The tendency of long-lived franchises and Legacy Characters to get the protagonists of the newest installment to deliberately contrast, either in personality or appearance, to the characters in previous or concurrent installments.

Examples of Contrasting Sequel Character include:

Advertising

Anime and Manga

  • The Digimon Franchise.
  • Just every JoJo's Bizarre Adventure protagonist seems to deliberately the opposite personalities and motivations than the protagonist than preceded them.

Comic Books

Fan Works

Film

Literature

Live-Action Television

  • Star Trek
  • The Power Rangers franchise, there's a new group that are different than their predecessors.
  • The Doctor and his/her companion(s) have this trope in spades, it's the reason Nth Doctor exists.

Music

Myths and Legends

  • Classical Mythology has the current gods, like Zeus, Apollo, Hermas, and etc. has different personalities, appear human-like, and have powers that are different than the previous titans, which are more of giants or just inhuman appearing monsters.

Newspaper Comics

Oral Tradition

Pinball

Podcasts

Professional Wrestling

Puppet Shows

Radio

Tabletop Games

Theater

Video Games

  • The Persona franchise, big time. The original main character was more or less an Heroic Mime; the Persona 2 duology has, in order of release, a troubled pessimistig young delinquent and a very genki and optimistic young woman; the protagonist of Persona 3 is a depressive youth who tries to keep to himself; the protagonist of Persona 4 is a way more social character who tries to uphold to justice, while the protagonist of Persona 5 has a delinquent backgoroud and authority issues.
  • The Assassin's Creed franchise, each of the protagonist has a whole different personality than the previous game (save the Ezio trilogy). For example, Altaïr is a cold yet arrogant and silent, contrast to Ezio who is a complete opposite. Just to name a few.

Western Animation

Web Animation

Web Comics

Web Video

Other Media

Real Life