Character Exaggeration

"I love how the Haruhi in Haruhi-chan is more Haruhi than the real Haruhi. I should have done this for the novels (half-serious)."

— Nagaru Tanigawa, Haruhi-chan Volume 1

The vague but noticeable change in a character's personality or habits in newer adaptations. Interestingly, it is more common for traits to be overemphasized (or even changed completely) rather than deemphasized.

Unlike Flanderization, this version of the character appears like this initially rather than gradually evolving to it; most of the time it just happens that the 'new' version is based on the end-product of the 'old' version's long and changing development. Similarly, production time often limits the amount a character can appear, in which case the most 'important' traits are emphasized to make the character distinctive. More negatively, subtlety can be lost if Executive Meddling changes the character to establish more broad appeal to some proven demographic. If something a character has said or done only once (or very rarely) becomes exaggerated in the minds of the audience to the point that it almost defines that character, that's Never Live It Down.

Parodies are especially prone to this. That said, Tropes Are Not Bad and some examples are actually more popular and better-developed than their originals (though others...aren't).

Compare with Ascended Extra, which is done to obscure characters to make them ostensibly prominent. Contrast Out-of-Character Moment. See also Character Check, when the writers try to reverse this, if only momentarily. May cause an Adaptational Skill (e.g. a character with an interest in other cultures becomes an Omniglot in an adaptation).

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Examples:

• Baywatching
• Fan Works

Multiple Media

• Whenever Batman's Genius Bruiser enemy Bane is adapted to non-comics media, the result usually plays up the "bruiser" part and forgets about the "genius". Often the use and effects of the Venom drug are also exaggerated. In the comics Bane is already a mountain of a man naturally, with the Venom giving an added boost. Usually in the comics the drug is not shown to have any detrimental effect on his mental capacities either. Adaptations usually also do away with Bane's moral ambiguity.
  • In Batman & Robin Bane is reduced to Dumb Muscle henchman who never even speaks, and his muscles practically deflate when the drug-supplying tubes are knocked away.
  • On the animation front, The Batman depicts Bane as a simple hitman with an average level of intelligence. Venom bulks him up to such proportions that Batman has to use a giant robot suit to defeat him.
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum and especially Batman: Arkham City fare better in showing Bane to be intelligent and a potential ally to Batman. However, according to the in-game character profile Venom nearly triples his body mass and without it he's an average-sized Joe.
    • Batman: Arkham Origins, done by a different company but still set in the same world, reverts Bane to probably the closest version of his original characterization. The plot of the game sets him up as The Dragon to The Joker, but in such a way it is clear he is the most intelligent and powerful enemy Batman faces that night, arguably even including the Joker. It also offers a justification for later portrayals in the series: for the final battle he uses an experimental modification of Venom which causes him to beef up to the ludicrous proportions seen in Asylum, but has brain-damaging side effects — including wiping his memory of Batman's Secret Identity.
  • In Justice League: Doom, Bane is presented as a reasonably intelligent guy, although his actions toward Batman are very much Stupid Evil. This version also has him as slender absent Venom.
  • The Dark Knight Rises is faithful in presenting a Genius Bruiser Bane, with plenty of emphasis on the Genius part of the equation. It somewhat fits the "doing away with moral ambiguity" aspect though.
  • Anarky too falls into this in most adaptations. Despite his name and being a hardcore anarchist, he's a firm aversion of the Bomb Throwing Anarchist. He has a firm code of ethics and ideals, and isn't really evil, being more of an Anti-Hero at best and a Well-Intentioned Extremist at worst who consistently fights against the oppression and exploitation of the working class. When a new Anarky showed up who was a Bomb-Throwing Anarchist popped up, the original was disgusted by him and dismissed him as having "a comic book villain's take on anarchy". Most adaptations just make him into an evil psycho devoted to "chaos". Even his somewhat sympathetic take in Arkham Origins is still portrayed as far more violent and something of a lunatic.
• A lot of parodies and retellings of A Christmas Carol do this with Scrooge. His main character flaws aren't that he hates Christmas or he's a miser. But he let himself become so broken by his traumas that he stopped caring about anyone but himself.
• Sherlock Holmes:
  • In addition to being Promoted to Love Interest in nearly every adaptation, Irene Adler is often portrayed as a Diabolical Mastermind and famous criminal as well. Her only appearance in the Arthur Conan Doyle canon may be awesome, but her only crime was owning a photograph that an ex-lover (who happened to be foreign royalty) felt could be used to blackmail him... which she ultimately never does. The 2009 movie is particularly guilty of this, in Scandal in Bohemia she was more of a Guile Antivillain, an adventress and an opera singer. In the movie she is more like Catwoman of the 1890's.
  • Many adaptations of the source material have taken Dr. John Watson from simply being Holmes' chronicler who is not nearly as brilliant as his mentor but still an intelligent man and a respected physician, to a blithering idiot played up as the Plucky Comic Relief. The movies with Nigel Bruce are the poster example, although this seems to have ceased in the most recent adaptations. In "Elemetary" she is even takes training from Sherlock enabling her to solve some of the cases herself.
• Almost every adaptation or parody of Moby-Dick shows an albino whale, different from Melville's description (that says that it only has a white forehead and a white hump).
• The various Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles tend to be subject to this to various degrees, especially Donatello, who is turned into a full-on Gadgeteer Genius in some adaptations when in the original he only had a knack for fixing things; and Michelangelo, whose original tendency to be more light-hearted than the others served as the basis for his "party dude" persona. Raphael's hot headedness gets interpreted in different levels of either violent aggression or comedic grouchiness, while different medias tend to take varying methods to divert Leonardo from his Standardized Leader persona.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Sonic tends to undergo this frequently in different ways in alternative medias. In early video games Sonic wasn't really able to develop much of a personality outside cocky expressions and poses via his gameplay sprites. As such his ego and brashness is often a defining point of his character in many early cartoons and comics, sometimes to borderline Jerk Jock levels (Sonic the Comic, Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie, and Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) are key examples). Some later medias such as Sonic X tend to go the opposite way with this, making his confidence give him a very laid back and mellow demeanor.
  • In most continuities, Knuckles isn't the brightest of the bunch, and is certainly pretty gullible, but he's not an idiot. In the Sonic Boom video game, however, Knuckles gets exaggerated to Dumb Muscle status, to the point where he can't tell the difference between left and right without looking at his hands. This is downplayed a bit in the TV show, where he's more of an oaf than an outright idiot. Shadow also gets hit with this in the same video game - in the original, although he is The Stoic and somewhat of a gruff loner, he still maintains friendships with Rouge and Omega and is not adverse to working with Sonic and co. when it suits his own ends. In Sonic Boom, he is a petty thug who openly derides friendship to the point of believing Sonic to be a weakling because of his friends and outright attacking him over it.
  • Amy in the games started off as a plucky girl with a Precocious Crush on Sonic, which can be seen in media such as the early Sonic the Comic issues before Characterization Marches On. She started this way in Sonic X as well, but flanderization emphasised her Loony Fan and brattier aspects. It also emphasised how large her crush on Sonic was and how clingy she is. The games later adopted this interpretation, however they later dialed her back again. Sonic Boom goes in a completely different direction and makes Amy's crush on Sonic a secret, making her a much milder character and putting more focus on her sweet personality.
• Starfire in Teen Titans (2003) was modeled after Foreign Exchange Student stereotypes. Unlike in the comics, she speaks in broken English due to not fully grasping the language or slang. Alas, some writers (including fans) don't seem to understand how to write her way of speaking like the original cartoon did. For example, in both Teen Titans Go! and DC Super Hero Girls she inappropriately overuses "the" a lot more than she did in the 2003 cartoon, to the point where it's a Verbal Tic.
• Tarzan: Edgar Rice Burroughs original Tarzan was a highly intelligent Genius Bruiser who taught himself to read and write both English and French from books his parents left, was fluent in English and conversant in French by the end of book 1 and quickly developed impeccable manners. Even while living among the apes he displayed an interest in dressing well and a well-developed (though somewhat morbid) sense of humour, which blossomed fully when he came in contact with civilization. It is also established very early on that the only reason he speaks in Hulk Speak is that he has never actually spoken any of the languages he reads and writes. All consequent adaptations completely ignore these facets of the character, preferring to make him a stupid but good-hearted child of nature, to contrast with the evils of the civilized world.
• Happens a lot in Arthurian Legend to various characters. Notably many French adaptations of the work often played down the heroic actions of the original Welsh Knights in order to make their original French characters such as Lancelot look better.
  • Arthur's nephew Gawain in the earliest literature is seen as the best Knight. In Robert Wace's Brut, very closely adapted from Historia Regum Britanniae, Gawain mentions that peace can be useful because among other things it enables the love of ladies. In Chrétien de Troyes' work Gawain is portrayed as overly interested in the ladies, having a few affairs, but still a fairly decent Knight. Gawain sleeping around is maintained in most adaptations. However in the Post-Vulgate Cycle Gawain is turned into a rapist and treacherous scumbag. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight this is possibly played with, as the plot largely involves a Lady trying to seduce Gawain assuming that he'll sleep with her due to the stories she's heard about him and Gawain courteously refusing her advances. The mobile game Fate/Grand Order makes him a noble but open Chivalrous Pervert who not only answers honestly about how he believes in Buxom Beauty Standard but also has some Incest Subtext with his aunt Altria^note who, along with Lancelot, tricked her into dressing like a Playboy Bunny during a Summer Event and his sister Gareth^note when he mentions how he wishes she grows up to be buxom like his Faerie knight counterpart.
  • Similarly Kay was portrayed as a very badass Knight who was also Arthur's steward. From Chretien onwards, possibly due to the fact in this genre stewards are usually portrayed as bad guys, Kay is depicted as a rude jerk who often gets humiliated. This has carried over to most other adaptations. In one version Kay even treacherously murders King Arthur's son Loholt.

Anime and Manga

• Creed from Black Cat is made to be even more obsessed and depraved in the anime than in the manga (which is saying a LOT). This makes for an extremely awkward Heel–Face Turn, which makes very little sense, especially since his slightly less perverted manga version didn't even do a Heel–Face Turn.
• Bleach filler tends to take the distilled essence of each character and blow it up until the character is as one-dimensional as they come. For example, despite being Ax-Crazy, Kenpachi is actually an insightful warrior as shown numerous times throughout the series (such as when he notes that Gin and Tousen are the only captains afraid to die and when he fights enemies whom brute force can't win against). In filler and movies, though, Kenpachi is offscreen until the fighting starts, at which point he just runs in laughing and slashing without any form of thought or development whatsoever.
• Carnival Phantasm does this to the casts of Fate/stay night and Tsukihime. It's intentional, though, considering this is a Gag Series.
• Applies to Kuroko in the anime adaptation of A Certain Scientific Railgun as a result of Adaptation Expansion. Her lesbian crush on Misaka is exploited to help fill episode time with more gags, but the new scenes tend to be exaggerated to the point of attempted rape. Outside the new material, however, her scenes in Railgun are adapted faithfully enough, still displaying her dedication and badassery, especially when things get serious, whether or not Misaka is around at the time.
• One of the many complaints you'll hear from fans of the Chrono Crusade manga about the anime adaptation. Aion goes from being unsettling and manipulative to the anti-Christ and a rapist; Joshua goes from being insane, glib and somewhat immature to so childlike he doesn't even realize he's aged beyond eleven years old; Shader goes from a energetic scientist that nevertheless cares about her comrades and the children she watches to a practically sociopathic Perky Female Minion who only cares to see more blood shed...nearly all of the characters get at least a little bit of this, but those are some of the worst.
• Cross Marian of D.Gray-Man suffers this. He's shown to have his Jerkass moments, but the manga also shows sympathetic sides to him as well, and that he's a Jerk with a Heart of Gold at worst. But the anime exaggerated his jerkass qualities with filler episode 27: My Mentor, General Cross, and due to cancellation, what more depth we do see of his character is cut off.
• Part of the failure of the Devil May Cry anime may be due to applying this to Dante's personality. In the games, Dante is playfully smug and very showy, but rarely does he cause collateral damage. In the anime, he seems to have a pathological "Need For Cool" that has to be satisfied regardless of what it costs him. For example, in the second episode, while chasing a demon, he demolishes a bridge along the way with his guns. The resulting repair costs cut severely from the fees he receives.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Dragon Ball Z has an example with Frieza's Bad Boss tendencies. He was a Bad Boss in the manga to be sure, but he wasn't prone to killing subordinates. In the anime, he kills his minions at the drop of a hat, reasons varying from "failing him", to "being no longer useful", to "speaking out of turn", to "just needing a target".
  • Goku also qualifies in a different way, as he's hit with a lot of Adaptational Heroism in the anime (both the original and dub). Akira Toriyama himself has commented that he's always been dissatisfied with Goku's "righteous hero" portrayal in the anime and that he was originally meant to be a rather selfish character who fights for himself rather than others, and just happens to end up in world-saving situations a lot. Dragon Ball Super brings him back in line with Toriyama's original concept, with Goku openly admitting at one point that he's a pretty selfish guy who only really cares about fighting (though he adds that he can't ignore people in danger, showing that he does have some heroic traits). On the other hand, this actually caused a backlash against the character, with some viewers declaring that Super turned him into a Jerkass.
  • Vegeta used to be an incredibly pragmatic fighter in early Z, doing things like throwing sand on Zarbon's eyes, sneaking up on Guldo while he was distracted to behead him, and ganging up on Recoome with Krillin and Gohan. Only once did he display any sort of Bond Villain Stupidity, and that was when he gave Goku three hours to arrive from the afterlife, specifically with the purpose of punishing him as a "traitor". It was this moment that stuck the most to his characterization post Frieza-saga, with him making increasingly stupid decisions just to get a better fight and satisfy his Blood Knight tendencies.
  • The anime makes Chi-Chi more of a bossy, short-tempered Education Mama compared to the manga, to the point where she literally considers Gohan's schooling more important than saving the world.
  • In the case of Android 16, the anime plays up his Friend to All Living Things trait, which was more an Informed Attribute in the manga. An example of character exaggeration done right.
• The anime of Excel♡Saga severely plays up the comic aspects of the manga, to the point of inverting the character dynamics (The manga version of Excel is substantially more competent, and thus slightly more useful, than her oft-demoted anime counterpart).
• Fairy Tail: Juvia. In the manga, when she first sees Lucy after joining Fairy Tail, she gives a chipper "Oh hey, love rival." to which Lucy responds "I'm really not." In the anime, Juvia glares at her instead, and shouts "LOVE RIVAL!" while blasting Lucy with dark vibes.
• Fullmetal Alchemist (2003):
  • Armstrong's character was exaggerated for the sake of humor, leading to him losing his shirt and showing off his muscles in almost every episode he appeared.
  • Edward's tendency to brood became far more prominent.
  • The writers also took a rather Out-of-Character Moment for Alphonse in the manga, wherein he has a Freak Out after his encounter with Barry The Chopper, and made naivete and bouts of irrationality a consistent part of the anime version of Alphonse's characterization.
  • In the manga and Brotherhood, Solf J. Kimblee weaves a happy line between monster and Manipulative Bastard, managing to pull his fair share of both awesome and horrible moments that leaves the reader/watcher unsure what to really think of him. In the 2003 anime version, much of this background had yet to be revealed so he was reduced to a stereotypical Mad Bomber obviously meant to be hated.
  • Basque Grand was originally an unknown due to dying before his introduction. The 2003 anime cast him as a Colonel Kilgore character who everyone was happy to see die. The manga later depicted Basque as being one of the more reasonable officers during the Ishvalan Massacre, willing to kill a superior officer in order to avert unnecessary bloodshed.
  • Much of Roy Mustang's character was expanded just after the point where the anime Overtook the Manga. The anime team decided to use what they had but in doing so overplayed his Chivalrous Pervert personality into being him being more of a Handsome Lech. In the original manga, Roy's Chivalrous Pervert is actually a cover for his spying skills and he is more straightlaced about the subject than the 2003 anime would let you believe.
• Sagara Sousuke has this happen to him in the manga Full Metal Panic! Overload. In the original light novels, he's shown being stern, a bit emotionless, rather socially inept, and taking certain extreme measures to protect Kaname. In this manga, he's made out to be a complete robotic sociopath that sees nothing wrong in mass-murdering people by misinterpreting Kaname's wishes. Many times, he's even shown blowing things up and causing damage to Kaname herself without so much as a blink of the eye - something his original self would never do. In fact, Kaname and Sousuke's roles are, in a way, reversed in this, where people will feel extremely sorry for her and wonder why she puts up with the insane physical abuse Sousuke deals out to her. Sure, it's all played out for laughs, but the Character Exaggeration is incredible. His psychopathy is extreme to the point where he's shown getting withdrawal symptoms when he doesn't use his gun for a day. Seriously, in that adaptation, he could give Gauron a run for his money in being Ax-Crazy.
• Galaxy Angel was also victim of this, due to the game it was supposed to be based on being repeatedly delayed until it came out only shortly before the first season ended — they didn't have much to go on other than a basic outline because of these problems, and decided to exaggerate all the character personalities for comedy and turn it into a parody to deal with the problem.
• Gundam Sousei takes the quirks of the staff of Mobile Suit Gundam and crank it up.
• The cast of Haruhi Suzumiya was already quirky. The Haruhi-chan series turned said quirks up to thirteen!
• The anime for Higurashi: When They Cry plays up Hanyuu's Immortal Immaturity. It's possibly most noticeable when she's mad at Miyo for talking about Oyashiro-sama (who Hanyuu is) as if they're malicious. In the anime it is Played for Laughs, while the manga and original sound novel have Hanyuu portrayed as genuinely upset and in tears.
• The anime adaptation of The Irregular at Magic High School simplified the main characters to caricatures of Memetic Badass and Little Sister Heroine, respectively. The most infamous example being the regular screams of "Onii-sama" by Miyuki, who in the original novel is noticeably more quiet. It even turned her into a Scrappy in the west, despite being liked in Japan. Much of this is due to the adaptation cutting out many explanations and internal monologues, leaving Tatsuya and his sister showing only their external side, which is what attracted hatred. As a result, the adaptation only strengthened the reputation of this title among western audiences as epitomising all the worst traits and clichés of light novels.
• Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?: In the novels, Hestia knew a good deal more about the world then she lets on, and Hephaestus notes that she had matured since she had last saw her. Hestia tries to seem mature around Bell, at least, and it ends up working. In fact, the fight that led to a War Game between the Hestia and Apollo Familias started because a table of Apollo Familia members were bad mouthing Hestia. The anime plays up the fact that she is a Clingy Jealous Girl and downplays these elements, making the scene where she gives her blessing to an adventuring party who would go out to save Bell even though said adventuring party was the one who endangered them seem out of character.
• Magic Knight Rayearth:
  • In the manga, Alcyone is in love with Zagato and a vicious, Faux Affably Evil opponent to the Magic Knights. The anime has her abuse her own allies by tricking Ascot into giving his own creature a Deadly Upgrade and freezing him solid when he protests, then having her contemplate Murder the Hypotenuse over Emeraude. Oddly, she also becomes more sympathetic than the original because she survives into the second season as a broken woman.
  • Innouva serves as Zagato's Number Two in the anime, and he's rather contemptuous of the other minions. In the Sega Saturn game his diary entries are about him being Surrounded by Idiots and he executes them when they fail.
• The Fillers in the Naruto anime often do this to several characters:
  • Most obviously Naruto's hot-headedness, taking him from a Book Dumb Indy Ploy master to full-blown idiot that can only spam Rasengan at anything that moves.
  • Likewise, Sakura goes from only occasionally hitting Naruto when he does something perverted, to beating him at every opportunity.
  • Tsunade's temper is even shorter in the anime fillers, as she tends to yell at Naruto more often and twice threatens to send him back to the academy and started beating the shit out of Sora because she thought he called her old.
  • Hinata tends to faint quite a bit more often around Naruto, while she only fainted twice in the manga (once when going to visit him in the hospital after the Sasuke Retrieval arc- which was not shown- and when she sees him for the first time after the Time Skip).
• The various adaptations of Negima! Magister Negi Magi have done this to better pronounce certain (i.e, important) characters' notability from the rest of the (very large) cast. For example, the first anime adaptation played up Nodoka's shyness for Moe purposes while trying to make her more recognizable. The second adaptation Negima!? (second season) took the alternative in trying to make her more calm and outgoing. The manga sits somewhere between the two extremes.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion:
  • In the Anime First series Neon Genesis Evangelion, we have Gendo Ikari. In the anime, he's morally ambiguous. In the manga, he's just plain evil.
  • Then there's Kaworu Nagisa, a conflicted and nuanced character in the original series. Elsewhere he's portrayed as villainous or, in other instances, unambiguously saintly.
• Ouran High School Host Club lampshades this, being an Affectionate Parody and all. While most of the Hosts play up their Bishounen archetype for the sake of their customers, Tamaki doesn't. He really IS that exaggerated, both in the manga and the anime. Oddly enough, these exaggerations lessen a little as the series goes on and we see some character development for all the Hosts—but don't think they sacrificed the humor. On the other hand, Renge is an exaggeration of Otaku Fan Girls... sort of.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • In Pokémon Sun and Moon, Lillie starts out as a timid girl who hates seeing Pokemon battle. In the anime adaptation, Lillie is more extroverted however she is outright afraid of Pokemon themselves. She can't even touch them due to some initially unspecified trauma.
  • Misty is described as the "tomboyish mermaid" but not much is shown about her character in the original games. The anime ramps up her Tomboy with a Girly Streak attitude and makes her a tsundere as well. This was partially added back into the games in Gold and Silver.
• Pokémon Adventures:
  • Sabrina is Creepy Good in the games. She's actually benevolent and rather pacifistic despite her intimidating appearance. In Adventures she's given the Adaptational Villainy route and starts off as a sadistic member of Team Rocket.
  • Wally has an unspecified illness that gets better in clear air. In Adventures he's so Delicate and Sickly that he has to carry around a machine and gets strained easily.
• Rosario + Vampire:
  • The anime plays up the seductive aspect of Kurumu's personality while downplaying her more kindhearted side.
  • In the original manga, Kokoa was a Tsundere, and while she preferred Inner Moka over Outer Moka, she was far more tolerant of Outer and didn't actually hate her. Capu2 exaggerated said Tsundere tendencies to make her a borderline Jerkass, and turned her preference for Inner Moka into full-blown hatred for Outer Moka to the extent that Kokoa flat-out refuses to acknowledge Outer Moka as her sister.
  • Kurumu and Mizore's respective parents, Ageha and Tsurara, had a bit of a Friendly Enemy relationship. Capu2 turns them into lifelong rivals since at least their days at Yokai Academy, and has them use their daughters' respective crushes on Tsukune to wage a proxy war against one another.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena lead character initially was described as simply acting like a boy. Later she would speak like one, and by the time The Movie rolls around, she actually looks like one.
• The different adaptations of Rurouni Kenshin go different ways on this compared to the original manga when it comes to the title character. Kenshin in the first anime series is more of a genuine doofus and prone to slapstick than in the manga, where this was largely an act that he was quick to drop when things got serious and showed more of Deadpan Snarker attitude. The Shin Kyoto-Hen OVA and live action series go the opposite direction and show him as significantly more ruthless and less emotional, ironically making him more like his previous self during the Revolution.
• RWBY:
  • The RWBY: Official Manga Anthology Red Like Roses exaggerates Ruby's personality all over the place compared to RWBY. She's more emotional and cries easily. Her childlike spirit is both downplayed and ramped up depending on the scene.
  • In RWBY: The Official Manga, Ruby's pre-Characterization Marches On shyness and awkwardness from the first episode is turned into a core element of her character.
• Sailor Moon:
  • Zoisite is an especially interesting example going through adaptations: Originally, in the manga he was just an attractive if somewhat effeminate-looking man. In the first anime, he is given more effeminate and catty traits and a romantic relationship with Kunzite. His DiC English dub counterpart exaggerates this further, along with making him into an actual woman.
  • The same thing occurred to Fish Eye in the fourth season. Originally, he was not much different than his strangely dressed and short-lived counterparts. His run in the show was much longer, and was made a clingy, shallow (though ultimately good-hearted) gay crossdresser, and a woman in various dubs in other countries outside of Japan. In fact, it's one of the other members of the Amazon Trio, Hawk's Eye, who crossdresses in the manga. Fish Eye actually tries to seduce Ami!
  • Usagi herself is rather exaggerated though adaptations. In the manga, she is basically a normal teenager and a surprisingly competent leader of normal intelligence. The anime version dialed up her laziness, her reluctance to fight AND her naivete slightly (for example, see her reluctance to kill anything that isn't a Monster of the Day versus her manga form who basically killed first and asked questions later). The 90's English dub takes this even further by making her a total ditz and a Butt-Monkey when it came to the other senshi. (They didn't tease her NEARLY as much in the Japanese anime.)
  • As well as Usagi/Serena, Rei/Raye was exaggerated quite a bit from the manga to the anime to the dub. In the manga, she's the Ojou with a bit of a rivalry with Usagi. In the anime, they ramped up her issues with Usagi and made her seem downright mean at times, thought it was still obvious that she cared for Usagi. Dub Raye, on the other hand, loses much of Rei's softer corners and is pretty all-out nasty with very few exceptions.
  • Haruka crossdressing. In the manga, she actually poses as a male high school student at the start of the Infinity arc, but doesn't seem particularly averse to wearing women's clothing when out of the disguise. In the anime, while she presumably still poses as a male while in the Infinity Academy, her gender is revealed in the same episode where she receives a proper introduction — but she keeps crossdressing throughout the series, even though her being female isn't treated as a secret. Apparently, in that version she likes it a lot. Furthermore, in the manga she even uses different pronouns depending on whether or not she is in disguise — ore and (of all things) atashi. In the anime, it's always the semi-masculine boku, even as Sailor Uranus.
• While Kyuuzou was still The Stoic in the original Seven Samurai, this is definitely given a lot more emphasis in the anime version Samurai 7, wherein Kyuuuzou is a Perpetual Frowner who rarely talks and whose emotions/motivations are hard to gauge. While the film version of the character joked with the other samurai, his anime counterpart is more like No Sense of Humor (with the other characters' reactions to him Played for Laughs).
• The Sands of Destruction manga makes both Rhi'a and Morte more insane than their original game versions. Rhi'a has gone from an occasional Cloud Cuckoo Lander to spending most of her time in crazy-mode, with exaggerated child-like cuteness and naivete. Morte has gone from simply wishing to end the world because of how messed up it is (and because Stuff Blowing Up is fun and Bigger Is Better, so blowing up the whole world would be awesome), fighting only against those who actively oppose her or who are responsible for the state of the world, to actively attacking innocent bystanders.
• Played for Laughs in Funimation's Gag Dub of Sgt. Frog, which exaggerates pretty much all of the characters: Fuyuki's wimpiness, Keroro's abuse of his friends and comrades, egotism and ditziness, Momoka's obsessive crush for Fuyuki, etc.
• Umineko: When They Cry:
  • Maria may be strange, but the anime shot her straight into Creepy Child territory in the first episode... and has just kept dialing it up from there to the point of Narm.
  • Battler, meanwhile, had his Chivalrous Pervert tendencies and desire to solve the mystery cranked up, at the cost of toning down his reactions to the murders.
• Valkyria Chronicles: The anime adaptation is a rather glaring offender. During the transition from the game to anime, many of the characters' traits were exaggerated heavily.
  • In the game, Alicia would sometimes get frustrated at Welkin's personality quirks, but ultimately understood them. She is converted into the generic Tsundere love interest in the anime.
  • Welkin is something of a Military Maverick with a few personality quirks, but was turned into a socially inept Genius Ditz.
  • Faldio was turned from a Colonel Makepeace to a suave ladies man.
  • Susie is characterized as a Reluctant Warrior who was conscripted despite being a pacifist, but she is still willing to fight to save lives (with a gameplay quirk that stops her from attacking sometimes). She passes out a few times during DLC missions, but not during battles themselves. In the anime, she is so afraid of violence and the prospect of fighting that she would literally just spontaneously pass out and regards Alica as a monster when her Valkyria power awakens.
• In the manga of Welcome to the NHK the main characters get overtaken more and more by their mental instabilities, turning them into psychiatric caricatures. This is especially poignant in the case of Satou and Misaki, who change from very disturbed but interesting and amusing personalities into lumbering, suicidal and psychotic wrecks. The anime (in case you're wondering, they're both based off a novel) has a more balanced characterization, making for a more relatable story.
• The YuruYuri anime does this to Chinatsu, playing up her creepy and unpleasant side. This is for the best, since she didn't have much personality in the original manga.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!
  • Seto Kaiba
    • The 4Kids dub of the anime cranks up Kaiba's rivalry with Yugi and contempt for Jonouchi, making him closer to the manga version, where he was hateful of Jonouchi and obsessed with beating Yugi, among other things. They also made him deny the existence of magic and refuse to believe in it, while in the Japanese anime he didn't care about it. Manga!Kaiba went back and forth from outright denial to not caring. It also tended to make him even more of a Jerkass than he already was in the Japanese version.
    • The dub also cranks up his disbelief in magic and other supernatural elements to the point of being a complete Agent Scully through the entire dub, as he dismisses any supernatural elements as hallucinations or holograms and thinks that the people who show him he's the modern reincarnation of Priest Seto are trying to brainwash him. He grows out of this in The Darkside of Dimensions dub, and is implied to have started believing several supernatural elements at the end of the anime dub since he refers to Atem as "Pharaoh" and thinks he's the true King of Games while he views Yugi as a fraud who took the credit for Atem's duel victories.
    • His dragon obsession is largely an anime thing. In the manga, the only dragons he really uses are Blue-Eyes and its fusions, and the majority of his other cards are Warriors, Fiends, and Beast-Warriors, focusing on a beatdown deck. The anime filler arcs add more Dragons to his deck to the point that his other cards seem out of place. The Dark Side of Dimensions has his deck be almost completely Blue-Eyes based to the point that Saggi the Dark Clown is an outlier.

Asian Animation

• In the Korean-American Flash animation Pucca, the title character was a naïve pre-teen Cute Bruiser who wanted to steal kisses from her Heroic Mime boyfriend Garu. When a TV series was made, Pucca became even more naïve than before and also a Clingy Jealous Girl with a stalker-like fixation on Garu, and Garu's cooties went from "I like her and she's sweet, but she just doesn't let me train" to a borderline "I HATE THE BITCH I HOPE SHE DIES." Guess the Running Gag got old after the first episode... And the Running Gag was little more than a Gender Flip of the classic Pepe Le Pew cartoons, with Pucca playing Pepe and Garu playing Penelope the Pussycat.

Comic Books

• All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder contains a Batman that is explicitly a hyper-exaggeration of Batman's well-known aggressive crimefighting tactics and grim personality. The degree to which it is an exaggeration is divisive as whether or not it's a grand cockup or hilarious self-parody. Either way... He's the goddamn BATMAN.◊
• Neil Gaiman's Marvel 1602 reimagines about twenty different Marvel superheroes in a fresh historical Alternate Universe setting based on Elizabethan Europe, and makes nearly all of them crucial to the plot in some way or another. Understandably, there's not always enough room to make the characters as nuanced as they are in the regular comics, so their characterizations tend to emphasize just one or two aspects of their well-known Canon personalities.
  • Matthew Murdoch's characterization emphasizes his fearlessness above all else, to the point that he comes off as an adventure-seeking adrenaline junkie, while discarding his legal education (which would be hard to fit to the period - no braille legal texts), his strong Catholic faith (which very definitely wouldn't), his working-class roots, and his militant hatred of injustice.
  • Peter Parquah's characterization emphasizes his role as the kindhearted, idealistic young rookie, while largely discarding the Deadpan Snarker and Sad Clown aspects of Peter Parker's personality.
  • High Inquisitor Enrique's characterization is largely dominated by the He Who Fights Monsters aspect of Erik Lehnsherr's personality, making him come off more as a straight-up Knight Templar than as the tormented Well-Intentioned Extremist known to X-Men fans.
  • Count Otto Von Doom is defined almost entirely by his narcissism and lust for power, while his characterization de-emphasizes the intellectual egotism and lust for knowledge that has long defined the character. Notably, this version of Doom doesn't seem to have known Richard Reed prior to the latter's transformation, largely removing the personal element in their longstanding feud. Doom is also depicted as an alchemist (in contrast to the more traditional scientist Reed), reflecting the original's tendency to occasionally dabble in the mystic arts.
• Played for Laughs in Marvel Adventures: The Avengers Issue #24, where Doc Samson boils all the characters' personalities down to their base elements in his analyses.
  Samson: So you felt that... ants... were the key to fighting evil.
  Ant-Man: They were just so orderly, so purposeful. [Doc writes 'Reverse Napoleon Complex']
  Samson: Say the first word that comes into your mind. Star.
  Captain America: Flag.
  Samson: Ring.
  Cap: Freedom.
  Samson: Lady.
  Cap: Liberty.
• Played for (very dark) laughs in The Sandman (1989) with Cain and Abel, who are strongly implied to be the same characters as their namesakes from the Book of Genesis. Cain is most famous for murdering his brother, while Abel is most famous for being murdered by his brother. In The Sandman, this is their entire gimmick: Cain is a gleefully psychotic madman who regularly murders his brother for kicks (in various creatively gruesome ways), while Abel is a meek Extreme Doormat who's constantly getting murdered by Cain (only to rise from the dead).
• Spider-Man: This trait is deliberately exploited by Spider-Man in the storyline Identity Crisis, when circumstances prompt him to take on multiple new costumed identities so that he can continue operating as a hero after being framed for murder and assault by Norman Osborn. Each new identity is based on aspects of his actual personality and skills, making it less likely for anyone to work out who these "new" costumed characters really are. Broadly speaking, the four identities are broken down as follows; the Hornet is based on Peter's intellectual genius and ability to make his own tech; Ricochet is based on Spider-Man's agility and speed as well as his Motor Mouth tendencies; Dusk is based on Peter's more menacing side and stealth skills; and Prodigy is based on his genuine heroism and desire to do good along with his super strength.
• Starfire (2015): Starfire's Fish out of Water status is taken to extremes, with her being unfamiliar with the most basic human terms and being extremely Literal-Minded, despite having supposedly been living on Earth for a while now. While this is supposed to be Played for Laughs, it has the unintentional effect of making it seems like she's simply a Brainless Beauty, rather than an alien warrior suffering from Culture Clash.
• Ultimate Marvel:
  • Ultimate Spider-Man: This continuity's incarnation of Flash Thompson is missing all of his sympathetic traits and admiration for Spider-Man, resulting in his character being reduced to a one-note Jerk Jock. In addition, unlike his mainstream counterpart, who eventually develops into a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, he never undergoes any kind of Character Development.
  • Venom and Carnage. They're notable for being some of the most monstrous members of Spider-Man's rogues gallery. In this continuity, Venom was noticeably turned into an nigh mindless monster when wearing the symbiote, even using Hulk Speak. Carnage, for his part, was reimagined as a truly mindless monster that doesn't speak and has no human identity, with Cletus Kasady having been Adapted Out.
  • The Ultimates sees Iron Man's struggles with alcoholism and Hank Pym striking The Wasp while in the midst of a psychological breakdown (something mainline!Hank deeply regrets) blown up to the point that Ultimate!Tony is frequently seen drinking and Ultimate!Hank is an outright domestic abuser.
  • Magneto. His mainstream incarnation is a morally complex, ambiguous figure. In the Ultimate universe, he's nothing more than a repugnant mutant supremacist and genocidal maniac. In fact, he's such a monster, that he has eaten human flesh in the past, and plans to turn humanity into literal livestock for mutants.

Comic Strips

• This is the main source of humor in Twisted Toyfare Theatre. Spider-Man's role as Unlucky Everydude turns him into a couch potato Deadpan Snarker, Reed Richards' Insufferable Genius tendencies get taken to a new level, Northstar is a Camp Gay, and Doctor Doom is such a Large Ham that he makes his in-continuity counterpart look underplayed in comparison.

Films — Animation

• In the book Coraline, Mr. Bobo simply happens to be Slavic (Russia isn't even mentioned, actually); it's not even implied that he has an accent until Misses Spink and Forcible happen to talk about him near the end of the book. However, the movie makes Bobinsky extremely weird and extremely Russian. Even though the flag outside his door is from Montenegro.
• In the books, Basil of Baker Street is a bit eccentric and prone to sudden bursts of energy. The Great Mouse Detective turns this up, while also changing him from a perfect gentleman to rude and socially inept... basically more like Sherlock Holmes himself than Basil.
• A staple of the Denser and Wackier LEGO Cinematic Universe, which serves as an Affectionate Parody of the source material:
  • Batman as portrayed in The LEGO Movie and its sequel The LEGO Batman Movie is more egotistical and brooding than his comic book self.
  • The LEGO Ninjago Movie does this to the Ninjago characters by updating them into a high-school setting. For example, Jay's underlying insecurity from the television show is played up to make him an awkward hipster, while Zane's inability to behave naturally is exaggerated to become a Cloudcuckoolander Stereotypical Nerd.
• In the original book Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Jeremy was a naive young crow if otherwise lucid. In The Secret of NIMH he is a klutzy Cloud Cuckoo Lander that serves as the film's comic relief. This change seemed to prove popular with O'Brien's daughter, Jane Leslie Conly, who adapted Jeremy's more whimsical film persona when writing the novel's sequel.
• In Ratchet & Clank, the personality and relationship between the title characters fall under this, to the point that they feel familiar with each other when they first meet, and the "Ratchet is impulsive, Clank is considerate" dynamic was exagerrated from the games.
  • Ratchet's goals are particularly notable: in the 2002 game Ratchet was only looking for a good time, whereas in the movie he specifically wanted to be a hero, something that only became a focal part of his character in Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One, a decade after the original game. Again the movie amps this up: Ratchet spends much of his waking hours talking about or training to be a hero, something he doesn't have time for in the games.

Films — Live-Action

• Humorously invoked in the Austin Powers films, which poke fun at some of the more dated aspects of the James Bond franchise by imagining how the title character might look if he were a hilariously exaggerated caricature of 1960s British culture, and even more of a shameless and flamboyant sex fiend.
• In The Blind Side, based on the story of Michael Oher, apparently the actual problems Michael Oher was helped through simply weren't enough for Hollywood. The movie's portrayal of Michael needing to learn American Football was pretty much Blatant Lies. Oher himself was notably upset over this particular piece of "artistic license". As for needing to toughen up, shockingly that was also untrue. In fact the very notion of putting aggression into someone is dismissed by Oher.
• The Brady Bunch movies exaggerated the characters' personalities a bit such as Jan's jealousy towards Marcia and Cindy's tattling, but true to the show. Family patriarch Mike's lessons are also parodied to the point of exaggeration, such as when he tries to teach Cindy that it's not right to tattle, even after she tells all that she witnessed their neighbor, Mr. Dettemeyer, steal the family's mail. They were the characters from the later seasons stuck in the 1990s. The TV movie The Brady Bunch in the White House made them unloveable parodies, such as Marcia complaining when she got captain of the cheerleading squad because the vote wasn't unanimous.
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Johnny Depp takes Willy Wonka's most readily apparent traits (and some not-so-obvious ones as well) and turns them up.
• The Harry Potter movies:
  • In the movies, Snape is suavely and delicately malicious. The Snape of the books can be snarky at times, but he's just as likely to be loud-mouthed and unsubtle. You couldn't picture Alan Rickman's Snape throwing the fit the character throws at the end of the book version of Prisoner of Azkaban. While they probably did this because a lot of shouting doesn't translate well to the screen, the change has certainly helped to increase the character's popularity.
  • In the sixth movie, Jessie Cave took the Sickening Sweetheart part of Lavender's character and played it to the hilt.
  • Miranda Richardson on playing Rita Skeeter: "Rita reads rather differently than how I played her. She reads more, to me, like Dame Edna. And there's no way I'm going to do Dame Edna. So it's a different twist on the character."
  • Happens rather dramatically to the Crouches in the fourth movie. Barty Crouch Sr., the one on the "good" side, went from being a kind of wizarding Senator McCarthy in the book to being a completely sympathetic character in the movie. Barty Crouch Jr., on the other hand, became a little psycho, never bothering with his Innocent Bystander act and basically screaming "Hi, I'm evil!" in every scene he appeared in as himself. And the change in his father's characterization eliminated his potential Freudian Excuse. The change is most clearly seen by the fact that in the book, Crouch Sr. sends his son to Azkaban out of pure spite, but in the film it's stated, "He had no choice." Crouch Jr. is crying and begging him not to do it in the book. In the movie, he's twitching his eyes, licking his lips, and cackling. Yeeeah...
  • Helena Bonham Carter takes Bellatrix's insanity and plays it up to make her childishly thrilled by such things as getting to torture and murder people.
  • In the books, Ginny is a Fiery Redhead, but in the movies she comes off more as a Girl Next Door. This may not really sound like an exaggeration per se, but it does play up an aspect of her book self's personality.
  • Ron is a lot more cowardly and much more of a Sidekick than he was in the books. His Deadpan Snarker tendencies get quite a downgrade in the films, too, though that might be more Rupert Grint's take on the character than an adaptation change.
• Teatime, in Hogfather, is a notable example. In the book his eyes, actions, and the content of his dialogue is what makes the character disconcerting, at times terrifying, as it directly contrasts with his boyish charm, manner and appearance. In the adaptation, however, Marc Warren emphasizes the character's way of speaking, in order to make his evil-ness just that bit more obvious, as well as losing the trademark "ever-present grin", which gave the original character a misplaced sense of childlike innocence. In a matter of fact, many people just think that the over-hamming of the character has meant the subtle, deep-seated sense of "there's something not quite right" seen in the book has been lost.
• In Jurassic Park (1993), Ian Malcolm is a comical Deadpan Snarker. In the original novel, he's a much more serious character, although he does have some humorous moments — such as dismissing the argument comparing reviving dinosaurs to using cloning to save the California Condor by pointing out the obvious fact that dinosaurs weren't driven extinct by man-made deforestation, and oh, by the way, condors don't eat people. Although, perhaps as a nod to this change, while delirious from drugs and severe injury in the sequel novel, The Lost World (1995), he temporarily takes on a talkative, wisecracking persona similar to his movie one, although much more over-the-top.
• The Lord of the Rings
  • Gollum. His somewhat split personality and division between the two equally troublesome sides of it (characterised as Slinker and Stinker by Samwise in the book) is exaggerated into the sweet but obsequious 'Sméagol' and the abusive, addicted 'Gollum'.
  • Denethor's deteriorating mental state and frosty relationship with his suriving son becomes full blown Large Ham frothing-at-the-mouth madness.
• Murder on the Orient Express (2017): Everyone knows that Poirot is described as having a big mustache, but Kenneth Branagh took that a bit to literally.◊ May also be an aversion; Agatha Christie approved of Albert Finney's portrayal of Poirot in the 1974 version, but thought his mustache insufficient.
• Sonic's quirkiness and energy level is ramped up in Sonic the Hedgehog (2020). He's depicted as barely keeping still in the film, while his game counterpart is more laid-back.
• Star Trek (2009):
  • James Kirk bears much more resemblance to the pop-culture idea of Captain Kirk than the actual original series character. The original Kirk was a brave, levelheaded starship captain who was occasionally forced to hasty decisions on the job, and had a tendency to attract the attentions of beautiful women — which he very rarely reciprocated. The new Kirk is a hotheaded, womanizing maverick who openly rebels against authority at every opportunity, and gets into bar brawls when he's not wearing a Starfleet uniform.
  • Several other characters are exaggerated as well, and in ways which are harder to explain away as immaturity. For example, Chekov went from simply being the youngest person on the bridge crew to a genius child prodigy who is assigned to the bridge while still a minor, and his accent is more ridiculous than ever. Instead of just having fencing as a hobby, Sulu now has a fancy collapsible space katana which he apparently regularly takes along with him on dangerous away missions. Instead of just being the token girl on the bridge crew, Uhura is Kirk's old crush from the Academy, and she ends up sleeping with Spock. Instead of just a hyper-competent engineer with a cheery, laid-back personality, Scotty is a kooky genius inventor who develops a revolutionary warp system and does experiments on beagles. Spock's half-human half-Vulcan dual nature manifests in a nearly bipolar tendency to flit between detached intellectual coldness and intense emotional outbursts.
  • All of this is in theory justified. Due to time travel shenanigans that resulted in the destruction of the Kelvin, these characters all lived very different lives and became different people. A lot of this Kirk's acting out is the result of his being raised without a father. Nonetheless, by the time of Star Trek Beyond, we appear to have reached the Close-Enough Timeline, as everyone's characters have more or less developed to be more in line with their familiar portrayal.
• The trope flies both ways in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the film adaptation of Gary Wolf's Urban Fantasy novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?.
  • The title character went from being cunning if somewhat self-obsessed, with only a select few cartoony quirks, to being a full-blown wacky Cloud Cuckoo Lander. Roger Rabbit being changed from a comic strip character who can only "talk" via text balloons in the book into an animated cartoon character in the film also has a lot to do with the wackier persona.
  • Eddie Valiant went from being an extremely over-the-top parody of the Film Noir Private Detective to being a fairly normal guy, given the circumstances.

Literature

• Flonne of the Disgaea series is a nice, flaky, adorable and optimistic Otaku angel whose dream is to spread love to every corner of the galaxy. In the novels she gets possessive Clingy Jealous Girl tendencies added to her personality, when a girl gets close to Laharl Flonne almost enters the border of Bitch in Sheep's Clothing.
• Star Trek Expanded Universe:
  • One episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine features a Department of Temporal Investigations agent name Lucsly, who makes an offhand remark about Captain Kirk's frequent Time Travel and dubs him a menace. This single line is referenced in just about every novel or short story featuring him. By the time the Department of Temporal Investigations have their own series, the Department in general and Lucsly in particular are portrayed as having an obsessive bordering on irrational hatred of Kirk, regarding him as the worst temporal criminal ever and comparing him to Adolf Hitler.
  • Several novels set between Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: First Contact featured Data still working out his emotion chip issues by having a sobbing breakdown, angry outburst or swearing a lot. This is based on his immediate reaction to having emotions as shown in Generations. First Contact showed that he actually got those emotions under control pretty quickly.
  • In a few of the novels, Picard is known to break into French profanity when irritated, in particular saying "merde". In the TV series, his French pride was a feature of his character for part of the first season, but even then he never broke into French profanity.
    • Except in "Elementary, Dear Data".

Live-Action TV

• Dr. Martin Ellingham of Doc Martin is a case of this in respect to his original incarnations as a character in the movie Saving Grace, in which he originated, as well as the original specials of which he was the protagonist (in both, he is called Dr. Martin Bamford). In the movie and specials, Doc Martin is a pretty normal, friendly guy who happens to be a Fish out of Water. In contrast, the series character is an abrasive Doctor Jerk. Perhaps explained in part by another case of Character Exaggeration in which the Quirky Town in which Martin lives is considerably quirkier in the tv series.
• Winston Churchill as depicted in the new Doctor Who is a caricature which takes a few of his best-known attributes and plays them up. He has a cigar in his mouth almost constantly, always wears a suit with a bow tie, and quotes his own famous speeches.
• Elementary has Del Gruner, an Arc Villain in the third season. His Conan Doyle original, Baron Adalbert Gruner from "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client", was a callous seducer of women who might have murdered one of them. Del is an outright sadistic and sexually-motivated Serial Killer who subjects his victims to days of rape and torture before finally killing them. This was probably so that the writers could keep the same final fate — he is gruesomely disfigured with acid by a victim who escaped him — without having the perpetrator lose the audience's sympathy.
• Game of Thrones:
  • While Stannis Baratheon is not one of the worst examples, the series makes him more brutal and villainous then in the books. An example is him burning one of his wife's family for not giving up their worship of the Seven. In the books, he does this when they try to make peace with the Tyrells behind his back. He is also more ready to burn his brother's bastard son as a sacrifice to the Lord of Light in the series while being very conflicted in the books.
    • In the books, there is relatively little detail on Shireen Baratheon's relationship to her parents. However, Selyse's few comments about her are usually negative in tone (namely her despair at her only child being a deformed daughter) whereas Stannis' are more protective (though he appears more concerned with her noble rights and dignity than her as a person). The show exaggerates this, making Selyse an openly disdainful mother and Stannis, below his tough guy exterior, a clearly loving father.
  • Actually this becomes a major part of the show, often playing more straight Character Tropes that the book versions were deconstructions off. The vain, greedy and amoral Renly who was basically a Villain with Good Publicity is portrayed as a straight example of The Good King. This is ironic considering Stannis and Renly are respectively based on Richard III and George, duke of Clarence (see below).
  • Similarly the Tyrells who convey a good image but are really Sleazy Politicians who were quite happy to starve hundreds of thousands of people into submission to help Renly usurp the Iron Throne are presented as much nicer characters who show more care towards people. For example, in the novels they immediately ostracize Sansa once she's engaged to Tyrion rather than consoling her. Other aspects of House Tyrell's collective character is also exaggerated from the source material as part of their Adaptation Expansion.
    • The family's Foolish Husband, Responsible Wife aspects are played up on account of the two most competent Tyrell sons (Willas and Garlan) being Adapted Out, Loras' character arc stalling in Season 3 and 4, and Mace's fecklessness being exaggerated from a blustering but tenacious man into an ineffectual and sycophantic Momma's Boy.
    • Margaery's sex appeal and cunning are also exaggerated. In the books, her power comes from her persona as a Princess Classic, not The Vamp, but on the show her Stripperific outfits and open ambitions make her more sympathetic to viewers as more liberal than the conservative Lannisters she contends with.
    • Book Loras Tyrell shows no sign of attraction to anyone, male or female, other than Renly Baratheon. After Renly's death, he joins the celibate Kingsguard, and openly implies to Jaime that he has no interest in ever having another relationship. His show counterpart, by contrast, is stereotypically gay, and routinely flirts and sleeps with other men after Renly.
  • Brienne of Tarth is a warrior woman in the books but is unsettled by killing. In the four books she has appeared in she only kills people in A Feast for Crows, and all four were monstrous war criminals who were trying to kill her. In the series Brienne is a much more violent character, remorselessly cutting down people even murdering the wounded Stannis Baratheon while deliberately speaking to him spitefully. The series also makes Brienne more bad-tempered, cynical and rude, rather then the rather naive but ultimately kind-hearted character in the books.
  • In A Clash of Kings, the handful of warriors who capture Winterfell under Theon's command openly show their disagreement with what they see as Theon's bad ideas, and don't hide that they don't like him much. However, they always loyally follow him, even choosing to stay and fight to the death with him after he offers them the opportunity to flee. Their counterparts in Season 2 of the show, however, mock and ridicule Theon, blatantly ignore his orders, and betray him the first chance they get.
  • In the same book, the initial mission given to Theon by his father (which Theon deviates from in order to capture Winterfell) as part of the Ironborn invasion of the North is still a pretty significant one - Theon merely feels marginalised from the operation because it is a less important mission than that given to his sister Asha. In the show, Theon really is given a pointless and irrelevant mission largely to get him out of the way.
  • In the books, Oberyn Martell's bisexuality is an unconfirmed rumour, albeit a very likely one - there is no hard evidence of him showing romantic or sexual interest in men. In the show, Oberyn is completely open about being bisexual, and his interest in men is widely acknowledged.
  • Tyrion Lannister gets a Sympathetic P.O.V. and has quite a few Pet the Dog moments but is still a rather sleazy hedonist who performs very morally questionable acts (such as having a singer murdered to cover up his affair). The series gives him a lot of Adaptational Heroism, playing up his nicer aspects such as care towards those who are looked down on in society, and make his actions less morally ambiguous, along with removing other unpleasant qualities such as his sexism and classism, Tyrion's use of whores being played more sympathetically and often in a more amusing sense. As a direct result it becomes much more frequent and casual, and is presented as something he does for fun instead of self-loathing necessity. An example is when in a Volantis brothel in the TV show a whore offers Tyrion free sex after he is nice to her, but he turns it down because he feels it isn't right. In the books Tyrion in the Volantis brothel has sex with a miserable, down-beaten whore, even though he knows she doesn't have any choice in the matter, and even thinks how horrible what he's doing is.
  • Ramsay Bolton in the books is a sadistic thug who has a rightly earned reputation as a terrifying monster, but is rather inexperienced and incompetent in political and military matters. In the show, Ramsay is the main Northern antagonist, and so he becomes reasonably adept at political maneuvering and military command, which becomes rather implausible as the series continues with Ramsay despite being openly psychotic still commanding immense loyalty.
    • In the books, Ramsay's father says that Ramsay doesn't really know how to wield a sword, but just randomly and viciously hacks about in combat. In the show, Ramsay can defeat a gang of armed Ironborn warriors while not even wearing a shirt.
  • Edmure Tully's General Failure and Glory Hound tendencies are played up compared to the books, and few of his positive traits are even touched upon. Most notably, his victory at Stone Mill is turned into a Pyrrhic skirmish instead of part of defeating Tywin Lannister and Gregor Clegane in open battle.
  • Littlefinger is a prime example regarding his love for Sansa. In the books, Sansa is more of a tool for his goal of acquiring power, and any love he might have for her is more of Loving a Shadow (Littlefinger loved Catelyn, so with her not an option, her daughter is the best choice to roll with). The show turns it into one of his primary motivations instead, turning him into a power seeker who is motivated by some element of love instead of a Wild Card like the books.
  • Theon in the books is a character who is good at a long of things but his ego leads him to believe that he's great at them. His greatest delusions are not so much his abilities but actually be the justifications for his various evil acts, his culpability for them, and downplays how people around him would perceive his actions. In the show, he's got obvious delusions of grandeur even though the script treats him as a Butt-Monkey.
• Hannibal greatly plays up Hannibal Lecter's Lack of Empathy and his Manipulative Bastard tendencies while somewhat downplaying his famous Affably Evil personality. In the books, Lecter utterly baffled psychologists by being sincerely kind, polite and charming towards people he respected, yet utterly ruthless towards people he considered beneath him—to the point of viewing them as livestock. Mads Mikkelsen's interpretation doesn't lack charm, but he's generally more the latter than the former. Case in point: it's hard to imagine Anthony Hopkins saying something like "It's only cannibalism if we're equals".
• Played for laughs in the House episode "Two Stories". House relays the events of the past days with all his colleagues at one point being portrayed as gross exaggerations of their primary traits. While they all ignore the patient who is coughing up his lungs in front of them, Foreman is a dick who refuses to consider anyone's opinion but his own, Masters is a morally self-righteous shrill, Taub immediately proposes an extramarital affair to a pretty nurse he sees while Chase suggests a threesome to her.
• The main four characters of Kim's Convenience suffer from this in the transition from stage to small screen, particularly Mrs. Kim and Janet. This is likely a side effect of the storyline and character expansion needed for adapting a one-act play.
• LazyTown: Although Stephanie has always been a happy-go-lucky Cheerful Child, the earlier seasons tried to remedy this by giving her Naïve Everygirl and Deadpan Snarker moments and showing that she could be just as flawed as everyone else. After the show was revived for its third season, Stephanie's perkiness was taken to the point where there's seldom a moment where she's not incredibly bubbly, and most of her flaws disappeared.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: The cinematic trilogies put more focus on the Hobbit's pastoral, hedonistic lifestyle but also mentions that they can be sneaky when they chose to be. While the Harfoots are shown being jolly, and having same food-loving tendencies, the series emphasizes on their stealth being their defining trait. Their Establishing Character Moment is about how stealthy they can be.
• The Roots (2016) remake noticeably exaggerates the level of African cultural knowledge of later generations of the Kinte family relative to their book counterparts:
  • In the book, Kizzy learns only a handful of Mandinka words from her father Kunta, never really speaks the language, and can later remember only a few words to pass on to her own son George. In the 2016 series, Kizzy is brought up as fluently bilingual in both English and Mandinka, regularly speaks to her father in the latter, and is shown still able to speak it fluently well into her later life (long after she last had anyone else to speak it with).
    • While in both book and series Kunta remains a devout Muslim and strongly anti-Christian (as he sees Christianity as the masters' religion), in the book Kizzy is raised as a Christian from birth and remains one her entire life. In the series, by contrast, she is shown to inherit her father's anti-Christian sentiment and holds it throughout her life.
    • In the book, while Kunta does perform a traditional Mandinka baby naming ceremony for Kizzy after her birth, this is never repeated by later generations. In the series, while each generation remembers less and less of the ceremony, they do nevertheless remember it.
    • In the series, Kunta makes an African-style necklace of beads shortly after his arrival in America, which is passed down the generations. A similar process takes place with a song taught to Kunta by his mother back in Gambia (which is eventually adapted into a popular local folk tune by whites). Neither exists in the book.
  • With the exception of Tom Lea (who was already a harsh and crudely racist master in the books), all the Kinte family's owners are portrayed as more openly racist and antagonistic than their book counterparts.
    • Patricia Lea, however, goes in the opposite direction. Her few book appearances show her as more or less indifferent to the slaves' fates, but in the series her role is enhanced and she shows noticeable more care and kindness for Kizzy (who teaches her to read) and George than her husband.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation:
  • Data meets Samuel Clemens in "Time's Arrow". His portrayal is about as stereotypical as it gets, including making up actor Jerry Hardin in a fright wig and having him mention his famous characters like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn almost every other phrase.
  • For that matter, "Descent" has Data playing cards with Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking (the latter played by the man himself), and both Newton and Einstein are portrayed as stereotypes, with Einstein having the trademark wild hair and thick accent, and Newton referring to the apple being dropped on his head (which didn't actually happen in real life). Still, they were holodeck recreations, so maybe they were The Theme Park Version (given that Hawking was acting As Himself, we can assume some accuracy in his portrayal).

Tabletop Games

• Exalted has this as a game mechanic. During a Limit Break, a character will suffer from a brief period of insanity where one of their defining characteristics (Valor, Temperance, Conviction, or Compassion) is totally in control of their actions. Your character is a Technical Pacifist who sees one injustice too many? Nothing in your sight can be unjust without spectacularly aggressive intervention! Can't stand to see someone you love get hurt? Heroic BSoD! Were you a Knight Templar to start with? Well now you're all out Ax-Crazy!

Theater

• Les Misérables as compared to the original Les Misérables
  • It exaggerates the degree to which Inspector Javert is single-mindedly obsessed with capturing Jean Valjean (as opposed to single-mindedly obsessed with enforcing the law generally). This is in part due to a case of Pragmatic Adaptation. In the novel, after Valjean has to reveal himself to prevent the wrongful conviction of an Identical Stranger, he asks to be allowed to bring Cosette to Fantine before she dies, which is refused, at which time he allows himself to be arrested. He then escapes, only to be quickly recaptured and confined to a ship, wherein he is believed to have drowned following his rescue of a sailor. It is only after this, that he goes to rescue Cosette. The musical simplifies this by having it that when Valjean's request to fetch Cosette is refused, he simply knocks Javert out and flees, which means that unlike in the novel, in the intervening years, Javert knows Valjean is alive, and is thus obsessed with capturing him.
  • The musical also amps up Eponine's unrequited love for Marius and tends not to highlight everything else about her character, although the numbers "Castle on a Cloud" (where she has no lines, but is shown as a well dressed little girl) and "The Robbery" (where her older self is introduced as a rag-clad street urchin helping her parents steal to survive) do provide a contrast between her pampered childhood life and her poor teenage life.
• Shakespeare used this to great effect in Troilus and Cressida, basing his version of The Trojan War around Chaucer's in-between-scenes story about the titular characters. Ulysses is a deceitful blowhard who talks too much and is obsessed with his own cleverness; Ajax (the one who didn't offend the gods) is a musclebound dolt; Achilles is even more of a jerk than his Homer-penned counterpart; and Cressida's uncle Pandarus is so flamboyant that modern performances often portray him as a drag queen. A lot of these exaggerations make the play far more entertaining, as it is essentially a cynical deconstruction of the tired ground of the Trojan War.
• Wicked: The musical puts more emphasis on Glinda being a Dumb Blonde early in the series compared to the original book.

Video Games

• A3 has a complicated case with Homare Arisugawa. In the original and the CN/TW version of the game, Homare's speech is formal and direct although he plays with words and metaphors sometimes. Very rarely, Homare uses Gratuitous French in these versions. However, the EN localization takes these wordplays, metaphors, and Gratuitous French up to eleven, resulting in him being very verbose, often unnecessarily. He also tends to use "dear" before addressing others, causing him to sound more poetic, affectionate, and flamboyant in EN localization.
  • On the other hand there is the inversion. Homare becomes Lighter and Softer in EN localization because of not only the added flamboyance and poetic flair drown the darker aspects of his character, but also how the wording of EN localization tones down his Heroic Self-Deprecation. The original alongside the CN/TW version has Homare describe himself as a defective product since birth and say that he is hated, whereas EN localization simply has him describe himself to be broken since birth and say that no one likes him.
• In the Disgaea games, you can recruit the protagonists of the past games as bonus characters. However, their personality is reduced to one or two of their traits tuned up. It's most noticeable with Laharl and Etna, the two main characters of the first game. Laharl was a the son of the previous Overlord, who started as a arrogant brat who hated love but matured into a responsible Overlord. Etna was his vassal, who was jealous of him for getting all the attention of his father, who she admired and saw as a paternal figure to herself, but as Laharl matured, she started to see that he was more than a spoiled brat and learned to respect him. In every subseqüent appearance, Laharl is a arrogant brat Overlord who wants to be the main character again to get more screentime and is an ass to his peers, while Etna is on a quest to gain more power to defeat Laharl, who she deeply dislikes. Etna also had two minor traits increased by a lot: she is complexed by her flat chest (a point raised in one line in the first game) and that she's a sweet tooth (also mentioned once in the first game, and became her difining trait in spinoffs, where she is always looking for some legendary candy).
• Everyone in Dissidia Final Fantasy is exaggerated to some degree from their original appearances to make individuals stand out from a mass of main heroes and main villains (...and Jecht). For example, much of Kuja's dialogue and attacks are based around a theatre motif because he showed a loving to stage arts once or twice in his game of origin. The prequel generally fixes this, with Kuja being the most obvious. Instead of a theatre-based brat obsessed with Zidane for whatever reason, his personality is based off his own at the end of the game he's in.
• In Final Fantasy VII spinoffs and in fan portrayals, Cloud's brooding tendencies tend to be central to his character. In the original game, he was a man of few words, but he only brooded during a handful of appropriate scenes.
• Grand Theft Auto V:
  • The Project Homecoming servers for the game's FiveM mod does this to some cars that, in vanilla GTAV, have handling quirks or whatnot. The versions of these cars, which are placed in the "Meme Vehicles" category, takes these quirks and take them up.
    • Vamos: In the vanilla game, this muscle car has excessive amounts of toe-out on the front wheels, which causes the steering to randomly wander, to the point that when one takes a constant radius corner in one direction, the steering might have a chance to randomly flip to the other direction for a split second. While Project Homecoming fixes this issue by adjusting the front toe values, the vanilla car's quirk spawned a meme version, The Sentient Vamos, which takes that trait up to eleven by, well, making the steering sentient and literally have a mind of its own.
    • Habanero: For crossover with relatively low ground clearance, it just likes to roll over quite a lot. The Habaneroll will practically roll on cue if you so much as take corners just a tiny bit too fast.
    • Tyrus: This GT1 racer has a quirk where weight shifts in the opposite direction of where it's supposed to go (ie. Inverted suspension forces). For example, when accelerating, weight shifts to the front rather to the back, and the car basically leans into turns. The Tyrus Effect takes the "Leaning into turns" aspect up to eleven, where the car, when taking a turn, will have the side opposite to where it's turning literally lift off the ground (eg. When turning left, the right side of the car leaves the ground).
    • Comet Safari: Both the near chase and far chase camera viewpoints are set further back than usual. The Comet Toofari edits the viewpoints for all the cameras except for the interior cam and puts them waaaaaaaay behind the car, Art of Rally style, and to enforce the use of this viewpoint, the car's windows and windshield have been made opaque so that it cannot be effectively driven from the interior cam.
• Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1:
  • Invoked In-Universe to hilarious effect with the fake CPUs that appear late in the game, which are exaggerated... to the point of incompetence. The fake Purple Heart searches for her objective in completely the wrong place, the fake Green Heart is so focused on video games it's completely harmless, and the fake White Heart is so much like her mild-mannered human form it blows its cover when the original start swearing. Only the fake Black Heart completes its stated object, by accident, in a failed attempt to outdo the original's ego.
  • This is actually inverted within the game itself. After Victory exaggerated the main characters defining traits (such as Neptune's laziness, Noire's haughtiness, Blanc's aggresivness, Vert's sister obsession, and Nepgear's lack of respect) to a contentious degree, many of their more extreme quirks were toned down for the remake, making them more likable while maintaining their iconic personalities.
• Occurs in the Lufia series. In the first game, Lufia & The Fortress of Doom, the prologue of the game features you playing as your heroic ancestor, Maxim, and his comrades 100 years in the past. These heroes speak much more formally than the main characters. Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals was actually a prequel featuring the entirety of Maxim's adventures, eventually ending in the same manner as the first game's prologue. However, in this game the characters who all spoke formally in the flashback sequence speak in much more contemporary language (except Artea, who speaks formally regardless.) This leads to a somewhat bizarre occurrence in the final dungeon where the party enacts a conversation that was fairly ominous in the first game, but actually sounds somewhat silly in the breezier language of the prequel. Given that the events of the prequel are written as a heroic tale in the first game, it's possible that they were written much more seriously by the tale's author.
• Next Level Games took the National Stereotypes of the previous Punch-Out!! games and ran with them to the extreme for the Wii version. Where before their personalities were only communicated through text and a few simple gestures, the Wii game has all the boxers feature hammy voice acting and ridiculous stereotypical antics. Notably, Disco Kid was the result of Kid Quick becoming so exaggerated that the producers made him a separate character. Also, King Hippo at least communicated in ordinary sentences in the NES game, while he only grunts in the Wii version.
• Spyro Reignited Trilogy:
  • Elora's implied crush on Spyro is given more emphasis in the remakes.
  • Hunter was always a bit of a Totally Radical fella but the remakes amp up this part of his character. His voice and personality are more "comedic skater dude" than before.
  • Bianca is made shyer and more awkward than she was in the original Spyro: Year of the Dragon. She was insecure in the original game, but it was less apparent early on.
  • The Sorceress' campy behavior is ramped up, making her less intimidating but more like an abusive Parental Substitute to Bianca.
• Super Robot Wars games often dial up a particular eccentricity of a character for the sake of a crossover gag. Notable examples:
  • Super Robot Wars V plays up Athrun Zala's status as a Chick Magnet by having nearly every girl he meets start crushing on him, including and in fact especially the lesbians from Cross Ange.
  • Super Robot Wars X takes Exev making a single comment telling one of his subordinates to remove a drill from a robot they were designing, something meant to showcase that Exev was a serious villain without the comedy of Might Gaine's other antagonists and followed by an Ironic Echo when that same drill is later used to kill him, and exaggerates it into a pathological hatred of all things drill-related. Since Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is in the game, Exev has plenty to complain about.
• Touhou Project's fandom has a tendency to take a single aspect of a character and run it into the ground. The worst part is that some characters get multiple flanderized versions, depending on which part of Fanon you listen to. For example, Flandre is canonically difficult to communicate with because she's a bit nuts, but depending on where you look, fans portray her as either a walking ball of moe or an extremely psychotic and violent girl.
• Inverted in Yakuza 0, where the Ax-Crazy Blood Knight Goro Majima is suddenly far more proper and subdued, even wearing a fancy suit. The rest of the game chronicles his Start of Darkness as the Mad Dog of Shimano starts to leak through more and more.

Visual Novels

• Saber in Fate/stay night is someone who enjoys food a great deal and eats a surprising amount for her size, about five feet tall, and weighing less than 100lbs. That's comparable to Shirou and probably slightly more, but less than Sakura, who eats twice as much as a normal person and tries to hide it. However, in the anime adaptation people stop and stare as she eats as much as any two or three of them and does so with extreme speed. Possibly the best way they could show how important food is to her within the time frame available.
• Tsukihime:
  • Kohaku is a gigantic woobie who also sets up a pretty damn impressive Batman Gambit against the Tohno family. Kagetsu Tohya and Melty Blood tend to discard the woobie aspect of her character in favor of portraying her as a cheerfully plotting psychopath with a Shiki obsession who doesn't seem to care about masking her goals.
  • Akiha started with 'You don't mind that I have small breasts... do you?' and nothing more. But the fans and the sort-of sequels Kagetsu Tohya and Melty Blood ran with it until she went from Saber's breast size and a little insecure to completely flat and willing to turn you over to Kohaku over comments made about her chest. Which is, of course, much funnier.

Web Animation

• RWBY Chibi takes a lot of the characteristics of the main characters and turns them up quite a bit. Ruby's a hyperactive child, Weiss' snooty personality reaches Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense levels, Yang and Blake takes Les Yay to whole new teasing levels, and the villains are card-carrying evil hams.
• YouTube Poop is all about this. For example, the King from The Legend of Zelda CD-i Games is always portrayed as an always-hungry glutton for dinner solely for saying "I wonder what's for dinner" in Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon.

Webcomics

• In The Last Days of FOXHOUND, (about the lives of the Quirky Mini Boss Squad from Metal Gear Solid) the personalities of virtually all the characters are moderate flanderizations of the originals. At first this is played for laughs, later it mixes with real Character Development.
• Homestuck:
  • Invoked. Caliborn could be interpreted as something like an exaggerated version of Karkat. Where Karkat is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, Caliborn is a Comedic Sociopath. Where Karkat has a soft spot for romcoms and romance, Caliborn gets a perverse sexual pleasure out of ordinary non-sexual shows of romantic affection such as hugging. Where Karkat is a pretty terrible artist, Caliborn is so impossibly bad that a pile of coloured scribbles◊ is what passes for a drawing in his eyes. Even Caliborn's one-sided relationship with Dirk could be seen to hark back to Karkat's unrequited blackrom interest in John. The theory makes even more sense considering Caliborn and Karkat have similar text colors and the exact same blood color.
  • The Dancestors, full stop, Damara and Meenah are the only ones that don't seem to be exaggerated versions of their post-scratch counterparts, being pretty much polar opposites of Aradia and Feferi's personalities.
    • Rufioh is Tavros's lack-of self confidence and general Chick Magnet properties.
    • Mituna is Sollux's cryptic speeches and game references.
    • Kankri is Karkat's inability to shut up and self-consciousness about his blood color.
    • Meulin is Nepeta's shipping tendencies and cat puns.
    • Porrim is Kanaya's fashion obsession and status as Team Mom.
    • Latula is Terezi's fascination with "cool kids."
    • Aranea is Vriska's tendency to learn everything about a game and act in a morally divisive way.
    • Horuss is Equius's fascination with horses and mechanics.
    • Kurloz is Gamzee's religious fanaticism and clown obsession.
    • Cronus is Eridan's fascination with wizards and his tendency to focus on relationships.
• Learning with Manga! FGO: Artoria/Altria Pendragon in most Fate media has a cool and composed nature, albeit with times where her composure shatters. This manga portrays her as a Perpetual Frowner completely uninterested in everything around her to the point where she never speaks.
• Phil Foglio's Hotter and Sexier Guest Strip story in Sluggy Freelance, in a way that borders on Comedic Sociopathy. The original Torg may be an Innocently Insensitive stereotypical man, but it seems rather much that, swapped into his female friend's body, he would abuse it by posing publicly as a lingerie model.^note This is also ironic in that XXXenophile, one of Foglio's own comics that's far more sexual, goes out of its way not to have anything look nonconsensual even while it involves weirder fantasies than this. Meanwhile, Zoë may have a bit of a different side that tries to get through her outer insecurity, and problems with money — it's even shown later that she's willing to kind of sell out to try to get a chance at a career — but her embracing a lucrative career as a somewhat ridiculous web lingerie model is, again, a bit much. And while Gwynn is more cynical than Zoë, she wouldn't just be blasé about the whole thing. (Two character appearances get the equivalent exaggeration treatment: the original Zoë is not built like Lara Croft and then some, and even though Gwynn is slim and has big glasses, she'd be furious to see her depiction as a stick figure in loose clothing.)

Web Original

• A number of LEGO Island characters were exaggerated when they appeared in Dino Attack RPG:
  • A minor note in the LEGO Island Comic Adventures stated that the Brickster wished to be as evil as Evil Ogel. In Dino Attack RPG, the Brickster has been exaggerated to the point of being Ogel's self-proclaimed #1 fanboy.
  • Especially in Atton Rand and imperial officer's posts, Enter and Return have been exaggerated to the point that the only jokes they are capable of are variations of their "stretcher, megaphone, shark, tree, umbrella, and mailbox" sketch. In some other peoples' posts, their humor extends a little farther (for example, in one of PeabodySam's posts, they were arguing about the color of their shirts), but for the most part, we only hear jokes about bringing a shark.
  • In the non-canon scene where Papa Brickolini was arrested by the Nick Brick, the Brickolinis were exaggerated heavily. In the original games, the Brickolinis spoke with a light Italian accent and accidentally freed the Brickster twice (and the second time, they were smart enough to try to prevent it from happening again). In this scene, the Brickolinis' Italian accents were exaggerated, and the two chefs were depicted as completely oblivious as they incompetently freed the Brickster again and again over the years by constantly sending super-spicy pizzas to the jail, even after what happened the first two times.
• Ivy, the Gadgeteer Genius from Noob, has Mad Bomber on her sheet for a good reason as bombs seem to be all she ever makes. However, this got mostly cemented in the webseries and comic versions. The novel in which her character was introduced had her build a device that definitely was not a bomb, thus hinting to a vaster domain of expertise.
• ''The Paul Powers Show': The Who Would Win episodes all have a special guest character from some unrelated cartoon, comic book, or video game. In every case, they comedically exaggerated versions of their cannon selves.
• In We Are Our Avatars, there is Young Lordgenome. Because Etheru did not know much about Young Lordgenome, he used several parts of the eighth Parallel Works Video, such as being with animals and no humans in sight as reference. Thus, Lordgenome's personality is dominated by his loneliness and love of animals.)
• There is a Tumblr blog, Shit the Signs Say, that focuses on doing this for each of the twelve signs of the zodiac.
• Yugioh The Abridged Series: Given that it's the progenitor of The Abridged Series genre where exaggerating character's traits for parody is the norm, this is to be expected. However, Abridged Seto Kaiba is notable because he's only slightly more exaggerated than one might think if they never watched the original show. Whether it be the original manga, Japanese anime, or 4Kids Entertainment dub, Kaiba really is that snarky, over-the-top, and melodramatic.

Western Animation

• In The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, Sheen was hyperactive, had a short attention span, and was socially inept, but he was still loyal to his friends. Planet Sheen ramps up his selfishness and stupidity to Master Shake levels while throwing all of his positive traits out the window.
• In Disney's Aladdin films (the first and third one anyway) The Genie is a cartoonish, but highly intelligent and formidable ally. In Aladdin: The Series he is reduced to a playful, silly, and just plain weird well-meaning buffoon who often does as much harm as he does good. This may have been sneakiness/laziness on the part of the writers — if the Genie is magical, smart and free to use his magic to solve problems and fight bad guys, then who needs Aladdin? Also, Genie is a living Deus ex Machina. If he were smart enough to use his powers to just defeat conflict by himself, what would the writers do with the other twenty-nine minutes of the episode?
• The Ember Island Players from Avatar: The Last Airbender specialize in this trope, which we get to see in their theatrical version of Team Avatar's adventures. For example:
  • Aang is one of the younger and more energetic members of Team Avatar, and is somewhat less manly than Sokka, the other male member. In the play, he gets portrayed as a mischievous Perpetual Smiler, but the worst part is that the actor playing him is a woman in a bald cap (a Shout-Out to how Peter Pan has traditionally been played by a woman on stage).
  • Katara is the Team Mom, and she often manages to lift her friends' spirits with motivational speeches. So she gets portrayed as a fat, matronly woman who's always tearfully preaching about hope. She also seems to have more of an open attraction to bad boys, especially Jet and Zuko.
  • Toph, a tomboyish Little Miss Badass, is played by a huge muscleman. She actually thinks that's kinda cool, though.
  • Sokka goes from being a goofy but still valuable team member with surprising tactical skill to being nothing more than the "meat and lame jokes" Plucky Comic Relief. His relationship with Yue is particularly bad, though it still moves Sokka to tears.
    Suki: [giggles] You never told me you made out with the Moon Spirit!
    Sokka: [teary-eyed] Shhh! I'm trying to watch.
  • Also, to be fair, Sokka deliberately gives his actor some jokes to say, because he thinks the jokes in the actual play aren't funny enough.
  • Zuko's quest to regain his father's approval, which he's gotten over already by this point, becomes him going around shouting "HONOR!!" all the time, his Important Haircut (or perhaps lack of haircut) got exaggerated to the point where his hair is flowing down to his shoulders.
• Ben 10: Ben Tennyson, as portrayed on the original show, is mischevious, immature, impulsive, and a generally justified case of Idiot Hero — he is 10 years old, after all. In Alien Force, he is now fifteen, and becomes smarter and more serious and while not without a sense of humor is not very humorous at all. After the fans complained about him not having any personality, writers did all they could to bring back his original personality, gradually flanderizing him. By Ben 10: Omniverse, he pretty much Took a Level in Dumbass, even though he is 16 years old at this point and has several years of experience with being a hero. He also becomes an overly clumsy Destructive Savior and an immature Leeroy Jenkins with a major ego problem.
• DC Super Hero Girls 2019: Wonder Woman's love for ice cream. When she first tried it out in the comics she was cheerful to the point of being accidentally threatening to the vendor, while here, she's crazy for it, taking her friends' ice cream after scarfing down hers, declaring it better than ambrosia in Elysium, and wanting to go to the ice cream parlor after every victory.
• DuckTales (2017): In DuckTales (1987), Launchpad was ditzy, but still relatively composed, brave and competent. Here he's... out there, to the point where Mrs. Beakley angrily calls him a Manchild and even the kids can't take him seriously.
• In the very first episodes after The Fairly OddParents! became its own series, after just being one feature of an anthology series, Cosmo turned from being a bit quirky and silly, but largely intelligent and reliable, to being "two halves of a whole idiot" with Wanda, until mid-Season 2 turns him into a complete idiot. To parallel the change, his voice drastically went from suave and somewhat charming to high-pitched and prone to squealing sometime around the fourth season. Strangely, even that level of idiocy apparently wasn't enough, and the later Flanderization, which started in Season 6, made him even dumber.
• Inspector Gadget went from a bumbling but somewhat effective agent with the occasional help of Penny and Brain in the original pilot to an Inspector Oblivious that is almost completely reliant on his Hyper Competent Sidekicks doing all the work for him. In spin-offs such as Gadget and the Gadgetinis this is exaggerated to the point of being excessively Too Dumb to Live.
• In Making Fiends, Charlotte is a lot less intelligent and more optimistic in Nickelodeon's TV series than in the web series. For example, in the web series she would have a blank expression on her face and sometimes say, "Huh?" if she heard or saw something strange or frightening. She would try to change the topic, find something positive about it, or just ignore it. In the TV series, she responds, "Yippee!" to Vendetta's death threats and has absolutely no sense of logic.
• While Blossom was Wise Beyond Their Years and was an A+ student in the the original, the The Powerpuff Girls (2016) reboot puts more emphasis on it, to the point where her self-worth seems to revolve around her grades and one of her superpowers involves her creating a stapler-looking projection. Blossom also has more mysophobic tendencies than she originally did.
• Scooby-Doo: All three of the other members of Mystery Inc. tend to undergo this in revival medias, since the original series revolved the formula more around Scooby and Shaggy's comedy, the others were left with little to behold outside trying to solve the mystery normally, thus they had what few quirks they had originally amped up so as to allow stories to give them more key focus:
  • Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated: Fred was always the one to build the traps for the Monster of the Week; this incarnation of Fred is literally obsessed with traps. He reads Traps Illustrated magazine, has said, "For trap's sake!" at least once, named his teddy bear Mr. Trapples, and can't think of anything beyond making new traps. In several other interpretations such as A Pup Named Scooby-Doo and What's New, Scooby-Doo? he is also more ditzy and oblivious; in the original series he was bumbling but only as much as the others in Mystery Inc. (if somewhat ineffective as a leader).
  • In Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, Velma is quiet compared to the others, but she still has a fair amount of dialogue, most often explaining things. In A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, she's so quiet that on some occasions, when she does speak, one of her friends says, "Velma spoke!".
  • Daphne is sometimes shown primping or shopping for clothes, and it's implied she's the richest of the gang. In A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, she's nearly obsessed with clothes, and is so rich she lives in a mansion with a butler.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • The DiC cartoons were guilty of this, particularly SatAM:
    • Sonic's Mascot with Attitude trait and arrogance were exaggerated to the point of parody, to the point other characters would complain about him acting too full of himself during serious moments. Similarly, his impulsiveness was taken up to eleven, making him into a Book Dumb Idiot Hero — particularly in the second season, where he had a penchant to screw up based on said trait on a regular basis. His Sonic Underground characterization was guilty of similar exaggerations, albeit to a considerably lesser extent.
    • Tails' role as Sonic's more inexperienced, younger sidekick was exaggerated to the point of getting demoted to a Non-Action Guy and occasional Tag Along Kid. Toward the tail end of the series he joins the Freedom Fighters and becomes more useful, but never reaches his game counterpart's level of competency and fighting capabilities. He fared a bit better in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, where he would always accompany Sonic and aid him in any way he could, but would almost as often fall into the role of Distressed Dude.
    • When Sonic 1 was localized, Dr. Eggman/Robotnik got turned into a more serious and threatening-looking villain in an example of American Kirby Is Hardcore. Then SatAM took it up to eleven, giving him an even more intimidating design, an edgier personality devoid of any affableness and whimsicality, and having him take over the world before the series began. On the other end of the spectrum, the second season and Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog gave him plenty of Butt-Monkey moments and reimagined him with an even more comical personality that his game counterpart, some episodes making him outright incompetent.
  • Sonic Boom: Dr. Eggman in most continuities is both Affably Evil and Laughably Evil, but still smart and vile enough to be a threat to the heroes. In this show, Eggman's friendly and silly aspects are played up such that he is an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain whose lack of common sense and his extra standards are often his own undoing, and his goal is changed from world-domination with a personal amusement park as the capital to the amusement park being his endgoal, something the cast points out wouldn't be all that bad (even if he insists that it is diabolical).
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
  • Turtles Forever: The 1987 turtles were undeniably goofy, due to the tone of the show (and cartoons in that era in general), but here they're all wisecracking goofballs with no sense of urgency who regularly break the fourth wall, are totally obsessed with pizza, and give inappropriate noogies. The Prime turtles also heavily exaggerate the grim and gritty tone of the Mirage comics. Both downplay the individual characterizations of each turtle, as well. Of course, three identical sets of turtles just wouldn't be the same, would it?
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): One of the Shredder's primary motivations was always revenge on Hamato Yoshi no matter what continuity, but this one takes it to a new level. Shredder is utterly obsessed with getting revenge on Yoshi/Splinter, to the extent that he's perfectly willing to help bring about The End of the World as We Know It as long as he can achieve it.
• When Thomas & Friends diverted into original stories, many of the original characters from The Railway Series underwent exaggeration, most of which only elevated as the show went on and Flanderization kicked in:
  • Gordon and James in particular became exaggeratedly vain and hammy, originally just the arrogant big engines of the main line.
  • Edward and Toby actually did have odd insecure moments in the original novels, albeit very subtle and rare (eg. Edward being downtrodden by the bullying of the other engines, or Toby being meek towards travelling without Henrietta) with them usually playing the Only Sane Man. Later writers of the TV series seemed to latch onto these for token flaws they could utilize for limelight episodes, and by the time of the CGI transition, Edward is an Extreme Doormat and Toby is a Lovable Coward.
• Total DramaRama: Between the various Adaptation Personality Changes, several characters are put through this. Gwen's Goth and loner qualities are exaggerated to the point where she transforms from a Perky Goth to a Creepy Child; Bridgette's very kind and sweet Nice Girl personality is cranked to unimaginable levels; Leshawna's proud and feisty attitude gets to the point of her being a straight-up jerkass; and Cody's childish tendencies are amped up.
• The W.I.T.C.H. cartoon exaggerates Taranee's Cowardly Lion tendencies from the comic.
• Nightwing has a reputation in the fandom for being a womanizer, but in the actual comics this isn't true. His romance escapades are usually kept to Starfire and Batgirl, with the occasional other woman. He's a Chick Magnet but doesn't actually date that many women. In Young Justice (2010) Nightwing has slept with Bette Kane and dated Batgirl, Zatanna, and Rocket (a good chunk of the women on his team). He's not even out of his teens in Invasion.
• Dina in It's Walky! is a shy, socially awkward girl who loves dinosaurs. All these attributes are ramped up in Dumbing of Age to the point that many fans read her as autistic.

Real Life

• Oda Nobunaga and Yagyu Munenori are probably two of Japan's Sengoku Jidai figures that suffers this trope greatly. Almost every fictional works featuring them depict them as bastardly villains. The reasoning for Nobunaga was due to his brutality as a warlord, especially the burning of numerous Buddhist temples critical of him and the slaughter of its inhabitants. Naturally, it's somewhat understandable how this might overshadow his brilliance as both a tactician and a businessman, how he revolutionized how wealth was counted, encouraged trade with Europe and other Asian nations, allowed Christian missionaries into Japan, made social reforms, etc. Though oddly enough, the brutality of most other warlords of the era seems to be less remembered. Munenori suffers this due to the fact that he was a shrewd politician as well as a swordsman, and in fiction, political people are often evil, so depicting him as scheming and amoral has become standard. Even worse for Munenori is the fact that his son Yagyu Mitsuyoshi (both has attained the title 'Jubei') is one of the most romanticized samurai of all time and a hero to the people, (who was known to disdain politics and court functions) so many authors feel the need to use Munenori as an Evil Counterpart to Mitsuyoshi. If a writer really wants to have Munenori Kick the Dog, then they cite the almost certainly untrue story that Mitsuyoshi lost an eye during his life and make Munenori the culprit. (There are softer versions where it was an accident, a strike gone wild in a sparring session, but the most popular and 'dramatic' versions have Munenori doing it on purpose because he's either jealous of his son's potential or he wants to teach Mitsuyoshi a lesson not to mess with him). Also, Munenori is often set up as an antagonist to another legendary and heroic swordsman that has no relationship with him: Miyamoto Musashi. Which he does entirely with underhanded tactics too. Munenori must have rolled over in his grave a few times at some of these depictions.
  • Not to mention that in Real Life, according to sourced quotes in The Other Wiki, Munenori cited stuffs that clearly defies evil. And yet, those who follows his Flanderization trend ignore them all for the sake of evilness, the very thing he defies in real life. Munenori was Demoted to Extra.
  • If you actually look at the manuals written by the two samurai, Musashi is revealed as more than a bit of a jerkass himself. He made his living by what engaging in what amounts to mutual and simultaneous acts of attempted murder, and never bathed or performed other hygeinic acts. "The Book of Five Rings" devotes an entire section ("the Wind Scroll") to criticizing all styles not his own, and he claimed that his mastery of a single area of expertise allowed him to extrapolate that skill towards mastery of all other skills and disciplines. By contrast, Munenori titled his own book "the Life Giving Sword," and filled it with exhortations of using the sword to only fight evil, and so defending the good, as well as the importance of a ruler being devoted to the common people under his rule and not simply the aristocracy. Simply put, Munenori was the good guy who devoted himself to the betterment of his country and the service of his lord, while Musashi was the smelly little bastard who ran around killing people for profit.
• A less more "demonization" or "villainization" example of that is the son of Takeda Shingen, Takeda Katsuyori. While he eventually causes the downfall of the clan, the man was actually a decent, competent general in battlefield. In fact, when Shingen couldn't take a certain castle from the Tokugawa, Katsuyori eventually took it. Unfortunately, these days, he's just remembered as the cause of the Takeda's collapse and as a hotheaded idiot, when the man was merely more capable as a general than a daimyo.
• Beforehand, there's also the daimyo Imagawa Yoshimoto. This might come as a surprise, but before Okehazama, Yoshimoto was downright terrifying as a daimyo, he's competent, held the Imagawa territory pretty good, be involved with the three-way Alliance with Takeda and Hojo, and built the clan nicely into a powerful one that looked like would be on the way to reach the capital. But because of Okehazama and his death by Oda Nobunaga's much smaller force, that's where everything goes down, this defeat is much more exaggerated and prominent in Yoshimoto's portrayal, turning him into more or less a buffoon serving as a first stage boss who might make you wonder 'How the hell is he supposed to be a competent daimyo in the first place?' (Best way to alleviate this is to say that he's Obfuscating Stupidity)
• Similar to the Japanese examples above, the classic Chinese pseudo-historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms flanderizes many, many of its characters into over-the-top superheroes, while others are portrayed as moustache-twirling villains.
  • The "three brothers" of the Shu kingdom (Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei) are the closest thing the story has to protagonists, and thus can do no wrong (with a couple of notable, even fatal, exceptions), while the Wei kingdom are flanderized into the Bad Guys and the Wu kingdom are mostly ineffectual in the long term, despite possessing many excellent generals. Perhaps the most notable flanderizing going on other than the Brothers' is as follows;
  • Lu Bu's combat prowess is exaggerated to the point of near invincibility, and entire armies flee from the sight of him. Seems to fade as the story goes on though, and his death is as anticlimactic as it comes; both Cao Cao and Liu Bei agree that the captured Lu Bu is too treacherous to be allowed to live, and he's simply hanged after begging for his life. The wuss.
  • Zhuge Liang's tactical genius, to the point that he comes off as somewhere between a wizard and a saint, performs several acts that are only plausible if one considers him to have magical powers (besides his practical omniscience), and even manages to humiliate and terrify his Wei rival posthumously.
• Willie Nelson is arguably the most important figure in country music history. You name it: songwriting, singing, breaking free of the Nashville establishment: he helped change the rules forever. He did the impossible and bridged the gap between hippies and rednecks. He expanded the musical vocabulary of country by throwing in everything from rock to The Great American Songbook...oh, and he likes to smoke pot. Unfortunately, that fact has taken over his public persona to the extent that his name has almost become a drug-humor punchline in and of itself. Nelson himself didn't help this part, doing things like giving exclusive interviews to High Times magazine and recording a reggae album, and it's admirable for someone of his stature to be so open about it, but still, he's about a step or two away from Cheech & Chong now.
• General George Armstrong Custer has been regularly portrayed as a Leeroy Jenkins, who charges into battle without second thought. He is considered as a reckless and incompetent leader who favored his looks over tactics. However Custer was pretty much a decent leader, and is respected by his men. His cavalry charge tactics were indeed effective, one of his best achievements was his participation at Gettysburg, his cavalry stopped Confederate reinforcements from supporting Pickett's Charge, and ensured the Unions victory. However this has been over shadowed by his last stand at Little Big Horn.
  
  Even at Little Big Horn, Custer followed a strategy (divide his force and attack an Indian camp from multiple directions) that had worked brilliantly in the Washita Campaign of 1868. Of course, at LBH Custer faced a 2,000-man Indian army rather than an Indian village of mostly women and children. Probably stupidity more than simple recklessness. Custer was also a victim of bad information — the people who ran the reservations of the time had either vastly inflated the number of people living in them, or ignored it when they simply walked away, in both cases so they could keep receiving money for their "charges" while skimming off the top. Custer, operating under the numbers from these reports, justifiably believed that it was impossible for there to be that many Indians out there. The discrepancy ended up being deadly.
• Most Elvis Presley impersonators go for the him being fat and wearing leisure suits and sunglasses rather than the attractive well-dressed man he was in the 50s and 60s.
• Michael Jackson is often portrayed as a naïve, shy Manchild. But he was also a shrewd business man, which you would expect from someone who managed to make the best-selling album of all time.
• Billy the Kid: He is believed to have been a notorious outlaw who murdered many people in cold blood, yet in reality his body count is not higher than four and some even contest that most of it was self defense. Much of his life has been mythologized after his death.
• Mata Hari: Often portrayed as a masterful spy who went to bed with every man she met in order to obtain military secrets. In reality this myth was fabricated by her bosses so that the Germans, who had captured her, would focus their attention on her instead of their other better and more professional spies.
• This trope also happens with a lot of people who are demonized by the press and media, even actual criminals and dictators. They are generally painted as diabolical inhuman beings, while in reality most of them just happened to come from bad backgrounds and were either forced to go into crime out of necessity or because they felt frustrated and wanted to commit revenge on innocent people. Especially dictators are often believed to be insane or stupid, while many of them are smart enough to keep control over their power and play upon the public perception, so that they can get away with doing a lot more things. A good example is Idi Amin, who acted as if he was a dumb clown, but in reality was a brutal and ruthless dictator who ordered many people to be murdered. It took a long time before the outside world realized he was far more dangerous than he appeared.
• Richard III, probably the poster boy for Historical Villain Upgrade. In the famous Shakespeare play of him, he is portrayed as a monstrous psychopath who gleefully tells the audience he plans to be a villain and is hideously deformed. While recent research shows Richard had scoliosis, the hunchback would not have been as noticeable as most productions portray it. While Richard did usurp the throne from his nephew, it is very unlikely he murdered so many of the other claimants and many historians think he acted due to difficult circumstances and felt the Queen's family was plotting to remove him from power (which they probably were). Another aspect is the death of his older brother George. While the play shows him engineering their execution, contemporary sources claim one of the reasons Richard didn't like the Queen's family was because he blamed them for George's death. And anti-Richard adaptations often leave out the fact George was a smug jerk who continually plotted against his older brother Edward IV, meaning they had good reason not to trust him.
• Marlene Dietrich often has her alleged self-centeredness and especially promiscuity exaggerated, in part due to a book written about her by her daughter (Maria Riva) which portrays her in an extremely negative light. Considering the book makes a lot of far fetched claims and contradicts what other people who knew her say, it's probably best to take it with a mine of salt.
• Walt Disney was a staunch supporter of the Republican Party and anti-Communist causes, but the image of him as a mean-spirited right-wing agitator who hated Jews is largely due to Mark Eliot's 1994 biography Walt Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince, which has been criticized by practically everyone who either knew Disney, or has studied his life, as a screed in which Eliot threw in every negative rumor about Disney he could find, without bothering to confirm anything.^note Eliot deserves a small bit of credit for refuting the Human Popsicle myth about Disney, though The anti-Semitic accusations are especially odd, since Disney gladly received an award from the B'nai Brith organization in 1955. Much of his negative reputation stems from Disney's involvement in the rather extreme Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals group, but he later distanced himself from them.
• Queen Victoria's prudishness tends to be greatly exaggerated: Not only did she propose to her husband (which was pretty much unheard of in those days) she had a total of nine children, suggesting that she did, in fact, enjoy sex. Her reputation for having No Sense of Humor is also mostly fiction, according to most accounts she acutally did have a pretty good sense of humor and would even laugh at jokes most people found shocking a lot of the time.

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