< The Scrappy

The Scrappy/Other Media

Before editing, remember that The Scrappy primarily refers to a character who is hated or disliked within their own fandom. It does not mean that just because you dislike someone, they belong here.

Be warned not to add Flame Bait.

Vanity Plates

  • Relativity Media. Whenever you see the logo, which is a quasar, accompanying a movie trailer, expect the movie to be So Bad It's Good, complete with really obnoxious scenery chewing in random scenes.
    • Recently, they've made two movies that look like ripoffs of more popular movies at the time.
    • The exceptions to Relativity's list would probably be their kids' films, as they contain very, very little to none of the scenery-chewing, for starters.
    • Another possible reason is that they've co-financed most of Sony and Universal's product since 2006 as well as their own product. However, there are a few exceptions to the rule (such as The Fighter, The Social Network and Fast Five).
  • Columbia-Tristar Television. The editing habits of Sony during the late '90s meant that older, more beloved (and sometimes scary) logos such as Screen Gems and Columbia Pictures Television which originally aired on older programs were replaced by this during reruns. Their ubiquity and the loss of the popular idents resulted in a rabid Hatedom decrying the logo as the "Boxes of Boredom". May have been Rescued from the Scrappy Heap now that the logo has faded away, having been replaced by...
  • Sony Pictures Television, known as the "Bars of Boredom". This is seen on maybe half of all reruns of popular television programs and, like its predecessor, plasters everyone's favorite obscure Columbia or Screen Gems logo. It has inherited much of the previous logo's Hatedom, to the point of becoming a Creator's Pet.
  • The "Are you going to talk during the movie?" vanity plate has this.
    • Now replaced by the "Turn your cell phones off" vanity plate in its various guises.
  • The Wonderful World of Dic logo that replaced the ever popular "Kid in Bed" logo.
    • Which has now been replaced with the Cookie Jar logo since that company bought up the Dic properties.


Software

  • Clippy, the Microsoft Office animated paperclip assistant. Stop helping us.
    • Only good appearance: a page of computer jokes somewhere, in which his sole dialogue is "It looks like you're writing a letter. Would you like me to a) bollocks it up for you b) just fuck off and leave you alone?"
    • Then there's the lolcat where he offers three choices for making LOLcats, and "Invisible Office Assistant" is chosen.
    • "Go away, you paper clip! No one likes you!"
    • Irregular Webcomic once had Mercutio confused that the absence of Clippy was supposed to be a software fault, rather than, say, a reward from the Omnissiah.
    • Microsoft were in on the joke, apparently: There was a Flash-animated short promoting Windows XP, where Clippy laments that he might be out of a job at long last. And he's voiced by Gilbert Gottfried, for Christ's sake.
    • And of course, this Demetri Martin routine.
  • BonziBuddy raised this trope to an art form. Bonzi originally appeared in the form of a green parrot named Peedy but then later became the purple gorilla we know him as today, Bonzi is an interactive virtual friend who sings, tells jokes, and reads stories. He may seem harmless enough on the surface, but he is actually a form of malware. The problem is that pop-ups that look like Windows warning messages appear almost frequently, he constantly asks you to purchase add-ons and upgrades for him, and the worst part is that he's almost impossible to get rid of.
  • Windows Vista. When a company pours millions into an ad campaign claiming "These are real individuals and not paid actors" to try and make a program look halfway decent, there's a problem. Doubly so if the campaign is a resounding failure (as "Mojave" quite clearly was).
    • Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld show up at ordinary people's homes to promote Vista, without actually ever mentioning it by name. To this day, nobody has any idea what the hell this was about.
    • Windows 95 had this too, for using up too much memory. Windows 98 would crash when you did complicated tasks like booting. Windows has a long history of being The Scrappy among operating systems.
  • Windows 7. It can cause your mouse to jam up at random, necessitating total reboot, it can fail to save documents entirely, even when it shows the saved document in the list, it can screw up the mouse so that it always wants to stick to one side of the page, and it sometimes make the downward-scrolling arrow disappear. Despite this, 7 is considered a vast improvement on Vista, and may be the OS that singlehandedly got Microsoft Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
    • As a general rule, all Microsoft OS systems will have scrappy status somewhere to someone. The number of users is simply so great that it is guaranteed.
  • There is always a domain on Usenet that is The Scrappy. At first it was AOL. Then it became WebTV.
  • The Apple Newton. If Apple had a Dork Age, this was its poster child. The uselessness of it was even referenced on The Simpsons.
    • Apple has quite a large hatedom among both casual users and tech-savvy people. Its image of slick, streamlined, user-friendly products for the artsy/hipster crowd which are overhyped and overpriced has led to many hardcore programmers and hackers shunning them outright.


Newspaper Comics

  • Luann features Elwood, a short, unappealing midget of a young man who appears to be wealthy (but bought a cubic zirconia ring for a girl), but comes across as selfish, stalker-ish and rude. Interjecting himself into the various Love Triangle storylines has made him very unpopular, as well as his having few good qualities. It remains to be seen if this was intentional or not, but Greg Evans has essentially not used him in months, so maybe he's aware of it.
  • The kids from Family Circus. They are the reason the strip has a Periphery Hatedom. Pearls Before Swine writer Stephan Pastis often uses his strip to point out the fact that its a relic from the 1930's doesn't really endear the comics section to any reader under the age of fifty.
  • Barry from Curtis. The author clearly intended his antics to just be normal kid-brother grade asshattery, but they're usually incredibly mean-spirited and deliberately designed to provoke Curtis, so that Barry can then sob to his mother that big mean ol' Curtis is trying to hit him for no reason at all, whereupon she will give Curtis chores to do for trying to hit his sweet, innocent brother, and Barry ice cream for being a manipulative sack of shit. Diane lacks the pattern recognition to notice that Curtis always has a very detailed description of the transgressions she doesn't believe Barry committed.


Professional Wrestling

  • The ur-example of wrestling would be Sean (X-Pac/Syxx/1-2-3 Kid) Waltman. Best known for naming the trope X-Pac Heat. To explain this a bit - Waltman had been part of the mega-popular D Generation X, and gotten very popular as part of it. His star faded though, but his gimmick didn't evolve. He took up plenty of TV time and rarely lost despite not really getting a push or doing anything interesting. Pretty soon the fans just didn't want to watch him. There were actually a few incidents where Waltman pulled himself out of the Scrappy Heap briefly, such as teaming with Jeff Hardy and doing the Hardy Boyz trademark double team moves with him, or a very good television match against Eddie Guerrero. But since his gimmick still wouldn't evolve.
    • Of course these days he's not all that hated. Partly because he's spent a lot of time in Mexico and time heals all wounds, and partly because he's working on cleaning up the bad attitude that contributed to his Scrappydom.
  • John Cena has been The Scrappy at periods of his career. As a heel, he worked a Pretty Fly for a White Guy gimmick and was extremely popular... then suddenly he turned face and the fans were expected to take the formerly phony hip-hop posturing seriously. Then the WWE bookers started pushing him specifically to appeal to younger fans, giving him a Periphery Hatedom. Nowadays, fans mainly like Cena - he regularly gets awards in wrestling magazines - but they continue to boo him mainly because the WWE bookers try so hard to get the fans to cheer for him. Scrappy By Proxy? X Pac Heat Once Removed? It's weird.
    • This whole attitude towards Cena may be best exemplified by ECW country
    • Well John Cena did state in a promo before One Night Stand that he knew he wouldn't be welcomed in any ECW arena and would probably spark a riot if he won. Then said he was going to win. Maybe that reaction was wanted.
  • Along the same lines as the above example, Lince Dorado of CHIKARA is often given the nickname "Cena Dorado" because of the way Chikara pushes him; despite the bookers fluctuating between booking him like Cena and booking him like any other wrestler, Dorado's considered to be The Scrappy of the promotion. This attitude was in full effect at King of Trios 2009, when Lince's team (The Future is Now) was defeated by the eventual winners of the tournament (Friends in Similar Tights, aka Team FIST); despite being the heels, FIST got cheered for taking out TFiN. Seems that the bookers got the message though, as Lince has been stuck in the undercard for a while lately.
    • It should be noted that a string of generally improved performances in-ring combined with a de-push, followed by a well executed Face Heel Turn is leading to much of the CHIKARMY ruling Lince as having been Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
  • Jeff Hardy during the early part of the 21st century. He was mainly Estrogen Brigade Bait, and the male fanbase resented him for this. Also he was demotivated and drugged up. Things bottomed out when he made an appearance at Ring of Honor. High pitched squeals of female fans who'd gone to the show just to see Jeff, mixed with the roughly 1000 ROH regulars chanting "We Want Matt" and "Don't Come Back" at him.
    • When Konnan went to ROH, he got the same treatment. For that matter, so did Matt Hardy, although he stuck around for a few more matches and put some of the ROH regulars over, redeeming himself in their eyes.
    • Despite all this Jeff remained relatively popular with other promotions, although still somewhat of a Base Breaker. This is until the Epic Fail that was the Victory Road PPV, where Jeff came out to wrestle for TNA's title completely destroyed on drugs. After that, people have started to migrate away from Jeff.
  • Around the turn of the century, Lita was in the same position John Cena was recently. She could do a moonsault, and the casual fans loved her. But her moonsault sucked, and despite doing a few high spots (which she usually botched) she was a terrible worker with no sense of psychology, and she was booked like she was head shoulders and waist above all the other women on the roster. Internet fans did not care for her in the slightest.
    • Then, she had an affair with Edge while dating Matt Hardy which made her hated by all.
  • Brian Adams as Crush of Demolition, as the three-man team era marked the beginning of the end of the team, as Ax would soon leave and Crush and Smash jobbed out.
  • Although the promotion Dragon Gate is popular with fans, it is something of a Scrappy to many other pro wrestlers. Dragon Gate's matches generally end with flat out barrages of finishing moves rather than a finisher. Many other Japanese wrestlers see this particular style as flat out disrespectful to the business itself.
  • Michael Cole serves as a non-wrestler Scrappy for his bland commentary and tendency to declare something as "the first time ever..." regardless of accuracy. He'll also make boneheaded comments like Bret Hart breaking his leg as the worst night of his life (why, yes, this was years after his brother Owen's fatal accident) and referring to Vickie Guerrero's tribute to her late husband at Wrestlemania XXVI as a "hog splash." Despite all this, Cole has maintained a unbroken commentary position with the WWE since 1999, something none of the other current commentators can say. Thus whenever anyone puts a beating on him, be it Bryan Danielson or Jim Ross, expect cheers. Lots and lots of cheers.
    • Before it's mentioned, yes, we know his fanboying of The Miz is kayfabe. This does not make it any less annoying. He is madly and unapologetically in love with The Miz for some reason, unambiguously favoring him in matches by on at least one occasion, standing up and loudly cheering for him, and whenever anything bad happens to him, he spends the entire match night bitching about how unfairly The Miz was being treated, making him come off as extremely, and disgustingly whiny. At one point, he cost the WWE champion at the time, Randy Orton, a win, and claimed that since he had won the Money In The Bank, The Miz was completely justified in doing this because "he can do whatever he wants."
      • In all fairness to The Miz and Cole, that is pretty much the same way every MITB winner except for Rob Van Dam had cashed it in. Even CM Punk mentioned it was smart of The Miz. Nevertheless, Cole does this for nearly everything Miz does to the point that he had to become a Complete Monster Jerkass against long-time commentating partner Jerry Lawler when Jerry began feuding with Miz. Again, it's Kayfabe but it's very annoying. I don't want to see him punched. I want to see him go away.
    • On the opposite end, there's his constant trolling of any and all internet favorites which has only become more shrill and annoying as the months go on.
  • TNA's Dixie Carter. The woman has no charisma or business sense. The worst part is, she never plays the heel, even though every one of TNA's fans and haters despise her. She literally had Tommy Dreamer beg on national TV for one last chance to show the world about ECW (something that did not happen for WWE's One Night Stand, because if it did, the Mutants would have destroyed Vince McMahon). Oh, and as pointed out by Spoony, she has only one facial expression, which is now known as "Dixie Carter Face".
  • Lacey Von Erich is regarded as one of the worst wrestlers in all of history to step into the ring. She's arguably even more incompetent in the ring than the WWE Divas, botches moves as often as she connects with them, and a failure at selling even the most basic of moves. The only person ever to display less in-ring talent than her in TNA history is Jenna Morasca. The worst part? She's got enough natural athleticism that there's no reason she couldn't pull a Trish Stratus and become good, but because of her wrestling pedigree (being part of the Von Erich family), she has never actually gone through wrestling training.
  • Vickie Guerrero, at least as a character. An untalented, shrill and downright ugly woman that had multiple segments of a SINGLE Smackdown! dedicated to her and whatever the hell she was doing at the time. As "GM" of the Smackdown! brand, Guerrero hogged the spotlight on a show that was mainly know for featuring a lot of up-and-coming stars and giving them shots at the big time. Her inability to act and properly play a crowd, besides some of the cheapest-brand Heat you could find, turned many off to the Smackdown! brand during her tenure as its GM.
  • As Rocky Maivia, The Rock had a huge hatedom. After his Face Heel Turn, he became the guy we all know and love.
  • Lay Cool. Unliked, not very talented, often mean-spirited and hateful and Generic Doomsday Villainesses (due to one of them being married to The Undertaker). An unholy combination of Scrappiness.
  • John Laurinaitis is the most recent example. In Real Life he was already disliked for being an incompetent stooge of Vince McMahon who primarily only has a job because he's such a suck-up. But it wasn't until 2011 that Laurinaitis made his WWE television debut, and currently most people wish he had just stayed behind-the-scenes. Initially it seemed like he was going to play Vince's right-hand Evil Minions similar to Brisco and Patterson back in the AE in order to mirror his Real Life role. However Vince went on another hiatus from television yet Laurinaitis remained behind. It quicly became clear that he was a terrible onscreen performer due to his lack of mic ability, poor acting skills, and having zero charisma. Despite this he stayed on TV and was played up as the person behind the conspiracy against Vince's son-in-law, Triple H. This arc was scrapped, but Vince still came back and appointed Laurinaitis as the new GM of RAW. He INSTANTLY became a one-dimensional and bland heel general manager, and finally ended up feuding with CM Punk. It didn't last long as the feud was a flop, and they teased Laurinaitis being fired, only for him to not only keep his job, but become permanent GM of RAW. It Got Worse when he feuded with Smackdown GM Teddy Long for control of both shows, which obviously Laurinaitis won, making him GM of both shows. After this Laurinaitis basically became the center of attention for the entire show. It's finally reached the point where now he's headlining a PPV against John Cena and winning. He's a blatant Mr. McMahon wannabe, but is really just an Expy of Vickie Guerrero, as in an annoying and untalented performer is pushed to the moon and made the center of attention and focus of the program simply and only manages to get X-Pac Heat due to them being a terrible performer, though WWE pretends it's heel heat and uses it as an excuse to push them.


Radio

  • Ralph Cirella on The Howard Stern Show. Howard once responded that Ralph gets more hate mail then a Ku Klux Klansman who is a frequent caller to the show.


Sports

  • Kickers in American football are usually despised by fans and media for being smaller and doing nothing but kicking the ball instead of running all over the field or plowing into other players. And it really irks those people how many times a game is decided because of the kickers.
  • The US Men's Soccer Team is this in the FIFA World Cup. While there are still fans; combined with Americans Hate Soccer, and the fact that most viewers in the United States are cheering are usually from Mexico or Europe, and are cheering for their own teams. Ironically subverted with the Women's team, which are actually quite popular in the U.S. and surprisingly around the world.
    • Likewise, the MLS and the NHL are not that popular compared to the other three leagues. Due to obvious reasons for the former, and that much of the U.S. is too warm for the latter. Though some cities, like Los Angeles and San Jose are exceptions for soccer, and Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis/St.Paul are exceptions for ice hockey.
  • Go on. Mention to non-Glasgow Celtic fans how much you love and admire Neil Lennon. I dare ya.


Music

  • Any time a band replaces the singer, he might become a Replacement Scrappy.
  • Person Man in They Might Be Giants' song "Particle Man" is clearly intended to be the scrappy of the comic book the song is about.
  • Back when rapper Chingy (yes, that's really his name) was in the group Disturbing Tha Peace, he was known as the black sheep of the group, though for good reason. The DTP single "We Got Them Guns" makes this fact painfully evident. At best, Chingy's a more derivative Nelly, which doesn't help, considering his beef against the rapper (both of them hail from St. Louis). It Got Worse when Chingy got so arrogant, he basically wanted out of DTP, because he thought he could reproduce the triple platinum success that he received from his one-hit wonder "Right Thurr". Chingy was the only person who seemed surprised that abandoning DTP was almost certain doom to his career...
  • Opera has quite a few of these; BBC Music recently did an article about it, in fact. They tend to be one-dimensional stock villains, especially ones who are ethnic stereotypes (such as Monostatos from The Magic Flute or Mime from Der Ring Des Nibelungen) or Purity Sues/Stus (for example, Don Ottavio from Don Giovanni).


Tabletop Games

  • Many gamers resent board games in general, as Moral Guardians who protest against Video Games often cite them as an alternative for children, often calling it an example of the kind of game that children should be playing, or as an example of something "productive" or something they can do while having fun with their families rather than sitting alone in the room interacting with nothing but a machine.
  • Keenan Caine of Bliss Stage is a Jerkass. His Kick the Dog moment in the continuing examples in the rules and being a Carefree Hedonist in game terms probably doesn't help much.
  • Kender. Maybe it's the way they're almost always played as Chaotic Stupid. Maybe it's because they seem rather out of place in a world as crapsacky as Dragonlance.
  • Marneus Calgar from Warhammer 40,000. Even most Space Marine fans hate him these days, possibly owing to him being a Mary Sue.
    • The Ultramarines as a whole. While they still have their fans, the majority of players can't stand them. They were alright when they were kept more in the background, but then Games Workshop fell in love with them and started promoting them out the wazoo.
    • For a lot of people Mat Ward has become a scrappy fluff writer due in large part to writing the background for the above mentioned Ultramarines and for the 5th Edition Blood Angels Codex.
      • This has been taken to truly staggering levels with the release of the new Grey Knights code; quite a few players are furious at Ward's new fluff, which among other things has one of the Grey Knights become the Grand Master of the chapter at the exact same time he's stranded in the Warp for several centuries, as well as making some Knights slaughter a convent of Sisters of Battle who have managed to remain pure despite their world falling to Chaos, and following that up with using their blood to anoint weapons and armor to protect against Chaos. The exact same wargear that's already been blessed and specifically made to fight Chaos in the first place.
  • In Dungeons and Dragons, one monster that is almost universally despised is the Flumph. First appearing in the original Fiend Folio, this flying jellyfish-like Aberration - and Ridiculously Cute Critter - was the only Lawful Good monster in the book. That kind of limited its usefulness - it's only real uses are for a party of Evil PCs or a Let's You and Him Fight scenario with typical ones. However, in either scenario, it's going to be a Curb Stomp in favor of the PCs, because the only truly useful ability a flumph has is its foul-smelling musk that might attract other monsters after the flumph is defeated. Among both players and creators, the flumph has been regarded as ugly, stupid, inappropriate, boring and generally one of the worst ideas to come out of D&D. In 3rd Edition, it didn't appear at all in any of the five Monster Manuals, two Fiendish Codices, or that edition's version of the Fiend Folio, nor did they appear in the Lords of Madness sourcebook, despite it being all about aberrations. It was likewise left out of 4th Edition, the dev team explaining that "if it's Good aligned, it shouldn't really be in the Monster Manual; those books should be full of creatures you can realistically expect to battle". (It should be noted that in 4th Edition, Metallic Dragons are changed from Good to Unaligned, and Storm Giants changed from Good to Evil.
    • Flumphs still have a few defenders, and 5th Edition has a few trying to Rescue them from the Scrappy Heap; they are in that edition's Monster Manual, and Pathfinder gave them something of a backstory with the Splatbook "Misfit Monsters Redeemed" splat, where it answered the question "why are Flumphs Lawful Good", and if you consider flumphs to be confused little aliens that fell off a Spelljammer craft, they almost make sense. For now, however, they seem to only fit as Joke Characters.
  • For Ravenloft players, other then Strahd and Azalin Rex, all the other Darklords/Domains have detractors and defenders; but Death and the Necropolis is almost universally despised. For those who do not know the setting. Picture a city in the middle of a populated Kingdom. Now everyone in this city is undead - sounds like a guilt-free monster bashing fest, right? Wrong. This city is surrounded by The Shroud - which immediately kills everyone who crosses it, and animates them into undead, no exceptions, no saves (sure there is a plant that prevents this, but it's a hard-to-find supplement). The Ruler Death also fails to leave a lasting impression. For most DMs, they found the obvious danger to PCs and the setting's aversion of Death Is Cheap trope renders Necropolis nigh-unplayable without some serious railroading, and often found it easier just to excise it.
  • For Magic: The Gathering players, there are many variants of this:
    • The Tier-Induced Scrappy colors are blue (for being too broken) and green (for being too weak). Red also gets some hate, because all the good red cards are at common, so many fans think you can always tell a n00b by the fact that it's turn 5 and all he's played are mountains.
    • The Scrappy Mechanic is countering. It just seems unfair that all your hard work will be removed. Of course, if it's a permanent, it can be removed anyway once in play...
      • Even with the prevalence of removal spells, countering is still considered far, far more of a Scrappy Mechanic. For one, there are only a tiny handful of cards that can't be countered. Anything else, even Progenitus, whose whole schtick is that nothing short of a board-wiping nuke can touch it, can get countered, usually meaning critical or game-ending spells can be thwarted for a measly two mana. This tends to have devastating consequences in more serious play, since the havoc counterspells wreak on tempo means even a soft counter like Remand can be devastating for the mana it makes you waste. Combine this with the fact that one of the single best equipment cards in the game, Sword of Feast And Famine, means any deck that runs counterspells has a way to always have land open during enemy turns while also giving one of their creatures a sizable power boost and four bonus abilities, and you can start to see why people dread playing against decks that pack a lot of counterspells.
      • One should note that this is exactly the reason why formats exist (apart from keeping up the income from the franchise). An old card becoming powerful way beyond intention due to new, stronger cards being printed, is not supposed to ruin the game. As it is these old cards (Wrath of God, Counterspell etc.) can only be used outside of vintage when the recent edition contained a reprint of said card. Most of these cards were made back when a powerful card cost 7 mana, was a 7/7 monster and had no effect at all.
    • The Scrappy sets include Homelands (too weak), Fallen Empires (all the good cards at common, a print run being six times the core set of the time), and The Dark (too weak, and even had Sorrow's Path, long considered the worst card in Magic.). The Kamigawa block also got a huge hatedom.
    • The Eldrazi Titans are Scrappies as well, either for being extremely powerful (In Vintage, it's possible to get them in play as soon as you have certain cards in play.) or for being too weak. (Emrakul costs 15 mana!)
    • Nicol Bolas has a huge hatedom, mainly due to his Villain Sue characterization.
  • In the Exalted fandom, there are large sections who view the Solar Exalted in general as this, for anything from their significant power (they're supposed to be the mightiest of the Exalted), their perceived lack of interesting features (their powers are more human-based than the other Exalted, and part of the jump-off point is based around them being uninvolved in the world's history for more than a thousand years), their setting centrality, or ideas of them being entitled (the Solars having been tyrannical rulers in the distant past and some portrayed as expecting such authority to be handed to them by right).
    • The Green Sun Princes are also subjected to some of it by people who think their introduction throws off too much of the setting, that they're allowed to make a Deal with the Devil and encouraged to not suffer any consequences for it, and the perception of their powers being expansive enough to "make all other Exalted redundant".
    • In terms of individual characters, the Scarlet Empress gets the most of this, often viewed as somebody who is given too many victories for too little effort, and who makes other characters look stupid for having failed to get rid of or otherwise deal with her (alternatively, there are those who view her as portrayed as having displayed too many incompetencies and having too many failures for her extended centrality to make sense).

Puppet Shows


Toys

  • Vezon from Bionicle, after he had lost his powers, and all that was left was his totally random ramblings. While these amused a portion of the fanbase, the rest found him incredibly annoying and useless. It didn't help that after having been infused with the power of dimension-traveling, he can now pop up literally anywhere.
    • Kiina, but only her portrayal in The Legend Reborn movie. The Genki Girl persona (which clashed heavily with how other story material depicted her), coupled with her "Yooo-hooo"s and shrill voice, made her one of the biggest and most hated Scrappies the fandom has ever known. Which is a shame, since those that read the books and comics know her true personality isn't like that at all.
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