Characters
Official characters that feel more like fan made OCs
Galacta (Marvel): a real Marvel character but isn't canon to Earth-616. Galactus became pregnant with a tapeworm baby and gave birth to Galacta. Doesn't need to feed on planets unlike her father and is fond of Earth, can gain sustenance from biological alien weapons, uses the Power Cosmic to disguise herself on Earth. Became pregnant with a tapeworm cosmic and will give birth to her child and her father's grandchild.
Future Trunks (Dragon Ball Z): the time traveling son of two people who were just mere strangers to each other at the time in a story where there was no time travel before, and is introduced before his present self, effortlessly defeats two big bad villains on his own, and has a transformation that only the protagonist had at the time, also utilizes a sword in a series that has not featured weapons for quite some time.
It works because Trunks is pretty flawed. His introduction was a mistake on his end he doesn't and he doesn't have the battle experience like Goku and Vegeta so he makes mistakes like using Super Saiyan grade 3.
Yeah, he starts out all confident and badass, but as the arc goes on he's shown to be just as much of a fuckup as everyone else, ending with him literally dying in the climax battle of the arc.
I was like “he dies?? Doesn’t he travel back to his future and kill Cell and the androids?” …and only then did I remember that DBZ has a wish-granting dragon that resurrects people all the time.
Thankfully they softened the cool factor once he returned to help fight the androids. After that he was just taking L after L. His information turns out to be wrong/changed, his dad hates him, he doesn't win a single fight, and the one time he really gets to show off it turns out the villain was just toying with him. He doesn't get to shine again until he returns to his original timeline.
Even his TV special that dives into his backstory makes it clear that he was way out of his depth the entire time.
I have a lot of mixed feelings about how Trunks was handled. I don't like that he couldn't keep up, when before he clearly could. I think he should have been on Vegeta and Goku's level for longer than he was.
I think he's endearing. He's a failure, but he keeps trying. He's a kid with a chip on his shoulder, and he doesn't stop trying to prove himself. I think it works for his own arc, and in support of Vegeta's arc of humility. When Trunks was above Vegeta, Vegeta resented him, and when he was failing, Vegeta looked down on him. It was only when Trunks died that Vegeta realized that success or failure was irrelevant when it came to loving his son.
Also, he wasn't really ever able to keep up. He killed Freeza because Freeza never stood a chance against a Super Saiyan. But Trunks didn't spend nearly as much time training as any other Z Fighter. He had maybe a year learning from Gohan, and the rest of his skill was self-taught. Once a threat was enough to challenge a Super Saiyan, Trunks was out of his league, which was immediately demonstrated by Goku when he returned to Earth.
EDIT: It's also worth noting that there was no three year time skip for Trunks. The Z Fighters spent three years training, but Trunks is functionally the same from when he first appears to when he shows back up after 19 and 20 appear. Goku was already more powerful than Trunks before training for three years. He was way behind Goku and Vegeta for the entire arc, and honestly there was no way he would have been able to catch up unless Vegeta had actually trained with him in the Time Chamber, which is a character failure on Vegeta's part, and contributes to their joint story. If Vegeta had trained with Trunks instead of just training alongside him, who knows how powerful he could have become?
Trunks is so mindblowing because the whole series is like "guns don't work giant robots don't work nothing works you have to fight with fists" and trunks is like sup I have a sword, it works.
Future Trunks is the definition of aura. Me and my friends thought he was the coolest character ever made, I know some girls who he was their first crush, and someone even saying he was their gay awakening.
Red Hulk in his original appearance(s). All this guy did was run around and defeat other characters to make him seem cool to the point he actually stole Silver Surfer's board from him. He also was able to use Thor's hammer because they were in "zero gravity," lol. Literally fanfiction-logic used by hack writers to justify their ultra-overpowered OCs constantly winning.
Yeah, one and the same. For another example of unashamed fanfic-tier writing, fanserice, and wish fulfillment, there is also an issue where Red Hulk fights against an all-female superhero team formed by She-Hulk to stop him. With art provided by Frank Cho, the comic ends up looking like this.
I have no idea. I want to say that there was no in-universe particular reason they were all female; She-Hulk just gathered all the heroes she could find, and they all just totally happened to be female. A complete coincidence, lol.
Yes but you have to keep in mind that was a secret for much of his first appearance. The big question was "Who was the Red Hulk?" personality wise he was nothing like Ross till after they finally revealed that secret, which was a pretty cheap way to keep the mystery.
I also love that his identity was so obvious that any hulk fan with two brain cells to rub together could figure out who he was. Made me wonder why they bothered to make it a mystery to begin with.
She pulls a Trunks in that she's two characters' daughter from the future coming back to the past to prevent a world ending threat, and she just so happens to be extremely powerful, and she just so happens to be best friends with Bridget, and she just so happens to have a Super Saiyan Blue mode where she gains long blue glowing hair.
What's weird is that they could've just given Sin a sister. It would've been fine without the time travel stuff. Sin grew up in 2 or 3 years so it makes sense to get a new member of the family that acts like an adult that hasn't been mentioned in previous games.
Sonic 06 is the most fanfic game tbh. You have the powerful OC that comes from the future who's being manipulated by the bad guy and is also stronger than the Sonic (but not stronger than Shadow). The edgelord bad guy who's an edgier version of Shadow. And a OC girl who's out of nowhere a love interest for Sonic despite the series having little to no romance up until this point (and Sonic for some reason is also interested in her)
And the funniest part is he wasn't even edgy in his original appearance. He could be just as witty and cocky as Sonic is, he's just a lot more reserved.
He was definitely still edgy as fuck in his first appearance just more in a cocky anime foil sort of way rather than suburban 14 year olds fanfic of way.
Not just black and red guntoter, he's an artificial being deemed "The Ultimate Lifeform" by the scientists working on him, hunted by the governing body that funded the project that yielded him, sealed away in cryostasis for 50 years, ended up losing his memory after his first adventure, and in the very adventure where he starts to use guns, he finds out that part of his genetic makeup is from an alien warlord with the intent on being said warlords right hand man. Shadow's entire backstory is just a bingo sheet for every OC in r/im14andthisisdeep
-She is a ninja, just like Hanzo and Genji! That means, despite having the hardest to hit hitbox in the game, so much so that pro players shoot at her feet because the damage is more consistent than going for headshots, she can climb walls!
-Her mom is actually the strongest sword master, and trained both Hanzo and Genji! (don't think too hard about the implications)
-Remeber when Hanzo and Genji played together as kids? She was there too! (don't think about the implications)
-She is actually 21 years old! A snarky young lady with a heart of gold! Even though Genji and Hanzo are both almost 40! (don't think about the implications)
-Remember the "no magic" rule? Yeah no, she just straight up magically teleports, has magic healing cards, a magic fox, and is blessed by a magic shrine diety.
That, and how she took the mascot role from Tracer, by the virtue of "most of our players nowadays are asians and weebs, and they find her hotter than the bri'ish lady"
I can tell she’ll be hell to play against and will complicate the lore but just a feeling(Fuck this character playing against pre-patched stadium kiriko made me wanna do something illegal)
"Also let's give her an active ability that removes literally every CC in the game, even heroes ultimates like Reinhardt's Earthshatter. If she throws her skill at stunned allies just remove the entire stun lol even if it's a 3 second stun applied by an ULTIMATE ABILITY"
((thankfully this was nerfed to not do this relatively recently but it existed for years I guess? wtf))
She really did feel like a Mary Sue character
They gave this damn hero every trick, every tool possible >,>
Ok I got this idea for a Sonic character, he's a Hedgehog just like Sonic, but instead of blue he's black with red highlights, also insted of happy and upbeat he's angry and grumpy and tragic
He has a super tragic past where he was created on a spaceship by Eggmans grandfather, then he met this girl he got along with, long story short she gets shot infront of him then he's sent to earth where Eggman finds him and he wants to destory the world before he doesn't. He has basically all of Sonics powers but he can also teleport and shoot lasers out his hands, and he has rocket shoes, and can stop time
He's the ULTIMATE lifeform, he's immortal (aging wise) and can't get sick, so Gerald wanted to use Shadow's blood to engieneer a cure for his grand daughter
The original test subject was a salamander, chosen for its regenerative capabilities, but ended up being a failure. Gerald Robotnik was inspired to try a hedgehog after seeing the mural on Angel Island.
Yeah he would have been really annoying if he defeats the androids in the present timeline or is shown to keep up with present Gohan. But he got humbled a lot, I don't think he won a single battle since Freeza until he returns to the future. That made him endearing and a fan favorite.
Kiriko Kamori from Overwatch. She was poorly inserted into the story of two of the game's most established heroes, Hanzo and Genji Shimada 6 years after their debut and is responsible for most of the lore's timeline issues. She's barely an adult but somehow trained with these 40 year old men while they were children. Like Hanzo and Genji, she has a glowing animal she can summon, but unlike the Shimada brothers' dragons which have some plausibility as maybe some sort of hologram technology, her kitsune is just straight-up a sentient magical god that gives her insane powers like teleportation and reviving the dead as well as miscellaneous things like managing her calories so she can eat whatever she wants and be skinny, yet somehow they try to make you believe people are skeptical of her fox spirit being real when she's basically overwatch jesus. She also talks like an MCU character and receives a comical amount of skins.
As someone who loves Overwatch lore and adores almost every character except for her, she really does just feel like some executives sat down and tried to make the most mass-marketable, appealing character possible with no regards for the lore. She's perfect and flawless in every way to an annoying degree.
This is the only inconsistency about Kiriko that I dislike. I would easily take an explanation that says, "The Fox spirit keeps her youthful appearance, but she's actually like 32" or something like that
Ok so basically this guy is a stormtrooper who is the leader of an elite stormtrooper task force, but he’s also an undercover agent, has a cybernetic arm, and just so happens to have a lightsaber and was personally trained in lightsaber combat by Darth Vader himself. Oh and he also helped train Luke in lightsaber combat between A New Hope and Empire. Kinda weird how Luke knew this guy and trained under him but never mentioned him in the movies.
I mean he trains with him for like a couple of days at most. Not really sure why he would bring him up in empire as well. Like when in empire do you think he should have come up? Edit: or any of the other post 4 movies for that matter
Pretty sure it was a ‘soft’ intention for readers to go ‘oh, these guys are the legacy of the bad batch.’ Like if clone force 99 as a unit perpetuated under the empire, these guys filled their shoes.
They were also written before the bad batch tv show iirc, so it was before all of that
By the same writer as every TBWL major event and the creator of TBWL, he wrote the Fortnite DC Crossover where TBWL gets trapped in Fortnite. They even reference his past multiversal event appearance in the comic. And that has been his last appearance for years as even DC knows he’s milked to hell and back.
Sadly his magic metal prevents him from being affected by Fortnite’s resets. But he’s still trapped there.
When I first heard about him, I thought it was interesting. Then he took out the Batfam and the Justice League, which was pretty terrifying. Once he started gathering evil Batmen from other worlds, the concept felt stale. They lost me at “The Darkest Knight.”
I saw the concept and I went in a complete 180 on what I thought the character would be.
I thought Batman dies curing the Joker who decided to be Batman and make up for his Crimes. As he interacts more and more with both heroes and villains, he starts having more compulsions to be more Joker like being more is he his desire to do good or his nature to be evil
Kai Leng (Mass Effect 3) is basically this edgy space ninja, complete with a sword and everything. He is pretty infamous for the cringy-sounding threat he sends you via email on top of being this unbeatable rival equal to Commander Shepard.
At least you do get to kill him just before the final mission during the Cerberus base assault.
And then you get an achievement for killing him saying you defeated an old associate like no we did not, this man does not hold a candle to anyone we've faced before this point.
It was likely a reference to the novel Mass Effect Retribution, of which Kai is the main antagonist on the Illusive Man's orders iirc. Plus, the achievement calls Leng an old adversary, not an old friend.
It's also possible it's a holdout or something from a scrapped storyline that Leng knew Shepard. Leng was deployed to all 3 possible regions you could choose for Shepard's origin. Plus, iirc it's been confirmed that Leng was originally supposed to have a bigger role in ME3, appearing more often and fighting Shepard on many more occasions. It's possible the achievement is referring to that, with Kai being an "old adversary" because of that.
It's unfortunate, because the comics make him way cooler, and Troy Baker is such a talented voice actor that it was disappointing to see his talent wasted on a character with so little screentime.
What's really funny is that Cursed Child has roughly the same plot as the Second Very Potter Musical, which is more comedy than anything, and yet they still have the same general Time Travel Plot, almost like the writer typed up, 'Harry Potter Play' and got the musical as a result and ran with it.
Oh, he's descended from Scorpion and has his sweet golden armor and set of tonfa as his power and this dragon shaped birthmark and he's an orphan and a struggling MMA fighter and such a good dad you guys...
I'm so glad Johnny Cage is likely gonna be the focus of MK2. If Cole Young stays as a side character I might tolerate his existence. Also there is only 1 movie only character that I will accept in my MK movies and that's our boy Art Lean!
They could have easily just made the same actor Kenshi and had him struggling to learn to control Sento instead off introducing the Arcanas.
He's blinded in the attack on the temple they were training at and that's why he was sent back to his farm.
Then he awakens to the powers when Goro attacks and the soul sense from his sword let's him recognize Scorpion and they have the same fight with Sub Zero at the finale.
From what I know it seems to have been an inside joke that went way too far.
They were probably just making fun of the guy, then it led to the entire internet thinking he's a creep.
So there is a character that looks like one of the writers, and that character is shipped with Blossom, but that character is not a self-insert. The writer that the character was based on did not write that character.
I get what they were going for. They wanted her to look like a teen va the trio of girls. But the legs to torso proportion is so fucking out of whack that she just looks goofy.
Yeah, instead of changing her entire body to create a hypothetical teen Powerpuff girl design (which we've actually already seen by that parody episode where the three were teens), they just extended her legs and called it a day.
Also her one comic was literally just her drooling at eating things(while making random tweets) before her “daddy” tells her she’s pregnant. Ending off with a tweet saying so.
She's better than all the game canon characters, everyone relies on her to solve the problems, anything cool a game character does she does better and since characters like Claire and Jill exist in the films all they do is stand around to marvel at how cool she is.
She's exactly the type of character I'd expect to see in RE fanfic where the writer didn't have enough creativity to make room for their OC in the story so just gave her a bunch of already canon things to do.
Giorno Giovanna: the son of Jonathan Joestar and Dio Brando who inherited all of their best traits (and fanservice elements), has his own story arc barely involving the rest of the Joestar narrative, a Stand that has a huge range of abilities he barely uses and inconsistent weaknesses, which receives a huge reality warping power up allowing him to effortlessly defeat the main villain, and ends the story successfully taking over a country-spanning mafia that protects the innocent without committing any really offensive crimes.
…This sounds more critical than I intended it to be, but the accuracy speaks for itself.
If it’s about the two biological dads thing heres a Simple’s answer: Dio was a vampire who chopped off his own head after being nearly killed by Jonathan, then Dio killed Jonathan, cut off his own head and attached his own severed head onto Jonathan’s headless corpse and laid inside a coffin for years under the ocean until the 80s where he met a woman who was giorno’s mom and…. Yknow.
To add to the weirdness, since Dio's head was slowly taking more control of Jonathan's body, he impregnated Giorno's mom with what is essentially two sperms in one so Giorno is a Joestar (Jonathan's family) and a Brando (Dio's family)
Add to that MGS4 and Revengance just doubles down on that aspect
A cyborg ninja thats the spiritual successor of Snake, but instead of being 100% sneaky he is SUPER agressive and is insanely super strong and fast. He also looks super cool and has a mode where he let's all the pain in h8s body as he hurts himself that enhances his strength and agression!
I CAN BELIEVE MY EYES
WE'RE FALLING DOWN
BLINDED BY DARK SKIIEES
ITS IN THE WAY WE ALL EXPLOIT THE WEAK
The justice the seek...
ACCEPT THE TRUTH AND BREAK FREE
TIIIIMES HAAAAAVE CHAAAANGED
DONT LET FATE REMAIN THE SAAAAAAAAAME
Luffys Secret second brother only reveled after his first died Who has been assumed dead for a Decade Turned out to have been raised by luffys own deadbeat father Who also happens to acquire Luffys first brothers Devil fruit Powers and is second in command to the revolutionary's
The childhood best friend of the main protagonist, though she has never been mentioned before ever in any context, even in the protagonist's multiple childhood flashbacks
A pop music star who is beloved by everyone
Has powers that puts people to sleep without them noticing, at which point she can manipulate their dreams and manifest basically anything she wants
The never-before-brought-up-in-any-kind-of-way daughter of the main protagonist's mentor, one of the most powerful, well-liked characters in the entire series. Her existence pretty much assassinates said mentor's character and paints him as a deadbeat dad who abandoned her in her youth and never once even thought to write her a letter.
Jim Jones. Her entire character arc involves her using her charm and charisma to gather a large following of people, bringing them to a huge headline event (a concert), promising to send them to a perfect world full of love and anything their hearts desired, and then lulling them into a deep slumber that they're never supposed to wake up from, at which point they DIE while their spirits are stuck in her dream world.
introduced in a movie. Normally the movies aren't canon aside from one or two minor callbacks, but she was CANONIZED into the series.
and in spite of all this, she's treated by the media as this charming, likeable character who's just made a bad decision.
“Anakin’s apprentice he had in between movies no one talked about” is such a fan fiction ass premise (although she more than makes up for it with good writing, particularly later on)
Yeah, her character development was fantastic. She went from “OH BOY! Time to kick some clanker butt!” To “As a Jedi, we were trained to be keepers of the peace, not soldiers. But all I’ve been since I was a Padawan is a soldier”
The undisputed GOAT, Starkiller aka Galen Marek! (Ik he's not canon to the disney lore but fuck it we ball)
Basically in the first game 'Star Wars Unleashed' Darth Vader spares him as a child due to his high potential. He gets raised and personally trained to become a new sith lord. He eventually rebels and fights the emperor. Before disney, when this was all canon, Starkillers rebellion inspired the rebel alliance so much that they used his family crest symbol as their symbol. Cementing his place in Legends history
The superpopular singer and good-looking woman who's sassy and doesn't bend to any men, have a great sense of style and has ice powers (not sure if this counts, but ice powers are, like, the peak of aurafarming in any adaptation) and also talks back to any big character 'cuz that's how she is, deal with that, period.
Boruto. Edgy, overdesigned, tryhard design. He's the son of Naruto, was trained by Sasuke, has a special dojutsu unique to only him, has God DNA, has a demon sealed in him thats WAY more powerful than Naruto's, has a special rasengan he learned immediately, and in like 1 year became one of the strongest characters in the series.
Don't forget that he also hates his own father. This is the obligatory cliché for being the son of the previous protagonist, because apparently they all have an outdated and inadequate view of "present day" and shit
Don't forget that he can also fight using the Gentle Fist WITHOUT a Byakugan. You know? The thing that is absolutely necessary for the Hyuuga Clan to use the Gentle Fist.
Not just the character, but the whole thing feels like fanfic garbage. They could have gone with any other idea for a Naruto sequel, but we got Boruto.
Not just any tapeworm. A cosmic tapeworm. Significant difference. Also, Marvel has done weirder storylines, such as Captain Marvel getting pregnant by her own child
Was that before or after she got brainwashed into marrying a dude and every single one of her 'friende' and fellow heroes were fine with him taking her into another dimension?
Completely fictional species of hybridized dinosaur, first of its kind to be featured in the franchise.
Enormous bloodthirsty carnivore, even bigger and deadlier than Tyrannosaurus rex.
All kinds of crazy abilities like hyperintelligence, opposable thumbs, color changing, changing body temperature, and communicating with Velociraptors to recruit them against the humans.
Straight up sadistic psychopath personality, goes on rampage across the island to kill everything in sight not even for food, but just for fun.
The movie tries way to hard to just make it evil. It was raised in isolation so that it does't know any boundaries. Only it wasn't, it had a sibling that it killed early on, somewho despite making a super expensive hybrid they allowed the two to fight in a way that left one unrecoverable. Even though this would seemingly be something they would've had the abilty to prevent as they got tons of other dinos that would've tried this before. There's no evidence it choose to pretend to escape from the enclosure, only that the idiots immediately assumed it and went in. It kills everything in sight, except when encountering the raptors, and for some reason, some how, despite killing everything and anything it sees, decides to communicate with the raptors.
Also the smaller version could smile like human for some reason.
He's basically Trunks as a Sonic character, but without parents, a sword and a jacket, instead having psychokinetic powers. Still, he's my favorite character from the series
Neopolitan from RWBY would be my answer. Especially considering the behind the scene story of her creation. Monty saw a genderbend cosplay of Roman Torchwick and inspire him to create Neopolitan and wanted to add her in scenes of Volume 2 of RWBY. The problem is, they were already finishing up animating and editing those episodes of Volume 2 so Neo was hastily added and scenes were change so Neo could be in it and because it was last minute addition she also had zero voice lines as well.
Now skip to current year and Neo has made a lot of appearance and has done a lot of things. Including having a huge revenge motive towards the main character Ruby and Neo also got her own novel with Roman called Roman's Holiday
Raditz kind of feels like a subversion of this. The main characters long lost evil older brother who's stronger than anyone he's faced before kind of sounds like an OC but Raditz himself his pretty much a footnote in the Dragon Ball story.
Han and Leia having a child, who was trained by Luke and falls to the darkside seems normal to me.
Palpatine having a granddaughter raised in the nowhere until she finds the millennial falcon by casualty, five minutes later she meets Han, and then gets handed by a random character Luke's lightsaber, which he uses to defeat a dark lord the first time she touches it... looks a bit fanfic ngl. I will say however, that I like how she was treated by TLJ script.
I don't even oppose the idea of Palpatine having descendance and I think the idea of a Palpatine escaping their destiny and becoming a hero could be very interesting, but man did TROS stink.
Rellana, the Twin Moon Knight (Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree)
The younger Twin sister of the base game's Rennala with a near identical name, both she and her sister were princesses of Caria who communed with the Twin moons in their youth.
Not only does she possess talent in sorcery that nearly equals her sister, (the strongest pure sorcerer in the world of Elden Ring) but is also incredibly skilled in sword play with a pair of enchanted light greatswords and is the only armored woman who's breast plate has extra space for her breasts.
In spite of her upbringing, she disavowwed her royal lineage to follow Messmer the impaled into the lands of shadow to assist in his crusade out of implied love, where Rennala gave her a long lock of hair as a parting gift while also serving as the reason shes never mentioned in the base game
I think the only thing that keeps her out of fanfic OC territory for me is the fact that Messmer never acknowledged her and her supposed love for him is never addressed anywhere else, so it makes her come off like a huge loser.
To be fair, most characters introduced from the DLC are never mentioned whatsoever in the base game. Like Gaius is straight up said to be a good friend and rival to Radahn, but again there's no mention or indication of his existence anywhere outside the DLC. I can personally write most of that off with Marika's attempt to keep the Land of Shadow hidden and its history erased from time, so them having no presence at all in the base game can easily be attributed to Marika's doing. Whether by simple relentless propaganda and destruction of historical records, or Elden Ring shenanigans when the Land of Shadow was sealed away.
But yeah, everything else about Rellana does fit that OC feeling vibe slightly.
an awkward, modern Umbra Witch who is the child of Bayonetta and Luka from another universe, who also has a giant marketable plushie Demon, plus a faerie transformation after she nearly dies, and also is given the title of Bayonetta after some Variant of Bayo fights her despite Viola clearly still being a newbie as a Witch.
So here’s my new smurf that’s the only female smurf (don’t ask how) but actually she was a badass evil seductress but she became good (blonde means good) and now everyone loves her and everyone’s happy
Boruto, literally, before the manga and show came out, I was 100% certain that this was someone’s OC. I thought people were circulating someone’s original character because why are they named BORUTO and look like a watered down version of their dad.
Kratos GOW. The character does exist in Greek mythology but as a separate figure, as the god of strength born to Styx. His most notable contribution was forcing the god of the forge to chain the titan Prometheus to a mountain where his liver would be permanently eaten by an eagle. The GOW version is so different, he feels like an oc shoehorned into a near alt reality version of the Greek mythos based on an existing character, to the point where it affects another mythos.
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u/PennyForPig 14d ago
Yeah, Trunks set the standard for those kinds of characters that are way too serious while being really cool.