• Lev from The Last of Us Part II: Lev is a trans boy who cannot medically transition due to being in a zombie apocalypse with a fascist government, yet the main cast in the story supports and affirms him as male.
• Denise Bryson from Twin Peaks: A trans woman DEA and FBI agent. She does not pass in the series, which is an integral part of her character; her boss simply tells people who don't like it to "fix their hearts or die."
• Cordelia from Vinland Saga: As a trans woman living in Northern Europe during the Viking age, it is impossible for Cordelia, who has a hulking, muscular figure, to transition to female. But despite not looking the part physically, everyone is cool with it and refers to her as female.
• Ladiva from Granblue Fantasy: A pro wrestler who makes no attempts to pass (save for hair) and is still beloved by the cast as a maternal figure, serving as a stark contrast to her species' women who are petite.

Edit: typos and incorrect lore fixes

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Yujiro vs Baki (Baki)

Miyata vs Arnie Gregory (Hajime no Ippo)

Mejiro Mcqueen and Gold Ship (Uma Musume Pretty Derby)

1.) The Invitation - the grief-stricken protagonist, Will, is framed as paranoid and is gaslit throughout the story until the reveal that the dinner party’s intentions were as sinister as he believed them to be.

2.) Bugonia - Teddy is shown as a nut job conspiracy theorist through the entire film until we discover that his theories were all spot on at the end.

1. Obsession (2026), Nikki walking backwards after 'seemingly' emotional exchange with Bear. (while she is walking backwards a distorted backwards angry boat sound plays that seamlessly interrupts the soundtrack).

2. Longlegs (2024), Lee Harker remembers painful buried memory or Longlegs after seeing a photo she took as a child. (the disturbing realization of Lee mixed with the indistinguishable sounds and imagery make this really jarring, at least for me).

3. Red rooms (2023), Kelly tries to provoke a man who is convicted of murdering girls while filming it and while Kelly is being dragged out of the trial - the screams of the girl she is impersonating from the video hauntingly screeches just for the viewer in an incredibly disturbing way.

AKA, easily parrying projectiles that are either physical, magical, etc.

1. Deltarune: Gerson Boom easily parrying a Rude Buster from Susie and vice versa.

2. Mob Psycho 100: after being powered up temporarily, Reigen casually swiped away the Psychic Gravity Wells that were coming at him.

Basically enemies that only show up if a player is causing too much chaos in a video game as a way to make them go "oh fuck, oh shit, they're here, I'm fucked" and shut them down.

MaxTac (Cyberpunk 2077) - My favorite instance of this. If you kill enough cops by going on a rampage in Cyberpunk 2077, the NCPD pulls back and deems you a Cyberpsycho, so they send in their most elite and dangerous tactical unit who specializes in dealing with high-level threats like yourself. When MaxTac shows up in-game, fighting them can be a death-sentence depending on your build and skill level, so it's recommended that you just run away as soon as you hear their deployment sirens.

Sergeant Cross (Need For Speed: Most Wanted) - Sergeant Cross is a character who spends a considerable amount of time in NFS:MW harassing and attempting to shut the player down for illegal street racing. When you have a high enough heat level (past 5) when causing ruckus in the open world, there's a chance he might show up in his custom police Corvette to personally deal with you. His car is tough and also pretty fast, so it's easy for him to bust you by surprise if you're not careful.

The Military (Old Grand Theft Auto Games) - The most classic example of this. Reaching a 6-star wanted level in any GTA game previous to GTA 4 (with the exception of Chinatown Wars for some reason since that one came out after 4 and the military does show up there despite them not being present in 4) has the police pull back so that the National Guard can step in just to take you down. Survival is extremely difficult because not only do they wield the most powerful weapons of the game (especially in GTA 3 where the M4s were just basically miniguns), they go as far as sending tanks after you and fighter jets if you take off in an aircraft (GTA SA). It was fun as a kid to see just how long I could last with a 6-star wanted level on me in various different GTA games and I hope GTA VI brings the military back even if it's unrealistic.

Riko (jjk), Moon (To Be Hero X), Canary (Hxh)

When the character is about to have a happy moment but gets shot in the head instead

Katniss and President Snow - Hunger Games franchise

Alucard and Father Anderson - Hellsing

- Beastly - blind touter gets magically cured

- Annabelle's wish - mute boy gets magically cured

- Fairytopia - wingless fairy gest her wings

I always felt weird seing this trope, becouse in real life people don't get some "magical" solution that fixes their disability. People have to live with them.

It would be amazing if that could happen, but seing this trope happen and framed as happy ending just feels wrong knowing some of those are incurable in real life.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: One of our main characters speaks deragatorily about the Kingsguard's "pretty white robes" and revels in the chance to batter the elite guards of the crown

The Horus Heresy: From the average Space Marine there's not much disdain towards the soldiers themselves who defend the Throne World, the position is considered a punishment and we see Marines shudder with disgust at the idea of being forced to stay home instead of crusading across the galaxy

Oblivion: While the Knights of the Thorn are well equipped with magical items and hold all of the power and influence you'd expect a Knightly Order to, no one respects them. The guard all see the Knights as layabouts and drunken troublemakers who do little of note

[Special Mention]

Star Wars: The Coruscant Guard is actually not an example of this trope! The reason why I mention it at all is because they were originally what inspired this post, as I've always heard people talking about how the Coruscant Guard is disliked by their fellow clones and I had just taken people's word for it when I was reading and watching lore stuff growing up. When reading and doing research though it seems as though this is entirely untrue, as far as I can tell there's no evidence the Guard is viewed this way and in fact it's likely the opposite as much of the Coruscant Guard is made up of decorated soldiers. This misconception I've believed and I've heard other people spout is seemingly entirely fanon, it's kinda cope because the Clone Wars fan base at large aren't big fans of the Guard since they serve as antagonists in two of the most important arcs in the show

Rick and Morty – S1E11 ("Ricksy Business") – Jerry and Beth go to a Titanic reenactment, where a cleaning lady harasses Jerry and tries to rape him, but Beth saves him.

Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire (2023) – in the bar/cantina scene, a local thug sexually assaults Gunnar, while Cora responds by beating the thug up.

Awake (2021) – a group of escaped criminals see the female main character's teenage son and quite openly say that they want to rape him. The main character successfully defends her son.

The Flower and the Empress (2019) – in prison, female guards going to rape the male lead, but the female lead arrives and saves him.

This isn't for people who make single mistakes and pay dearly for them. This is somebody who does EVERYTHING wrong in their time during the story. Usually very entertaining to watch, much like a train wreck in slow motion.

1. Cersei Lannister (ASOIAF)

(This largely applies only to the book version of Cersei, since the show makes her more of a valid contestant to the throne. However, in the books, Cersei is quite different.)

Cersei Lannister is the Queen of the Realm, and at the beginning of the books, is wife to King Robert Baratheon. Their marriage is a testy one, and Cersei orchestrates Robert's death so her firstborn son, Joffrey, can ascend to the throne. Joffrey proves an even worse ruler than her loutish husband, and his short-sighted cruelty and impulsiveness proves a terrible combination. Consequently, Joffrey dies at his wedding (which Cersei blames on her reviled brother Tyrion), leaving her nextborn son, Tommen, to take the throne. Since Tommen is too young to formally ascend, Cersei becomes the informal ruler of the throne as the Queen Regent.

While we've seen Cersei from other characters' points of view, the fourth book, A Feast For Crows, gives us our first perspective of Cersei from her own eyes. And boy howdy, is she a mess. Cersei's POV characters are wracked with paranoia (believing that Tyrion and the Tyrells, a rival family married to her son, are in the walls and waiting for her to slip up). Having also lost her cold and distant father, Tywin, Cersei is also driven by a desperate need to upstage her father and prove herself valid after he disregarded her for her whole life due to her being a woman. All the while, Cersei is a raging narcissist who refuses any questioning or critique whatsoever.

This means that Cersei makes MASSIVE mistakes in her tenure as the Queen Regent. She regularly destroys her family's alliances out of petty spite or a fear they might take any concession as a means to upstage her. She rids herself of her father's trusted councilors the moment they criticize her, and replaces them with stooges and sycophants. In one damning case, she bankrupts the kingdom further by building a new navy... only to entrust the navy to an untrustworthy rogue because she thought he was sexy. And, wanting to establish her legacy right off the bat, Cersei makes brash decisions such as allowing the Church to carry arms in exchange for relieving their debt to the crown while they're in the midst of a literal fundamentalist uprising.

After three books where we watch characters like Jon, Tyrion, and Dany deal with the realities and harsh lessons of careful realpolitik, Cersei's entire character arc shows what happens if someone ignored every single one of those lessons. As a result, she undergoes a devastating fall from grace when her instilled leader of the church turns on her with his newfound power and imprisons her due to her sins. Her brown-nosing "allies" leave her to her fate the moment she no longer has power, and her navy ends up becoming a massive loss when her crush absconds with it to become a pirate lord. And to top it off, her washerwoman has been shrinking her clothes!

2) Jackie Aprile Jr. (The Sopranos)

Jackie Aprile Jr. is the son of the former Boss of the DiMeo crime family, Jackie Sr. Jackie Sr. was a respected mafia leader, a renown boss, and considered a high point of the family. Jackie Jr... is not.

Jackie Jr was familiar with the Mafia, but his father kept him out of the family business and encouraged him to take on a civilian life. After his father's death and at his behest, Jackie goes into medicine at Rutgers University, and strikes up a romantic relationship with the new boss's (and series protagonist, Tony Soprano) daughter, Meadow. This puts him in an EXCELLENT position as either a civilian or an associate to the family, and all he has to do is sit back and focus on his life. However, Jackie Jr considers the Mafia to be his birthright, and effectively forces himself into the DiMeo family.

Tony doesn't want Jackie Jr in the family, partially out of respect for Jackie Sr, and partially because Jackie Jr is a complete and utter liability. He shows a lack of foresight, is too dumb to consider anything beyond the best possible scenario for his schemes (leading to him regularly getting excess attention and his crew injured), and thinks he's more important than he actually is. He regularly invokes his father to the point where it becomes a catchphrase, despite the fact that his father's reputation only goes so far when he keeps poking the bear.

Still, Jackie can't leave well enough alone, and keeps acting like an established mobster despite not making his bones. He flunks out of Rutgers because he keeps skipping classes, and he ruins his relationship with Meadow AND Tony when he gets caught separately by the two of them cheating on her. Tony informs him that he's done with his shit. Jackie decides he's not done, and tries to pull a hail mary to get back in the family's graces by copying one of Tony's moves from his early years: robbing a Mafia card game. Naturally, this goes terribly wrong, and Jackie kills a Mafia associate and shoots a Made Man, making him a dead man walking. After pitifully begging for another chance from Tony, Jackie gets unceremoniously shot when hiding in a Jersey slum.

Jackie Jr. is remembered for being one of the dumbest characters in a show with no shortage of them, and the thing that separates him from the rest of them is just how badly he fumbled his hand. He had basically everything in life handed to him, and he could have been a success if he just stayed his course. Instead, he wound up dead in a snowbank, all because he REALLY wanted to be a gangster, but refused to learn any of the lessons he needed to learn for it.

3) Twitch (Holes/Stanley Yelnats' Survival Guide to Camp Green Lake)

This is admittedly a pretty out-there example, but the popular children's novel Holes had a companion guide where the protagonist, Stanley Yelnats, tells kids going to Camp Green Lake how to survive there like he did. He also details his experiences and stories with his various bunk mates at the juvenile detention facility.

Twitch, a teenager imprisoned for grand theft auto, has a pretty sparse role in the original novel (mostly serving as Zero's replacement to the tent before Stanley runs off to find Zero in the desert). The Survival Guide goes more in-depth about his role at the camp, and Stanley tells us in no uncertain terms that Twitch was an example of what not to do at Camp Green Lake.

From the beginning, Twitch was an obtrusive and over-talkative inmate. Stanley details every single rule Twitch broke on his first day alone, including...

• Talking over everyone (Everyone's tired as hell, and Camp Green Lake very much values their pecking order)
• Going through other camper's things (Those are the only ties those campers have to their homes, and touching them is a great way to get your ass beat)
• Mouthing off to Mr. Sir (Mr. Sir is incredibly sadistic, and deliberately encourages Twitch to over-exert himself on the first day he digs his hole, which Stanley tells us is the toughest day)
• Drinks all his water in one go (You're encouraged to conserve your canteen as much as possible throughout the day, since the truck gets in late and refills aren't guaranteed)
• Asks his neighbors for their water (Nobody's giving you what you wasted)

Stanley even half-joking comments that the last thing he heard before he ran from Camp Green Lake was Twitch telling everyone to look at the cool lizard he found with yellow spots. (If you get bit by one of those, nothing will save you.)

1. The second episode of The Red Ape Family has the main guy wake up from a nightmare and say “we got hated on by a bunch of trolls in their mothers basement“ then there was the jab at Saberspark with “Saberfart“.

2. The Watchmojo crashout in response to a video criticising them.

Sindel (Mortal Kombat Annihilation) - After arriving, she says this line to Kitana.

Johnny (The Room) - After arriving on the roof, he says this.

Emmet and Clara - Back To The Future: Part 3 (1990)

Probably one of the more well known examples of this trope. While there’s only a 14 year age difference between the Actors, the character of Clara is only about 30, while Doc Brown is around 65. Despite this, age isn’t really brought up in the film, and their relationship is treated pretty wholesomely, with them bonding over a shared interest of History and Joules Verne, resulting in them eventually starting a family together.

Renee and Paz - The Boroughs (2026)

In The Duffer Brothers’ new show, two of the main Renee, a retired music manager and Paz, a younger security guard at the titular retirement village: “The Boroughs”, begin secretly seeing each other, while investigating the shady goings on at the facility. Unlike the first example, the age difference is acknowledged multiple times, and is a point of tension between the two, as Renee is more self conscious and somewhat apprehensive about what people might think if news got out, while Paz doesn’t seem that worried about the whole thing. However, by the end of the series, they decide to stick together, not caring what people think of them both.

Lisbeth and Mikael - The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Millennium Trilogy)

In The Millennium series, Lisbeth and Mikael have a pretty unusual relationship, as what starts off as a professional partnership, between a mid 20’s hacker, opposed to strangers, and an early 40’s reporter, standoffish to the woman who hacked him, quickly evolves into something much more, as they both come to realise they have an undeniable mutual attraction, and compliment each other well.

Sadly, things don’t exactly work out between the two, but less because of the age thing, and more down to them being from very different “worlds”, with Lisbeth feeling a sense of imposter syndrome among Mikael’s reporter community, along with Mikael’s struggle to commit to a single relationship (he couldn’t stay faithful to even his own wife), eventually leading to Lisbeth deciding to leave, forcing herself to hate Mikeal, because loving him is too painful.

However, the ending of the third book does kind of leave things open between the two, with Lisbeth inviting Mikeal into her apartment implying the possibility of them maybe getting back together.

(Honourable Mention) Rebecca and Sam - Ted Lasso (Season 2)

Technically this one is an honourable mention, as it’s more of a limited time relationship, but I felt it was worth putting anyway. Essentially, Rebecca, owner of The Richmond Football Team and Sam, one of it’s key players, start using a dodgy blind dating app, and unbeknownst to both of them, make a good match, and end up arranging to see each other at a restaurant, where they finally realise who each other are. Despite things initially being awkward, they both find they get along surprisingly well, and continue to secretly see each other for a little while. Despite this though, the two do later decide to go their separate ways, due how this could effect their very public lives as club owner and professional player respectively, with Sam starting a side venture as a restauranteur, while Rebecca eventually finds someone new.

Morrigan Aensland (Darkstalkers): S-class demon who had her power divided and even then,she could fight against other demons who are so powerful they could affect entire solar systems.

Erza Scarlet (Fairy Tail): One of the strongest battle mages of the entire world,she's also called Titania ''The Queen of Fairies''.

Sara Pezzini (Witchblade): She's bonded to the Witchblade,a cosmic object born out of two ancient creation gods.

Inoue Orihime (Bleach): She can alter causality by rejecting events,going as far as being able to erase someone from reality.

Characters who display weaponized earnestness, relentless optimism, and a passion for planning & actually following through - with no mention of medicamentation whatsoever… My type-b ass could never

- Leslie Knope (Parks and Recreation)
- Amy Santiago (Brooklyn 99)
- Monica Geller (Friends)
- Janine Teagues (Abbott Elementary)
- Judy Hopps (Zootopia)
- Annie Edson (Community): with a * because Little Annie Adderall was a thing

- In Fullmetal Alchemist, Edward and Alphonse attempt to do a human transmutation trying to bring their mother back to life, it doesn't work and they pay the price for it as Ed loses his leg and Al his entire body.

- In Witch Hat Atelier, upon finding out how magic is cast Coco attempts to trace the spell circles in a spellbook not knowing what they do, the spell she accidentally cast covered her entire house, destroying it and turning her mother into stone.

The Simpsons appearing on Sesame Street

Smosh playing Mario Kart 8 with fucking Shigeru Miyamoto

I love when characters in media are shown to be musical bands, artists, or singers. At the same time, these artists' music seeps into real life, and you can listen to it.

This trope does NOT include artists originally created for musical projects (like Gorillaz). I'm talking more about characters that exist independently in a work of media but have an album.

• KDA (Riot Games): Originally conceived as a cosmetic skin line, Riot Games turned the game's champions (Akali, Kaisa, Ahri, and Evelynn, then Seraphine later on) into a K-pop girl group. The musical project did numbers with real-life K-pop artists collaborating on the project.
• Trapnest (Nana): Trapnest is a fictional band in the world of Nana. They are one of the most popular bands in the story. When the anime was released, a whole musical album of Trapnest was also released that fans could listen to.
• Heartsteel (Riot Games): Similar to KDA, Heartsteel is another K-pop group created by Riot Games that took 6 popular male champions (K'sante, Ezreal, Kayn, Aphelios, Sett, and Yone) and was formed after the popularity of KDA, but this time targeting the boy group niche.

Edit: I forgot to include Scylla from Hades 2.

Caleb Widogast (Critical Role)

Caleb is the party's pyromancer wizard, exceptionally gifted in casting (and creating) any spell related to fire. Except prior to the campaign he was tricked into burning his family alive and was deeply traumatized by the experience. This hasn't been addressed quite as much in the animated adaptation, but in the actual play (especially in the beginning) Caleb had to roll a save every time he killed someone with fire. His pyromancy was initially treated more like a form of punishment, constantly forcing himself to be reminded of murdering his family.

Percy Jackson (Percy Jackson/Heroes of Olympus)

While adventuring in Alaska, Percy very nearly drowned in mud. This really messed him up, enough that (despite having spent 6ish years regularly breathing water) he spends much of the next book afraid of being submerged, irrationally certain that he will drown. He's a bit hard on himself, noting that it's ridiculous for a child of Poseidon to be afraid of water, but it takes him a good while to get over his fear.

Repost because of misspelling

Vox from Hazbin Hotel - While Vox is multimedia Overlord, being all about popularity and that, his voice actor Christian Borle doesn't even have YouTube. He's barely online.

Alastor from Hazbin Hotel - Meanwhile with Alastor, who's a Radio demon, not using internet, phone and such, his voice actor Amir Talai is very online like on TikTok.