Character Derailment/Newspaper Comics


 * Probably the most extreme example out of this page, Jerkass Amoral Attorney Steve Dallas gets kidnapped by aliens and Brainwashed into a touchy-feely, effeminate hippie. Ironic, because this is also one of the best cases of Tropes Are Not Bad. Avoiding Snap Back and We Want Our Jerk Back typically associated with this trope for several years, Steve Dallas becomes a much more sympathetic character and even patches up his relationship with his mother during this time period.
 * This character also a rare case of this trope being subverted; at the end of Bloom County's run he ends up derailing himself again into exactly the same character before.
 * Actually, Steve ended up being too annoying, and Hodge-Podge did start to want the original Steve back.
 * Also another example of Tropes Are Not Bad, Opus from the same comic was derailed from a generic Funny Animal to the neurotic, politics obsessed, couch potato materialist we all know and love today.
 * That one may be a better example of Characterization Marches On.
 * This happens again in Bloom County with Bill the Cat. For most of the comic, when he wasn't in a drug-induced coma or brain dead, he did nothing but spout gibberish. Toward the end of the comic's run, he was kidnapped and had Donald Trump's brain transplanted into him.
 * The dad in The Family Circus was originally a lot more buffoonish, and used to be more devious -- such as sneaking his own booze into a sporting event, banging on the table when Thel tries talking to him, et cetera. By the 1970s he was a lot trimmer and wore glasses, and his personality became a lot more sympathetic. His is yet another example of Tropes Are Not Bad.
 * Not too many people know that the US Acres segments on Garfield and Friends were based on a comic strip of the same name, also created by Garfield creator Jim Davis. In any event, there weren't too many changes from the US Acres strip to the animated version... except in two characters: Bo Sheep went from The Ditz to a somewhat normal-intelligence Surfer Dude; and Sheldon lost his introspective, meditating edge to become basically a one-note character whose main joke was that his shell was a Clown Car Base.
 * That's nothing! In the original comics, Lanolin was a loud-mouthed Jerkass, who would even give Roy a run for his money, yet in the TV series, she wasn't quite as vicious towards Roy as she was in the comics, but at least she still kept her propensity for yelling at the others when really mad.