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Causes of Base-Breaking Characters
- This has a peculiar tendency to happen to dark and troubled Anti-Hero Mr. Fanservice types, where some fans find them identifiable and compelling, some find them attractive and/or sympathetic, while others think they are absolutely insufferable.
- Mr. or Ms. Fanservice characters in general tend to be Base-Breaking Characters, with half of the fanbase finding them attractive, and the other half thinking that the fanservice is too tacky.
- Consider video game High-Tier Scrappies that hide a poor overall design. A lot of Base-Breaking Characters have the narrative equivalent of the same problem, relying on gimmicks or clever incorporation to carry a poorly-conceived character. Maybe the character has a skill that allows them to competently solve problems but acts like a Pinball Protagonist in terms of their actual agency; maybe the character is charmingly performed by the actor but they're written with a different personality every week; maybe they tend to succeed via Deus ex Machina rather than payoff on their actual actions.
- Cute and/or cheerful characters are often Base-Breaking Characters, with some fans finding them adorable and the rest hating them due to Sweetness Aversion.
- Impolite characters (such as a Jerkass, Deadpan Snarker, or Insufferable Genius) are prone to this, with some viewers finding them cool (or funny if their bad manners are Played for Laughs), with the other half finding them just too obnoxious.
- If a character is part of an underrepresented group (such as a woman, a racial minority, or an LGBTQ+ person), fans might argue over whether that character is good or bad representation for that group.
- A Kid-Appeal Character will often be liked by kids, but hated by adults.
- A Sixth Ranger or Canon Foreigner will often have fans who like them as a character, and detractors who think they're "useless" or "unnecessary". This goes double if another character left or died at the same time as the new character was added (since the detractors will often consider the character not only useless or unnecessary but a Replacement Scrappy as well) or the newcomer is a kid (since that falls into the same "cute vs. saccharine" debate that many cute characters get).
- An Only Sane Man might have fans who see them as the needed voice of reason, and detractors who think of them as a wet blanket.
- Shipping can often lead to Base-Breaking Characters, with a character's love interest being liked by people who ship the pair, but hated by people who'd prefer one or both to stay single, or who ship one half of the pair with a third party. Love interests in general also often break the base, with their fans liking them as a character and/or thinking that they and the other half of the pair are cute together, and their detractors thinking they make a bad couple, one of them is a Satellite Love Interest, or that their romance is a Romantic Plot Tumor.
- A character who did something negative and can Never Live It Down is often a Base-Breaking Character, with their detractors not forgiving them for the bad thing they did, and their fans thinking that the detractors just need to let go.
- Aesop Enforcers tend to lend themselves to this, with people who agree with the Aesop liking them and people who disagree hating them. If they get Anvilicious about it, they might even gain a few haters who do agree with the Aesop.
- Comedic characters, especially if the work is not a comedy in general, will have fans who think they're hilarious, and detractors who think that they don't fit into the story and/or are useless.
Writers' Responses to Base-Breaking Characters
- This phenomenon tends to put the creators in an awkward position, as they can't increase or decrease focus on the particular character without angering one segment of the fanbase. Depending on how it goes, Spotlight-Stealing Squad and Wolverine Publicity can be the ugly results.
