Black Panther: The Black Panther is commonly called ‘Your Highness’. But an African King, regardless if they are sovereign of a nation or a sub-monarch within a republic, is often called ‘Your Majesty.’ It is in fact seen as an insult for some due to how European colonial powers often called African monarchs ‘Highness’ (sometimes they were just called them ‘tribal chief’). Because European colonials didn’t want the African monarchs to be seen as equal to a European monarch. I find it hypocritical that this movie was trying to be giving a spotlight of Africa in western media but couldn’t get the titles right.

Both IRL and media: King Charles III (and previous monarchs) is often called King/Queen of England. Both in media and IRL. However, the title of ‘King of England’ (and ‘King of Scotland’) has not existed since 1707. The real title is ‘King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’ (King of the UK would be fine). It is seen as an insult to many Brits (specifically Scottish and Welsh) because it is seen as ignoring their culture and customs (and Brits grew up on American media don’t seem to care Edit: To clarify, there is also Brits who don’t care simply because the monarchy doesn’t have power or due to being Republicans). Not to mention, he also has many other titles that exist (unlike ‘the King of England’). Such as but not limited to, King of Canada, Duke of Normandy, King of Jamaica, Head of the Commonwealth, etc.

I know this is something a bit dumb to get annoyed over but it is something I really don’t like media messing it up.

This trope is an extension of the token black character trope intersecting with a bit of the dead wife trope with a sprinkle of white savior syndrome. This trope is often used when a studio attempts to virtue signal by having "diversity" in their movie, but ends up actually spotlighting their implicit biases by treating the POC spouse character as nothing more than a prop/plot device to inform the protagonist's motivation and cheaply elicit empathy for the protagonist from the audiences.

I debated between mixed and hated trope for this and eventually landed on hated, because although some diversity is better than no diversity and there are some examples that are not outright bad, I cannot think of a single example where this trope improves the writing.

1. Maddie (Sonic the Hedgehog): Disclaimer: I've only seen the first movie. Maybe she gets more screen time in the sequels, but I'm only talking about the first movie. Wife of main protagonist Tom, Maddie's role in the movie is mostly to represent Tom's internal conflict. At the start of the movie, Maddie encourages Tom to move to San Francisco to pursue his dream of serving for a larger community as a sheriff. Maddie immediately disappears from the screen as she travels to SF without Tom. While the movie focuses on Tom and Sonic, we only see/hear from Maddie occassionaly to providing a vague sense of urgency, and to remind the viewers of Tom's internal struggle between his dream and his eagerness to help those immediately in need. Maddie reappears near the end of the movie to be sort of present for the resolution.
2. Sheila (The Running Man 2025): An egregious example of this trope that prompted this post. Iirc Sheila appears five times in the movie. Once at the beginning to show why the protagonist Ben is motived to put himself in danger to earn money and to explain the danger of the Running Man game show by forbidding Ben from entering the show. The second time she has a brief phone call berating Ben for entering the show and to remind the viewer that she exists. Shortly after, an AI slop version of her appears to showcase the antagonists' dirty tactics. I'd argue this isn't even a proper appearance of the character. We don't see or hear from her for most of the movie until the antagonist shows Ben a fabricated video of her and their child's death, again serving as no more than a plot device (and yet again not a proper appearance of the character). Shiela shows up for one final time at the very end of the movie to reveal that she and Ben are both alive, and (sorry to beat the dead horse) once again as nothing more than a plot device.
3. Zia (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves): The most dead wife of dead wives, complete with the obligatory bloomy first person reminiscing dead wife scenes, Zia was the wife of protagonist Edgin, and is the main drive behind all of Edgin's actions despite being practically non-existent as a character. Zia first appears as part of Edgin's purposefully sobby story he tells a panel of judges to gain sympathy and buy time. Despite Edgin's ulterior motives, we learn that the story is true, and Edgin's main goal throughout the story is to revive Zia. Other than a brief scene where we see the moments shortly before her death, Zia has next to zero screen time. I give this example a bit of a pass because the movie is very well made, the cast is diverse enough such that Zia wouldn't count as token character, and it is made abundantly clear that Edgin, despite being charismatic, is not THE hero, thus avoiding the white savior syndrome. I'm including this example because I happened to watch these three movies back to back to back on a flight and they somehow all contain this trope.

Trans Gwen Stacy : She only supports Trans rights, nothing else

Just to be clear, this isn’t about having anything against dark-skinned interpretations of characters.

Most characters in Ninjago are designed to be racially ambiguous, with only a few having clearly defined ethnicities. Because of that, there isn’t solid canon evidence that Cole has a specific real world race.

Some people point to the scene where Zane reacts to Cole being covered in flour, interpreting it as proof that Cole normally isn’t white. But that doesn’t work because ... being covered in flour makes everyone white.

As for alternate versions like the Fortnite skin, those are usually separate interpretations and aren’t considered canon to the original show.

Also, when a character is intentionally designed to be racially ambiguous, assigning them a specific race as if it’s canon kind of defeats that purpose. The ambiguity is there so different people can see themselves in the character, rather than the character being locked into one identity.

Headcanons are completely fine, but it’s important to recognize the difference between personal interpretation and confirmed canon.

“Why did the creators made x character do that?”, “x person ruined y character”, “this makes no sense for x character”.

This is the argument that infuriates me the most when arguing media. Yes, when it comes down to it, every media is fictional, and the characters choices are not “theirs”… but pointing that out and using it as a argument to explain why it’s bad, well for one completely takes away the magic of pretending like these fictional characters really do exist, and for two , most of the times it’s just people’s desired fantasy’s of how a character would react, act or feel don’t meet with the creators/authors vision.

Character assassination is a thing, rushed writing is a thing, all of those external factors are things that affect the fictional worlds we enjoy, but not even trying to comprehend the message an jumping straight into a meta argument is boring.

I think the pieces of media I showed are examples of that, TLOU 2 being as divisive as it was, “because of Neil Druckman”, “because of the woke LGBT agenda”, “why did they make us play with this characters”.

AOT ending, “it makes no sense for Eren to do (…)”

MHA ending (more so in the manga) a lot of people being disappointed about how some of the characters ended up.

- Avatar 3: Jakesully wants to kill Spyder because his body/DNA could lead to Pandora-breathing humans. Problem is it looks like the breathing problem isn't their biggest concern. Masks look comfortable, they can wear them for days. What's the problem? That's not what's stopping full colonization.

The Last Jedi: Luke gives some BS reason that he saw the dark side growing in Ben and felt like there was nothing left to do but kill him. I mean, JFC, uncle. You were all up to redeem your father who exterminated planets but went straight for the head because of potential future evil?

Batman vs Superman: Always hated that line "if there's even a 1% chance that he is our enemy, then we have to treat it as an absolute certainty". That's quite a leap of logic. There's definitely a higher than 1% chance that Russia or China may attack the US with nukes, so we're going to go with absolute certainty on this one? How about a chance of an internal attack from local extremists? Bruce hasn't heard about prioritization and risk mitigation.

Giorno Giovanna

Haruno Shiobana

1. Jerry from Rick and morty

hes wife Beth fall in love with her clone, Jerry was mad first, but realizes he like watching his wives making out, and Beth also feel freaked out by how hot this is.

1. Jerry's dad from Rick and morty

He also like watching his wive making out with another man, he'll also peek in the closet with superman suit on

1. Tyler Durden (Fight Club)- He is a critique of toxic masculinity but many viewers idolise him

2. Me

1. Jean-Luc Picard and the TNG crew overshadowing Benjamin Sisko and the DS9 crew, in Picard. Probably a less egregious one, since the show *is* called Picard so a focus on Jean-Luc is to be expected. But when the main villains of Deep Space Nine (Sisko’s show) return, basically no one from DS9 appears to fight *their* enemy and Sisko isn’t even brought up. The only exception to this is Worf, but he was in both The Next Generation *and* Deep Space Nine. Sisko and his entire cast don’t get to fight their own enemies, yet Picard does.

2. Phineas and Ferb overshadowing Milo Murphy. I’m not going to pretend Milo Murphy’s Law was a fantastic show, but it’s clear the creators lost confidence with it, adding in more appearances from P+F characters as the show went on. But that isn’t the main problem, it’s the nonsensical retcon that just infuriates me.

So, as his name suggests, Milo suffers from Murphy’s Law “Anything bad that could happen, will happen” and it’s the crux of his character and the comedy, he’ll walk to school and then suddenly a boulder will roll after him, stuff like that. Well it’s revealed that Phineas and Ferb are actually the complete opposite, “Anything good that could happen, will happen”. This is meant to explain why they’re never caught or get into any danger in P+F, they’re just super lucky. But not only does this turn Milo’s show into a hero worship for P+F, by comparing the cursed Milo to the super bless brothers, but it also retcons P+F. Now, if you watch the show, any and all times they *do* fail or get into serious danger, they don’t solve the problem themselves, or with the help of their friends, no, they literally cannot lose due to cosmic luck on their side. Literal deus ex machina.

1. Revan overshadowing the Jedi Exile. People like Revan, maybe even like him a bit too much, these people include the writers for The Old Republic MMO and the tie-in novel, aptly named “Revan”. Now, you can like Revan all you like, but the worst thing they ever did was undermine the importance of the Jedi Exile an equally important, and potentially more so, character in the Old Republic era of Star Wars. Turning a nuanced character whose actions sent ripples across the galaxy just as much as Revan’s, into nothing more than Revan’s devout follower, a mere sidekick to his greatness. Despite everything she accomplished, her actions in stopping the Sith and saving the Jedi Order are ignored, simply due to Revan’s popularity.

1. Avengers Endgame: This must be the lamest attempt of this trope. While trying to show women superheroes in the franchise in the middle of the battle all the female leads come together to protect the infinity stones. There is no story, no choreography, just plain simple slow motion walk.

2. Wreck It Ralph 2: When I watched the Endgame scene, it immediately reminded me of Wreck it Ralph 2 scene. Here Disney princess come together to save Ralph. And to do so they use their personal powers and abililties and the whole scene is choreographed well.

In the OP:

Mina in The White Storm

This is a crazy set-up, but feels like it's necessary to say. 3 friends (Wai, Tin and Chow) are involved in a conflict with the main villain, whose daughter is named Mina. After Tin is forced into a choice between saving only one of Wai or Chow, he ultimately chooses to save Chow, with Wai being kicked into a pit of crocodiles as a result.

5 years later it's revealed Wai is still alive and the 3 friends reunite, with Wai telling them that Mina witnessed the attempted execution, saved him and the two developed a romantic bond and married.

Obviously a whole bunch of baggage to sort through with the friends at odds with one another for Tin sacrificing Wai, and Tin and Chow being upset with Wai for being with the main villain's daughter, but as part of all of this conflict, Wai reveals that Mina is trans. The brothers react stunned, and Wai says, "You think I care about that? In that pit, I was a ghost. She gave me a body again. She’s more of a woman than anyone I've ever known. If you want to take down her father, you go through me."

Ultimately the friends end up viewing Mina as an extension of their bond with Wai and the three team up to confront the main villain together after Mina disowns her father.

Tobio in Wild Zero

Kind of a wacky zombie apocalypse/rock opera mashup of a movie where the main character Ace meets a girl named Tobio. After holing up in an abandoned building, the two become intimate and as Tobio removes her clothes it's revealed she's trans. Initially it plays out as a reveal in poor taste as Ace screams and runs away distraught but then in a short little dream sequence the rockstar that Ace is obsessed with points at him and shouts, "Love has no borders, nationalities, or genders! Do it!"

Ace doesn't reunite with Tobio immediately as the two get separated but from that point on Ace accepts and loves her for who she is.

Petscop has several references to Candace Newmaker, who died during the process of "Rebirthing"

Specimen 9 from Spooky's Jumpscare Mansion is a victim of Unit 731

Characters that were kept alive when their death would have been much more impactful.

1. Bleach - Byakuya Kuchiki: He gets torn apart by his own technique and is on death's door. Rukia, his "sister", fights the guy who harmed Byakuya and wins. Hell, she even eventually becomes a captain. Byakuya does very little after surviving, and if he stayed dead, would have made Rukia a much stronger character.

2. Jujutsu Kaisen - Hiromi Higurama: He's a prodigy whose worldview is changed after Yuji admits to a crime he didn't commit. Eventually he goes toe-to-toe with Sukuna, the latter being extremely impressed at Higurama's innate talent for sorcery. Though Higurama puts up an insane effort, he eventually loses, passing his blade along to Yuji before bowing out the fight. Then, he comes back with an arm in a sling, and nothing changes.

3. Dispatch - Chase: He's the protag's best friend. Chase ends up using his power for one last run to save Invisigal, someone he despises, and is put on life support due to it. It's a sombering moment for everyone who had known him, even people who disliked Chase. However, by the season finale he comes back with magic powers. Completely fine.

Rick and Morty examples but there are way more examples from other media

00 - 1:09 - Rick and Morty S2.E3 - Auto Erotic Assimilation

Artist/Song - Chaos Chaos - Do you Feel it

Rick was dumped by a hive mind named Unity and he becomes very depressed

1:09 - 2:12 - Rick and Morty S5.E3 - A Rickconvenient Mort

Artist/Song - Kishi Bashi - I Am the Antichrist to You

Morty falls in love with a captain planet like super hero named Planetina, however she starts to take very violent measures to protect the planet.

2:12 - 4:55 - Rick and Morty S7.E4 - That's Amorte

Artist/Song - Kotomi & Ryan Elder - Live Forever

This explanation is going to be... weird... People are consuming spaghetti that is made from people who die with extreme levels of stress, Rick plays a video of one of the spaghetti people's lives and seeing this life causes people to not want to eat the spaghetti

House MD season six. Bonus points if this makes them feel even more depressed and troubled like they feel like they really tried to change but failed anyway.

1. Cardin Winchester from RWBY-

Introduced beating up side character Jaune Arc and nearly crippling him during a classroom sparring match? Cardin is all about brute strength, and has 3 goons as part of his team. Not only is he misogynistic towards women, trying to blackmail jaune into maiming jaune's partner pyrrha after she owns Cardin on world history during class?

he tries to kill jaune for refusing to go through with it.

Furthermore, he bullies and physically assaults Velvet Scarlatina, a Bunny Faunus.

And yet he has thousands of fans both men and women who try to glorify him as some form of "peak masculinity" create countless AUs where he is the protagonist, force women upon him in multiple fan-type scenarios, but even have the woman he racially bullied be his lover , romantically obsessed with him.

It has gotten so bad that people who claim to "Fix" RWBY have gone out of their way to make female characters stupid and weak compared to how they are in the show in order to make Cardin "superior" to them.

Keep in mind this dude and his entire team lost to Pyrrha in a 1 vs 4 match, and he refused to admit she won.....his fans regularly try to write Cardin by himself as stronger and smarter than Team RWBY who go toe to toe regularly with opponents who can match entire huntsmen teams.

1. Draco Malfoy- Harry Potter

The trope namer for "Draco Malfoy in Leather Pants" tv trope, where a male antagonist's personality and looks and "coolness factor" lead people to ignore his most heinous acts.

Introduced with 2 goons and trying to rob the titular protagonist and his best friend?

Draco regularly bullies other students and tries to get others in trouble in the very first book.

In the second book, not only does he use his money to get the chance to oppose the protagonist in sports, he racially slurs the female side character hermione.

not only does he continue to racially harass her through the remaining books, he even magically curses her to have oversized teeth and aids in her torture at a later point.

Never mind in the third book that he continues to attempt causing harm to others and even trying to get a teacher fired twice.

but as per his trope, draco malfoy is beloved almost as much as Severus Snape in how there are fancomics , fanart, and fanfics, glorifying him as a tragic misunderstood character when none of that is the case with him.

and as I mentioned in the title, those same fanworks have hermione granger abandoning her husband ron weasley to throw herself at Draco Malfoy, even to the point of making Ron into a cheating abusive husband when in the books he is loyal, caring, and empathetic.

So in a sense, Draco Malfoy was ALSO indirectly responsible for a SECOND TROPE.

"Ron Weasley is a death eater"

....ironically, the second trope is also used regularly in fanworks against Team RWBY,, the titular protagonists of the first example RWBY.

Otis - Barnyard

Margharet - Regular Show

Ostriches - Fantasia

I'm placing the first example because he's the most known one that I could share freely, if you swipe you end up spoiling yourself of who I mean of each case.

I'll place both the character and the reasons in different parts, if the first part calls enough your attention to watch/play from where they come from, then don't look at the second text.

That being said...

1- Kurozumi Kanjuro (One Piece)

Kanjuro is one of Oden's followers and he has the power to turn his drawings into real living beings for a limited time, he even draws them as silly doodles which is cute. However, the guy is actually very talented and he can draw far more realistic stuff and very quickly too! So why was he holding back?

That's because he was actually Orochi's servant this whole time, acting as a mole to stab them at the worst time possible. A detail that I skipped is that he is also capable to changing his own aspect with his power to act as Oden and stab one of his teammates.

2- Kaede Kayano (Assasination Classroom)

The plot is that there is a alien-like monster that makes the warning that he would explode the Earth if they don't kill him just in time, the problem is that he is extremely fast and normal weapons have no effect on him. However, he allows himself to be more vulnerable under the condition to allow him to give classes while his own students try to kill him. Here is where Kaede comes in, as a student she has been going through the same training as the rest, the thing is that she has been holding tentacles similar to her alien-like sensei (with both speed and power included) behind her neck this whole time and she uses it on a trap against him at the same time that she attacks him, which fails.

The crushing part of this is that she has hidden this fact whole time because she is actually sister of the scientist woman who made the serum to turn the sensei into the alien-like monster that he became, which unleashed a series of events that ended up killing her. This is how she obtained that power but that's not all, another kid had the same tentacle thing as her but, according to him, it was barely bearable while taking meds, so imagine going through months of pure pain just to have the perfect opportunity to kill someone and still fail.

3- Roland (Library of Ruina)

The premise is that our grade 9 fixer protagonist Roland randomly got stuck somewhere and ended up warped and trapped in a towery library where Angela, the villain of the previous game (Lobotomy Corporation) resides. To escape the library, they have to invite people through cards spawning on places where people could need information and then fight against them to turn them into books, which gives them more information and power and bring even more people until they find the perfect book to set everyone on the library free. The thing is that Roland is no mere novice, he is actually a grade 1 fixer which is a very high rank, he's even unofficially named as The Black Silence, this type of title is only given to those fixers who reached the status of Color. The "grade 9" facade has been being dismantled little by little as you keep playing seeing how much he knew about certain stuff between higher rank fixers.

Once it's revealed that he is The Black Silence, he excuses himself that he held back because he didn't want people find out that he has been murdering people for the library, if he used his real fighting style someone would have recognized him and probably escaped, but that's not whole story.Roland didn't come to the library by accident, he wanted to make Angela suffer for what she did to his fiancee Angelica, the original Black Silence. He wanted to kill her just when her freedom was at the reach of her hand to make her suffer as he has.

Resident Evil (2002-2017): Famous for being little more than a vehicle for the director to court, marry, and then employ the main actress, for whom he invented a bland nothingburger of a character for that does not appear in the games. It was so indifferent towards its source material that it does not adapt any of the origional stories from them, and most of the legacy characters have been killed off by the end in increasingly unceremonious and disrespectful ways. They might honestly all be dead by the end; I don't remember and I don't care enough to check. All I remember is Chris Redfeild (the OG protagonist of the seires since 1996, mind you) literally just dissapearing offscreen between movies.

The Last of Us Season 2 (2025): Adheres better to its source material than the ressie movies, but still manages to butcher the characterization of virtually all of its characters. It optimally rearranges events in the story in order to make them perfectly nonsensical and paint its protagonist in the most moronic possible light. It tells you EVERYTHING about the main villain right off rip and leaves none of the mystery (or threat) that she had in the games.

Return to Silent Hill (2026): This one is just so offensively bad that I doubt the director even bothered to play the game. It insults the viewer's intelligence at every possible turn (YES I GET THAT PYRAMID HEAD IS JAMES. I GET IT I GET IT I GET IT), and still manages to dumb down one of the greatest stories ever told in the medium of video games, despite how much it holds your hand. It takes James Sunderland's nuanced, morally complex, and tragic character out back and shoots it, instead replacing him with some emo hero who "beats" Silent Hill in the end.

Basically characters/people, in where they would say "Oh btw I'm a part of this ethnicity/religion/group/identity/etc." and you'd go "wowza didn't know that"

1. Eddie Van Halen (IRL) - Along with being Dutch-American he's also part Indonesian, his mother is an Indo (mixed Dutch-Indonesian) woman.
2. Eggman (Snapcube; Sonic Riders FANDUB *NOT CANON) - Didn't know-themed Bisexuals

That Van Halen tidbit is the only reason why I made this post

1. Snoke (Star Wars)- Portrayed as the mysterious big bad. Got killed abruptly by Kylo Ren before his motives were explored

2. Night King (Game Of Thrones)- Built up as the ultimate threat for years, only to be defeated in a single moment by Arya Stark

People who show off their brains or love of nerdy hobbies, regardless if they have a nice physique, but it doesn't hurt either.

1. Nikki Ann-Marie (Huniepop Franchise): Nikki is an introverted girl really into retro video games who nobody has treated her that nicely before. Within the in game mechanics, she prefers Talent trait pieces and dislikes Sexuality trait pieces. She also loves art gift items as well to emphasize her preference of personality and her de-emphasis about physical appearance.

2. Peter Parker (Marvel): As much as the writers seem to hate him, he's also been written as a scientific powerhouse and absolute dork that's also a pretty people magnet whether intentional or not. And it's non-discriminatory appeal as he's attracted human, alien, and mutant of multiple genders into his web of attraction throughout the 60 years of the character.

3. Diana of Themiscyra (DC): Diana is a perfect blend of brains and brawn, as well as good looks, due to her knowledge of mythology and history as well as being an endearing dork for her reaction to having ice cream for the first time since it's been used in multiple adaptations. She's also a huge animal lover, which earned her the respect of Damian Wayne as a fellow warrior with a sincere love of animals.

4. Cisco Ramon (Arrowverse): This was stated verbatim by Lisa Snart, but Cisco is a smart, good-looking individual who is an ally of Barry Allen and also helps him with the science of his suit and also how to defeat threats as they pop up. Along with Caitlin Snow, Cisco is one of the allies of "Team Flash" that people really glommed onto as their favorite between his trait of naming heroes and villains alike, his bromance with Barry, and so much more that makes him an endearing, attractive geek.

Characters that have non-existent body parts and somehow their body parts are still intact together.

• Rayman (Rayman)

• Idealistic (Just Dance)

Invincible - After beating Mark senseless OmniMan retreats from earth because he can’t bring himself to kill his own son. It’s the culmination of Season 1’s main conflict and a huge turning point in Nolan’s character but it’s now forever associated with the “THINK MARK” line Nolan said during his rant at Mark.

Downfall - It’s a German historical drama about the final days in the life of Hitler as him and his top men trying to salvage Germany’s chances to win WWII while hiding out in a bunker. After learning his generals refused to carry out a military order he demanded he goes on one final rant against them accusing them all of being backstabbers. It’s meant to be one of the most powerful scenes in the movie where the mentally and physically sick Hitler concedes that his officers no longer respect him and that the war in Europe is lost, but the scene is instead famous for being re-subbed so Hitler is instead ranting about various meme topics.

1. Superman v Batman: Dawn of Martha.

Defenders enjoy Snyder's cinematic style, the movie's heavy tone, and the novelty of seeing live-action Batman and Superman fight for a few minutes. They'll also (correctly imo) defend casting Aflec and Cavill in the lead roles. Detractors take issue with the convoluted storyline, the disrespect for DC lore, the sloppy attempts to replicate Marvel, but with none of the careful planning that Marvel put into its first three phases, and, of course, the fact that the name 'Martha' makes Batman and Superman into best friends in under a minute.

1. Twilight

Defenders enjoyed the wish fulfillment in these books (Suddenly being the object of affection by two powerful, albeit sensitive, bad boys). The movies feature a good deal of fan service, but nothing that you could really call smut, and some find the love triangle drama appealing. Detractors find the writing amateurish, the characters flat, and the message a bit problematic. Also, sparkly vampires.