Star Wars characters have had a lot of unfairly exaggerated moments:
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Prequel Trilogy
Attack of the Clones
- Anakin dislikes sand and loves Naboo because it's not sand. He only says that once and it’s heavily implied that it’s because it reminds him of his time as a slave on Tatooine, but people make it out like he has a pathological hatred of sand.
Revenge of the Sith
- Palpatine only declared himself "the Senate" exactly once, yet he will always be remembered with the Fan Nickname "The Senate".
Original Trilogy
- The Stormtroopers. Only four humans, one Wookiee, and two droids are shown to survive more than one firefight with the Stormtroopers, yet the fandom continuously depicts them as unable to hit the broad side of the Death Star. Return of the Jedi is the most responsible for this happening due to portraying the Imperial Stormtroopers as incompetent as possible when they faced off against the Ewoks.
- The Original Trilogy as a whole is subject to many incest jokes due to how the Luke and Leia relationship played out over the course of the three theatrical films. Mostly due to the fact that the writers didn't know that Luke and Leia were supposed to be brother and sister by the time of the third theatrical film Return of the Jedi.
- At first, Luke's "attraction" to Leia is confined mostly to A New Hope, and Splinter of the Mind's Eye in the Expanded Universe. It never goes anywhere, but in the eye of popular culture he will always be the butt of jokes related to incest. It's not helped by the fact that, in the theatrical film as shot, they aren't supposed to be related.
- Leia kissed Luke precisely twice, once on the cheek for luck and once on the lips specifically to make a point to Han. There is nothing particularly sexual between them, but some people seem to genuinely believe they were screwing like incestuous bunnies before Return of the Jedi. Wishful thinking? Squick! The other thing that people conveniently forget is that neither Luke nor Leia learned they were brother and sister until this theatrical film. Although, it's not helped by Leia telling Han in Return of the Jedi that "somehow, [she] always knew" that Luke was her brother via the Force.
- Parodies of Star Wars, and even some EU material, often depict Darth Vader as strangling his subordinates at the drop of a hat, often for extremely trivial reasons. In the movies, he only ever executes two officers like this, and while it's still pretty Disproportionate Retribution, the people he strangled actually did fail him in pretty big ways (and in one case, it's implied that Admiral Ozzel made a habit off making such mistakes and generally not following orders right).
A New Hope
- While Darth Vader has done a lot of awful things, he had only a peripheral role at most in the destruction of Alderaan; that was all on Tarkin.
- Because Luke didn't immediately jump at the call and had a particularly whiny delivery of "But I was going into Tosche Station to pick up some power converters!", he sometimes gets characterized by fans as being forever whiny. Those fans miss out on the awesome development Luke undergoes all through the original trilogy.
- Post-editing, people went from thinking of Greedo as simply a random bounty hunter that Han got the drop on to a Butt-Monkey to so incompetent that he couldn't hit someone literally just across the table from him. Even a card game gave him the special ability to attack first, where he dies instantly if it fails - his card is the only one in the game that can kill itself like that.
- Chewbacca never receiving a medal is a sore spot for many of his fans who feel that he was just as important as Han when it came to helping the Rebels with the destruction of the Death Star.
The Empire Strikes Back
- Lando is perpetually known for betraying Han and the others in Cloud City despite the fact that he did so to protect the city from the Empire, orchestrated their escape from the city when the Empire "altered" the deal, hid in Jabba's palace undercover to rescue a frozen Han, and piloted the Millennium Falcon into the reconstructed Death Star at the Battle of Endor. Lampshaded on an episode of Robot Chicken, where Billy Dee Williams is approached about the subject and quickly gets into a shouting match explaining Lando's actions and that his character didn't end at "betrayed Han", even coming up to say more in The Stinger. Various sources claim that Billy Dee Williams really will defend Lando's actions at length, in the very same way that he does in the sketch. Spaced referenced this as well with the phrase "You Lando!" being Tim's euphemism for traitor.
- Lando has never lived down the incident with the Millennium Falcon's hyperdrive, either, simply because he was under the impression that his mechanics would fix it rather than the Imperials sabotaging it further. Every further appearance of Lando in the old Expanded Universe showed that nothing he attempted to pilot would work as intended, with "It's not my fault!" turning from an Ironic Echo into Lando's catchphrase. Somehow, Han doesn't get any flak for the fact that the Falcon was acting up like this for the entire movie.
Return of the Jedi
- Many modern days fans commonly agree and go about criticizing that the Ewoks defeated the more technologically advanced Empire with just sticks and stones. Despite many other persons and events at work, fans and viewers make it sound as if the Ewoks single-handedly handed the Empire their ass. In addition, they tend to ignore that some Ewoks had rather graphic death scenes courtesy of AT-ST.
- In fact a common complaint back when the movie was released was that more time was spent focusing on Ewok death scenes than the Emperor's defeat or the Death Star's destruction. People tend to forget that the Ewoks spend the first half of that battle being massacred, and they don't turn it around until Chewbacca commandeers an AT-ST and starts evening up the odds.
- Boba Fett, for all his badassery and awesome attire, will never live down a blind Han accidentally defeating him with a stick.
- Don't forget about Admiral Ackbar, who can detect TRAPS!. It's made worse by the fact that people tend to forget that Lando was the one who figured out it was a trap and Ackbar just labeled it so.
Sequel Trilogy
The Last Jedi
- Leia catches a lot of flack from Poe's fans for demoting him for getting so many fighters destroyed in the attack on the Fulminatrix, when if he hadn't destroyed the dreadnought, it would have quickly wiped out the Resistance fleet after they were tracked through hyperspace. Leaving aside the fact that both parties were arguably at fault for the loss of so many fighters — Leia for not recalling them under her own authority, and Poe for having them fly in a formation that caused most of them to be taken out by a freak accident — this ignores the fact that as soon as the First Order fleet emerges from hyperspace, Leia authorizes Poe to go out and attack them without a second thought. It's actually Holdo who insists on enforcing Poe's demotion after Leia is incapacitated, leaving the question open as to whether or not Leia would have recanted on her decision had she not been injured.
- Luke Skywalker will forever be remembered for wanting to murder his own nephew Ben, in contrast to his portrayal in the original trilogy was trying to save the people he cared about at all costs. Nevermind said save everyone mentality is why he considered doing it after sensing that "Snoke had already turned his heart. He would bring destruction and pain and death, and the end of everything I love because of what he will become", and it caused Luke to immediately stop and regret it before attempting it, and that Ben's recollection of his attempted murder which caused the backlash was exaggerated as him jumping to the wrong conclusion. Also Luke was just as unhappy about it as fans to the point his Fatal Flaw, and cause of controversial character change, was his being too afraid of similarly failing to fix it, those in-work to know about the moment were less upset about it than his unwillingness to act and set things right, and Luke realized his mistake and got over it retuning to his Ideal Hero characterization by the end of the movie. Fans also largely overlook Luke had a worse Moment of Weakness in Return of the Jedi coming closer to killing his father Darth Vader, snapping out only because Palpatine goaded him on (while ROTJ has more justifying context for the movement than TLJ, it's very rare fans bring this up when making their complaints).
- Rey for some reason wanting to hold hands with her best friend's maimer, her father figure's killer, and the man who violated her mind under torture... because she saw him shirtless once. Out of character as this is, Rey does learn that she is wrong about this in the film (especially as this was one of Snoke's intentions) and ends the story symbolically and literally shutting the door on their force connection.
The Rise of Skywalker
- After cheating death in Return of the Jedi and displaying a powerful Force Lightning storm upon his rejuvenation, Emperor Palpatine is immediately killed off when Rey deflects his Force Lightning back at him with two lightsabers. While it's implied that Rey is given strength from all the Jedi spirits to defeat the Sith Lord, the film makes it seem that the Rey only prevailed by calling upon a second lightsaber to push back the Force Lightning. Consequently, Palpatine is often portrayed by fans as someone who is easily defeated by anyone wielding more than one lightsaber, even if they have no Force powers like General Grievous.
Television
Star Wars: Rebels
- Detractors tend to never get pass Ezra's initial character summary and appearance as "Space Aladdin", usually as a jab at the "Disney-fication" of the Star Wars franchise, even though the series shows that he's much more than Aladdin inserted into the plot of Star Wars. It's often because said detractors have never actually watched the show.
- Ever asking about the villains in Rebels may lead to a downhill conversation about the heli-sabers used by the Inquisitors in "Twilight of the Apprentice", which was treated completely seriously. This is seem as turning them into jokes despite how genuinely capable and threatening they've been before, Word of God explaining it only works in Dark Side hotspots like Malachor, and it being only a minor part of the episode.
Expanded Universe
- Kyp Durron blowing up a star system killing "millions, perhaps billions," and being Easily Forgiven afterwards. Never mind that Kyp was under Sith ghost Exar Kun's influence, if not outright possession, such Kun's destruction caused Kyp to immediately realize his wrongdoing and surrender as well as him risking his life to make amends. Later works would have characters repeatedly bring this up.
