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In TV shows or other works produced by a team of people, or where a [[Long Runner]] has a long succession of different creators, the fandom or part of it sometimes decides to hate one individual creator to an unhinged degree and blame him or her for everything that ever went wrong with the work. Often, the alleged flaws in the person's run/episodes are more generally present in the work as a whole, or habitual to the genre. Still, it is easier to focus the rage upon a single entity, than to admit to that.
Often the result of actual or perceived [[Pandering to the Base|taking sides]] in a [[Broken Base]] situation. Frequently the result of perceived responsibility for a [[Dork Age]] or [[Canon Discontinuity]]. Can happen when a person becomes a lightning rod for general [[Fan Disillusionment]], resulting in them being [[
Of course, if you set yourself up as the public face concerning a work, franchise or even a particular decision, you have to expect this to come with the territory. And if you've made a habit of deliberately needling fans in other areas, it is not wise to expect much charity from them.
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Contrast [[Protection From Editors]] and [[Creator Worship]].
{{noreallife|this is an [[Audience Reaction]] trope, and Real Life doesn't have an audience (as far as we know).}}
{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==▼
* An odd example is ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny]]'', with the [[Creator Couple|husband and wife team]] of director Mitsuo Fukuda and head script writer Chiaki Morosawa. They are to blame for some of the problems that afflicted the series; rather infamously, late in the show's run an animator blogged about Morosawa's perpetual tardiness with the scripts forcing them to add lots of [[Padding]]. However, the fandom tends to exaggerate this wildly, and gladly parrots off a number of unflattering and never confirmed rumors on request ("Fukuda hates America because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki"; "Cagalli got [[Chickification|demoted to extra]] because Morosawa hates her [[Naomi Shindo|voice actress]] personally", etc). All this is on top of the accusation that Kira Yamato and Lacus Clyne are their [[Mary Sue]] [[Author Avatar
▲== Anime ==
▲* An odd example is ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny]]'', with the [[Creator Couple|husband and wife team]] of director Mitsuo Fukuda and head script writer Chiaki Morosawa. They are to blame for some of the problems that afflicted the series; rather infamously, late in the show's run an animator blogged about Morosawa's perpetual tardiness with the scripts forcing them to add lots of [[Padding]]. However, the fandom tends to exaggerate this wildly, and gladly parrots off a number of unflattering and never confirmed rumors on request ("Fukuda hates America because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki"; "Cagalli got [[Chickification|demoted to extra]] because Morosawa hates her [[Naomi Shindo|voice actress]] personally", etc). All this is on top of the accusation that Kira Yamato and Lacus Clyne are their [[Mary Sue]] [[Author Avatar|Author Avatars]], used to explain why they always win and look good doing so (The fact that [[Rie Tanaka]] said that Lacus is a difficult role for her in [http://www.animevice.com/news/nyaf08-interview-with-rie-tanaka/78/ an interview] certainly didn't help matters.) Some have even gone so far as to blame [[Ill Girl|Morosawa's perpetual illness]] for the [[Development Hell]] that's delayed the rumored ''SEED'' conclusion movie for over five years - to the point of ''hoping she dies of it as "punishment"''.
* Much like the Fukuda/Morisawa case above, Chiaki Kon is to blame for most of the problems that plagued the anime adaptions of ''[[Higurashi]]'' and ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro ni]]'' (so much so that the original writer had to step on board and supervise the second season of the former). But that doesn't stop the fans of the Sound Novels for portraying her in the most negative light possible and some even take the blame also on [[Studio DEEN]] as well, never mind the studio ''only'' produces the anime of the 2 adaptations.
* Many ''[[Bleach]]'' fans hold Kubo Tite responsible for the anime fillers (and for the anime in general, including openings/endings), despite the fact that he has nothing to do with the anime aside of sometimes designing characters for fillers. Probably because he's said he's "more involved" with the anime than normal mangakas. But that doesn't mean he has to be much more involved.
* For that matter, similar to the ''[[Bleach]]'' example, manga authors are often credited with/blamed for anything that happens to the animated version of their work. Yes, some like Kubo Tite actually ''do'' have involvement with the anime, but sometimes, they're often blamed for parts of the anime that they don't have any control over, ''especially'' fillers and pacing.
* Shoji Kawamori is a very strange example: around the time ''[[Macross Frontier]]'' was airing, quotes and interviews popped up that annoyed fans so much it started the meme "Kawamori trolled my fandom!" Then it turned out that he never actually said any of those things, [http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?p=2585414#post2585414 because they were fiction made up by a disgruntled member of the fandom.] This doesn't stop people from treating Kawamori like mocking the fandom is his one true love.
== Card Games ==▼
* While Richard Garfield is largely exempt (he even had a card made of him with the art portraying him as Jesus) from the RAGE of the [[Unpleasable Fanbase]], the current head designer of [[Magic: The Gathering]] Mark Rosewater is often blamed for [[Ruined FOREVER|breaking the game's balance]].▼
== Comic Books ==
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** What's especially odd is that he got the job after doing so well on the cartoon, but not allowed to do much in the comic. Neither fans nor staff forgave him for this.
* Ken Penders for fans of the ''[[Archie Comics Sonic the Hedgehog|Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' comics. Whether it was for the much disputed events of Endgame, the [[Dork Age]] that some plagued the comic, or his later attempt to sue Archie for ownership of the characters he created despite them being derivative of Sega's creations, he attracts a lot of vitriol in the fandom. This tends to overshadow his contributions which were once widely appreciated by the fandom and still have an impact on the book today.
== Film ==
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* [[Jean Pierre Jeunet]] on ''[[Alien Resurrection]]''. He was brought in late into a troubled production and ended up being thrown under the bus by Fox for the film's failure despite most of the film's problems being the fault of either the studio or the screenwriters. The experience caused Jeunet to swear off Hollywood, and he hasn't returned since.
* [[David Fincher]] suffered this on ''Alien 3''. From what is known about what happened, Fincher was brought in late to the production (after several directors and writers, including Renny Harlin and Vincent Ward, left the production due to creative differences). Fincher had to contend with overzealous studio executives who attempted to tell him what and what not to shoot, very little room to alter the script (which was several different drafts bashed together into a vaguely coherent narrative) - which in turn forced him to continually rewrite pages to match already-shot footage, reshoots and the experience of being locked out of the 20th Century Fox editing room during post-production. Almost 20 years later, you can still find fans who lay the entire blame of the film's aesthetic and plot on Fincher - who, at the very least, did what he could to try and salvage the film. An interview with Fincher in the early 00's had him explain that he would have started entirely from scratch if he had his way.
== Literature ==
* In ''[[Star Wars]]'', R.A. Salvatore got criticisms up to and including death threats for writing the death of Chewbacca, even though it was collectively agreed upon by the higher ups that [[Tonight Someone Dies|someone had to die]] to establish that [[Anyone Can Die]] in ''[[New Jedi Order]]'', and GL did not expressly tell them not to kill him. One can only imagine what would have happened had the higher ups been allowed to kill off their first (tentative) target, Luke Skywalker. This was reportedly nixed by [[George Lucas]] himself.
** Karen Traviss is savaged by a number of fans and ex-fans alike of the [[Star Wars]] [[Expanded Universe]], but a number of what they dislike about "her" writing is not necessarily due to her. For example, [[Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale|the numbers of the Grand Army of the Republic vs. the Trade Federation's droid army are 3 million and 4 QUADRILLION]], respectively. These are not Traviss's numbers, however; she was told to use them by the people in charge of canon for the Clone Wars era, and she did.
*** Perhaps as a form of irony, the former was the one that first penned the clone numbers<ref>
* Among parts of the ''[[Warrior Cats]]'' [[Fan Dumb]], Victoria Holmes gets blamed for everything [[Unpleasable Fanbase|that they think is wrong with the series]]. Insults range from calling her sexist, insulting almost every word that comes out of her mouth, and the most mindboggling of them all: Fans claiming that she steals all the credit from the other authors, despite the fact that they think she deserves to receive all the blame.
** Their hatred of her is even more confusing since she is responsible for all the concepts and ideas behind the series, which the fans love, as well as the plotting and creating the characters. Kate and Cherith, on the other hand, are responsible for the actual writing of the books, which is generally agreed upon to be [[So Okay It's Average]].
▲== Live Action TV ==
* A large portion of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' fandom, long after the series' conclusion in 2003, can still be guaranteed to meltdown at the name of Marti Noxon, whom they believe personally ensured that Season Six sucked. David Fury and Steven DeKnight sometimes also get this, although in their cases it's more down to off-screen interactions with fans that went bad.
** And some fans squarely place the blame on [[Joss Whedon]] for dissatisfaction with the UPN years. Or [[Broken Base|anything else]].
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** You forgot Ronald Moore. The guy's done ''[[Battlestar Galactica]]'' and ''[[The Dead Zone]]'' and still gets called a hack.
** Some people hate Ira Steven Behr for taking a franchise about exploration and science fiction and turning it into a [[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine|space soap opera]].
** Fred Freiberger inherited ''[[Star Trek]]'' from [[Gene Roddenberry]] for its 1968-1969 season. Yes, season three, which
** Gene Roddenberry has been spared this, though his passing may have something to do with that. The two areas he had the most control of post-TOS were the first movie and the first season of Next Generation, and they are reviled by most fans. Yet most Trek fans seem to mostly forgive him for these (at least compared to what many Star Wars fans think of George Lucas).
* Of both ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' and Atlantis, Joe Mallozi and Paul Mullie have fallen into this too, even so far as fans looking down on an episode ''just because they wrote it''.
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** And Mallon has recently gotten heat for starting an [[Mystery Science Theater 3000]] website featuring Flash cartoons of the 'bots, voiced by a different group of actors.
* Doug Naylor gets bashed to no end for series VII and VIII of ''[[Red Dwarf]]'', which were written after the splitting-apart of his writing partnership with Rob Grant and were not as well received as the previous six series. The lazy assumption is that Rob Grant was the source of all the best and most sophisticated humour and stories, while Doug Naylor was a lowbrow drooling dead weight leeching off Grant's success. Honestly, one has to assume they've never read Grant's ''Red Dwarf'' novel "Backwards", which contains more gross-out humour than all of Series VII and VIII combined.
** A rather more
** Alternatively, it could just be that they work better as a team than apart; it's worth noting that Grant's post-''[[Red Dwarf]]'' CV, while more varied and somewhat better received, hasn't exactly set the world on fire either.
* Ryan Murphy, one of the three creators/writers for ''[[Glee]]''. To be fair, he arguably screws up the worst and he's appears to play [[Lying Creator]] the most.
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*** Kalish is slowly getting vindicated due though thanks to the revelations of Disney's growing disillusionment with the franchise that led to the episode count and funding cuts and its near-cancellations and the fact his [[Cut and Paste Translation|cut and paste]] tenure's looking more and more ambitious compared to the watered down [[Shot for Shot Remake|translation]] [[Power Rangers Samurai]]. And Jonathan Tzachor was a base breaker in the first Saban Era...
* Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, creators of ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'', got positively vilified by fans for the general shittiness of season 5, especially for breaking up the Barney/Robin pairing. This despite the fact that no one with even a modicum of perspective and understanding of how TV works should be able to realize there is no way in ''hell'' CBS would have ever actually allowed [[Wolverine Publicity|Barney Stinson]] to stay in a relationship, because that would mean no more jokes about his womanizing and over-the-top behavior. Yes, Barney had recieved a great deal of [[Character Development]] in season 4 that made the return to his previous behavior nonsensical, [[Executive Meddling|but when has that ever stopped network execs in the history of television?]]
== Newspaper Comics ==
* The ''[[For Better or For Worse]]'' "newruns." Creator Lynn Johnston had wanted to retire for real, but the syndicate, not wanting to risk losing a slot on the funny pages to another syndicate's strip, decided to put the strip in reruns, with various things updated for the times. However, the [[
== [[Professional Wrestling]] ==
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** Likewise, [[Vince McMahon]] tends to get blamed for everything in WWE, as if he's the one who handles everything.
*** Given Vince's reputation for nepotism and micromanagement, the fandom may have a point here.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
▲=== Card Games ===
▲* While Richard Garfield is largely exempt (he even had a card made of him with the art portraying him as Jesus) from the RAGE of the [[Unpleasable Fanbase]], the current head designer of [[Magic: The Gathering]] Mark Rosewater is often blamed for [[Ruined FOREVER|breaking the game's balance]].
** This is especially funny because he's only the lead designer, not the lead of all of R. And while design tries to get in the general area, until around May 17, 2017 it was really development's job to hone the balance to just right. Currently that jurisdiction now falls upon Play Design. That said there was a time period where MaRo was part of development (well before the year 2017) and during that time the game got ''horribly broken''. He along with other people got chewed out and was told they would all be fired if it happened again.
=== Tabletop RPG ===
* Holden Lee Shearer or John Chambers of ''Exalted'' get blamed by various circles for various things. Usually it goes like this: if you hate John Chambers, you blame everything bad about Exalted on him and sing praises of Holden. If you don't like Holden, he gets blamed for ruining favorite topics.
** Holden has effectively performed a bait-and-switch with collaborator and fellow Ink Monkey John Mørke, which makes it harder to criticize.
* Mike Mearls of ''[[Dungeons
*
== Video Games ==
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** MMORPG lead devs in general are likely to end up targets of this. It's perhaps for this reason that the lead developer of Clichequest, the fictional MMO in ''[[The Noob]]'', is portrayed as a [[Ted Baxter]], [[Jerkass]] and [[Pointy-Haired Boss]].
** Speaking of which, Jack Emmert has teamed up with Bill Roper of ''[[Hellgate:London]]'' infamy for a double dose of extra [[Fan Dumb]] for ''[[Star Trek Online]]''.
* Reggie Fils-Aimé, president of Nintendo of America, tends to get a lot of (mostly) undeserved flack from the ''[[
** Some [[Fan Dumb|fans]] also claim that he was actively trying to prevent Xenoblade, [[The Last Story]], and [[Pandoras Tower]] (the "Operation Rainfall games) from reaching North America. Just look at the comments made on Nintendo World Report's news page about [[The Last Story]] being published by XSEED for a North American release... Some fans take it even further, and claim that it's all Reggie's fault that there weren't a lot of games released for the Wii last year, despite the fact that NOA ''doesn't make the games.''
* Not one of the more high-profile examples, but there are those who blame any bad bit of level design in ''[[Doom]] II'' on Sandy Petersen. He also worked on quite a bit of the original ''Doom'', but that game is generally more highly revered than its sequel.
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** And ''Super [[Street Fighter]] IV'' has characters from III in it, so...
* The title of scapegoat for ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' seems to change every expansion. In the first few years, people generally blamed developers Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan and Alex "Furor" Afrasiabi for any and all of the game's shortcomings. In the Burning Crusade era, this title shifted to Tom "Kalgan" Chilton. Since the release of Wrath of the Lich King, however, players have been calling for Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street's head whenever they're particularly unhappy.
** Pretty much solely due to the now-famous "[[Memetic Mutation|To the ground!]]" nerf of Retribution Paladins. Oddly enough, Ghostcrawler's existence has rather neatly bisected the community between those that dislike him for [[
** Way back in WOW classic, Eyonix was the laison between the shaman community and developers. Just after promising that shamans were to be reviewed and have some problems fixed, he was laid up in the hospital for weeks. Lacking his input, the developers didn't make the promised changes. He came back to the forums to face a metric ton of hostility, including a wish for him to be hit by a bus. This inspired a "Bus Shock" meme, based on the shaman's fire/frost/earth shock spells.
** A good potion of the fanbase will blame every misstep on Chris Metzen, the Vice President of Creative Development, even when it's obviously outside of his department.
* And nowadays, almost everyone's pointing fingers at [[Activision]] for stuff ''[[Blizzard Entertainment|Blizzard]]'' does. DPS Being "Dumbed down" in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' by making Intellect function the ''same way as Strength and Agility'', meaning Mages will actually ''look'' at it when determining their gear? Activision's fault! Never mind that even ''before'' the merge people were screaming for that.
** Nevermind, either, that Activision-Blizzard is still essentially two distinct entities that are united on paper for record-keeping purposes. Neither group is in charge of the other, and both operate independently. The most that they share besides a letterhead is likely a pool of playtesters and artists.
** And likewise, ''[[Diablo III]]'''s "Always online". look at all the comments and you'll see "It's Activision's fault." No, that was ''Blizzard's'' choice.
* Most people who voice disappointment at later ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' games tend to heap their scorn on Tetsuya Nomura, despite the fact that Nomura was only the character designer for most of these games and not the director. And even then, he wasn't the sole artist, or even the art director for these games that he's credited with directing. They will even blame him for games he wasn't even involved in, such as ''[[Final Fantasy XII]]''.
** This is probably because of at least one interview in which Nomura ''himself'' claimed responsibility for a huge array of overall design decisions in the ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' series, despite many of them being nothing to do with character design (and almost certainly nothing to do with him). Scapegoating from within the company, perhaps?
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* LJN Toys is blamed on the games they published, even though Rare made them.
* David Gaider is this to certain portions of the Dragon Age fandom, mostly because he is the most well known person involved with the franchise (having written the accompanying books and well as writing for the games). Despite the fact that he is a writer, he will often be blamed for programming mistakes and blamed for characters that he didn't write. When fans aren't blaming him for every fault in the story anyway.
* Insomniac Games have been blamed for ''[[Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly]]'' even though they had nothing to do with it or any of the following Spyro games.
== Western Animation ==
* This phenomena, a lot like what happens in [[Real Life]], is lampshaded in ''[[A Bug's Life|A Bugs Life]]''
{{quote|'''Hopper''': "First rule of leadership: ''Everything'' is your fault."}}
* [[John Kricfalusi]] is widely blamed for the failures of [[The Ripping Friends]] and [[Ren and Stimpy]]: Adult Party
* Showrunner Mike Scully is usually blamed for ''[[The Simpsons]]''' nadir in quality and [[Flanderization|characterization]] in seasons 9-12. Of course, the fans have been saying the most recent season is the worst ever more or less since the series began (Comic Book Guy's catchphrase "worst episode ever" was coined in relation to ''[[The Simpsons]]'' in response to a fourth season episode, the fourth season now being considered to be something of a Golden Age). Also, the last episode he wrote was "How I Spent My Strummer Vacation" - which first aired in ''2002''.
** Creator Matt Groening also gets a big heap of blame from unhappy fans. The primary complaint is that he should have ended the show years ago. But Matt was complaining as early as season 5 that how long [[The Simpsons]] continues is totally out of his hands. He doesn't have the power to end the show and never did. That's Fox's call. He instead went on to create Futurama and be heaped with praised for taking a more hands-on approach.
** Current showrunner Al Jean gets a lot of blame for the latest quality drop, especially considering the fact that he has been the showrunner for over seven years, far longer than anyone else, not to mention that Al Jean was, with then partner Mike Reiss, showrunner on Seasons 3 and 4, as well as some episodes produced on the side for Season 6 when they did ''[[The Critic (animation)|The Critic]]'' and Seasons 8 & 9 when they did ''[[Teen Angel]]'' for [[Disney]]. Jean decided to return to ''The Simpsons'' in Season 10 when he felt he wanted to return to the show, and Reiss has since returned to ''The Simpsons'' as a co-producer.
* ''[[Transformers]]: [[Beast Machines]]'' head writer Bob Skir is generally blamed for not doing much to make the series a continuation of ''[[Beast Wars]]'', even though then [[Mainframe Entertainment]] president Dan Didio (yes, THAT Dan Didio) told him ''not to watch [[Beast Wars]]'' before becoming involved. His strong online presence at the time backlashed (in part thanks to the jerkass admin of his message board) into him getting most of the blame, while his writing partner Marty Isenberg, who kepts a low profile, was spared most of the flak (and went on to be the head writer for [[Transformers Animated]]).
* [[Seth MacFarlane]] is mistakingly thought to be responsible for everything and anything wrong with the [[
** You know "Not All Dogs go to Heaven"? The one that's most criticized here for being an [[Author Tract]] for Macfarlane? [http://familyguy.wikia.com/wiki/Not_All_Dogs_Go_To_Heaven Yeah, he neither wrote nor directed that episode.] Same with the second-most-criticized episode, [http://familyguy.wikia.com/wiki/Road_to_the_Multiverse Road to the Multiverse.] Both episodes were directed by Greg Colton, and the writers of "Heaven" and "Multiverse" were then showrunner Danny Smith and Wellesley Wild, respectively.
** Whether or not he's credited as writing or directing an individual episode isn't as important as one might think. As the executive producer, he oversees the creation of the scripts and approves them before they enter into production, sometimes rewriting them. That said, the original writer(s) tend to escape any blame in favor of targeting Seth.
** He is very frequently [[
** He even gets blamed for FOX's cash-grab DVD releases. [[Sarcasm Mode|Which is totally within his control and has never been mocked or bitched about on the show itself at all.]]
* [[Don Bluth]] has often been blamed for allowing several of his movies to have been made into sequels. While ''[[An American Tail|Fievel Goes West]]'' is sometimes considered watchable (Partly due to Nostalgia reasons), all the other stuff, especially ''[[Secret of NIMH]] 2'', is sometimes blamed on him. Other than ''[[Bartok the Magnificent]]'', [[Don Bluth]] had very little to do with any of these sequels. (Despite that, interestingly, he said that if he ''would'' direct a sequel for ''[[Secret of NIMH]]'', he listed a few ideas that were present in the sequel, but flipped around, ie, he wanted ''Timothy'' to be the villain and ''Martin'' to be the protagonist.)
** Of course, some of the films he ''was'' responsible were almost as bad, so it's not surprising that people would be unable to tell the bad writing from the other bad writing.
*** Though in those cases, there's a lot of [[Executive Meddling]], so it's still played straight.
* [[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic/Recap/S2
* [[Pixar Regulars|John Lasseter and Ed Catmull]] have recently fallen into this among some [[Pixar]] fans and especially [[Disney Animated Canon]] fans sometime after ''[[The Princess and the Frog]]'' was released. For example, they have gotten a ton of flack for changing ''[[Rapunzel]]'''s title into ''[[Tangled]]'', canceling the production of ''Newt'', ordering up sequels to previous Pixar films like ''[[Cars]]'' and ''[[Monsters, Inc.]]'', putting any fairy tale projects in development at Disney on hold, and changing the hand-drawn project ''[[The Snow Queen]]'' into a CGI film titled ''[[Frozen (Disney film)|Frozen]]''.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Audience Reactions]]
▲[[Category:Double Standard]]
[[Category:Blame Tropes]]
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