Beast Wars Waspinator. In the pilot two parter, he was an actual threat. After that, he's the universe's punching bag.

 

I was going to put Animated characters in general, especially the core Autobots.

 

Tigerhawk, the dude was presented as a powerful being created by the Vox and gets killed by a flying ship...

 

Couldn't all the autobots fly in g1 MTMTE and then the ability was removed in later episodes?

 

I dunno, the Battle Rig Blaster's kinda large.

 

Whenever it's convenient for the plot in the movies

 

Thunderwing lost his Matrix Affinity in IDW and was reduced to a super powered zombie.

Scorponok was reduced to an interesting, conflicted villain to a two dimensional mad scientist in IDW.

Thundercracker went from a noble warrior to a dog loving, script writing goofball.

Dreamwave badass Sunstreaker became a whiner in IDW.

G1 Galvatron went from a cunning, genuine threat in Target 2006 and the movie to a looney in both the G1 cartoon and comic.

Menasor went from a genuine threat in G1 and Devestation to a grating voiced moron in Prime Wars.

Animated Bulkhead went from a likeable underdog to a generic tough bot in Prime.

 

Thundercracker went from being the cool redneck Russian fighter jet with an orange shotgun to being a nameless DotM Decepticon...

 

Both he and Rodimus Prime got nerfed. Rodimus Prime was the savior of the Cybertronian race and imbued with the wisdom of the Primes. But the writers decided to make him mostly weak and ineffective until you get to the end of Season 3...and then they take the Matrix away from him and bring back Optimus. Whose narf idea was that (rhetorical question)?

Honestly, there aren't too many characters who are introduced as "big bads" that don't get nerfed eventually. That's all due to the constant need to infuse new product and characters into the line and the bar has to constantly be raised to keep things interesting. The G1 TOEI-verse is riddled with this and it tends to be a common anime trope as well (think Dragonball or Fairy Tail).

 

Lockdown. He went from cynical, morally ambiguous bounty hunter in Animated and Age of Extinction to a generic, goofy goon in Cyberverse.

Also, Lugnut. He went from a firebrand fanatic with devastating weapons and an urge to use them to, as with Lockdown, a generic, goofy goon whose only real character development is switching sides halfway through Cyberverse. At least they had the decency to change the name in this case.

 

Lugnut is not Clobber, despite having some skin-deep shared hallmark appearances. Different personality, different name, different alt mode. Basically, we're talking Ratchet being mistaken for First Aid level here.

 

That's demonstrably false. Clobber is very, very clearly Lugnut in design. She was clearly intended to be Lugnut judging by the design, but the decision was made to change it to a "new character" given the major differences between her and Lugnut. It still means Lugnut got a downgrade. He was designed, had his personality changed, then got a new name and gender switch. "New character" yes, but it's painfully obvious where the character came from.

 

Unless you can prove that was the plan all along, we have to go with what is face value. Aside from having a similar robot mode, the character is completely different to the point that there's no up or downgrade going on. They co-exist as completely separate characters within canon.

We're talking that if the actual Lugnut were to show up, you'd tell a difference.

 

If we were to go by that logic, you also can't tell me that it wasn't the plan all along. Like you said, we have face value to go off of, and like I said, Clobber was very clearly designed to be Lugnut. She shares far too many design cues with Lugnut for it to be a coincidence.

 

However, she's NOT Lugnut, no matter how she was designed.

 

That's taking into account the end result. Yes, the end result is a new character, but the journey taken leading to that new character involved nerfing Lugnut.

 

Or, maybe rather than nerf Lugnut, they chose to make it a different character. Thereby making a reasonable opportunity to bring in the real Lugnut later.

 

What part of my last post did you not understand?

 

The part where you say the character is Lugnut when it's not.

 

Where do I begin...
Tfp predaking
Tfp insecticons
Tfp optimus (upgraded)
G1 constructicons
G1 brawn
G1 galvatron
Idw tarn
Bay megatron
Bay optimus
Rid15 optimus
Rid15 soundwave
Beast wars tigerhawk
Beast wars/machines rattrap
Beast wars/machines primal