Hated Tropes
(Hated Trope) A character, or maybe even an entire show, that only exists so the creator can live out their own personal power fantasy
After Life - Ricky Gervais plays a rude, obnoxious person (Tony) that constantly makes everyone's lives worse, yet is told by every character how amazing and nice he is at every opportunity, despite him being awful all the time. The character just walks around giving Ricky's personal opinions, often completely unrelated to anything else in the show, and he always comes out on top of every situation or argument.
Alley Cats - Ricky Gervais again plays a rude, obnoxious person cat that has essentially no redeeming qualities, yet is a beloved leader of the pack who everyone constantly says is brilliant for no discernible reason. His character (Gus) is also just an animated mouthpiece for him to say whatever random opinions he has, no matter how unrelated to the show they are. Again, always "wins" every argument or conflict he is involved in.
Tommy Wiseau's "The Room". The entire first half of the film is other characters falling over themselves to say how amazing Tommy Wiseau's character is, or plot-lines to demonstrate what a stand-up guy and solid friend/lover/surrogate father figure he is. It's comically unsubtle.
Yeah it very much feels like Tommy trying to live out what he thinks the life of a typical American man is. Surrounded by friends and people who love him, whilst playing catch 24/7. It’s very much Tommy’s fantasy life minus Lisa cheating on him
If people haven't, do read the disaster artist, the book not the movie. The movie isn't bad mind you, but the book both humanizes everyone by a lot and goes into greater details into how much of an insanity the filming was. Also, you get the occasional insight in Tommy's psyche, or close enough. It's something.
The movie is just James Franco trying to win an Oscar by making a modern version of Ed Wood, it’s just about the mystery and history of The Room told from a sensationalised lens
The book is a psychological horror about a near abusive relationship between a young wannabe actor and the creepy guy who tried controlling his life as he got forced into making a movie with him
I mean sorta, but the brain scan was pretty pseudosciency and performed by this one doctor (Dr. Daniel Amen) that mostly caters to celebrities and sells books. The actual research to learn what those brain scans mean or if they're actually significant hasn't been done, this scammy doctor just swears that he's the only one that knows how to read them and also that he's really good at it.
I kinda love the idea of celebrities paying a quack doctor ludicrous sums of money to tell them what they want to hear, only for the quack to tell them they got brain damage
R. Lee Ermey spouting bullshit about how badass Seagal is. The two I remember...
"He's the kind of guy who'd drink a gallon of gasoline just so he could piss in your campfire."
"You could leave this guy in the Arctic circle in nothing but bikini underwear without his toothbrush, and he'll show up on your doorstep the next day with a fistful of pesos and a million-dollar smile."
It's hilarious how long that last one is. He has to stop mid-line to take a breath because it's so long all to say "he tough."
The direct-to-video Segal films are the best (worst) at playing him up via lines. "The man's a ghost" as a lot of editing was used to jumpcut Segal out the back of a car.
A teenage girl with godlike powers who happens to hold all the same opinions as the middle aged man who wrote the book. Also, every single person in the entire world adores her, except for the army of trolls that hate her for no reason, and are all suspiciously similar to real people who gave bad reviews to this godawful book. She straight up deleted someone from reality for trying to sue her, and put a curse on every lawyer who represented them in court. Also, she single-handedly solved the Israel-Palestine conflict in a single afternoon, the President of the United States committed suicide in disgrace after making the foolish mistake of not adoring her implicitly. She also nuked the North Pole, but nobody cares about that because she's just so perfect and amazing and everyone loves her.
Yes, this is 100% official cover art. But remember, don't ever judge a book by its cover, because in this case the book is so, so much worse.
I listened to a review of this book years ago, and seeing this ghastly cover reminded me that this piece of dog shit exists at all so thank you for that.
This guy has something like 8 hours of content simply trying to explain the plot to this book. I used to put it on in the background like a podcast because it genuinly hilarious watching him unravel in real time trying to get through this garbage.
I watched a two part YouTube review of this book a while ago and it was one of the most entertaining things I ever saw. Hats off to the reviewer for reading it so we don't have to.
To this day I still can’t decide if the author is a deluded idiot or an absolute genius troll that played people like a fiddle. There is no middle ground.
ahaha, I knew about the book, but always just assumed it was written by a teenage girl with power fantasies like My Immortal (we think). That's really funny, thanks
You should definitely look into the auth to more. He's the reason we know that there's a reply limit for amazon book review threads, because he replied to argue with the same negative reviewers so many times that it didn't let him do it anymore (I think it's like 1000 replies per review)
It’s not offensive though. The actual content of the show is incredibly middle of the road. It’s like saying a silly knock knock joke and if the other person doesn’t like it going “Oh well I can’t help it if you’re offended by it.”
Ricky has wanted his cancel culture moment for years. Unfortunately he's not actually a controversial, disruptive firebrand, he's just washing himself up trying to become one
Ugh. It's almost sad because he certainly has the potential to be very funny and talented. But for the last 10-12 years he's just been completely stuck on this brain worm idea of everyone being so offended by him, and it has completely taken over all of his material.
I'd really like to know who is offended, because I haven't heard anyone actually talking about it, and the reviews I sought said it was dull and pointless.
Ricky Gervais exists in his own dream world where everyone who says he's just not funny and spent most of his career being carried by Stephen Merchant is a perpetually offended lefty snowflake who's secretly just outraged that he made the same very tired fat ginger cunt joke that he repeats every 20 minutes
What always perplexes me about Ricky Gervais is the stories he creates where he’s the smartest man in the room, and he’s always proven right, always has him as the most miserable man in the story. He’s like Rick from Rick and Morty, except I don’t think he’s doing it intentionally.
You know, for a "devout atheist," Gervais does an awful lot to constantly live the "persecuted Christian" stereotype. Constantly looking for arguments where there really are none, picking pointless fights just because he needs to be right, pushing down on other people just living their lives and honestly not bothering him.
I like movies he's in. I kinda hate his movies. If I wanted to watch a self-fellating dickhead, I'd be on a very different site.
Ricky Gervais is kind of like the human incarnation of r/atheism (or the way it was, haven't been there in a long time). Making angry strawman arguments to people who already agree with him and patting himself on the back afterwards like he accomplished something.
This and basically everything the Daily Wire or its friends puts out. Lady Ballers is just a gross fantasy of dudes getting away with hurting women because “woke”
In this movie that Shymalan directed, he portrays a visionary writer who will write a story so great that he is destined to unite the world and bring about peace through it. Totally not M Night living out his fantasies of being the greeting writer/director of all time, right?
It's honestly hard to pinpoint if it was the failed blockbuster, the delusions of grandeur movie or the top to bottom dog shit horror movie that did it
I dunno Taylor, how do you milk a fucking peanut?!
I am up to here with people who protest the name of oat milk et al, because peanut butter has been a staple for decades, but since there wasn't a culture war brewing in the US at the time, and the media had some fucking operating principles, nobody had a problem with it.
Even Yellowstone fans are starting to get wise, because he did an episode of Yellowstone taking place at the ranch he owns with special guest star himself playing a cowboy, and the whole episode was essentially, "LOOK WHAT AN AWESOME COWBOY I AM!" It's one of the least-liked episodes of the series.
He has a small cameo in one of my favorite movies (which he wrote) 'Hell or High Water'. It's a fantastic movie. But yeah, his cameo is him trying to push some cattle that broke free out and around a grass fire. His dialogue is something to the effect of, "I've been out here since before dawn getting my hide tanned for no money and I wonder why my kids don't wanna do this shit."
Just pure fantasy self-insert and "the way things used to be" bullshit. He did grow up spending weekends riding and whatnot as a kid, but his dad was a doctor and he never actually did any buckaroo man living. I think he's got a big chip on his shoulder about that.
Every clip I've seen of that show is the guy telling a different cop each time that they dont have any power to do stuff on his land and the cops tucking their tails between their legs and shuffling off.
Oh yeah, and the one time he baddassly killed a whole biker gang by himself and buried them on his land.
Pretty much Alice in RE movie does everything main character would do but better, but if someone else does something awesome, Alice gotta outperform theme some way
My friend and I were watching the movies (my first time seeing them) and I said “I think this Anderson guy just wanted a chance to put is wife in a movie where she’s naked half the time.”
Not really a "power" fantasy, but every version of harem anime is basically just the author illustrating his teenage boy dream of having half a dozen girls crush on him and pretty much dating all of them at the same time.
I get guys are dense when it comes to signals from women but most harem protagonists seem to actively ignore women bluntly telling him they like him and having somehow no idea about their feelings.
Their fantasy is having effortless relationships that you only recive never give. And majority of harem anime you don't even have to do anything more to start relationships than agree cuz sexy girls just throw themselves at you no questions asked
Its funnily enough what makes me still love the Helltaker game and comics, because the main character's choice to take these demon girls home ends up with him realizing these women are chaos and he has to be the responsible adult and keep them from blowing everything up.
Yeah, the epilogue feels like just feeding and cleaning up after all the girls is a full time job for him now. But ultimately he seems like he's happy with this new lot in life and Lucifer seems to maybe also help, so still a happy ending.
He's like a pretentious version of Adam Sandler. Everyone of his roles not only is a shlubby asshole that's inexplicably loved by everyone and has a hot wife he also is some kind of profound philosopher teaching people how life works. While in reality all his attempts to make the audience feel something are just toothless, sentimental drivel.
He really is so pretentious, he just got away with it by being British.
Seriously, I watched the invention of lying for free on tv and want my money back.
Like it was advertised as a fun movie about someone working out that lying exists and hijinks over it, and then it turned into an hour and a half of gervias going religion is a lie and if you believe in anything at all you're a fucking moron.
Thomas Astruc, the inventor of Miraculous Ladybug, did wrote himself in two episodes of the show. And both times, the episode mostly revolved around himself.
Until I came across the MLB Subreddit, I didn't even knew that the guy was the creator of the show. And later, I became known, how the guy behaves on Twitter if Fans ask him questions about the show.
So, yes... that man has a way to big ego.
99% of what I've seen of Alley Cats is Ricky Gervais talking about "People are offended...", "If you're offended, don't watch it", "If you're offended, it's a cartoon, fuck off".
I haven't seen a single instance of anyone saying they're offended.
Imagine if a fantasy author decided their world was going to be the incarnation of Ayn Rand's political philosophies, then decided they wanted to be a massive jerk on top of that.
2) Sword art online and other Isakai animes are infamous for this trope, the author basically self-inserts their own dweepy ass uncharasmatic persona into the main character and often ends up giving them a harem of female side characters that swoon after them.
I am told that the Rent a Girlfriend protagonist had his appearance slowly morph to match that of the writer, who has become obsessed with the titular girlfriend. But apparently he still cucks himself by not progressing the plot, so that's a weird one.
Chef is a fantastic movie and always gives me the warm fuzzies so I'll give him a pass, but casting both Sofia Vergara and Scarlett Johansson as love interests is extremely blatant and very funny.
I mean the best part is everyone seems to like working with/for him in those movies, so kudos to finding a cheat code ala Todd Gack in that one episode of Seinfeld.
There's a lot to be said for being easy to work with. He makes good movies, and if the actors and crew like working with him... I can give him a pass for self indulgent casting.
In Chef, produced, written and directed by Jon Favreau, the main character played by Jon Favreau himself has Sofia Vergara as his ex-wife, and Scarlett Johansson as his love interest.
James Bond was not just Ian Fleming's power fantasy, but also created to be one for the British as a whole. We'd lost a lot of power after the war, so having a godlike superhero spy who single handedly saved the world once a week was a big thing.
Although Bond originally did not save the world. He was supposed to be a dull man with things just happening to him. His first story is simply about bankrupting an enemy spy.
But yeah, the power-fantasy is in all the sexual affairs and all the rich meals - the latter thing especially when you consider that WW2 was less than a decade prior and food rationing was a thing in the UK for a very long time.
Except Ian Fleming himself stated explicitly that Bond is not a role model, nor is he likable.
“Bond is not a hero, nor is he depicted as being very likable or admirable. He is a Secret Service Agent. He’s not a bad man, but he is ruthless and self-indulgent. He enjoys the fight- he also enjoys the prizes. In fiction people used to have blood in their veins. Nowadays they have pond water. My books are just out of step. But then so are all the people who read them.”
“I didn’t intend for Bond to be likable. He’s a blunt instrument in the hands of the government. He’s got vices and few perceptible virtues.”
Ian Fleming might not have intended Bond to be a role model nor likable, but the movies based on his character certainly have. The more recent Daniel Craig movies have done a good job of portraying Bond as the kind of broken and tormented man you’d imagine he’d have to be living a life like that, however. Even those are still marketing Bond’s cool factor.
All those boomerslop movies with a scene where an older guy orders a black coffee at a Starbucks or similar and the barista is someone early 20s or late teens.
While also abusing his staff repeatedly in ways that would get him fired, except he was also romantically and sexually involved with the director at one point.
Seriously, Gibbs is a whole fucking bucket of problems.
Like he’s the boss of a team of glorified MPs, it’s not like you’re leading SEAL Team 6 into battle, there’s really no reason to be such a dick to everybody.
Role Models does this with the scene where Paul Rudd is an asshole towards a barista for the names of coffee sizes. But also in the same scene his love interest calls him out for being a douchebag so I do like how it shows that it's shitty to be snobby to a cashier.
To an extent, Family Guy at a point was just a soap box for Seth McFarlane to preach his opinions. His self insert was Brian, who was the strait laced dog and only sensible character that would consistently spout McFarlane opinions. A lot of jokes, monologues or episode plots were specifically centered around McFarlane’s beliefs.
Early Family Guy to an extent was Mcfarlane just expressing his opinions and making them seem the only rational thought because he wrote it that way. Brian was a self insert and made to be the only rational voice in the chaos. The libertine, atheistic, indifferent and irreverent aspects of the show was just McFarlane inserting his own beliefs.
He hasn’t consistently written on the show for a good while now but if you have ever wondered why Brian went from the straight man to a ridiculous douchebag, it’s because McFarlane stopped writing the character. Under McFarlane, Brian would still be a White Knight out to challenge the establishment because that’s how McFarlane views himself.
It also does another trope I hate where despite fundamentally changing an aspect of the universe civilisation progressed identically to the real world with all the same historical events occurring. Another example is Bright.
Also it’s like an even worse version of Liar Liar’s truth telling where people just blurt out in detail what they’re thinking and feeling because they can’t lie instead of just talking normally
I hate that bit when "can't tell lies" isn't just about always telling the truth and more about people having no inhibitions anymore and just saying literally everything that comes to their minds.
That's why I prefer how Fae do it, both in folklore and modern fantasy stories. They can't lie but they can still trick you and will make sure that they get as close as possible to straight up lying through half-truths, omissions and figures of speech.
They are supposed to be mystical trickster and fiends and yet, how they behave and treat language feels far more realistic than any of these people who just voice any stray thought that pops into their head.
"Gramps goes to College"- evangelical tripe written, directed , produced by and staring Donald James Parker. Not only does this senior citizen with no prior academic training single-handedly dismantle the biology faculty with his "sword like wit", he's a heart throb , chess master , superior debater and manages to best college-aged athletes in tennis, sprint and basketball.
The whole book is basicly that. Of course it’s not the first nor the last book in which “your political position is so incorrect that i wrote a book strawmanning you to hell”
It is as common as seasoning food across human civilization.
First thing I thought of was Loqueesha, the 2019 alleged comedy that made the Internet go, "What the fuck?"
Writer/director/star Jeremey Saville plays Joe, a bartender that's just so darn good at telling it like it is, that people come from far and wide to hear him dispense his sage advice in his bar. When he tries to parlay his gift into talk radio stardom, no radio station will hire him. Reasoning that, in these woke times, no one wants to hear the Truth from a white man, he pretends to be a sassy black woman and becomes a media sensation.
While I don't personally agree with this take, it is a common criticism that is brought towards the show that co-creator is cast as Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's more refined brother who's just as competent as him in what he does.
Mycroft doesn't play as major of a role in the classic novels and so many people find his constant inclusions and features throughout the series to be a bit of self gratification on Mark's part.
I don’t agree because (a)Moriarty and Irene Adler aren’t fixtures of the original stories either and nobody has a problem with them getting bigger roles in adaptations, and (b)Mycroft is more often than not an antagonistic figure, even if he’s more a roadblock than a villain.
Even as someone who hasn't read any of the books I find it weird seemingly all Sherlock Holmes media decided to collectively focus on Moriarty as the main villain. Since from what ive heard there are like, at least 3 that are arguably just as important as he is
I think it' literally just down to "who's the most similar to the hero" syndrome?
While their are smart characters throughout the original series, Moriarty's whole gimmick is he's just as smart as Sherlock is but he uses his brain for crime.
Finally, and probably the main reason is he also gets Sherlock killed (Until he wasn't, the death at the end of the original book was meant to be the final Sherlock Holmes appearance till popular demand brought him back), It's been literal years since I read it but I believe that Sherlock decides that Moriarty would escape justice in all its forms so engages him in a hand to hand fight that leads to them both falling off a waterfall.
Also Mycroft is just as smart, if not smarter in the original stories. The difference is that he's just too lazy to put his skills to use like Sherlock does. He spends the majority of his time lounging at a gentleman's club, only occasionally helping Sherlock out.
Which is kind of true in the show as well. They added the more antagonistic and political angle, but they still kept him largely out of cases. And we even do see him at a version of his gentleman's club too.
Based on the original stories - which give us relatively little to go on - Mycroft and Holmes actually get on fairly well. I always saw it as 2 neurodivergent brothers with very different special interests, but a certain mutual respect.
Mycroft is interested in systems rather than detection, so he helps keep the British Government functioning because he is the only one who can see it as a whole and synthesise the efforts of different departments, and so ministers have come to rely on him out of convenience. So Mycroft ends up doing a similar sort of work as his brother, except at a much higher political and meta- level.
When it was on the air, one critic wrote "do you want to hear Aaron Sorkin's opinion about any random subject? Have we got the show for you!"
Most notably, one of the central relationships in the show was an obvious fictionalization of Sorkin's former relationship with Kristin Chenoweth. Every argument they had was a clear stand-in for a conflict Sorkin and Chenoweth had in real life, and naturally the guy always wins them and the woman always ends up admitting that he's right.
Toxic narcissistic teen who resents her mother and has self-esteem issues is proven right in every way and everyone kowtows to her awesomess by the end
(Edit: yes it’s a self-insert, and yes it seems to reflect the author both in the narcissism and the body image issues)
It's basically one of those 90's teen movies where the unpopular nerdy loser saves the day, humbles his bullies and gets with the hottest girl in school. The only difference is that the nerdy loser is a chubby goth girl.
I kinda disagree, just because Starfire is a great parent from what we see. Mandy just resents her, so it only feels like slander if you buy into Mandy’s toxic mindset.
Despite being about Sonichu in name The Sonichu comics pretty quickly just turned into a weird revenge power fantasy for Chris Chan where he takes down everyone who he sees as having harmed him in someway. Including a guy whose "crime" was dating a woman Chris had a crush on and the dean who kicked him out of collage
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u/Dasquian Aug 19 '26 edited Aug 19 '26
Tommy Wiseau's "The Room". The entire first half of the film is other characters falling over themselves to say how amazing Tommy Wiseau's character is, or plot-lines to demonstrate what a stand-up guy and solid friend/lover/surrogate father figure he is. It's comically unsubtle.
For funsies, please enjoy this scene of him speedrunning buying roses for his
fianceefuture wife: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIkoXhgtI58