< Wall Banger

Wall Banger/Other

No Real Life examples, at all, please. That is just asking for trouble.

Comic Strips

Funky Winkerbean

  • The reappearance of the title character's nephew Wally: while it is, after all, remotely possible that the militants might have taken pity on a victim of brain injury and kept him alive for the decade Wally was in captivity, his treatment by the Army on returning Stateside is harder to believe. Simply put, they simply checked him over, told him his symptoms and cut him loose back in Westview to fend for himself.
    • Not only that but the Army apparently found some remains, declared them to be Wally's, and had him buried. First of all, the Army (or any branch of the armed services) doesn't declare anyone dead until they are damned sure they have identifiable remains. Second, remains of fallen soldiers are now identified by DNA testing (which is why there will likely never be an Unknown Soldier from Iraq or Afghanistan). So this thing is being sloppily handled from beginning to end.
    • The general indifference to his return was particularly jarring, especially considering he was a POW for ten years. Most soldiers returning home under those circumstances could expect lots of public fanfare, interviews, and photo opportunities with various high-ranking politicians. Wally gets a short check up at Walter Reed before being immediately drop-kicked to the curb.
      • ... out-processing and "transition to civilian life" training (generally, stuff like 'how to fill out a resume' and 'how to apply for veterans' benefits') generally takes weeks for guys ending their service in peacetime under normal conditions. Guys who have been in heavy combat get still more time for 'decompression' and PTSD screening before they send them back to civilian life. A guy who spent ten years in a POW camp would be kept on active duty and in the Detachment of Patients until they were absolutely sure he was physically and mentally recovered.
      • Additionally, if he was determined to have any lasting medical effects of his imprisonment he would almost certainly be placed on some kind of disability pension or medical retirement so he would at least have some kind of supplementary income.
  • Going back a few years, it's mind-bending that Lisa, a lawyer no less, never sued her doctor for malpractice for all the critical mistakes she made in her care - both addressed in the strip and otherwise. In one case the doctor even told them they made a major mistake in her care, Lisa realised that she's lost months of valuable time in her treatment, and now her cancer was terminal because of the mistake. The doctor then called the person who got Lisa's results by mistake to tell them they were healthy and not dying of cancer - ANOTHER case of malpractice. Basically, everyone involved in Lisa's treatment was an idiot. The real irony being that the original "Lisa has cancer" storyline won Batiuk an award for his accuracy in depicting cancer treatment.
  • And then there's the February 2011 strips involving Summer blowing out her knee during a state tournament basketball game. First of all, this is being told to Les after the fact as apparently no one thought to contact Les to tell him his daughter was in the hospital. Then we're told that the Lady Scapegoats actually forfeited the game in order to go be with Summer at the hospital. And Bull lets them without apparent protest. Words cannot express how stupid this is to anyone who knows anything about sports to someone who doesn't. Suffice it to say, in real life, Summer's reaction would be less "That is so sweet, you guys" and more "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT FOR!?!"

    And then the implausibility ticks over into the impossible when Central Catholic, the Lady Scapegoats' opponents actually refused to accept the forfeit and insisted on finishing the game. Central Catholic would not be allowed to do that. They'd be forced to accept the forfeit so the tournament could stay on schedule, which is usually a tight schedule as most state tournaments are held at a neutral site that the tournament only rents for a few days. Naturally, the Scapegoats lost.
  • As if we need to see just how much more implausible we can get, the Westview School Board just canceled athletics in the middle of the season due to a lack of money because the school levy failed. Never mind that school budgets are set the spring before, or that the levy failure would affect next year's budgets, or unilaterally cancelling athletics would screw up every other school's schedule. Not to mention that it appears that the marching band gets to survive the chopping block. Let's just go with Batiuk has absolutely no concept of how anything involving schools actually works.
  • And then we have the much-ballyooed 2012 prom storyline "featuring" two gay students who attended the prom together. "Featuring" is in quotes because not only did the gay couple in question only show up in three strips in the entire arc (none of which were at the actual prom) but they were never even named. The boys were less characters and more living Mac Guffins

Others

  • The event that defined Anthony as For Better or For Worse's Creator's Pet: the 'going-after'. After saving Elizabeth from her attacker, Anthony instantly squashes any good karma he might have earned by claiming he 'never had anything to fight for before now!' Problem was, he was married to Therese, and they had an infant daughter. Things rapidly decline from there: rather than take the shaken Liz to the police station or even back home, he drives her to the park and begs her to 'wait for [him]'. When she insists that she doesn't want to be a homewrecker, he wails "I have no hoooome!" Then he proceeds to outline just why his marriage is suffering, blatantly admitting that he tried to snare Therese in a baby trap and acting as if it's entirely her fault for not wanting to Stay in the Kitchen. He promised that if they had a child, he'd look after it while she went back to work, and was upset that she actually held him to that promise.
    • An earlier Wall Banger occured around the time of Farley's death. The entire incident happened because a four-year-old April was left completely unattended, free to slip out of the backyard. However, an earlier strip established that April could open the (very simple) latch to the gate... by having Elly watch her do it from the window. Despite knowing that April could open the door on her own, she made no attempt to fix the problem by, say... replacing the latch with an actual lock? Yet April is the one blamed for everything that followed...
    • For all the complaints regarding For Better or For Worse in its later years, one big Wall Banger came back in 1989 when Mike and Lizzie were still kids and Elly takes away their TV privileges for two weeks - for saying a couple of swear words. What makes this Wall Banger territory is how Elly immediately blames the TV for giving them such foul mouths - when she and John have been seen swearing in earlier strips, sometimes within earshot of the kids! Even today, with many readers now adults, this looks like an extreme punishment that makes Elly look like a Puritanical dictator and a hypocrite.
      • In fact, let's just throw Elly's entire parenting history in here, especially if she should ever talk about her experiences as a parent. Elly's impression of her own capacity as a parent is a case study in the Dunning-Kruger effect.
  • A recent[when?] Doonesbury strip had a guy with a permit to carry. Some woman insulted him because he has a permit to carry. This being Doonesbury, the guy was portrayed as a moron. But, whatever your politics are, you probably shouldn't insult someone who is openly carrying a handgun.
  • 9 Chickweed Lane's World War II flashback: It starts with the Foregone Conclusion that Edna (Gran) ends up married to Bill O'Malley - rendering the Love Triangle between her, O'Malley and Nazi P.O.W. Lt. Kiesl more about Juliette's paternity than anything else. Then we have to deal with the snowballing implausibilities that make the story go, starting with the OSS tapping a naive, untrained USO singer to spy on the Nazi POWs, continuing with O'Malley beating up a British superior officer for calling Edna a Nazi-loving whore (which was what it looked like because the Americans never told the Brits what Edna was doing), to a 10-year Time Skip to when Edna and Kiesl reunite and become lovers in earnest (and later become engaged) only for Edna's boss, the base commander whom Edna now worked for as a civilian, letting Kiesl and Edna know that Bill was still alive (in a move worthy of Iago). The lack of drama got so bad that Brooke McEldowney threw in a flashback-within-the-flashback to establish that Edna and Bill had more than unspoken attraction between them and to try and show that Edna wasn't being needlessly melodramatic over Bill's still being alive. The resolution which details what happened after Juliette was conceived, which tried the patience of even the most loyal of the strip's fans, devoted a week's worth of strips to Gran's marriage to O'Malley, Gran's vague comments about how for reasons she couldn't fathom, she was disliked and that it was entirely possible it was wrong of her to treat Juliette as harshly as she did merely because a previously-unknown son died.
    • Edda's 2012 pregnancy scare: she reacted to the thought of possibly being pregnant (apparently after getting "carried away" and having sex with Amos without protection. Once.) by first driving to Vermont to talk to her mother, then the both of them immediately flying to Vienna (a spur of the moment flight that would've been prohibitively expensive) to talk with her grandparents. Apparently phones don't exist in the 9CL world. And neither do pregnancy tests, since Edda didn't even "anoint the stick" until long after she'd returned from Vienna. Ditto actually telling Amos about it. Only one character, Seth calls Edda on her flightiness.
  • The Garfield comic posted on April 24th certainly didn't match the cheerfulness of the Easter holiday. Jon took making fun of Garfield's weight to a new low. As Jon serves Garfield's lunch, he calls out to him by shouting "SOOOO-EEY! Pig! Pig! Pig! Pig!" and it looks like he's smiling as he says it. And he seems to have a smug grin on his face the whole time as Garfield eats. It's just a comic, and Garfield shoving his food dish in Jon's face at the end was satisfying, but man. You get the feeling Jon only adopted Garfield so he'd have somebody constantly around to feel superior toward.
    • I'd like to say that at the school I go to, a few days after that strip, they had that strip hanging on the wall of the cafeteria for the rest of the school year. The logo box parodying Pac-Man was pretty clever, though.


Fan Works

  • The Naruto fanfic A Different Path. It's an interesting twist on the Naruto story, Where Hizashi was born first, Hiashi was sacrificed during the Kumo kidnapping attempt, and his children are sealed. Also, Naruto and Sasuke become friends at a younger age, though they're not teamed up. It's Naruto/Hinata/Shikamaru teaming. Neji... well, he's still a Jerkass. The first 11 chapters are well-written including Hinata's 'death' and ressurrection, resulting in her Cage Bird Seal activating and sealing her Byakugan. However, once they return to Konoha, the Elders want to reseal Hinata for the sheer Hell of it. Naruto is allowed into a private meeting, and exploiting the irrationality and love of a 12 year old, pretty much kidnaps him into the 'family' via the Caged Bird Seal. But what worse, and I quote from a review:

Nemrut: Ok, when Naruto received the Cursed Seal, a bold move if I may say so, and Hizashi was called to the hokage I expected a major dressing down. I expected the third to be furious beyond belief that he actually had the balls to place the cursed seal on a shinobi who was not part of his clan, that he practically exploited the irrationality and love of a twelve year old to trick him into servitude. That he would give Hizashi three days to take that seal from Naruto before he and the ANBU would take down the Hyuuga compound and kill every single one of them if he didn't.

Instead we got this weak, now he has a family, crap. I am sorry, but you do realize that Naruto has a family in the same manner that a slave is a member of the family he/she serves right?

  • In the Harry Potter fanfic Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness, the speed at which the Hogwarts students involved in Dumbledore's Army mature and suddenly become total adults makes no sense. First off they manage to develop solid, professional military discipline and how to run a military-style training program with no help from outsiders or a society with anything vaguely resembling a military force. While you would have Muggle-borns in Hogwarts none of them would have anything remotely resembling the experience necessary to train the DA into being prepared soldiers as quickly as they did especially since the bulk of military training revolves around breaking down the moral objections to killing and building up the necessary suppressed yet controlled rage to kill people. Also the speech out of one student's mouth for joining the DA to fight Voldemort sounds like they swallowed a polysci textbook and puked it back up, certainly not something most teenagers would come up with especially in a school that doesn't even teach political science and the history class is explicitly stated to be really boring.
    • Also, this is the fic series where on two occasions rape victims comforted by sexualised acts initiated by men. It's a throwaway line in DAYD itself, where, just after her rape is avenged - without consulting her, and ignoring her fears about her family - by the men, Lavender is found having sex with her boyfriend. The one shot More Realer is worse: In DAYD's sequel, Sluagh, Hermione spends about 5 chapters being tortured and raped, described in graphic detail, finally setting herself on fire to escape (she got better). In the one-shot, Ron basically forces himself on her, and she accepts this, because up to that point, he'd been patient about her request not to have sex. She's flinching away, but he just keeps massaging her shoulders, applying sensual kisses, and all sorts of things, all without her consent. Ugh!
      • Let's take another look at that "vengeance". Neville calls in Ernie, Sean, Terry, and Michael. Notice who's absent: any women at all. Not even Ginny, his own lieutenant (or, if you're going by canon, the one actually in charge). When they actually barge in on Crabbe and Goyle (because of course only ugly people are rapists), Lavender is hardly mentioned by name. The boys simply take turns showing off their muscles (literally!) and taunting the duo being punished. The rape seems less an avenged act and more a justification. How much more trivializing can you get?
    • Oh, and let's not forget Hannah. Not only does Thanfiction claim she only looked a bit plump in the books because of the school robes, and she's actually supermodel thin; but he makes her psychotically crazy, attempting to kill Neville because she thinks he's dating Ginny. This is before her first date with Neville.
    • And another thing: Snape. Having agreed to kill Dumbledore because someone would need to keep the students safe when Voldemort took over in Half-Blood Prince, in DAYD, he attempts to murder multiple students, and tortures them and others to the extent that someone tries to mercy kill one of his victims. Completely Missing the Point, and derailing his entire character arc.
    • Chapter 10 is especially bad. Colin Creevey was splinched after he apparated with his brother. In canon, Ron passed out seconds after losing some of his skin. Colin loses a hand and not only does he cover the wound with duct tape, he is able to contact the Army and hide the wound from everyone. And instead of getting help, they decide to do a blood transfusion. Death Eaters come to the place that they are hiding, at the house of a Muggle friend of the Creeveys, who they leave to die instead of a Sidealong Apparition. And then Neville berates him right after he recovers.
      • Hell, even Thanfiction seems to have realized the beratement went too far - when Neville leaves the room afterwards, Arthur Weasley slams him against a wall and tries to unmask him as a Death Eater.
    • The DAYD-verse is just full of Wallbangers.
  • In response to Pluto's "demotion" many fanfics featuring Sailor Pluto were made. Among other oddities, they often featured Sailor Moon firing Sailor Pluto because she wasn't a planet. A moon... firing a dwarf planet... for not being a planet. Yeah... Besides this, many, many Senshi didn't represent planets at all. Pallas, Juno and Vesta didn't even represent dwarf planets; the Starlights are implied to represent moons; Galaxia and Cosmos represent far larger structures then planets; and, well, Chibi Moon. It's implied every astral body can have a Senshi, so why would its label matter?
  • The infamous Zelda Self-Insert Fic My Inner Life has a scene where Jenna and Link sit down in a tavern after a long journey through a desert. Fine, right? It is, until you realize that Jen is about 6 or 7 months pregnant with her second child, and shouldn't be going through a desert full of dragons anyway. The worst part is that she gets completely drunk off of Griffin Spice Ale while pregnant and doesn't give an Octorok's fart. And neither does Link. Or anyone else in the tavern.
  • While the main story of the late Trek Wars: The Furry Conflict was very good, the Captain's Log at the end of Episode One has to qualify for this: "Peace between the Federation and Empire has been established. For today. But the furry conflict is only beginning." WHAM!
  • The series Hogwarts Exposed has Wallbangers that are not only contrived and stupid, but also extremely disgusting and disturbing. One nasty example is in the third chapter of Hogwarts Underexposed, when Jamie has been rescued from an extremely horrific abduction and torture session (the results of which are described in almost loving detail by the author). Given all of that, it's quite understandable that Jamie feels uncomfortable being physically affectionate with her steady boyfriend and holding to her nudist lifestyle. And then she's visited by her friend Amanda, who instantly begins to lecture Jamie about how wrong it is that she doesn't want to run around naked and have sex after having been tortured and (implied) raped. She also guilts Jamie by going on about how it's unfair to the boyfriend that she isn't putting out. Oh, and even worse? Amanda herself had been knocked out and nearly raped and had clearly been terrified by the event! And yet she doesn't understand that Jamie needs more than a few days to recover from what happened to her? What? Of course, that's about par for the author's understanding of the mind of a rape victim. An earlier story had a shy eleven year old girl nearly be raped by her father and immediately respond by taking up nudism, losing all previous insecurities she had with being naked in front of others.
    • The sequel (yes, it exists) takes it to the next level with a new first-year at Hogwarts who's Jamie's sister or something like that. On the train ride to Hogwarts, she and Jamie are sharing the cabin with a new first-year and then, for some reason, they wind up stripping themselves while on the ride. This makes the girl uncomfortable. Jamie and her first-year sister then proceed to essentially bully the girl, lecturing her about how society shoves the "wear clothes" practice down your throat and how it bullies everyone into adhering to it. During said lecture, whenever the girl tries to speak up Jamie and her sister proceed to talk her down into silence while continuing their drivel-laden lecture. But there's good new to all this: After reading that shite, this troper was able to watch On Deadly Ground with a new appreciation for just how bad Author Tracts can go...
      • It Gets Worse. The sister, Emily, and the first year, Kim, wind up as Slytherins together. Because of one incident (Kim having to run to the bathroom naked, first thing in the morning, to take a leak), Emily convinces her that she'll have to pretend to be a nudist while in the dorm, which means that the shy Kim is essentially bullied into marching around naked in front of her dorm mates, several of whom are rude and spiteful towards her. Oh, and the entire reason for this charade? Because Kim is trying to hide the fact that she wears Powerpuff Girl underpants. Because clearly there isn't an easier solution than that!
    • And that's to say nothing of the author's depravity, clearly not seeing how disgusting it is that he's putting underage girls through this sort of lifestyle, whether it be their Nymphomaniac lifestyle or whatever. Anyone who pointed this out he insulted and derided as "intolerant."
    • Neville indecently assaulting Hermione in Chapter 12.
  • The Undocumented Features sidestory "Justice and Mercy" could qualify for inclusion from the get-go, with a scene shoving Kei and Eiko through the Chickification wringer. But what truly kills it comes later. One of the main characters sees a group of orphans beating up another orphan. His response? Go into giant-robot mode and kill their ringleader. This isn't hyperbole - he explicitly thinks to himself that the kid will not survive impact after being kicked into the sky! Sure, the kid was a bastard, but does that justify murder? Our hero, ladies and gentlemen. Doubling the damage: the orphans being abused are Yakko, Wakko and Dot under slightly different names. This is played dead straight.
  • All He Ever Wanted: For some readers, the point where they gave up on the fic was when Prussia raped Austria in front of a chickified Hungary. For others, it was when Hungary taught Liechtenstein how to be a better sex slave to Prussia.
  • Harry Potter and the Invincible Technomage:
    • Early in the fic, Harry says the term "Muggle" is condescending. Keep in mind he's been in the Wizarding world a matter of hours. He suggests using something more egalitarian, like "Normal" or "Mundane", after pointing out that Wizards are abnormal.
      • This version of Harry is from the Marvel Universe, where 'mundane' or 'normal' are the polite terms for people without superpowers. He is, like any other recent immigrant, having his initial reactions to a new culture being based off what he learned in his old one.
    • Later on in the fic, during a custody hearing (that itself required a number of contrived circumstances), Harry threatens to bring down the wrath of god on the Ministry. Specifically, Thor. In other words, he threatens government officials with bodily harm because they made a decision he didn't agree with. That's the sort of thing Voldemort would do and canonically has done, but Harry's supposed to be the good guy.
      • 'A decision he didn't agree with' is a bit of an understatement. A more accurate rendition would be 'A decision that in the real world would be considered an act of war'. When government A kidnaps a citizen of government B to force said citizen to fight in government A's wars for them against his will -- well, shit. The War of 1812 started when the British did that to US sailors. So, saying 'Look, keep this bullshit up and I will get my ally, Asgard, to unleash the can of whoop-ass on your government', is actually a proportionate response.
      • Also, the fanfic specifically mentions that Harry had no actual intention of attacking Magical Britain, and picked Thor precisely because Thor had enough temper control to not actually hit anyone, as opposed to what would have happened if he'd picked, oh, Hercules. It was all a bluff.
    • Throughout the fic, Harry and Marvel characters seem to have carte blanche to be jerks to Harry Potter ones, even when they're wrong. (The fic goes out of its way to make HP characters "wrong", outright ignoring its own canon in some circumstances.) Apparently it's only "bad business" to needlessly antagonize people part of the time.
      • The key word is 'needlessly'. Remember that this is Tony Stark we're talking about here; he's an experienced enough businessman to know that you don't piss in someone else's coffee as a way of starting out negotiations, but he's also enough of a hothead that if someone else pisses in his coffee first then something just started that's not gonna stop until somebody gets repulsored in the face. In pretty much every confrontation in the fic between the Potterverse and the MU, its the Potterverse characters that metaphorically or literally threw the first punch. Of course, as this is a fanfic with the 'Manipulative Dumbledore' fanon and 'Stupidly Officious Ministry of Magic' canon both in full use, that's hardly surprising.
  • Forward Momentum was doing so well right up until The Two Ivans, when Unfortunate Implications came into play. To wit, Ivan specifically does not want to marry two woman who have both proposed to him and are perfectly okay with polygamy. He does, however, want to secretly marry another woman and run away before the first two find out. He is forced to marry all three. And not in the P. G. Wodehouse hilarious misunderstanding fashion either; the first two find out, show up, and negotiate their positions in the marriage with the third, without any input from Ivan, backed by Imperial pressure, right in front of him. Pressure from both Emperors. While Ivan was in the wrong on a lot of points, that doesn't make it okay to force him into what's basically a Shotgun Wedding. If it seems like some sort of just punishment to you, try reversing the genders and imagine two men adding themselves to a marriage with the consent of only the man involved. Basically, you might want to skip that story, since it seems more about torturing Ivan than anything else.
  • Fallout Equestria: After Lilpip starts dating Homage, there comes a point where Homage starts making reference to their sex lives while in character as DJ Pon3, embarrassing her terribly. And then Calamity, Velvet, and Xenith join in the fun. Lilpip does not even consider asking any of them to stop, only doing the same in revenge, which she never gets around to. This is especially egregious if you recall that she had no problems calling out Velvet for hitting on her to make Calamity jealous when she had to have known of Lilpip's crush. Operation: Jealousy? Bad enough for an immediate call-out. Her partner and friends and the occasional random person knowingly trampling all over Lilpip's boundaries with regards to her sex life? Embarrassment, but no real protest. Just a harmless joke, the fic seems to be saying. Now if Lilpip was dating a stallion who did the same thing...

Radio

  • In the 1940s, there was a radio Sitcom titled Life With Luigi. This fellow Luigi was a recent immigrant to the US from Italy. Every single time this Luigi character encountered a Latin motto of any sort, he accepted without question the translation given by his local uneducated lout. Not once did it occur to him to ponder, "Gee, those Latin words are suspiciously similar to Italian words with which I am familiar, and they do not mean what he claims."
    • As an Italian, he's probably a Catholic, which should make him more familiar with Latin itself than the average American.
      • A pre-Vatican II Catholic, at that.
  • Adventures in Odyssey: The entire sports competition in the episode: "Connie Goes To Camp", first was the archery tournament, the boys win, but it was because Jimmy Barcley distracted Robyn Jacobs ("Hey, Robyn! You've got mud on your new t-shirt!") casing her to flub her shot. Instead of having her try again, or disqualifying Jimmy, everyone just goes through with it, the only thing anyone says is, from the boys' coach is that it was unsportsmanlike. Then there was the canoe competition, where the boys forget to tie their canoe from the dock, while the girls row to the finish. Do they demand a retry? Nope! They just go on to the last activity, an "Egg-In-The-Hat" relay race. (Which makes no sense, how does that even work? The hats are worn upside down? What hat can you wear upside down without it falling off??) The boys and the girls eggs all break, and what happens? "Nobody wins the competition between the boys and the girls!" Ok, you have got to be freaking kidding me, what person would end a game with a tie without a tiebreaker? That just blows my mind.
    • An earlier episode which introduced "KYDS Radio" had one that wasn't obvious unless you thought about it. So the episode involves a kid who is very interested in radios so he starts the station. During a montage of getting the station started, we hear a kid audition for a disk jockey. The kid has a strangely nasally voice.[1] A little while later when everything is going wrong, the radio kid is saying he left a kid named Benjamin in charge. "I thought Benjamin didn't want to be a disk jockey." Whit says. "He doesn't." Barry, the radio kid, replies. A moment later, we hear Benjamin...and it's the nasally voiced kid from earlier! The very one who wanted to be a disk jockey! It's an obvious continuity error, but it's a little jarring. For shame!

Tabletop Games

  • Magic: The Gathering has some fun ones. First, we have that artifacts originally were turned "off" when tapped (turned 90 degrees). Fine. Except that they changed it, and now they specifically rewrote Winter Orb to include the broken "turned off when tapped" factor. Then there's the Humility (all creatures are vanilla 0/1s)/Opalescence (all enchantments are creatures) rules clusterfuck, and both were Standard-legal at the same time. There used to be a card type called Interrupt, associated with damage prevention (Reverse Damage), counterspells (the eponymous card), and mana generation (Dark Ritual). Interrupts were an exception to the FIFO rule. In Fifth Edition, they changed the rule to LIFO, but kept the Interrupt type, until Sixth Edition. By the way, Sixth Edition experimented with the idea of damage on "the stack". This meant that my Shock Troops could do damage, then I could sacrifice them for more damage. And that's to say nothing of the arbitrary times they put reminder text on a card, usually defeating the purpose of giving an ability a name.
  • Mitos y Leyendas, a chilean card game that used to be fairly popular, pitted, as it's name says, creatures and heroes from different mythologies against each other, and, of course, the gods occupied the top tiers among each deck. Until the "Heroes" set, made to celebrate the country's bicentennial. Since it was based on the War of the Pacific, there wasn't too much to draw inspiration from, which lead to the wallbanger in question: They used the important historical figures as top tier cards. This, in other games, wouldn't be too bad, but here it brought Badass Normal to idiotic levels. Arturo Prat, a ship captain who performed a (pretty impressive, but still) Last Stand, could stand toe-to-toe against Zeus and Thor, and people who were otherwise colonels and lieutenants could curbstomp manticores and giants. I know it's not exactly bad to be proud of your heritage, but this is Author Appeal in a very bad sense. The company that made the cards folded shortly after, but not without producing the "Trincheras" set, based on World War I, which had even bigger problems.
  • While there are many points of dissension among the Exalted fanbase, it is universally agreed that the crunchy bits of Scroll of Heroes, Scroll of the Monk, and most of the Charms in Dreams of the First Age were abysmally written. For stuff that was actively hated rather than just really bad, however, there was the Locust War chapter in first edition Autochthonians, which was an adventure module written without considering the involvement of player characters (which is dumb enough in a generic game, but this is Exalted - player characters can reshape the world if they try hard enough), relied mainly on the device of "NPC's do things, the players...um...bear witness to their badassery, I guess", and had nonsense like a culture that has never seen an ocean being able to throw down in naval combat with the premiere oceanic power in the world and win.

Web Original

  • The Lonelygirl15 episode "Alone in the Woods" provoked an overwhelmingly negative reaction from the fanbase when the TAAG leave odd but well-meaning Brit Steve stranded in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country because he was suspected to be a mole. This, after Steve accompanied Jonas to the USA at great personal risk just to help the gang out, and after he had been shot in the arm by an assassin who was aiming for the gang. That Steve is a popular character from another show, Kate Modern, only makes things worse.
    • And from the season one finale of LG15: the resistance, Sarah's a Card-Carrying Villain and has been all along. They do appear to have had this planned from the beginning of the spinoff, at least; but the explanation video put up after The Reveal noticeably leaves out any scenes of her from the original Lonelygirl15 footage, as there's no way it makes sense given all that history.
  • The fourth step of the Korean flash series There She Is, was noted amongst many people to be a complete divergence from the lighter tone of the earlier flashes. Granted, the hint was at the end of Step Three, but after three episodes of lightheartedness, an ultradark serious and depressing episode made for painful Mood Whiplash. The setting has Fantastic Racism, but it was originally played for comedy; the spiral of depression because of their Interspecies Romance took fans off guard, one way or the other.
  • While New Vindicators has many of these moments throughout its career, the most outrageous example would have to be Magnus Loder's method of dealing with his girlfriend's horrific rape. He goes and has an affair on her while she's off recovering in a hospital. * loud thudding sound*
  • The poorly-done Reset Button scenario that Gaia Online used as a Status Quo Is God device for the Halloween 2009 event. To elaborate, the Gaian userbase was given the choice between playing on BOO's (the good guys') side, or on SIN's (the bad guys'.) Both sides received a special, soulbound skin that their avatars could wear, unique for each side, and both had to do as many missions as possible to get enough points to come out on top. At the end of it all, though, came the followup manga, where Jack suddenly burst in mid-fight and stripped both the Overseer and Sentinel of their powers for no real reason other than that he could (and then proceeded to re-kill the zombified Bruce Hardcastle for the same reason.) Meanwhile, all the users that played for BOO had their event skin changed into the hideously ugly 'Potatoverseer' skin, while those on SIN got to keep theirs. You can see why this is a point of contention with many of the unsatisfied players. The epilogue manga didn't do much to ease their minds, either; it took the Christmas event to set almost everything right for them again.
  • Shortly after the reboot of his internet radio talk show 2 Sense, furry comedian 2 the Ranting Gryphon, infamous for his "weekly assignments" to his listeners, posted an announcement of a new assignment on his fan forum, specifically asking for listeners to write in to him for details. Several did, but the assignment proved to be a failure when no one was able to do it for unknown reasons (though a lack of proper tools seems likely, if the complaints made on that forum shortly afterward about what kind of paper needed to be used are to be believed). The real wallbangers then come in quick succession: part of the rules for the assignment was that no one was to discuss it to anyone who wasn't participating, a rule that was broken when the complains started about why no one could do it, and which defeats the purpose of announcing the assignment and a call for volunteers on a public forum. Also, the assignment was supposed to be for a very small number of volunteers, though neither 2 himself nor any of the administrators on his staff shut down the talent search when they hit their target mark. If he only wanted a handful of people, why couldn't he announce the assignment through discreet private messages? Oh, but the biggest Wall Banger? The entire assignment was a lie. It was never meant to be completed; it purpose was, and I quote, "to root out loyal listeners who could keep a secret to join (2's) secret online Furry Illuminati message boards, where the real assignments are given out, and no one misses a message". First of all, as an internet celebrity, doesn't he know that data retention on a forum or message board is non-existent? Why does he think thread necromancing is such a big irritant to board admins? Second, he obviously didn't check the board after the announcement was given, because he assumed those who were chosen for the assignment kept their silence when, as mentioned above, they most certainly did not. And third, he was completely serious about the Furry Illuminati message board. Has the guy lost his mind? And the funny thing is, several of his well-known rants deal with furries and other people who delude themselves into believing something fantastic and stupid (like a furry who believes they really are a 5,000 pound dragon).
  • In ScrewAttack's "Top Ten Worst Mario Games" video, they explain at the beginning that Mario Is Missing doesn't belong on their list since you can't play Mario. Fair enough. However, later on they put Mario's Fundamentals on the list, a game in which you play games like checkers and go fish against Mario. The hosts acknowledge this in the video, so they clearly averted Did Not Do the Research. Still, it does not compute! Especially if you're one of several who finds geography quizzes less fun than checkers! (not that checkers is a barrel of fun, but still)
  • Homestar Runner had this in the form of Strong Bad blowing up his own computer! The Lappy! Which he spent an entire email rescuing! It was pretty conflicting what Strong Bad thought of the Lappy.
    • To be fair, given the way the laws of physics work in his universe, his logic was sound: he was right around the point in the Lappy's lifespan the Compy was when it died, and his computers do have a tendency to explode violently, so he might as well blow the poor thing himself and get it over with (actually, come to think of it, it's his fault his old computers blew up too. Bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy).
  • This review of Steam. Somebody can't use a computer for the life of them.
    • This example has officially blurred the barrier between an intentional troll and a failure. Up till now the debate for it is still on, and none can effectively point out the truth without being tipped off the iceberg..
  • If reviews count, then this review of the Wii version of Punch-Out!! is definitely one of the most confusing I've ever read. The reviewer claims that the franchise once had a "previous sense of intense boxing" and has become "more cartoonish and family friendly, concentrating less on hard punches." He criticizes the game for having a "friendlier animation style and a conflict that emphasizes dodging over hitting," despite the fact that the original NES game was just cartoonishly goofy and relied just as much- if not more- on figuring out how to dodge your opponent's attacks than knocking them out.
  • The Spoony One's bashing on Tron: Legacy. The dude was seriously missing the point of the movie, overanalyzing everything and claiming it didn't "innovate" like the original did, even going so far as to say that "Inception" was "Tron: Legacy done right". First of all, Tron was never meant to be a serious look into the advancements of technology, but an escapist romp into an absurd computer world, so saying that it wasn't "deep" enough is ridiculous. Second, the only "innovation" that the original had was it's graphics, and at the time, it got an Oscar Snub for supposedly "cheating" by use of CG. Third, a lot of his analysis makes no sense; for instance, he claims that the Encom coporates are "evil" for wanting money, and Sam was doing what he was doing to be a "rebel"; the Encom corporates were "evil" because they abandoned Sam's father's ideals for the company and disrespected him by downplaying his part in the company, and Sam didn't trust anyone on the board (including Alan, his sole supporter) to take his interests as the company's primary shareholder seriously - his actions are what any other disgruntled computer techie would do with their brainchild when they're being screwed over by their bosses. Finally, to top off the absurdity, he places the movie on his top 10 worst movies of 2010 for being fanwank slop, yet puts Scott Pilgrim vs. the World on his top 10 BEST movies list for the exact same reason. Trying to have your cake and eat it, too, Mr. Spoony?
  • The Irate Gamer has many:
    • From the Odyssey review: He rants about the system's connection cables and how outdated they are. He made it sound like 37 years ago they would be able to adjust for the future.
      • Not to mention how he was judging the system by today's standards.
    • From the R.O.B. review when he looks around his room for batteries and eventually takes them out of his Gameboy, and the camera's rolling the whole time. He wanted to show off all his new posters and video game merchandise. On his website he once advertised that as a brand new set, even though it's the same room covered in posters. But a ten-gallon hat don't make you a cowboy, and a bunch of showpieces don't make you a gamer.
    • In the Yo! Noid review, when he sees the main villain is The Noid's evil twin he exclaims "I have an evil twin! I wonder how he's doing?" It should be noted that he murdered him a few episodes ago. So to reiterate, he's wondering how a man he murdered is doing.
    • After constant bragging about the amount of fact-checking and work gone into History of Video Games 3, he calls Pong designer Al Alcorn "Al Acorn". What the frak?
    • Bores had to be TOLD that Tekken 6 was a fighting game with an Arcade mode, and the "reason" he didn't know this was due to the menu hiding it. You figure it out.
    • His Monster Party review, while there are other notables, he complains about the title of the game, saying that there is no party in the game, he seems to be ignoring the whole fighting monsters thing.
    • His review of Kirbys Epic Yarn where he complains about the difficulty. The person who proudly admits to using a Game Genie, critiques games for being too hard, and wanted the easy setting in Resident Evil 5 to be easier, complains about how you can't die in the game. Gee, I wonder how he'd do in I Wanna Be the Guy or Kaizo Mario World?
    • In his review of Super Smash Brothers Brawl, Bores called Pit "Kid Icarus", despite Pit's name being everywhere and outright stated by the announcer in game!
      • And he pronounces Melee as "Me-lay", made even more stupid in the fact that the announcer yelled that game's title.
        • The word "Melee" is actually pronounced "may-lay" due to its language of origin, French.
    • In his review of Cool Spot for the SNES, Bores states that you need to collect at least 30% of the Spot coins in order to pass a stage. Almost directly after this, he whines that he "doesn't understand why he has to collect them", despite just stating why. Then, when he reaches the end of the last level, Bores clearly has only 29% of the coins collected and yet still beats the level, obviously showing that he cheated.
      • Even as a joke, Bores was going to give away his Magnavox Odyssey for a "free" pizza to some stranger (that ended up being his Evil Twin). Ignoring that he was going to give away his very rare console for a pizza, trading something for something does NOT make it free!
    • In his first Contra review, the IG fails at understanding the plot. It's all mentioned in the manual, but he refuses to read it, stating, "Whoever reads those things, anyway? I can’t waste my time reading about a game, I just gotta play it!" Thus he is later surprised to find out that the main enemies are aliens, despite the story being explained in the manual.
      • It Got Worse. In his review of Home Improvement, the IG does not understand the controls, and thus looks for the manual (only to find out that Home Improvement didn't come with instructions; "Real Men Don't Need Instructions!"). This is really hypocritical of him, as he asked in his Contra review if anybody reads the manuals.
    • IG's video on Ubisoft at E3 2011. Due to overbooking, IG couldn't get into Ubisoft's press conference. What's his response? Make a video where he "blows up" Ubisoft's office. Implied terrorism will not get your message across Bores!
  • Normally, SF Debris is fairly good at doing Star Trek reviews, but a few of them come off as this:
    • In his "The Measure of a Man" review, he completely ignores the legal inconsistencies in the episode by deferring to the writer - a purported lawyer - despite always bashing on other writers for not doing the research, and claiming that statements made in the show that seem obvious to the viewer can be brushed off as "part of the message. Considering the long, LONG list of inconsistencies for the episode in this trope, you'd have to wonder how well he actually reviewed the episode.
      • It gets worse later on, during his review of the original series episode "Wolf in the Fold", when he comments on how ludicrous it is for a society to continue to abide by a centuries-old law that has no more relevance in today's society. Yet, he makes no effort to use the same sentiment against "The Measure of a Man's" usage of a centuries-old ruling to render Data property. Seriously, how did he miss that?
    • His review of "Masks" has gotten more than a bit of ire from some fans, and for good reason; he seems to focus more on the fact that there's little action in the episode and that it's "generally considered hated" (by whom? There seems to be a lot of fans of the episode out there) than on actual reviewing the episode. He also makes the same ludicrous mistake that Spoony did with his Tron: Legacy review by claiming it sucks because it doesn't hold up to the likes of an episode like "The Inner Light". Yeah, sure, he bases his scores on comparison with other episodes within the same series, but considering he's yet to review "The Inner Light", making such a comparison is stupid.
  • A rare example of a Wall Banger being acknowledged and made up for: In The Nostalgia Critic's review of Ernest Saves Christmas, the Critic's response to the puppet show scene was a ridiculously insensitive jab at autism. Pretty much the entire fanbase exploded in outrage, quickly forcing the Critic to redo that scene with a more appropriate joke. Notably, Doug recognized how badly he screwed up on this one, as the autism joke would earn a spot on his "Next 11 Fuckups" vid, which included a genuine, heartfelt apology for it.
    • Some of his hyperbolic bashings of Princess Peach in his Top 11 Dumbasses In Distress video were actually unfounded criticisms. Her self-aware attitude on being kidnapped is Played for Laughs and not meant to be insulting to Mario or the player. His claim that she's "done nothing in any of the Mario games" is flat out untrue; he only sights Super Mario Bros. 2, in which the entire game was Mario's dream, and the various sport games and the Super Smash Bros. series, which aren't in the main series, but doesn't credit the Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario series' in which she's an active character. Him saying that her using "a frying pan and her butt" to fight being "what women in the 40's would use" (Rapunzel AND Flynn Rider would beg to differ on the frying pan!) and her fighting with her emotions being lame just reeks of Real Women Never Wear Dresses. And in general, he seems to project his own feelings onto Mario and wonder why anyone would want to save her when she gets kidnapped all the time. Perhaps Mario just doesn't find "save the princess" adventures as annoying as you do, Critic?
      • Admittedly, wondering why Mario bothers to save Peach after she gets kidnapped so much is one of the most common jokes about the series, which has even been lampshaded in a few of the games. Although, by now this joke has probably gotten a little stale.
    • His review of Junior, when he lists reasons why men shouldn't get pregnant. Among the list are the usual medical reasons and things like "Jesus would cry", which are fine, but there are also things like "Abortions would sky rocket", "No man could resist alcohol during pregnancy. In fact they'd probably drink more", and "Men have no patience". 'Cause men don't give a crap about the precious gift of life.
    • At the end of the review of the remake of The Haunting. Good grief. He did a joke where he "impersonated" the director/writer of the remake, and said that his movie was more mature than the original cut, all the while getting louder, whinier, and more childish. It could've passed as a "meh" joke, but it just kept going and going. It's easy to forget he's trying to mock the director, and think he's just having his genuine reaction to the remake. Loud and childish for the sake of humor can only go so far before realizing you're just watching a grown man throw temper tantrums at movies simply because he doesn't like them.
  • Sometimes, The Angry Video Game Nerd makes up games to refer to during his videos for the sake of a joke. That's all fine and dandy, but not when making a comparison about something like game mechanics or characters. What I'm referring to here, is comparing "Full House Tournament Fighter" (which I actually thought was a real game up until several days ago) to Shaq Fu on Christmas of 2007. James, if you wanna demonstrate how bad some aspect of a game is compared to other games (which you failed to that one time), like, find a real game, why don't you...
    • The overall Critical Research Failure that was present in the Castlevania reviews, and since this is supposed to be a tribute to them, that just makes it all the more jarring:
      • Castlevania Bloodlines does have diagonal attacking. What's worse about this one is that in the footage before he says that, Eric is clearly seen attacking straight upwards.
      • He confuses the storylines of Dawn of Sorrow to that of Aria of Sorrow.
      • Claiming that most of the later games take place inside the castle, which is not true: Order of Ecclesia was outside of the castle until most of the game was finished, and Portrait of Ruin had dimensional paintings of different settings to travel in. Also, didn't the majority of the first game take place inside the castle?
      • Also, the series is called Castlevania. Being surprised that Castlevania has even large portions that take place in castles is like going to a Boston Red Sox game and being surprised that that team's players wear red socks.
      • The "flaws" to Castlevania 64 however, is the worst offender: Legacy of Darkness was basically the director's cut of Castlevania 64, there is music beyond the first stage (in the footage, you can hear the music in the stages past it), you can run while holding the nitro, and you put it down by using the action button, not the menu screen, which is for healing items.
      • And before we forget, he was comparing all of the games after Super Castlevania IV to that one, which is rather unfair to the games themselves.
  • This website showcasing what they consider the worst Wii games ever. Among them is Looney Tunes Acme Arsenal. While talking about it, they figure that kids nowadays don't even know who Bugs Bunny is. The sheer inaccuracy of that statement is enough to make someone give themselves 25 concussions from Wallbanging.
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  1. ↑ But the kid sounds like a usual announcer
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