Franchise Original Sin

A Franchise Original Sin is a storytelling element or trope which has been present since a franchise's early (or earlier) days but it's not until later that this element, for whatever reason, was considered to be the detriment of the property.

It's possible to Jump the Shark without having an Original Sin; take, for example, Moonlighting, which couldn't keep up the Will They or Won't They? any longer, and the point at which They Did was the moment all dramatic tension deflated from the series. There was no Original Sin there, besides the Will They or Won't They?, which was part of what made the series work, so it doesn't qualify here.

Rule of thumb: if you can imagine a reboot without the element in question, then it qualifies. If you can't, then it isn't a Franchise Original Sin. Secondary rule of thumb: If it wasn't visible in previous good episodes, it's an Ass Pull or a Retool gone bad, not a Franchise Original Sin.

Examples of Franchise Original Sin include:

Anime and Manga

• In Naruto, even in early episodes you could already see that Sasuke was going to be really important and tips about how the Uchiha clan's Myth Arc is key were dropped. Then Sasuke became really important, and the Uchiha clan's Myth Arc swallowed the plot, to the complaints of many.
  • It's a sore spot between fans whether this is a good thing, a bad thing, or something in between.
• Many of the things that would cause Bleach to be criticized during the Arrancar saga first showed in the Soul Society arc. The decreased focus on Ichigo and his friends (Much of the arc revolves around the intrigue among the Shinigami, as opposed to Ichigo's mission to rescue Rukia, Chad is taken out easily by Captain Kyoraku, and Ishida and Orihime disappear for a large part of the story) the feeling of Arc Fatigue, and Aizen's hard-to-shallow level of planning and his ability to easily take out anyone in his way are all things that would become much worse in later arcs.

Comic Books

• The comic maxi-series Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld, although published by DC Comics, was originally a self-contained fantasy series about a suburban teenage girl named Amy Winston, who lives a double life. On another world, the Gemworld, she is Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld. It was a wonderful twelve-issue maxi-series, with a well-thought out fantasy world filled with drama, rivalrous nobility, and fascinating characters. It was so successful it spawned an ongoing series. Unfortunately, in order to attract more readers to the series, the writer Dan Mishkin had Amethyst team with Superman in the team-up title DC Comics Presents, therefore establishing that Amethyst was part of the DC universe. This could have easily been ignored—except that when Mishkin left the ongoing series and was replaced, the new creative team decided to further tie her world into the existing DC universe with a series of retcons tying Gemworld in to Dr. Fate's Lords of Order and the Sorcerer's World of the Legion of Super-Heroes. In the process, the Amethyst series lost the epic fantasy feel, and became just another mystical superhero title. It was cancelled soon afterward. Some can easily imagine the series being rebooted with the story of the original twelve-issue maxiseries intact, but the Superman teamup (which occured outside the maxiseries) retconned out. That teamup was Amethyst's Franchise Original Sin.
• Crisis on Infinite Earths. While cleaning up the Continuity Snarl that was the multiverse was a good idea, bringing Retcon to whole new levels and unleashing the horror that was the Dark Age of comics did not help things.
  • And you can't accuse Crisis on Infinite Earths without also pointing the finger at the fateful "Flash of Two Worlds" story from 1961, establishing the idea of Golden and Silver Age versions of the same heroes coexisting in separate universes and traveling between them. If the Crisis was Original Sin, "Flash of Two Worlds" was its corresponding Fall of Lucifer.
• X-Men:
  • A lot of the problems with the books started with Chris Claremont doing too many things on the fly and not often planning ahead. But at least he didn't force those Running the Asylum now to take his older plots as canon gospel. That is their own fault.
  • The X-Books arguably have another big problem. Originally, the handling of the concept of mutants and the theme of racism was edgy and interesting. But over time, the presence of these topics has increased more and more. It reached the point that the franchise has turned almost entirely inwards: most stories revolve around the "mutant problem", anti-mutant attacks and sentiments - and since House of M - the survival of mutants and the reactivation of the X-gene. The X-Men don't even seem like superheroes anymore. Certainly, they don't fight much crime anymore, and spend most of their time reacting to the various attacks and agendas of others.
  • A frequent critique of the X-Men books is that it makes little sense for mutants to be so hated when beings of comparable power (most notably the Avengers) are, largely, beloved and accepted by the Muggles. This was there from the start but in the early days of the Marvel Universe but the nature of the Shared Universe wasn't quite established (the most people could expect in the 1960s was maybe a background cameo or a rare guest appearance). After the world was fleshed out more, only then did people notice this logical gap (something the Marvels even stopped to lampshade), especially as things never got better for mutants while the similar Inhumans were, largely, accepted peacefully by the denizens of the Marvel Universe.

Film

• Batman and Robin was merely the fruition of everything that went wrong in Batman Forever (no Michael Keaton, the bat-nipples, the Lighter and Softer angle, the return to Adam West-era Camp). Forever, while silly, still felt Batmanish, so it wasn't as bad; B&R had no such redeeming elements.
  • This started way back in the 1989 film, although not as obviously. The first film was pretty much "Batman: starring Jack Nicholson." The sequel was similar—its two villains combined have more screen time than Batman. Michael Keaton and Val Kilmer both left the series because they felt that the movies were more about the bad guys than Batman. This led the way for the sequels to become overcrowded with villains and the same "Villain shows up, teams up with other villain, they fight Batman, Batman wins" plot repeated in every sequel.
  • The two biggest flaws present in all four of the Burton/Schumacher Bat-films were the semi-obligatory casting of A-list actors as the main villains (whether they were any good in the role or not) and the Bizarrchitecture (which was reasonably subtle and effective in the first film, but by the fourth film had become an obscene distraction). You'll notice that the Nolan films have been inverting the first trope by casting their biggest guest stars in relatively small parts and completely averting the second by shooting all their outdoor scenes on actual locations rather than soundstages.
  • Another complaint leveled at Batman and Robin is how incredibly campy it is, but there was a certain level of camp present in Batman that only increased with every new installment.
• Superman:
  • All the campiness and New Powers as the Plot Demands in the sequels were there in the first. It's just that Superman II onwards featured Sequel Escalation of both these aspects.
  • A lot of the issues that the DC Extended Universe's haters have with that version of Superman can be found in these films such as Superman being a Jesus-allegory or Jor-El intending for his son to become Superman. The difference is that, the earlier films didn't take these aspects too seriously and generally focused on lighthearted action-adventure. The DCEU by contrast played these aspects dead-straight with their more reserved take on Superman not allowing for much fun to be had.
• All the problems with the Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan-era James Bond movies—the over-the-top gadgets, the bad puns, the overly elaborate villain plans and death traps—are visible in Goldfinger, where they were still reasonably in check.
• Star Wars is full of this. Everything that the haters take offence with in the Prequel and Sequel Trilogies or the various Spin-Off movies and television shows; such as the Conspicuous CG, Narmy dialogue, engineering designs that don't make a lick of sense, Villain Balls, Romantic Plot Tumors, Writing by the Seat of Your Pants; can easily be found in the Original Trilogy. But the OT was much Denser and Wackier/Lighter and Softer than most of what followed and, a result, these flaws are much more noticeable in the more grounded Darker and Edgier entries that followed.
  • In The Force Awakens, some criticised the casting of black actress Lupita Nyong'o as Little Orange Woman Maz Kanata, as she is one of the few women of colour in the franchise and they used a Motion Capture technique to portray the character. However, black women have usually been cast in the role of aliens in the Star Wars franchise, beginning with Femi Taylor as Twi'lek Dancer Oola in Return of the Jedi. This continued in the prequels which featured Gin Clarke and Lily Nyamwasa as Tholothians Adi Gallia and Stass Allie, as well as Mary Oyaya as Luminara Unduli. But these alien characters in the older films were much more minor non-speaking characters, and were also portrayed by actresses in prosthetics and makeup rather than in CGI. Maz is just the first main character to be a technicolored alien portrayed by a black woman.
  • For all the complaints in The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker about General Hux's Badass Decay, the seeds of it are very visible in The Force Awakens. He's the first to bolt when Starkiller Base comes under attack, showing his Dirty Coward attitudes, and it's painfully clear that Kylo Ren and Supreme Leader Snoke don't respect him at all. The only difference in this film compared to its successors is that Hux hadn't yet cost the First Order its ultimate superweapon. When Starkiller blew up, Kylo had the ammunition needed for open contempt of his rival.
  • Most complaints about the post-2014 Star Wars Expanded Universe can be found in the old Star Wars Legends continuity. But since Legends was Denser and Wackier, lived largely in the pre-internet era, and, not bound to coordinate around a release schedule of major media, the more outlandish ideas had more time to settle and become an accepted part of the fandom and complaints about such ideas didn't spread far without the saturation of social media.
  • A critique of the Sequel Trilogy's Worldbuilding is how haphazard it felt and how much the Star Wars Expanded Universe had to pick up the slack to flesh things out and plug in some logic holes. But this holds true for the Original and Prequel Trilogies as well. The only difference is that by the time the Sequels were released, only then was Lucasfilm expanding the lore of the prior two trilogies. Of course they didn't devote too much Worldbuilding to the Sequel Era when the films were developing that time. It was only after the Sequels finished did Lucasfilm start having entries filling in the lore.
• Many of Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg's trademark writing traits (Shallow Parody, Narrow Parody parodies depending more on references and audience recognition than actually making fun of the target, regardless of how well the reference works with the movie itself) are fully visible in their earlier, funnier movies, Spy Hard (which was barely saved by some of its clever bits, including its theme song by "Weird Al" Yankovic) and Scary Movie (which was saved by having four other writers). Then, the duo dived head-first into directing their own movies, with every problem that plagued the last two movies amped Up to Eleven and creating some delicious Snark Bait in the process.
• The Transformers film series:
  • The problems with the later movies are quite evident in the first one, including the crude sex jokes and too much focus on the humans instead of the robots. But since that was the first film that was gradually introducing the audience to the Cybertronians, people were willing to look past it.
  • While the films' tone is much Darker and Edgier than most cartoons that preceded it, its degree of focus on humans and ancient Cybertronian artifacts littered on Earth is quite similar to The Transformers and Robots in Disguise (2001). But since the films are Darker and Edgier, they can't fall back on the Narm Charm that carried the cartoons.
  • Even how the characters differ from their classic G1 incarnations was nothing new. Focusing on a small cast of Cybertronians on Earth was how the then quite recent Unicron Trilogy treated their casts. The animes however did offer the Cybertronians more Character Development that fleshed them out to properly distinguish them from their '80s counterparts. And the Unicron Trilogy being largely a Dork Age meant that the widespread nature of the films' reimaginings was much more apparent to the fandom.
• Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Phase 4 saw a rise in complaints from some rather misogynist parts of the fanbase who believed that the old guard of heroes; Hulk, Clint Barton, Doctor Strange; have been weakened to prop up female heroes. This likely stems from the fact that Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame saw the old guard fight at their full potential to combat a universe ending threat in do or die battles. In Phase 4, the heroes simply don't need to go all out and have returned to their usual levels; Hulk is training She-Hulk and holding back to not injure her, Barton views the Tracksuit Mafia as beneath him and doesn't need to go all out against them, and following the Darkhold turning Wanda Maximoff into an Invincible Villain, Strange can't stop her one-on-one.
  • For all the complaints that Phase 4 was directionless, so was Phase 1. The difference is that Phase 4 has Continuity Lock Out from the previous three Phases and people have grown to expect a clear Myth Arc from Marvel.
  • There were likewise a litany of complaints that new Bigger Bad Kang the Conqueror was overhyped by Marvel and not very threatening based on his on-screen record. These were the exact same complaints levelled at Thanos before Infinity War, given that he lost an Infinity Stone and his Orcus on His Throne tendencies caused him to outsource his schemes to Loki and Ronan, to the point that Thanos still enjoys a reputation as something of a Memetic Loser. The difference is that Kang's variants tend to keep dying as soon as they're introduced despite his Deity of Human Origin status. Thanos was kept away from the main story and was, despite being mocked by fans, never seen physically losing before he showed up.
  • Likewise, the MCU has seen complaints about it becoming, as Martin Scorsese infamously said, "popcorn heavy" due to what is seen as an increasing amount of humour undercutting what would otherwise be dramatic moments. But the MCU always placed a heavy focus on its light-hearted comedic moments to counter the drama. The difference is that as the MCU allowed superhero media to become more mainstream, and those other medias generally didn't give comedy an equal focus to drama, it began to seem like the MCU had more jokes than its earlier films.
  • The MCU saw a rise of complaints in Phases 3 and 4 about the Unfortunate Implications that it venerates the status quo while ignoring or downplaying that some villains, like Thanos and Killmonger, raised rather salient points about societal problems. In truth, this has been a feature of superhero media as long as there's been superhero media to the point that "Reed Richards Is Useless" was named to summarize it. The difference is that since the MCU leans very hard into "Like Reality Unless Noted" - compared to the Denser and Wackier source material - this trend is more noticeable. And as Marvel Comics writers have said in the past, while Tony Stark could readily cure most problems in the Marvel Universe, that wouldn't fix those same problems in the real world and could potentially be seen as trivializing those problems.

Literature

• The two novels in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, succumb to the sprawling, complex nature of the storyline that had previously been a selling point. The series has always been about gradual plot development and long term pay-offs, with a lot of detail put into exploring the backdrop of the action and the world in general - but this was all complemented by significant happenings. Though some POV characters had less to do than others, each book had dramatic arc to it. Feast and Dance, meanwhile, are criticized for (among other things) essentially very little happening because the focus is drawn so wide, with so much time spent describing characters and places that don't really matter.
• Wheel of Time is a similar case. The first book already had many POV characters and a rather slow pacing with lengthy descriptions of what everyone was wearing and what everything looked like. Later the number of new POVs would slow down the plot to the point that there would be things like 100+ page prologues detailing how everyone reacted to end of the previous book and make the pacing positively glacial. Much-hated overused character quirks like Nynaeve's braid tugging and skirt-smoothing were there in the first book too, as well as male and female characters going on about how they don't understand the opposite sex.
• The Jack Ryan books by Tom Clancy have their original sin as far back as Executive Orders. While a good book, it has issues with repeating certain plot points ad nauseam and reliance on the villains carrying the Idiot Ball that would only grow worse in later books.

Live Action TV

• The original Jump the Shark moment was merely the point at which Happy Days completely Flanderized Fonzie, and lost track of its Fifties motif, both trends that had been present for a long time by that point.
• Star Trek:
  • Most of the things Trekkies hate about Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise were already very present in the much-lauded middle seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and even in Star Trek: The Original Series; things like the anomaly of the week, the malfunctioning holodeck, the evil versions of regular characters, the shuttle crash plots, and the B-plots that feel like a soap opera. But it wasn't until later in the franchise that they really started to grate on viewers, since it finally started to seem like the same thing over and over again.
  • Most complaints about Darker and Edgier takes on Trek; the violence, the swearing, a Humans Are Flawed take on Starfleet; can easily be found in the much lauded Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. But since this was the first show to do it, and was marketed as the oddball of the Trek shows of the 1980s and 1990s, these aspects could easily be overlooked as one-offs. And, before and after the Myth Arc started, DS9 had many of the usual apolitical Monster of the Week episodes, something that also gave the characters more time to process and address everything that had happened, rather than the overt serialization that defined Trek from Star Trek: Discovery onwards.
  • Most complaints about Trek "going woke" following its return to television in 2017. These viewpoints and morals were always there in Star Trek but the older shows generally presented the issues by looking at alien societies and using metaphors that could obfuscate the issues and messages to those not paying too much attention. From 2017 onwards, a lot of the morals are presented when looking at the flaws in human society, making Trek‍'‍s political biases unmissable.
  • A common complaint about Star Trek: Discovery is that the ship always saves the galaxy. This isn't new, the hero ship was always the one to stop a galaxy-ending threat, but the older shows generally only used that plot one to three times over their runs. Discovery has every season be about stopping a galaxy-ending threat, wearing out the audience's patience and tolerance pretty fast. The fact that Discovery is serialized and dedicates thirteen episodes to understanding and stopping the threat rather than it being resolved in a quick two-parter is another point against it in this regard.
  • Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard:
    • All the complaints that the show has "gone woke". Putting aside that Star Trek was always firmly on the political left since forever, the only difference was that Season 2 made its left-wing talking points in a show (then) set Twenty Minutes Into the Future, making them seem Anvilicious, which is also nothing new in Trek, instead of Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped that the previous shows pulled off.
    • Bringing in real-world politics to Trek‍'‍s 2024. It was done because the real world timeline was catching up with the dates of Trek‍'‍s Alternate History which caused many who didn't want to see politics in Trek - whether just viewing Trek as escapism or it being the real world views of the Misaimed Fandom that had become Acceptable Political Targets - to cry retcon. Yet TNG all the way through Enterprise, and the Star Trek Expanded Universe, were already doing this, turning the Eugenics Wars into a Secret War and even showing that 9/11 happened, whereas TOS hinted that Earth in the 1990s and early 2000s was a dystopian wasteland due to the Eugenics Wars. The difference is that Season 2 of Picard, released in 2022, makes this "Like Reality Unless Noted" take on Trek‍'‍s past disprovable while the earlier hints were either in the ignorable EU or largely in the background of earlier shows or one-off Time Travel Episodes.
• Xena: Warrior Princess probably would have been better off in the long run if they hadn't had Xena and Gabrielle run into a family of monotheists in an episode clearly inspired by the Abraham and Isaac story. It was an isolated episode and could have been ignored. So was the later 'Giant Killer' episode where Xena helps David kill Goliath. But then comes the opener of the fifth season, where Xena and Gabrielle find themselves meeting angels in a war between Heaven and Hell (as opposed to just journeying through the previously established Greek mythology afterlife featuring the Elysian Fields and Tartarus). And then comes the whole 'Twilight of the Gods' arc in which Xena is basically manipulated by 'the one God' to kill every Greek God who appears on-screen, except for Ares and Aphrodite. The fact that the Gods, previously shown to be very competent and powerful, end up carrying the Idiot Ball and literally can't kill a Badass Normal like Xena if their lives depended on it, didn't help. And neither did the whole 'Xena and Gabrielle awake 25 years later' thing. In this case, the original sin would be the Abraham and Isaac episode, done back in the series' otherwise better days.
• The original sin in the BBC's Robin Hood was the moment that the writers became more interested in Guy of Gisborne (and specifically, his volatile relationship with Maid Marian) than with every single other character on the show. This lead to more and more screen-time being devoted to Guy and Marian as a potential couple, until the point where the writers (presumably) realized that they'd gone too far with it, and needed to derail it pronto. Their solution was for Guy to stab Marian to death in a jealous rage at the end of Season Two. There are plenty of reasons why Season Three is considered terrible, but it's mainly because that without Marian, the story had absolutely no emotional centre. There was simply nothing left to care about, or to look forward to.
  • Marian's death also left a place open for the introduction of the despised Kate, but that's a whole other can of worms...
• Doctor Who:
  • For all that fans of the classic show lambaste the series' drop in quality starting in Season 19, much of the flaws; the Villain Decay, the demystification of the Time Lords, the plastic-y looking sets, the inconsistently written characters; can be found back as early as Season 14. The difference is that Season 14-18 had Tom Baker's sheer force of personality to carry even the weakest stories along with his fantastic chemistry with the companions and the Fourth Doctor's Byronic Hero qualities to contrast the wacky. When John Nathan-Turner forced Tom Baker out and wrote the Fifth Doctor as a much more subdued character, the flaws became all too apparent and the show started to look Denser and Wackier. Notably, Adric was just a Kid Sidekick alongside Four's Large Ham tendencies but with Five being so calm, Adric, whose character had not changed at all, was suddenly regarded as an Insufferable Genius.
  • Daleks fans often lambaste Davros' appearance in the classic show as all Dalek stories following "Genesis of the Daleks" became Davros stories, them just serving as their creator's Mooks. But what were considered the best Dalek stories, save "The Daleks" and "The Power of the Daleks", before Davros' introduction in "Genesis of the Daleks" all had someone else as a primary antagonist and a mouthpiece for the baddies. The difference is those primary antagonists were either King Mooks or someone the Daleks would betray, both cases giving the Daleks agency as antagonists. When Davros was there, the Daleks had little agency, to the point that the Imperial Daleks were created as just expendable Mooks loyal to Davros.
  • Clara Oswald's character arc. Compared to the feats of prior companions like Rose Tyler, Donna Noble, Amy Pond and River Song, Clara's status as the Impossible Girl, convincing the Doctor to save Gallifrey and convincing the Time Lords to give the Doctor more regenerations are arguably less impressive. But Clara did all those fantastic things within a few months of each other (both In-Universe and out); as opposed to other companions either achieving similar feats over years' time or only having one such feat to their name; making her seem hyper-competent to her haters. Even her becoming a Distaff Counterpart to the Doctor was, to a degree, done before with Donna but since Clara stayed longer and wasn't subjected to Laser-Guided Amnesia, she was allowed to take it to its logical conclusion, again seeming like a Mary Sue to her haters (most of whom just so happened to ship the Doctor with someone else).
  • Though "The Power of Three" is generally held up as one the best Slice of Life episodes the show produced, it does foreshadow more than a few of the elements that would come to define writer Chris Chibnall's rather controversial tenure as showrunner. The main threat takes way too long to be fleshed out, the resolution is a quick Deus Ex Machina and there are elements of Moral Dissonance and Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending with regards to the Doctor's actions. This generally slipped under the radar at the time because Series 7's Troubled Production caused viewers to be more forgiving of its gaffs and because Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill's chemistry made the Slice of Life parts memorably enjoyable. When Chibnall took over though, the show had every resource it needed and the leads didn't have the same level of chemistry. And as these tropes popped up in most of Chibnall's scripts, most fans quickly lost patience.
• During Donald Trump's tenure as President of the United States, Saturday Night Live came under fire, from both sides of the political spectrum, for being too vocal about its hatred for Trump and conservative policies, its critics arguing that it was becoming an Anvilicious Take That aimed at conservatives. Discounting the fact that SNL has always had a left-wing bias and continued to mock liberal politicians during Trump's presidency, the show patterns its political sketches after contemporary events/controversies. This pattern didn't change during the Trump years, it's just that he gave SNL more moments that were ripe for parody compared to his predecessors as President of the United States, particularly compared to his predecessor Barack Obama.
• Though Season 1 of The Flash is near-universally praised as the show's best season, all the flaws that would contribute to the detriment of the show as it went on are present in that first season. The difference is that, since this was the first season, fans expected the show to outgrow these problems and said problems made sense in the lore. People could look past Season 1!Barry needing a pep talk from his team or that he Forgot About His Powers because he was still new to his powers. When this trend continued for eight more seasons, fans lost patience and just began seeing Barry as an idiot.

Video Games

• Mega Man 5 was the first game to not make any substantial change to the series formula (Mega Man 2 had items and eight bosses, Mega Man 3 had Rush and sliding, and Mega Man 4 had the charged buster shot and the Disc One Final Dungeon). The series became notorious for repetition not long after.
  • It was also the first game to repeat the "twist reveal" that the Big Bad was Dr. Wily all along and make it completely unsurprising. 4 had the element of Wily supposedly dying in the previous game while introducing a completely new antagonist in Dr. Cossack, making the twist somewhat surprising. For 5 to suggest that Proto Man had suddenly undergone a complete Face Heel Turn for no real reason, most gamers could easily guess how it was going to turn out.
• Star Wars Galaxies committed many grave sins against its franchise, including having overt Jedi running around the galaxy, Rebel troops patrolling Core World cities... and protagonist heroes making regular visits to players.
• It's said that the Sonic Adventure games, while worthy installments in their own right, started a number of annoying trends exacerbated in the later 3-D Sonic games.
  • Some consider the introduction of Tails in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Knuckles in Sonic 3, and ESPECIALLY Amy Rose and Metal Sonic in Sonic CD, while well-liked additions to the series overall, to be the beginning of the Sonic franchise's (at times over-exaggerated) troubles with Loads and Loads of Characters and juggling different styles of gameplay.
    • The Gamegear version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2‍'‍s bad ending implies that Tails is murdered by Eggman. Which may have been a slow beginning to the Darker and Edgier route, the tone ending up becoming a big criticism by the time the 3D games reached Shadow The Hedgehog and Sonic 2006.
  • Some others thought Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island foreshadowed the problems with the 3D games. Gameplay is slowed-down and running controls are loose and slippery, while the "get to the end as fast as possible" goal was replaced with "find all of the birds and guide them to the exit". This possibly led to experimental gameplay mechanics like Big the Cat's stages in the Adventure games that deviated too much from the Sonic formula.
• Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s: a poorly received Mission Pack Sequel to the excellent Guitar Hero II. Two years later, with Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, Guitar Hero: Metallica, Guitar Hero: Smash Hits, Guitar Hero: Van Halen, Guitar Hero: On Tour - Decades, Guitar Hero: On Tour - Modern Hits and Band Hero, there's a definite feeling that the series is drowning in a flood of Mission Pack Sequels.
  • A little backstory here: Rocks the 80s was made by Harmonix (also the makers of the first two games) under contract after Activision bought the Guitar Hero series. Neversoft (under Activision) made Guitar Hero III and onward. So Rocks the 80s might have shown signs of problems to come, but it wasn't made by the same company that made the later games.
  • On the Rock Band side, Harmonix have continued this trend on their own with Rock Band Track Packs (bare-bones game discs with songs taken from the game's vast DLC library, for players stuck on consoles with no DLC or who want to get the songs for slightly cheaper) and band-specific sequels with artists like The Beatles and Green Day.
• Mortal Kombat only completely entered its Dork Age when it smashed into the Polygon Ceiling, but the third game shows at least some of the weaknesses of later installments: overreliance on dial-a-kombo, unmemorable and often easy-to-hate new characters, the complete shattering of the Eastern-ish theme (which resulted in people realizing how ridiculous some of the characters looked), and the bosses suddenly getting cheaper. Yet there's still a lot of fans and defenders of this one.
• Arguably the case with World of Warcraft, with its creeping layers upon layers of retcons, the Horde/Alliance Conflict Ball, and the increasingly immersion-breaking self-aware humor. You could say that the worst excesses of Wrath of the Lich King existed in embryonic form in The Burning Crusade, and likewise, the worst excesses of Cataclysm can be found in a weaker form in Wrath of the Lich King.
  • Most of the above was present when WoW launched. The real Original Sin came in Warcraft III, where Blizzard first began to rely on massive retcons in lieu of moving the story forward in a logical fashion.
• Pokémon is a gameplay example. Type effectiveness and general balance have always been a crapshoot in competitive play when you don't know what kind of Pokémon your opponent is going to send out, but they were mostly manageable. Then the fourth generation introduced Stealth Rock, and the entire metagame was flattened into a thin pancake. This was pretty much rectified with the fifth generation wherein Stealth Rock is no longer widely available and has thus falling drastically in use in the metagame, though it's still entirely usable by way of transferring over Mons who know the move from the fourth.
  • Weather effects have been around since Gen II, but at the time of their introduction Weather-based teams were not very popular because they didn't last very long and the effects were rarely worth the time spent setting up. Gen III introduced abilities, among which were several weather-related ones: Drought/Drizzle/Sandstorm, which caused weather effects that would last indefinitely until another move or ability was used to cancel them out; along with other abilities like Swift Swim that doubled certain stats in certain weather conditions. However, Drought/Drizzle were exclusive to two Legendary Pokemon that could not be used in most forms of competitive play, and sandstorm was (at the time) weaker and harder to use than the other two, so this wasn't a huge issue. Gens IV and V, however, have since added even more weather-based abilities, moves and items, including giving Drought/Drizzle to non-banned Pokemon and introducing strong sandstorm users such as Garchomp, Excadrill and Landorus. The result is the Gen V metagame is so dominated by weather teams a few of the larger Pokemon communities have had to place bans on certain Pokemon and combinations, and have even discussed banning weather (or at least weather-inducing abilities) outright.
• American Wasteland may have marked the exact moment when the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series' franchise zombification became irreversible, but the things that sent it and later games off the rails can be seen as far back as Underground (and even, arguably, Pro Skater 4), when the series was still on top of the world. By adding the ability to walk around on foot and drive around in vehicles, Underground started the series' trend towards over-reliance on gimmicks like the "Nail the Trick" feature and Ride's use of an expensive skateboard peripheral, and became less about the actual skateboarding — something that was made readily apparent when Skate came out without any of these gimmicks and proved that they were unnecessary.
• Everything that some fans hate about the modern incarnations of the Final Fantasy series, the focus on graphics and special effects to the detriment of gameplay, unlikeable characters made of angst and hair gel, extremely linear "walk here, fight bad guy, watch cutscene" gameplay, the excessively long summons, etc, was very much present in Final Fantasy VII too.
• Resident Evil:
  • The fifth installment, Resident Evil 5, marked the shift of its series from the Survival Horror genre that it had pioneered to the Third-Person Shooter genre, a shift that was met with a relatively lukewarm reception by fans and critics, who felt that the series was me-tooing Gears of War at the expense of its roots. All of the complaints that people had with the game — the focus on nearly non-stop action at the expense of scares, the abundant ammunition supplies that made ammo conservation a much more minor concern (and thus reducing tension), the over-the-top Action Hero protagonists — appeared in embryonic form in the previous game, the much-better-received Resident Evil 4. That game introduced upgradeable weapons and had downed enemies dropping ammo and other loot for the first time, as well as featuring such scenes as Leon suplexing enemies and leaping through a laser grid in a manner that would make Keanu Reeves proud. While these changes were controversial even then, RE4 was still scary enough that longtime fans could ignore them and appreciate the much-needed improvements to gameplay that it made.
  • Another, and earlier, likely Original Sin may have been the film adaptation, which was, at the time, one of the most action-packed zombie movies ever made, and certainly more action-heavy than the games that preceded it. Its sequels only further amped up these elements, to the point where the RE movies are now described strictly as action films with zombies in them. The success of the film series likely colored people's expectations of the games, leading to later installments of the latter, such as RE4, incorporating more of the former's stylistic elements.
• Metroid, after eight years in rest since Super Metroid, was revived with two well-received games, one of them being Metroid Fusion. Despite the positive reception, a point of criticism from fans was its stronger focus on a story, it was even the first time Samus interacted with another character. This was seen as a turning point for the entire series to shift towards more plot-driven games, which may not have affected too much games like Metroid Prime 3, but by the time of Other M, it has become an important concern for the fanbase (particularly due to how the latter characterized Samus Aran).
• Mass Effect suffered from this greatly, a problem which stemmed from Mass Effect 2. While Mass Effect 1 ended with Commander Shepard looking for a way to stop the impending Reaper invasion, Mass Effect 2 advanced absolutely nothing about this. Instead, it chooses to kill Commander Shepard, scatter their allies and undo almost everything Shepard fought to accomplish, something that's not productive at all in terms of overall plotting. Mass Effect 2 even ends with Shepard stating that they'll find a way to stop the Reapers, that is to say, the same exact thing they were going to do when Mass Effect 1 ended. All of this went unnoticed, however, because of truly excellent character writing and dialog, alongside very memorable moments and relationships. The problem takes the spotlight with Mass Effect 3, a game that has to contend with a prequel which didn't bother to develop much of the main plot, leaving barely a skeleton of a plot left. Seamus Young has a novel-sized analysis on why this happened.
• Most complaints about The Last of Us Part II‍'‍s more controversial aspects; the Darker and Edgier tone, the Cast Full of Gay, the production team that "ruined" the second game; were present in the first game, its DLC or its Expanded Universe. The difference is that since the first game was largely framed through Joel, whose Dark and Troubled Past was established through the Distant Prologue and Offstage Villainy, the dark nature of the characters didn't weigh too heavily on the players. Likewise, most of the more overtly feminist and LGBT aspects were established mainly in the comics and DLC, so those who hadn't consumed them weren't ready to see it take centre stage in the second game.
• Fans of the Fire Emblem franchise criticized Awakening for its marriage mechanic and heavy emphasis on couples having children, when all the game did was bring back a mechanic from Genealogy of the Holy War.
  • Some fans were horrified when Fates did away with weapon durability, when Gaiden had been the first and so far only game to do it.

Western Animation

• The Romantic Plot Tumor of Star/Marco that was considered to have led to the Seasonal Rot of Star vs. the Forces of Evil was there since day one. But in the first two seasons, it generally took a backseat to the show's Magical Girl aspects and never overshadowed the Myth Arc as it did in the last two seasons.
• Miraculous Ladybug:
  • Much of the flaws from Season 3 onwards - the Status Quo Is God, Marinette's Stalker with a Crush tendencies, Adrien's Entitled to Have You moments, Chloé's Aesop Amnesia - can be seen as early as Season 1, see "Copycat" for a prime example. The difference was that in Season 1, the show was still new enough that people overlooked this and/or the Character Development of Season 2 made fans much less tolerant of them in the later seasons.
  • Most complaints about Zoé being a Flat Character (or even the Designated Protagonist Syndrome complaints) can easily be applied to the other hero characters (hell in many cases they're more applicable). The key difference is that Zoé started out as a Replacement Flat Character who was clearly designed to be a stand-in for a redeemed Chloé (who was herself a more mercurial character than the rest) and was fast-tracked into becoming a Miraculous holder, getting the Bee before she got any kind of substantial Character Development, along with being the first full-time replacement for a Miraculous. She doesn't do any more or less than characters like Rose, Luka or even Nino, but how quickly she got her Miraculous made her initial lack of development more apparent and harder to overlook to audiences than those characters who were there from the beginning.
  • Adrien being Demoted to Extra/Out of Focus in Seasons 4 and 5. This too was there from the beginning of the show, since Marinette is the lead character, and generally a more proactive person than Adrien. But since that was the beginning of the show, when the basic Worldbuilding was still being laid, people assumed Adrien would be given prominence later on, especially when it was revealed that his family was at the centre of the show's first emotional arc. Even in Seasons 2 and 3, he was being side-lined in favour of Master Fu but people generally looked past that because the new heroes were being introduced and Fu was giving the audience more hints about the Miraculous. When Adrien still never got any focus come Season 4, when Fu was written out, only a handful of new heroes were introduced and Alya all but replaced Adrien as the deuteragonist, only then did people began to view him as being cut out of his own story.
• For all that the Ben 10 franchise got flack in its later shows for having aliens with too similar powers, such as Swampfire being a poor man's Heatblast with bits of Wildvine, that problem was there in the original show. The difference was that in the original show, there weren't as many aliens so their differences stood out more. For example, Four Arms, Diamondhead and Cannonbolt were Ben's go to choices when he wanted Super Strength but Four Arms had four arms, Diamondhead was Made of Indestructium (allegedly) and Cannonbolt was a self-propelled cannonball. By the time of Ben 10: Omniverse‍'‍s midpoint, the Omnitrix was overflowing with specialized aliens who had very few differences in abilities (such as XLR8 and Fasttrack or Jetray and Astrodactyl).
• Many complaints that people have about the Uncanceled era of Family Guy were present in its pre-cancellation era.
  • The abuse of Meg. Granted it was nowhere near the level it is now, but at first, Meg gave as good as she got and was arguably one of the darker Griffins in the first few seasons, to the point that her humiliation in Season 2's "Love Thy Trophy" was Laser-Guided Karma. But Meg steadily becoming Out of Focus and the Flanderization of Peter and Lois into outright Abusive Parents led to Meg's status as a Cosmic Plaything defining her.
  • Brain Griffin's Feigning Intelligence and overly political speak. Aside from him being more tolerant of religion in the early seasons, this was always a part of Brian's character. And while he did suffer some Flanderization on these fronts, the increased prominence of these traits is largely the result of Brian being one of the show's Breakout Characters and being showcased much more than he was in the earlier seasons.
• One complaint people have with Barbie: It Takes Two is that Barbie Brooklyn Roberts (who's black) basically acts interchangeable with Barbie Malibu Roberts when it comes to sharing the same interests and dreams in making music, and is seen as more just her friend rather than a character in her own right. However, Nikki from the parent series Barbie: Dreamhouse Adventures (who's also black) could also have this since she also had a similar mindset of sharing the same dreams and interests with Barbie. However, the show more clearly made her special interests pronounced, such as owning her own baking and dogwalking businesses and being a fashion designer. These are things that Barbie also likes, but doesn't actively pursue as her own interests (she loves baking as a hobby, but hasn't made a legitimate business out of it outside of occasionally helping Nikki). Contrast with Brooklyn Barbie, where some of her more specific interests (a love of acting and telling ghost stories) are given less emphasis. Furthermore, while Nikki is a major character, she wasn't exactly pushed to be co-lead like Barbie Brooklyn Roberts since the parent series focused on an ensemble cast, unlike how It Takes Two pushes just the two Barbies even with Barbie being the main character. She is also more prone to panicking when she's in a tight situation, unlike how Brooklyn Barbie almost never shows doubt. While Malibu Barbie comes up with solutions to help Nikki, she also makes sure to emphasize that her dreams come first and she's just there to help out.
• One complaint about Milo Murphy's Law is with how it relies on too many references and callbacks to its parent series Phineas and Ferb (since characters from that show regularly appear there starting in season 2) and doesn't have much of its own identity. Phineas and Ferb pulled a similar stunt with the two crossovers it had with Marvel and Star Wars. However, most people were willing to let those slide regardless of if they liked them or now since the show had already established itself well enough by season 4 to do stories like this. Contrast with Milo Murphy's Law, where it just barely begun, and used these references more as a crutch rather than a way to enhance the story. As such, most people were more critical of that show.
• The major two complaints about Equestria Girls; the over-saturation of Palette Swaps and the Easily Forgiven anti-climatic endings; are present in parent series, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. It's just that since humans wear clothing, the similarities in body styles, or recycling of clothing assets, are a lot more obvious. And since the EG movies had less run time than a whole season of the television show, there's simply not enough time to develop an antagonist enough to make their Heel Face Turn feel believable or allow for the leads to explore their foe's motivations.
• A lot of the criticisms revolving around the love triangle between Nightwing, Starfire and Batgirl can be directly traced to Batman: The Animated Series, which made Nightwing and Batgirl a couple, while previously in the comics, not only were they not romantically involved, Barbara was a whole decade older than Dick. The show deaged Barbara to make her the same age as Dick, but most importantly Starfire was not present in the DCAU, which meant there was no reason for a love triangle. In addition, when the romance ended, it was because Dick and Barbara had kept secrets from each other, in addition to Dick's long simmering anger at Bruce that caused the romance to end, meaning it did not end due to another person. By contrast, shortly after Barbara was deaged in the comics, she and Dick had a one night stand before he was supposed to marry Starfire, which kicked off the love triangle, and generally every time a romance ends in the triangle, it is due to the other love interest.

Other

• In philosophy and religion, some view evil itself as something similar to this. Basically, every evil in the world (e.g. rape) could not have existed without the good of which it is a corruption (love/sex).
• Some hardcore social conservatives (technically referred to as status quo ante conservatives) fervently believe that everything's been going down the tubes for the past 100 years (or 50 years, or 25 years) all because back then they tolerated that one naughty trend that snowballed into all the other "bad" stuff. Discordant, violent, anarchic, Satanic Heavy Metal music? Oh, it's all Elvis Presley' fault! Thong-bikini bathing suits? Hmph, they never should have let those swimmers bare their legs.
• The constant expansion of federal authority within the US that is frequently criticized by libertarians arguably began more than two hundred years ago with the Louisiana Purchase under Thomas Jefferson. After all, does the government have the right under the Constitution to expand the borders that had been established for it in 1783? Even at the time, some people felt that Jefferson, who espoused a strict interpretation of the Constitution, was being hypocritical.
  • There exist some people who believe that the Constitution itself is responsible for permitting government to get as big as it did, and that it would never have happened had America stayed under the Articles of Confederation.