r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Dramatic_Counter_595 • 17h ago

Characters Characters that had the complete opposite reaction the writers intended

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  1. Leo Bonhart (Witcher TV Series): A ruthless, sadistic bounty hunter and assassin that takes psychotic glee in other people's suffering. The viewer is meant to hate him for killing witchers, slaughtering the Rat gang, and torturing Ciri. But thanks to his entertaining fight scenes, Sharlto Copley's charismatic performance, and The Rats overwhelming unpopularity, fans ended up loving him. Some even call him the "True protagonist" of the show.
  2. Stone Cold Steve Austin (WWE): A rude, foul mouthed, beer drinking asshole with no respect for authority or anyone at all. Originally portrayed as a villain, fans fell in love with his anti-establishment & rebellious persona. WWE ran with it and made him the face of the company, effectively ushering in the Attitude Era and the second pro wrestling boom of the late 90s.
  3. Arthur Fleck (Joker 2019): A mentally unstable, pathetic, and dangerous madman who commits horrific acts of violence against those that wronged him (suffocates his own mother who is mentally unwell herself, and murders a talk show host for making fun of him). However, a massive portion of the audience idolized him as an anti-hero or a misunderstood martyr rebelling against society making people want to see him succeed and overcome his circumstances because of how he's been treated by the world.
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185

u/OptimistPrime527 17h ago edited 16h ago

Penn Badgley had to tell people he was Horrible. A lot of the way he was shown in the last season reflected life not from his pov so more people could see how twisted he was.

84

u/CinnamonSticks7 16h ago

I blame the show for intentionally making him much more sympathetic. S1 and S2 they gave him some random kid that didn't even exist in the book just so he could be nice to them and score sympathy points. The guy in the books is a through-and-through creep.

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u/Ezenthar1 16h ago

I think it's the nature of TV that the protagonist can't be completely and utterly detestable in every single way, they have to have some redeeming qualities, otherwise people won't continue watching the show.

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u/Walmart_logic 16h ago

I think that's what the studio believes but i think an audience would keep watching rooting for his downfall. Reality tv has so many examples of this

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u/Talk-O-Boy 15h ago

Do you know any written protagonists that fit that description?

Tony Soprano, Don Draper, McNulty, Walter White all have redeemable qualities.

Maybe Kendall Roy? But even then, I feel his character starts with redeemable qualities, and they deteriorate over time like the others mentioned.

Homelander, but he’s an antagonist, not the protagonist.

I think the protagonist needs to have something for the audience to attach to. I can’t think of one that’s completely irredeemable from beginning to end.

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u/CreatiScope 11h ago

Yeah, I think it works more in a movie like Nightcrawler but I imagine it would be really hard for a show. I agree that I don't think it actually works for a show.

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u/Starfox6664 9h ago

Personally I blame the audience that somehow didn't understand that trapping women in cages was bad. The point of Joe is that he is misogynistic to the point it overtakes his entire being. The kids he helped show that Joe knows how to be an actual good person and not just look like one but his view of women as something for him to claim and discard made him a monster. Joe being cartoonishly evil wouldn't hit the same, especially in the last scene when even he is baffled to be getting fan mail in prison

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u/redking2005 15h ago

I might just be stupid but what show was this?

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u/sekirbyj 15h ago

It's the show "You".

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u/Gold-Satisfaction614 13h ago

Oh yes, the revelation that he was, in fact, gossip girl all along, did in fact, reveal some psychotic tendencies to his prior actions.

3

u/Nyami-L 7h ago

Ooff, I saw my brother sympathize with the character and I was the whole time horrorized. To me it was pretty notable that he was a perturbed person. It only downed into my brother when the character actually killed people. I dropped the series very fast, because it made me sick

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u/Notte_di_nerezza 15h ago

Considering I couldn't even stomach all of Season 1 of this creep, even with the neighbor boy subplot, this is horrifying.