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.

• 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

This trope is so haunting to me because it reminds me of how most people treat other human beings.

Examples:

• Polyphemus (Christopher Nolan's Odyssey) - In Christopher Nolan's adaptation of the Odyssey, Polyphemus plays a less significant role but the segment is all the same. Odysseus and his men find a random cave full of cheese, they take the cheese and feel they're entitled to it only to find out it's whole to a man-eating giant. What makes this version of the story haunting is how Polyphemus doesn't talk to the Ithicans, he instead treats them as extensions of his sheep, keeping them trapped, moving them around when they to escape and just devouring them at random whenever. When it's revealed that he can speak, the others wonder why he didn't before, Odysseus states "Would you talk to ants?"
• Ape City (Planet of the Apes) - A trio of astronauts crash land on what they assume is a desolate planet only to find other humans, but they seem less intelligent and incapable of speech. Later they discover that there are sapient primates who hunt these humans down. The Apes ride on horse with guns and shoot them down or lead them into nets, they pose with dead human bodies, take living humans as test subjects or zoo animals, and even dissect, lobotomize, and stuff humans. What's even crazier is how the governments treats them like an invasive species or even some invading monster army kind of like Helldivers.
• Animal-Humans (Animan) - In this horrific world, there was an experiment conducted on a lamb which caused it to give birth to babies that can only eat meat, this lamb became known as the Virgin Maiden and would go on to spawn the Animal-Human race. In parts of the world, Animal-Humans treats Humans like animals. Some communities will keep human beings in cages and let run loose into the wild where they can hunt them, even using children specifically trained to track other humans. They also are willing to devour human beings alive, rip them to pieces as needed, and treat them like pets. Because Humans are still human in this world, some Animal-Humans even used Humans for sexual purposes (the protagonist finds a sheep raping a woman and kills the sheep). There was also one case where a Cow kidnapped a couple in the woods, he murdered the boyfriend then stripped the woman to... harvest her... milk... What's also interesting is that Humans still remain dominant in this world and some even eat Animal-Humans... This manga kind of went from being cool to weird really quick.
  

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.

​

Yujiro vs Baki (Baki)

Miyata vs Arnie Gregory (Hajime no Ippo)

Mejiro Mcqueen and Gold Ship (Uma Musume Pretty Derby)

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.

- 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.

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.

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.

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

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

​

Whether because of Mastery over the form, not having time to throw in the usual reused footage, or a stylistic choice. Seeing a character casually transform in the background or with little effort and fanfare is always cool.

Okarun (DanDaDan): DanDaDan does this a lot, having Okarun transform in the background or during conversations, often to little actual fanfare until the combat starts.

Power Rangers: Done in every series at least once, rather than taking out the morpher and yelling catchphrases, they transform in a flash of appropriately coloured light and leap into action (or more commonly having leapt before the transformation takes place)

Naruto: Naruto having mastered the Nine Tails Chakra Mode to the point he can speak and transform at the same time.

Goku, Vegeta, Gohan (Dragon Ball) Having all mastered Super Saiyan to a level that what once took a solid minute of screaming can be done on the spot. (Special shoutout to Goku who also mastered Kaioken to be able to use it, whilst balancing Super Siayan Blue, whilst being actively tossed by his leg by his strongest foe, when before it took a minute+ of focus)

Having superhuman durability to the point you can break an object by just STANDING STILL because your skin is too hard that it breaks the enemy's weapon.

•MegaMind

Tighten is unaffected by Megamind's glove, another scene is showing MetroMan got zero damage after Roxanne throw stuff at him

•Invincible break Miyamoto Usagi's katana

It's only a fanart by Ryan Ottley, but it's a great example for the power demonstration.

•Justice League: Throne Of Atlantis

Aquaman break a thug's knife

•The Boys

Homelander takes zero damage from Queen Maeve's Sword and destroys it with his superhuman durability.

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

To get one thing out of the way, no I am not saying that the 1970s onwards were some amazing year to be LGBT+, just that pre-1970s is what I consider "Old" or "Classic Movies" (films from the 70s onwards would be modern classics, to me at least, I know everyone considers these things differently). I had to cut it off at some point. I could make a whole different post for portrayals in the 70s, or 80s, or even 90s (where things got better, but still weren't great).

Anyway, this is for portrayals of LGBT+ characters prior to 1970 that are surprisingly good, especially given the context they were being written in. They don't have to be good by todays standards, just "fair for its day". The character itself doesn't have to be morally good, they just have to be nuanced and their sexuality can't be considered a major fault.

Examples in the photos:

• Image 1 - Theo in The Haunting (1963). Now, this is pure subtext, but Theo is intended to be a lesbian (or at least attracted to women) and the film isn't overly subtle about it either. While Theo is not a perfect person, she has her faults, she also is never treated as wrong or unsettling because of her sexuality. At worst you could maybe say that her treatment of Eleanor is poor and linked to being attracted to her, but even then I think there's a subtle distinction made between Theo acting that way because Theo and Theo acting that way because she's a lesbian. Indeed, there are scenes which could be interpreted as characters being homophobic towards her, and these scenes seem to be presented as bad. I've not read the book, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, but my understanding is that the subtext does come from the book.
• Image 2 - Richard the Lionheart in The Lion in Winter (1968). The film (probably inaccurately) portrays Richard as gay (or at least attracted to men). The French king in fact used that to seduce him in the past. Now, while Richard's sexuality did result in him being used by the French king, this is no different than all the other examples of sexual manipulation in the film, most of which are opposite sex. Richard himself is presented as a complex, sympathetic character (he's at least no worse than the other main characters). Unlike Theo in The Haunting, the sexuality is much more explicit.

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.

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.

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.

The Simpsons appearing on Sesame Street

Smosh playing Mario Kart 8 with fucking Shigeru Miyamoto

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.)

Call of Duty Advanced Warfare, Will Iron's funeral

Tekken 8, Jin v. Leroy QTE

Final Fantasy 16, Clive

Extra points if the input is failable lol

The Simpsons: Homer Identifies that the Isotope Dog was made with ingredients enjoyed there

Looney Tunes: Bugs Bunny remarks that he should've take a left turn there

Breaking Bad: It takes place there

High School Musical: East High School is supposedly located there even though it's actually at Salt Lake City

Albuquerque: *Bottom Text*

No... Seriously... How do I know Five Different References to Albuquerque?!

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.