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Flanderization - TV Tropes
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Flanderization
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"I think Homer gets stupider every year."
The act of taking a single (often minor) action or trait of a character within a work and exaggerating it more and more over time until it completely consumes the character. Most always, the trait/action becomes completely outlandish and it becomes their defining characteristic, turning them into a caricature of their former selves. Sitcoms and sitcom characters are particularly susceptible to this, as are peripheral characters in shows with long runs.
The trope is named for The Simpsons character Ned Flanders, who was originally depicted as a friendly, generous Christian neighbor and a model father, husband and citizen, making him a contrast to Homer Simpson. As seasons progressed, however, he became increasingly obsessively religious to the point where he eventually embodied almost every negative stereotype of the God-fearing, bible-thumping American Christian evangelist.
Note that the key to this trope is in how the process is a gradual thing: the character starts relatively normal with a few quirks, the quirks become more prominent, then the quirks gradually become the character. If the character acquires quirks that are contrary to their earlier portrayal, usually because the writers were figuring out what to do with them, that is Characterization Marches On.
In general, comedies, especially sitcoms, fall into the trap of Flanderization because Character Development is far less important than Rule of Funny. Given a choice between getting a laugh or moving the story forward, the former will almost always take priority.
Flanderization doesn't have to be a bad thing — sometimes it can be used to expand on a background character's personality when they are brought to the foreground, or make an otherwise bland character stand out more. It can even be beneficial on a cast-wide scale: A comedy that has a cast full of zany, outsized personas will probably be funnier than one full of nondescript straight men.
When Flanderization occurs as the result of adaptation from one medium to another (manga to anime, for example), it's Character Exaggeration and frequently a sign of Adaptation Decay. May sometimes be related to Lost in Imitation.
See also Never Live It Down (when the character is more associated with some action or event than the character actually changing), Unintentionally Sympathetic (when realistic quirks are mishandled by the writers) and Forgot Flanders Could Do That (when a story brings back pre-Flanderized aspects of the character as a reminder that those traits are there, even if you don't see them much any more). Compare Temporarily Exaggerated Trait, which is like flanderization but only done temporarily. Compare and contrast Early-Installment Weirdness (as it applies to characters), with early depictions of a character being different from later ones simply because the producers hadn't figured out what role they should play in the story. See also Moral Disambiguation for when the morality of a work becomes more black and white.
The opposite to this trope is Character Development, naturally.
Wikipedia has their own article. It credits us!
List of cases of Flanderization:
Stupidity
- A character who starts off dimwitted or unintelligent gradually becomes even more clueless and inept.
- A character who is initially portrayed as slightly dimwitted and clueless, yet still able to function in everyday life, gradually has their stupidity exaggerated over time. Eventually, they become so clueless that they struggle to grasp even the simplest concepts, often creating chaos or confusion in situations where they once could manage.
- The character's stupidity is only demonstrated by them saying funny phrases, but later starts putting their and others' lives at danger.
- Insanity or eccentricity is mistaken for stupidity, and a dippy or crazy character becomes a dumb character.
- A character is not dumb, just lazy and/or hates studying, but is turned later into straight dumb.
- Incompetence or clumsiness is mistaken for stupidity, and a character who's clumsy or bad at their job becomes a dumb character.
- A character who starts out dimwitted but well-meaning, often unaware of the wrongness of their actions, gradually transforms into a more rude, callous, and malicious figure. As time goes on, their lack of intelligence becomes an excuse for selfish and harmful behavior. Instead of being portrayed as harmlessly clueless, they begin to use their ignorance as a justification for mistreating others.
Intelligence
- A character may start out as intelligent in a grounded, believable way—sharp, resourceful, and knowledgeable within a realistic scope. However, later on, their intelligence gets exaggerated to the point where they’re portrayed as near-geniuses or on par with famous scientists, solving impossibly complex problems or inventing groundbreaking technology with ease.
- Insanity or eccentricity is mistaken for brilliance, and a dippy or crazy character who would previously save the day through an Ass Pull once in a while for Rule of Funny now does so Once per Episode.
- A character is intelligent in one or two specific areas, but more inexperienced and flawed in others. Later they are smart in every level, providing knowledge and wisdom in every possible situation.
- Knowledge is conflated with intelligence, and a character who knows a lot of trivia is turned into a genius.
Greed
- A greedy character has a kind side and often chooses what is more important instead of riches, but later, becomes even greedier to the point that they even sacrifice friends and family just for a few more pennies.
- A character who is a collector who enjoys building their collection turns into a hoarder whose life revolves around filling their house with an excessive number of trivial possessions.
- A character is frugal or a cheapskate but on a realisitc level where they simply try to reduce waste or save money while buying necessities and luxuries will eventually become so cheap that they can't even spend a penny without making a big deal about it, will hoard garbage and valueless junk, or cut corners to the point where it endangers themselves or others.
Meanness
- A Jerkass becomes much meaner and nastier, perhaps even behaving more like a villain, becoming a Designated Hero in the worst cases.
- A Jerk with a Heart of Gold degenerates into a straight Jerkass.
- A character who is generally decent but has a mocking sense of humour turns into a true bully who greatly enjoys insulting other characters.
Kindness
- A Nice Guy but with human flaws becomes a Purity Sue.
- Alternately, they evolve into an Extreme Doormat who is unable to stand up for themselves whenever they’re mistreated.
Villainy
Annoyance
- A character who starts off as somewhat annoying, primarily irritating those who are particularly sensitive, becomes insufferable to nearly everyone around them, to the point where the audience begins to sympathize with the characters who are frustrated by them.
- When creators find out that a character has received a negative reception from fans or critics due to their obnoxious and insufferable behavior, they typically handle it in two ways:
- On one hand, the creators may double down on the character's obnoxious traits, exaggerating them even more for comedic effect or dramatic impact. This can turn the character into a more exaggerated caricature of their former self, pushing their flaws to new extremes, which could either further frustrate the audience or result in an even bigger comedic payoff for those who enjoy the character’s antics.
- On the other hand, creators may decide to punish the character by subjecting them to torment or hardship, often in an exaggerated or over-the-top manner. This approach can be satisfying to audiences who have grown frustrated with the character's obnoxious behavior, providing a sense of justice or catharsis. However, it can also backfire, especially if the character's torment feels excessive or unjust. If the character hasn't done anything intentionally wrong—aside from their annoying behavior—the punishment can come across as too harsh, unnecessary, or even mean-spirited, leading the audience to sympathize with the character rather than enjoy their comeuppance.
- A character who is intelligent and sometimes accidentally patronizes or confuses laymen, later becomes an Insufferable Genius and may even lose the "genius" part.
Likes/dislikes
- A character has a favorite food like many people have, but later the love for that food is brought up all the time and the character becomes enamored with it to the point of addiction.
- Conversely, if there is a food or something else that the character doesn't like, their distaste for it will increase over time, and the character will become more and more of a magnet for improbable situations in which the disliked thing cannot be avoided.
- It's also possible for a character to simply be a Big Eater who has their love of food upped over time to the point that they will eat literally anything happily, even inorganic/inedible items.
- A character has an interest, that gradually turns into an obsession.
- A character starts out with a diverse set of interests, but gradually becomes only obsessed with one of them.
Sexuality
Gender
Others
- A character is somewhat of an activist and organizes protests when something really bad is going on, but later becomes very annoying with activism, and almost all episodes revolving around the character are about a protest.
- A character who begins as a prankster or someone with a mischievous side will often start by pulling harmless pranks on their friends and peers. However, as time goes on, their pranks escalate, becoming more malicious and even dangerous, causing real harm or distress to others. What once seemed like harmless fun evolves into reckless behavior, and the character’s actions may shift from being playful to deeply problematic.
- A character who initially uses foul language only occasionally—typically when they're angry, scared, or trying to sound cool—is later unable to form a single sentence without swearing.
- A nervous or timid character who is initially afraid of certain things and situations later evolves into a complete coward, becoming deathly terrified of even mildly nerve-wracking circumstances. Over time, their fear intensifies, and they develop multiple phobias, avoiding anything that could cause them discomfort or anxiety.
- Similarly, a character is afraid of something, but can still function when around it, but eventually, the fear becomes crippling.
- A character gets in distress sometimes, but has many other uses in the plot. Later, the character's only use is getting in danger to be rescued.
- A character has some anger issues, but is still able to control it and mostly gets angry when the situation calls for it. Later on, however, their anger issues get much worse to the point that they go berserk over the slightest annoyances, provocations or inconveniences.
- A character who often talks loudly gets louder and louder to the point that they have NO INDOOR VOICE.
- A character who is emotionally sensitive, but only when the situation calls for it becomes a full-blown crybaby who bursts into tears on a regular basis and often for petty reasons.
- A character is in a romantic relationship while maintaining their own personal motivations and goals, but then have all of their screentime solely devoted their significant other to the determent of their other aspects.
- A character who starts off somewhat childish and immature but still retains moments of maturity when the situation calls for it later evolves into someone who is extremely immature, to the point where they never act their age. Over time, they lose the ability to rise to the occasion or demonstrate any level of responsibility, and their childish behavior becomes a defining trait.
- A character with an illness, allergy, or disability who is initially portrayed as managing their condition well and still able to participate in everyday life and activities is later depicted as borderline invalid. Over time, their condition is exaggerated to the point where it significantly hinders their ability to function or participate in anything, often at the expense of their independence. This shift can make the character's challenges seem unrealistic, reducing them to a one-dimensional figure defined solely by their condition, rather than a well-rounded person who navigates life with it. Alternately, a Hypochondriac will gradually be portrayed as actually being sickly (neuroticism and geekiness optional).
- A character with a job will slowly become obsessed with said job.
- A character who is somewhat popular within a community may later evolve into a full-on celebrity, gaining widespread recognition and attention. Alternatively, a character who starts off as socially awkward and somewhat unpopular, yet still has a small social circle, is later depicted as having no friends at all or just a single, often very close, friend.
- A parent character who is somewhat overprotective of their kids later becomes so protective to the point that they keep their kids away from anything that is negative in the slightest.
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Comic Strips
- Dilbert has played with this trope over the years. With some characters it's played straight: the Pointy-Haired Boss went from an ordinary Mean Boss to a complete moron, while Wally went from Brilliant, but Lazy to just lazy. Alice went from being a brilliant engineer with a low tolerance for stupidity to being defined by regularly screaming and punching people (or injuring/killing them with just a look.) On the other hand, Dilbert himself has become less of a nerd and more a mixture of The Everyman and Only Sane Man.
- While most of the FoxTrot characters had their personas taken to the extreme at times, Andy was quite extremely Flanderized, going from a simple, caring and concerned mother to the Granola Girl Moral Guardian of the strip who serves her family earth-friendly fare like braised zucchini every meal, keeps the thermostat so low that it flash-freezes the steam from a cup of coffee, and throws a fit if she catches the boys playing a violent video game. Unfortunately, since the series became Sunday-only, there's little chance of her changing. On the other hand, before this happened Andy pretty much didn't have a personality at all beyond Mom.
- Roger Fox started off as a classic sitcom dad, somewhat bumbling but still level-headed and respectable. Though he wasn't very good with computers, the series started in the late 80s when they weren't nearly as common. Over time he's gone into Too Dumb to Live territory and possibly even beyond; his computer ineptitude has progressed into full-blown Walking Techbane, he gets beaten in chess by 4-year-old children, and he almost blows himself to Kingdom Come every time he tries to grill hamburgers.
- Which is not to say this didn't happen to other characters, too. When the series started, Jason Fox was a smart 10-year-old, but still hated school as much as his siblings. As the series progressed he's become a full-fledged nerd, possessing extensive knowledge of computing and physics far beyond his years, loves school so much that he dances with joy over hard tests, and once brought down the entire Internet with a single virus...but he still believes that The X-Files, mutant powers, and undead Ringwraiths are real.
- On the other hand, Peter de-Flanderized from a bit of a Jerkass into a Straight Man. Outside his massive appetite, he's probably the most normal of the Fox family now.
- Garfield managed to invert this trope, then play it straight. He started out very lazy and sarcastic, but de-Flanderized into a more playful attitude by the late eighties. Over time, he's gradually shifted back into his more cynical self.
- Garfield's (the character) de-/re-Flanderization pretty much mirrors the strip perfectly (as you'd expect). It began as a Slice of Life strip, but as the character became less Flanderized, the strip shifted to a light surrealist style, which set the tone for the franchise as a whole (probably best shown in Garfield and Friends). Around the mid '90s the strip shifted back to the slice of life style, becoming re-Flanderized into the strip we know today.
- There's also Garfield's appearance and mannerisms. Originally, aside from a few human-like quirks, Garfield looked and acted like a typical cat. Over time, however, he was depicted with more and more human like behavior until it's extremely rare to see him engage in any feline activities anymore.
- Played straight with Jon Arbuckle, who started as being the Straight Man and a bachelor who cared for Garfield. During the first months of 1979, he was Flanderized into being the Straw Loser compared to Garfield (with his role of the Deadpan Snarker going to Dr. Liz Wilson), and by the late 1990's, he was given a more Cloud Cuckoo Lander personality that occasionally borders on being a Manchild.
- Odie was simply a standard dumb dog in his earliest depictions, as in, his low intelligence didn't expand past being a typically standard and fictional canine. Nowadays, his stupidity is greatly exemplified on every occasion and topic it's shown and brought up. On certain occasions, he's treated as much a dog as merely an epitome for any sort of low intelligence.
- Peanuts:
- Charlie Brown, somewhat surprisingly, was a victim of this trope. In his earliest strips, he was basically the prototype of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes in that he was a wise cracking rascal who often got the upper hand. For instance, he comes across another character who is sweating and asks her if anything is wrong. "I'm hot!" she says. "You don't look so hot to me," he retorts before running away with a smirk. Another strip has him trying the patience of his friends as he fussily arranges them for a group photograph before playfully announcing that his camera doesn't actually have any film in it. As he runs away with his angry friends in close pursuit, he laughs and says, "I like to live dangerously!" In the very earliest strips, he even had girls fighting over his affections. Some vestiges of the later Charlie Brown were there in the early days with the other children being somewhat crueler to him than they were to their other peers, but it wasn't until later that his tendency to always come in last became such an overpowering part of his characterization.
- The first two girl characters to appear in the strip, Patty and Violet, suffered heavily from this as the strip went on. Initially they were (usually) portrayed as nicer characters than the two boys (Charlie Brown and Shermy), but as the 1950s went on they started to adopt "mean girl" personas and spent most of their time together putting Charlie Brown down. At first their attitudes seemed like a response to Charlie Brown's arrogant "nobody likes me despite how great I am" streak in the mid 1950s, but by the time he had fully flanderized into a total sad sack by the early 1960s it seemed like they were just piling on him for the sake of it. By the late 1960s they had been phased out as regulars in favor of Lucy, who Charles Schulz felt worked much better as a female "bully" character.
- Since Greg Howard stopped writing Sally Forth, Ted has become quite the Manchild. This is a bit of an odd case, though, as Francesco Marculiano has admitted that he based his portrayal of Ted somewhat on himself; the Flanderization was almost a complete coincidence.
- Tiffany in Luann went from being a rich girl with flaws who was still likable, who just so happened to become obsessed with seducing her roommate's boyfriend Kip every so often before her previous characterization returned; to being completely obsessed with seducing Kip 24/7, all her previous Character Development going right out the window.
Eastern European Animation
- KikoRiki:
- Early on in the show, Krash was a goofy kid, but still had control over his actions and his friendship with Chiko was less complex. However, as the series progressed, he became nearly a menace to the KikoRiki, the biggest example being Deja Vu, where he got his friends in a huge danger while thinking he was having fun.
- Chiko was a nerdy and shy hedgehog who spent most of his time at home and occasionally checked his health. Later on, he became The Paranoiac who suspects someone is watching them and became dependent on Krash's presence, despite the obvious danger of being around him.
- Wally started off as a hopeless romantic, who was deeply depressed but kind at heart. Later on, he became a Nervous Wreck whose obsession over Rosa passed the limit, with him hopelessly trying to attract her attention.
- Rosa. She was initially portrayed as a kind young girl with a dream of becoming a princess, and occasionally teasing her crush Wally. Later on, however, she became easily angered, manipulative and ruthless, with one episode centering on her making hypnotising dolls so she can turn the entire world obedient and girly.
- Dokko started off as an Absent-Minded Professor, who knows about everything, from nanotechnology to inventing devices to alter voices. In some episodes of New Season, these traits are dropped, making him a "pseudoscientist" (called this by Tatyana Belova, a writer of those episodes) whose attempts to grow strawberries result in making a bunch of manure and starts talking with trees, bugs and other inanimate objects in hopes of studying them.
- Olga's cooking abilities have also downgraded in some episodes of New Season thanks to the aforementioned Tatyana Belova. Usually, she is an excellent cook who occasionally screws up due to her forgetfulness and clumsiness (which even became a plot point in PinCode's "Multi Cook"), but Tatyana Belova puts her as, quote, a "chucklehead who can't cook", with her burning honey pancakes she tried cooking for Barry in "Valhalla" while she continued burning them with a straight face, and her stew in "Winter Tale" being horrible in both taste and design, looking like a brown mush.
Fan Works
Films — Animation
- Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: Baby/Chicken Brent has the catchphrase of "Uh-oh" from his time as the mascot of the Baby Brent Sardine company. In the first film, he says it pretty often. The sequel, on the other hand, he says it so much it's reached Verbal Tic levels.
- In Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds (2021), The Muskehounds' personalities from the series (which themselves were exaggerations of their personalities in the book) have been reduced to a single character trait they embody at all times:
- Athos has gone from a Boisterous Bruiser and Big Eater to always either eating or complaining that he isn't. At one point he complains he's missing lunch while eating breakfast.
- Aramis doesn't just write poetry, his every line Rhymes on a Dime.
- Porthos goes from the most disciplined of the Muskehounds to training pretty much constantly.
- The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part: Lampshaded with Benny, who asks Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi how she knew he loved spaceships when they meet for the first time, only to immediately follow it up by proudly boasting "Loving spaceships is my one defining trait!"
Films — Live-Action
- Happens to several characters in Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa. Dave Clifton goes from a fairly unremarkable provincial DJ who Alan made nasty jokes about his alleged alcoholism to, to gleefully and openly recounting his experiences with booze, cocaine, heroin and prostitutes. Lynn, previously barely mentioning her Christianity, suddenly becomes notably more openly religious. Curiously, Alan himself undergoes the opposite, becoming less distinct and more general a character in the movie.
- The Weyland-Yutani Corporation in Alien. Each film, book, and game seems to exaggerate their attempts to exploit xenomorphs for profit just that much more. In the first film, they learn about the xenomorphs and try to use the crew of the Nostromo to bring one back to Earth for study. Beyond that, they don't seem particularly obsessed with it; it's just some lifeform they think might be valuable. Eight movies and a ton of comics and video games later, Weyland-Yutani seems obsessed with studying and profiting off xenomorphs to borderline suicidal degrees, to the point you start to wonder how the company even turns a profit when its only projects seem to be screwing around with alien bugs. Their amorality is also more and more exaggerated; in the first movie they're willing to sacrifice a tiny crew of glorified truckers to get the alien, while later works show them sacrificing ridiculously huge amounts of people to their bug hunts. It's easy to lose count of how many colonies and research facilities are destroyed for the sake of studying a species that really doesn't seem to have any practical applications.
- The first two sequels to the horror classic Child's Play (1988) flanderized Chucky into becoming a Stupid Evil villain who was incredibly incompetent and never achieved his main objective, and instead wasted time going on killing sprees rather than possessing Andy. The horror comedies played the whole killer doll concept for laughs, possibly because the writers realized how silly the franchise was becoming. But then came Curse of Chucky, which brought Chucky right back on track.
- While few would consider the Leprechaun films masterpieces, the first film at least was a straight slasher movie with some comic relief. Even then, most of the humor were either sight gags or rather crude puns. By the second installment the series started amping up the humor and self-awareness to the point where it overtook the horror elements. In later sequels the Leprechaun impersonates Elvis and John Wayne, speaks entirely in rhyme, becomes a binge drinker and pot smoker, and most egregiously, raps.
- Angela in the Eddie Murphy movie Boomerang originally started out as really laid back, and in one scene where she finds out where Marcus cheated on her, she tells him to "Stay the fuck out of her life!"; later on in the movie her cursing habits are Amped Up To Eleven whereas, before that scene, she was relatively mellow.
- Probably the best-remembered characteristic of Chinese detective Charlie Chan is his use of pithy "Oriental" aphorisms — a trait which comes directly from the Warner Oland film adaptations, and which were the only aspect of those adaptations that Chan's original author Earl Derr Biggers himself heartily disliked. Not surprising, given that he'd explicitly created Chan as a subversion to the tired "fortune-cookie" stereotypes then popular.
- Eddie Wilson in Eddie and the Cruisers started out as a serious musician who wouldn't sell out. By the end of the sequel, his only emotional response was to run away from anything that might be critical of his music.
- Death in the Final Destination movies. In the first movie the deaths were freak accidents with only minor supernatural intervention from Big D — with the exception of the poor teacher's hilariously Rube-Goldbergian demise. Apparently it was the most talked-about death scene so subsequent installments gradually increased the complexity of the deaths.
- Flodder: The characters got more cartoonish as time went on. Ma Flodder became more of a mean drunk, Johnny became more of a criminal schemer, Male Kees became more of a Manchild, Female Kees became more of a Dumb Blonde, and the two youngest children became even bigger brats.
- In Freddy vs. Jason, Jason Voorhees is taller, slower and more stupid than ever, possibly in order to more sharply contrast with Freddy Krueger.
- George of the Jungle 2 takes certain aspects of the first movie's characters and dials them up to eleven:
- George made a lot dumber.
- Beatrice's villainy is amped up. In the first film, she doesn't approve of Ursula and George's relationship, but seems to relent. In the sequel, she stops at nothing to break them up.
- Betsy - in the first film, she jokes once about hooking up with George. In the sequel, she willingly ignores her best friend getting knocked out in hopes of finding out if George has a brother, then later, forces herself on him to help break her hypnosis.
- Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle: An odd example, where at the beginning of the movie, whilst played by Madison Iseman, Bethany is legitimately very much a stereotypically self-absorbed teenage girl who can't function without her phone, when she enters Jumanji (and her avatar is played by Jack Black), these traits are amped up to 11, as well as adopting a Valley Girl accent not present when in the real-world. She gets better by the end of the movie after some character development.
- In The Hangover Part II, Alan's Manchild traits are driven to higher levels. The Hangover Part III manages to bring it further.
- Agent Tom Manning from the Hellboy film series. In the first movie, while not a very good field leader, he was still a competent bureaucrat; he and Hellboy butted heads but ultimately gained a bit of respect for each other, and bonded over cigars. The second movie made him almost completely incompetent, and reduced him to bribing Hellboy with cigars to keep him in line. Maybe justified by the fact that, without the professor, there is no one who can truly keep Hellboy from doing something stupid.
- Help!:
- The film versions of the band were supposed to exhibit exaggerated versions of their own personalities: John as a snarky smart aleck, Paul as a smooth lady killer, George as a miserly spendthrift, and Ringo as a gloomy misfit. Most of this gets lost in the finished version, though.
- Whereas A Hard Day's Night showed the band as individuals, Help! now shows them as one band living in the same house with four separate doors.
- Brought up in-universe in Inception. Part of what makes Cobb understand that his mental projection of Mal is fake is that it’s basically an idealized Flanderization of the real person; taking her love for him and acting as if that was her one and only personality trait, with nasty results.
- Marcus Brody in the Indiana Jones films. In Raiders, he was a Reasonable Authority Figure who was implied to have had Indy-like adventures of his own in his younger days. In Last Crusade, he was a totally Absent-Minded Professor who got lost in his own museum.
- The James Bond franchise becomes increasingly campy over the course of its history, with increasing reliance on implausible action scenes, cartoonish villains, science fiction gadgets, Bond One Liners and loads of sex. The Roger Moore era was considered the height of the franchise's campiness, while the following Timothy Dalton films were an attempt to make the franchise darker. The campiness came back over the course of the Pierce Brosnan era. Casino Royale (2006) was specifically created to completely eliminate the campiness and return to the franchise's more realistic roots. It succeeded for a while, before careening off again in another direction: melodrama.
- The Lethal Weapon series gives us Dr. Stephanie Woods, who, in the first film was a competent psychologist with legitimate concerns about Riggs' stability. By the third film, she was an inept, touchy-feely shrink who served as little more than comic relief. It's heavily implied in Lethal Weapon 4 that it was actually Riggs' deliberately toying with her over the course of the series that pushed her to this point.
- In the Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Tony Stark in Iron Man was a charismatic celebrity billionaire who could walk into any group of people and become the center of attention because of his fast talking wit. After his life changing experience being captured by terrorists, his moral compass changed dramatically but his personality remained the same, still very fast talking and had a quick wit. This was largely due to Robert Downey Jr. and the director deciding on a lot of improv so they can take the best material from that. Starting with Iron Man 2 his wit was replaced with making a lot of quips, generally refusing to take a situation seriously and often easily distracted. This continued through The Avengers and Iron Man 3 before reaching its apex in Avengers: Age of Ultron (it's even been argued that due to the success of RDJ as Tony Stark that this trait has been pushed through much of the MCU, with almost every individual series having a lot of quipping characters even though it has little basis on their various comics counterparts). This trait was largely reversed in Captain America: Civil War as Tony was going through a lot of personal issues and looked constantly tired, and we see him return to that "charismatic celebrity" personality when he went out to recruit Peter Parker, which was maintained with Spider-Man: Homecoming and the last two Avengers movies.
- In the first film, Drax is intelligent but Literal-Minded and doesn't understand figurative speech. The movie is vague as to whether his native language doesn't use idioms, if he doesn't get human expressions, or if he's just dense in more ways than one. But in the sequel, this trait is expanded to him having no verbal filter whatsoever, saying whatever is on his mind regardless of how wildly inappropriate it is. The third movie addressed this by given him more depth and wrapping up his arc in a way that tied into his past while still keeping him funny.
- Thor started off as a loveable Fish out of Water who needed to learn how to be less arrogant but was otherwise an intelligent and noble warrior. In more recent movies, he’s a Manchild who can’t understand basic concepts such as Peter Quill owning his own spaceship and is often self-serving to the point where he often cracks jokes or sulks when he should be going off to fight evil.
- In the original Men in Black, K is a rather stoic individual who takes his job seriously, but approaches everything with a calm demeanor, contrasting J who doesn't take the job seriously, but overreacts to everything. By Men in Black 3, K is so stoic, he is unable to crack a joke or a smile.
- Happened to Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther series. His French accent was originally straightforward, though A Shot in the Dark introduced odd accent-based pronunciation quirks ("beump" for bump, for example). When he revived the character in the mid-1970s, the accent was significantly thicker and the mispronunciations were more frequent ("minkey", "rheum", "leu"), etc. Other Shot in the Dark elements became Running Gags too: he donned more bizarre disguises with each film, and Cato's attacks grew increasingly destructive, as did the slapstick in general for the whole run of films. However, this went over like gangbusters with audiences and it didn't violate Clouseau's basic character, making it one of the less destructive examples of Flanderization on this list.
- A Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy Krueger was originally a dark, scary supernatural killer with a twisted sense of humor. But starting with the third film in the series, Freddy's humor began taking center stage. His quips and killing tactics also became cheesier with each subsequent installment. Freddy was fully Flanderized by the end of the series (Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare), having become a campy, pun-spouting parody of his former self. This version of Freddy has been likened to an evil Bugs Bunny. The character was returned to his dark/scary roots in the 1994 film Wes Craven's New Nightmare. However, this film takes place outside of series canon; it's also not the "real" Freddy, but an ancient demon who adopted Freddy's persona. The 2010 ''Nightmare'' reboot featured a serious, darker Freddy. But "Reboot Freddy" has not supplanted Robert Englund's version as the "official" Freddy Krueger in popular culture. So the "real" Freddy is still campy as ever, per his most recent canonical appearance (2003's Freddy vs. Jason).
- In the first Honey, I Shrunk the Kids movie, Wayne Szalinski is a brilliant scientist despite a few flaws that he has. The Direct-to-Video sequel Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves turns Wayne into a Genius Ditz at worst, considering the reason why and how he and Diane got shrunken.
- Pirates of the Caribbean, originally an Affectionate Parody and homage to the pirate genre, became a parody of itself after the first film, when all the character traits, quirks, and set-pieces that were more subtle in originally were subject to relentless self-referencing.
- Rambo: John Rambo in First Blood is introduced as a very competent Vietnam vet, but has a lot of personal package and while showing skill and brain, it takes him some time to defeat the local police. Starting with Rambo: First Blood Part II, Rambo becomes a hyperskilled One-Man Army and the definition of a classic Action Hero without the layers from the first movie.
- Rush Hour (1998) Carter (whose Butt-Monkey status stems from his Cowboy Cop tendencies alienating everyone around him) is actually a fairly competent detective, but simply not as combat effective as Lee. In the sequels, his competence is completely jettisoned, he becomes a classic Small Name, Big Ego, and much Uncle Tomfoolery ensues.
- Star Wars movies:
- Yoda's diction in the first two movies, for the most part, was simply swapped nouns and verbs in a manner similar to some real-life languages. More precisely, when he first appeared in The Empire Strikes Back, his grammar actually stayed within the bounds of normal poetic English, and the most egregious features like clefting were 1) largely limited to his "crazy swamp Yoda" persona, and 2) used in short sentences such as, "Suffer your father's fate, you will." This was exaggerated to extremes in pop culture, and made canon in the prequel trilogy, where Yoda's previously more understated vocal quirks gave way to such gems as, "Around the survivors, a perimeter create!" and "Not if anything to say about it, I have!"
- While C-3PO clearly wasn't as brave as R2-D2 and could express fear, in the original film he was still capable of self-sacrifice, even urging Luke to abandon him after 3PO had been badly damaged by the Sand People. Later, when he was cornered onboard the Death Star by some Storm Troopers, he managed to successfully bluff his way out ("They're madmen! If you hurry you might catch them.") He also felt grief for Luke and the others when he thought they were dying. In The Empire Strikes Back, he's Flanderized into a total coward, unable to think about anyone but himself, and frantically advocates surrender when the Falcon is being chased by Imperial Destroyers. What nuance he regained in Return of the Jedi (being highly instrumental in gaining the Ewoks as allies and again able to provide a momentary distraction) was again lost in the prequels, where he contributes nothing except extremely lowbrow humor. Since the Disney purchase, however, Lucasfilm seems to be attempting to avert this; All There in the Manual for The Force Awakens reveals he has become the Resistance's droid Spymaster. He doesn't really have any noteworthy scenes The Last Jedi, but he is very important to the plot of The Rise of Skywalker.
- The Trade Federation Battle Droids were originally introduced as mindless soldier drones. They were just human enough to be used for slapstick, but were still inhuman enough to be mildly menacing. As the decade wore on the writers slowly morphed them into a big goofy gang of bumbling and cowardly Harmless Villains.
- It is a joke among many that Stormtroopers cannot aim and are incompetent in their roles, something that has crept into the franchise itself through numerous references. In the Original Trilogy however, this only really applied to when they faced the protagonists. Their introduction in A New Hope features them curb-stomping the security forces of the Tantive IV with ease, and the troops investigating the whereabouts of the Death Star plans on Tatooine come close to finding them. Later on in the Death Star proper, the guards quickly see through Han and Luke's disguise, and in the ensuing battle are under orders to capture them alive. In The Empire Strikes Back, the Snowtroopers again make short work of the Rebels at Echo Base, and the Stormtroopers at Cloud City are again under orders to keep the heroes alive. It's in Return of the Jedi that the portrayal of Stormtroopers as incompetent pushovers began to set in, especially since they were defeated by primitive teddy bears. From that point onwards, the franchise only depicted Stormtroopers as rank-and-file disposable mooks instead of elite soldiers. Even later, more serious installments like Rogue One and Andor still depicted Stormtroopers as non-threatening enemies; in the former, a blind monk curbstomped a dozen Stormtroopers with his staff, while the latter showed a Stormtrooper getting head-butted into submission by a civilian scrapper.
- When his character debuted in The Force Awakens, Poe Dameron was depicted as a selfless (if occasionally cocky) starfighter pilot who evoked the amiable charisma of the original trilogy heroes. He was heavily Flanderized in The Last Jedi, now being depicted as a brash, argumentative, rebellious jock who disobeys orders and finds himself at odds with the secretive, no-nonsense Admiral Holdo. In The Rise of Skywalker, he was Flanderized even further, as it's revealed he used to be a spice runner (the in-universe term for a real-world drug smuggler) and part of a cartel until he abandoned it to become a starfighter pilot. Despite the revelations about his criminal past damaging his already marred reputation even further in the eyes of his friends, Poe redeems himself at the film's climax, successfully leading a squadron in the terrifying and deadly Battle of Exegol.
- Gale Weathers of the Scream films. In the first, she's simply a very-determined reporter who resorts to bending the rules to get her story. She mainly has a beef with Sidney because they have differing viewpoints on one person - Sidney believing Cotton to be her mother's killer, Gale viewing him as an innocent victim of an abusive affair with Sidney's mother (and she turns out to be right!). She's given several softer moments with Dewey and the only other person she's outwardly nasty to is her cameraman Kenny. By the time of the second film, she's suddenly shamelessly bitchy with poor social skills who snipes at everyone she comes across. While the trauma of the first film could have had some effect, they act as if Gale was always this way.
- The Matrix: Sunglasses and long coats. In the first film they actually took a relatively realistic approach to them: Neo and Trinity wear them in order to hide their belts of weapons from the security guards in the Agent's office block and then immediately ditch them before commandeering the helicopter. Even Morpheus has lost them by the time he is captured by Smith. You will note that after these points we never see any of the main characters wear them again until the closing scene with Neo flying away. Come the sequels and everyone is wearing sunglasses and/or a long coat in more or less every single scene throughout the movie even when it makes no sense such as when holding a mission briefing in a darkened room.
- In Major League, Roger Dorn was a veteran ballplayer who was a superstar in his prime, and even at the tail end of his career had plenty of skills and talent left. He's just stopped applying himself, coasting on his past and slacking off in the field to avoid injury limiting his options during upcoming contract negotiations (thus not making the plays he should be making). Jake Taylor calls him out on his attitude and behavior, and how his lackadaisical play is spoiling things for the younger players who may be getting their only shot, while also reminding him that he used to be a great player, eventually leading to him straightening out and playing like the star he is. Come Major League II, Dorn is whiny, incompetent, and is presented as a complete joke of a player, whose announcement that he's reactivated himself is met with annoyance by his teammates.
- Jay and Silent Bob received quite a bit of flanderization over the course of Kevin Smith's The View Askewniverse film series.
- Jay became wilder, stupider and more perverted. In the original Clerks, he's shown conversing with a girl quite casually (despite insulting her when she arrives) whereas in the later films he can barely talk to a girl without it being completely sex related. The number of F-bombs he dropped also seemed to increase with each film.
- Silent Bob's characterization actually went back and forth between films. He spends most of the original Clerks smoking cigarettes and didn't really do anything until towards the end where he dances with Jay and later gives the convenient store clerk, Dante, some helpful relationship advice (this would later become the defining trait of the character). The following film Mallrats however portrayed a much sillier Bob, where he partakes in some goofy antics and is much more expressive. Chasing Amy went back to the more reserved and deadpan Bob from Clerks, Dogma did a mixture of the two personalities and in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Clerks II he's goofy again but still more reserved than Jay. In Jay and Silent Bob Reboot he takes a serious level in dumbass, to the point where he often comes across as barely smarter than Jay.
- Just how silent Silent Bob is varied quite a bit - from a guy who just isn't into idle chitchat (and who has a companion more than willing to make up for said lack) to someone who resorts to charades when conveying extremely relevant information only he knows.
- In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Donatello demonstrated a certain knack with mechanical contraptions, as emphasized in the cartoon and toy line. In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014), Donatello speaks in a nerdy voice, and wears high tech, spectacle-like goggles to emphasize that he is a nerd.
- The Terminator had the T-800 models gradually develop a fixation with sunglasses. In the original movie, the only reason the evil T-800 played by Arnie wears shades was to cover up his face after a car crash ended up exposing his robotic eye. However, this ended up becoming such an iconic image, to the point that it was used for the publicity still that ended up serving as the film's poster. In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, he ends up stealing a biker's pair of shades for no reason other than to wear them for the most of the first half before losing them while rescuing Sarah Connor from the mental asylum, while in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines his obsession with sunglasses becomes an actual character trait to the point that he is particularly selective over which kind he wears. The young T-800 Arnies that appear during the flashbacks in Terminator Genisys and Terminator: Dark Fate also have him wearing sunglasses for no particular reason.
- Everyone in the first three Transformers Film Series, but special mention goes to Sam's parents. In the first film, they're fairly typical embarrassing parents; the Dad is cheap and obsessed with lawn care, and the Mom is (as RiffTrax puts it) shrill and annoying. In one scene she openly talks about Sam masturbating, but in the privacy of their own home, and she apologizes for it when she sees how awkward it made everyone. In the beginning of the second movie, she's yelling at coeds in Sam's school that they should hook up with him, but that's at least partly because she unknowingly ate a pot brownie. From that point on, shouting embarrassing things in public seems to be her favorite thing to do, and she doesn't care what anyone thinks about it. The Dad also seems to become less sophisticated as the films go on. In the first film, he's shown relaxing with a glass of wine. In the second film, he's drinking a Budweiser at a restaurant in Paris, while threatening a mime.
- In Rocky, Apollo Creed's patriotism is for show. He denies that his "underdog" idea is patriotic and insists that it is intelligent. In Rocky IV, he puts on a similar song-and-dance routine, but this time, it is a genuine expression of extreme patriotism, a quality not before seen in Apollo. Justified as this is an exhibition, and Apollo is doing what he does best, putting on a show. It's also possible that the increased Cold War tension of the 1980s (and/or fighting a Soviet as opposed to other Americans) brought it out in him, but it's also worth noting that this was around the time he cheated on his wife and unknowingly conceived his son Adonis.
- Although Biff harassed and tried to assault Lorraine in the Back to the Future, aside from one remark where original 1985 Biff says to Marty "Say hi to your mom for me", there was no implication that he had any long-term interest in her. In Back to the Future Part II, it's made explicit that Biff's feelings for Lorraine constitute a Villainous Crush, with him still lusting after her even in 2015, as he tells Marty (masquerading as his son Marty Jr.) "Say hello to your grandma for me".
Literature
Music
- One of the main things that annoyed The Beatles about their 'Fab Four' image was how it reduced all four of them to a quick-caption stereotype which lingered — John was the 'funny' one, Paul the 'handsome' one, George the 'quiet' one and Ringo the 'normal' (i.e., less talented and klutzy) one.
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- In A Hard Day's Night George is more "deadpan" than "serious", not only because it was part of his personality but also because he lacked the natural talent for comedic acting of John and Ringo. But he gets two of the funniest bits of the movie: the "what would you call your hairstyle?" joke and the scene where he's mistaken for a fashion model (both of which work well with a Deadpan Snarker).
- Overlaps a bit with Truth in Television: when asked what would they do with the money they made in A Hard Day's Night, George simply asked the reporter "What money?"
- Elvis Presley has been shamelessly Flanderized after his death by Elvis impersonators. In his youth Elvis actually was slim with boyish good looks and a pleasant smooth tenor voice with only a little shaking in it. If he were anything like most of his impersonators, he would not be nearly as popular as he was in the late 1950s.
- Guns N' Roses were a basic rock band in every sense and proud of it. Then Axl Rose started to want to make more and more long rock ballads after the huge success of "November Rain" and later "Estranged". Slash, the popular lead guitar player, disagreed with this direction among other personal issues with Axl and left the band.
- When Liberace started in the 40s he was known for wearing nice suits and styling his hair. Over the years his outfits and personal style got gaudier and guadier until he became more known for his over-the-top flamboyance than for his piano playing.
- N.W.A, on the album Straight Outta Compton, mostly stuck to an aggressive Gangsta Rap style they called "reality rap", and used quite a few songs to explicitly criticize the conditions and harrassment endured by the black population of Los Angeles. Then Ice Cube bailed, and they became ridiculously over-the-top, violence-celebrating Horrorcore with Efil4zaggin. note Basically, they went from Gangsta Rap Type 1 to Type 3.
- Ozzy Osbourne gets this a lot from the press. For example, from the way people talk, you'd think he bites the heads off bats all the time. In truth, he only did such a thing once (completely by accident!note A fan threw it on stage, and Ozzy assumed it was a rubber prop (because what sort of deranged person would carry around a real bat?) and decided it would be funny to bite the head off; he was shocked when it turned out to be a real bat and bit him back.) and went to the hospital for a rabies shot immediately after.
- Pantera. When they hit the mainstream with Cowboys From Hell in 1990, they had a then-unique "street tough" attitude but had no problem getting into some pretty emotional/sensitive topics with their music. Starting around Far Beyond Driven, however, their "toughness" was heavily Flanderized with many songs revolving around Phil's over-inflated ego, and (with a couple exceptions) the band shed all traces of angst and sensitivity.
- Queen is another example of fan-Flanderization. Due to the publicity surrounding Freddie Mercury's bout with AIDS, many now assume their classic songs are about his illness and/or bout with homosexuality. Freddie was actually bisexual, and he wasn't diagnosed with AIDS until after the release of A Kind of Magic (the band's third-to-last official album before his death).
- Freddie himself has been Flanderized by his tribute acts; he had so many different looks down the years yet what does every tribute singer focus on? Yep, THAT yellow jacket.
- Red Hot Chili Peppers tends to get Flanderized by detractors as always singing about California. Their jumbled lyrics also are exaggerated, as has their white boy rap which Anthony Kiedis has largely avoided the past 15 years. AV Club tends to portray them as nigh-unintelligible horndogs.
- They've had success with ballads, and then did so many that they inevitably became bland and predictable.
- All of the Spice Girls. Documentaries and interviews with them before they ever signed a record deal show that the styles and personalities they became known for were always there, but after they got some fame and money behind them, and more importantly were given their nicknames by the British media, things quickly went much further.
- Comparing their early TV appearances when they were more or less just being themselves, to their appearances in late 1996 after Top of the Pops magazine gave them their nicknames when they were hamming it up, then to their peak Flanderization around the time of Spice World in 1997, when they had fully embraced the nicknames and were essentially playing cartoon characters of themselves.
- When Rihanna came out she sang about a variety of topics. Now it seems like all of her singles have devolved into songs about sex with the occasional love song in them.
- When Weezer burst into the music scene back in 1994, they were just naturally geeky. Instead of trying to have some kind of bombastic or showy image, they were completely themselves. However, around the time the Green Album was released, their geekiness was heavily Flanderized. They all began dressing deliberately in geeky/outdated fashions, frontman Rivers Cuomo began wearing thick-rimmed glasses, etc. Plus, even though he's now well over 40, Rivers STILL obsessively sings about topics like snagging the sexy cheerleader goddess!
- Taylor Swift's music appears to have devolved from the usual country themes and stories her young audience can relate to being Take Thats to her several famous exes.
- Many of her album tracks have focused on other subjects than the "Taylor gets back at her exes" subject so often depicted in the media ("Back to December" places the blame solely on herself; "Mean" is about bullying; "Never Grow Up" is a celebration of childhood innocence; "Long Live" is a tribute to her backing band/stage crew/fans; songs like "Mine" and "Enchanted" show positive experiences with exes), but it seems most of the singles chosen for her albums like to emphasize her "getting back at exes"-side.
- She's shown more self-awareness about this in her later albums. "Blank Space" in particular sends up the image of her as the girlfriend from hell, and other tracks on 1989 recognize Swift's tendency for crash-and-burn romance ("Style," "Wildest Dreams"), blame herself for relationship foul-ups ("I Wish You Would"), or discuss her mental health struggles ("Anti-Hero").
- Jimmy Eat World: On their self-titled debut album, Tom Linton was the band's lead vocalist, with Jim Adkins receiving A Day in the Limelight on "Usery." Their second album, Static Prevails had Linton and Adkins singing on roughly an equal amount. By Clarity, their third album, Adkins took over as the lead vocalist, with Linton only resurfacing once in a blue moon. Since their most acclaimed albums are Adkins-led, this a rare positive example of Flanderization.
Mythology and Religion
- As a rule, gods operate on Grey-and-Gray Morality, though of course this varied by what sect you belonged to. Nowadays we have the dual tropes of Everybody Hates Hades and Everybody Loves Zeus to make things more black and white.
- Those two trope names come from Classical Mythology, wherein Hades' villain status does have some basis: he's not evil, but he's grim and unfriendly, and people tended to be scared of him because, y'know, he represents death. The idea that he's Ancient Greek Satan basically takes that characterization and runs way overboard with it. Which said, the Greeks may well have started this sort of process with some of their own gods; there is some evidence that they imported Ishtar, a complex Mesopotamian goddess of love and war, and quickly flanderized her (with a side-order of Chickification) into Aphrodite, a more focused Love Goddess. In which case, the trope may well be Older Than Dirt.
- In Egyptian Mythology, Set was subject to flanderization before any modern people had the chance to reinterpret him. The oldest stories still have him murder and try to usurp Osiris, but of course, "killing people whom you don't like" isn't exactly uncommon for gods in any belief system; the earliest takes still present his rivalry with Horus as pretty even-handed, with the two more like Friendly Enemies who also have sex one time. As the centuries passed Osiris, Isis and Horus became more important to the Egyptian religion, and as a result, Set became more vilified. It didn't help that one of his jobs is "god of foreigners," which made him a lot less popular when Egypt was temporarily taken over by the Hyksos. He still had a role protecting Ra from Apophis, making him important to the cosmic order, though eventually even that started getting passed on to Thoth (probably because he was the easiest god to replace Set with in carvings). Again, this makes the trope Older Than Dirt.
- In the old polytheistic days, gods weren't characters in anthologies, they were everyday gods that you'd pray to when you needed something, or just as part of your daily ritual. So when you'd hear "Zeus," your first thought would be "king of gods, god of hospitality, law, civilization," not "Depraved Bisexual who'll do anything that moves in Whatever Shape He Likes." Similarly, "Hera" would inspire "goddess and protectress of women, home, family, and domestic life" not "Clingy Jealous Goddess in Sheep's Clothing." However, because now all that we have left of these gods are the stories they left behind (and what stories!), we tend to picture pretty much all gods as caricatures of their original selves.
News Media
- Sports broadcasters and a lot of radio personalities do this to themselves as time goes on. Chris Berman, Tony Kornheiser, Dick Vitale, Jim Rome all immediately come to mind as people that have particular quirks that are used more in more as they continue and their knowledge hasn't grown so they cover it up with their personality.
- John Madden is a great example of this. While coaching the Oakland Raiders, Madden was actually considered one of the smartest football coaches of his era,note Madden even earned a Masters Degree in education, as he planned to become a teacher if his sports career didn't work out, and often attributed his success in coaching to his student teaching experiences while also being as tough, loud and opinionated as you'd expect from an NFL coach. This dual personality carried over into Madden's early days as a broadcaster, where he mixed cogent analysis with silly dad humor and a bombastic personality to the general delight of sports fans. By the later stages of his career, Madden leaned more and more on the latter (regularly using catchphrases like "Boom!" and "Doink!" in place of detailed commentary), with Pat Summeral and Al Michaels often acting as straight man to Madden's goofy antics.
- Canadian hockey broadcasting legend Don Cherry certainly qualifies. Originally a serious, though outspoken, broadcaster noted for wearing occasionally over the top suits, he has since morphed into a loudmouthed cranky old man who wears the most garish suits known to man.
Podcasts
Professional Wrestling
- "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, anyone? At the height of his popularity, he was simply a very tough working-class guy who was lashing out at the oppression of the modern world. Over time, the "underdog" side of his character became deemphasized and the "rebel" side became predominant, with the inevitable result that he devolved into an unabashed Jerkass — and the fans still cheered him!
- The Undertaker went from being a nigh-unstoppable zombie type of character to becoming almost literally a god of death and the occult. Briefly reversed when he became a "biker" character for a few years. Paul Bearer was no stranger to this trope either, with his voice and mannerisms getting progressively goofier over the years. Compare this early 1991 promo to this later 1994 promo.
- Inverted with Triple H, who started out as an Upper-Class Twit but eventually developed into a fairly normal, non-pretentious guy who just happens to be very rich.
- Despite the negative connotations behind Flanderization, it's been said that the best gimmicks are really just exaggerations of a wrestler's real-life personality.
- In The Shield, Dean Ambrose was a mercenary type character who was able to put on a normal face, but was obviously unhinged and just waiting for an excuse to hurt somebody. After The Shield broke up and he didn't bother with that normal facade anymore, he began devolving briefly into a "lunatic" character who frequently costs himself matches by trying to perform pointless stunts that only end up hurting himself.
- The formation of Team Hell No caused the heel personas of both Daniel Bryan and Kane to be cranked up to near self-parody levels, creating some of the most hilarious moments in recent WWE history. The audience loved their interactions so much that despite being heels who hadn't changed character at all, they got the face treatment.
- Paul Heyman defined the term "Hardcore Wrestling" as "Having a hard-working and dedicated attitude towards fans and the art of professional wrestling, no matter what it takes". This could mean the guy who's willing to get powerbombed through a flaming barbed wire table, but it could also mean the guy who puts on great technical matches night after night. Many outsiders missed the latter meaning and took it to mean "no rules and lots of violence". Heyman's preferred term for wrestling with no rules and lots of violence was "Extreme Wrestling", as shown by the name of his promotion.
- Goldberg being so known for the Spear at the expense of all his other moves that, when Gillberg missed it in his match with Luna Vachon on the January 11, 1999 WWE Raw, professional moron Michael Cole said "He only has one move." It's especially insulting since Goldberg didn't even use the Spear in his debut match. He slammed Hugh Morrus twice and then hit what would become known as the Jackhammer.
- Ron Simmons being reduced to saying only "DAMN!" or words that rhyme with it.
- Jerry Lawler becoming an unlistenable horny screeching idiot yelling "Puppies!" at the expense of everything he'd accomplished, particularly his legendary status in Memphis.
- Much like Lawler, The Iron Sheik becoming a profanity-spewing meme-generating caricature of himself.
- Even on This Very Wiki, ranting/shoot interview/memetic mutation Jim Cornette taking precedence over 1980s-1990s manager/promoter Jim Cornette.
- Done intentionally with Maria Kanellis. After competing in WWE's Diva Search, she was hired to be one of their backstage interviewers, but her inexperience caused her to constantly trip over her words and flub simple lines. She was eventually given the character of The Ditz to better paper over the nerves, and Kanellis to her credit, successfully pulled it off with comedic gusto and solidified herself into the business, outlasting just about all of her contemporaries in the process.
Radio
- Birdie in The Great Gildersleeve has more nuanced characterization in early seasons, even the occasional subplot about her life outside of her job, such as the episode where she enlists Gildersleeve's help with an auction at her church. Over the years she devolves into a one-note Mammy stereotype, who only drops in to make sardonic comments on Gildersleeve's absurdity-of-the-week.
Roleplay
- One of the many side-effects of the World Split hitting Ink City was certain characters undergoing this as a sign they were growing increasingly unbalanced. Don, for instance, is a fan of giving and receiving hugs, which he calls 'sugar'. Due to losing all his ink after the Split, he turns bright pink and can't say anything other than "Sugar sugar sugar."
- At one point, Open Blue's Espartano unit went from ostensibly unisex Tyke-Bomb training program to Amazon Brigade factory. Has a bit of Never Live It Down due to the main contributor just happening to prefer badass lolitas, thus inadvertently bringing the other players assume the factuality of said flanderization. They in turn started making Espartano characters using said assumption, resulting in the concept's flanderization. This was cleaned up in v5, when the new unit for the role, the Engelmacht, was explicitly stated to be unisex.
- PeabodySam's Garry's Mod tribute to Dino Attack RPG plays this for laughs, with every character oversimplified to their most basic traits. Rex is "a guy who was a dinosaur", Dr. Rex goes from spending three quarters of the RPG as the Big Bad to "a mad science guy who went into a thing that did something and became a dinosaur", Hotwire is a guy who lost a leg, Dust goes from a complex anti-hero to "this guy who was really cool and then he died", Kate Bishop is "a girl who cried", and Andrew is some guy who watched a movie with an alien.
- In Embers in the Dusk, the Chaos Polities of Tjapa are basically a Flanderized Imperium with all the fanaticism and oppression, but without the Realpolitik and the occasional Only Sane Man around.
Tabletop Games
- One criticism of the second edition of Exalted is that it took the interesting characters from 1e and flattened them out. Especially the Deathlords — First and Forsaken Lion went from being an interesting character who wanted to take over the Underworld and didn't care about Creation to Mask of Winters v2 who wants to CONQUER AND/OR DESTROY EVERYTHING!
- Thankfully, Third Edition statements seem intent on stepping away from the sins of second edition while not repeating the same things 1e did in terms of number of non-interesting or incredibly forgettable characters that both editions had. There have been a few bits released out for fiction, though if they succeeded is up to the readers.
- In Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, the Chaos God Khorne was flanderized from an incredibly bloodthirsty but moderately honorable warrior who preferred Worthy Opponents and whose servants would sometimes spare non-combatants, to wanting all blood from everyone all the time. While Khorne is still often portrayed as honorable, his followers are now almost all blood-thirsty psychopaths. Note that at no point was Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne! not part of the deal.
- Interestingly, in the 2012 audio drama Chosen of Khorne, Khârn the Betrayer — who is often considered to be the most Ax-Crazy of all of Khorne's mortal servants in Warhammer 40,000 — was significantly de-flanderized. He's quite level-headed outside of combat, despite being prone to violent visions and impulses, and even refuses to harm non-combatants (so long as they don't touch his axe). It's also revealed that he's been killing off the remnants of the World Eaters' Pre-Heresy command structure in a bid to reunite the Legion under his own banner, which is hardly the MO of a frothing, myopic lunatic.
- And again in The Wrath of Kharn short story.
- In Warhammer 40,000 (Originally Warhammer in Space!), the Imperium of Man is continuously suffering from this trope. Every year, it seems to become more repressive, depressing, backwards, ignorant, and desperate. The Space Marines become more Knight Templar, the Imperial Guard becomes more likely to invoke We Have Reserves, and so on. The Tau, however, have received modest character development, transforming to a more complex faction and one of the few Greys in the usual Evil Versus Evil. Writers have been trying to reverse the process of flanderisation and turn them back into an authoritative and overly bureaucratic but still functional dictatorship with genuine heroes.
- Matt Ward has been working on Flanderizing the Ultramarines from a respected puritan Chapter of strict adherents to the Codex Astartes into the absurd force of unimpeachable and unbeatably awesome "Ultrasmurfs". At a stroke, he accomplished this mission for the Grey Knights with the 2011 codex, turning them from an interesting faction of thin-spread heroes fighting desperately against horrors which often threatened them and the entire Imperium into Big Damn Heroes who God-Mode Sue it up, curb stomp all your foes in tabletop, and not only are completely incorruptible, but can't be beaten. Game-Breaker units? Check. Incorruptibility that can survive alone in the Warp and isn't tainted by bathing in the blood of Sisters of Battle? Check. God-Mode Sue fluff? In spades. Before, Grey Knights were earlier well-liked by fans, who still used them even with a codex that was a bit out of date.
- The Necrons originally had vague allusions to ancient Egyptians, and their fantasy counterpart, the Tomb Kings. Come 5th Edition, they're all wearing pharaoh hats and wearing gold and blue jewelry while wielding sickle blades. Also done by Matt Ward. The players received massive Character Development in the process. That's because Games Workshop were savvy enough to control Ward's antics this time with at least two people getting the job of simply checking he does it right and stopping him when it goes awry. It worked, although the Necrons did end up losing almost all of their pre-fifth edition backstory, although as others have pointed out, their wasn't much substance to their original backstory so not a lot was lost.
- There have been some attempts to reverse the Flanderization of the Imperium in the tie-in novels, most notably the Horus Heresy books and, of course, Ciaphas Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!!!
- A smaller one, but no less hilarious, is the Flanderization of weapons and equipments in the Codexes. Space Wolves don't have "lightning claws", they have "Wolf Claws". Blood Angels don't have Power Fists, they have "Bloodfists". And almost every single melee weapon available to the Grey Knights are now some flavour of "Nemesis Force", although that is somewhat justified due to them being previously named under the blanket "Nemesis Force Weapons", meaning that there is simply more of a distinction now rather than a full rename (unlike the aforementioned Bloodfist, which is functionally identical to Power Fists). There's also the "Artifacts" section of newer Codexes, meant to be a selection of rare weapons and equipment that can only be selected once-per-army. However the naming gets silly with the Tyranids, who have "Bio-Artifacts" that somehow grows on their body but are still "artifacts" in that they're unique in the universe.
- The Inquisition has been partially Flanderized (at least among the fandom) in regards to their usage of Exterminatus. In-universe, Exterminatus is meant to be a last resort when there is no hope of reclaiming the planet from something like Chaos' corruption or a Tyranid invasion, and the Inquisition is very careful to make sure that there is absolutely no alternative before sacrificing an inhabitable world (a very finite resource that the Imperium can't afford to waste); in the fandom, simply mentioning heresy in any way, shape, or form is enough to warrant the planet being nuked into oblivion.
- In an interesting inversion, the art style for units of many factions, but particularly Space Marines, Orks and Tyranids, has went from the goofy and over-the-top miniatures of early editions to the later more refined and serious designs. The Orks are a particular case, as their first versions were clear parodies of English hooligans, while later they are more of a savage army from a Mad Max movie, without losing their comedic tones.
- Half-Orcs in 1st edition Dungeons & Dragons were originally just ugly anti-heroes with a bonus in Strength — in fact, they were actually characterized largely by their aptitude for stealth and sneakiness, with their favored racial classes being the Thief and Assassin. By the time 3rd edition came around, they, along with their full-blooded orc kindred, became strong but stupid brutes with penalties to Intelligence as well as Charisma, thus limiting their utility as player characters to be much else. They also became associated with the new Barbarian class, which basically doubled down on the Dumb Muscle angle. Although 4th and 5th edition dialed back considerably on the "stupid brute" aspect, they're still mostly associated with being Boisterous Bruisers.
- Likewise, when first introduced in the 1st edition "Vault of the Drow" adventure module, it was only the drow nobility who were demon-worshipping evil monsters. The common drow had a default alignment of True Neutral; not really buying the demon-worship or enjoying it like their superiors, but reluctantly going along with it in order to avoid ending up on the sacrificial altar themselves. In fact, commoner drow could become allies to the party during that adventure. Although some later works do hint that common drow tend to be more cynical about Lolthism and more likely to be trustworthy, in comparison to the infamously treacherous noble houses, as a whole, the drow are considered Always Chaotic Evil.
- The gnolls are a race of Monstrous Humanoid Hyenas who went from merely having been taken over by worship of the Demon Prince Yeenoghu after he stole them from their uncaring creator-god to having been directly created by him in 4th edition. At the same time, though, the trope was Zigzagged in that this same edition notes that despite this demonic taint (gnolls being either hyenas that scavenged Yeenoghu's kills or hyenas he forcefed demons to), gnolls were not an Always Chaotic Evil race and that many packs or tribes instead turned away from their demonic heritage to embrace their natural origins and live as hyenas with human-level intellects would do. Such gnolls were hardly fluffy bunny rabbits, but they weren't the cannibalistic slave-taking marauders that Yeenoghu's worshippers were. Then came 5th edition, when their 4e fluff was flanderized: now, all gnolls are essentially nothing more than a particularly weird kind of zombie, being living avatars of Yeenoghu's hunger to devour all life and having essentially nothing in common with natural life at all. This goes even further in the 2024 revision, to the point that they're considered Fiends rather than Humanoids.
- Kenku, a race of humanoid ravens, were never a particularly well-developed race in D&D, being defined almost entirely by their obsession with stealing things. But, 5th edition still managed to do this to them: in previous editions, kenku were famous for their skill at vocal mimicry, and their use of mimicry to create elaborate code languages. 5e rendered them completely incapable of innovation; they can't even form their own language, and instead mimic other noises because they're mentally incapable of speaking in any other way.
- St. Cuthbert became this somewhere in 3rd Edition. In his original appearances in Greyhawk, he was characterized as a Lawful Good god who leaned towards Lawful Neutral, with a portfolio consisting of wisdom, common sense, dedication, and truth, who hated evil but prioritized order first and foremost. He was suggested to one of the most down-to-earth gods, and highly resentful of Knight Templar types like Pholtus — though he was blunt, and cared about converting others, he wasn't into killing people for not worshipping him. Somewhere along the line, it was realized he was the most prominent Lawful Neutral-leaning deity in the setting, and he ended up losing his kinder traits while absorbing a lot from Helm and Pholtus, to the point that "worshipper of St. Cuthbert" became a byline for "stick-in-the-mud Jerkass Church Militant who wants to convert everybody by force."
- Happened in-universe in Mage: The Ascension. During the Avatar Storm crisis, a detachment of The Technocratic Union became stranded and warped by the Void. The result? Their role in The Technocratic Union consumed everything else, including their humanity. For example, The Progenitors who wish to advance humanity by biological science now wants to grant perfection to all humans by turning them all into a soulless Hive Mind, and Iteration X who sees cybernetics as means to an end now is more machine than man. They are know known as Threat Null, and they want to go back.
Theme Parks
- At Disneyland, Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom, and Disney's other "castle parks," Tomorrowland was originally devoted to the science and technology of the future, of which space travel was just one example. Over time, however, the land has become increasingly themed to space and sci-fi, with attractions added based on Star Wars and Buzz Lightyear.
Visual Novels
- Happens to a number of recurring characters in Ace Attorney. The Judge seems to get dumber and become more of a Cloudcuckoolander every game, as does Gumshoe (though Dual Destinies dialed the Judge's ditziness back a little). Additionally, Larry progressively becomes more of a loser, and Wendy Oldbag becomes more of a Jerkass unrepentant stalker with every appearance. Winston Payne, a prosecutor who is meek and easily intimidated, became much more arrogant while also becoming a lot more spineless in later games. His brother, Gaspen Payne, takes these traits farther with a mix of Jerkass in the 3D installments. Pearl Fey went from being a child who thinks Maya and Phoenix are a couple and gets mad whenever Phoenix is talking to another woman to being a child that outright slaps Phoenix for even being near another woman in front of Maya. Maya explains that the reason Pearl behaves that way is due to her seeing her hometown's sky high divorce rate, ergo she wants to make sure Maya and Phoenix never separate or see other people. Pearl would ditch this trait once she got older. Trucy Wright's debut appearance depicts her as an incredibly clever, sharp-witted girl with deep-seated emotional troubles that she conceals beneath the guise of acting like a peppy, quirky teenage magician. In the sequels, she would instead become a quirky, airheaded magician incapable of holding a conversation without twisting its subject back around to talking about magic.
- The Fruit of Grisaia:
- Michiru started off fairly dumb and intentionally obnoxious but had both a serious side and played a rather crucial role in making everyone get along without either killing each other or collapsing from overwork. By The Eden of Grisaia this aspect of her has almost entirely disappeared, leaving her as nothing but the butt of jokes or someone that has no clue what's going on.
- In the common route, Yumiko is portrayed as an intelligent yet antisocial Bookworm with some Covert Pervert tendencies and a Sugar-and-Ice Personality. Later in the story, her perversion becomes more and more apparent, reaching its pinnacle when she tries to sexually assault Yuuji in his sleep. Her Tsundere trait goes through the roof, especially in Yumiko's own route, and for this very purpose she goes back to hating Yuuji's guts right after the route starts even though we saw them having a friendly conversation many times before. Her intelligence and level-headedness gets undermined by many stupid decisions, repeating the same mistakes and even not being able to perform simple housework. The worst moment would probably be when she called her father after her escape and wanted to give herself in, because she didn't want to cause Yuuji any more problems, even though he told her multiple times he was helping her of his own will. In effect, she actually caused more problems: she immediately realized her mistake and hung up, but has already given away their location.
- The Sakura series by Winged Cloud suffered from two kinds of flanderization. One, it went from having fairly tame Fanservice to having graphic sexual content. Starting from Sakura Maid, the series started gradually refusing to make an All Ages version. Two, the series started out with a male main character falling in love with the female characters, who also have feelings for each other, to having only a female main character falling in love with other female characters.
- Played for Horror in the "Darkest Timeline" route in Monster Camp. In the first event, the characters are acting normally, even showing off some Hidden Depths; in the second, they've basically regressed to being defined by only one of their personality traits (e.g., Milo suddenly becoming an obsessive Selfie Fiend, Dahlia refusing to talk about anything but her muscles and/or fighting, etc.), in addition to having more of an interest in figuring out the logical solutions to problems. The third event ultimately reveals that Calculester replaced everyone in camp with robots as a solution to the perceived lack of logic his friends demonstrated; the Flanderization was a result of him trying to program their personalities into the robots.
Web Animation
- Among Us Logic:
- Veteran goes from mildly dim and somewhat naive, but still experienced and intelligent, to a total idiot with some utterly bizarre ideas.
- Captain goes from well meaning yet narcissistic, to basing his entire personality and life around Player and their "friendship".
- Noob from Battlefield Friends started out as simply making rookie mistakes and only suffering an occasional misunderstanding. However, he quickly began to get dumber and dumber, to the point where, in the second season, he barely understands even core gameplay concepts and is a complete liability to his own team.
- The Annoying Orange: While Orange was always annoying, he gradually became more and more annoying during the series' progression. He farts and burps more and detonates TNT excessively, much to the annoyance of Pear.
- Pear isn't any safer either, as he not only becomes more and more wimpy, he's become a Butt-Monkey, as both Orange and his fans find ways to torture the poor fruit, such as blowing him up with surprise airbags, and dropping various objects on him.
- In Freeman's Mind Gordon Freeman started off as somewhat selfish and arrogant but he still sometimes tried to help people in trouble and sometimes ranted about odd things, though these rants were always on topic. By the beginning of Season 2, Freeman views anyone that isn't himself as below him, goes on utterly deranged rants disconnected from what's going on, and doesn't mind ditching people to fend off the alien invasion on their own. Justified, since the invasion of Black Mesa has caused him to undergo major Sanity Slippage and brought out his worst qualities.
- The GoAnimate "Grounded" videos have evolved into complete and utter Black Comedy over time thanks to this trope. Originally, the grounding videos were more or less parents grounding their kids and not really liking it at all. However, as time passed on, the grounding reasonings got more and more ridiculous and, thanks to people like Issac Anderson, the creator of "Punishment Days", became more violent, with the characters changing to fit the mood.
- Homestar Runner:
- The title character was Flanderized from The Fool into The Ditz, while the King of Town's unpopularity and Bubs's tendency towards dodgy dealings were also blown out of proportion.
- Coach Z started as a relatively down-to-earth character with a cartoony but not incomprehensible Midwestern accent, who was occasionally capable of dispensing good advice despite some hints of a troubled private life. In later toons, he's shown to have a lot more than just two "prablems", and his accent evolved into a bizarre tendency to mispronounce any and all words in strange ways, sometimes to the point of bordering on The Unintelligible.
- This gets lampshaded in a trick or treat video, where he mispronounces Jujyfruits as "Jorgy forts." Bubs reacts in exasperation, and Coach Z responds "It's a fan favorite!"
- Strong Sad actually seemed to go through reverse Flanderization, going from a rather one-note downer to an artsy and snarky Only Sane Man.
- Llamas with Hats: In the first episode, Carl killed only one person, did it in a fairly mundane way — stabbing him repeatedly — and actually had an understandable reason for it, as the victim was implied to be a trespasser. In later episodes, the scale, the strangeness, and the arbitrariness of his murders all became progressively more exaggerated, to the point that by episode four, he was wiping entire cities off the map on a whim. It's implied that Carl does this on purpose as part of an attempt to prevent Paul from getting inured to his acts, as when Paul tells him in Episode 3 that mass murder has become the norm for him, Carl responds "I feel like I've been issued a challenge". Deconstructed in the second half of the series, as Carl's crimes becoming more severe leads Paul to come to his senses and stop putting up with him. This only causes Carl to become even more extreme as the loneliness takes its toll on him, culminating in Carl ending all life on Earth.
- Several characters in Neurotically Yours have undergone Flanderization:
- Anchovie, AKA The Pizza Guy/Dude, was a young man that was deeply in love with Germaine, even though she always rejected him. He slowly became a stalker and even borderline rapist no matter how many times Germaine rejected him.
- Germaine's sexual fantasies and desires were exposed more and more up to the point where Germaine relished it and became a hooker. The reboot arc eliminates the sexual shtick but later on dived right back into it and done it even harder than before.
- The Hatta' was Foamy's Token Black Friend with a hint of black stereotypes. The Hatta' is now a walking stereotype of black characters and claims everyone is a racist except him.
- Red vs. Blue is a good example of why Flanderization isn't necessarily a bad thing: in very early episodes, the characters are all quirky, but mostly sane enough to function in real life. Within the space of the first season, they grow increasingly zany, with increasingly hilarious results, and it's doubtful the show would have become so popular otherwise.
- SMG4:
- SMG4 started as Mario's foil, but got flanderized into being "the meme man" who was primarily concerned with internet fads and such. The "Super Meme Genesis" arc seems to have undone it to a degree by giving him a backstory and a fleshed out purpose in the world's setting, even if memes are still a big part of it.
- Princess Peach began as the voice of reason before turning into a naggy housewife figure and eventually devolving into just screaming in aggravation at whatever was going on to the point of barely having dialogue.
- Fishy Boopkins went from being a socially awkward loser to an anime-obsessed weaboo as of "High School Mario".
- In Kirbopher's Super Freakin' Parody Rangers series, the Rangers themselves are basic Flanderized versions of the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Meat, the Red Ranger, is an extreme sports nut who continually flexes his muscles; Willy, the Blue Ranger, is a short and stereotypical nerd; Pinky, the Pink Ranger, is a stereotype of all things girly; and in reference to the original Black and Yellow Rangers, Mace the Black Ranger and Chan the Yellow Ranger are, well, an African-American and a Chinese girl, respectively.
- Team Service Announcement: In Unlockable Weapons, the BLU Soldier is a competent if overoptimistic fighter who got cornered by a Scout. In Grenade Launcher he's Too Dumb to Live, willfully standing on a sticky-mine trap.
Webcomics
- In 8-Bit Theater, this happens to at least four characters. Black Mage goes from merely sadistic and murderous to a full-on Omnicidal Maniac, Fighter goes from being gullible and dim to being stupider than the furnishings (although given the number of times he's been stabbed in the head this may technically constitute Character Development), Bikke goes from being a bit dim to making Fighter look like a genius, and King Steve goes from incompetent and callous to being a crazed tyrant who acts entirely at random.
- Achewood's Cassandra "Roast Beef" Kazanzakis is an interesting case. He didn't have a personality to speak of to begin with, but around the party arc we learn that he is depressed and borderline suicidal. Shortly after that the trait began to dominate his personality, though despite this high focus on his depression he remains a rather multifaceted and interesting character.
- David from Bittersweet Candy Bowl. The author originally intended him to be far less weird and wacky than his later appearances suggest.
- Pretty much everyone in Bob and George. Mega Man and Bass go from being a bit ditzy and out-there to having full disconnects from reality, Dr. Light goes from being a competent though slightly uncaring scientist to being a vaguely insane drunk, Bob goes from a jerkass to an omnicidal maniac willing to destroy the universe he's in because it's there, and George goes from having a few issues with the casual use of violence to solve an issues to being a full-on Straw Pacifist.
- Ethan in Ctrl+Alt+Del began as The Ditz, but moved on to Cloud Cuckoolander. More recently, he has surpassed this, and some fans are starting to suspect he is in fact clinically insane. This may explain why Ethan made a Heroic Sacrifice to prevent a dystopian future from happening, and the entire strip got rebooted.
- Dominic Deegan:
- Szark Sturtz was originally a master swordsman and a sadist. Following his Heel–Face Turn and admitting to having a crush on the title character, he eventually became "Szark (who is gay)", according to one forum that follows the comic.
- Siggy's racism. Quilt's stupidity. Dominic's ability to plan ahead. Luna's bids for independence. Dex's timing for Big Damn Hero moments.
- When she first appears in Dumbing of Age, Raidah is angry at at Sarah for (as she sees it) betraying her friend Dana, but not irrationally so. There are hints that she is ambitious, but not necessarily worse than, say, Sarah herself — and when she first met Sarah, in the comic's past, she made a real effort to befriend her, for no obvious profit. Over time, however, her social climbing ambitions become her defining feature, and she appears to value "friends" only for what they can do for her. She descends from being a somewhat understandable antagonist to being downright horrible. (It's possible that being dumped by Jacob because, as she thinks, of Joyce sends her over some kind of Despair Event Horizon, making her see no reason not to be selfish.)
- In El Goonish Shive, Grace's bubbly innocent side was gradually cranked up while her role in the story was reduced until she appeared to be little more than a Plucky Comic Relief character. Later arcs revealed she was putting up a bubbly front to cover some serious inner conflicts.
- Girl Genius has two cases, both in-universe:
- Punch and Judy are two constructs created by the legendary Heterodyne Boys, and helped them save countless people from mad Sparks. Punch was mute but intelligent and kind, known among his friends for building toys for orphan children, while Judy was severe but compassionate, and eventually retired to become a teacher. Pretty much every story of the Heterodyne Boys reduced them both to the status of Butt-Monkey and Plucky Comic Relief, and they're generally just referred to as "dopey monsters." When Jägermonsters who actually met them talk to the actors who play them, the actors are aghast. One tries to get permission to have the character dictate a treatise on the dignity of man, but he gets shot down by his boss.
- Klaus Wulfenbach is the feared emperor and dictator of Europe, ruling with astonishing competence and surprising compassion backed up by an iron fist when people don't cooperate (which is often—most rulers are Mad Scientists, after all, with emphasis on the mad). Yet whenever he appears in the Heterodyne stories, he is usually portrayed as a braggart, a coward, and a Butt-Monkey. The only reason why the storytellers and actors keep their heads is because Klaus secretly finds this portrayal hilarious.
- Grim Tales from Down Below has Grim, the personification of death, speaking in a slightly garbled manner in the beginning but it begins to get more and more difficult to understand as the story moves on.
- Homestuck:
- In the Act 6 Intermission 3 walkaround games, some of the Pre-Scratch Trolls are revealed to be Flanderized versions of their "dancestors." In particular, Cronus Ampora reflects all of the worst, most recognizable traits in the fandom's vision of Eridan (i.e., his romantic troubles, douchebaggery, and hipsterism), while Meulin Leijon is an exaggeration of how the fandom sees Nepeta (i.e., shipping and cat puns).
- Aradia is an interesting case, in that the trait that's been exaggerated is one she didn't actually possess at the beginning, but picked up after coming back to life. She went from a cheerful person with a couple of minor death-fangirl quirks to spending entire scenes bearing a truly demented Slasher Smile and generally being more than a little creepy.
- While Feferi and Nepeta were rather cute in their early appearances, Act 6 has them do nothing but stand around and do adorable things in the background while smiling. This is taken even further with Fefetasprite, which upped their new status as Those Two Guys by combining them together and (mostly through Roxy) painted the sprite as a "poor, sweet, precious" person who didn't deserve what happened to them. This gets reverted later, as both of them eventually have speaking roles, in The Homestuck Epilogues (either the Alpha Timeline Feferi or an offshoot; it's never made clear) and right after the retcon, through Nepetasprite/Davepetasprite^2, respectively.
- Wayward Vagabond also gets hit with this post-Cascade. Due to being Demoted to Extra, most of his contributions to scenes exclusively revolve around Can Town.
- Least I Could Do has seen this happen to most of the characters, but it's particularly noticable with Rayne, whose childlike obsession with Star Wars and other geek properties and 12-year-old boy-like obsession with getting laid have basically consumed his personality, to the point where it's a surprise when he acts like an actual person, or even gets something accomplished, other than weirding people out with his desire to be Emperor or getting laid.
- Richard from Looking for Group was always intended to be an Always Chaotic Evil insensitive dick and main comic relief, but his antics in later parts have done nothing but break the pace of the story.
- And then Subverted when the whole thing turns out to be a coping mechanism over the fact he is forced to be evil.
- Defied and discussed in Manly Guys Doing Manly Things. Sten gets tired of the cookie jokes real fast.
- Ménage à 3 is somewhat prone to this:
- Gary manages both Character Development and flanderization, simultaneously. On his first appearance, he's a quiet geek who is still a virgin due to severe problems in dealing with women. However, he is also able to assert himself a little when pushed, and he sometimes demonstrates flashes of insight or snark. Over time, he loses his virginity, and gains much more confidence in dealing with women (presumably because he's often surrounded by attractive women who sometimes want his sexual services). However, his geekiness becomes worse, if anything — he drags a non-geek date into a comics shop at least once — and his quiet nervousness decays into total spinelessness and passivity, which the comic lampshades on occasion.
- DiDi's sexual frustration becomes more and more prominent over time — though this may be considered a matter of Character Development, as she is becoming more desperate. Also, her near-total inability to process ordinary social cues maybe gets worse over time.
- James rapidly goes from vaguely liberal to Straw Feminist to displaying weird hang-ups for the sake of the plot.
- Muh Phoenix: Almost everybody. Scarlet Witch really resents that people only remember her for depowering the mutants and being Robosexual.
- Miko from The Order of the Stick was always a bit excessively-Lawful and stubborn as a mule, but she was in fact capable of reason and being talked down, and while she could jump to conclusions, it wasn't a defining trait of her character. After 80 strips Out of Focus, though, she came back as a completely Lawful Stupid caricature who constantly jumped to conclusions and was completely incapable of understanding that she might, in fact, be wrong about them.
- In-universe example in Ozy and Millie, where Llewellyn's horns exaggerate character traits when worn. Ozy becomes so passive he goes a whole day without moving, Millie becomes so mischievous she tries to cut off Ozy's tail, and Avery does nothing but gush about how awesome he is after putting them on.
- Penny Arcade has two main characters, both pretty heavily Flanderized. Tycho went from a slightly meaner than normal, slightly smarter than normal person with some issues to a psychotic genius with an abused past and a fetish for long-necked animals like giraffes. By contrast, Gabe went from being "Not as smart as Tycho" to being portrayed as stupid enough to glue his hands to his face and not quite understand how children are made (as a 30-something man WITH A CHILD at this point). On the other hand, the characters were somewhat bland and interchangeable in the earliest days, so this ended up making them more distinguishable.
- Inverted in Precocious (sort of). Most of the minor characters are introduced pre-Flanderized. Played straight, however, for Shii Ann Hu. Mentioned by trope name in the alt-text for strip 237.
- The Perry Bible Fellowship deconstructed this trope in a particularly dark installment, "Gee Golly Jeepers," in which the actor of an obviously flanderized sitcom character — looking very much like the later manifestations of this page's Trope Photo — hates what his alter ego has become so much that he offs himself. It was an expression of Creator Breakdown, as the author had started to fear his own work becoming flanderized.
- Questionable Content:
- Hannelore, shortly after her first appearance, mentioned that she had severe OCD. Over time, she developed more and more quirks and phobias to the point of being essentially a female Adrian Monk (she even had a "sex" dream about him, where they cleaned together in the nude). It wasn't long before they had to Hand Wave the fact that she even has piercings, and the circumstances of her first appearance — loitering in a public restroom, smoking and nonchalantly talking to a man peeing in the sink — have become absolutely inconceivable. (In fact she wins a massive bet with her wealthy mother by simply agreeing to briefly touch the toilet in a public restroom!) The problems had to be explained in Comic 1046, where Hannelore reveals she's always had these problems; it just varies by the drugs she takes.
- Also Raven. At first she was an easy-to-rile goth stereotype who was not the brightest bulb. Then she reappeared as a Perky Emo. Then she was a little bit of a Genki Girl with rare flashes of wisdom and occasional casual sex. More recently she is a flat out bizarre Cloudcuckoolander (even by the standards of Cloudcuckoolanders), and has probably gone around the block an innumerable number of times.
- Even Pintsize to an extent. Originally he was just a quirky, sociopathic robot with weird fetishes. Now he is just /b/ personified doing anything for attention.
- Leo from VG Cats was at first a typical Cloud Cuckoo Lander whom, despite some unusual quirks, still made sense at times. This got worse, much to the discomfort of his co-star, Aeris. Now he is effectively a textbook Ditz.
- Widdershins sees this invoked by Luxuria, an incarnation of Lust. He picks out six other humans who are inclined towards another of the Seven Deadly Sins and manipulates them to be dominated by this emotion, to make them ideal vessels for his fellow spirits.
- Whomp! and its titular chacter, Ronnie. Starting off the series as an introverted, geeky and somewhat overweight otaku, all of these characteristics get exaggerated to comic proportions over time, until he is literally unable to interact with people in a normal manner, his eating is out of control and his Japanophilia borders on manic obsession.
Web Original
- A lot of people probably don't realize that the original "Caturday" pictures (now known as LOLCats) were captioned in proper English. They were still funny, because the photos were inherently bizarre, like photos you might see in magazine caption contests. Now it's escalated to the point where any photo of a cat combined with bad enough English is supposedly hilarious.
- SF Debris delights in taking Star Trek tropes and characters to their extremes. These range from running gags in fandom, such as Janeway's coffee obsession or Troi's bad piloting skills, to total re-imaginings such as:
- As Trek's Stock Aesops age naturally over time, The Federation is increasingly depicted as an Orwellian state.
- Probably most famous is Chuck's interpretation of Captain Janeway as a supervillain on par with Palpatine and Dr. Wily. This originated with Janeway's inconsistent characterization over the course of the series, when viewers were expected to blindly side with her despite the writers disagreeing over how she would act from week-to-week.
- Almost as famous is Harry Kim's sexual confusion and Butt-Monkey role. It's worth mention that this and Janeway's mental illness are regarded as Word of Saint Paul by the actors themselves.
- Captain Archer as a deranged homeless man who was abducted and put in charge of a starship. His resentment of the Vulcans, a running theme on Enterprise, has been inflated to cartoon-level paranoia. Captain Archer:
I told them I told them I TOLD THEM the Vulcans you can't trust the Vulcans they run up the flat to the back of the dragon and hold their tails so you can't fly no more and then you can't know your thoughts no more because they've already stolen the wrench to your mind...
- Tales of MU does this to gnomes (its version of hobbits) to a certain extent, when comparing the species to the one from Middle-Earth. The latter are respectable to a fault and don't think much of people who travel too much or have adventures — the former literally consider "adventure" a dirty word and take pains to use an Unusual Euphemism.
Hazel: What I mean to say is that she's an... a lady of wandering interests [...] You know, prone to seek out, ah, random encounters.
- Pretty much any sort of Abridged parody will have a few characters be only defined by one character trait from canon.
- TV Tropes: The Self-Demonstrating Character Pages on this very wiki are prone to this, which is outright acknowledged on the Rick and Morty page. For example, the page for Captain Falcon uses excessive Intentional Engrish for Funny and Bold Inflation due to his Gratuitous English and Large Ham tendencies in the Super Smash Bros. series; in a similar vein, The Incredible Hulk page has the Savage Hulk's every word in Bold Inflation and seems unable to depict himnote and not his alternate identities in any mode other than "angry as all hell". Hell, the allcapsed and bolded Billy Mays page even acknowledges this in its tropes.
Web Videos
- The Angry Video Game Nerd started out as a jaded sort of fellow who would only start dropping F-bombs when the game truly deserved it, and concentrated more on the reviews themselves. As the series continued, the Nerd would collapse into screaming apoplexy at the slightest provocation, game-related or not, and the shows gradually got more and more taken over by movie-like set pieces and Large Ham supporting characters (this was about when Mike Matei got an expanded role).
- The Nerd's preference for vintage stuff has also been exaggerated, to the point where he seems to be nearly completely out-of-touch with modern-day appliances with apparently little to no knowledge of newer games, in addition to apparently even using an old Commodore computer and vintage cell-phone on a regular basis. In earlier videos, he was implied to be at least moderately familiar with modern games as he mentioned games that were modern at the time every now and then, and in heavy contrast to his later Disco Dan characterization, was even shown using a current-day (at the time at least) cell-phone in a few episodes (specifically "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" and "Ghostbusters").
- The YouTube user Benthelooney has suffered this in his videos. Originally, on his old PuffyZillaman4 account, he was consistently calm and laidback, despite several rants. However, enter later half of 2010, and he becomes a lot more loud and aggressive in tone. This is possibly to add effect to his rants however. Another thing that has been flanderized about him, is his opinions. For example: In his "Nickelodeon" salute, he didn't exactly say he hated Rugrats, but he didn't think that it aged well, but it was good for nostalgia purposes, but in a later video, he says he hates it, and that it's not even good for a "nostalgia trip" and was baffled that many people his age love it. The same could be said for his opinions on Rocko's Modern Life and Scooby-Doo. To add to this, he has received another Flanderization, when it comes to his opinion towards Pixar. In his older videos, he enjoyed their first couple of movies but wasn't too happy about their later ones and Pixar winning the Oscars. Now, it has gone to the extreme, of him actually hating Pixar, and thinking that they have ruined animation. He has expressed hate for them in several comments. He even flat-out ranted on Pixar (He apologized for it later). However, in occasional videos, he realizes this and tries to go back to his 2009-2011 persona in occasional videos. Ben Tannehill (the web-show's creator) himself is pretty much the opposite of the character himself in real-life, as he is actually very nice.
- Brows Held High: In an odd example, Oancitizen tends to be more comically pretentious in crossovers than in his regular reviews.
- Chubbyemu: While earlier videos from often featured people who face serious consequences from genuine mistakes such as petting a cat, or eating leftovers, or a scientist briefly being exposed to methylmercury, recent videos tend to focus more on overtly ridiculous and foolish behavior, such as eating silica gel or drinking glow sticks, which oddly result in no serious consequences.
- In Courier's Mind: Rise of New Vegas, The Courier accuses Caesar's Legion of flanderizing the Roman Empire, citing that they got their military practices down to pat but saying they don't have any right to call themselves true successors to Rome until they demonstrate great works of architecture and poetry on top of that.
- Filthy Frank started out as an angsty nerd type of character with a mild tendency to say rude and edgy things, but as the series went on his rude, edgy, vulgar, politically-incorrect tendencies gradually became more and more prominent until they eventually consumed his entire character, with his angsty, nerdy personality being pretty much entirely phased out. In addition, he eventually evolved into a full-blown evil, politically-incorrect Jerkass of a Villain Protagonist who frequently said and did immoral and offensive things merely for the sake of being edgy and evil.
- Gaming Garbage hosts Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka and Dave "Shmorky" Kelly" started out utilizing deadpan, casual deliveries before Lowtax took several levels in ham and Shmorky settled into a hyper-effeminate Uke personality with a frail, high-pitched voice.
- Hitler Rants tends to reduce Hitler and his high command to what they were doing (or what it might sound like they're doing to people who don't speak German) in the scenes parodied, plus some extra insanity.
- Hitler... well, rants at things, which can range from Fegelein's latest antic to current events to the failure of his latest stupid plan. He also occasionally takes calls.
- Fegelein pisses off Hitler. In the original movie, this was because of his desertion. In the videos, it's because he is an 'Antic Master' who keeps pranking Hitler.
- Gunsche is the Bearer of Bad News, because he was the one to tell Hitler about Fegelein's aforementioned desertion.
- Jodl is bald and objects to things. Jodl in the movie (and real life) was a Yes-Man, but since he raises an objection during the famous ranting scene, he has now become the go-to objector in the bunker.
- Burgdorf is an alcoholic, and probably Krebs' boyfriend.
- Krebs is obsessed with fish and pointing at maps, because in the original rant scene he points at a map when discussing defense plans and says something that sounds a bit like "fish" ("Bewegungsunfähig"- meaning immobilized- but said fast and somewhat slurred).
- Goebbels looks like Skeletor and is Hitler's Yes-Man (which, to be fair, is historically accurate).
- Goering is fat and likes eating things.
- Jake from College Humor's Jake and Amir went from being a regular guy having to deal with Amir's antics to being somewhat of a Jerkass, and Amir became less and less sane.
- JonTron was originally an AVGN-ish review show. Similarly to the Nerd's anger, Jon became more and more wacky and less down-to-earth as videos continued. After he quit Game Grumps, the videos became even more wacky as a result of his time there. This has worked out well, as his recent videos are some of the most-liked ones.
- Hugo, one of Matthew Santoro's clones, started out as being mildly stupid, but later became insane.
- Miranda of Miranda Sings started out as a fairly believable Stealth Parody of amateur singers on YouTube who are deluded about their talent before her singing, fashion sense, and overall attitude slowly started getting more and more over the top. Compare this to this. Colleen Ballinger, the creator of the character, says she was deliberately exaggerating whatever traits were most derided in the comments section in order to make her more annoying. And due to Poe's Law, some still seem to not immediately get that she's a fictional character.
- A couple of characters from Noob got this:
- Sparadrap started out as a Noob in pure form: annoying, not listening to people giving him advice, overestimating his talent and the ego that comes with it. Over time, forgetfulness and sheer idiocy became the only reasons he was doing anything wrong. That stupidity led to a tendency to be friendly in situations that called for battle that expanded to other domains, eventually making him into a Stupid Good Manchild.
- Gaea started out as the Audience Surrogate, then hinted that accumulating in-game currency was a bigger priority to her than other things, which makes sense for a new player. Her means of raking in more money have gotten more and more elaborate over time, to the extent that she's now known to be a greedy Manipulative Bastard by any of her acquaintances that are not a Horrible Judge of Character.
- In “The Nursery Nurse”:
- Autumn Knight was originally introduced as falsely happy with a sadistic side, and was then morphed over time into an emotionless, sadistic monster. This could be seen as Character Development, but her violence and anger issues are becoming a larger and larger part of her character.
- Jodie was introduced as a slightly incompetent member of the nursery staff, and now appears to be dangerously incompetent and mind numbingly stupid.
- SuperMarioLogan
- Brooklyn T. Guy, the firefighter from Stuck in a Tree originally was helpful but dumb, as he got distracted by a phone and failed to save Toad. However, starting from Bowser Junior's Summer School 5, he is a Deadpan Snarker, and keeps working for more jobs as time progresses.
- Rosalina, in her first two appearances, kept screaming and crying about Luma, and blames the Sun, which she believes is a planet. However, in her current appearances, she became more of a stereotypical ditzy blonde.
- In Vaguely Recalling JoJo, Jonathan's signature move is the revolver he uses on Dio when Dio is a vampire. Will A. Zeppeli repeatedly uses the frog punch on his foes. At one point, he does the frog punch on Dio's zombies, and giant fists rain down upon them. The grenade deflection attack is one of Straizo's signature moves.
Renegade Shepard VI
Commander Shepard finds the Shepard VI. It is pretty much an exaggerated version of a Renegade Shepard. Of course, the Commander wonders if she really does sound like the VI. (Vid from FluffyLlamaNinja)
Alternative Title(s): Flanderized, Flanderisation, Flanderize, Flanderise, Character Conquering Quirk, Flanderizing
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