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Creator's Pet/Video Games: Difference between revisions
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* ''[[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 Guy|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 [[Ass Pull|asspulls]] and, to give him weight, culminated in his hijacking the lore of one of the most prominent quest lines the Alliance had: {{spoiler|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 [[Moment of Awesome|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.
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** 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 [[Dragonball Z|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, {{spoiler|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 [[Warmup Boss|the last boss of the Ghostlands quest chain]].
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* 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<ref>Press and hold R down all the way, not just with slight pressure and press A</ref>. The hate [[Up to Eleven|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 [[Ensemble Darkhorse|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 in ''[[New Super Mario Bros Wii]]'', it seems at least one of the issues has been resolved.
* For several years, the creative team of ''[[The King of Fighters]]'' foisted the paradox that is Ash Crimson onto the world. [[Ambiguously Gay]], overpowered, [[Dude Looks Like a Lady|a strange, androgynous appearance]], and storywise is one of the strongest characters and is responsible for at least three characters [[Brought Down to Normal|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 ''[[Ret-Gone|alter the past so he never existed]]''.
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** 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 [[Recycled in Space|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...
** [[Series Mascot|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 "[[Sesame Street|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 [[Hype Backlash|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 Darkhorse|Ensemble Darkhorses]] Reshiram and Zekrom, and the Zoroark hate never really materialized. Zoroark instead became a somewhat popular Pokémon (though [[Captain Obvious|not as popular as Lucario during its peak]].)
* ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'':
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*** 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 {{spoiler|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.
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