Troperville
Help us survive. All donations are anonymous on the wiki and unacknowledged, as we don't wish to create a hierarchy among Tropers.
Editing
Tools
Toys
|
|
|
|
"...OK, they're in-they're in the woods...the camera keeps on moving...uh, I think they're-they're looking for some witch or something, I-I don't know, I wasn't listening. Nothing's happening...nothing's happening...something about a map...nothing's happening...it's over. A lot of people in the audience look pissed."
Your friends have been bugging you to watch the latest TV show that everyone's talking about. Every newspaper raves about its originality, well-deserved popularity, and effective mix of comedy and drama, on the front page of the Entertainment section. The critics are rushing to hail it as the re-definition of its genre. After the thirtieth or so "Just watch it already, geez!" and maybe a Hype Aversion stage, you finally give in, pop the DVD in your player, and lay back to enjoy the latest masterpiece...
...Only to end up watching a mediocre show with average plots and few laughs or an utterly confusing one with more than enough Shocking Swerves to boggle the mind; one that definitely isn't the seminal classic everyone's been touting it as. What on earth did everybody see in this retread and/or overrated piece of drivel?
Usually occurs when Quality By Popular Vote fails. Most often, the work isn't bad at all by itself, and would have easily been accepted as a solid and enjoyable work by the same person under different circumstances. But very few things can actually live up to being praised as utterly perfect works of pure genius by lots of people for long, and to someone who was expecting nothing short of a flawless masterpiece to live up to all the hype, the disappointment can be bitter indeed. Bonus irony points if the disappointment stems from the viewer having seen the work's elements done to death already, when in fact the work had originated those cliches in the first place!
This trope is often at root in the gulf that can exist between the critical praise a show receives and the public reaction to it. Critics have a loud voice in influencing people as to what they think is worth seeing, but it's not uncommon for them and the public to have different tastes, expectations, and demands. This trope can also expose when, from the perspective of the person the Backlash is happening to, something is being heavily over-analysed or praised as being more rebellious, challenging or intellectually 'deep' than it may in fact be; it's not uncommon for people coming to something that has been praised to the moon for it's iconoclastic bravery or intellectual complexity to find that what they are watching is neither as revolutionary or deep as they've been led to believe.
The true backlash comes when the person who "doesn't get it" becomes so irritated at others' tendency to see that work as absolutely perfect that they put as much energy into downplaying or nitpicking it to show that it isn't as wonderful as everybody seems to think it is. If pitted against a fan base so utterly enthralled with the work that they consider the slightest criticism to be an act of war, the two camps can degenerate into a Flame War.
Of course, sometimes the thing really does suck according to general consensus and it becomes Deader Than Disco.
See Green Eggs And Ham for when the subject really does live up to the hype.
Please note that this page is not meant to be a personal blog for things you found overrated. If you would like to do that feel free to make a Troper Tales page for this to do that in. Remember also that Tropes Are Not Bad and Your Mileage May Vary - if you see something you love on this list, it doesn't mean it's bad, it just means that other people may not love it as much as you do, so try and keep that in mind before making a Justifying Edit.
The following things have been accused:
- "Reimagining" of an older/classic works:
- The 2007 Transformers movie from Michael Bay
- Sci-Fi Channel's versions of Battlestar Galactica and
- Dune
- The series Star Trek Enterprise
- They're often entertaining in their own right (this troper was thoroughly entertained by Transformers for instance), but no way are they going to meet the hype for most people, particularly the original fans, who will likely end up tearing its credibility limb from limb.
- The Hype Backlash page itself! This troper just made the trope go meta by linking to it on a message board one time too many for someone else.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion was hailed as the greatest anime of all times, until about 5 years ago, when the people who turned to watch it either didn't like the fact that the entire casts needed therapy, the ending was nonsensical, and the character of Rei has one of the largest Misaimed Fandom ever primarly because she appears less like a Creepy Child and more like a blowup doll.
- Suzumiya Haruhi, to the point where certain Image Boards immediately brand anyone that likes it a bandwagon jumper... despite the fact that these communities are, themselves, bandwagons and pride themselves on such.
- Haruhi Suzumiya the character gets a good deal of this. Hearing how much fans absolutely adore her before watching the show has lead more than a few people to be so put off by how much big a Jerkass she is early on that they don't realize/notice/accept how much of a jerk she isn't later on. (the Anachronic Order of the episodes doesn't help).
- For this troper, it wasn't just the Anachronic Order that caused Hype Backlash. The utterly insane amount of PVC figures and statues of Haruhi that the fandom eats up like candy made me feel like this character, who I just didn't like, was being shoved down my throat even harder.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, not helped by the fandom's tendency to USE THE CAPSLOCK KEY!!!!!OMG!!!!
- Any long anime that achieves mainstream success in English-speaking countries, many of which go on to be Deader Than Disco.
- Code Geass R2 is a bizarre case as in the ANN website the thing is hailed as a masterpiece, while in other popular forums such as Animesuki and Toonzone the reviews are lower. Usually within the 8 out of ten range, the problem is that much like Evangelion, Code Geass R2 has a relativly flat cast as the only character to get any massive character development is Rolo, while Lelouch has faked character development by revealing that he hates what he does, and thinks its wrong. Something made abundantly clear in the first season finale, and brought back in the second season as if it was never mentioned before. The character of Gino has plenty of screen time but never receives any character development, and seems to be a character development blackhole. Not to mention several Curb Stomp Battles, and a cop out ending that just has the whole world hating Lelouch because the writers say so.
Comedy
- Dane Cook, after his second comedy CD "Retaliation" shipped platinum. Those who've started listening to him afterward describe him as "an unfunny joke thief who jumps and screams a lot."
- Carlos Mencia gets this treatment too, but replace the "jumps and screams" part with "uses the word 'beaner'".
- Abbott & Costello's "Whos On First" routine. A bit that has transcended comedy and become a pop culture touchstone. Even people who've never heard oa A & C will at least recognize "THIRD BASE!". So naturally, when modern audiences see the routine in full, the usual response is "That's it?"
- Dave Chappelle's "I'm Rick James, Bitch" sketch became an entrenched meme long before most people saw it. And many of those who saw it after the hype were majorly underwhelmed. (In this troper's opinion, it's not even the funniest segment of "Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories").
- Also happened with Samuel Jackson Beer.
- Neil Gaiman, apparently.
- Scott Pilgrim is a very fun, quirky series. Unfortunately, it's being touted as some kind of revolution in the comics industry, when it's mostly just a well-constructed webcomic in print form. Unique in the world of executive run comic pages, but the kind of quirky, in-jokey humor that's been available on the web for years.
- Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns were two of the major comic books credited with bringing a more adult, mature sensibility to superhero comics in the mid-1980s. However, as with many things that have been hyped to Jupiter, new readers may find them slightly off-putting, impenetrable and / or dated, and the nature and tone of both means that some (including, to be honest, this editor) may find them works to be admired for their historical significance more than actually enjoyed. It doesn't help that the 'mature' sensibility both are credited with creating was arguably closer to 'adolescent', since many subsequent creators who followed in their footsteps missed the point entirely and decided that 'mature' meant books full of pointless sex, graphic violence, and swearing.
- Honestly, the datedness is precisely what makes Watchmen the classic that it is. It's not just for study of the Cold War - it snatches your mind and transplants it into the Cold War.
- In this troper's opinion (being of that disposition himself) if you are the sort of person who likes reading (and re-reading) the Lord Of The Rings, you will enjoy doing the same with Watchmen. Put another way, it's not the sort of work that you can browse well in the shop.
- This troper barricaded herself in the local bookstore's browsing nook with pillows and bigger comic books and read the whole thing in one sitting. Never bought it. She'd initially come just to page through, see what the artwork was like, and left maybe two hours later very drained and very giddy, and babbling about it all the way home. You either find it fascinating and a little nerve-racking, or you find it a useless timesink where nothing. Ever. Happens. (Or at least, it takes you a billion pages to get there and all the subtle little psychological cues leading up to the Big Reveal feel like cheating when the Big Reveal is interminably boring as well as long and dull. In no small part because every other person who's ever touched it had been screaming in your ear about how it's the frigging literary Second Coming. So, basically, yeah. It might be like reading Lord Of The Rings.
- 300. For those who didn't like it, the world is getting quite disenfranchising.
- One word: Titanic.
- Another word: Cloverfield.
- Napoleon Dynamite is a decent if rather odd film which scored fairly well from most reviewers. You wouldn't know this from the internet reception, which comes in precisely two flavours: "OMG TEH BEST MOVIE EVA!" and "OMG TEH WORST MOVIE EVA!".
- The Blair Witch Project
- The Star Wars prequels, especially Episode 1. If Jar Jar was in any other sci-fi movie, he would have been considered mildly annoying. Some really hated it, but most fans were very rabid that Star Wars could not go wrong. (The Ewok complaint seemed to be long after the movie actually came out, due to saturation.) Episode 2 seemed to be generally more reasonable in fan criticism, but critics were less kind. By Episode 3 the general consensus was "let's hope it turns out okay", and probably due to that mindset it is the best received.
- The original Star Wars trilogy can also suffer from this trope as well; thirty-odd years of intense critical and fan appreciation can make watching the movies a little disillusioning for someone who didn't grow up with them. Or even for someone who did.
- Citizen Kane tends to suffer from this these days. Although a fine movie and a worthy and significant achievement in cinema, it suffers from this partly due to a well-known ending (avoid the link if you want to avoid a spoiler, incidentally), partly due to sheer age, partly due to the fact that many of the techniques and stylistic functions it pioneered (actually refined from forgotten silent films) have been copied so many times they're a bit old-hat, but mostly because almost every film critic ever loudly insists that it's the greatest movie ever made and no movie made before or since will ever compare to it. Welles himself wasn't that impressed with the film (he was much prouder with his adaptation of The Trial).
- Many of the big Oscar-winning movies of the last few years tend to suffer from this, in fact. This is partly because there are few bigger forms of hype in culture than the Oscars, and movies which sweep the awards tend to provoke increased interest in them as a result of their victory, and are often accompanied by widespread critical acclaim and / or massive amounts of promotion and PR. Given the nature of this trope, many of the people who see these movies are naturally going to leave the theatre or eject the DVD wondering exactly what the big deal was. It doesn't help that, in recent years in particular, a formula used by studios for making movies "designed" to be nominated for Oscars has become increasingly apparent, which means that some audiences watching these movies might find them a bit samey and obvious in their intentions.
- The Departed. It was a pretty good, well-made, nicely suspenseful little mob
plaigarism ripoff movie, which somehow won Best Picture '06.
- The movie adaptation of Chicago. An entertainingly cynical but slight musical which - even more perplexingly than the above - was apparently the Best Picture of 2002 according to Oscar.
- American Beauty
- No Country For Old Men
- People who follow movies can give you this advice: The real best movie of the year will win Best Screenplay. Best Picture is all politics.
- This Troper seriously doubts Juno was the best movie of the year. It was sweet, funny, and Ellen Page was lovely, but that's where it ends.
- On the other hand, Citizen Kane won Best Screenplay and lost Best Picture.
- Anything involving Judd Apatow.
- Reefer Madness is actually a rather dull movie to people expecting the over-the-top narmfest that the internet makes it out to be.
- If you find the movie by itself too dull, try it with the Audio Commentary by Michael J. Nelson.
- The Scream trilogy. It would have made a great parody of the slasher genre in itself, if it wasn't for the fact that it became the formula for EVERY single horror movie that was ever made since!
- This editor is guilty of bugging a friend to finally watch Fight Club since it had been years since it came out on DVD and he hadn't seen it yet. He described it as "two hours of his life that he'll never get back." As far as deconstructing it, he complained that there was not a single character that he could relate to. Oh, and he already knew the plot twist.
- If you go into The Wizard Of Oz expecting to see a decent, cheery movie musical with some good songs, you won't be disappointed. You may even find it surprisingly creepy. But if you go in waiting to be scared mindless, you may develop a major hate-on for your entire life.
- The Matrix. By the time this troper saw it, he was expecting philosophical subtlety worthy of Gibson and Vinge if not Socrates and Plato, and was subsequently disappointed in what is really a pretty good action movie with visuals and the occasional philosophical phrase thrown in for flavour.
- This troper had The Rocky Horror Picture Show described to him in such a way that made it sound like the Second Coming. Unfortunately, it was really nothing more than a bad B sci-fi flick with Tim Curry (who really made it all okay). He actually fell asleep during the last 20 minutes of the film (sacrilege, I know!)
- Amazingly, this troper had almost the exact same experience, only worse: I got bored and stopped watching rather than falling asleep. And yes, Tim Curry!
- Well, the original stage production bubbled along for years and never really took off. Now you have an idea why. It only rose to its present eminence following the release of the film version, which was supposed to have marked the end of the stage production. Plus, where it really shines is in the whole audience/fan participation, which evolved by itself over many years.
- Ferris Buellers Day Off
- This editor suspects The Dark Knight will befall this fate - with people who haven't even seen it yet praising Heath Ledger's performance and rating it on a Four Point Scale, there's no possible way it can live up to expectations.
- And yet it did, massing huge profits, garnering both success from critics and the box office and surpassing this trope into Its Popular Now It Sucks territory
- And more yet, despite the movie being extremely popular and subject to tons of post-release hype, plenty of viewers think it was an hour too long, and would have been better if it hadn't continually explicated its theme out loud like some one-track Freshman English teacher.
- Hell, if anything the rare instances of Hype backlash are subject to backlash. Why, some sites are seemingly dedicated to finding and destroying anyone who disliked it.
- On the subject of Comic Book Hero Movies, this troper found that this was gladly not the case with Marvel's Iron Man. It was heralded as 'The' comic book hero movie to see, even begging to see it in actual theatres, much to this troper's delight, it met all expectations and more.
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. While not quite as major as Phantom Menace's backlash (and a bit of a Your Mileage May Vary), negative backlash has been pretty vicious.
- The Ring (American remake). It was a box office smash, made a lot of money for a lot of people, made Naomi Watts mainstream, spawned a shitty sequel, and was hyped as the scariest movie in years... but when this troper saw it he didn't find it to be the least bit scary and was generally pissed at everyone who told him he just HAD to see this movie.
- The American remake of Godzilla fell victim to this, mostly due to numerous advertisements letting us know that the titular monster is big, and also due to the hype generated by fans of the original Japanese film series. Needless to say, the film didn't live up to its hype.
- Harry Potter: coughhackcoughahem
- The Da Vinci Code. Critics didn't really like the book, but it was a huge bestseller and was mostly hyped for controversial subject matter.
- The works of Jane Austen. Especially Northanger Abbey.
- Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series has been heralded as the next big thing since Harry Potter and also as an unique take on vampirism. Some very vocal people online have attacked it for having Purple Prose, Mary Sues, and utterly ridiculous concepts (Vampires that sparkle? A "heroine" who deliberately puts her life in danger just to hear her love's voice?). In all reality, it's probably just a moderately good work suitable for a diverting read, but with all the elements in place to appeal to teenage fangirls. With such a massive Hatedom its on the fast tract to being Deader Than Disco.
- No matter how erudite they are, everyone has probably read (or been forced to read) a classic novel and been totally unable to comprehend why people worship it as a work of transcendent genius. This troper had that problem with The Great Gatsby (but is wondering if that has something to do with coming from an obscure Soviet republic and not having been marinating in The American Dream from birth). The Catcher in the Rye and War And Peace commonly suffer from this. And nobody likes Ethan Frome.
- Nah, you're good. In the copy of The Great Gatsby that this (American) troper read, the foreword contained a rather lengthy complaint about the poor pacing of the book.
- Catcher In The Rye is also much less controversial. From the spin this editor's teacher had put on it when mentioning it, he assumed it had to be wall-to-wall gore and pornography. And... it's a kid walking around New York thinking about a bunch of phonies. It was good, but not enough to make one go crazy with counter-culture fever.
- In the case of Catcher In The Rye, part of the controversy may stem from the fact that it was Mark David Chapman's favourite novel, who claimed to use it as an inspiration for murdering John Lennon; people may go into it expecting it to be a lot more brutal than in fact it is based on that.
- Nightwood. Apparently, it was once a piece of radical "queer literature", promoting tolerance and stuff. By today's standards, however, the sheer quantity of all those Depraved Homosexuals, Psycho Lesbians, and Depraved Bisexuals, the Aesop is either broken or intentionally like that.
- As much-beloved as The Lord Of The Rings may be to some.. Tolkein still needed an editor, no matter how much his fans try to defend him.
- Ethan Frome wins the boredom award for this troper. 110 pages of nothing happening.
- Curb Your Enthusiasm (may have been for being compared to Seinfeld)
- Arrested Development
- The works of Joss Whedon tend to suffer from this, but in particular Buffy The Vampire Slayer. An entertaining and engaging vampire-horror series with a cute heroine, some funny lines and a tendency to go a bit overboard on the Wangst at times? Maybe. The greatest thing ever broadcast over the television airwaves, as its fans routinely declare? Many would beg to differ. Firefly also fits prominently under this trope.
- Monty Pythons Flying Circus also suffers, especially in it's homeland. As do many of the 'classic' 1970s British comedy shows — Dads Army, Fawlty Towers, etc. It results from a combination of being described by critics since the seventies as being classics, the natural process of becoming slightly dated and over-homaged over the years, and being repeated ad nauseum on television channels over and over since they were first broadcast.
- It doesn't help that the really popular sketches and scenes get quoted and referenced ad nauseum.
- There was good Python and less good Python. Only the best stuff gets repeated over and over verbatim. Plus you have to think like a Brit to get it all. BTW, the Four Yorkshiremen sketch originated with an earlier programme, At Last The 1948 Show, which featured John Cleese and Graham Chapman - it was introduced into their live shows to wrong-foot all the fans who knew (and could be seen reciting) all the words to the sketches.
- Very common among music fans. The Arcade Fire is a good example, but any band that releases an EP or plays a show will suffer Hype Backlash from people who liked them before anyone knew about them, man.
- Radiohead, especially albums like Kid A and In Rainbows. Not helping them was a rather infamous review of Kid A where the reviewer, favorably, compared the album to a dead baby.
- The Shins. Some people say they changed their lives, while others respond with a "meh".
- Forty-plus years of being described as the most influential and important rock album ever made, coupled with many of the advances and breakthroughs it made being assimilated into the genre as a whole mean that many people who listen to The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band might wonder what the big deal was.
- Jimi Hendrix is getting this in black music circles. Primarily because a lot of people (and mainstream media) seem to think every black guitar virtuoso is inspired by him if not completely copying him. Despite the fact there was other black guitarists that coincided and preceded him with comparable skill.
- Might be because the rock genre was more popular, and he tends to over shadow a lot of other "black rock" guitarists who primarily did hard funk instead of straight up rock.
- Speaking of which, a lot of white rappers and soul singers get this treatment among black music fans. Particularly when the media essentially puts a crown on their head so to speak. Vanilla Ice is probably one of the earliest examples when concerning hip-hop specifically, and New Kids on the Block when it concerns R&B/Pop (although this goes back much further).
- A certain amount of backlash was guaranteed when Gary Cherone was tapped to be Van Halen's third front man - by virtue of him not being David Lee Roth or Sammy Hagar. But when Cherone was hyped as having "a voice like Sammy Hagar and the stage presence of David Lee Roth"... that was just setting the poor guy up for a fall if he' wasn't better than advertised. (He wasn't). The fact that the album, III, sounded like neither the Roth nor Hagar-era VH didn't help.
- One Word: Synchros. Probably holding the record for the fastest acceptance of a new idea to the Yu-Gi-Oh card game in the history of the franchise, there is literally no deck among the elite duelists of the world that doesn't have these wonder monsters in them. Dissidents against the new monsters would be quick to point out they're little more than a rehash of the Fusion and Ritual monsters the game has had for years already, or that - due to how easy they're able to be gotten out do the the insane synergy they have with the current "throw out as many high-powered monsters you possibly can at any one time" mindset of said elites - they're virtually broken...if it wasn't for the fact that those same elite would think nothing of slicing their throat with a Ghost Rare Stardust Dragon should you utter a peep of it.
- Any Final Fantasy, much more so after Final Fantasy VII caused an explosion of interest in the series.
- For some, this applies more to Square's endless number of sequels, retcons, and other story add-ons, and the sheer obsession of some parts of its fanbase, rather than the original game itself.
- Also available in Roman numeral infighting. It seems you can't like a Final Fantasy game without wishing fiery death upon another one.
- Halo was an extraordinarily popular game, a Killer App for the launch of the Xbox. Halo 2 was even more popular, being similar in gameplay while also advancing the storyline. It sold eleventy billion copies... and was rather routinely eviscerated by reviewers and fans because of the presence of a talking vine who rhymed using archaic meter. The reviews were rather funny, actually, in that they all gave the game ridiculously high scores but tended to be surprisingly harsh.
- There's also the fact that, along with the "Its Popular Now It Sucks" sentiments of a lot of gamers, the idea that Halo was popular with the "wrong people"... IE, frat boys liked it, and since TV has told them gamers and frat boys are mortal enemies, Halo is clearly the enemy.
- Poetic plantlife? For the first time, this troper is interested in Halo.
- Poetic zombie plantlife, that gets way more lines in the last game. This troper isn't sure but thinks it's iambic heptameter.
- Ditto for Half-Life 2.
- After reaching an unprecedented 99 on Metacritic and dominating media video game coverage for the forseeable future, expect a lot of this directed towards Grand Theft Auto IV.
- Super Smash Bros Brawl has seen reviews similar to Halo; while the scores are great, the reviews spend most of the length complaining about everything that isn't as perfect as the initial hype made many believe... despite the fact that, objectively, those things (single-player and online, to be short) are still much better than the previous Melee incarnation (the former featuring additional modes, the latter being completely new).
- Zero Punctuation, as seen below, has mainly repeated those, but in addition complained about unlockable content as well as going somewhat offtopic to complain about fighting games in general. Then again, he also made it clear that he only made the review to shut up the masses that wanted to seen it reviewed (read: picked apart) by him.
- Don't get me started on what Melee fanboys think of Brawl...
- This might be part of what is holding Duke Nukem Forever back. Think about it, after over ten years of waiting, the game will inevitably be rather disappointing if it's just a good FPS in a time where FPS are a very common genre.
- Though in fairness, the company responsible has hardly done itself any favors by a combination of
whoring licensing out their titular character to keep themselves in the black and implying that their game taking longer to create than several iterations of Windows is due to their ceaseless pursuit of, nay, insistence on, sheerest perfection.
- A unique example of this is Fable; the game itself didn't deliver on the hype, with half of the content promised removed and the other half altered beyond recognition (so much so that the head of the development team had to issue a formal apology for it). Despite that, it's not a bad game, and is actually quite a decent (if rather linear and shallow) hack and slash. However, if anyone says they didn't think the game was stellar to a die-hard fan, they'll likely to be criticized for hating it on the sole premise of the false hype, and not on the final product.
- This may have something to do with the critical and fan response to Too Human and Haze. They're average at worst... but they were built up fairly heavily by the publishers and developers before release.
- Similar to Fable, Black And White was hyped to hell by Peter Molyneux, who promised such details as intimately following the exact details of villagers, from birth to wedding to death. He made a good game, but hardly the life changing event promised. The fact that it's considered overrated by many people is probably due to this trope.
- Spore seems to be hitting this trope in many quarters. The fact they've been promising and previewing it at games expos for the last few years probably contributed to this. And the whole heavy-handed DRM system debacle didn't help either.
- "A mile wide and an inch deep" is the common thread of the backlash. And it's got its justifications. The players who are preemptively pissed off about the entirely hypothetical avalanche of Sims-esque expansion packs may be a bit ahead of the curve, though.
- The Force Unleashed, sadly, seems to have fallen victim to this effect. If it hadn't been hyped up to EPIC levels as the Star Wars answer to God Of War, it would probably be thought of as a decent Star Wars game.
- The hype surrounding Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 is humongous, with Midway cashing in by making it the default old-school MK game to port onto anything. While it's not a bad game, it's notoriously unbalanced to the point of being broken, and a closer inspection of the added characters clearly shows they're unfinished, not at all qualities you'd expect to find in the purported "best MK game ever".
- Zero Punctuation: many dislike it for its negativity and tendency to for (often off-topic) Take Thats, but every other goddamn line becoming a page quote makes it very hard not to think about it, which leads to massive frustration.
- Yahtzee appears to frequently suffer Hype Backlash himself, especially with Halo. He even recently dedicated an entire video to the fan reaction to the (even more than usually) scathing review of Super Smash Bros Brawl, which he was particularly harsh with largely because of this.
- Even Yahtzee's games seem to fall under this trope. People heaped lavish praise on them when they came out, but played today, the opinion of some is that they're average rip-offs of/"inspired by" other series (5 Days = about a billion "trapped in a house" horror movies, 7 Days = Jason X, Trilby's Notes = Silent Hill mixed with Zelda-esque dimension hopping, and 6 Days just being your usual evil cult story) that all got wrapped up with a Gainax Ending that required you to pay to get the full ending and understand what the hell was going on.
- Achewood. From all the hype you'd think it cured cancer or something.
- Referenced in this
 Real Life Comics strip.
- El Goonish Shive tends to get this reaction from people who are so, so tired of seeing its name come up on this wiki. The fandom's tendency to swoop down on any criticism made of it and apply a Justifying Edit does not help matters. As is the Hypocrisy Humor of fans of a comic that, in all honesty, mostly exists for Author Appeal being shocked to find porn of it.
- The same problem happens with any series of Doctor Who. The way it is praised on this site, you'd expect it too have cured cancer, stopped global warming, saved the universe, and stopped all the evils in the Universe... It doesn't.
- The works of Pixar in general, WALL-E in particular. Pixar-in-general hating may sometimes result from people misattributing other, and perhaps lesser, CGI animated films to them.
- Batman The Animated Series tends to get hyped up a lot, particularly when compared to any other superhero cartoon (and especially when compared to The Batman).
|
|
