Replacement Scrappy / Video Games

• In The 3rd Birthday, Eve Brea may have the looks of Aya Brea, but she can never have her fire.
• Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney attracted a lot of ire from fans of the old main character, Phoenix Wright; partly because Apollo simply wasn't Phoenix, and partly for necessitating Phoenix to become arguably Not As He Was Known in order to allow Apollo to shine. No one could quite seem to decide what the problem with him is as a character, though; depending on who you ask, the complaint is that he's "almost a carbon copy of Phoenix" or "not enough like Phoenix". The unexplained absence of well-liked support and secondary characters important to Phoenix's character (especially the Feys, Gumshoe and Miles Edgeworth) also upset many fans, which meant poor Apollo got even more dislike directed towards him. In the tutorial case, Phoenix essentially solved the case himself before Apollo even entered the courtroom (leaving players feeling cheated and making Apollo look like a bigger idiot). Alleviated by Dual Destinies where Apollo works together with Phoenix and Took a Level in Badass.
• Assassin's Creed:
  • Connor from the third installment got heaped with tons of this by virtue of not being Ezio what with being a near polar opposite character, and Ezio having 3 full games worth of character development behind him, which is not helped by Connor's most well-regarded characterization elements being relegated to the side missions on the estate. Connor's got his fans of course, but finding them takes a lot more work than finding his detractors. His successor character — who's also his grandfather — Edward didn't seem to get hit quite as hard, helps to be a Jerk with a Heart of Gold pirate one can assume, instead of a Stoic Native American warrior. This even gets something of a lampshade thrown on it in the latter game.
  • One of Edward's successors, Arno, also gets this. He's seen as a very 'safe' character composed of traits from the more popular protagonists, Ezio and Edward. Like Ezio, his father was an Assassin who is killed and thus part of his motivation for joining the order, and he's also a flirtatious nobleman. And like Edward, he's an alcoholic (right down to a scene where you play him drunk, just like with Edward) and self-destructive. He's consequently seen as very bland, especially in comparison to some of his supporting cast. And finally, Connor fans disliked Arno for just not being Connor, since this means Connor only got one game to himself, with his story not really getting any closure, while Altair and Ezio got at least two each (they shared Revelations), and Edward's story was decently wrapped up.
  • Shay Cormack, Edward's other successor, gets this to a lesser degree. He's at the very least an original character in comparison to Arno. However, he's seen as a replacement scrappy for fans of Haytham Kenway, a very big Ensemble Dark Horse and a Templar fans already got to play for a while. Part of this stems from the fact that Haytham would play identically to Shay if he was the protagonist of Rogue, since both are Templars with Assassin skills. Fans are also miffed since a Midquel would've been entirely appropriate, given that Haytham appears at the end of Black Flag and is playable at the beginning of III. Also, Shay isn't a Kenway.
• In the Backyard Sports series, Samantha Pearce. This was probably because some other girls had the natural athlete personality, but didn't look the part, and were removed in favor of new characters. Soon after Samantha's debut, she became the most annoying character in the entire series (besides Joey, of course).
• Bayonetta 3 provides a now infamous example of this with newcomer Viola whom is revealed to be the daughter of Bayonetta and takes over from her mother after Bayo pulls a Heroic Sacrifice and is killed off with Viola taking her monicker of “Bayonetta” and setting out as the new protagonist. While it’s obviously an attempt to replicate the Passing the Torch that Viola’s Distaff Counterpart Nero received in DMC5 (which for the record took a whole game and an attempted reboot to be accepted, see below) Viola getting handed the reigns of the franchise got severe backlash from a lot of fans not only because Bayo was literally executed to make it happen but Viola’s The Chew Toy Butt-Monkey status compared to her cooler and effortlessly stylish mother, meant Viola was simply considered an Inadequate Inheritor in said fanbase’s eyes. This was also on top of finicky gameplay issues regarding Viola’s combat that made her less fun to play.
• BlazBlue:
  • The second game seemed to be setting up Hazama/Yuuki Terumi and Relius Clover to be the main villains of the whole series, but then the third game came along and pretty much threw them under the bus in favor of their previously unknown boss, the Imperator: Hades Izanami. Naturally, many fans weren't pleased about this, mainly because Terumi and Relius were already pretty popular villains in the first place for playing Evil Is Cool and Love to Hate to their fullest extent and how the cast all had personal conflicts with them. Izanami was initially considered pretty boring by comparison, having nothing that made the former two characters stand out and that her motives and goal are pretty shallow. She also doesn't really have any personal ties to the cast outside of Ragna and Jin due to Izanami possessing their little sister Saya. Izanami's reception among the fanbase did improve, however, when she was announced as a playable character starting from the second part of the following title, getting a chance to show just how scary a goddess of death can be and really living up to her moniker.
  • Naoto Kurogane, mainly for being a pretty blatant Suspiciously Similar Substitute to Ragna, right down to having similar names for their moves. Interestingly, this sentiment is shared in-universe and has actual plot ramifications because Naoto is so similar to Ragna that he can potentially override the latter's existence and the cast are trying to kill him on sight for that reason, since they either don't want Ragna to be wiped from existence or can't afford it to happen.
  • The entire series was at one point considered this for Guilty Gear. Due to the coincidental timing of the first title releasing shortly after Arc System Works lost the rights to develop new Guilty Gear fighting games, a misconception formed among some fans that the series only exists to fill that void. This sentiment has long since faded, even before the release of Guilty Gear Xrd.
• Contra: Legacy of War, the first of the much maligned 3D installments in the Contra series by Appaloosa, recycled the plot of Hard Corps while substituting all of its characters with new ones, with the sole exception of Ray Poward (who didn't look anything like the original character from the Genesis game). Sheena was replaced by Tasha, Brad was replaced by Bubba, and Browny was replaced by CD-288. Even the antagonist, Colonel Bassad, is just a ripoff of Colonel Bahamut.
• Devil May Cry:
  • Devil May Cry 4 and "I'm-not-Dante" Nero. Possibly made worse by the revelation that he's actually supposed to be "Not-Vergil" rather than "Not-Dante." Although when the below character made an appearance, some people took back what they said about him and outright apologized for giving Nero a hard time.
  • Dante from DmC: Devil May Cry did not have a good time either, especially since this Dante has black hair and looks like an emo poser. It certainly says a lot when the main feature that everyone clamored for was the shifting environments... as opposed to the story or even playing as Dante again. Pick any random review site or video game magazine; chances are that their DmC article will showcase the "non-static" setting while taking only a minor note of everything else. The initial models of Dante's new look had an uncanny resemblance to Tameem Antoniades, Ninja Theory's Art Director and head of the project. The fact that he then spent subsequent interviews after the announcement bashing the previous Dante's traditional and iconic look definitely didn't endear this new game to fans. In fact, the sheer amount of dislike towards the new Dante made the previous replacement scrappy Nero seem like a much better alternative with many apologizing for what they said about Nero.
  • There's also Lucia from Devil May Cry 2, who many saw as a poor replacement for Trish (who was present in the game as a Secret Character; the irony of it all is that Lucia was most likely created because Trish wasn't playable in the original).
• Half the Disgaea fandom will declare any main character that is not Laharl to be a Replacement Scrappy. Adell from Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories got flak for being a Hot-Blooded He-Man Woman Hater, while Mao from Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice got flak for being too much like Laharl (he isn't, but makes a similar first impression). Mostly averted with Valvatorez from Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten, whose hamminess and charisma won him a lot of fans. According to Word of God, they tried to make Laharl and his cohorts the central characters again, but ran into a wall, eventually deciding that they'd already come up with everything they could with them. In turn, in order to attract more people, they had to come up with new faces, new locations, new everything. Luckily for those fans Laharl, Etna, and Flonne reappear as main characters in Disgaea Dimension 2: A Brighter Darkness
• In the Donkey Kong series:
  • Tiny in Donkey Kong 64 for replacing Dixie. She has since been Rescued from the Scrappy Heap due to Dixie appearing in future games.
  • Kiddy Kong in Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!, who replaces DK and Diddy from the first two games and plays almost exactly like DK, but has looser controls, is far more ugly-looking, obnoxious, makes the worst sound imaginable when he dies, and has none of DK's charm.
  • Donkey Kong Country Returns was announced to much rejoicing. Then it was announced that the Kremling Krew and King K. Rool were going to be replaced by the new Tiki Tak tribe as villains for the game, and the fandom went insane. Prior to that, this was the reaction towards a lot of the cast of Donkey Kong Jungle Beat for replacing the other Kongs, Kremlings and long time enemies. It was only one game, but Donkey Kong Country fans have not at all forgiven most of them for this (especially the animal buddy replacements).
  • Stanley the Bugman from the third game was originally this for replacing the beloved Jumpman (or Mario). Nowadays however, he's an Ensemble Dark Horse.
• Some were annoyed by Anders' apparent attempt in Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening to take over Alistair's 'adorkable' role. But the most hate was leveled at Velanna for replacing Morrigan's Dark Magical Girl, mixing in Can't Argue with Elves and a half-hearted attempt at Well-Intentioned Extremist, only lacking the good intent. Or any redeeming qualities at all.
• A lot of Drakengard fans regard Nowe, the hero of the first sequel, as a Replacement Scrappy for Caim... and even most of Nowe's fans admit he just can't compare as a character.
• Example mostly occurring because of gameplay reasons in Dungeon Keeper, where in the 2nd game the Dragon, considered to be amongst the best creatures in the original, is replaced with a much less useful creature called the Salamander. Fans weren't pleased.
• Final Fantasy:
  • While it's much less extreme now, Squall Leonhart from Final Fantasy VIII used to get a lot of hate in the 90s from fans who'd jumped onto the series blind with Final Fantasy VII, and then grabbed the sequel, thinking they would get to find out what happened next to the VII cast. Nowadays, anyone interested in Final Fantasy will know the games aren't that kind of a series, and vocal Squall haters tend to complain about his writing rather than just being confused as to why he isn't Cloud.
  • Final Fantasy V has Galuf die and be replaced (at his insistence) by his Token Mini-Moe granddaughter Krile. Many players felt the switch to be a downgrade since they preferred Galuf's humor and standing as a Cool Old Guy to Krile's generic Tag Along Kid personality, and/or dislike how this makes the player party three-fourths princesses (since princesses have a negative stigma of their own). She does, however, get all of his skills, jobs and stats, so it doesn't affect gameplay much (Krile's base stats are slightly different than Galuf's, but it's just a few points here and there), but this also rubs salt in the wound by making the switch be entirely pointless — if you're stuck with a functionally identical character, what was even the point of losing the old one?
• An In-Universe example in Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach: After Glamrock Bonnie disappeared, Montgomery Gator replaced him in the band as bassist, and (as the Ruin DLC revealed) a story was made that Bonnie decided to pass the torch to Monty. While Monty has some fans, most kids (including Ruin's protagonist Cassie) made their dislike of Monty known, and kept asking when Bonnie was coming back. This has driven management to Unperson Bonnie as much as possible, even talking of revamping the Bonnie Bowl section to remove his image and push Monty's image of the Superior Successor. The implication that Monty killed Bonnie to get the bass position makes all this much worse.
• Golden Sun fans expected Saturos and Menardi, the villains of the first game, to return after their obvious Disney Villain Death for the second. But instead, The Lost Age introduced two new members of the same clan, Agatio and Karst, to be the antagonists. Karst ended up even more popular than Menardi had been due to her stronger storyline, Character Development, and attractive character design... while Agatio got all sorts of vitriol from the fandom for years because he was considered not to be as cool as Saturos was.
• This is often seen in racing games, with Porsche being replaced by the similar models produced by RUF in games such as Gran Turismo, Test Drive Unlimited, and initially in the fourth iteration of Forza Motorsport due to EA's exclusive contract to feature Porsche vehicles in their Need for Speed series. EA do sometimes give a sub-licence to other developers so that Porsche cars can be seen in the game, such as with Forza Motorsport. (Except for on the initial release of Forza Motorsport 4, with Porsche only turning up later in a DLC pack.)
• Midori from Guitar Hero III, as noted by Yahtzee in his review of the game. She was added to the series' third installment while Clive Winston, Eddie Knox, and Pandora were removed. While Midori is a perfectly fine (and downright cute) character and the player's choice of avatar has absolutely no effect on the actual gameplay, people are still bitter about the removal of their beloved Pandora.
  • Strangely enough, Eddie Knox and Lars Umlaut could both be seen as replacements for Clive Winston (who got shoved into being an unlockable character in the second game before being removed in the third), but neither got anywhere near that much heat.
  • Rectified in Guitar Hero 4.
  • Due to the choice to remove nearly the entire line-up of original Guitar Hero characters in favor of unlockable real-life stars, Guitar Hero V has the interesting potential for the likes of Shirley Manson or Kurt Freaking Cobain to be Replacement Scrappies, if you liked any of the characters that were dropped.
• Halo
  • This almost happened in Halo 2, with grumbling about how much focus the game puts on the Arbiter over Master Chief. Fortunately, fans instead warmed up to Arbiter fairly quickly for being a badass alien with the voice of Keith David and a surprisingly strong character arc... but mostly because he wound up not stealing Chief's spotlight, instead settling down into the role of Deuteragonist and being allowed to grow into his own character. He became such a beloved member of the cast that his return in Halo 5: Guardians was widely considered one of the few things that game's story did right.
  • Averted in Halo: Reach with Noble Six, who was basically as badass as Master Chief and enjoyed customizable armor. His only flaw? He was unlucky. Part of this stems from the fact that Noble Six is literally YOU. The Rookie from Halo 3: ODST also tends to avoid this; the worst thing anybody has to say about them is that they're not quite as cool as Master Chief and Noble Six (which, amusingly enough, fits pretty well with how the ODST are frequently overshadowed by Spartans in-story).
  • Many fans of Master Chief were not pleased that he wasn't the main playable character in Halo 5: Guardians (he only appears in three levels). They find his replacement, Jameson Locke, to be boring, and the attempts to show that Locke and his team are badasses comes across as trying too hard, e.g. a big The Oner that makes them come off more like Power Rangers.
• Delsin Rowe in inFAMOUS: Second Son is this to some people. Partly due to the fact that he replaced Cole even though he died at the end of inFAMOUS 2, The Stinger hinted that he may have survived, and partly because he's kind of an immature douchebag.
• In The King of Fighters:
  • Lots of people hated May Lee for replacing Jhun Hoon. And lots of people hate K' and Ash Crimson for not being either Kyo or Iori. K', however is less Scrappy than Ash because he only links himself with Kyo's story once (in 1999, whereas actual Kyo clones appear, but even they don't play much to the story/main fighting) and doesn't bother with him much. Ash, on the other hand, had it worse due to his extremely flamboyant style, as well as him becoming a Creator's Pet by starting to actually upstage Kyo and his crews by stealing Chizuru's powers, and, later, Iori's, in every game he's in.
  • May Lee is an interesting case. She was reviled (at least in Japan) when it was revealed in The King of Fighters 2002 that a newbie had "stolen" King's spot, and placed alongside the veterans of the Women Fighters team (Mai and Yuri). Other than that, the fans seem to love her.
  • Chae Lim from the Maximum Impact games was widely seen as an unnecessary replacement from series mainstay Kim Kaphwan. This died down a bit when the latter was brought back in the second game.
  • On the basis of K', his Scrappy status died out by the time of XIII, when the fanbase collectively squeed for his return. Ash, on the other hand, may have been Rescued from the Scrappy Heap by revealing his true nature as a Guile Hero fighting to counteract his evil identical ancestor and then commiting a Heroic Sacrifice that erased himself from existence.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Inverted in Kingdom Hearts II. Roxas starts with a lot of these traits (he's the first person you play as, he plays like Sora did in KH1, and Sora is nowhere to be seen), but the creator probably realized he had a potential reverse-Raiden on his hands (playable at the start but not for the main game, which was the opposite for Raiden) and promptly Dropped a Bridge on Him at the end of the Prolonged Prologue. Some players played this trope straight with their reaction to Roxas, while others actually would rather have spent most of the game as Roxas instead of Sora. Thankfully, Roxas eventually got his own game, so fans of his rejoiced. People who aren't fans of his, on the other hand, had their feelings toward him increased. This review outright describes Roxas and his game as "Scrappy Doo getting his own show."
  • Namine of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories fame was either hated by Kairi fans for replacing Kairi, or loved by Kairi haters for replacing Kairi. Once more, the fact that the two are the same being is ignored.
• Inverted in Knights of the Old Republic 2 with the Exile. While fans of the game don't outright hate the character, the characters in the game certainly seem to! Just being present at the site of a major catastrophe will cause everyone to blame you for it and even doing good deeds (incidentally, one includes fixing the problem that you didn't cause but were still blamed for) still fails to earn more than a smidgen of respect. Instead every character in the game seems to want the protagonist from the original back. And yet they can't help but be drawn to the Exile.
• The cast of Left 4 Dead 2. Rochelle, whom almost everyone hates because her personality comes off as dry to most and having a very annoying laugh that many players online abuse constantly. Most of the hate Rochelle gets is her being a replacement to the more well liked Zoey from the first game. The Passing DLC gave Rochelle a lot of witty dialogue and The Last Stand update restored many of Rochelle's cut lines, making her more of a Deadpan Snarker and Sassy Black Woman.
• The Legend of Dragoon: Miranda is usually scorned for replacing Shana. It's not because the character she replaces is liked better,^note Shana is often seen as a Damsel Scrappy, while Miranda is not. but more that Miranda joins in Disc 3, and only gets a few scenes of development when compared to everyone else. She's also very abrasive, although she does get called out on this. What doesn't help either is the fact that both characters require a lot of work in order to get a payoff.
• The Legend of Zelda
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, some fangirls see Linebeck III as a poor replacement for his Grandfather, Captain Linebeck from The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. It doesn't really help that his clothes look an embarrassingly lot like a Sailor Fuku.
  • The post-Twilight Princess antagonists are also one to Ganon fans, although many are happy Hijacked by Ganon hasn't happened since that game.
• Mass Effect:
  • A character aversion is Wrex's replacement, Grunt. Wrex was a Blood Knight, Deadpan Snarker, and a fan favorite. At first, the trailers for Mass Effect 2 show Grunt as a simple Blood Knight, the krogan hat. However, Grunt was grown in a tank to be the ultimate krogan, leading to some existentialist angst (not Wangst) that helps flesh him out, and goes away as part of his loyalty mission. Additional Character Development led to fans accepting him as a good character in his own right. Ironically, the reveal that James Vega is a Soldier whose skill set focuses on defense at first led to him becoming a proper replacement scrappy for Grunt. Like Grunt, however, he has since become an aversion once the game was released.
  • Another aversion comes in Mass Effect 3: if Mordin dies in the second game, he is replaced by Padok Wiks. BioWare was clearly aware of this trope, and many comparisons are made in-universe (Joker even calls him "Not-Mordin"), but talking to Wiks shows that he is a well-developed character in his own right, who, despite many similarities, acts as a foil to Mordin in some areas. Following the curing (or not) of the Genophage, which requires the real or faked death of Padok, Bioware shows how confident they are in Padok as a character by having Joker and Shepard retract the "Not-Mordin" moniker and use his real name. Most players will agree with them.
  • Mass Effect 3 has the option to have a reporter on the Normandy. Many were hoping for the popular Emily Wong, but instead we got Diana Allers, while Wong got killed offscreen and never even mentioned in-game. In addition, Allers is voiced by Jessica Chobot of IGN, which prompted accusations of BioWare pandering to the media, is a very underdeveloped character with a weak romance, and in a game filled with superb voice acting almost across the board, she sticks out like a sore thumb.
  • Another example from Mass Effect 3 is the Catalyst, who takes over the role of Reaper leader from Harbinger, their previously presumed boss. Despite being the Big Bad of Mass Effect 2 and taking a personal interest in Shepard, Harbinger is Demoted to Extra and becomes The Voiceless, while the Catalyst becomes the game's primary antagonist. Though there are other reasons that make this character a regular scrappy.
  • The entire Tempest crew in Mass Effect: Andromeda tends to get this in regards to the Normandy crew. In this case, it's hard to say they're really hated (though some of them are); they're just dismissed as pale imitations not even worth the trouble of acknowledging, which is arguably worse. Reactions to the squadmates range from liked but not as beloved as the first crew (Vetra, Jaal) to mostly ambivalent (Peebee, Drack) to hated by many (Cora, Liam). The supporting crew members are barely acknowledged as existing. And Ryder themselves seem to have no identity amongst the fandom other than "Player Character who isn't Commander Shepard".
• MechWarrior's "Unseen" BattleMechs - a carryover from the original tabletop game's legal scuffle with Harmony Gold over licensed robot designs - have been missing from the commercial games since Mechwarrior 3 despite many of the designs being fan favorites, like the Warhammer, Marauder, and Rifleman. Come Mechwarrior Online, the fan-favorite Rifleman is replaced by the Jagermech, a mech with a very similar role and loadout, but with an absolutely hideous design, looking like a Rifleman that has been squashed in a a trash compacter. Notably, the Jagermech design ran concurrent to the Rifleman on the board game, both debuting in the original, but due to its status as a Joke Character to many players of the tabletop game, it was often poorly regarded by longtime fans. Similar circumstances have surrounded other favorites, most notably the remaining 65-ton classic, the Crusader, which was based on the Armored Veritechs of Super Dimension Fortress Macross. In its place, a new design called the Roughneck was added to the game, but fans have been critical of the inclusion of the Roughneck, as it is a new design created from whole cloth by the devs, lending it a sort of Sailor Earth stigma. Snarky MechWarrior Living Legends ^note a officially licensed but noncommercial game players noted how they had an original Rifleman, Warhammer, and possibly even a Marauder in the future, until they got Screwed by the Lawyers by Mechwarrior Online, which by extension turned the entirety of MWO into a replacement scrappy for MWLL (now being the only mechwarrior game in town); fans of both games were not happy, absolutely ruining the reputation of ''MWO'''s developers
• The title character of Mega Man X7 was demoted to Optional Party Member so the apparently 13-year old reploid Axl could steal the lead role. For many, Axl was Rescued from the Scrappy Heap with his subsequent appearances in Mega Man X: Command Mission and Mega Man X8 thanks to improved gameplay mechanics (with Divergent Character Evolution from the vastly superior X between X7 and X8). He even gets to deliver a Shut Up, Hannibal! to the Big Bad of X8 via gunshot! The only real problem for Axl in X8 was that he was necessary for item collection (and thus, 100% Completion) alongside X, which required players to bench Zero for a good portion of the game.
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty intentionally does this with Raiden. Maybe he would have been more liked if he hadn't, to make his inherent not-Snake-ness worse, also for being a distinctly Bishounen This Loser Is You character who spent a lot of time Narming at his girlfriend over the Codec. This is made even worse in that he remained practically hidden away by Kojima until the Prologue section of the game ended. The opening introduction even goes as far as to either show none of the Plant chapter, or when they had to, only show the villains, or to make sure Raiden isn't very visible. But then gave the fans something to talk about in Metal Gear Solid 4.
• To fans of Metroid Fusion, Adam Malkovich in Metroid: Other M manages to be this to himself. The Adam AI from Fusion had a small but loyal number of fans intrigued by his characterization and past tense but apparently-flirty and respectful working relationship with Samus, and believe that Other M failed to live up to this with the original Adam.
• One GameSpy Daily Victim character complained about the disappointment he felt when, as a child, Clyde was replaced by Sue in Ms. Pac-Man.
• A lot of Naruto fans hate the Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution 2 game, because the creators decided to give North America some exclusive characters like Kurenai, Asuma, Yugao, Baki, and Bando (the last one being an Expanded Universe character created solely for the game, the others (save for Asuma) have never been in the Clash of Ninja series, even in Japan). The thing is, in order to add these characters, they removed some old ones like Iruka, Kimimaro, and the Third Hokage.
• Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony has some, due to Franchise Original Sin kicking in brutally.
  • The Monokuma Kubs are hated by the fans (save Monodam) for being an annoying Monokuma-aide substitution for Monomi of the previous game.
  • Shuichi Saihara already had crooked looks due to him being a Legacy Character for the beloved Kyoko Kirigiri, but when the fan favorite Kaede Akamatsu dies and he becomes the real player character for the rest of the game, some fans came to loathe him, accusing him of being a way too bland protagonist who is effectively a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for the two previous games' player characters, while Kaede was an Ideal Hero and a Contrasting Sequel Main Character and she became a Tough Act to Follow. Chapter 6 reveals he's even this in-universe, with the audience of the Danganronpa reality show saying, "This guy should have died instead of Kaede."
  • The new mastermind got this treatment, being accused of being a watered down, less fun version of the original mastermind.
• Nintendo Wars:
  • Advance Wars: Dual Strike has Von Bolt, the Big Bad replacing Sturm. Being a crippled asthmatic old man in a hovering wheelchair, and a subpar CO that was ludicrously easy to defeat on top of it, rankled somewhat when compared to Sturm; being essentially Darth Vader with a paint job who dropped meteors on people and had a leitmotif with an electric guitar solo.
  • Andy was bland, but his replacement Jake's Jive Turkey routine is grating and borderline insufferable thanks to basically being his entire character and being Totally Radical.
  • There are those that look upon the entire Days of Ruin cast in the same way, thanks to the game being a Darker and Edgier reboot of Nintendo Wars that completely dropped everything from the old setting. The whole cast is replaced by new characters and nations, along with the world being mostly destroyed by a meteor strike.
• Hoxton in PAYDAY 2 is not the same character that appeared in PAYDAY: The Heist. With the exception of Wolf and Bain, all of the crew in the sequel have been changed to different characters to reflect the ones seen in the web series. New Hoxton is disliked because he's American and lacks charisma and charm compared to the old version of the character that was British. This is addressed in the "Hoxton Breakout" DLC, where Old Hoxton has as much contempt for New Hoxton (Now Houston) as the fans did, reclaimed his name from Houston, and regularly insults Houston in-game if they're in the same crew.
• Pac-Man: Due to legal and royalty issues surrounding the rights to Ms. Pac-Man, Namco would phase her out of the franchise in favor of a Captain Ersatz version of her called Pac-Mom, who would go on to replace Ms. Pac-Man in new titles and even rereleases and remakes of older titles. Fans did not react well to this change and have quickly begun to hate Pac-Mom due to her replacing one of the oldest and most iconic female characters in gaming, on top of finding her design to be ugly and out of place.
• Pokémon:
  • In Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, Steven Stone is the Champion of the Hoenn region, and he becomes one of the most popular Champions in the series among fans. However, in Emerald, Wallace replaces Steven as the Hoenn Champion, and Wallace's role as the Champion is not very well-received, due to Steven's greater popularity, Wallace being generally considered to be the easier boss^note Due to his team's lack of type diversity compared to Steven, making it more vulnerable to Electric and Grass-type moves. and being the Water-type Champion in a region already infamous for the large amount of water routes and Water-type Pokémon the later parts of the game contain — and comes after both a villainous team based around Water-types (not helped by Team Aqua getting more focus than Team Magma in Emerald) and a Water-type Gym Leader. It does not help that despite no longer being the Champion in Emerald, Steven still gets more screen time than Wallace and becomes a Superboss whom can be battled against in the post-game, with his team's level being much higher than Wallace's. Emerald also introduces the new Gym Leader Juan to fill Wallace's role, and he gets a similarly cold reception from fans — not only does he feel like a redundant inclusion, even sharing the same "water = beauty" motif that Wallace has, but his presence also means that Hoenn has both a Water-type Gym Leader and Champion.
  • The Gen III Pokémon in general were initially seen as this due to being part of the first reboot style games, only 200 of the 387 mons being present, the art-style change of the Hoenn mons, and many a Suspiciously Similar Substitute in the Hoenn set (e.g. Beautifly and Dustox to Butterfree and Venomoth). This has faded over time and Hoenn's Pokémon have gained a substantial fanbase in their own right because of the change in style that gave them their own distinct personalities despite fulfulling similar roles.
  • When Generation II remakes HeartGold/SoulSilver was announced, everyone assumed Kris from, well, Pokémon Crystal would return as the female protagonist. Instead, another character named Lyra was introduced as the new character. Quite a bit of backlash ensued, with debates ongoing as to which character had the better design, despite the fact that Kris was technically never a part of the original Gold/Silver games in the first place, though she was the first female player avatar. Kris not being part of Gold/Silver is often used as an argument as to why she was replaced, but then you have to wonder why Eusine, also not in Gold/Silver, was included. A Dummied Out PokéGear icon◊ for Kris suggests Kris was originally meant to return. Most of the Lyra hatred has disappeared over the years, with Lyra eclipsing Kris in popularity.
  • Perhaps the most infamous of these is the Spiky-Eared (or Notched-Eared in the original Japanese) Pichu. She essentially replaces Celebi in an in-game event in HeartGold and SoulSilver, is unable to evolve, has poor stats and a poor moveset, and cannot even be transferred to games other than HGSS.
  • Some of the Pokémon that are introduced in Pokémon Black and White get this reception due to its reboot-ish nature. Examples include the Timburr/Conkeldurr line for the Machop/Machamp line, and the fairly weak Pidove/Unfezant line for the much more versatile Starly/Staraptor line. Inverted in many cases, however; many fans were happy to see the Zubat and Geodude lines replaced with the Woobat and Roggenrola lines, respectively (with the latter also getting an unusually badass-looking final evolution in Gigalith).
  • It was later revealed that Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 would have new protagonists instead of bringing back Hilbert and Hilda. The new male protagonist has become a major case of divisiveness. He mostly receives hate for appearing to be more immature than Hilbert. The female has been received a bit more warmly, but that doesn't stop some from disliking her for being more girly in appearance than Hilda. However, a trailer done in the style of a movie trailer has won over many fans for the male protagonist, who is portrayed as much cooler than his official art let on.
  • If there is a new Legendary Pokémon, or even just a next-gen Pokémon being featured to promote the newest games, you'll be sure they'll be seen as replacement scrappies for older generations. Zoroark, in particular, was seen for the longest time by some people as being little more than a "Lucario Clone." It doesn't help that both are bipedal canine-like Pokémon (Lucario being a jackal and Zoroark being a fox) and that both of their pre-evolved forms can't be obtained in the wild in their debut games (you're given an egg containing a Riolu in Diamond/Pearl/Platinum, a Zorua offers to join your team if you have a Celebi on hand in Black/White, and a former Team Plasma member will give you N's Zorua as a gift in Black 2 and White 2). Not to mention that both Pokémon were used as Early-Bird Cameo for their respective generations in the films (Lucario for Gen IV and Zoroark for Gen V).
  • In Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!, the main story of the game was slightly rewritten. For instance, there are more Call-Forward moments (like Archer showing up as Giovanni's right-hand man). Some of these changes included removing Red as the protagonist, to be replaced with Chase and Elaine, and Blue as the rival. This change wasn't received badly by fans, and neither was the replacement rival, Trace. But fans did take issue when Trace ended up as the Pokémon League Champion instead of Red or Blue, especially because Red, Blue, and Green were all shoved into the postgame for little more than glorified cameo appearances, when Blue's appearance as the Champion after beating Lance had become one of the game's most memorable plot twists, and many felt Trace was not nearly as effective at selling the twist as Blue had been.
• Prince of Persia (2008). Some fans disliked the new Prince's cocky, Han Solo-esque, one-liner spewing personality compared to the charismatic yet somewhat naive Prince from Sands of Time. It has more to do with the Prince's new companion being capable of exactly the same acrobatics as the Prince, as well as having access to powerful magic, which is the mechanism you are rescued with when you screw up, along with the plot critical powers needed to undo the corruption. Also, that magic is how all boss fights are best dealt with. In short, the new Prince is more or less extraneous and serves as little more than a meatshield, and is probably closer to being a damsel in distress what with him constantly having to be rescued from fatally stupid acrobatics.
• Some fans of the original [PROTOTYPE] were very vocal about how little they like James Heller, the sequel's protagonist that replaces the original's Alex Mercer. The fact that Mercer appears in the game as the villain with a completely different personality from the original makes it worse. Heller doesn't really have much of a personality outside of being a stereotypical angry black man.
• After Nintendo's contract with Mike Tyson expired (which, contrary to popular belief, was unrelated to Tyson's legal troubles at the time), they replaced him in the game formerly known as Mike Tyson's Punch Out!! with Mr. Dream, a fictional boxer, while retaining the boxing style. To say the least, fans were unhappy with the perceived generic character. Later games in the series use Mr. Sandman to fill the gap instead, being a character with a lot more charisma as he was (likely) inspired by Joe Frazier but has some Tysonisms too like the Winking Uppercut.
• The Photon Laser weapon in Raiden III serves as a replacement for the iconic Bend Plasma (aka "Toothpaste Laser"), and as a result III got a lot of flak for it. While there are other complaints about the game, such as overall level and boss design, most complaints can be summed up as "give me my toothpaste laser back!"
• Red Dead Redemption suffered from this, and quite intensely. Fans were not hesitant in vocalizing their vehement hatred of the end of the game, wherein the player gains control of Jack after his father, protagonist John Marston's, death. Fan either hate Jack for not being John, or for being too much like John. Either way, finding fans who don't outright swear off the game after the twist is a difficult feat indeed. Weirdly enough, this situation repeated itself while simultaneously getting twisted around in the second game. When it was first announced, many feared Arthur Morgan would be this to John. Instead, Arthur ending up being hailed as one of the best video game protagonists ever, with many people feeling he's actually better than John. So when Rockstar repeated the twist from the first game (Arthur dies and you play the epilogue as John), a lot of players were pissed, to the point that some would refuse to play the story past a certain point just so they could keep playing as Arthur. Effectively, John somehow went from being the beloved original to being a Replacement Scrappy in and of himself... though, even then, he gets way less hate than Jack; unlike him, people mostly think that John isn't a bad character, Arthur is just better.
• Resident Evil 6:
  • The Ustanak wants so hard to be the next Nemesis, but falls flat. Unlike the Nemesis, whose set and random locations made him feel like he was legitimately hunting you and making the player desperately devise any way to fight him off temporarily, Ustanak only shows up in set cut scenes or boss encounters. The rooms for said boss encounters tend to be filled with conspicuous, bright red exploding barrels that the game wants you to use to do damage. Problem is, the second you see those barrels after the first encounter, you know EXACTLY who is about to show up. Thus turning it from a Nemesis style "Where is he? Will he be here? Oh no he's here!" into more of a "Oh... this guy again" response.
  • Claire Redfield was originally meant to appear in the game as Leon's partner, but had to be dropped in favor of newcomer Helena Harper because Claire was already appearing in Resident Evil: Revelations. As Helena was already fairly unpopular in the first place, the revelation that she is what fans got instead of an awesome reunion between Leon, Claire, and Sherry that would have been a callback to fan-favorite Resident Evil 2 did not sit well with the fanbase.
• Possibly intentional in Sam & Max: Season 3 Episode 3, where Sam is forced to animate Max's body with the brain of a boy pharaoh, thus replacing him. Sam likes the pharaoh well enough (he refers to him in dialogue as a 'nice kid'), but the player is supposed to hate him because of what he spends the third act doing.
• Johnny from Shadow Hearts: From The New World was seen as a poor stand in for Yuri, the protagonist of the previous two entries in the series.
• In Soldier of Fortune II, Taylor is assigned to replace the late Hawk from the first game. However, she is obviously a poor substitute, never seen in combat, and is bumped off halfway through the game.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • When Silver got a starring role in the Milestone Celebration Sonic '06 with Sonic and Shadow, fans felt he was usurping worthier characters like Tails or Knuckles and accused Sega of being biased against their non-hedgehog characters. Silver's cameo in Brawl also led to claims of this. Him being an infamous That One Boss supreme in the game didn't help matters, either.
  • The Sonic Rivals games were more enjoyable before we found out Nega kicked Eggman out of the villain spotlight.
  • Omega is this for fans of E-102 Gamma.
  • Since Shadow's introduction in Sonic Adventure 2, some fans feel that he replaced Knuckles' role as Sonic's main rival and view him as the reason for Knuckles becoming less prominent after Sonic Adventure.
  • The Sonic series later on was starting to face some criticism for its dearth of playable characters, usually featuring only Sonic in some form or another and completely abandoning even the better-received diversity of playable characters seen in Sonic 3 & Knuckles and the Sonic Advance trilogy—so when the Custom Hero/Avatar was revealed for Sonic Forces, a whole lot of fans were incensed that Sega had essentially decided to make everyone's OC ever playable over anyone from the existing cast.
  • The Funny Animal NPCs in Forces is this to the human NPCs in previous games, especially Adventures and Unleashed. It's mainly due to the characters signifying a change in Sonic canon from Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My! to World of Funny Animals. They're also disliked because they use designs from the customizable player, meaning they look off compared to the main characters to the point of Unintentional Uncanny Valley.
  • In Team Sonic Racing: The Chao replacing Cream in Team Rose hasn't gone over well. This alongside her conspicuous absence in Sonic Forces has left many fans to question if she'll be phased out of the cast altogether. Making matters worse is that one of the playable Chao is Omochao, who is often seen as one of the most hated and annoying characters in the whole franchise. This is at its worst in Team Adventure Mode; unlike Charmy and Espio, who are given an in-universe explanation as to why they aren't with Vector, Cream isn't mentioned even once throughout the story nor is she even given an explanation for her absence. Everyone, including Amy and Big, just goes through the entire game like she never existed.
• In the Soul series, rabid Hwang fanboys (and HwangxMina fangirls) wouldn't stop bashing Yun-seong for replacing Hwang in Soulcalibur II.
  • It's the same with Maxi, who is similar to Li Long, although it has to be said that Maxi's fighting style is more developed. Fortunately, he has mainly avoided this, if simply because he was the nunchaku fighter most fans got to know first.
  • Berserker and Assassin in Soulcalibur II have the same moves as Rock and Hwang (who are not in SCII) did in Soulcalibur. They aren't strictly Scrappies because they're not canon to the game's story and are just one-time mooks.
  • Cassandra was one for a very short time when she was thought to be replacing Sophitia. Once the latter was brought back to the console version of SCII, fan opinion quickly improved and led to Cassandra being a series regular.
  • Natsu, one of the newcomers in Soulcalibur V shaped up to be this, as she's replaced the beloved series stalwart Taki. Fans were not pleased.
  • Plenty of the new characters in V got this. Xiba for replacing Kilik and being a shallow Sun Wukong Expy who only ever thinks about food, the above-mentioned Natsu for being arrogant and cocky rather than Taki's cold, get-the-job-done attitude, Patroklos for being a self-righteous Jerkass (even though he does get better later on in the story mode), along with Pyrrha for replacing their mother and aunt, and being a massive Spotlight-Stealing Squad to the rest of the characters... the list goes on. Leixia and Pyrrha have avoided this more than others by not having such drastically different personalities from their predecessors.
  • An in-universe example occurs between Tira and the new Nightmare. While Tira had Undying Loyalty to the Nightmare of III and IV, that Nightmare was destroyed by Siegfried. Tira has since refused to accept the new and more subtle Nightmare, considering him a coward for relying on manipulation instead of just slaughtering all in his path; instead, she plans to bring the OLD Nightmare back by using Sophitia's daughter Pyrrha as Soul Edge's host.
• Splatoon 2: Each Splatoon game is headlined by a different group of idols, who deliver a newscast summing up the current stage rotation when you boot up the game. However, fans were not aware that this would be the series' modus operandi until Splatoon 2 revealed that the duo greeting us at the start of every play session wouldn't be the Squid Sisters, Callie and Marie, but Off the Hook, consisting of Pearl and Marina. The new musicians got hit with this hard during the game's first year, being viewed as underdeveloped, flat characters who couldn't hope to match the charm of their predecessors. This wasn't helped by the fact that they were completely uninvolved with the main campaign's narrative (only bookending the mode by reporting on the Great Zapfish and Callie disappearing/returning), and the English localization originally trying to copy-and-paste Callie and Marie's old dynamic onto them (Marina, in particular, was uncharacteristically snarky towards Pearl in light of later character reveals). It wasn't until they were significantly fleshed out by the Octo Expansion DLC campaign, which established their backstories and the deep nature of their friendship, that Off the Hook's popularity among fans skyrocketed.
• Spyro the Dragon: The first reboot, The Legend of Spyro, only includes three characters from the original series, and lacks versions of the rest of the original games' supporting cast and villains. It has its own cast of characters, which hasn't settled well with old fans.
• The PAL version of SSX Tricky replaced Mac with his German cousin Marty in an attempt to cater to European players. Marty evidently didn't catch on, as every following game stuck with Mac regardless of region.
• Star Fox:
  • A few fans saw the single character, Krystal, to be an example for not just one, but two characters: Peppy Hare, whose role she took over from Assault onwards and Fara Phoenix ^note from the Nintendo Power comics from over ten years earlier, who coincidentally was first to play the role as Fox McCloud's Love Interest. Most of it comes from fans of the latter, as they maintain she "stole" Fox from Fara. Despite this, some others believe she is still a worthy addition to the series.
  • The Great Fox II from Star Fox Command. The original Great Fox, sacrificed in Assault, was elegant and somewhat foxlike in appearance as well as the mightiest warship in the Lylat system; alongside its 4 Arwings it was a match for entire fleets. The second, however, is a stripped-down carrier with minimal armament and armor, and looks nothing like its predecessor.
• Remy from Street Fighter III catches a LOT of flak due to his specials being "borrowed" from Guile and Charlie/Nash, who are both fan-favorites and were notably absent. Dudley also got some hate for being a Balrog knockoff, but it quickly subsided. In Alpha, Charlie was seen as one for Guile.
• Though the Super Mario Bros. series isn't typically seen as character-driven, it nonetheless has a few of these.
  • In Super Mario Galaxy 2, the lovely, mysterious, and compelling Rosalina was replaced by Lubba, an obese purple Luma who won't stop telling bad jokes except when he gives you generic words of encouragement. The same words of encouragement. Even after you've already heard them. Right after completing a Prankster Comet stage, which will not leave you in the mood for his rambling. At least Rosalina makes The Cameo in the ending, and will also permanently appear on the Starship Mario once all 242 Power Stars are collected.
  • The case of Bowser Jr. has zig-zagged over time. When he first appeared in Super Mario Sunshine, the character was seen as the replacement for the original seven Koopalings, with their distinctive appearances and (slight) personalities; at least for a while. Once he appeared alongside them in New Super Mario Bros Wii, it tended to dissipate. But when Word of God confirmed the Koopalings aren't Bowser's children anymore, the hatred towards Junior returned with a vengeance. The situation was reversed once again when Bowser Jr. was cut out of the Mario Kart 8 roster while the Koopalings got in, amplified even further when the Koopalings were included as all seven of Bowser Jr.'s alt skins in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. Bowser Jr. fans started baying for the Koopalings blood. The whole situation calmed down when Bowser Jr. was made playable in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
  • For many fans, generic series enemies (or drones, as they call them), such as Koopa Troopas and Boos, become this when they are playable in Mario games of the Go-Karting with Bowser variety. The reason is that they're there instead of the large amount of actual characters the series has built up, particularly in its RPG entries; many of whom have massive cult followings, but were effectively left to rot after just one game. It's not hard to see why multiplayer games would be a fine place to bring them back, yet they haven't returned.
  • In Super Mario 3D World, Plessie is one to some Yoshi fans, although others think he's a worthy Expy, especially after his bigger role in Bowser's Fury.
  • The Blue and Yellow Toads in New Super Mario Bros. Wii and New Super Mario Bros. U were this for Peach and Toad as well as Wario and Yoshi, due to being completely generic to the point of not even having official names. This was because Nintendo didn't want Competitive Balance, but they listened for Super Mario 3D World and brought back the former pair.
  • Honey Queen, a minor character from Super Mario Galaxy, is an unlockable character in Mario Kart 7, while Ensemble Dark Horse Waluigi is absent. Due to statements that more characters were planned, but had to be cut due to time constraints, most fans view Honey Queen as having "stolen" Waluigi's spot, and hate her for that reason.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • This gets leveled against all the Suspiciously Similar Substitute additions to Super Smash Bros. Brawl in some circles, although most of the removed characters were just duplicates of other characters who remained. Perhaps the one who gets the most heat is Lucario, though, as it's believed to have replaced Mewtwo, who didn't have any clone in the game. The fanbase still has arguments as to whether Mewtwo was a hopeless character that got replaced by a superior character in every way, or replaced by someone meant to hype the at-the-time latest versions of the Pokémon games and abandoned instead of retooled.
  • On a side note, due to a poorly worded entry on the Smash Bros. DOJO website, Lucas was thought to be a Replacement Scrappy for Ness until Ness was confirmed to return.
  • Played straight with Toon Link though, since there were some people who didn't like Wind Waker that went berserk when Young Link was replaced by him. However, thanks to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, this no longer seems to be the case, as both Young Link and Toon Link are playable characters.
  • In a non-character related examples. Many of Wario's random moves in Brawl got a lot of ire directed towards them for replacing moves used in Wario Land. In particular the "Corkscrew" move is disliked for having nothing to do with the "Corkscrew Conk" from Wario World.
• Emil from Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World... is a subversion because Lloyd never had that much fans and the problem the fandom has with his is his wangst, not being unable of living up to Lloyd's non-particularly high standards. Emil's game came around the same time as Yuri Lowell's. Yuri himself is so popular, he managed to knock Ensemble Dark Horse Leon Magnius's long-held #1 spot on the annual Tales of Popularity poll.
• Tekken:
  • Master Raven from Tekken 7, although liked by some, is hated by many other fans because she is not the original Raven.
  • Christie Monteiro from Tekken 4 was not popular when she was revealed, as she was believed to be a replacement for the iconic Eddy Gordo. Fortunately, Eddy was brought back as a bonus costume for her, before slowly being fully reinstated into the franchise for 5.
  • Asuka Kazama is a very popular character, but she still gets some flack for being a Jun clone and that her presence is preventing her aunt from returning to the franchise.
  • Jaycee was widely seen as a unique twist on Julia Chang's character for Tekken Tag Tournament 2, but fan opinion quickly soured up on her when it was revealed regular Julia wouldn't be playable. Given that Bob, Jin, Lee, and Ogre all appeared in the game with two forms, many fans wondered why Julia couldn't join them.
• Twisted Metal:
  • Cousin Eddy in Head-On is often treated as a poor replacement for Minion, with many fans viewing him as an offensive hillbilly stereotype who is much weaker when you play as him than when you face him as a boss fight.
  • Few if any of the characters in 4 are liked, but Captain Grimm counts as he was a lame pirate retool of Mister Grimm.
  • Dollface has been criticized by fans for filling in for Ensemble Dark Horse Mr. Ash as the driver of Darkside from Black to 2012.
  • Many fans of the original Dollface have expressed disgust for 2012's Dollface, who retained neither the sympathetic traits the original had nor the redeeming qualities, being a one-dimensional psychopath not unlike Sweet Tooth.
• Umineko: When They Cry:
  • The fifth arc introduces Erika, a little girl who floats to Rokkenjima practically out of nowhere, and proceeds to solve the epitaph and possibly figure out the murderer for the arc she was introduced, attracting some visceral reactions from fans who have been puzzling over this stuff for a bunch of arcs and have scrambled brains to show for it. She then proceeds to kill the previous antagonist and attempt to be the new protagonist of the story by turning Battler into a Decoy Protagonist. Fandom was... not happy. Played with, though, because Battler is still the protagonist, just under an And Then John Was a Zombie situation. Erika is being set up as an antagonist, and so it's likely that the author was actually trying to get that reaction.
• The first non-expansion sequel to Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War gave us the Force Commander, a fresh-faced and newly appointed superior officer whose characterization hinges almost entirely on being incredibly skilled despite his relative youth and thus in charge of the grizzled veterans. He was less than well received after the charismatic Captains Gabriel Angelos and Davian Thule of the initial DoW series, and Chaos Rising really didn't help much. Then came Dawn of War II: Retribution, where the Space Marine campaign was headed by Apollo Diomodes, the captain of Chapter Master Kyras' honor guard, who unknowingly served as an antagonist during the prior expansion throughout Kyras' secret descent into Chaos worship. Force Commander Vanilla Ice and about half of the less-popular members of the support cast are on the run, declared "renegades" by Kyras, and the fans seemed much happier with Diomedes and his positive Character Development than his predecessor.
• Invoked in The World Ends with You with Joshua. Replacing Shiki from the first week, his attacks are much harder to use, weaker, and don't do damage until the end of a combo (where Shiki's hits every step of the way), and he can't jump or block. Even though he gets much, much more powerful later on, to the extent that he becomes easily the strongest partner in the game, by that time the damage is done and the player is probably very annoyed with him over his combat performance and his overall bad attitude— perfectly mirroring Neku's feelings about this smug, condescending, secretive, Jerkass little prick who took the place of his new, much nicer friend.
• Valkyria Chronicles 4: Selvaria was intended to be a Disc-One Final Boss who was killed off at the end of the first game and never mentioned again. Unfortunately, she ended up becoming the most popular character in the franchise. This caused Sega to either feature her or Suspiciously Similar Substitutes in every subsequent entry. Their most blatant attempt at this was Crymaria, whose detractors see her storyline as an attempt by the writers to rectify the mistakes made to Selvaria's in the first game^note Crymaria's backstory and emotions are given more focus. Klaus vocally and explicitly stands up for Crymaria and convinces her to see worth in her life (in contrast to Jaeger who was an Accomplice by Inaction until it was too late). Klaus seemingly dies protecting Crymaria and then helps her to control her powers through his true love for her and they even abandon the Empire to get married. These concerns are even acknowledged in-game as Crymaria less difficult gameplay-wise than Selvaria and a DLC mission even states that the former was jealous towards the latter. The contrast between Maximillian (a charistmatic and attractive prince who groomed and pretended to love Selvaria to make use of her more effectively) and Belgar (a mustache twirling mad scientist who controls his minions through brute force) also made it feel like Crymaria had less of a reason to fight for the Empire than Selvaria did, making her arc less compelling overall. All these factors contribute to the notion that Crymaria is an inferior copy of Selvaria that got the happy ending the latter was more entitled to.
• World of Warcraft:
  • From Vanilla, we have Fandral Staghelm, who replaced Malfurion Stormrage, whom Blizzard Put on a Bus for seemingly no discernible reason. The fact that he was replacing a very well liked character already put Fandral on an uphill battle, but on top of that Fandral proved to be an arrogant and xenophobic Jerkass who was constantly at odds with fellow Night Elf leader (and also a fan favorite) Tyrande, which unsurprisingly made Alliance players clamor for Malfurion's return and Fandral being retired. Fans got their wish with the Cataclysm expansion, which not only saw Malfurion's return, but Blizzard had Fandral pull a Face–Heel Turn, join Ragnaros, and made him a boss of the Firelands instance, allowing players to kill him. And while Malfurion would become a Base-Breaking Character for the next few expansions thanks to some questionable writing choices, no one has asked for Fandral to come back or even lamented his fate.
  • The Cataclysm expansion features Garrosh Hellscream becoming this for Thrall. To clarify, Garrosh was already a Scrappy and a Creator's Pet; making him replace Thrall as the Warchief just made things worse.
  • Ironically, the announcement that the last patch of Mists of Pandaria would feature a raid in Orgrimmar in which Horde players would seek to oust Garrosh Hellscream and restore Thrall as Warchief was also met with disdain. This was not because Garrosh had been Rescued from the Scrappy Heap, but rather because Thrall has become something of a Scrappy himself (mostly due to his spotlight stealing plots in Cataclysm). Instead, players have been asking that Garrosh be replaced by Vol'jin, Saurfang, or even Sylvanas. Blizzard actually delivered, once everything's done, Thrall relinquished his Warchief status to Vol'jin.
  • On the Alliance side, Varian Wrynn is a borderline case. He replaced Bolvar Fordragon (probably the most popular of the Alliance faction leaders) as the leader of the Alliance, but he existed for as long as Bolvar, who ruled Stormwind in his absence. His formal introduction into the game was one of the events leading into the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, and he has been as destructive towards the fragile peace between the two factions as Garrosh since. Funnily enough, Wrynn has never gone to direct conflict with the Horde (though he has ample reason to) out of some respect for Thrall, Jaina, and Saurfang. He still despises them (ditto above) and is unlikely to back down in the face of Garrosh's inevitable aggression against Gilneas and Ashenvale. With the most reasonable Horde leaders being shoved aside, it seems that Varian is getting new respect from the playerbase.
  • The entire thing can be largely summed up by Blizzard becoming aware that all the huge threats facing Azeroth that force the Alliance and Horde to work together and respective faction leaders who try to forge a delicate peace seemed to decrease the impetus for the player-versus-player, Alliance-versus-Horde conflict. Seeing as they could not have that happen, the replacement faction leaders were needed to be Hot-Blooded enough to get the Conflict Ball rolling again, even if that meant pushing more level-headed and well-loved faction leaders to the side.
  • Scarlet Commander Durand seems to be an In-Universe example; he replaced Commander Renault Mograine as High Inquisitor Whitemane's partner and one half of the final boss of the Scarlet Monastery after the dungeon was revamped (since at this point, Renault was dead story-wise). During the fight, there are some pieces of dialogue from Whiteman that accidentally reveal that she preferred Mograine over Durand.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has a downplayed example: A Recurring Element in the Xenoblade Chronicles series is the presence of Territorial Rotbart, a level 81 gorilla type enemy who wanders around each game's early open areas, and the subject of much Memetic Mutation by the series' fans, who typically assert that getting annihilated by Rotbart is an integral part of any Xenoblade game. The fans were therefore not happy when 3 replaced Rotbart with a Suspiciously Similar Substitute in Jingoistic Giganticus, who is only level 80, and has considerably less aggressive AI, making it much easier to avoid. Thankfully, Future Redeemed reveals why: it was defeated by Matthew Vandham, Shulk, Rex, A, Nikol, and Glimmer before they defeated Alvis's evil side, Alpha.
• To make it closer to the anime, Yo-kai Watch 3 ditched the series' previous female protagonist option, Katie. The male protagonist, Nate, is the canon protagonist while the new female protagonist is Hailey Anne from the anime. Katie is regulated to just being Nate's NPC classmate. Many Katie fans dislike Hailey for replacing Katie. This is especially common internationally, where Katie is more popular than Nate amongst the fandom. Even Sukiyaki (and all of the international versions) having Katie being playable in a short "alternate universe" section didn't help, as many fans thought it was a tease more than anything.

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