial videos, just not to the extent that made those videos divisive at best, and (in 2018's case) outright hated at worst:
- Appearances by non-YouTuber celebrities were present from the start, with Psy appearing in 2012, and 2013 onwards featuring talk show hosts like Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, and Conan O'Brien to name a few. However considering Psy was responsible for the (at the time) most viewed video on the platform it made sense to let him appear, while the aforementioned talk show hosts were among the first to leverage YouTube as a means to grow their audiences, thus it made sense. Come 2016, and it opened not with an actual YouTuber, but with Dwayne Johnson, while 2018 would open with Will Smith, and those were seen as more jarring and cringeworthy than anything especially since they got more screentime than many actual YouTubers.
- Using memes considered outdated was a big part of why the later videos weren't as liked, but even the earlier videos contained their fair share of outdated memes (Harlem Shake and Horse Heads in 2013, the Ice Bucket challenge in 2014, the dress debate and pizza rat in 2015, etc.). The difference was they were played with either a sense of irony, or done in creative ways: the Harlem Shake and Ice Bucket moments were used as pseudo-montages to get as many YouTubers in the video who couldn't have bigger parts in as possible, pizza rat being part of a send-up to Five Nights at Freddy's, the dress debate being reimagined as a lip-sync battle, just to name a few. 2018 meanwhile, with almost no prompting, played "Baby Shark" with zero sense of irony in spite of its massive Periphery Hatedom, with a good portion of the audience for YouTube Rewind being part of said hatedom.
- Political and social justice messages were part of the earlier videos, as 2012 made reference to the reelection of Barack Obama, and 2015 celebrated the legalization of gay marriage in the United States. Yet both of those worked, the former due to it being just as much of a reference to the hugely successful Epic Rap Battles of History between Obama and Mitt Romney as well as Obama being respected (or at least tolerated) by most regardless of political alignment, while the latter mainly was referenced by a rainbow flag that only took up a few seconds. 2017-18 meanwhile would stop right in the middle of their videos to talk about justice advocacy, as if it was their way of giving themselves a pat on the back despite barely contributing to said advocacies, and the platform still giving a voice to those who opposed said messages.