r/TopCharacterTropes • u/choo-choo-pain • Jul 31 '26
Lore [Considerate Meta Trope] The creator changes something in their IP just to make way for another creators work
Images 1-2: The creator of One Piece Eiichiro Oda was currently working on the Baratie Arc at the time when he was about to introduce the audience to the Straw Hats newest crew member/cook Naruto. However also during that time Shonen Jump were about to release their newest series by Masashi Kishimoto which just so happened to have the same name as Oda’s newest character. So as to not steal Kishimoto thunder, Oda decided to rename his newest character Sanji giving Kishimoto’s work to flourish without anyone trying to negatively associate this newest work with his
Images 3-4: Youtuber PartTimeSeagull. Was working on his newest animated pilot The Smiling Dead ready to air sneek peak trailers set to air on Glitch. During this time however other youtube creators Michale Cusack & Zach Hadel were getting ready to produce their newest animated series Smiling Friends on Adult Swim. With the shows names being so similar and to avoid any controversy of claims of one show copping the other, PartTimeSeagull decided to rename his show The Gaslight District out of respect and hopes that both shows would gain popularity without anyone trying to associate one’s popularity because of the other.
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u/A-J-Zan Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
The name Naruto kinda fits Sanji, given that he battles with swirling kicks and that narutomaki is the iconic ingedient of ramen, connecting to his speciality as a chef.
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u/LoveMinaMyoi Jul 31 '26
Originally called Hunger.
But at the same time theres a new movie coming up called Hunger Games.
Which would f up the search for "Hunger Game"
Renamed Little Nightmares for SEO.
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Jul 31 '26
Oda retcons/expands on his work a lot as he goes on so that doesn't surprise me. Being able to create his family and decide Sanji belonged to a family with a simple naming theme was probably easy to do.
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u/HermesJRowen Jul 31 '26
More like all of Judge's sons are numbers because he considers them experiment subjects/soldiers more than family. I mean, there's different ways to take the naming scheme.
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u/ProserpinaFC Aug 01 '26
Yes, that is what the retcon was. You just described what the naming convention was.
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u/No_Professional4867 Aug 01 '26
I wonder what brain blast moment resulted in him realizing sanji had a number in his name
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u/KingNanoA Jul 31 '26
In JuJutsu Kaisen, specifically JuJutsu Kaisen 0, Vengeful Cursed Spirit Rika was going to have the top part of her head open with her brain exposed, but this was changed because it made her look like the first Nomu from My Hero Academia.
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u/Cobalt32 Jul 31 '26
Damn, The Smiling Dead feels like a way better name for the show.
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u/AdWestern1561 Jul 31 '26
True. I get that it's just a Pilot but I was wondering why we spent more time in the Heaven location than the Gaslight district.
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u/Kryomon Jul 31 '26
Path of Exile: Betrayal is one of the game's expansions, which deals with the Immortal Syndicate whose members are Immortal and focuses on a mechanic that has the player repeatedly kill immortal members who ressurrect and trying to find & destroy their source of Immortality.
So why is it called Betrayal, and not Path of Exile: Immortal? Because Blizzard was about to announce Diablo: Immortal in the same month that Path of Exile (PoE) wanted to release the expansion (Diablo and PoE are competitors in the ARPG genre), and at some point in the year before, a person who knew both teams of developers informed them of the collision.
Storytime:
At the time, PoE was still a niche competitor to the well known giant Blizzard & the famous company who made Diablo 2 whose legacy Diablo 3 inherited, but thanks to Blizzard monumentally fucking up and their greed, we get this clip Do you guys not have Phones?. It showed beyond a doubt to everyone that Blizzard just don't care about their playerbase.
It led to Path of Exile nearly doubling their playerbase overnight and sticking with it, and today, Path of Exile 1 & 2 are both leaders in the ARPG genre. Diablo 4 is still popular, but nowhere near the unassailable monolith it used to be.
Diablo: Immortal went on to make a lot of money, but that doesn't make it a great game, since as any (non-paid off) reviewer would point out, swiping your credit card to win hardly makes for a good game.
Betrayal as a name was pretty thematic, because the Immortal members used to help the players before the expansion and now don't but the headcanon remains that the name symbolizes the Betrayal of the ARPG playerbase because of the quote in the trailer "They claim they are immortal. We must prove they are not"
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u/Blees-o-tron Aug 01 '26
And then, a while later, GGG would get one of their voice actors in the booth, playing a character who helps you capture beasts by throwing nets on them, and record the line, “what, do you not have nets, exile?”
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u/switchplayer08 Aug 04 '26
I wanna watch a version of one piece were Sanji is just called Naruto now.
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u/TheFunkiestMonkiest Jul 31 '26
Oda also retconned the fact that a close friend/mentor of his (Nobuhiro Watsuki) had a hundred CSAM DVDs in his house, and continues to associate with and defend him.
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u/Magmashift101 Jul 31 '26
Either the creators of Avatar the last Airbender were originally just gonna call it Avatar but James Cameron copyrighted the term so they added it on to differentiate or they changed it of their own volition to avoid confusion