Creator's Pet/Video Games

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• Seth from Street Fighter IV to an UNBELIEVABLE degree. He could well be the videogame poster boy for this trope. He's received a huge amount of flack from reviewers and the fandom in general for his lackluster design, massively cheap AI and cloned move-list. Producer Yoshinori Ono acknowledges this hatred, recently stating "Everybody hates Seth, that's why he's back as the end boss in SSF 4. I want to torture people with him!" and admits "Seth will remain a target of universal hate".
• Kurtis Stryker looked incredibly out of place in the Mortal Kombat universe, as he was a plainclothes cop in a video game world filled with demons, cyborgs and Palette Swap ninjas. From his initial appearance in Mortal Kombat 3, the developers figured that he would become one of the series' new favorite characters and tried to elevate his power to near-Game Breaker status, but only made him a Tier-Induced Scrappy. Thanks to his new design in Mortal Kombat Armageddon, he's been Rescued from the Scrappy Heap. The backwards baseball cap is gone, at least...
• Mortal Kombat 9: Quan Chi has definitely become a Creator's Pet due to how in MK9, he is given a greatly increased role and ends up taking most of Shang Tsung's old role.
• World of Warcraft:
  • The player base is split about the leaders of their respective factions being this. The first, Thrall, has generally been accepted as Chris Metzen's pet character ever since his initial appearance, but not many have called him out on it, since the change of the Horde from bloodthirsty demonic army to a shamanic society of proud warrior race guys under his leadership has been accepted as a good thing for the lore. Ever since the latest expansion pack, though, they've been treated to Varian Wrynn, the rightful king of Stormwind who was lost to his people until recently. The way his change in character, return and insertion into the game has been handled, however, has been heavily criticized. Not only does his character development run a clear parallel to Thrall's, but it has been done in a fraction of the time, in which his character made a complete 180 - a barbaric human to Thrall's educated Orc - it involved some major asspulls and, to give him weight, culminated in his hijacking the lore of one of the most prominent quest lines the Alliance had: the exposing and subsequent slaying of Onyxia. This has drawn bad blood from both factions, while getting others up in arms over Thrall's status as Metzen's pet. Currently, Varian seems more deserving of Creator's Pet status, as the developers keep pushing him in an ever more prominent role in matters even though a large part of the base hates him, while the main complaint of Thrall's detractors is that he's doing too little to oppose the inner conflicts, instead relying too much on advisers.
  • Varian's hijacking of Onyxia's kill was rather obnoxious in and of itself, putting him almost in Marty Stu territory, and his constant whininess about how a secret sect of the Forsaken experimented on humans without Thrall's knowledge automatically makes the Horde evil and unbearable has made him almost a return to the Alliance's roots as horrible anti-orc racists--indeed, he's beginning to sound rather like the ill-fated bigot Lord Garithos of Warcraft 3. Thrall has been taking his responsibilities quite well, only making appearances for doing awesome things, where Varian has the "wonderful" privilege of being a gigantic fracking tool in every cutscene he's in. The fact that he serves as the instigator for a larger Alliance Vs Horde split in the latest expansion is especially grating: Thrall was doing quite well in working the Horde and Alliance towards a solid cold-war style peace, and with one word Varian brings it crumbling around Thrall's head.
  • Garrosh Hellscream is the Horde equivalent of Varian Wrynn. In Burning Crusade he was nothing but a minor character whose story was mostly a Call Back to Warcraft III. Lately, he's been all over the place, leading the Horde forces in Northrend and escorting Thrall to all diplomatic events, and he's a hothead who causes conflict wherever he goes. His actions are doubly insulting to players who identify with the Horde. First, he loves to criticize Thrall and tell him what a "true Warchief" would do, despite only being a member of the Horde for less than a year. Second, for years Horde players have had to deal with idiots who aren't familiar with the story assuming Alliance are the good guys and Horde are the bad guys - Garrosh's making the Horde look bad makes them look bad as people who play Horde.
  • His entire involvement in Cataclysm is just other characters (besides the other racial leaders), talking about how awesome and talented he is. It almost seems like a joke, since this shilling is usually followed by Garrosh destroying his own faction through sheer stupidity.
  • To the complete and utter joy of the fanbase, this creatorism seems to have a been a ploy to make Garrosh less-likable to the players, and he's currently set up to be the final boss in the upcoming expansion Mists of Pandaria, following a War crime that sends his past a Moral Event Horizon that makes the Horde turn on him. Good riddance.
  • Most of this can be summed up as the writers liberally passing around the Conflict Ball. That's not being snarky; its a well-known fact that the creators want the factions to remain at war (its called World of Warcraft, after all), and introducing two racist, overbearing and aggressive faction leaders is a great way to do that. It was either that or derail Thrall and Bolvar Foredragon, which would have resulted in riots. The players are constantly bombarded with the two leaders' their supposed "badass"-ness at every freaking opportunity and are then expected to be ecstatic about them whenever the subject about them comes up. It's a Double Standard if there ever was one.
  • Hitting existing characters with the Idiot Ball and indulging in supreme Informed Ability hijinx with Garrosh and Varian does not help matters.
  • An interesting reversal in regards to the initial point; Thrall is truly starting to slip into full-blown Creator's Pet-ism as of Cataclysm. He has since gone from being a likeable leadership figure to the shaman equivalent of Superman, which many people have felt has made him less effectual than he was before. What's worse is that it's obvious Metzen has let loose the floodgates and is gushing his unadorned love of Thrall into the narrative now. He outright stated in the Cataclysm DVD commentary that Thrall is both the most important character in Warcraft, AND that he is representative of everything the franchise is about. Many fans, even long-time fans of the series and the character, have met these statements and Thrall's character development in Cataclysm with disdain.
  • It's gotten to the point of stupidity. The cinematic patch 4.2 goes as follows: Thrall's at the Maelstrom keeping the world stable, when out of nowhere Ragnaros comes and tells Thrall about how he's going to burn the world. Thrall has hallucinations of the world burning to the point of collapse and Aggra runs over to see what's wrong. Thrall has almost no presence this patch (He gets a short, arguably minor, questline in which he dies and you help Aggra restore him and then they get married, that's it), as opposed to major characters for this patch like Hamuul Runetotem, Malfurion Stormrage, Fandral Staghelm or even Leyara. Yep, Metzen loves Thrall to the point of giving him Wolverine Publicity.
  • Metzen's even admitted to this, but hopes to focus on other characters in the future.
  • Aggra herself, who was created by Metzen because he hates the Thrall/Jaina ship.
  • Aggra represents a buttload of Unfortunate Implications, too.
  • Thrall does make a few appearances in patch 4.3... you have to follow him around in an Escort Mission dungeon instance (Hour of Twilight) and he shows up in the final battle against Deathwing after the players fought him to near victory and Kill Steal the whole fight with a spirit bomb. And did we mention he gets ALL the attention from the dragon aspects in the following cinematic? Yeah, we'll be standing over there, saving the world from the next Omnicidal Maniac while you philosophize about the endless nature of war and the passing of the age.
    • And now, as of Mists of Pandaria, Thrall has replaced Deathwing as the Azeroth's Aspect of Earth, despite not being a dragon. This, in turn, means that Thrall's overpowered status will be turned Up to Eleven. Couple this with the utter sinking of the popular Thrall/Jaina ship by Metzen, and you have a fuming, really pissed-off base of former Thrall fans.
  • Some of Richard Knaak's characters for the tie-in novels.
    • Rhonin becomes leader of the Kirin Tor and marries the unknown-until-now youngest Windrunner sister, going back in time and altering history in the War of the Ancients.
    • Darkhan Drathir, a mouthy, spoiled mage background character in a prior novel, became a Villains in the Sunwell Trilogy, was able to defeat Sylvanas off-screen in her own territory. In World of Warcraft, he plays a more minor role as the last boss of the Ghostlands quest chain.
• Touhou:
  • Aya Shameimaru has long flirted with Creator's Pet status. She made her first appearance in Phantasmagoria of Flower View as a tengu reporter who was investigating the incidents going on at the time. Oh, and she also "accidentally" beat up everyone along the way because she was "holding back" and "not actually trying to fight". This would have been one thing, but she would, in some form, go on to appear in the next four Touhou games, including a Gaiden Game with her as the main character. Her appearance in Mountain of Faith was particularly infuriating because most of the old cast, Reimu Hakurei and Marisa Kirisame notwithstanding, made no appearance in this game... except for Aya, who not only ended up being the level four boss, but was explicitly stated by Touhou creator ZUN himself to have lost to the heroine on purpose.
  • At her peak, Aya had become so bad that a minor meme had spawned explaining that she had gotten into so many games in exchange for giving ZUN sexual favors. However, fanon often portrays Aya as a humorously over-the-top, so-obnoxious-she's-funny tabloid reporter with a penchant for taking embarrassing photos of the other girls. This interpretation of Aya is not nearly as bad as the one that ZUN has saddled her with, and it not only rescued her from the scrappy heap, but it gave her almost as many fans as she has haters, making her one of the most polarizing characters in the series.
• Rayman:
  • Some older members of the fandom absolutely deplore the Rabbids. There can be little debate about their forcibly changing the Rayman series from adventure platformers to collections of short, bizarre minigames, pushing all of Rayman's previous supporting cast out of the spotlight, and carrying on their franchise hijack for a large number of games in a short amount of time.
  • Their Creator's Pet status only became more apparent when one of them got a playable role in, of all places, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game.
• Guild Wars Factions:
  • The character of Mhenlo at times felt more like the hero than the player characters. In the cutscenes, he seemed to do most of the thinking and talking, and he appeared to be..."acquainted"...with most of the female population of Cantha. In addition, that chapter was full of Escort Missions, usually with him as the person who you had to keep alive. (It helped that Mhenlo was actually a healer who was good at keeping himself alive, though.) Fortunately, ArenaNet dialed his importance FAR back in later campaigns and didn't make that mistake again.
  • Although Lieutenant Thackeray is coming close to taking his place. It's already been revealed that he's going to father an important character in the sequel with fan-favorite Broken Bird, Gwen. However, he was only introduced in the Christmas event, and since then his interactions with her have been seen as ham-handed at best, and outright forced at worst.
• Joey MacAdoo in the Backyard Sports series. Saying nothing other than corny jokes (you gotta MACADOO it!) in his first appearance in Backyard Baseball 2007, he was destined to become The Scrappy. The writers somehow thought he and Ernie Steele (who is also corny, but actually realizes he is making bad jokes) should be the poster boys for the series, evolving into a Creator's Pet. Even worse: In one of the few Backyard Books, Joey is the main character.
• Reaver from Fable II could be argued as one, as the writers constantly paint him as a Badass Magnificent Bastard despite the numerous atrocities he commits throughout the game.
• Reaver returns in Fable III, and he still can't be killed. However, pretty much EVERY character hates Reaver with a bloody passion, and it's hard to find someone in the game who doesn't want him dead. Doesn't help much though, considering in Fable III, you have no choice but to rely on him as king/queen even though he tried to kill you earlier in the game. You're either forced to agree with his evil ideas or use his company to have your morally sound decisions reach fruition.
• The Super Mario Bros. games have two such characters, both of whom were introduced in Super Mario Sunshine:
  • FLUDD from Super Mario Sunshine seemed to have garnered a lot of hate because of the fact that you can't move on in the game without using it. Even worse, because of the controls having to be remapped to account for FLUDD's presence, Mario loses one of his most useful moves, the long jump, and this also caused many players to not be aware that the backflip was still present. The hate escalated when it replaced Mario's B-Down move in Super Smash Bros.. Brawl as fans greatly preferred his old B-down move in Super Smash Bros. Melee. The old B-Down move is still there (As his Aerial Down attack), but Damn You, Muscle Memory! still means lots of accidentally pumping up FLUDD.
  • The biggest Creator's Pet is Bowser Jr. In Super Mario Sunshine, he was merely a Replacement Scrappy (for the Koopalings) who was far from alone in being annoying, but despite overwhelmingly negative fan reaction (particularly in the West), he has since reappeared in four subsequent installments of the main series (both New Super Mario Bros.. games, and both Super Mario Galaxy games), something not even true of beloved characters like Yoshi. He always has a very prominent role in the plot. Fans hate him, but the developers are in love with him. Since the Koopalings are back as of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, it seems at least one of the issues has been resolved.
  • Funnily enough, the Koopalings would run afoul of this themselves once they rejoined the main cast. Once a fun Quirky Miniboss Squad beloved by fans, they started to wear out their welcome once they started popping up in game after game, acting as the main bosses in the New Super Mario Bros. series and several games during the Dork Age of Mario RPG's and replacing far more unique and creative bosses with their repetitive and samey boss fights. They'd attract further heat come Mario Kart 8, where they'd take up a whopping seven slots in a fairly limited roster already padded out with filler characters like the Baby Princesses, Metal Mario, and Pink Gold Peach and lacking Ensemble Darkhorses like Diddy Kong, Dry Bones, Petey Piranha, King Boo, and Kamek. Despite fan outcry it seemed impossible to escape from them until the Switch era, where the devs seemed to get the hint and would ease up on their appearances in games while reintroducing unique bosses into the mainline platformers and RPG's once again.
• For several years, the creative team of The King of Fighters foisted the paradox that is Ash Crimson onto the world. Ambiguously Gay, overpowered, a strange, androgynous appearance, and storywise is one of the strongest characters and is responsible for at least three characters losing their moves. The dev team absolutely loved him, but players (non tournament players, story obsessed nerds) wished he would he would step aside so that more orthodox characters could get a chance to shine. SNK acknowledged these complaints in KOF XIII...by having him alter the past so he never existed.
• Pokémon:
  • The fans got their Creator's Pet with the form of Pichu, a second-generation Pokémon promoted heavily two generations later. It's known that Pichu is one of the creator's favorite Pokémon, but in the height of rumors about the fifth generation and with a new movie on the way (that would make all Generation IV Pokémon featured at least once in the anime), Spiky-eared Pichu (a female Pichu with a spike/notch-ended ear) made her first appearance. She was basically promoted as one of the main stars of the twelfth movie, that featured the God of Pokémon. She made her way into merchandising, got an anime ending, and even got an appearance as a very special event-only Pokémon in HeartGold and SoulSilver. They also got as far as featuring a Pichu with AN UKULELE as a big surprise for an upcoming game (a spin-off, fortunately).
  • Let us not forget about Plusle and Minun, who had a lot of exposure in marketing, movies and spinoffs despite lacking in stats and basically being "Pichu/Pikachu AS TWINS" designwise, for the sake of promoting double battles. Thankfully, they only had this much exposure during Generation III and the following "Pikaclones" had much less exposure...
  • Pikachu itself is treated as this, needless to say. It's far more popular with the young kids that make up Pokémon's traditional target demographic than with older fans (especially male). Yet, it constantly shoves its chubby yellow face into every single aspect of the franchise, even material related to the recent Pokémon Black and White (games where Pikachu isn't even obtainable), making it an "Elmo" of sorts.
  • Lucario came close, in that it got to be in its own movie, characters of its Gen. dress like it, and became a character in Brawl. But aside from people who think he replaced Mewtwo in Brawl, Lucario was never an unpopular Pokemon.
  • Zoroark also came close and didn't quite become a Creator's Pet, but for different reasons. A blatant Expy of Lucario, it was shilled endlessly during the early days of Generation V as an attempt to repeat Lucario's success - and didn't reach the same level of popularity. However, instead of shoving Zoroark in everyone's faces, Game Freak shifted its main marketing for Gen V to other Pokémon such as pre-established Ensemble Darkhorses Reshiram and Zekrom, and the Zoroark hate never really materialized. Zoroark instead became a somewhat popular Pokémon (though not as popular as Lucario during its peak.)
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Shadow is currently seen as this by half of Broken Base. He was once the most popular character in the series with his debut in Sonic Adventure 2, having a deep and compelling backstory as well as being an Evil Counterpart to Sonic. After his apparent death at the end was Retconned into him surviving with amnesia, a huge amount of plot focus was put on him in Sonic Heroes. Later, he got his own game that continued his story arc. Due to all of the focus on him, many fans have started to hate him for somehow managing to displace, if only temporarily, Sonic himself from being the focus of the series.
    • The Sonic-displacing is proven by Sonic being nerfed in boss fights against Shadow to a truly unbelievable degree and being given a thorough backseat moveset-wise. In Sonic X, 9 times out of 10, Shadow will have Sonic on the ropes with Sonic putting up no believable resistance given his consistent attributes throughout the series.
      • Even after Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 continued this trend, giving not only Shadow but also Silver the treatment: it reserved the most interesting parts of the story to Shadow and Silver's episodes, while Sonic's story consisted in a tedious and uninteresting saveElise-from-Eggman-only-for-her-to-get-kidnapped-again loop; and made Sonic out to be the weakest of the three hedgehogs, with Silver expressing incredulity at how weak he was. There was even a cringe worthy scene in which Sonic got defeated by Silver in a matter of seconds, followed by Shadow showing up and saving him as Silver was about to kill him. And that's not even getting to the part in which Sonic actually got killed.
  • Shadow is also the Assist Trophy (which work like Poke Balls) from Sonic's universe in Super Smash Bros.. Brawl, seemingly displacing other candidates such as Tails or Knuckles, who are relegated to running loop-de-loops in the background of the Sonic stage alongside Silver.
• This is always a risk with Exposition Fairy characters, such as Navi from Ocarina of Time, and the titular Minish Cap.
• The Soldier from Team Fortress 2 is getting accused heavily with this for a number of reasons, including a recent spree of highly controversial updates that give him more weapons to work with (ignoring what statistically amounts to reskinned weapons, Soldier has 20 different weapons. Demoman and Heavy only have 16 each). The fact that he's Robin Walker's favorite class does not help defend his case.
• BlazBlue:
  • While she is for the most part well-loved, Noel Vermillion is very much being a Creator's Pet. The creator made no excuse in declaring how much he likes her and puts many things considered good into her character and she seems getting pushed into getting like a Breakout Character. But as said above, she's still well loved despite some Hatedom and the in-game story was MUCH more merciless to her.
  • While this hasn't reached to official 'director declaring love', Makoto Nanaya is getting close into being one. Her story in Extend practically was just stumbling at some places and doing nothing important. Yet, she's been given a lot of Character Shilling in form of Hazama considering her a Spanner in the Works for his oh-so-perfect Evil Plan, Relius suddenly declaring her 'having a powerful soul' and just can't seem to get enough of her and even Rachel not snarking at her (especially when compared to Ragna, where she spent every second of their on-screen time together being a snob to him). That's quite a way to go for someone at first presented as unimportant at first and doing nearly nothing in her story. But just like Noel, fans utterly adore her.
• Liara T'Soni of Mass Effect is this to some. She is with you at the beginning of Mass Effect 3 without leaving you, appears to be pushing as the main love interest even when you romance someone else, and has a comic book and a DLC dedicated to her. Also, she was never as popular as Garrus or Tali before both were accused of being a Spotlight-Stealing Squad, and she gets a lot more screen time and conversations than every other character in Mass Effect 3. This is partly because she cannot die until the end but it also doesn't explain why things like the interactive comic pans lovingly to her, or having both Shepards call her "beautiful" and putting her figure at the foreground in every panel. In addition, quite a few people were confused as to why their Shephard's final thought before death was to remember Liara's smile. If you didn't romance Ashley/Kaidan, Liara's face appears in Shepard's flashback montage of his/her closest friends at the end of Mass Effect 3, even if you romanced someone else.
• RuneScape:
  • Some of the marketing strategies they use to get free players to buy members definately fall under this category. Once every few months, the marketing team comes up with some new gimmick that they endlessly harp on about in order to justify their existance. The current Gimmick is the Squeal of Fortune, which definitely qualifies for this status.
  • To elaborate: The SoF is a simple slot spin which involves humourously punching a goblin that awards the player with a free item. It occasionally awards an item that only members can use, encouraging players to purchase members. An animated picture appears in the middle of the screen whenever you log in and have the chance to play (no other update in the history of the game has been quite so obnoxious), and attempting to purchase spins will log you out with no warning whatsoever (again, more obnoxious than any update so far). A picture of the beaten up goblin (which loses its charm after the first 20 spins) is featured on the main page as well.
    • Elaborating further: The SoF has received more negative feedback within two weeks of release, than any other update in the entire 10+ year history of RuneScape. On two separate occasions, Jagex have responded by stating that they acknowledge the colossal amount of negative feedback, only to immediately announce that they'll be keeping the SoF in the game anyway.
  • This was only exacerbated by an update that allowed players to buy Squeal spins with real-world money; not only had Jagex said they would never do something like this in the past, but it's also questionably-legal, as it could be seen as encouraging underage gambling.
  • This has happened quite a few times in RuneScape's history, as the company grows larger. Updates that simply do not fit into the rest of the game are added, completely ruining immersion, apparently because the current developers like them. It doesn't happen often, but it is jarring when it does. The Squeel of Fortune is one example of this.
• Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII for some. After her starring role in XIII, she became the sole representative of that game in Duodecim, got into Theatrhythm, XIII-2 was partially greenlit because Squeenix wanted to use Lightning again. And this isn't even all her appearances in Square games so far. And for a character who originated in one of the most divisive FF games ever, this is a huge deal.
  • Arguable in Lightning's case. While the party is diverse and all the characters get a lot of development, Lightning is far and away the most iconic character and was always central to the plot.
  • Sephiroth can also come off as this, as he has appeared in many games and spinoffs, sometimes with the flimsiest justifications. This could probably be explained by him being a firm fan favourite and one an iconic character, however.
  • Like the BlazBlue examples though, both characters are still well liked. Final Fantasy XIII-2's Caius on the other hand...