Hype Backlash

"Rabinowitz: What are you reading? Topper Harley: Great Expectations. Rabinowitz: Is it any good? Topper Harley: It's not what I'd hoped for."

- Hot Shots Part Deux

Your friends have been bugging you to watch the latest TV show that everyone's talking about. Every newspaper raves about its originality, well-deserved popularity, and effective mix of comedy and drama, on the front page of the Entertainment section. The critics are rushing to hail it as the re-definition of its genre. After the thirtieth or so "Just watch it already, geez!" and maybe a Hype Aversion stage, you finally give in, pop the DVD in your player, and lay back to enjoy the latest masterpiece...

...Except you come away with a very different opinion than your friends; to you, it's at best a mediocre show with average plots and few laughs or an utterly confusing one with more than enough Shocking Swerves to boggle the mind, a show that definitely isn't the seminal classic everyone's touting it as. What on earth did everybody see in this?

Usually occurs when Quality by Popular Vote fails. Most often, the work isn't bad in itself and would easily have been accepted as a solid and enjoyable work by the same person under different circumstances. But few things can live up to being praised as perfect works of pure genius by lots of people for long. To someone who was expecting nothing short of a flawless masterpiece, the disappointment of anything less can be bitter indeed. Bonus irony if the disappointment stems from the viewer having seen the work's elements done to death already, when the work had originated those clichés!

This trope is often the root of the gulf that can exist between the critical praise a show receives and the public reaction to it. Critics have a loud voice in influencing people about what they think is worth seeing, but it's not uncommon for them and the public to have different tastes, expectations, and demands.

This trope can also show up when, for the person disappointed by the work, something is heavily over-analyzed or praised as being more rebellious, challenging or intellectually 'deep' than it is. It's common for people coming to something that has been praised to the moon for its iconoclastic bravery or intellectual complexity to find that what they are watching is neither as revolutionary or deep as they've been led to believe. In some cases, the revolutionary unique show you're watching was only revolutionary when it was made.

If the people who are praising the work are also spoiling it in their praise, Hype Backlash becomes very likely. Almost guaranteed to occur if fans claim the work is a Trope Codifier, and/or that it's the inspiration of everything, including your beloved obscure work that was released years before it but is not as popular.

Over-enthusiastic fans can also provoke this reaction; of course, a fan of something is always going to be particularly committed and convinced of it's quality, but they can let their enthusiasm get out of hand. Often, this trope results when a person initially only had a mild dislike, or even just a passive disinterest, in a particular work - until over-enthusiastic fans of the work start harping on and/or berating the person for not enjoying the work as much as they do. This can often have the affect of making the person suddenly hate the work that he or she previously had no strong antipathy towards.

The true backlash comes when the person who "doesn't get it" becomes so irritated at others' tendency to see that work as absolutely perfect that they put as much energy into downplaying or nitpicking it to show that it isn't as wonderful as everybody seems to think it is. If pitted against a fan base so utterly enthralled with the work that they consider the slightest criticism to be an act of war, the two camps can degenerate into a vicious conflict very swiftly.

Of course, sometimes the thing really does suck according to general consensus and it becomes Deader Than Disco.

This, as well as Hype Aversion, is often a result of someone who may have been burned one too many times with "Try it - you'll like it!" promises in Real Life. Face it, everyone has one of those experiences. You probably remember as a kid being told to try something that looks and smells absolutely unappetizing at all, with the assurance that "You'll like it" by your parents/guardians that you actually thought tasted horrible. As natural, this happens with entertainment too, especially annoying since some people can be quite overzealous about recommending a show to a friend. There is nothing bad about recommending a work to a friend, but if they don't show an interest in it, then it's generally a good idea to back off. Sometimes, they might actually see it not because they think it might be good, but to shut you up, meaning they're already viewing it through Jade-Colored Glasses.

See I Do Not Like Green Eggs and Ham for when the subject really does live up to the hype. When the opposite to this trope occurs, and something is condemned and criticized in such a way as to make it impossible that the work is as bad as it is made out to be, that's Critical Backlash.

Related to Hollywood Hype Machine, along with healthy doses of Opinion Myopia and Fan Myopia. See also Wanting Is Better Than Having for when this is used as an Aesop or to refer to the psychology behind it.

Anime and Manga

 * Anime and Manga in general, especially in the wake of the Toonami and Tokyopop booms and the prominence of the fandom as a semi-organized entity.
 * Fullmetal Alchemist is starting to suffer from this now that there are two different series for it. Fans tend to trash the first series just because it didn't follow the manga. (It couldn't help that, the author told them to write their own story because she wanted it to be different because she was still writing it at the time). While the first series had a good bit of Fridge Logic it's still widely considered to be one of the greatest anime series' of all time. But when the later manga volumes came out, especially after the start of Brotherhood, people started trashing it.
 * Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is also suffering from this because while it does follow the original manga, the first half bothers viewers because it feels more rushed than the first series, that had better pacing when you compare the episodes.
 * This is because the first anime followed the manga's plot for its first third or so. Brotherhood tried to rush through that part as quickly as possible so it didn't feel like a retread.
 * Yet this backfired, and it ended up feeling like even more of a retread, and a badly planned out one at that. Good thing that the remainder of the series is basically one giant Crowning Moment of Awesome...
 * Remember when Inuyasha first aired on Adult Swim? Remember how it was praised to the point of being widely hailed across the Internet as the greatest anime of all time? Well, that time has long passed. The series is now widely considered to be a complete and utter joke by most anime fans and reviewers.
 * Haruhi Suzumiya, to the point where certain Image Boards immediately brand anyone that likes it a bandwagon jumper... even though these communities are themselves bandwagons and pride themselves as such. As a popular part of the show, the title character specifically gets a good deal as well.
 * Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Mannerisms from the series adopted by fans tend to be... noticeable.
 * In an interesting twist, most of the backlash is directed at one specific character who needs no introduction. The tendency of the fans to not know when the hell to shut up about Kamina has unfortunately pressed some people to hate the character.
 * There was a time when Neon Genesis Evangelion was hailed as the anime: the greatest, the ultimate series, the Crowning Moment of Awesome for all of animation in general. Nowadays, you'll be hard-pressed to find a review that doesn't brutally deconstruct the series.
 * Code Geass R2 is a bizarre case; looking at the ANN anime rankings, most of the users who voted hailed the series as a masterpiece; on other popular forums, such as Animesuki and Toonzone, scores and reviews are lower but generally still positive. Notable because, within a short span of time, it went from being popular to being a popular target for bloggers mocking its many plot holes and over-fondness of increasingly bizarre twists. By the end of R2's Japanese run, this was so pervasive that it had become trendy to defend the show from its detractors. The backlash got backlashed.
 * Shonen fighting anime often fall into this for various reasons, whether it be length, no reasonable explanation for new abilities, or just the overall style of these shows. Specific examples include Soul Eater and Naruto.
 * And then there's Bleach, which is arguably the biggest victim of this out of the Shonen category. It was originally considered one of the greatest anime of the new decade, but after a few years and the fact that nobody dies in Bleach, many people now think it's boring, slow, and repetitive.
 * FLCL, aka Fooly Cooly: Deeply symbolic, and you would need to take several graduate-level classes to appreciate all of its artistry. Or grossly-overrated fap fodder, full of dated parodies that weren't particularly funny when they were current. Depends on who you ask.
 * In Fresh Pretty Cure, Setsuna gets a ton of screentime, has her own arc and a lot of focus on her development before and after, and is practically promoted to co-lead, and she's really popular with fanartists. Miki loses her screentime more and more as the show goes on, the Periphery Demographic doesn't like her despite her uniform suggesting that she was designed for them, and a character poll says that only three point five percent of children watching the show liked her best. The LiveJournal community responded by practically becoming Setsuna's Hatedom and Miki's InstantFanclub.

Comic Books

 * Neil Gaiman. There was a style change between earlier books written/co-written by Gaiman and American Gods.
 * Scott Pilgrim is a very fun, quirky series. Unfortunately, it's being touted as some kind of revolution in the comics industry when it's mostly a well-constructed web comic in print form. Unique in the world of executive-run comic pages -- but the kind of quirky, in-jokey humor that's been available on the web for years. ... and Hollywood turned it into a movie.
 * Which, while very well received by the critics and those who saw it, didn't do all that well. Hollywood must be experiencing this trope with it now.
 * Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns were two of the major comic books credited with bringing a more adult, mature sensibility to superhero comics in the mid-1980s. However, like many things that have been hyped to Jupiter, new readers may find them off-putting, impenetrable, or dated; and the nature and tone of them both means that some may find them works to be admired for their historical significance more than enjoyed. It doesn't help that the "mature"' sensibility both are credited with creating was arguably closer to 'adolescent', since many subsequent creators who followed in their footsteps missed the point entirely and decided that "mature" meant books full of pointless sex, graphic violence, and swearing.
 * A lot of Grant Morrison's work falls into this trope for some people.

Fan Works

 * RE-TAKE is often advertised as being "basically canon" and as such was pretty much begging for this trope. The fact that the comic actually has some very serious problems in both pacing and characterization definitely does not help matters.
 * Fanfics in general can acquire pretty rabid fans who are quite vocal about their belief that their favorite fic is a work of literary brilliance, and tend to gush praise for it whenever they can. While some fics widely promoted as good really are good, the fan hype machine for some (especially for Shipping fics) can just as easily leave one wondering what the big deal is, and sometimes a fic with rampant popularity can be genuinely bad. Not helped by the fact that avid fans of some fics will jump on anyone who criticizes them, accusing the critics of being philistines with no taste, jealous of the author, or similar.
 * Possibly Shipping, though it's even less objective than hype in general and therefore might not qualify.

Film
"Sometimes a movie achieves such legendary status that it can't quite live up to its reputation. Plan 9 from Outer Space is not one of these movies. It is just as magnificently terrible as you've heard."
 * 300. For those who didn't like it, the world is getting quite disenfranchising.
 * Titanic. It won quite a few Oscars and was popular when it came out; but it is a long film whose narrative core is a love story about Star-Crossed Lovers on the Titanic. The love story is so basic and archetypal, and so much the focus, that the film borders on epic Real Person Fic romance with Original Characters. (It is possible that one or both of the leads are Black Hole Sues.) If you like that sort of thing (and many do), it's a beautiful and moving film. If you don't, it's Snark Bait. There's also a significant minority who are disgusted that Cameron used a historical disaster to tell a love story at all, despite the Tear Jerker treatment given to the rest of the disaster.
 * Cloverfield. Many of the problems of The Blair Witch Project. The good news is, they knew better than to promote it as real. The bad news was that the Mind Screw was cranked to 11.
 * The Blair Witch Project -- for some, effective psychological horror. But it was deliberately amateurish-looking, and its resolution had some Gainax Ending in it. That it was promoted as real when it was fiction didn't help. Neither did the stories of some fainting in fear and being terrified to leave the cinema after viewing it, for those with stronger constitutions at least.
 * It's the same for Paranormal Activity, crammed up to 11.
 * Which would make the adverts for the sequel up to 111.
 * The original Star Wars trilogy can suffer from this trope; several decades of intense critical and fan appreciation can make watching the movies a little disillusioning for someone who didn't grow up with them. Or even for someone who did.
 * Even the first Star Wars movie suffered from this during its initial theatrical run. In the summer of 1977, it was a runaway box office success the likes of which hadn't been seen since 1939. Lines outside the movie theater ticket windows stretched around the block, sometimes twice. It might be months before the average viewer mustered the time and energy to brave the box office crowds and finally see it, during which time everybody was talking about just how doggone great Star Wars was. Thus, the average viewer's expectations for this film were astronomical. Even Star Wars could never live up to this degree of hype.
 * And of course, the triumphant example of frustrated hype that was The Phantom Menace (though being released sixteen years after the last movie, it would be hard to please everyone). The other two in the prequels get it as well (Revenge of the Sith less so).
 * Citizen Kane tends to suffer from this these days. Although a fine movie and a worthy and significant achievement in cinema, it suffers from this partly due to a well-known ending (avoid the link if you want to avoid a spoiler, incidentally), partly due to sheer age, partly due to the fact that many of the techniques and stylistic functions it pioneered (some refined from forgotten silent films) have been copied so many times they're a bit old hat, but mostly because almost every film critic ever loudly insists that it's the greatest movie ever made and say no movie made before or since will ever compare to it. Welles himself wasn't that impressed with the film (he was much prouder of his adaptation of The Trial).
 * Brokeback Mountain. One suspects that a lot of critics only lavished awards on it so that they would appear progressive.
 * Many of the big Oscar-winning movies since 2000 or so tend to suffer from this, in fact. This is partly because there are few bigger forms of hype in culture than the Oscars, and movies which sweep the awards tend to provoke increased interest in them as a result of their victory, and are often accompanied by widespread critical acclaim and/or massive amounts of promotion and PR. It doesn't help that, in recent years in particular, a formula used by studios for making movies "designed" to be nominated for Oscars has become increasingly apparent, which means that some audiences watching these movies might find them a bit samey and obvious in their intentions, and Hype Aversion to such films can result.
 * American Beauty won in 2000. Widely acclaimed as one of the finest achievements in American cinema at the time of its release, many viewers today find it a slightly pretentious movie with numerous Narmy moments.
 * The movie adaptation of Chicago. An entertainingly cynical but slight musical which -- even more perplexingly than the above -- was apparently the Best Picture of 2002 according to Oscar.
 * Crash (2004), a regular trope-o-rama... and not the good kind, either. It was initially hailed by as a meticulously plotted and provocative commentary on racism. It even won "Best Picture" pretty much entirely on that basis. When the film won, people criticized the Academy for not giving the award to Brokeback Mountain, which had almost unanimously swept every other award ceremony. Crash, as many would find out, had predictable plot twists (everyone learns not to be racist!), shoddy writing, characters that were two dimensional.
 * The Departed. It was a pretty good, well-made, nicely suspenseful little mob movie, which to the bemusement of many won Best Picture of 2006. Given that a lot of reaction from critics and fans was "good, but not quite up there with Martin Scorsese's finest works", many suggested that the real reason the movie won was because the Academy was finally throwing Scorsese a Best Director Oscar that was widely considered long overdue, even if the work itself wasn't nearly as good as the better films for which the Academy had previously snubbed Scorsese.
 * Slumdog Millionaire had morning television show hosts blowing smoke up its ass for months on end. In the run up to the Academy Awards it was presented as some sort of beloved underdog facing down a juggernaut, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; apparently by people who hadn't noticed that Button had gotten only mostly favorable reviews and Slumdog was directed by Danny fucking Boyle!
 * The fact that The Dark Knight and WALL-E, at the time widely considered to be the best films of 2008, were snubbed for the nominations (not just the award) also had something to do with the backlash against Slumdog.
 * The Hurt Locker, which was really a case of underdog vs. juggernaut (and just not any big picture: the highest-grossing film of all time). Gets particular hate from Avatar and Tarantino fans.
 * The English Patient was getting snide comments during the ceremony (from Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice no less). The major Adaptation Decay received flack for spending too much time on the long, melodramatic, morally myopic affair between the two very European leads when the under-examined topic of how World War II affected Africa and The Middle East fell by the wayside.
 * Avatar had a double dose of this. First, the film's secrecy led to Cameron's fans working themselves into a frenzy. When the first trailer revealed it to be, basically, Native American catpeople vs. Space Marines, the backlash was loud and immediate.
 * Reefer Madness is actually a rather dull movie to people expecting the over-the-top narmfest that the Internet makes it out to be.
 * The Scream trilogy. Much like Death Wish and First Blood before it, these were films that were seen as pretty novel and original when they were first released but their innovativeness has since then become so commonplace in the horror genre that people forget that there ever was a time when these ideas were original in the first place.
 * The Dark Knight: After making #1 on the IMDb top 250 Movies list for quite a duration, many unfortunate people went in expecting literally the best movie of all time. Those of us who remember that the IMDB Top 250 list is based on fan popularity (a barrage of "1/10" votes for The Godfather helped that movie to lose the top spot and has pretty much no credibility at all were still pretty peeved.
 * The Godfather tends to draw "It wasn't that good" reactions since it is the number 1 on every best film list. If it doesn't happen to come top of the list, then chances are it's only Citizen Kane that's beaten it. (except the IMDB, helmed by The Shawshank Redemption due to the thing done by fans of The Dark Knight mentioned above).
 * Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. While not quite as major as The Phantom Menace's backlash (and a bit of a Love It or Hate It situation), negative backlash was pretty vicious. Just like the Star Wars prequels, it was inevitable.
 * Pulp Fiction. When it was released, it played with narrative devices rarely seen in film (or at least, not in use for decades) and embraced pop-culture savvy and a coolness that essentially launched Quentin Tarantino's career and the whole "indie" film movement of the 90s (not to mention Samuel L. Jackson's career, and resurrecting John Travolta's). Unfortunately, it also spawned over a decade of "hip" Tarantino-esque clones so if you were to watch it now, you might be struck at how trite it feels (although it was the originator).
 * Likewise, Steve McQueen's Bullitt, which was touted as having the greatest car chase sequence ever filmed. And so it was -- in the 1960s! The "Greatest" tag is usually applied by car buffs who like it because it's got a Mustang and a Charger and is "pure" because it was mostly done for real and had no music. The layperson is likely to find that even a comedy like Wayne's World 2 has a more action-packed and spectacular car chase scene. Even the average episode of Top Gear contains more complex stunts than the ones in Bullitt (especially the Ford Fiesta Vs. Chevy Corvette shopping mall chase!)
 * Australia had a lot of buildup and looked like it was going to get Baz Luhrmann lots of critical praise and some award show love. When it came out, it was mostly found to be mediocre.
 * Used in The Fast Show to set up Mr. "I'll Get Me Coat" as he complains to his highbrow friends about an Ingmar Bergman film he watched: "What a waste of time... One, it was in black and white; two, it was subtitled! Nobody got their kit off, nobody got shot... (indignant looks all around)... I'll get me coat!"
 * The Watchmen film is arguably suffering a modicum of this just from all the comic fans frothing at the mouth over it. People who aren't familiar with the comic see it and come out going "A dark, cynical take on the superhero genre? We've seen that. Not too long ago, in fact." Basically, for the same reason as the comic book, above.
 * Juno was initially quite well received, but a year or so on, a lot of people began taking the view that it's nice, but didn't deserve all the critical praise and certainly not the Best Screenplay Oscar.
 * Juno is the best example of a mini-trend within Hype Backlash, in which good, quirky, sincere, original independent films like it seem to come out of nowhere and charm its first audiences. In other words, if you're one of those first viewers, it's a pleasant surprise because you hadn't heard anything about it, and hadn't seen a film quite like it, leading you to over-praise it a little or recommend it more than you would otherwise. Then, as the first wave of audiences start recommending it to friends, it becomes a "sleeper hit" and word of mouth continues, until its praise and attention has grown so out of proportion that disappointment is all but inevitable for new viewers, especially if they have low tolerance for quirk or blatant sincerity to begin with. Garden State, Little Miss Sunshine, the above Slumdog Millionaire, and (500) Days of Summer have also fallen victim.
 * Tim Burton. His status as an "emo icon" can be grating to some, and while he's done many good films, his brain farts can't be overlooked (what he wanted to do with Superman, the flaws in otherwise good Batman movies, his penchant for wanting to remake everything in his image, etc.).
 * Suspiria. Music and cinematography do a fine job of creating tension- up until the big reveal, when the limitations of 1970's special effects become apparent.
 * Any of the Twilight series. New Moon opening to the third biggest opening weekend ever demonstrates the "hype" bit. Unlike most of the examples on this page, however, it's not a matter of Seinfeld Is Unfunny so much as extreme hype.
 * Despite the massive hype behind it, the hatedom for Twilight is of almost equal size to the fandom.
 * The original The Matrix film was hyped endlessly by fans upon its release as being incredibly innovative and philosophical filmmaking. After all the excitement died down, many detractors discovered it to be little more than a poorly-acted exercise in style-over-substance, with the supposedly "deep" parts amounting to little more than a Philosophy 101 depiction of Skepticism. The sequels didn't help its status any.
 * The Exorcist. When nothing less than the poster for the movie is declaring it to be the "scariest movie ever!", it's just begging for this audience reaction.
 * An Amazon.com reviewer of Plan 9 from Outer Space solemnly promises that that movie would avert this trope:


 * Inglourious Basterds received some of this because quite a few people were mad that it was a dialogue-heavy dramedy that spoofed old World War II films instead of being the WWII version of Kill Bill.
 * Pixar can be a victim of this, from Fan Haters irritated by its rabid fanbase, fans of traditional 2D animation who credit Pixar with killing 2D animation and spawning the subsequent trend of crappy CGI animated movies, and people displeased with their lack of female protagonists.

Literature

 * The Da Vinci Code. Critics didn't really like the book, but it was a huge bestseller and was mostly hyped for controversial subject matter.
 * Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series was heralded as the next big thing since Harry Potter and also as an unique take on vampirism. Some very vocal people online attacked it for having Purple Prose, Mary Sues, and utterly ridiculous concepts (Vampires that sparkle? A "heroine" who deliberately puts her life in danger just to hear her love's voice?).
 * No matter how erudite they are, everyone has probably read (or been forced to read) a classic novel and been totally unable to comprehend why people worship it as a work of transcendent genius. The Great Gatsby is a major sufferer, and The Catcher in the Rye and War and Peace commonly suffer from this.
 * The Great Gatsby is one of the best examples for that. Yes, the writing itself is good, but the plot moves so slowly that things gets dull quickly. Until the last few chapters anyway.
 * Nightwood. Apparently, it was once a piece of radical "queer literature", promoting tolerance and stuff. By today's standards, however, the sheer quantity of all those Depraved Homosexuals, Psycho Lesbians, and Depraved Bisexuals, the Aesop is either broken or intentionally like that.
 * As much-beloved and influential The Lord of the Rings may be, many of Tolkien's fans believe he would still have benefited from an editor.
 * If your first exposure to Shakespeare came from one of his many, many starry-eyed worshipers, you might have been disappointed at the play you actually saw or read.
 * Hype Backlash is the only reason there have been a series of cults out to prove Shakespeare was someone else (Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere, etc.). There isn't a single bit of evidence to suggest the man from Stratford didn't write the plays, but he is so deified by academia and the theatre that an equal and opposite reaction was born out of sheer scientific necessity.
 * Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. Usually talked about reverentially as some kind of Citizen Kane of sci-fi series. It's actually not that well written, full of two-dimensional characters who often seem to have stepped out of bad pulp novels and a lot of its sci-fi ideas (Galactic Empires, interplanetary warfare, epic pan-galactic quests) have become genre clichés. It's not a bad series, of course, it's enjoyable enough but it doesn't really live up to its reputation. Especially when you consider that it defeated The Lord of the Rings to receive the Hugo Award as "Best All-Time Series."
 * Harry Potter. Given the astronomical amount of hype around the series (it's the best children's literature series in decades! It's a publishing phenomenon! It's giving children a reason to read again!), it's almost inevitable that some of those who come to it fresh are going to be somewhat underwhelmed in the process.
 * Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Many bought it without realizing that in order to "get" a Jane Austen-Zombie mashup, you have to have a tolerance for Jane Austen. It also hurts that the first zombie attack is quite a few chapters in, and most (though not all) of the comedy is either derived from the gimmick or appeals to Austen fans.

Live-Action TV

 * 30 Rock, especially with all those awards it keeps winning.
 * "Reimagining" of older or classic works. They're often entertaining in their own right, but no way are they going to meet the hype for most people, particularly the original fans, who will likely end up tearing its credibility limb from limb. Examples:
 * The Sci-Fi Channel's versions of Battlestar Galactica and Frank Herbert's Dune
 * The series Star Trek: Enterprise, whose difference from other installments was both its selling point and its Achilles' heel.
 * And even more so Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which ultimately split the fandom right down the middle because of its style.
 * Star Trek. Many people don't despise the shows and/or movies themselves. They despise the folks who say "Good Morning" in Klingon, come to work in a vintage TOS-era uniform, and say that Barrack Obama isn't nearly as good a leader as Jean-Luc Picard. So of course, they will avoid even a commercial for one of the shows or movies or books as if it's swine flu.
 * Curb Your Enthusiasm (may have been for being compared to Seinfeld)
 * Seinfeld itself could fall into this trope.
 * Buffy the Vampire Slayer particularly comes in for this. An entertaining and engaging vampire-horror series with a cute heroine, some funny lines and a tendency to go a bit overboard on the Wangst at times? Maybe. The greatest thing ever broadcast over the television airwaves, as its fans routinely declare? Many would beg to differ.
 * Firefly also fits prominently under this trope. The amount of hype by the fans would lead you to believe it was the best thing ever. Upon watching... it's okay.
 * Dollhouse is a quiet drama-driven series about the nature of identity and self. Coming off of Joss Whedon's three successive action-adventure series, a good deal of people were apparently expecting something similar. This was the first time the Hype Backlash caught up with the hype; as soon as the show aired, a lot of people came out of the woodwork to talk about how it didn't live up to their expectations. Even though the show was cancelled, the fans couldn't exactly complain about being Screwed by the Network, because despite the low ratings for the first season, Fox still gave it a second. Even the DVD sales, which were able to vindicate Firefly, were sluggish.
 * Monty Python's Flying Circus also suffers, especially in its homeland. As do many of the "classic" 1970s British comedy shows- Dad's Army, Fawlty Towers, etc. It results from a combination of being described by critics since the seventies as being classics, the natural process of becoming slightly dated and over-homaged over the years, and being repeated ad nauseum on television channels over and over since they were first broadcast. It also doesn't help that the most popular sketches and scenes will often turn up in "World Best Comedy Sketches"-type programmes and will also be repeated over and over and over (e.g. The Dead Parrot Sketch, "What is your name... Don't tell him Pike!", Basil Fawlty giving his car 'a damn good thrashing'). A legendary example of Hype Backlash in action: Lorne Michaels (who idolized the Pythons) invited John Cleese and Michael Palin onto Saturday Night Live to re-enact the Dead Parrot Sketch. The audience was dead silent.
 * The Young Ones. Not a case of being un-funny, since it was very well written and had some comedy legends in it, but anyone coming to now it expecting something totally anarchic or outrageously profane has to remember that it was made way back in 1982/1984 and also that many of the political references ("Thatcher!") are dated. Plus Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson later created Bottom, a show that was much more outrageous, (especially the uncensored 'Live' stage shows), more tightly scripted with less of the lulls that occasionally occur in Young Ones episodes, and was (probably!) funnier and more quotable.
 * Bottom can also receive this kind of reaction.
 * Mad Men. With most, if not all, critics crowing about its magnificence one can build up very high expectations of its quality, particularly given comparisons to The Wire (which no doubt can also suffer this trope for some) with its slow burn pacing and intelligence. Actually sitting down and finding out that it is just competently acted and more dull than slow paced comes as quite a shock, though the negative view probably comes from the intense effect of this trope.
 * Doctor Who can come in for some of this, but the new Doctor Who in particular (the classic series, by the time it ended, had arguably incurred enough criticism and bad press to stave this off somewhat, and few go into the old series not expecting some Large Hams and Special Effect Failures). Some of this disappointment may be due to the show's notoriously Broken and Unpleasable Fanbase, but the tendency of some to describe the new series as being a near flawless masterpiece and pretty much everything that Russell T. Davies and/or Steven Moffat does as being a work of unqualified genius probably doesn't help matters much.
 * Glee fell into this trope later than expected. The show was praised by both fans and critics after the "sneak peak" of the pilot aired and received major hype before the series began its actual run. It was an immediate smash hit when it actually started airing. The backlash didn't really start until it went on a mid-season break. Viewers tuning in afterward could be left going "This is supposed to be an instant classic?"
 * Heroes ended up in this state, not helped by its own Unpleasable Fanbase.
 * Lost suffered from this, especially when people reach the third season which is notorious for its plodding pace among other things. The show is believed by many to improve improve again with season 4 to at least an acceptable level and to even get back to the sort of things and overall feel that originally made it great with season five. However, given how impossible it is to follow for anyone who hasn't religiously watched the whole thing it can be extremely hard for people who "broke up" with it during season 3 to get back into it let alone for anyone completely new to jump in.
 * A significant number of "Susan Boyle haters" don't hate the woman, but rather the extraordinary ridiculous amount of hype she received.
 * In the UK, just about any new American drama series suffers from a wave of ludicrous hyperbole before its arrival on these shores meaning that the finished product, when it arrives, often disappoints.
 * The Fast Show. One of the most popular British sketch shows of the '90s and quoted to death not just at the time but right up until the present day. It's still talked about reverentially and seemingly ranked alongside Monty Python and the like. It's actually not all that good, being basically about seven jokes repeated week in week out some of them in a way that's practically shameless. Interestingly, The Fast Show is arguably directly responsible for a wave of character/catchphrase-based sketch shows following in its wake which, whilst often as popular (Little Britain, anyone) have nothing like the critical respect presumably because the Emperor's nakedness has become rather more obvious.
 * Little Britain was was praised to the skies when it first started, thus leading to this trope; however, perhaps at least in part to the experience with The Fast Show, it wasn't quite as long before began to criticise it for being overly-repetitive-bordering-on-lazy.
 * Whatever GSN/Game Show Network was overplaying on its schedule. Especially The Newlywed Game. Nowadays, it seems like Family Feud and Match Game are getting some of this.
 * The British version of The Office suffered from this. When it was originally broadcast it was praised as a well-acted comedy mockumentary with a good cast (including Ricky Gervais, then relatively unknown) and which accurately reflected a lot of real-life experiences of office work. However, at some point after the second series it was hyped-up into becoming One Of The Greatest British Sitcoms Of All Time (arguably partly thanks to BBC2's relentless promotion of and hyperbole about the show) leading to both an active backlash against it (particularly by Gervais-haters) and disappointment for many of those coming to it for the first time.
 * The American version of The Office is also seen this way, with many viewers baffled at how millions of people could possibly watch Michael Scott and Dwight cross their Moral Event Horizon in every episode.
 * Power Rangers Time Force is often hailed by fans as one of the greatest seasons of the show. As Linkara points out, while it is very good, they do overestimate it more than a bit. Primarily, vague hints at a Fantastic Racism theme are exaggerated by the hype into an actual full fledged theme, and a villain with a Freudian Excuse and Morality Pet is hyped as a genuinely sympathetic character.
 * The Event suffered from this before it even came out. It was advertised as the next Lost, right after the finale shot its viewers in the face.

Professional Wrestling

 * Triple H suffers from two different kinds of hype backlash. First, as the WWE tries to promote him as an epic level superstar along the lines of Hulk Hogan or Steve Austin, even most of the fans who like him just aren't buying it. On the other hand, the loud and often strident hate for him among the hardcore fans has lead some of them to proclaim that the internet is wrong and stupid and HHH is an excellent wrestler who has earned the right to politically bury all other wrestlers who could potentially outdraw him.
 * John Cena. Believe it or not, once upon a time just about everyone liked him. These days you'd be hard-pressed to find a male over the age of 15 who will cop to having ever cheered him.
 * The Rock, when he turned face, started getting smark detractors for not being a "great worker," though in all fairness the other argument, that he turned into a "catchphrase machine," had more validity.
 * HARDCORE HOLLY, of all people. Back in 1999, the IWC loved his super-heavyweight schtick. If he wasn't put back into the midcard after returning from his broken arm, suffered in a match with Kurt Angle (who was the WWF champion at the time, instant title/revenge program there), he might have turned out better.
 * Mr. Kennedy (though his injury-prone status and know-it-all rants during the Benoit scandal may have hurt him)
 * Matt Hardy, blame the fact that his best persona, the "V1/Mattitude/Matt Facts" one, was cut off at the knees so they could push Albert AGAIN. Having an insane reality show and bitter emo rants on his blog post-Edge/Lita Affair didn't help.
 * Hulk Hogan. Though it's gotten better than it was in the '90s, there's a lot of IWC'ers who'd never admit that they were Hulkamaniacs when they were young. As an extension, there's others who'll swear they never liked the WWF, and "always" loved the NWA, or name-your-hardcore-territory-promotion.
 * This is common when viewing 5-star matches from the seventies or eighties. Today, for most fan to consider a match a classic there would have to be spots that are memorable and quick action. Matches back then are common for their rest holds that apply Wrestling Psychology. Many of these matches don't age well.
 * Hulk Hogan vs Andre the Giant at Wrestlemania 3. When viewed today without any historical input it's nothing but slow power wrestling. However, back then, that was the height of Hulkamania and Andre was considered unbeatable back then.
 * Because the new hiring requirements for Divas seems to be less "talented wrestler" and more "hot enough to be in Playboy," fans are longing for the days of more talented Divas. This leads to Divas such as Trish Stratus, Lita, and Ivory getting built up well beyond their abilities.

Music

 * Anything with Justin Timberlake.
 * Very common among music fans. The Arcade Fire is a good example, but any band that releases an EP or plays a show will suffer Hype Backlash from people who liked them before anyone knew about them, man.
 * Radiohead, especially albums like Kid A and In Rainbows. Not helping them was a rather infamous review of Kid A where the reviewer, favorably, compared the album to a dead baby.
 * The Shins. Some people say they changed their lives, while others respond with a "meh".
 * More than half a century of being described as the most influential and important rock album ever made, coupled with many of the advances and breakthroughs it made being assimilated into the genre as a whole mean that many people who listen to The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band might wonder what the big deal was. The Beatles themselves qualify as well.
 * Ditto The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds.
 * Jimi Hendrix got this in black music circles. Primarily because a lot of people (and mainstream media) seem to think every black guitar virtuoso is inspired by him if not completely copying him. Despite the fact there was other black guitarists that coincided and preceded him with comparable skill. Like the first all black rock band Black Merda whom clearly inspired Hendrix. He gets it outside of black music circles as well.
 * A lot of white rappers and soul singers get this treatment among black music fans. Particularly when the media essentially puts a crown on their head so to speak, without giving similar black artists with comparable skill the same type of fan fare. Vanilla Ice is probably one of the earliest examples when concerning hip-hop specifically, and New Kids on the Block when it concerns R&B/Pop (although this goes back much further).
 * A certain amount of backlash was guaranteed when Gary Cherone was tapped to be Van Halen's third front man -- by virtue of him not being David Lee Roth or Sammy Hagar. But when Cherone was hyped as having "a voice like Sammy Hagar and the stage presence of David Lee Roth"... that was just setting the poor guy up for a fall if he wasn't better than advertised. (He wasn't). The fact that the album, III, sounded like neither the Roth nor Hagar-era VH didn't help.
 * Describing Elvis Presley as 'The King Of Rock and Roll' is just guaranteeing that a lot of people who listen to his music -- especially more than half a century after he recorded it -- are going to be disappointed. The Follow the Leader he caused is a major culprit.
 * Led Zeppelin has been described by more than one music critic as the most overblown band in the history of music. Amongst the Zeppelin fans themselves, there are a good portion who despise "Stairway to Heaven" -- considering other songs from the band's catalogue to be far superior.
 * Joy Division and later New Order, too. Joy Division have been so influential on hundred of imitators it's easy to forget they were very much a cult band who only ever played small venues in their brief existence. Any newcomer listening the albums expecting every track to be borderline Top 20 pop like "Love Will Tear Us Apart" will probably be nonplussed by "She's Lost Control" and "Transmission". In 1987 New Order put out all of their twelve singles (including the hidden gem "Everything's Gone Green" and "True Faith") onto one two-disk set aptly called Substance and did the same for Joy Division in 1988 for the single-only Joy Division tunes. As such, Substance is generally considered to be the CD that most people are steered towards buying as far as their first New Order CD, since it has all of the band's best and most loved songs. Their actual albums are considered, by many, to be hit or miss and could turn off new fans.
 * PJ Harvey makes best-of-the-year lists every time she releases an album, and critics can't think of enough ways to dissect, analyze, and rave about her music. However, outside critical circles, she doesn't have much of a following, and her songs have never had the traction and lasting power of other 1990s alternative rock icons.
 * Elton John. After "Candle in the Wind 1997" came out (and went 11 times platinum), he went straight from being still loved by fans and critics alike to being called extremely overrated by those same people, even for his older, great work. Now, he is often called the male equivalent to Celine Dion -- the fact that they alternated concert dates at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas for a time didn't help -- even though his albums and live performance advertisements set him up as one of the greatest musicians on the earth.
 * When the record company began promoting Elvis Costello's Imperial Bedroom using the tagline "Masterpiece?", Costello was extremely irritated because he knew it was then an absolute certainty that this trope would kick in.
 * Bruce Springsteen: especially if you live in New Jersey, and you don't enjoy his music.
 * To put things a bit in perspective: My Bloody Valentine are a good band whose style isn't exactly everybody's cup of tea and who have made an excellent album. Still, they're praised so much you could reasonably call them the Citizen Kane of Alternative Rock.
 * Taylor Swift after the Kanye West debacle and, most recently, winning four Grammys has entered the It's Popular, Now It Sucks realm.
 * Nirvana. Between the simple fact that the music is old, residual It's Popular, Now It Sucks, and people just getting sick of listening to amateur guitarists playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit", they get a lot of hate they honestly don't have coming to them.
 * Not to mention all the thousands of bitter metalheads furious over what happened to metal in the early 1990s and looking for someone to take out decades of anger at. Nirvana, because of Kurt Cobain's famous hostility to metal and rise of grunge, are a very visible target.
 * Rapper Drake, critics saying he's a breath of fresh air, while others think he's no different than any other mainstream rapper.
 * Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen is the top song in the Dutch Top 2000 of all time for ten years straight, since then there have been several voting actions to get the damn song off that position on the list since people are sick of it.
 * Queen itself might fall into this, either by fans sick of the band being only known for their hits (including "Bohemian Rhapsody"), or critics who think the band was overrated hype to begin with.

Recorded and Stand Up Comedy

 * Dane Cook after his second comedy CD Retaliation shipped platinum. Those who've started listening to him afterward describe him as "an unfunny joke thief who jumps and screams a lot."
 * Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?" routine: a bit that has transcended comedy and become a pop culture touchstone. Even people who've never heard of Abbott and Costello will at least recognize "THIRD BASE!". So naturally, when modern audiences see the routine in full, the usual response is "That's it?"
 * Dave Chappelle's "I'm Rick James, Bitch" sketch became an entrenched meme long before most people saw it. Many of those who saw it after the hype were majorly underwhelmed. This also happened with Samuel L. Jackson Beer.
 * The United Kingdom a) is one big Unpleasable Fanbase and b) takes its comedy very seriously. Ricky Gervais is a recent victim, as is David Mitchell for his ubiquity on every panel show the nation has to offer (even if he's the best thing on said panel show, as is often the case).

Tabletop Games

 * Synchros. Probably holding the record for the fastest acceptance of a new idea to the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game in the history of the franchise, there is literally no deck among the elite duelists of the world that doesn't have these wonder monsters in them. Dissidents against the new monsters would be quick to point out they're little more than a rehash of the Fusion and Ritual monsters the game has had for years already, or that -- due to how easy they're able to be gotten out do the the insane synergy they have with the current "throw out as many high-powered monsters you possibly can at any one time" mindset of said elites -- they're virtually broken...if it wasn't for the fact that those same elite would think nothing of slicing their throat with a Ghost Rare Stardust Dragon should you utter a peep of it.
 * Sen Zar got brutalized hard by this trope, thanks to the creators' ill-advised antics on UseNet.

Video Games

 * This happens way too easily nowadays, and sometimes where this trope overlaps with the Nostalgia Filter. Of course some games you played back when you only knew about what games you can look forward too when you found a gaming magazine in a store may be better -- largely because you didn't have a chance to expect so much out of them. Nowadays, almost nobody only looks on the shelf and says "oh hey -- a new game in a series I like!" or "Oh hey, this game sounds coo-It's already out?!" because of the internet. Nowadays the second a game is in development, magazines are running articles about the development (when the game can be released months later), screenshots and footage from E3 or similar events flood sites like YouTube, and that's not even scratching the surface how much "leaked footage/screenshots" find their way to the internet.
 * Almost any video game released more than two generations ago. In the current generation (PS3/Wii/Xbox 360) this is PS1 and earlier. The graphics begin getting dated and some interface elements that have become normal hadn't been invented yet, making them not quite as fun as when we were first experiencing them. There are exceptions, of course, but in general video games age much worse than almost any corresponding media (at least so far).
 * MMOs in particular tend to really suffer from this. It's a given that on any MMO forum someone will be claiming a previous MMO (that is, one with years of development behind it versus the one that's had far fewer) is better, one claiming that the Next Big Thing has the right idea (even if it's the same ideas), and the process repeating on that Next Big Thing.
 * Almost all games that are considered "Popular" are subject to being bashed and hated on in pretty much every gaming community. Some games and genres are bigger targets than others, even if Double Standards exist. (such as FPS's currently being the "in" genre in contrast to the often-maligned RPG.)
 * Gamespy once did a 25 Most Overrated Games list. Reasons for inclusion: Hype Machine (obviously), Done Better Before (Quake II), Overpraised (the #1 game, Black and White), and Total Letdown (Daikatana).
 * The Elder Scrolls, given how much of a high pedestal Morrowind is placed on. Many Morrowind fans will greatly laud their chosen game over its sequel Oblivion and indeed any other fantasy CRPG in the same ballpark. The clunky game engine, reams of plot text and dated graphics can prove underwhelming to today's generation of gamers. Mutual bashing ensues.
 * And then Skyrim came along...
 * Super Mario Galaxy. Every single review praises its wealth of ideas, giving it scores in the 97+ range due to its sheer creativity...which leaves many people disappointed, often feeling that its "wealth of ideas" are just slight tweaks on basic 3D platforming, and that its moments of "sheer creativity" are so rapid-fire that none of it really stands out as memorable.
 * Any Final Fantasy game, much more so after Final Fantasy VII caused an explosion of interest in the series. For some, this applies more to Square's endless number of sequels, retcons, and other story add-ons, and the sheer obsession of some parts of its fanbase, rather than the original game itself.
 * Not exactly after FFVII, but more so FFVII itself is probably the best example of this trope.
 * After reaching an unprecedented 99 on Metacritic and dominating media video game coverage for the foreseeable future, expect a lot of this directed towards GrandTheftAutoIV.
 * Ditto for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and Super Mario Galaxy 2 getting a perfect ten from both Gamespot and IGN.
 * A unique example of this is Fable; the game itself didn't deliver on the hype, with half of the content promised removed and the other half altered beyond recognition (so much so that the head of the development team had to issue a formal apology for it). Despite that, it's not a bad game, and is actually quite a decent (if rather linear and shallow) hack and slash. However, if anyone says they didn't think the game was stellar to a die-hard fan, they'll likely to be criticized for hating it on the sole premise of the false hype, and not on the final product. It says something that, as of the beginning of Fable 2's development, whenever lead developer Peter Molyneux makes a public appearance he's accompanied by a Microsoft employee who stops him from talking to people. The guy just plain loves his job and can't help but talk about what he wants/plans to do, regardless of whether he's run that idea by anyone else.
 * Fable 3 followed the tradition of the first. Many of the complexities of the first two games were stripped out in order to make way for the super-hyped "will you deliver on your campaign promises?" mechanic, which wasn't quite as cool as it should've been.
 * The Force Unleashed, sadly, seems to have fallen victim to this effect. If it hadn't been hyped up to EPIC levels as the Star Wars answer to God of War, it would probably be thought of as a decent Star Wars game.
 * The hype surrounding Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was humongous, with Midway cashing in by making it the default old-school MK game to port onto anything. While it's not a bad game, it's notoriously unbalanced to the point of being broken, and a closer inspection of the added characters clearly shows they're unfinished, not at all qualities you'd expect to find in the purported "best MK game ever".
 * The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time itself is beginning to get some HypeBacklash as its pioneering graphical and immersive qualities have become commonplace.
 * No More Heroes gets this from people who are tired of hearing about how good, "innovative", and "subversive" it is, when there are occasional slices of gameplay stashed between excessive money grinds and annoyingly excessive amounts of pointless travel.
 * Take one look at reviews for any popular game with a lot of hype behind it and there will be at least one review where one person did not like the game and felt it was overrated. If it's by a professional reviewer, it can cause some heated discussion.
 * Amongst the shmup fanbase, the Touhou series is a victim of this.
 * The developers of Two Worlds promised that it would be "the Oblivion-killer!" This backfired big-time. Two Worlds is actually a pretty decent video game (at least on PC -- stay away from the Xbox 360 version) but it received lots of negative criticism primarily because of being significantly less good than expected.
 * Modern Warfare 2 started to get this, as the most highly-anticipated game of 2009 (bar none). Then when the game came out, people realised that the Single player could be played through in less than five hours. And the story itself is torn straight from the pages of a Tom Clancy novel, except less coherent.
 * Doubly so for PC gamers, who got a multiplayer matching system they were unfamiliar with and considered worse than the first Modern Warfare, and triply so because the well-touted and hyped up anti-cheat system was defeated almost immediately.
 * Donkey Kong Country. A great game at the time, it's been hit hard by the backlash after Rare was sold to Microsoft, with once praise filled publications and fans saying how the games 'weren't ever that good' or what not based on a single remark Miyamoto once said when Nintendo actually did have Rare working for them. It also extended to many other Rare games, which considering the high quality of most of them (including Donkey Kong Country), is rather unfortunate.
 * Donkey Kong Country has always been criticized a bit for being a Mario clone.
 * Not to mention DonkeyKong64 being a blatant clone of Super Mario 64 which also applies to this list.
 * Dante's Inferno was hyped to hell and back by the developers, only to receive lukewarm to fairly decent reviews. It should also be noticed that the marketing generated more controversy than the game itself, and that's saying something.
 * Spore had this in spades, it spent years in development and was hyped as being an immersive, freeform god game that would let you guide a species from the cell stage to interstellar menace. What we got was a decent game that consisted of a number of smaller RTSes, while still a decent game, the Hype Backlash was major.
 * Killzone was hyped before release as a Halo-killer but was released to mostly middling reviews. Killzone being a Sony exclusive led to a great deal of Console War flaming as well. The sequel was quite well received however.
 * Geoff Ramsey of Achievement Hunter experienced this with the special edition of The Secret of Monkey Island, calling it "an old fucking game that everybody talks about how great it is, and then when you play it, you're like 'Aw, it's not really all that great at all.'"
 * Kinect for the Xbox 360 was hyped up beyond the product's actual capabilities. This video compares the marketing to reality. It certainly doesn't help that Microsoft removed the product's onboard processor and lowered the camera's resolution to keep the price point down, but even so some of the early product demos -- like Milo and Kate, which appeared to allow you to carry on a conversation with a sophisticated, humanlike AI -- were pretty much packs of vicious lies that no product could have possibly delivered.

Web Animation

 * Zero Punctuation: many dislike it for its negativity and tendency for (often off-topic) Take Thats, but every other goddamn line becoming a page quote makes it very hard not to think about it, which leads to massive frustration. Many also feel that considering all the hype and overexposure he gets, Yahtzee's really not as funny or witty as people make him out to be.

Web Comics

 * Achewood. From all the hype you'd think it cured cancer or something.
 * El Goonish Shive tended to get this reaction from people who got so very, very tired of seeing its name come up on TV Tropes. The fandom's tendency to swoop down on any criticism made of it did not help matters.
 * This blog plays this role for xkcd.
 * And this one came about after Carl left.
 * Penny Arcade, to many, is drastically overhyped, as well as imitated.
 * Las Lindas.

Web Original

 * Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog also receives a lot of this. Those going in expecting the masterpiece its fans frequently build it up as may discover it to be an entertaining musical drama but not quite as clever, deep or original as it's made out to be.
 * Sailor Nothing, as admitted on its Headscratchers page.
 * Twitter, along with Myspace, and to a lesser extent, Facebook. But Twitter is the worst of the bunch.
 * When Second Life was gathering its userbase through gradual word of mouth, the community developed a loyal following at a manageable rate. When Linden Labs began hyping it far and wide to inflate their membership numbers, they demonstrated that their server grid wasn't nearly as scalable as they'd claimed to customers, investors, potential corporate clients, etc. This resulted in performance losses up to and including outages, which bemused long-time residents and certainly didn't give newcomers the best impression. In addition, the marketing and publicity attempted to sell the sex and bleach its underpants at the same time, and the mixed message left Second Life with a far worse reputation than if new users came across the user-created underground on their own. Add on the number of hucksters seeking to take advantage of fresh blood by camping the welcome point to hawk wares, and turned off potential residents with the impression they'd entered a predatory money-racket.
 * TV Tropes. The ruining your life thing? Not as fun as it seems, especially when people loudly break down media into a series of tropes, thereby sucking all the fun out of it for everyone in the vicinity. Other common complaints include politicization, natter, potshots, This Troper lines, lack of standards on Subjective Tropes, prevalence of Justifying Edits, etc.
 * And then there's the entire toxic post-2012 "preserve the cash flow at all costs" culture among the site management. A new user can come in, attracted by the shiny fun of helping take apart and understand the workings of fiction, and then run afoul of the dirty little truth that anything and anyone who might threaten the imaginary perception of the site as somehow "family friendly" -- and thus jeopardize precious, precious advertising revenue -- can be tossed overboard with no warning.

Western Animation

 * Yes, Avatar: The Last Airbender is a good show. But the common fan attitude that it's the best work of fiction ever puts the show on a high pedestal it doesn't deserve that can make it into a disappointing experience for newcomers. It doesn't help that a lot of fans are overly defensive of the show and its popularity.
 * Batman: The Animated Series tends to get hyped up a lot, particularly when compared to any other superhero cartoon (and especially when compared to The Batman).
 * Practically overnight, Family Guy turned from everybody wanting new episodes to people complaining when those new episodes came to be.
 * South Park definitely qualifies for this. In the beginning it was considered funny and original in both art style and dialogue, but after being after being on the air for at least a quarter century, most people find it to be repetitive and outdated so much that it falls under the Love It or Hate It category.
 * The original G1 Transformers cartoon was the show that started it all. But G1 purists decrying all other Transformers shows and acting somewhat stuck up can cause one to be rather critical when watching the original 80s show, especially in pointing out the plot and animation consistencies.
 * There's actually a name for the Hype Backlash in in fandom itself: it's called "Gee wun".
 * Beast Wars is a very, very good animated series -- but the attitude of some of its fans grates on much of the TF fandom. Beast Machines suffered in terms of popularity by being such a radical departure from BW's style, angering many of its strongest fans.
 * The Simpsons can trigger this reaction from a lot of people, for numerous reasons. It's long-running, and been stressed as a classic for so long that people who come to it fresh after hearing all the praise heaped on it can wonder exactly what the big deal is. It's often praised for being radical and counter-cultural, which may result in people who watching it deciding that it's not quite as rebellious as it's made out to be (particular in light of the fact that it's a marketing and merchandising juggernaut as well). It's influenced a number of other animated shows, several of which have also become quite popular, meaning that those who come to it having experienced its followers might not see that they did it first. Its more recent episodes have been criticised for being quite sub-par, particularly when compared with earlier classics. And, perhaps most damning, it's been repeated, rerun and quoted so frequently that it's possible to utterly sick to death of even the classic moments without having even experienced them initially.