Trope Workshop:Indelible Reputation

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Sometimes a character has a reputation they can't shed. It can be annoying, or harrowing. In some cases they get embarrassed on a regular basis. For some reason, that one bit of history (or falsehood) keeps popping up.

The In-Universe version of Never Live It Down, the Indelible Reputation is one that a character cannot shake off. They may have done something to earn it. Or they may be very unlucky or the victim of Malicious Slander. In either case, it tends to be more negative than positive, the opposite of Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?

Examples of Indelible Reputation include:

Film

• Big Hero 6 has Wasabi mutter that he got his nickname due to spilling wasabi on his shirt one time. Some dubs amp this by revealing he ate an entire spoonful of wasabi and reacted appropriately.
• Toy Story
  • Toy Story 2 has the toys cringe when Buzz reminds them how Woody didn't give up after they tossed him out of the moving van in the first movie. Mr. Potato Head even asks why he had to bring it up again.
• Wreck-It Ralph
  • Deconstructed as the inciting incident for the plot. It's revealed that in this arcade at least, bad guys are Punch Clock Villains, even ones like Eggman. Ralph when off the clock is a Nice Guy, using the Bad Guys Support group to express depression about his thirtieth anniversary approaching and how he never even gets a bit of appreciation for doing his job. The Nicelanders all view him as the Bad Guy that wrecks things, deliberately exclude him from the anniversary party where Pac-Man and Sonic are attending, and don't understand why he would be upset about not receiving an invitation. Ralph even asserts angrily that he's just doing his job and isn't always a Bad Guy. Cue the next day where they get exactly what they want: Ralph not destroying their homes after a girl tries to play the arcade cabinet, because he's vanished (to fulfill a bet with Gene the building owner). With no Bad Guy, Fix-It-Felix has no purpose, the game becomes unplayable, and the Nicelanders all panic onscreen. While Gene remains a jerk to Ralph in the end, the other Nicelanders treat him better in the ending, Felix included, with him receiving a new anniversary cake that shows him on top with the others.
  • Vannelope can't quite escape her nickname as "The Glitch" and King Candy uses it to justify why he never lets her enter the races; if she glitches during a session, the players will think she's broken and the arcade owner will unplug the game. Vanellope would then die, since her glitch wouldn't let her escape with the other players, and she's actually calm about that possibility. He's lying; if Vanellope crossed the finish line, the game would reset and she'd regain her true identity. Also, her glitching becomes a form of teleportation, which players adore once Vanellope resumes her rightful position as head gamer.
  • Becomes a Chekhov's Gun with the phrase "Going Turbo" refers to a character leaving their game and hijacking someone else's. Felix explains to Calhoun, whose cabinet is new to the arcade: Turbo was a 2D racing character who got jealous on seeing a new racing cabinet getting attention. So he hopped games and tried to appear in the more popular one, which led to both cabinets getting "Out of Order" signs because the arcade owner naturally thought they were glitching. And if those games get unplugged forever? The characters become homeless if they manage to escape being erased. Turns out Turbo got smarter about it with his second attempt; he went into Sugar Rush, corrupted the code to erase Vanellope, and installed himself as King Candy, with improved graphics to hide his 3D nature. Quite fittingly, it is Vanellope's acquired glitching powers thanks to this corruption that expose Turbo's true form during the climax.

Literature

• Anansi Boys has this as a plot point. Despite having lost weight and his American accent, "Fat Charlie" is still known as the fat loser kid thanks to his father nicknaming him. His fiancee tolerates him, while her mother hates Charlie. Heck, his brother Spider steals his fiancee without any remorse. Much of the novel is about Charlie learning to reclaim his father's power after the latter dies.
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
  • Alastor Moody has a reputation for being extremely paranoid, owing to his career of hunting down Death Eaters and taking them in alive if he could. Professor Karkaroff, one of the former Death Eaters that he captured, references more than one incident where "Mad-Eye" Moody's paranoia backfired on him. It also allows Barty Crouch Jr. to hide any OOC moments and hatred of the Death Eaters that escaped Azkaban while posing as Professor Moody.
  • Draco makes the mistake of trying to hex Harry in front of Professor Moody. Mad-Eye turns him into a ferret and bounces Draco with magic, until Professor McGonagall intervenes. People start mocking Draco for the incident; even Hermione, who was worried that Draco could have been hurt, trolls him when he tries to mock her about her teeth (which he enlarged with magic).
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: It takes Harry an entire year to shake off the allegations that he is lying about Lord Voldemort's return. Even Seamus Finnegan, a longtime roommate who has always been civil with Harry, mentions offhand that his mum doesn't believe the story, which starts their one and only fight. Ironically, when people finally believe him, he doesn't care because Sirius died fighting Bellatrix and Harry doesn't know how to cope with the loss.
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
  • Thanks to his inaction and attempts to slander Harry and Dumbledore, complete with overstepping his authority as Minister of Magic, Fudge is forced to resign in disgrace. He tries joking with the Muggle Prime Minister that it's the only time he's seen the Wizarding World united against a common enemy-- him. And because of him enabling Umbridge's reign of terror at Hogwarts, which involved torturing children and creating a private army, Dumbledore told him to fuck off when Fudge asked for him and Harry to put in a good word to save his job.
  • Harry never lets the new minister, Rufus Scrimgoeur, off the hook for arresting Stan Shunpike on trumped-up charges.

Live-Action TV

• Angel
  • Angel, as he was for most of his time in Buffy, is trying to spend the rest of his afterlife atoning for the centuries of pain that he caused to others as a vampire. And yes, old enemies or descendants of the people he hurt come after him. It affects him so badly that when given a chance to become human, he begs to be turned back into a vampire on hearing a prophecy that Buffy will die. Ends up being All for Nothing when they break up anyway, and Buffy dies in her show for completely different reasons.
  • Cordelia and Wesley mock the relationship Buffy and Angel had by acting out the drama in front of a Locked Out of the Loop Fred. Gunn starts cackling, and when Angel walks in, he admits it was pretty accurate.
  • The team takes a very long time to forgive Wesley for accidentally getting Angel and Darla's son kidnapped when mistakenly thinking that a prophecy predicted "the father would kill the son". They keep bringing it up after he manages to save Angel from A Fate Worse Than Death until Angel makes a Deal with the Devil with Wolfram & Hart to give Connor a normal life.
  • One Season Five episode has an awakened Potential kidnap a true Heel Face Turn Spike, accusing him of ruining her life back when he was evil. Even though it turns out Spike was legitimately innocent this time since the girl is revealed to be an Unreliable Expositor, he points out that given his history, he did hurt a lot of people and she may as well have been one of his victims.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  • Cordelia suffers this after her Secret Relationship with Xander comes out in Season Two. Her Beta Bitch Harmony takes over their friend group and ices out Cordelia unless she dumps Xander and follows all the new rules; after a love spell gone wrong makes Cordelia realize how much Xander cares for her, she rejects rejoining the group and gets back together with him. But in season three, after they break up? The jocks disparagingly refer to her as Xander's "leftovers". She only sheds this reputation after moving to Los Angeles to become an actress, since her family goes broke following an IRS investigation.
  • This becomes a plot point for Xander in Season Five. Owing to being the Butt Monkey, he ends up suffering the most humiliating incidents from the various monsters and magical beings they encounter. No one really lets him forget that he got the "funny syphilis" from a Chumash Tribe, and that he was compelled to eat bugs thanks to Dracula brainwashing him. Anya herself brings up that his "penis got diseases" in Season Six. Xander becomes motivated to build himself up as a construction worker, and when split in two, his "better" half upgrades to a nicer apartment for himself and Anya.
  • Anya doesn't let Willow live down the fact that she's the reason Cordelia and Xander broke up. (Not helping is Cordelia's wish for vengeance cost Anya her powers.) Season five features an episode where they fight about this after Anya starts dating Xander, and Willow pointing out that she's gay didn't exactly reassure Anya.
  • Buffy takes a long time to forgive herself for being compelled by demon poison to murder her friends and sister in "Normal Again", where she was either hallucinating that she was in a mental ward for catatonic schizophrenia, taking a peek into a parallel universe, or was actually snapping out of her hallucinations. It's ultimately up to the viewer to decide. She keeps apologizing to Dawn afterward and nearly cries laughing when recounting what happened to Giles during the Season Six finale.

Newspaper Comics

• In Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin for some reason is attributed with a Noodle Incident at school. He insists that he was framed, and the details are left up in the air. Unlike most of Calvin's mischievous activities, Bill Watterson chose not to elaborate.

Western Animation

• Arthur has a few of these:
  • A Running Gag is that people assume that Binky hates reading. This is even why Arthur assumes that he is the only kid who couldn't have stolen his library copy of The Mysterious Hand. Turns out that Binky enforces this trope, as he hides any books he's reading behind comics and tries to hide his interests in botany.
  • Despite the fact that Mr. Ratburn is an ordinary guy, just a Stern Teacher, the kids in season one believe for a while that he eats nails for breakfast that come in a cereal box and hates the screws.
  • D.W. for a long time blames Arthur for her snowball disappearing, even though it turns out he had nothing to do with it. Arthur, of course, keeps reminding D.W. of his innocence.
  • As turnabout is fair play, one episode duology has D.W. mistakenly thinking that green potato chips are poison, thanks to Arthur and Buster trolling her, and that she was dying. (Arthur later told her he was joking, mortifying her.) The second episode has the whole town finding out, just when D.W. is trying to prove she's mature enough to attend a comedy show. She worries about people bringing it up when she's running for president in an Imagine Spot. While she blames Arthur for spreading the story, turns out it was their mother who told their neighbors and Bitsy, who works at the paper. It's one of the few times D.W. sincerely apologizes to Arthur for accusing him, and he cheers her up by saying he's taking her to the comedy show.
  • The same episode had Buster tell D.W., in an attempt to comfort her, that one time his mother Bitsy called him "Boo Boo" in front of his third grade class, and naturally he was teased about it.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender
  • In the Fire Nation, Iroh is well-known for his failure to breach the Ba Sing Se walls. (Iroh is actually more concerned that his only son Lu-Ten died during the invasion, which made him suffer a Heel Realization about the cost of this centuries-long war.) In a great fit of irony, Iroh ends up retaking Ba Sing Se back from the Fire Nation on the day of Sozin's Comet.
  • Sokka won't let Aang forget the time the Avatar made him and Katara suck on frozen frogs when they were sick.
  • Enemies and allies alike call Ty Lee "a circus freak," though her chi-blocking abilities turn out to have nothing to do with her acrobatics. Ty Lee explains to Zuko that the circus was the place where she could find herself, as opposed to being with several identical sisters all expected to act the same.
  • Azula uses this to her advantage. People know that she lies, and she's such a good liar that not even Toph can tell. And when she is being honest? That's when she's at her most dangerous. Her overhearing Azulon ordering Ozai to kill a young Zuko led to Ursa giving Ozai an undetectable poison to use on his father and become Fire Lord. She also keeps her word to restore Zuko to his place in the Fire Nation royal family if he helped her in Ba Sing Se, albeit by crediting him with killing Aang after he lied to her that there is no way Aang could have survived.
  • Book 3 has Katara hold a grudge against Zuko for a long time for betraying her in Ba Sing Se. When he switches sides proper, it takes four episodes for him to earn her forgiveness.
• The Legend of Korra
  • Played for Drama in one instance; the Fire Nation has been spending the last few decades undoing the damage that started with Sozin's reign; the current Fire Lord Izumi even refuses to proactively send troops against Kuvira, reminding Republic City President Raiko that such actions were what caused the hundred-year wear in the first place. All the priests that opposed letting the Avatar talk to Roku in The Last Airbender? Their successors help Korra when she suffers a bout of amnesia while seeking aid for the Northern Tribe. Sozin wiped out all the Airbenders except for Aang and the history books lie that the Airbenders had an army? An older, retired Zuko takes charge as soon as Harmonic Convergence gives many people airbending powers and supports rebuilding the new Air Nation, complete with giving Korra advice when Zaheer takes them hostage.
  • Hiroshi Sato was revealed to be The Mole for Amon, giving his Equalists platinum mechas that could capture and debend the metalbending police. Then he tried killing his own daughter for turning those same mechas onto him and calling him out for being no better than the Firebenders that killed his wife. They disowned each other in that moment, though Asami ended up winning and sending her father to jail. Several years later, Hiroshi is truly remorseful on seeing how Asami had to rebuild his company from the ground up, complete with getting screwed over and sabotaged. Still, she holds it against him for a long time, especially after realizing that she's fallen in love with Korra, whom Hiroshi tried to kill. Even when they begin to mend their relationship tentatively, with him still in jail, the new Gaang treats him warily, especially Korra.
  • Mako for a long time isn't allowed to forget how he badly handled his relationships with Asami and Korra. While Asami forgives Korra for kissing Mako while the latter was dating Asami, having sussed the Avatar has No Social Skills she is mad at Mako for keeping it a secret. Book Two shows Mako's decisions getting dumber. During the Book Four recap of this, even Prince Wu calls out Mako for his idiocy.
• Ducktales
  • Donald can't live down the fact that he is Born Unlucky; in fact, in an episode where the Phantom Blot steals his luck, it's revealed to be a genuine force of chaos. Scrooge mentions offhand Donald got trapped in the pantry for a week and is still there when Webby sees signs of a struggle in the kitchen.
  • "The Impossible Summit of Mount Neverrest" deconstructs it; the reason why Scrooge is determined to reach the top of Mount Neverrest, even as he battles with common sense and the need to protect the kids is that he was the Neverrest Ninny that George Mallardy cut loose a long time ago, and who was blamed for Mallardy's disappearance. Huey gets through to him by pointing out that no one knows who the Neverrest Ninny was, let alone caring about ninnies these days.
  • Scrooge can't quite forgive his ex Goldie for ditching him every time it benefits her. She doesn't help her case in the present when they go on a few adventures with Teeth-Clenched Teamwork, or Louie attempts to run a scam with her at Doofus Drake's birthday party. Unlike in the comic where he kidnapped her and made her work for him after she robbed him, Scrooge had legitimately done nothing to Goldie to earn her Chronic Backstabbing Disorder.
  • Season two deals with the Elephant in the Living Room after Della Duck returns to Earth. No one wants to bring up or face the fact that she abandoned the triplets for adventure, and that it was her own pride that caused her to be stranded on the moon for so long. Eventually, however, Louie reaches a Rage Breaking Point and calls her a hypocrite when he nearly permanently damages time and she grounds him, and Donald calls her a "big dummy" when they reunite. After that, it's harder for her to live it down. Season three has Donald's wish for "normal family adventures" cause her to talk about being on the moon as a Running Gag in a sitcom land. The series finale has her upset that Donald wants to go on a romantic vacation with Daisy, but Donald doesn't even have to point out that it's rich of her to beg him not to go.
• Rick and Morty features a few of these with the title characters:
  • Season 1 Jerry from dimension C636 and being Morty's original Jerry won't let it slide that Beth is a horse surgeon and not a human one in the pilot.
  • Jerry brings up that it's ridiculous Rick is scared of an ocean deity when he "fucked a planet" in "Mort Dinner Rick Andre". Rick has a sour look when the former mentions that.
  • Season five also has Rick lampshade that the show will never live down Naruto Smith, aka Morty and Summer's "Incest Baby". Thankfully, season six at least left him drifting in space after the family hopped dimensions.
• Futurama
  • Leela once slept with Zapp Brannigan, a Jerkass Abhorrent Admirer, in a Moment of Weakness. He never lets her live it down, considering it one of his greatest moments. Which makes it serious that the one time she tried seducing him after he started dating her mother, Zapp refused her advances.
  • Fry can never quite live down the fact that, to maintain a Stable Time Loop, he is his own grandfather. Other people tend to bring it up at inconvenient times.