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.

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. Heck, his brother Spider steals his fiancee without any remorse.
• 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 this.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender
  • Sokka won't let Aang forget the time the Avatar made him and Katara suck on frozen frogs when they were sick.
  • 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.
• Ducktales shows this in "The Impossible Summit of Mount Neverrest" and 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.
• 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.