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Voltron: Legendary Defender has its own page.

  • Haru from Avatar: The Last Airbender showed up in the third season with a mustache, and the fandom still hadn't stopped making up jokes concerning it. This is partially because a certain Internet parody series played him as a self-absorbed Camp Gay pretty boy several weeks before he reappeared.
    • Canon example: Katara made one speech about hope and courage and freedom. The Ember Island Players's stage rendition of her was constantly waxing melodramatic about hope and "tearbending".
      • Her mood swings. They're really not as bad or as frequent as fandom made them out to be, and considering she's a teenager she's usually fairly in control of herself. But fandom still went nuts with the "must be that time of the month" memes.
      • Her involvement in Zuko and Azula's final Agni Kai. Fans bash her for "stealing Zuko's moment" and even her fans have said "the bashers have a point" based on a few nitpicky details (i.e. where Katara's feet happened to be planted). What really happened was that Zuko taunted his sister and she played dirty by trying to kill his friend, and he unfortunately messed up redirecting her strike.
    • Sokka and Momo accidentally getting strung out on peyote for a day and a night in the desert. Sokka then became the go-to character for Mushroom Samba memes.
    • Aang is still accused of entitlement and sexual assault after kissing Katara in The Ember Island Players, mainly by Zutara shippers.
    • Mai's first episode has her going along with Azula's plans to renege on a prisoner trade of King Bumi for Mai's baby brother Tom-Tom. This caused the fandom to denounce her as a hateful, heartless child-hater who didn't care about her little brother despite there being far more nuance to the situation (Mai is the apathetic sort and holds little affection for her family, but still).
      • Her request for a fruit tart in "Nightmares and Daydreams" got her pegged as a selfish fat pig who loved to stuff her face.
  • Transformers:
    • Optimus Prime, similar to Jean Grey, has only sacrificed his life and revived a total of two times in the G1 cartoon, and another two in the Marvel Comic rendition.
      • That's just G1. In addition to those four instances, Optimus also dies in Transformers: The Headmasters, his expy of Optimus Primal dies three deaths before being Killed Off for Real at the end of Beast Machines[1]. He also dies in Armada, and now in the second live-action movie, Revenge of the Fallen. As the first time he did it was so shocking, fans and writers alike quickly latched onto the idea, and it seems the writers have gotten carried away. Now, if the current series' Optimus doesn't do this at least once, fans are disappointed, and it even got its own little Lampshade Hanging in Beast Wars. The Transformers Robots in Disguise incarnation is the only version of Optimus to not have died at least once. Transformers Animated gets it out of the way in the series premiere (and even then, he was only dead for a little over a minute). Transformers: Cyberverse got around this however by having alternate versions of Optimus die. The main one lived on until the end.
      • Hell, when G1 cartoon Optimus' backstory is revealed, we find he became Optimus in a We Can Rebuild Him situation - he was a civilian who was killed by Megatron soon after Megs' villain career began.
    • Ultra Magnus is only remembered by a certain subset of fans for the infamous movie line, "I can't deal with that, now". Not only has it become an internet meme, but it also forever painted Magnus in fans' minds as an arrogant and lazy commander who would rather pass off responsibilities to his subordinates than actually get his own hands dirty. The fact that he's seen coordinating strategies more often than he is executing them doesn't help matters much, but he is more proactive than this misconception paints him as being. On top of that, the original line was said as he was in the middle of trying to pilot a ship that was crashing, so it was less "Who cares?" and more "Kinda busy here!"
    • Remember how G1 Red Alert was always panicky and ultra-paranoid? If so, that makes one of us: In the aptly-named episode "Auto Berserk," when a missile hits him in the face, resulting in brain damage that would have killed him eventually, he starts acting in this manner, to the point of helping Starscream get his hands on a superweapon just to keep the Autobots, whom he believes have turned against him, away. He's fixed later. Fans seem to forget both that he was this way for one episode only due to damage, and quite how dangerous the paranoid schizophrenic Red Alert really was. Even his toy bios go on about his paranoia, as if something we've never witnessed in any episode or comic but the brain-damage situation was in fact his defining trait.
    • There's also Mix-Mix-Mixmaster's Verbal Tic of re-re-repeating the beginning of a sentence... some-some-something he only actually did in one ep-ep-episode (City of Steel.) Thank-thank-thankfully. Shrapnel, however, really did repeat the last word of every sentence almost every time he appeared, appeared.
      • Beast Wars once had a damaged Waspinator think he was Shrapnel... only to start talking like Mixmaster did in City of Steel.
    • Sentinel Prime may be going this way due to Transformers Animated, due to his smug attitude, general disrespect for others, and sometimes morally reprehensible techniques, in later continuities, there are some aspects of it, one of the names Zeta Prime has, suggested by the writer of Exodus is Sentinel Zeta Prime, and demonstrates much of the same behavior. The Sentinel in Dark of the Moon seemed to avert this, but then it turns out he's worse than the Animated Sentinel, using both sides of the conflict and murdering Ironhide.
    • As any Transformers fan can tell you, humans are The Scrappy of the franchise, usually being stereotyped as wangsty little brats with boring home lives who serve mainly to steal focus from the Transformers. While there have been many human characters who fit this mould (such as Sam Witwicky), there have also been human characters who were very warmly received by the fans (the best example being the humans in Transformers Prime) but they never seem to be around for very long, causing most people to forget them and default to the memory of Kicker Jones as to why there shouldn't be any humans in the story.
    • In Season 1 of Transformers Prime, Bulkhead shows that he's okay with leaving Ungrateful Bastards (Agent Fowler but he changed his tune soon enough) and Jerkassess (Vince) to the Decepticons. To some fans, a lot of them Jack/Arcee shippers, this forever tainted his reputation, who branded him a total monster who was no better than the Decepticons... missing the point that, at that point, all of Team Prime was made up of Anti-Heroes.
    • Cliffjumper's Sacrificial Lion moment in Prime. As Cliff is historically a Pint-Sized Powerhouse who manages to be The Dreaded, it was a good way to demonstrate The Worf Effect and how dangerous the Decepticons are. But after Bumblebee recycled the death, Cliff will now always be the guy to die to the point that his cameo in War for Cybertron left many assuming that he died soon after it.
  • Ron in Kim Possible received Twenty Four Hour Superpowers at a rate not seen since Jimmy Olsen. For some reason fans latched onto his one time use of "Monkey Power" which influenced the writers to both tease and please fans with its usage in later episodes. Perhaps Everything Is Better With Monkeys.
    • The "Monkey Power" was never a 24 hour power though, it was a permanent change. Even Monkey Fist got imbued with it and kept it. Ron just could never get it to work more than intermittently.
    • A real example, though, is cooking. One episode shows Ron as a surprisingly excellent chef, while Kim is a disaster. Though she improves by the end of the episode and it's never mentioned again, in Fanon Ron is a god in the kitchen, while Kim's cooking defies physics with its hideousness.
      • Though not as prominent as the other examples, a few KP fanfics milk drama out of the fact that Ron essentially killed Warhok & Warmonga, despite the fact that a). said aliens, had they lived, would've no doubt come back to exact horrible revenge and b) it wasn't like he did it in cold blood; he just happened to toss them into their spaceship, which exploded. But for many authors, this was a Moral Event Horizon.
  • Tygra in Thundercats is known as a weak-willed junkie, despite being addicted twice, only one of which was actually presented as a drug.
  • Comic Hero Aquaman is commonly haunted by his portrayal in the Superfriends cartoons, as a guy whose only real powers are swimming and talking to fish. This has actually worked out for him a little, as later iterations of the character usually go to great (and awesome) lengths to subvert this image.
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  • Wendy broke up with Stan exactly once, in the seventh season of South Park. They got back together in the eleventh season finale and have been together ever since. Yet fanfic writers tend to portray Wendy as a manipulative shrew who breaks Stan's heart again and again. This is usually done to justify Stan leaving her for Kyle. But even some writers who like Wendy latch onto the idea that she and Stan break up and make up all the time.
    • It may have more to do with the fact how shallow their relationship is shown at times. Both have shown heavy attractions to other characters in an extremely unsubtle manner (Stan once constantly attempted to make passes to a substitute teacher and even gloated about supposedly making love to her to Wendy's face while Wendy became disinterested in Stan in favor of another popular jock less than one season after they got back together). Their less than affectionate relationship was even Lampshaded in Raisins
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 Bebe: Wendy broke up.

Stan: Wait what did I do wrong? I haven't talked to her for weeks!

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    • Eric Cartman has done a lot of bad stuff in the show. So shipping him with anyone often comes with his detractors constantly reminding everyone of these feats (even if the writer/artist did nothing wrong, he gets better in said works and/or fanon discontinuity is in play), much to the chagrin of said shippers and his fans.
    • Randy ends up destroying any positive qualities of his reputation in "With Apologies To Jesse Jackson" when he warps "naggers" into the Latin word for black with an extra G and an S on the end during a game show despite not only the former answer being correct but also the latter being straight up unable to be correct in the first place in a family-friendly (ironically for the show's genre) game show. His blunder ended up giving him his nickname "that n-gger guy," not to mention his prize got voided by the answer he gave.
  • Craig is seen as aloof, rude and has bullied people at time. Cue the fandom making him a smoking bad boy type when he grows up. He typically stops when someone (namely Tweek) 'fixes' him.
  • In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fandom, April O'Neil's yellow jumpsuit, her fucking jumpsuit. Honestly, every conversation about the old show dissolves into one about her hotness and jumpsuit, this has even made it into other adaptations, as a reference or actually happening (Hell, in the Back to the Sewers season of the 03 show, she wears one!).
  • The Fairly OddParents! The episode "Home Wrecker" had Tootie admitting, through Suspiciously Specific Denial, that she tapped Timmy's phones. "Just the Two of Us!" had Trixie going insane and attempting to kill Timmy when the two were the last humans on Earth. The detractors of both have not forgotten these incidents. And let's not forget, although in this case it's an example of the producers never living it down, the horrendous Wonderful Life Subversion episode, "It's A Wishful Life". It is still heavily criticized as one of the lowest points in the series.
  • On Codename: Kids Next Door, Lizzie used a "Boyfriend Helmet" on Numbuh 1, and ordered him to destroy his teammates. In several future appearances, she was developed more, given her relationship more depth...but people's minds were already set. She became the single biggest target of Die for Our Ship in the fandom. Admittedly, she remained clingy, but nowhere close to that level.
  • In-universe example from Total Drama Island: Noah kissing Cody on the ear while they are both asleep in "The Big Sleep" is still remembered by campers well into season two. (For both of them--apparently being kissed makes Cody at least bisexual too.)
    • It's also remembered by the creators as well, see the Ho Yay section for more.
    • Ezekiel made one sexist comment during his short time on Total Drama Island. Two seasons later, even though others have shown far more sexist tendencies, Zeke was pretty much labeled Straw Misogynist, and is still hounded for it.
  • Similar to the Pikachu/ketchup example, Starfire of Teen Titans was shown drinking mustard once. It's common for it to be referenced in fan works.
    • She is, however, shown at several points later with a bottle of mustard with a straw in it in the background, even if she's not actually in the process of drinking it.
  • Spider-Man: The Animated Series - whole show, for the censorship issue. Yes, they couldn't say "die" or "kill," have Morbius suck blood, or have Spidey full-on punch anyone. But it seems that's all anyone says about it lately. In fact, it was an ambitious arc-based series with a lot of depth, emotion, surprises, and the portrayal of Venom that has impacted every adaptation since. Interviews with showrunner John Semper reveal that as it was on Fox - yeah, that Fox - it was a 24/7 battle to keep it that way. And just because they couldn't say "die" doesn't mean no one ever did die.
  • Professor Farnsworth from Futurama, having been declared dead as a tax dodge some years before, found himself irritated that his son Cubert used this fact to perform a hostile takeover of Galaxy Express.
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 Farnsworth: You take ONE nap in a ditch and people start declaring you this and that!

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    • And of course, Leela's infamous one night stand with Zapp Brannigan is mentioned every time Zap makes an appearance in the show. Usually by Bender or, more commonly, by Zapp himself.
  • Xeexi got his Memetic Molester status by mind raping two characters in an episode. Only one instance is really ever noted, but now Xeexi is only remembered as a rapist, even though he's also a tactical genius, and well...dead.
  • Fans of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic tend to assign traits to characters based on random memorable scenes. This includes:
    • Derpy Hooves is all about this trope. She was always depicted wall-eyed and ditzy based on a scene in Episode 1, even before it became canon in Episode 15. Her love for muffins also stems from a single scene.
      • Additionally, she is portrayed as the klutzy mail carrier based on the "Feeling Pinkie Keen" scene where it is implied that she dropped a series of objects on Twilight including an anvil and piano.
    • Fluttershy wanting to be a tree, based on a random night conversation on a train.
    • Scootaloo secretly being a chicken, based on a random night conversation in a forest.
    • Pinkie Pie being an insane psychopath. It was already part of Fanon due to a certain fanfic, but after the episode "Party of One" was aired, it will be hard not to think of the scene where Pinkie goes completely nuts.
      • When she's not depicted as a clinically insane Yandere, she's either a Stepford Smiler, she's bipolar, or she suffers from some sort of trauma in her past.
    • Celestia is sometimes exaggerated banishing anyone she doesn't like or would rather not deal with to the moon, all because she banished (reluctantly, even) Nightmare Moon (formerly her sister Luna - Word of God has stated they aren't the same pony, just the same body) to the moon. Once.
      • Word of God actually has stated they may very well be the same pony - one interpretation of Faust's elaborations makes it entirely possible that Luna used dark powers. But that will not be discussed here. The point is, in canon, Nightmare Moon is very very very BAD and the only person Celestia has ever banished like that. Fanon? Not so.
      • She also turned Discord to stone... after he conquered Equestria and turned it into a nightmarish World Gone Mad. Fan Dumb has warped it into a reputation of turning those who oppose her into a Sealed Evil in a Can.
    • Rainbow Dash said "twenty percent cooler" one time, so now it's her Catch Phrase.
    • Season 9 featured the long awaited return of Grogar... only for him to be revealed as Discord in disguise to the rage of most of the fanbase. Think the fandom reaction to the Mandarin in Iron Man 3 and apply it to MLP.
  • In X-Men: Evolution, Scott was always a nice guy to everyone unless they deserved otherwise. However, Avalanche and him had a known rivalry due to being the leader of an opposing team, and usually it was Avalanche that instigated it, in fact, most if the time Scott was defending someone else or reacting to Avalanche's previous action. However, during season 2, Avalanche had changed. Not as in he developed, but his personality had completely taken a U-turn and he was suddenly in love with Kitty (Itself being a Never Live It Down moment as he'd only had one interaction with Kitty before hand and wasn't even positive) and willing to join the X-Men simply to be close. Obviously, Scott remembers how he's acted and doesn't trust him. When Avalanche proves he's not interested in learning at the institute Scott retaliates by reactivating the Danger Room control for a second to make him trip up, a complete Out-of-Character Moment that was never demonstrated before or after (He made a joke, they completely forgot who this is). And when someone starts stealing the X-Vehicles, Scott, as well as EVERYONE thought it was Avalanche. When it's all over, Scott apologized for this and offered to start again. Lance decides to quit because, after his time here, he's realized its too much work and not really him. However, the Brotherhood fans and a few others refuse to think of Scott as anything but a petty jerk who just hates Avalanche for no reason, who is nothing but a saintly loving Boyfriend to Kitty (Despite the fact that, by the end of this season he returns to previous characterization and breaks up with Kitty), and that Scott was the reason he quit, having driven him away with his bullying and accusations when Avalanche would have made a great addition to the team. Sigh. That's two characters remembered for a personality they didn't have, because of one episode and one Out-of-Character Moment.
    • Similarly, the New Recruits are only remembered by some fans as idiots who only want to cause trouble and if left alone would destroy the world. They only did two stupid things, steal the X-Vehicles, and break into the Danger Room unsupervised. Not only did they learn their lesson, they actually showed they were smarter than previously thought (How many of you could fly a jet or survive a Danger Room session designed for the more experienced children?), in fact, it wouldn't of been a problem had Avalanche and Kitty hadn't got in the way and caused the systems to get fried and fired at two Air force jets. But because one caused Avalanche to quit and another was 'confirmation' people always think of them as Too Dumb to Live assholes.
  • Family Guy's Brian Griffin. Some fans will never forgive him for utterly derailing the seventh season, or, for reasons that are still incomprehensible, going from a normal Christian to a rabid anti-theist after the show's Revival.
  • In-universe example: In a Robot Chicken skit on G.I. Joe, a new recruit is given the name Fumbles after slipping on his spilled soda. This leads him to defect to COBRA for the sake of revenge. Unfortunately for the Joes, "Fumbles" happens to be a Badass Bookworm Cold Sniper who is capable of single-handedly killing them all.
    • Even better, at the end of the sketch, Cobra Commander is so impressed that he wants to give the sniper a much better nickname, only for him to coldly respond "It's Fumbles. It's always been Fumbles."
  • While it's understandable since "When you wish upon a star" is basically the theme of the Disney company, Disney Animated Films are often generalized into only promoting that moral (that a princess, or any person just needs to want something and they'll get it). The Princess and the Frog seems to address this prevalent idea, and balanced it out with a hard work moral.
  • Benson's actions in Best Burger in the World. From mocking Mordecai and Rigby to eating their burgers, that episode turned him into The Scrappy for some fans. At first, Benson was seen as just a strict boss with low patience, but now, people see Benson as a Jerkass Bad Boss that makes Mordecai and Rigby's lives hell, despite past, present, and future Pet the Dog moments.
  • She-Ra and the Princesses of Power will never live down the creators' infamous proclamation that their show would have better LGBT representation that Voltron: Legendary Defender. It was almost certainly not meant to cause a Fandom Rivalry between the two shows but it still springs to the mind of many a Voltron fan with the She-Ra fans firing back with just as much vitriol. Even some fans who have come to enjoy both shows, know that it's suicide to broadcast their love of both too loudly.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants; there are many, MANY things the fans will never live down, for better or for worse;
    • For worse; Mr. Krabs won't be able to live down the following:
      • Driving Plankton to suicide and getting away with it in "One Corse Meal".
      • Using Gary as a coin magnet and stealing spare change, injuring him, and keeping SpongeBob distracted.
    • Patrick won't live down trying to burn Gary alive with a flamethrower in "Pet Sitter Pat".
    • SpongeBob himself has been disliked for abusing Gary while being bluntly unaware of Puffy Fluffy trying to kill them both, when Gary was just trying to save SpongeBob in "A Pal for Gary".
  • The Simpsons:
    • Lisa's more Granola Girl / Soapbox Sadie moments will never be forgotten by her detractors who readily use them as excuse to accuse her of being a Creator's Pet and make her out to be worse than she really is. Especially where Bart is concerned.
    • Seymour Skinner being revealed as an impostor in "The Principal and the Pauper."
    • Willie's "Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys" line. He hates all races, including the Scots, but a lot of people remember him solely for that anti-French remark. Which was the only time he ever mentioned the French.
    • The most infamous example has to be the Season 18 episode "The Boys of Bummer." After Bart fails to catch a fly ball and costs Springfield the Little League Championship, he suddenly becomes a pariah to the whole town. He's ultimately Driven to Suicide with the angry mob continuing to harass him after the suicide fails. Even those who drew some enjoyment at the episode's Black Comedy consider it a low point for the show.
    • The town's willingness to hang the entire Simpson family, even Maggie, for Homer's blunder in The Simpsons Movie is also not something that anyone is likely to forget.
  • Pink Diamond pulled a lot of shit in Steven Universe that people are very hesitant to forgive her for, but none has garnered quite so much hate as her casually abandoning Spinel in the Garden for 6,000 years. It's all her haters need to frame her as the show's true villain and an irredeemable monster.
  • While fans eventually accepted Superman's initial coldness to Superboy in Young Justice, his ordering of Apple Pie in one episode has snowballed into being this incarnation's Trademark Favorite Food.
  • A decent percentage of The Loud House‍'‍s fandom can never look at the Loud Family, Lynn Jr in particular, the same again after their abusive treatment of Lincoln in "No Such Luck".
  • In the infamous Ben 10: Alien Force episode "Grounded", Ben's parents discover his powers and ground him out of the Adult Fear of their son being on the front lines of an Alien Invasion. Or at least that's what it was intended to come across as. Ben's parents were so Unintentionally Unsympathetic and needlessly aggressive, almost coming off as grounding their son for being a hero, that some fans tend to portray them as being abusive, of the emotional variety, towards their only son. Even though Ben's parents eventually came around, the fact the "Grounded" was the only time they were prominently displayed rather sours their depiction in the collective fandom's minds.
  • Miraculous Ladybug:
    • Anyone, usually Alya, who ever believed anything Lila said is irredeemable in the eyes of at least one fan.
    • Alya's lack of regard for people's privacy (including Marinette's) and her refusal to ever check her sources (usually Lila's) has led to many viewing her as a crap reporter, or a gossip writer masquerading as an Intrepid Reporter.
    • Critics of the Marinette/Adrien ship (and all the various other combinations of the Two-Person Love Square) refuse to ever look past any creepy moment from either (usually Marinette/Ladybug's Clingy Jealous Girl moments and Adrien/Chat Noir's Entitled to Have You moments) and regard those moments as their defining character traits. Feelings of Flanderization and Arc Fatigue only made this worse.
    • Chloé stans forever look at Chloé's half-sister Zoé as a Replacement Flat Character after Chloé's Character Development from Season 2 was tossed aside and she cemented a Face Heel Turn at the end of Season 3, seeing Zoé as just a generic blonde nice girl. To be fair, Zoé did start out as such but she got a lot of Character Development that took her in a different direction from her sister. Though the fact that much of this development came when increasing feelings of Arc Fatigue, Narm and Seasonal Rot began to turn away viewers means that most simply didn't see Zoé change, so they tend to default to her initial characterization when asked about her.
      • On a more positive Zoé note, following her akumatization into Sole Crusher, many fan artists enjoy depicting Zoé's superhero form of Vesperia as a giantess.
  1. Though Optimus Prime himself nearly bought it at the end of Beast Wars Season 2.