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Belated Backstory: Difference between revisions
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== [[Literature]] ==
* Huckleberry Finn, when he transitioned from supporting character in ''Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' to main character of his own self-titled novel.
* The Patrician in the first ''[[Discworld]]'' book is portrayed as a fat, jewel-encrusted glutton, but later becomes an extremely spartan person who eats only bread and water and has a figure to match. Since the difference is so drastic, and it is several years in-story before the Patrician is given a name, many fans just assumed they were different men until [[Word of God]] said otherwise.
** A subtler example of this trope in [[Discworld]] might be the Senior Wrangler, who started out as being functionally indistinguishable from his colleagues, the Lecturer in Recent Runes and the Chair of Indefinite Studies. As of ''[[Discworld/Hogfather|Hogfather]]'' and ''[[Discworld/The Last Continent|The Last Continent]]'', he's ''still'' largely interchangeable with them, except that he's fallen in love on at least two occasions. ''[[Discworld/Hogfather|Hogfather]]'' also gave him a working class background for some [[Slobs Versus Snobs]] rivalry with the Dean, but this seems to have fallen by the wayside since.
** Death's daughter Ysabell in ''[[Discworld/The Light Fantastic|The Light Fantastic]]'' is a psycho with a scythe. By ''[[Discworld/Mort|Mort]]'' she's a lot less insane, though still desperate for company.
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* Danni Sullivan from ''[[Scrubs]]'' is a rather less successful example of this happening; her initial character was fun, likable and sensitive but when she reappeared she had turned into an obnoxious, slutty, vapid party girl.
** The attempt to write around this is distinctly odd as well - apparently she was pretending to be somebody she thought JD would like. Which is weird seeing as she's well in character by the first time she and JD meet and neither Jordan (her sister) or Dr. Cox (her brother in law) seem to notice any change in her personality.
* Harmony Kendall from ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' is an interesting case: in her earlier appearances her main defining trait was her meanness, especially when she took over leadership of the [[Girl Posse|Cordettes]] from Cordelia. After becoming a vampire her (considerably expanded) role focused mostly on her [[Dumb Blonde|stupidity]] and clinginess instead. In fact, aside from the whole bloodsucking, no problems with killing thing, she actually became [[Affably Evil|far less obnoxious]]. This was taken even further when she started appearing on ''[[Angel]]'' and developed into a likable, if highly incompetent ally of the good guys. Even her rather ineffectual betrayal at the end is done without rancour on either side (Angel actually counted on her betraying him as part of his plan, and writes her a letter of recommendation).
** In an even more noticeable example in the same series Anya (a former demon turned into a human) had no major difficulties adapting to human customs [[Villains Blend in Better|early on]], but as soon as she [[Redemption Demotion|took on a larger role]] she suddenly started using [[Spock Speak]] and had had tremendous problems grasping human things like tact and mortality.
*** Justified, really, since her interactions with humans tended to last only a few minutes while she waited for them to inadvertently make a wish; apart from that she made little effort to blend in at all. As for tact and morality, she was a malevolent [[Manipulative Bitch|manipulative]] demon- they ''never'' mattered to her, even if she [[Faux Affably Evil|pretended like they did.]]
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* While Bob from ''[[Re Boot]]'' was a very popular and interesting character, some fans quickly caught on to small changes to his personality to better fit the backstory revealed in season 4. That could partially be blamed on the three plus years between seasons.
** Specifically, during season 4, Bob adamantly believed that viruses could be cured rather than merely [[Never Say "Die"|deleted]] and that "deletion" should be avoided at all costs. This initially seemed like [[Character Development]], but then multiple flashbacks during that same season made it clear that he had always been that way, even though he had made several genuine attempts to kill [[Big Bad|Megabyte]] in earlier seasons.
* Ralph Wiggum from ''[[The Simpsons]]'' went from a generic classmate of Lisa's to [[The Ditz]] and [[Cloudcuckoolander]].
* Doctor Zoidberg from ''[[Futurama]]'' went from being a normal (well, alien) doctor with a humorously poor understanding of human anatomy to the very essence of a [[Butt Monkey]] (...with a humorously poor understanding of human anatomy). He now is [[Perpetual Poverty|perpetually poor]] and hungry, is generally disliked by just about everyone, and is put into question whether he actually is a doctor or not.
** His doctorate is in art history.
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[[Category:Characterization Tropes]]
[[Category:Belated Backstory]]
[[Category:Backstory Tropes]]
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