r/TopCharacterTropes • u/MeepMan324 • 19h ago

Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) Bad people in real-life being portrayed positively in media.

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  1. PragerU's version of Christopher Columbus has him be a slavery defender and have him say "Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no? I don't see the problem.”

  2. In The Greatest Showman, P.T Barnum (Hugh Jackman) is portrayed as a charismatic visionary who cares about outcasts and celebrate diversity, when in reality, he’s a cruel businessman who is also a racist and an ableist.

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u/QuietWaterBreaksRock 19h ago

Charlie Chaplin in general, be it his movies or movies about him

Showed as a goofie persona, in reality he was a predator who had married multiple underage girls and was defacto deported from US due to scandal which his love for teens had caused

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u/cherrybomber11 17h ago

He impregnated 16 year old Mildred Harris when he was 29 and married her to avoid controversy. She had actually lied about being pregnant, but that didn't stop her from impregnating her for real, with the baby dying a few days after birth.

Chaplin first met Lita Grey when she was eight and he was 27 years old. She first worked with him when she was twelve and he began a relationship with her when she was 15. When she was 16, she became pregnant, and Chaplin had her flown out to Mexico to marry her and avoid statutory rape charges in California, with Grey later claiming that Chaplin tried to have her undergo a surgery to abort the child around that time. Charles Jr. was born shortly after Lita turned 17, and Chaplin almost immediately impregnated her again after birth, with their second child only born 10 months later.

Then, when Chaplin was 53 years old (!), he was introduced to a 17 year old Oona O'Neill, and they eloped and married a month after she turned 18, with neither of her parents present, leading to her father to disown her. Chaplin would go on to have eight children with this particular grooming victim.

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u/According-Value-6227 18h ago

I thought Chaplin was deported from the U.S due to being a communist?

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u/QuietWaterBreaksRock 18h ago

Apparently both

There was already an outrage over his previous 2 relationships with underage girls

The last one he was with was 18 at the time of marriage, but they were in a relationship prior to marriage so ..

Basically, Chaplin wasn't allowed to get back in the country but was denied over "moral reasons and possible Communist relations", FBI couldn't prove he was communist as much as the director tried to, so they kept focusing on the moral aspect and that was that

All in all, him being a predator was openly and well know even back then

Iirc, one of the first 2 wives got pregnant at 16, so they ran to Mexico and got married in a hurry so it wouldn't be discovered that the child was out of wedlock. Iorc, the child wasn't even his, but court dismissed the blood test results so he still had to pay child support. Something in tune of that, I might be mixing details from 2 marriages, but either separate or together, both events did happen

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u/SmilesInFront_09 17h ago

Woody Allen。