Not as You Know Them

""Game recognize game, and you lookin' kinda unfamiliar right now!""

- Riley Freeman, The Boondocks

Pushing a new character into the spotlight via Character Derailment of the character that they're replacing. Dying to Be Replaced seems merciful and dignified by comparison. At least that way you're dead, or comfortably converted to the The Dark Side, before someone starts messing around with your job.

The "victim" who was Dying to Be Replaced is moved out of the way, but the victim who is Not as You Know Them is expected to stick around and suffer. Not only have they lost their old title, it's usually through circumstance rather than their own fault. Unfortunately, whatever happened to them has transformed their personality - generally into something more jaded. They're still there in the story, they're still (usually) on the side of good... but for all intents and purposes, it may as well be a different character. They often become a cynical version of The Obi-Wan to the new hero, who, of course, is much better at their job than they ever were.

It's a trick that writers use to keep people tuned in to the show/playing the video game/reading the books when they decide to switch protagonists. Rather than risk starting all over again with a new character, the writers use the old hero as a hook to lure in the "old faithfuls" in the audience. Unfortunately, many fans have become wise to this ploy and view such sequels with some trepidation. It's a bit of a Catch-22 - do you avoid knowing your favorite character's fate, or find out what happened to him, at the risk of realizing that you don't particularly like what's happened to him?

So why do a character assassination on an old favorite? Well, if the returning character was as lovable as (s)he originally was, the viewers' familiarity with them means that audience allegiance would remain firmly on their side... even when they're going against the new hero. That's not what the writer wants—they want you to follow the new guy, so the returnee is demoralized to alienate them from the viewers/readers. However, this can backfire if the viewers resent the newcomer already, just for being a "usurper", and then find insult added to injury when they find their original, amiable hero has become grumpy and surly in the gap between series.

The quickest way to figure out if a character has become Not as You Know Them is to ask yourself "if their physical appearance was completely different, and I wasn't told exactly who they were, would I have figured it out or assumed they were a new character?"

If the returning original character doesn't suffer Character Derailment, then they're Older and Wiser - but still recognizably "as you know them." Compare Same Character but Different, where the returning character is derailed, but to fit a role in the plot instead of to make a replacement protagonist look good. As is always the case with Character Derailment tropes, Not as You Know Them can be fairly subjective; there will be those who hate the changes and declare Fanon Discontinuity, and those who like them and cite Character Development (albeit Character Development that happened "off screen").

Anime and Manga

 * In the much-maligned Manga Tokyo Mew Mew a la mode, the de-powered Ichigo becomes little more than a sidekick to the Creator's Pet, Shirayuki Berii. Actually, "sidekick" is too strong of a word—she's her Mid-Season Upgrade that just happens to be able to talk.
 * Some of the original Digimon Adventure characters in Digimon Adventure 02 could qualify. Sora and Joe especially, who, during the three-year gap, became everything they didn't want to be when they were kids.
 * Pokémon adaptations rarely keep prominent characters the same as the games, especially the two most-well known adaptations. For example Elesa is an Emotionless Girl but in the anime she's a Genki Girl, Cilan lost all of his Shrinking Violet personality in the anime, and Sabrina is often given an Adaptational Villainy role when in the games she's a Reluctant Warrior who is more on the Lawful Neutral side.

Comic Books

 * The most excessive (and infamously so) case may be the prologue to Kyle Rayner's term as Green Lantern, which required a Face Heel Turn from signature GL Hal Jordan, who in turn either killed or depowered every other member of the Green Lantern Corps.
 * They were careful not to do this when Hal was redeemed and returned as Green Lantern. Kyle got upgraded to "Ion" and was promoted out of the way.
 * New Aquaman is in. Old Aquaman gets to be turned into a squid-faced being called the Dweller, whom DC keeps around to keep his fans reading... until he is Killed Off for Real.
 * Ryan Choi is the New Atom. Old Atom ran off after his ex-wife (whom he still loved) went crazy/evil. After a "Search for Ray Palmer", the old Atom has been found, but he is now portrayed as cowardly, and eventually this is revealed to be the result of a complicated plot from his nemesis Chronos to discredit him. Then Ryan gets Stuffed Into the Fridge and the Cry for Justice mini has Ray Palmer torturing a supervillain by shrinking down and stepping on the bad guy's brain. Take note: that's exactly how accidentally murdered . And this is the same Ray Palmer who in Blackest Night
 * To be fair,
 * Compare Black Tarantula's appearances in Spider-Man (late Dark Age) with those in Ed Brubaker's Daredevil (Modern Age). You will be surprised how much he changed, without any reason. And, what's the most scary, it was good for him.
 * Terra when she was resurrected as Terra II. Terra was originally The Mole and a Psycho for Hire who infamously died due to her own anger, but her resurrected form was an all-around good guy and a straight superhero.
 * To be fair,
 * Compare Black Tarantula's appearances in Spider-Man (late Dark Age) with those in Ed Brubaker's Daredevil (Modern Age). You will be surprised how much he changed, without any reason. And, what's the most scary, it was good for him.
 * Terra when she was resurrected as Terra II. Terra was originally The Mole and a Psycho for Hire who infamously died due to her own anger, but her resurrected form was an all-around good guy and a straight superhero.

Film

 * Jim Phelps in the Mission Impossible movies.
 * Darth Vader from Star Wars is described as having once been a hero named Anakin Skywalker; he even has the prequel trilogy detailing his descending to the Dark Side.

Literature

 * The Bernice Summerfield novels feature a brief appearance by Chris Cwej, the Wide-Eyed Idealist who was the Doctor's companion alongside Benny in the Virgin New Adventures. Only now he's a cynical and bitter Time Lord agent who has had his memory altered and believes he was kidnapped by "the evil renegade". Then he regenerates (the Time Lords having given him that ability), so he doesn't even look like the original Chris any more. The Faction Paradox books take it further, with a whole army of "Cwejen": Cwej-Primes are the original tall, blond version, Cwej-Plus are the post-regeneration fat and balding variety, and Cwej-Magnus are bio-armored shock troops. One FP novel involves a Cwej-Prime allying with the Nazis to hunt down renegade Time Lords members of the Great Houses.
 * Most of the major characters in The Time Paradox suffer from this, although Your Mileage May Vary.

Live Action TV

 * In the 1988 series War of the Worlds, mercenary John Kincaid joined the cast in the second season to fight alien invaders, and the cast changed as a result. The character he was replacing (Lt. Paul Ironhorse) was kidnapped, replaced with a doppelganger, and then shot himself in the head. Kincaid got more depressed as the series went on, especially when his brother (who he thought was dead) came back - and then died for real. Even the main cast was affected. The lead, Harrison Blackwood, lost his quirky nature, and started carrying weapons, when he refused to do so in the first season, and his accomplice, Suzanne, became so stupid that she didn't know how to bake a cake!
 * Maybe not a good example, since Executive Meddling just turned everything Darker and Edgier, wrecking all the characters and the entire show in the bargain.
 * Chloe Sullivan suffered from this during the 7th (and final) season of Smallville, once Lois Lane was hired at the Daily Planet in a chain of events that led to Chloe being fired by Lex Luthor for protecting Clark. This came a few episodes after she had gleefully handed over all her info she had compiled through investigation on the Luthors to Lois.

Video Games

 * In Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, the main character of the first three games has been disbarred and become a piano player since we last saw him. His sense of justice takes a battering after this, and he is no longer the upright, optimistic lawyer of the first three games. Stepping up to bat is novice lawyer Apollo Justice.
 * On the flip side, borderline Idiot Hero Phoenix has become something of a Chessmaster in the intervening years, working to reinstitute trial by jury . Considering the way he shrugs off getting hit by a car, one could argue he's been upgraded into a full-blown Determinator.
 * Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World supposedly features Lloyd as an antagonist. The opening has him killing people in the burning ruins of what had been Palmacosta. Your first few encounters place him as either crazy or evil.
 * In Mega Man X 7, the reluctant warrior X is suddenly an obstructionist pacifist so that Axl can steal the show.
 * Subverted in Mega Man Zero when
 * In Deus Ex Invisible War, the hero of the original Deus Ex has been converted from a badass secret agent with a practical take on geopolitics, to an intellectual super-being with a god complex who wants to reshape the world in his image. He's also the Final Boss in every ending EXCEPT for the one where you side with his faction.
 * Justified, he had his mind merged with an AI programmed to reshape the world in its image. It's also complicated by the fact that players were able to determine his character in the first game—playing him as an intellectual super-being with a god complex was entirely possible.
 * Schala became like this in the transition from Chrono Trigger to Chrono Cross, as a result of . Longtime Trigger fans, as one would expect, were not at all pleased with the revelation.
 * Dreamfall, the sequel to The Longest Journey, brought back the heroine of the previous game, about thirty years older and absurdly cynical and bitter. She was still the most appealing main character in the game.
 * Contra: Shattered Soldier plays this straight: Lance Bean, player 2 in the early Contra games, was apparently killed off between games (causing him to be replaced by Lucia, a female protagonist), only to be revealed that he still alive and is in fact the terrorist leader . Neo Contra lampshades by having Lucia, Lance's replacement, do a Face Heel Turn herself.
 * In Pokémon Gold, Silver and Crystal, you play as a new character. However, deep inside the final dungeon of the game, you find the player character from the original Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow, who elsewhere in the game is stated to have been missing for years, simply standing there in an empty cave staring towards the wall and not speaking to you before or after he battles you (with what are far and away the most powerful Pokémon owned by any trainer in the game). Some would argue that the lack of speech is simply because he is a Silent Protagonist in the original games, though in fact the dialogue of other characters frequently implies that your character actually spoke but you simply didn't see it directly. Either way the experience of finding the familiar character there living alone in a cave is remarkably unsettling.
 * It's possible that he just happened to be passing through that particular cave at a time when you walked in, the same way all the NPCs in the games just stay in one place but are presumed not to be there for their whole lives, not that he actually stayed in that one spot forever.
 * In Obs Cure II, Shannon went from a fairly upbeat Hollywood Nerd to a Jerkass Goth girl, Stan went from a pot-smoking slacker to an ex-convict, and former varsity athlete Kenny . This was presumably done to make room for Amy, Corey, and Sven, who have similar character traits to those that the characters listed above had in the first game.
 * Prototype 2 replaces protagonist Alex Mercer with new character James Heller, a move the developers made to avert Bag of Spilling and in the hopes Heller would gain more audience sympathy. In the process, they decided to make Alex the villain - by completely inverting his personality and ignoring most of the last game's plot developments. Where Alex once went on a vicious Roaring Rampage of Revenge against those he perceived as responsible for New York's hellish state,, he's now deliberately spreading the infection (including to Heller), Even reading the bridging comics makes it only slightly less difficult to believe they're supposed to be the same person.

Western Animation

 * Peculiar example: Egon in Extreme Ghostbusters couldn't really be said to be "not as you know him" - he always was an absent-minded genius, and doesn't change in the sequel series - he's just Older and Wiser. Janine, too, remains much the same personality-wise. However, when the other three original Ghostbusters turn up, their circumstances have changed drastically . In this case, it's not so much the characters' personalities that have changed so much as their role in life... but since ghostbusting was so central to their character make-up, it's still a culture shock for anyone who watched the original series. To be fair though, it's just as much of a culture shock to the new generation of Ghostbusters as it is to the viewers.
 * In Transformers: Beast Wars, Optimus Primal was a competent, down-to-earth commander with a tendency to make somewhat sappy speeches. In Beast Machines, Optimus became some kind of spiritual teacher/fanatical terrorist, and the "down-to-earth commander" role got passed to Cheetor, probably the only returning character in the series who didn't get shafted by his personality change.
 * Anyone familiar with The Get Along Gang who watches this pilot for an aborted revival of the series will probably find themselves planting some Epileptic Trees regarding how.
 * In Wolverine and the X-Men, at least in the early episodes, Cyclops is turned into basically the sum of all the bad qualities Wolverine used to have before they made him a Canon Sue (minus the bursts of Ax Crazy, that is.) His role is "the one who's always wrong so Wolverine can be right."
 * Alternate explanation: the writers were simply taking in all of the Flanderization Cyclops has gone through over the years (the nigh-constant Wangst over Jean and his disconnection from the team) and leaving out a fair portion of his honest Character Development that has made him a proper team leader.