Basic Trope: A character is made more sympathetic in a different adaptation of a work.
- Straight: Emperor Evulz is the Big Bad of The Troper's Tale, with very few redeeming qualities. When The Movie comes out, he's given a Freudian Excuse which explains that he became a villain to avenge his deceased parents, and often shows signs of Even Evil Has Standards as he's frequently horrified by things that some of the other villains have done.
- Exaggerated:
- Adaptational Heroism
- Emperor Evulz was The Sociopath in the source material, but becomes an Anti-Villain in the movie.
- Downplayed:
- Hiro gets some sympathetic backstory, although he was already a hero to begin with.
- Evulz' backstory does give him some sympathy, but still very clearly shows that he's evil, and it may even be for a rather petty reason.
- In the original version Bob is taught a lesson not to mean to people and becomes a nicer person, in the adaptation his "mean" behavior is portrayed as reaction to others being mean and he is the one who ends up teaching the lesson instead.
- Justified: The Movie chronologizes how Evulz lost those sympathetic attributes.
- Inverted: Emperor Evulz was a relatively sympathetic villain in the original story, but many (if not all) of his redeeming qualities are removed in the movie.
- Subverted: Emperor Evulz pretends he has a more sympathetic motive to his actions, but is really just a heartless villain.
- Double Subverted: But it turns out that even though his motive was false, he still has loved ones and lines he won’t cross.
- Parodied: Evulz is given a ridiculously petty Freudian Excuse in the movie, such as having him turn evil because someone stole candy from him when he was a kid.
- Zig-Zagged: Evulz claims to have a sympathetic backstory, but he later reveals he was lying, but it’s also revealed that much worse things happened to him, but they aren’t the cause for his evil, but for some other petty reason.
- Averted: Evulz is just as unsympathetic in the movie as he is in the book.
- Enforced:
- The creators of the movie want King Cruelty to be the main villain, but still want to include Emperor Evulz in there somewhere, so they retool him to be a friendlier villain.
- The creators of the movie don't like that Emperor Evulz was portrayed as nothing more than a completely unsympathetic monster, and felt that there was potential to give him something better.
- Emperor Evulz' original characterization was full of Unfortunate Implications, and the writers had to make him more sympathetic to avoid raising the controversy.
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: ???
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "I don't remember Evulz having a sympathetic backstory."
Back to Adaptational Sympathy
