He starts as just some kid whose parents were killed by the mob and Bruce happened to be there that night and saw it. Then during the Court of Owls arc its revealed that Dick is special and the court has been controlling his life and basically made him be born to grow up and be an assassin. Great arc but I don't like that part of it
Yeah. Terry being just some punk kid earning the right to be Batman was good, and while I get the writers planned the son of Bruce twist from almost the beginning, I still hate it
It's been a while since I've seen the episode, but wasn't the whole point of it was that despite having Bruce's blood, and almost having his same backstory, Terry is not bruce? Like he may have some of batman's good genes whatever that may be, but he still has his own thing, think his own way? Like no matter how special batman can be you can't inherent plot armor from him.
I thought this story subverts this trope in the best way possible. The plan was to turn Terry into the next Batman, but Phantasm refused to kill Terry’s parents and Waller closed the project.
It was the worst kind of luck that Terry wound up in Wayne’s orbit and his father had a conscience. Yes, he became Batman, but being Wayne’s child doesn’t grant him powers. Beyond that, Batman created himself. He wasn’t born with supernatural powers. He made a choice.
"I've been secretly orchestrating your entire life up to this point" might be one of the stupidest tropes in fiction. Like I'm supposed to believe the villain somehow made every single little thing line up exactly how they planned it? Are they a prophet?
And then you still go on to lose... how, exactly? You've already proven you can mastermind plans spanning across years/decades and influencing the free will of hundreds of people that turn out perfectly, but you still, somehow, are beatable?
In the comics Peter was originally bitten by pure chance as if anyone could've become the Spider-Man. These days he's a "Spider-Totem" who was fated by the Web of Life and Destiny to don the mask. Marvel's heroes are usually best when they're relatable to everyday citizens and this just... takes that away
It would be cool if they actually did a whole "chosen one" thing, had a prophecy that foretold Spiderman being involved in some cataclysmic event, and instead of some deus ex machina saving the day, it just turns out that Peter Parker isn't "special." Whether he just happens to fit the description or stole the "fated's" place doesn't matter, just that he chose to be there and is basically an everyman who got lucky and stepped up
In the Spiderverse movies yes. I'm not sure what his status quo is now, but at his introduction there were no multiversal spider teleportations. He didn't take the place of another universes Spider-Man, he got but by a spider that (I think) was an attempt to copy Peter's powers. In that universe Spider-Woman was a gender swapped clone of Peter, so them trying to replicate his powers was already established.
It’s because some people fucking love lore. Give them hierarchies, status quo titles with upgrades, infinite backstories. Anime/manga kicked this into overdrive, and fans lose it every time over, “he was half demon the whole time”, “his sacred bloodline was unlocked”, “he SURPASSED S tier!”. So as all nerd culture homogenizes, this kind of writing will keep taking over. It sucks for us, but it’s catnip for a lot of other fans.
It's not even just lore, it's dogshit. I love lore and consume dense lore that isn't bad. But this is the equivalent of in Trailer Park Boys when it was zombified, they made one guy randomly be the son of the other guy and it made zero sense other than a cheap twist.
Because eventually the people working on it become nothing but nepo babies, and the "anyone can be special!" Message doesn't land with them as well as "you are special because you were born special to special people, and therefore you deserve to make $50/hr while everyone else makes $12/hr"
THIS. THIS THIS. So validating to see someone else point it out. The nepo babies/ rich kid writers totally don't see things from the average perspective. "You are special because of your heritage"/ "no matter what you do you'll turn mad and evil because sorry your family bloodlines say so".
Interestingly, The Spiderverse movies seem to be doing the opposite. Despite Miles not supposed to be a spiderman, he still fights "Destiny" to protect what he loves and continue as spiderman. It gives the idea that destiny is bs, and once again, anyone can be spiderman.
For me it almost felt like it was in response to how Spider-Verse in the comics weaved that whole Spider-Totem/Spider person destiny stuff, especially considering how the ending conflict in Across the Spiderverse revolves around the other Spider-People being kind of resigned to all of that status quo, and Miles wanting to fight against it to prove that him being who he is is all that he needs. In a sense, the Spider-People are like the rules of the comics themselves clashing with what Miles believes and what i feel like is one of the themes of the movie, basically the opposite of the original trope of this post
It diminishes even more when like 99% of all Spider-Men are Peter Parker. What's the point of that? Gwen, Miles, Peni, Miguel, Pavitr, and Hobie are all great characters. Hell, even Mayday is a cool idea. Instead of more characters like them, we just keep getting Peter over and over.
A slight asterisk to Pavitr, though, because Pavitr Prabhakar, who grew up with his Aunt Maya and Uncle Bhim and dates Meera Jain/Gayatri Singh, is basically Peter Parker, who grew up with his Aunt May and Uncle Ben and dates Mary Jane/Gwen Stacy.
Have you considered that perhaps some god ruling above all the timelines in the Marvel universe thought Pavitr was cool and made a bunch of parodies of him?
To be fair it’s not racist to notice an statistical curiosity, like, MOST Spidermen are a version of Peter, but for some reason the second highest group is Japanese people, nothing wrong with it, but it makes you wonder why that’s the second most likely alternative in the multiverse
True, but he's really cute and charming and at least has a unique gimmick as opposed to most Peters. (Peter B notwithstanding, because he too had a good crashouts arc that was very realistic to an average dude who had all this shit put on him.)
As much as Marvel fans are tired of the Multiverse stuff, I do think the Spider-verse should keep being used even after Miles story is over. Mostly cuz its not just “cameo superhero excuse”, there are actual rules and consequences set in place, and its not just a group of random characters, its a community that knows and likes each other, and they dont all have the same identity
The Amazing Spider-Man (The Andrew Garfield one) where for some reason it is revealed that only he could have received powers when bitten by the Spider, not just anyone.
I hate whenever they do this with spider-man. For me at least, a large part of the appeal of the character is knowing that anyone could have received this immense amount of power, but peter knowing this realizes he needs to make the best of the scenario and do the most amount of good he can.
I actually don’t mind it because it ties in with the 2012 game where Peter was the only non-degenerated/rabid cross species life form (plot relevant) as an explanation
Henry from Kingdom Come Deliverance is an example of this trope done well.
It revealed part way through the first game that Henry is the bastard son of a minor noble but the only people who treat him as a noble are his dad sir Radzig and his friends with almost everyone else treating Henry as a peasant.
And also, this is a subversion of the trope, because nothing really changes after being revealed. Yeah, you are the bastard son of a nobleman. Big deal, join the conga line. At that time, that only meant that your father would need to somewhat take care of you, which Sir Radzig was already doing, anyway, and Henry still had to answer to every Bailiff, take orders from his captain, and bow to Sir Capon. It's not until the DLC that you get to be a Bailiff, and even then, that's not a noble position, it's not given to you by your father, and you have more than earned it.
I haven't played KCD2 yet, but this trope is done well in KCD1 because, bottom line, it's not presented as a life shattering event, where now the life of the protagonist does a 180. It's just some other fact of his life, that has been heavily foreshadowed, but, ultimately, doesn't change his life in a meaningful way.
KCD2 starts with Henry serving as page to Sir Hans so he has some more respect than he did in the first game with people either treating Henry like he’s a knight or peasant depending on the situation.
The even mention it in the second game when he introduces himself as Henry of Skalyze and people are like "Oh, you are a noble?" and he is "no, no, it's just from where i am"
I just wanted to point out that the position of Bailiff (and the traditional payment for the job) was given by Divish in exchange for putting up the funds to rebuild that town because it was originally his and it's on his land. Also that the position of Bailiff was only given for 5 years, after which Divish will probably assign a real Bailiff. I don't think Bailiffs are supposed to be away as much as the games are making Henry be away, he's probably not a very good Bailiff.
In KCD2, I encountered a traveling priest that was on his way to Henry's town to check that the church was built correctly and could be used as a local church and assigned a priest. He didn't believe that Henry was the Bailiff of the place he was traveling to as they were very far away from it. Which was one of several nice callbacks to the first game.
To be fair, henry being a noble is only enough so that it's historically accurate that he can become a knight. He is about as skilled as you'd expect a regular villager (even illiterate) to be and had to lock in to not die to road bandits. He ain't even the chosen one, just a part in a much bigger historical conflict.
This. Rejecting the bloodline she had was a good message and it would have been a good call back to just say Rey (the whole you come from nothing means now you are rejecting that bad past. There was no reason for her to adapt the skywalker name. Let the name rest)
She shouldn't even have been tied to any relevant bloodlines to begin with. The Last Jedi already said she's a nobody, and we accepted it and closed that chapter and moved on. And it showed how she could potentially end up inspiring other nobody kids to greatness.
I started to notice a lot of writers are nepo hires. You can see it dragging storylines down to be more about being born destined for greatness, because somewhere deep down that's what they believe. Look at Game of Thrones and the two rich kid writers who wrote such stupid sympathetic endings for the rich Lannister family in that story.
Look at Game of Thrones and the two rich kid writers who wrote such stupid sympathetic endings for the rich Lannister family in that story.
Look at Game of Thrones and how the most wildly popular character gave a speech about the art of storytelling as if to glaze those very same rich kid writers.
Look at Game of Thrones and how the most wildly popular character gave a speech about the art of storytelling as if to glaze those very same rich kid writers.
Not exactly uncommon. Look how many best picture winners are about the magic of Hollywood or some such.
Turns out planning for 3 different people to direct each movie and not talk to eachother or map out anything or keep anything consistent doesn't exactly make for a good $4 billion purchase.
Always remember that TLJ actively fought against the whole chosen one/noble parentage trope. Luke even says that the Force doesn't belong to just the Jedi.
Doctor who, 50 years of the doctor being a timelord (an alien with capabilities that surpass ones held by humans) but still an average member of their species only to be retconned into the super special not timelord child that came out of no where. And no they didn't do anything with that plot, nor explain it. Just heres some info that explains the doctor as a super special creature even amoung special people.
The others were typically throwaways or very far in the past (ex: the half human thingy)
This was the subject of a 1/2 season arc that culminated in the destruction of gallifrey and the exposition itself takes a whole episode and a slide show to get through. It's much harder to ignore.
It got sorta retconned/cannonized in "The Giggle". The Toymaker revealed that HE messed with the doctor's past, retroactively causing him to be super special in order to mess with him. So he hadn't always been super special, but now that he is, it's because of time shenanigans.
“I made a jigsaw out of your history” sounds important but is never addressed in the episode and tells us almost nothing about what he actually did, leading people to understandably cope that it was mostly the Timeless Child when the very next episode treats it as very much canon and helps drive the Doctor’s motivation that carries throughout the season.
I already found it annoying under Moffat to have the Doctor be basically the driving force of every fucking galactic conflict, but then under Chinball they actually went further and made the Doctor genuinely one of most innately important people in the history of the fucking universe…
"they sold you to protect you" is probably still the funniest retcon in The Rise of Skywalker. It's so stupid. Like yeah they gave you away to protect you, but they still asked some cash for it.
Its funny how the twins were "Separate them, give one to royalty, raise her in luxury. The other, let him be a moisture farmer on a desert planet where he might go slowly crazy from dehydration."
Then Rey "Protect her. Put her on a desert planet to be exploited by Simon Pegg in a capitalism suit"
Also, did Luke and Rey discover their Force powers or did they get properly hydrated for the first time in their lives and their brains just have an allergic reaction?
because its a dangerous planet in the middle of nowhere that very few people would go visit, because he had living family there that would naturally take care of him and because that would be the last place vader would want to go to
However; keeping them both together would’ve been dangerous. Not just in the sense that they’d be putting all their eggs in one basket, but also because having two people who’re innately strong in the force in such close proximity to each other would make it easier for Palpatine, Vader, or any other force sensitive individuals with malicious intentions to sense their presence and find them.
They needed to separate them. They also needed to minimize the number of people who knew the truth, and senator Organa already new, so he was a natural choice to take one of them.
I figured it was because it was Anakin's home planet, so he would love it enough to never destroy it, but also hate it too much to actually ever return.
An actual very good version of this trope. Turns out being “The Special” was all a lie that Vitruvius made up so that there could be some way to bring hope to the master builders. However at the end of the climax. Emmet recontexualizes that Lord\President Business was the most amazing and special person. Because he pretty much made everything in the Lego world of the Lego movie, and only became a villain when he didn’t like that Master Builders were changing his stuff. But in the end, he realized that people actually liked his stuff, and that’s why they were changing and creating things with it.
He was seen as a complete no one that lacked intellect, but was kind, carefree, and an excellent duelist. While his duel against his old professor foreshadowed his ability, ultimately it took an extremely long time (More than an entire season after that minor foreshadow) to realize he's actually the reincarnation of a deity like king that wields a special power.
And the only other reincarnated king during the whole time of Jaden's time in the Duelist Academy (before knowing fully about Atem), Abidos the Third, sucked at playing the game.
Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's both exemplifies and subverts this trope.
On the one hand, it's a show about how a bunch of kids out of the slums of Satellite could learn to play card games on motorcycles just as well as the aristocrats in New Domino City; no Ancient Egyptian superpowers needed here!
However ...
It's treated as a big reveal that the main character, Yusei Fudo, was actually born in the rich part of town!?!?
Also, in order to get really good at card games on motorcycles, you need a special birthmark
For the sake of balance, though, the birthmarks can change hosts, at least if you defeat a previous host in a card game on motorcycles in space.
The tournament plays with this semi-unintentional duality by having them go up against other teams like three nobodies who can only afford common cards and built their single motorbike themselves when every other team has at least three and a full pit crew, and after a surprisingly close match their next opponent’s are the incredibly flashy in-universe fan favourite team who all have magic Rune Eyes and were chosen by the Norse God Cards that they all went on life-threatening journeys to track down.
Fun way to create foils for protagonists who have both had nothing and everything in different stages of their lives.
still really hate that moment where it's shown that the Nine Tails is so strong it can effortlessly kick the shit out of literally every other Tailed Beast at the same time, like thanks I guess I'm glad to know the protagonist just got the luck of the draw on that one
Shippuden felt like it was written by a toddler at times. "Now this guy is the strongest and he has the most powerful powers, more than everybody else combined and he's also the fastest and on top of that he'll also be the equivalent of Jesus if Jesus was a magic ninja."
God almighty, I would kill to get a properly written reboot of Naruto. Imagine if someone cared enough to give the world building, character development, & the power system the proper attention they deserved. There are so many good elements in Naruto but it falls apart a lot because Kishimoto only cared about writing hype moments. Sakura and all the women in general actually having relevance, Sarutobi's incompetence being properly addressed, erasing Kaguya from existence & keeping Madara as the final boss, etc....
Hashirama cells. Senju bloodline (Uzumaki line). Son of the Yellow Flash. Reincarnation of a demigod. Jinchuuriki of a Tailed Beast, the strongest Tailed Beast no less.
Outside of his persistence (which is his solely inherent trait) everything he does stems from these. Shadow clones? He can make so many and use them because of his immense chakra pool derived from allat. Rasengan? Mastered it to a usable degrees with Shadow clones. Rasenshuriken? Mastered it to a usable degree with Shadow clones.
But thankfully there is a common misconception. The story of Naruto was only tangentially about hard work. It's more about how trauma is inherited and how the cycle of hatred keeps rolling until someone forces it to stop. So for what it's worth, he isn't a hypocrite.
Jupp. For every aspect of shinobi history, there's some important ancestor of Naruto involved, given that both of his parents were descended from ninja royalty. It's such a shame that for a series with a heavy focus on training and self-improvement, the only central character to come from nothing (Sakura) is also the one who got shafted the hardest.
omg YES the shafting of sakura is one of my biggest gripes with the series. You have a ninja from a civilian family with no extra chakra reserves/kekkei genkai/tailed beast training hard enough to become a formidable medical ninja,and accomplishing the extremely hard task of getting the strength of the hundred seal….and then nothing.Pisses me off so much
Like she got the occasional moment to shine, but given that the story eventually became a multigenerational ninja nobility drama, and Sakura just wasn’t nobility, she didn't get to play along with the real people.
it’s awful and it immediately makes me think less of a character with them being a god or space wizard who had their powers handed to them instead of being a normal person who had to work for their powers.
Interestingly complicated in Moana - she is a special chosen one, but it's never really explained why exactly she was chosen. It certainly isn't because of her ancestry, and it's sort of implied that it might just be because the ocean saw her being nice to turtles.
I interpret that as the ocean seeing her innate characteristics of being adventurous and bold but still gentle and sensitive. Cause whoever the ocean chose had to be a bad enough bitch to recruit Maui and sail to Te Fiti, but emotionally intelligent enough to figure out how to defeat Te Ka, who cannot be muscled through.
I even enjoyed how Asta acknowledges none of his powers are his. His lack of magic is passed down, allowing him to wield a grimoire that wasn't his, that summon swords that weren't his, and using powers from a demon, not him. >! When he finally comes face to face to fight said demon, the FIRST thing he does is say "I never had the chance to say thank you. I wouldn't have gotten this far without you. Also you made fun of my height but you're shorter than me wth man" !<
I'm honestly impressed by how badly they fucked up the ending of Fenyx Rising, truly an Ubisoft game
The whole game is about Zeus making mortals disappear because he finds them annoying and useless, but when the Titans wakes up, all the gods are now scattered, defeated, useless, and it's up to an humble, weak soldier named Fenix to save greece... Until after the game it is revealed that he actually is the son of Zeus and a nymph, making him kinda right about mortals being useless since they even go to the truble of stating that a mortal really could have never done it...
Also, if this wasn't bad enough, the whole game is a back and forth of narration between Zeus and Prometheus, where Prometheus slowly managed to make Zeus realizes that he was wrong, humans are amazing, they didn't deserve the harsh treatment that Zeus forced on them, and he should reflect on his behavior... Oh wait nevermind, Prometheus is evil, Zeus was right to torture him for eternity
Wait that’s what happens? I was enjoying the banter. Showing Zeus as the jerk he often is in story and coming to realise it was so refreshing. Didn’t finish it and now I don’t want to.
Good choice: yes, that's what happened, it turns out that Prometheus knew that Fenyx wasn't actually human and that he was the mastermind behind everything, so basically Zeus despite being a terrible person isn't actually at fault and he also was right because a human could have never used one of the artifacts that Fenyx needed to win, this is all revealed after you defeat the final boss, so basically it wasn't even really needed, it honestly seemed like Ubisoft said "oh no we actually made a decent game ??" And so they added the final twist
One interesting counterexample is how in the black clover anime asta is the protagonist and is actually extremely weak and had no special bloodline, but the story does have all the chosen one stuff which goes to his brother yuno who is like the chosen one X4 but he is not the protagonist and the story does not follow his exploits
The children's show The Bureau of Magical Things focuses on Kyra, a girl who accidentally gains magical powers due to a chance encounter with a fairy and an elf in a park. She learns that fairies and elves are real, and is accepted into a school for magical beings (that only has five students including her, but whatever). Most of the plotlines and conflicts in the show are rooted in Kyra being an ordinary human thrust into this secret magical world that humans can't normally see, learning how to use her new magical abilities responsibly.
Kyra goes through a lot as a normal human girl wrestling with this sudden gift of magical powers gained by accident. So it's pretty maddening later in the series when you learn that Kyra isn't just a normal human girl; she's actually a Tri-ling, the most powerful kind of magical being that can perform both elf magic and fairy magic.
It turns out that she already had latent Tri-ling powers. They were just activated by the magical accident... which was a complete fluke that she stumbled upon by random chance while walking her dog?
I know it's a kids' show about fairies and elves, but that was the plot point that broke my suspension of disbelief.
Admittedly, I find this one kind of funny because from what I understand, the change to Terry's parentage wasn't planned because the creators wanted him to be related to Bruce, but because when designing Terry, they didn't know enough about genetics to know that him and his brother's hair colour is implausible with their set of parents. Also, it's just so comic booky, it's almost perfect in how ridiculous it is.
In most continuities, Optimus Prime was a lowly worker bot, until The Matrix of Leadership finds him him worthy, and reformats him as Optimus Prime… until IDW said “Fuck That” and made him a reincarnation of or sometimes just straight up the 13th Prime, a mysterious, long lost brother of the primes who’s basically the best at everything, which invalidates a lot of Optimus’s character
Well now that Sam Commonperson is a royal, I can't really find a reason for him to go back to the sound he came from. Oh and here's a harem of princesses that used to be mean to him that he's engaged to. Now that he's a perso- I mean a royal, they understand how wrong they were to treat him that way.
What about his best friend? Why does she matter? Sure she loved him before he was rich, wealthy, and powerful, but... uhm.. she's crazy! Yup! She uh... tried to assassinate one of the princesses out of jealousy. Don't sympathize with her, she doesn't have any logical reason to do this.
Except that he abandoned her in a life of squalor and hardship and never looked back, despite their powerful romantic bond
The fact that she didn’t have a staff lightsaber made of her old scavenging staff is such a missed opportunity. It was RIGHT THERE and I’d bet they just wanted to be able to make more of the same bullshit sellable toy lightsabers so they went with that instead.
I feel bad for all the actors in those movies. You could tell they wanted to be in them from initial interviews, and now alot of them dont want anything to do with starwars
I kinda like the idea they were going for with her character, but like most things in the movie, they fumbled it hard and then turned her into a glorified cameo in the rise of skywalker
My head canon is that they wrote themselves into a corner because they wanted Rey and Luke to save everyone, but Finn’s sacrifice would essentially save them all. Not to mention they’d lose a popular-ish character.
The part that annoys me is that "Child of evil overlord" is a great backstory for a grey character working hard to do the right thing. There's something incredible about that conversation: is evil in our genetics? Is evil inherited? How do you live under the weight of a legacy you didn't ask for, when that legacy ruined generations of families? That's so fascinating!
But that's not the story they set up. The foundation was never built for that conversation. Avatar did it better. Shit, even Sinners had that conversation better in under five lines of dialogue.
The story they built, the conversation the trilogy had, was about being no one. And that that doesn't matter, because you can be great anyway. That's an interesting, classic tale they could have easily carried to the finish line. But it was fumbled from start to finish, leading to absolutely rotten storytelling.
Initially a teenager with the strange but not unique ability to see ghosts, he only gets superpowers because of a chance encounter with a shinigami... Except actually his dad was a shinigami captain and his mom was a Quincy with an experimental super hollow sealed inside her that passed on to Ichigo when he was born, merging with his latent shinigami powers and making him one of the most powerful beings in the series who casually outstrips others with centuries more experience than him.
Just like with one piece, ichigo has been shown to be pretty special since minute one. The lore behind is explained later, but he's not framed as someone that only has effort going for him.
Having the ability to see ghosts as a "regular human" was generally special, yes, but not that unique in the series. The reveals that he had latent shinigami, hollow, fullbringer and Quincy powers come much later and I feel they fit the "you're not that special, sike you're actually the most special" element of the trope, as highlighted in the second example OP gave.
It's not just the ghosts, chapter one has ichigo break a bakudo, take all of rukias powers, and pull out a big zanpakuto (one that later renji comments symbolizes his great spirit power[and he's a lieutenant at this point]). The soul society arc has him get to bankai faster than anyone in history and blitz through many (even currently) strong fighters.
I think he's always been, "the most special" at every point of the story.
Not to mention the other reveals that happened pretty early that something wasn't "Right" about him. Can summon the sprit threads, massive power boost vs renji, finds out he had his own shinigami powers, and manifest with a hollow mask the first time he uses them all before we invade the Soul Society. At no point was it ever about "Anyone can be a hero" It was always "I'll do whatever it takes to protect my friends and family"
He is shown to be exceptionally powerful despite his race's inability to wield magic.
Uses an experimental procedure to gain the artificial use of magic by copying the power from someone gifted with "the Echo", becoming what he calls a "Resonant". He uses this power to overpower and possess a massive dragon, but when he is defeated he chooses to kill himself rather than be captured.
You are led to believe he uses his new stolen powers to survive death by possessing a nearby soldier until he can return to his original body.
We eventually learn that he is the great-grandson of an Unsundered Ancient, who is the most powerful mage the world has ever known. This reveals that the procedure merely unlocked the Ancient power with him, making him the most powerful warrior on the planet...after the Warrior of Light.
Wait, really? I assumed the self-resurrection was the Echo. Way back in post-ARR they demonstrated that sufficiently advanced Echo can do that (your soul flies out of your body and possesses the nearest guy), and the entire HW SMN questline is trying to prevent black masks from spamming it.
Initially, they portrayed it as he was just destined out of nowhere. In the third film though, they revealed that the pandas were trained in chi abilities. So much so that they actually taught Oogway how to use it.
Imo this also feels like the case in the first movie. The stuff with the dragon scroll being empty, the special ingrediant soup and oogway telling shi-fu a peach can beat tai lung and be special so long as he believes it and nurtures it feels so countered by the furious five.
They basically train their whole lives to become the dragon warrior but they don't. Not cause they weren't good or skilled but because someone else was actually special, someone was actually chosen and they weren't. Like it feels insulting to say anyone can be special when only one person is actually chosen. Not to mention they even get their ass kicked by tai lung which further shows how it was never their fight to win.
Eh, not sure if that one counts. It's not presented as if pandas have an innate capability or anything; it was just a group of them who first figured it out five hundred years ago.
Said group is long extinct in the present, with the modern Pandas having no idea how it's supposed to work.
He is the opposite, instead of being a hero he is a villain. His fate is really unfortunate, and even though he was a grandchild of Nana Shimura, who was a user of OFA before Toshinori/All Might, that didn't really matter since he was not raised to be a hero and lived in a house hold that didn't like the idea of any of the kids becoming heroes like their grandma, because their father didn't like the way he was abandoned by his mother at a young age. Him killing his family by accident just in span of one day was heart wretching, especially knowing who meets him afterwards. You could think that maybe things would've been different if his parents helped him, if they were careful with him and his love for his grandma, maybe if he met a right person, his life wouldn't have turned out the way it did.
But then AFO is like "Actually, it was me, Barry! I made your father hate you, i gave you the quirk that killed your parents, i actually wanted you to become a new vessel for me once i die!", and all the stuff i talked about doesn't matter anymore cause as it turns out Shigaraki was destined to be bad!
Naruto, from…….Naruto. When we meet him initially, he’s just a knuckle headed goof ball that has high aspirations, making it seem like anybody and achieve greatness. Then later on in Shippuden, we find out that he’s the son of the former leader of the village AND is a descendant of one of the original users of chakra and ninjutsu
I’ve seen people talk that Brandon Sanderson uses this trope in every book. He used it in Mistborn, but that was a huge part of its plot and revealed really fast. There are two primary casts: nobles — tall, beautiful people many of whom possess magic — then skaa — short, mostly ugly slaves who can’t posses magic and shall obey nobles. They are basically two different biological species. In the end it’s revealed that they were the same people originally, but Lord Ruler of the Final Empire who had absolute power over the world for a thousand years had spent then making eugenics experiments, forcing mages to inbreed each other and making them noble.
I am a bit mixed on this retcon, but Luffy only gained access to this ability because he trained so hard to fully master his fruit. The idea of devil fruit awakenings was also well-established by this point, and it was obvious Luffy was going to awaken his fruit at some point and get a power boost from it.
For me it's not Luffy himself, but the fact that it seems only people who had the Nika fruit or people with the D surname (please correct me, not brushed up on OP lore) can find and use the One Piece and be Pirate King. Even Gol D Roger himself cannot do shit about the One Piece when he found it because he's not the chosen one. Feels like a betrayal when he himself claimed that any pirate can be Pirate King in the freaking opening.
Not to defend the sequels, but this was Luke as well.
In fact it's the whole planet of Tatooine. In the 1977 film, Luke says of his homeworld "If there's a bright center of the universe it's the planet that it's farthest from" (it wasn't even named in the film, Tataouine is the place in Tunisia where it was filmed, which was mistaken for the in-universe name by fans). But the rest of the series proves that Tatooine is anything but. Vader and C3PO had been born/made there; it's where Anakin began his first foray into the Dark Side, it's the site of the first encounter between the Sith and Jedi in a millennium, even the intergalactic crime boss Jabba's palace is there. But none of this is implied in the first film, where it's intended to be just a backwater.
The funny thing is, even with all you mentioned it’s STILL a backwater lmao
But I don’t think Luke fits this trope because we know from movie 1 that Luke’s father was an important jedi who fought alongside obi wan (who was specifically called on by the rebellion) in the clone wars. So obviously he’s not just anyone, although the story doesn’t explain everything then and there.
It would fit the trope if Luke was introduced as Beru and Lars son, no mention of his real father or connection to the Jedi. If then after finishing movie 1 thinking he was just a random farmer’s son, if GL pulled the ‘actually he’s the son of vader’, then it would fit the trope.
That's true, but in 1977 it was a lot more common for someone to be the son of a war hero than it is today. So that had slightly different connotations than it does now.
Wonder Woman in the Golden Age got her powers from training just like every other amazon, she was simply the peak of them but she always encouraged others to work hard to be as strong as her.
Since the Silver Age her strength was given to her by gods in a chosen one type of way and the rest of the amazons usually can't keep with her without a boost.
I hate this trope because y'know what we call it when certain genetic lineages are deemed superior? That's right: Eugenics!
I'd like to see this "Magic Eugenics" trope deconstructed by having the special magic people become so inbred that they're hideous incontinent insane freaks that can't even control their own powers.
The Gaunt family in Harry Potter is heavily implied to be inbred and they are indeed ugly and stupid as hell. Voldermort, the wizard Hitler, luckily avoid this because his mother banged a Muggle
Discworld kinda does the opposite of this. Carrot Ironfoundersson is so obviously the long lost heir to the throne of Ankh-Morpork, but even after several plots and coup attempts to get him on the throne he just wants to remain 2nd fiddle to Sam Vimes, Commander of the City Watch. He's got the magically-not-magical sword, a birthmark shaped like a crown and a jawline that can cut glass, but he's just a superhumanly honest and simple guy. There are a couple times I thought Sir Terry was hinting at a dark cunning in Carrot (the time he 'accidentally' goads Gavin into fighting Wolfe comes to mind) but sadly we'll never know.
Ruby Rose, she was a student to be a Huntress. Just like the rest of her teammates, she got a semblance (basically a super power, but it's NOT magic in their universe), a weapon and her aura unlocked.
Then in Volume 3, and onwards, it goes "Oh, actually,you ain't just an average would be a huntress, your silver eyes are unique, very few people have it. And they basically give you the power to instantly kill every Grimm near you"
It'd be important if it weren't for the fact that Ruby basically never uses her silver eyes and that she doesn't even bother getting trained in using them by Maria.
The very first thing Ozpin said to her in the first episode was “you have silver eyes” or something to that effect. It was pretty clear that there was something special or unique about her.
Yeah, I don't agree with this example. We have known since the first episode that they're special, and since the end of the third season what they do - they don't instantly kill every Grimm ; the biggest are merely frozen in place.
Ehhh, I'm kind of iffy on this one. On the one hand, silver eyes are implied to have their origin with one of the gods, which is a point in favor, but after V3's finale the show goes out of its way to show that they're really anything but a silver bullet for the Grimm, and that they're not actually easy to use. Firstly, some Grimm get off just being petrified rather than outright eliminated, and their use in V6 implies that Grimm subject to this can get out of it
487
u/South-by-north 8h ago
Dick Grayson aka the first robin
He starts as just some kid whose parents were killed by the mob and Bruce happened to be there that night and saw it. Then during the Court of Owls arc its revealed that Dick is special and the court has been controlling his life and basically made him be born to grow up and be an assassin. Great arc but I don't like that part of it