Character Derailment/Comic Books

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Examples of Character Derailment in Comic Books include:

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DC Comics

  • Wonder Woman. Fans of the George Perez intelligent reboot have dealt with a whole host of derailment. From working in a fast food restaurant to Mike Deodato's "Wonder Thong" costume to becoming a bounty hunter to John Byrne trying to turn her into She Hulk / Babe by increasing the size of her breasts and giving her the standard "wimpy male sidekick" Byrne trademark. During all this, Julia Kapatelis was virtually Put on a Bus. And now there's this. The cries of "Ruined FOREVER!" have been unceasing.
    • Part of the problem is that Wonder Woman is supposed to be a superhero who is also the ideal woman. It's even part of her origin: when the Greek gods breathed life into her they gave her gifts that would make her the perfect woman; the superpowers and equipment came later. Problem is, every writer seems to have a different idea of what is the "ideal woman".
      • This may also overlap with Values Dissonance; Wonder Woman was created in the 1940s, when ideas about the "ideal woman" were somewhat different than they are today.
  • This was a slow process with Batman. From the mid-nineties until early 2006, the cool, gruff, Badass, Goddamned Batman slowly moved from "aloof and driven" to "frickin' jerk". DC eventually fixed this by having him realize how he was acting, and go on a year-long trip around the world with Dick Grayson (the first Robin) and Tim Drake (the current Robin). Note that this change was a reflection of the general comic book slide towards Nineties Anti-Hero characters, and his change back is part of a general return to more positive heroes.
    • This was merely the most recent incarnation of a storyline that's been recurring since the early 90s. Batman would become more aloof than ever before due to some sort of crisis, only to eventually realize that he should be nice to his friends and swear that he would never go down that road again - until next time (See "Prodigal," "No Man's Land," "Batman: Murderer/Fugitive"). The only difference between this storyline and its precursors is that writers seem determined to stick to it for a change.
  • Conversely, the switch of Batgirl III/Cassandra Cain from one of the better examples of Rising Above Her Past (raised from birth as an Assassin, but horrified enough by her first kill to become a Technical Pacifist) to a Stereotypical Cackling Dragon Lady Mastermind was abrupt enough to induce whiplash. Nerfing her enough for Robin to force a stalemate was simply adding injury to insult. The efforts to retcon the whole mess as brainwashing by Deathstroke came off as more than a bit slapdash, and did nothing to explain the improved language skills (what was once a virtually illiterate dyslexic who rarely spoke a sentence more than five words long without the use of pausing, was now Monologuing and knew Navajo code, one of the hardest languages in the world).
    • The latest mini series about her derailed her character even more. Her improved language skills were taught (she learned to read English, and speak and read Navajo) by Albert, off screen. And she became good with using a computer by herself. Her deep rooted refusal to kill anyone was removed in order for her to kill her dad and Deathstroke. Her body language (which was used by her to know that Batman was Bruce Wayne) was nerfed in order to let an old man lie to her right in front of her face. And if that wasn't enough, her past was changed from loving her father but escaping from him because her first kill was the first time she saw someone die which made her realize how wrong her life was, into hating her father during her entire life and actually having to watch him kill people right in front of her eyes without her caring at all. And on top of that, the series even managed to derail Rose Wilson, the daughter of Deathstroke.
  • Many readers felt that Dr. Leslie Thompkins was derailed in the "War Crimes" plotline (following the "War Games" crossover), when it was revealed that she had intentionally withheld care from Stephanie Brown, a.k.a. Spoiler (and one-time Robin) so that she would die in order to teach Batman a lesson. Considering her previous saintly devotion to saving lives, this was a bit stupid and subsequent comics have quietly ignored it.
    • However, in a recent story, it was revealed that this was a fake-out on Leslie's behalf, as Stephanie wasn't actually dead but smuggled out of the country. It's blatant Retcon, of course, but given most people see it as an Author's Saving Throw on Leslie's characterisation, there are few complaints.
  • Most fans of Young Justice thought the entire team went through this when they transitioned to Teen Titans. Kon suddenly having Cloning Blues and generally being a too-serious jackass when before he even made jokes about his clone status, and wearing a new costume that consists of jeans and a t-shirt! Impulse suddenly grew grim and studious (and became Kid Flash, abandoning every last trace of his fierce individuality) after Deathstroke kneecapped him and he was forced to endure painful surgery. And Robin was Batman Jr, without a trace of his Deadpan Snarker attitude, his geek hobbies, or the fact he does have a sense of humor.
    • Cassie has become very ill tempered and cold towards her teammates. Her character has downgraded into a self-righteous, holier-than-thou Ice Queen who is obsessed with bringing Conner back and wants to change the team back into Young Justice.
      • At least they still get to be characters. Secret, Empress, Arrowette, Ray, and Slobo.
        • Sean McKeever seemed to have noticed Cassie's change, and attempted an Author's Saving Throw by blaming it on accepting powers from Ares. This negated the powers Zeus gave her and would have corrupted her completely, were her will not strong enough to resist him. Instead, she just turned into a bitch.Although the following writers promptly derailed Cassie back into a raging shrew, to the point where a group of rather vocal fans considered her Ruined FOREVER to the point that only her death would "cleanse" the Teen Titans title.
        • Some would argue that Cassie has reasons to act ill-tempered and cold. First off, Superboy is basically the love of her life, and they even had sex before his death. That is normally considered cause for angst, and would be difficult to cope with, since she is a young teenager. Also, she has been the leader of the Teen Titans at some points, and a leader is supposed to be tough. For instance, she has reasonable concerns with having Ravager AKA Rose Wilson on the team, because Rose is a murderer addicted to adrenaline. Cassie really has come a long way from being a Wonder Woman wannabe created by John Byrne. Hopefully the revamped version of her will be better if not just as good. Really, she should not have to be killed off.
    • While we're on the subject of Young Justice, Inertia, Impulse's Evil Twin. Originally, he was a rebellious teenager who secretly resented Impulse for having something he never had: a family. In fact, that eventually drove him to abandon the people who were using him to try to make his own way in the world. Then he became a generic, baby-killing, crazy eeeeeevil and sadistic version of Kid Flash. I don't even think I have to tell you how much less interesting this is than the original characterization.
      • Then you will be happy to know that shortly after Inertia took on the name Kid Zoom, he got killed off. Yep, he is dead as a doornail.
    • When the second Aquagirl (Lorena) was introduced in the pages of Aquaman, she was a resourceful Plucky Girl with brains who learned to adapt fine to the ocean after she lost her entire family and all of her friends. Once she became a Titan? She became derailed into a horny and mouthy Latina stereotype, trying to play homewrecker to Blue Beetle and Traci 13, while serving little other purpose than to hit on boys, argue with Bombshell, or get seethed at by a jealous Cassie.
    • Some argue that Geoff Johns' changes to Raven have stained her character reputation irreparably. These include having her reborn as a teenage girl (after she spent time in limbo as a golden Spirit Advisor) who only occasionally retained her original speech patterns and personality (while the rest of the time she had a snarky and broody attitude like her animated incarnation), hooking up with Beast Boy, and saddling her back with the position of being the Damsel in Distress that the team must rescue. Later writers like Judd Winick only made these changes even more jarring.
      • On the opposite end, Beast Boy fans have become upset that after having received development in his own mini-series, he started on a gradual decay back to being the team goofball to the point where even his own best friend and younger team members were depicted as talking down to him and considering him to be a joke. The same Beast Boy who became team leader of the Titans and was considered capable (before executive meddling hit, combined with Geoff Johns deciding the team had "too many adults").
    • Then there's Red Hood and the Outlaws, see a long rant in two parts here.
  • Judd Winick's run on Green Arrow and Green Arrow/ Black Canary derailed quite a few characters.
    • Despite having moved on from a troubled past which included alcoholism, rampant womanizing and generally irresponsible behavior and evolving into a loving, responsible father and boyfriend under Kevin Smith's pen, Winick wrote Oliver Queen back into the clueless, womanizing, limousine-liberal stereotype many comic fans wrongly saw him as.
      • It is also worth noting that - despite Winick's portrayal of Queen as an unrepentant ladies' man - Oliver Queen never cheated on long-term girlfriend Dinah Lance (aka The Black Canary) before Judd Winick started writing the character. He did father a child with Dragon Lady Shado, but that was the result of Shado raping him while he was drugged. In Winick's first story arc, Oliver Queen had a one-night stand with the niece of fellow superhero Black Lightning and later tried to lie about the affair to Dinah Lance. Interestingly enough, the two had never been shown to have officially reestablished themselves as boyfriend/girlfriend until Winick chose to break them apart.
    • Dinah Lance (Black Canary), as written by Winick, changed into a Shallow Love Interest after years of being a confident, independent Action Girl.
    • To the astonishment of fans everywhere, the title has actually managed to get worse since Winick left, highlights of new writer Kreisberg's work including Ollie going off the rails about how useless nonlethal crimefighting is (despite having dealt with the whole killing thing decades earlier in what's probably his single most famous story and subsequent run), and Dinah's nurturing hero-focused childhood amongst her JSA 'uncles' being retconned into a Wangsty life of ignorant normality until the day she accidentally permanently deafened a friend with her emerging superpower. In order to mirror her incompetent adult use of said superpower, wherein Kreisberg caused her to deafen an innocent bystander in a fight so he could give her a new supervillain. Reactions have been fairly uniform.
    • Jefferson Pierce (Black Lightning) went from being a Technical Pacifist of such strong ethical fiber that he retired from superheroics when he thought he couldn't use his powers safely into a man who could easily strike down the corporate raider indirectly responsible for the death of his niece.
      • After taking flack from numerous fans as well as Black Lightning creator Tony Isabella, Winick retconned that last one in Outsiders #45-47, where Jefferson turned himself in for the murder. More, he was revealed to be innocent of the crime, thanks to super-assassin Deathstroke just happening to be in the area, just happening to guess what Jefferson's internal conflict was and just happening to have the perfect Deus Ex Machina to kill the man and have it look like death by electrocution.
  • Blue Beetle (Ted Kord) and Booster Gold over the twenty years that these two have been friends and thought of as a duo they have been so massively derailed that they practically switched personalities. Booster was originally a Fish Out of Temporal Water Mr. Vice Guy who screwed up once in a while but learned from it, while Ted had Jumped At the Call and was basically Batman with a sense of humor. By the time of Super Buddies, Ted was now a I Just Want to Be Normal slacker who was letting himself go and was now The Straight Man. Booster got it worse as he seemed to have permanent ownership of the Idiot Ball and was the one who wanted to have fun all the time and was such a screw up that they coined the term "Boostered" after he accidentally sent the team to hell. Needless to say those comics make many fans flinch.
    • The Flanderization that took place before that was retconned into Obfuscating Stupidity. Beetle was killed in Countdown to Infinite Crisis and Booster has a new series where he's treated more seriously. Some fans, however, greatly enjoyed the Superbuddies and were greatly disturbed by the Character Derailment of characters such as Max Lord, Fire, Mary Marvel, and a number of the others.
      • Maxwell Lord was never the "nice guy" on the team, he was certainly a Jerk with a Heart of Gold...but was it ever a question about the heart of gold part? No. He even thought and believed he was doing the right thing most of the time and showed genuine concern for his team, back when he headed off the group. He even got into an argument with Martian Manhunter about how they needed to get "big guns" on the team to make sure no one would get offed. It's not like it was all dialogue, some of this was in thought bubbles, so that means he thought he was a hero, not a villain. So is there any reason...AT ALL...why he should suddenly become a cliched villain two steps above strapping Penelope Pureheart to a train track? Or any reason why he would blow Blue Beetle's head off, or claim he was lying all those times (even to himself apparently!) he said he was a good guy? The writers actually admit they know they derailed him but don't care because they needed a villain...the writers knew they were doing something that flew in the face of his prior characterizing and did it anyway! Jesus. I mean...wow. Just wow.
      • There are two explanations for this, a fan one and an "official one". The fan one is that Max was still under the influence of Kilg%re, even when he became fully human again. The "official" one is that Superboy-Prime's punching of the Source Wall retroactively influenced Max; while he was sincere before, during his many surgeries and procedures to become human, he gained a hatred of superheroes, presumably because the community at large was responsible for him being a cyborg in the first place.
      • An issue of Justice League Generation Lost showed that Max only went off the deep end after Central City (Along with his mother) was totalled by Mongul.
  • The Amazons Attack! miniseries afflicts Wonder Woman and the entire Amazon people with character derailment by way of Idiot Plot.
  • Infinite Crisis saw Superboy Prime move from one of the guys who saved all of reality to a Knight Templar obsessed with finding the perfect Earth. Later stories moved him all the way into Omnicidal Maniac territory as he crushes entire planets because he happens to think they're lame.
    • Just think of it this way, the only appearances of Prime are in Crisis On Infinite Earths, Infinite Crisis, Green Lantern (especially the "Sinestro Corps War" arc), and Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds. Prime's appearance in Countdown to Final Crisis never happened, just like the rest of Countdown. This at least gives him a relatively stable character transition: Multiversal hero to Knight Templar to The Dog Bites Back to frustrated semi-Omnicidal Maniac who wants to destroy Superman's legacy and show he is superior.
  • Countdown to Final Crisis does this to Mary Marvel in a very annoying fashion. If not her character arc of accepting Black Adam's powers, going a little nuts and joining up with Eclipso before learning the error of her ways and helping to rescue the Greek gods, then it certainly counts when she, after this long storyline of turning evil and being redeemed, joins up with Darkseid again!
  • Owen Mercer, the second Captain Boomerang, was never a completely good person. At his best, he reached Jerk with a Heart of Gold status. But he was trying to move away from the family legacy, and trying to do good, and won himself friends like Nightwing and Supergirl in the process, then vanished from the comics for awhile. Then in Blackest Night, he pops up as an unhinged psycho feeding children to his zombie father, and is promptly killed for it. And then the white rings resurrect his father in his place. ...meh.
  • Hank Hall in DC's Hawk and Dove was an impulsive Jerk with a Heart of Gold in the Kesels' run, having been fleshed out significantly from the original Steve Ditko incarnation and his appearances in the original Teen Titans. However, once the identity of Monarch was leaked as Captain Atom in an advance spoiler for DC's mini "Armageddon 2001" (though there had been foreshadowing that this was the case to begin with), editorial had to scramble and find a new character to be Monarch to retain the "surprise" ending. Unfortunately, they picked the one character that was blatantly shown NOT to be Monarch and a perplexing plot twist followed, derailing Hank into a murderous extremist and suddenly advanced enough in intelligence and powers to control time (with yet another villainous name change as Extant). He then lingered on as a sort of Villain Sue until he was killed off in the pages of JSA and then later brought back in Blackest Night, though it remains to be seen how his characterization will fare.
  • Superman in the Batman stories written by Frank Miller, is displayed as a dumb muscle who sold out his morals and is completely incapable of thinking strategically like the oh so perfect Batman. There is precedent, sort of, for Superman being a dick, but not an idiot.
  • Batman Beyond's 2010 mini series does this to almost every single character in varying degrees, from Terry forgetting he has a girlfriend and picking up the Idiot Ball - apparently losing about 3 years of experience in the process - to Bruce suddenly deciding that Terry just isn't good enough anymore and constructing bat robots to replace him. This is without getting into all of the logic and continuity fail that is eeeeverywhere, or characterization like Dick's... which probably classifies as character derailment even taking into account the fact that he spent 30-40 years being bitter and alone, because his characterization is so far from the DCAU starting point (whose characterization is different from his comics counterpart in a fairly substantial way) as to be baffling.
  • David Reid was introduced to the Justice Society of America as the great-grandson of FDR, Reid joined the team as an earnest but dedicated rookie with a solid respect for the team of veteran superheroes. Then along comes Gog, who transforms Reid into Magog after his brief brush with death. The transformation influences Reid into acting brashly and recklessly, but once he sees what Gog's really about he turns on his master, even severing Gog's head in the climax. In the aftermath, he apologizes to Alan Scott and is seen without his trademark eye scar [dead link], indicating he's earned a fresh start. So what happens after that? He's quickly flanderized into a caricature of his Kingdom Come counterpart in every appearance other than his brief miniseries and ultimately killed off by Maxwell Lord in a really ugly death scene.
  • JLA: Act of God does this to just about every single character bar Batman, who takes a huge level in arrogance.
  • On the X-Men page linked above, it's been noted that Warren Ellis's approach when writing for mainstream comics lately has been "take a look at past few issues featuring character, extrapolate from there as baseline behavior." If you want any further proof that's the case, then behold as Captain America condones torture.

Marvel Comics

  • Spider-Man is either happy-go-lucky or so emo that he makes deals with devil to stop the pain. This may even happen to his movies if the rumors are true about the reboot becoming grim and gritty.
    • For that matter, Mary Jane as well. In One Moment in Time, said deal is retconned so that she is now the one to have agreed, and adding insult to injury, she says, "See, to me, the reason I wanted to get married was to have kids. If that's (children) no longer a part of the equation, then marriage is just a piece of paper."
  • Black Panther. Poor T'Challa. Opinion is divided about when, exactly (Johns, Hudlin, or Liss) the derailment occurred, but not if. The fact is, in the early 2000s, Panther was treated as one of the smartest men in comics, king of both the Batman Gambit and the Xanatos Gambit, and spent his time matching wits with Mephisto, Dr. Doom, Iron Man, etc and coming out on top. Fast forward to the present, where he and Storm have been Strangled by the Red String in the span of basically one story arc, he's lost his kingdom (on account latching onto an uncharacteristic Idiot Ball), and his IQ appears to have dropped about fifty points. His well-documented scientific skills and background have been downplayed if not out-and-out retconned, and he's gone from being "Batman, only better" to "Daredevil, only worse, and have we mentioned lately that he's black?". His villains have gone from major threats like Doom, Magneto, and Mephisto to never before seen Russian mobsters, and Hatemonger. In terms of standing, he's gone from one of the most respected and revered heroes in the Marvel Universe to being talked down to by Luke Cage on a nearly monthly basis. The most recent direction has been hemorrhaging sales as a result, and with Christopher Priest retired, and a general genre wide lack of interest in minority heroes, it's not clear that anybody has the interest and/or skill to try and save the character.
  • Most characters in the Marvel Universe Crisis Crossover Civil War. In a way, Captain America was one of the lucky ones.
    • While his ideals and so on were kept intact, Cap's being forced to marry the Idiot Ball probably counts as derailment. The writers forced him to adopt a strategy that had literally zero percent chance of achieving any lasting peace or useful result, because otherwise the storyline wouldn't have had the ending they wanted.
    • Iron Man. Just a special mention for getting the worst. Going from a hero (albeit occasional jerk) to Der Eisenfuhrer, the armored superhero who doesn't mind throwing his best friends in jail for life. It took over a year and The Movie to undo much of the derailment and there is still a very vocal Hatedom. Unfortunately, most of the people who decided to check out the comics because of the movie quit reading out of disgust, so the Hatedom is still the primary chunk of readers.
    • Luckily, there's the Marvel Adventures line. It pretends that Civil War, World War Hulk and House of M never happened, and picks up where the 90s left.
      • Too bad it didn't extend that to Magneto (Wanda and Pietro leave him 'cause he tries to nuke New York just out of annoyance for his latest plan having failed. Not that canon Mags doesn't go back and forth on just how villainous he is when in villain mode, but... it tasted kinda like Planet X.)
        • That's more a rehash of the 1964's Uncanny X-Men #4, where Magneto tries to nuke a small country after the X-Men run him off, much to the displeasure of Pietro, who defuses the bomb. Not every "Magneto is evil" story is linked to Grant Morrison.
  • The Punisher has had to brush with character derailment ever since he was created. Although his exact quirks and personality vary slightly from writer to writer, in his heyday in the early nineties he was generally portrayed as sincerely wanting to help people and keep them from going through the same things he did, would occasionally question his actions and show mercy if the situation warranted it. Even a few traditional heroes considered him a good man at heart. Other writers would instead portray him as a complete amoral psychopath who didn't care about anything except killing criminals, and never ever questioned his actions.
    • Garth Ennis seems to have struck a fine balance, portraying him both as a complete amoral psychopath who doesn't care about anything except killing criminals and who never ever questioned his actions, but also as a man who is extremely diligent, going to huge lengths to ensure absolutely no innocents are harmed while he's "working". And on rare occasions, the plight of those around him do get through - just read The Slavers.
      • Quite possibly the ultimate derailment was Punisher: Purgatory, which set Frank up as an avenging angel. In fact, that was the last Punisher story until Welcome Back Frank, wherein Ennis promptly undid that idiocy.
  • Attempts to break away from their own title for the stars of Power Pack have led to baffling character derailments, such as when eldest boy Alex stole his brother and sisters' powers and became the laughably-monikered Power Pax, alienating fans for years after the event. Eldest girl Julie Power also changed from a book-reading, highly-articulate redhead (her character was based on her creator, Louise Simonson) in the original comics to a bumbling, dumb blonde actress in the pages of Runaways and a later spin-off series, Loners, where she was notable for magically appearing in one scene without explanation merely to be brutally stabbed so that a male character could be shown to feel guilt at her situation, and having a solo story that somehow convinced several thousand readers to stop buying the book with only two issues to go.
    • In fairness, the "dumb blonde" part was later shown to be a deliberate facade.
  • Okay, it's only a story about a possible future and, arguably, not in the main continuity but Bruce Banner in the climax to the Wolverine story Old Man Logan who is revealed to have become a sociopathic, redneck cannibal who is now head of a family of in-bred Hulklings. For added Squick it's revealed that this family resulted from Bruce breeding with She-Hulk, his cousin - "The only woman out there who could take the damn pace" (emphasis as original). There's also a strong implication this was not consensual. Ugh, just, ugh. Compare this with Banner's actions in Incredible Hulk 602 which came out the same week to understand exactly what's wrong with this picture. Naturally this is another Mark Millar special.
    • It's worth noting that apparently in this universe Banner's long years of exposure to gamma radiation finally took their toll on his two personalities. So for this reason the Banner persona disappeared, left with nothing but an insane, Complete Monster Hulk.
    • Of course if one consider's Mark Millar's other major work involving the Hulk, The Ultimates, also cast the Hulk as a Complete Monster, and that continuity was specifically created to show case "new interpretations" of the characters, i.e., the writer's interpretations, one gets the impression that Millar isn't a Hulk fan.
  • Ed Brubaker did this to Black Tarantula in his Daredevil run. Black Tarantula was created as an elegant boss of criminal empire who put himself above everybody else, is a heir of ancient power and Implacable Man who gets toe to toe with Humongous Mecha. Brubaker completely changed his character, gave him father issues, turned his empire into ordinary gang and weakened him a little without giving any reason. Some say that he's gone from a bad ass sinister crime boss to a low level stereotypical thug, while others point out that in Spider-Man stories he was was really close to Villain Sue territory (he defeated Spidey twice and spared his life because he didn't found him as a real threat) and don't mind.
  • Anybody written by Matt Fraction. Maria Hill from Badass Normal Action Girl turned into The Chick for Iron Man? Check. Weapon Omega, guy who was always afraid of using his powers and never wanted to hurt anybody, becoming a psycho who likes killing people? Check. Ares, master strategist and badass god of war turned into stupid brute who says only Aye? Check. Pixie drained of all her character and transformed into Fetish Fuel Station Attendant for all loli fans? Check. Emma Frost flanderized into Flat Character who is only defined by calling people "darling" (and there is already large group considering her being derailed in at last five different ways. Fraction's version don't match any portrayal of her)? Do a number of fans think Matt Fraction just doesn't understand the characters he's working with? Hell yeah. Recently, he managed to screw up Tony Stark's characterization and entire history in one issue, including things estabilished by Fraction himself.
    • In the new[when?] Defenders series, we now have Doctor Strange, sexual predator, and Betty Ross, slightly petulant adrenaline junkie who keeps forgetting she's invulnerable.
  • Brian Bendis has a tendency to be horribly tone-deaf on some characters. That Photoshop that's the page image? That was originally Dr. Doom -- ruler of Latveria, world-class evil genius, and refined bastard -- telling Ms. Marvel to "shut [her] cow-mouth" or else he'll stop her "whore's heart". And what did Ms. Marvel, veteran superhero and military brass, think about this childish outburst? "That hurt my feelings." Carol, when the supervillain who matches wits with Mr. Fantastic breaks down and calls you imbecilic gutter insults, you don't feel bad. You take a picture so it can last forever.
  • Try reading Alpha Flight some time. From Byrne to Mantlo. 'nuff said.
  • J Jonah Jameson has always been a jackass (whether there was anything more than that depended on the writer) but he also tried as hard as possible to reveal the truth about any Villain with Good Publicity. Recent stories have his hate for Spider-Man go from irrational to certifiably insane and him becoming a vocal supporter of Norman Osborn who treatened to kill his family in the past.
  • Canonically, Death's Head II is supposed to be the same character as Death's Head. However, many fans felt he was not the same character -- he was not written by the original writer, exhibited none of the mannerisms and personality quirks of the original, and ended up as a generic Darker and Edgier Boring Invincible Hero. It got so bad that Death's Head's original creators Simon Furman and Geoff Senior wrote and drew What If... #54 just to show their take on what should've happened instead.

Other Works

  • In the original Inodoro Pereyra comics, Eulogia was beautiful and nice. During the 70s, she became fat and cranky.
  • Agatha went from being Gaturro's girlfriend to his unattainable love interest.
  • The in the original stories of Paperinik (aka Phantomias), Paperinik was the Chaotic Neutral alter-ego that Donald Duck used for punishing those who would annoy him. His victims were mostly his own relatives. He was a shameless outlaw who was hunted down by the police and never had a motive to help others, unless he'd get a large reward. Now, in the later versions, he has turned into a Lawful Good superhero who fights crime and unconditionally helps the authorities.
    • Consider that Donald Duck, while very flawed, deep down is still a genuinely good guy with a sense of justice, and that he originally acted as an "avenger" because his relatives had wronged him.
    • Let's face it, back when he was created his relatives were huge Jerkass. Scrooge was always breathing down his neck, pushing him and so on. Daisy, well, let's say she was Tsundere. And Gladstone, do I need to explain?[context?] After everyone got their Character Development, there was no need for avenger and he became more soft, instead protecting the innocent.
  • This trope came down on Rotor hard in Sonic the Hedgehog issues #215-#216; normally, he's depicted as a shy, introverted Bollywood Geek who prefers to stay in the background and only fights when he needs to, but these two issues, in order to pin him as the Faux Traitor in Ian's ongoing story arc with Silver, twisted him into a bored glory-hound with a self-esteem issue who nearly killed his friends in a previous and ill-conceived attempt to play the hero. Even worse, despite being touted as one of the greatest minds of Mobius for most of the comic, these issues made him come off as dumber than average, spouting inaccurate Techno Babble and pushing the development of his projects off to NICOLE instead of doing it himself.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When Twilight, the villain of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8 comic, is revealed to actually be Angel this represents a major case of character derailment. We're supposed to believe that someone who'd spent five seasons learning that the battle against evil is probably hopeless, but you fight it anyway has suddenly decided to abandon the world to destruction in order to bring about his own happiness? Right.
    • It's all the worse when you consider that as far back as the episode "I Will Remember You" of Angel, Angel was willing to sacrifice his happiness with Buffy in order to be able to fight the good fight against evil. In the entire Buffverse arc since they, nothing has been seen to contradict this, and suddenly he could give a flying fuck... literally.
  • Deconstructed in Maus. The story continually compares the generous, brave, resourceful Vladek Spiegelman who survives the Holocaust to his present self, who has inexplicably devolved into a cranky pain that makes life miserable for everyone. Part of this (non-fictional) account deals with the author's issues and incredulousness at the difference between his father's behavior then and now. The story also rejects his Freudian Excuse of behaving the way he does, noting that other Holocaust survivors didn't become the bitter shell he is now.
    • It should be noted that the portrayal of Vladek as he was during the Holocaust could be a case of an Unreliable Narrator; the only source of information we have is Vladek himself, and attention is drawn several times to the fact that Vladek's memories sometimes contradict themselves or other eyewitness accounts.
    • Also, it is debatable whether Vladek's post-Holocaust misanthropy is truly a derailment from what he was during it; there is never any question that he loved Anja (his wife during the Holocaust, who committed suicide a few decades after it was over) far more than Mala (his wife at the time of writing), so it makes sense that he would be far more compassionate towards Anja. Old Vladek also shows resourcefulness, but because it is unnecessary in his time it comes across as simple miserliness. There are also hints from Vladek's possibly rose-tinted memories of himself that suggest he might have been somewhat domineering and lacking in sympathy even then.
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