Is "Humanizing" a dark character bad?

[KILLdozer]

Mysterious,,dark,evil,,something strange about them,,all these qualitys are usually something to do with dark gimmicks,,theres been arguably the most famous,,the Undertaker,,which is part of my reason for this post,,and theres beens raven as well,,also part of my reason,,,and youve had taskmaster,,abyss,vampiro,,sting etc...Point is,,is giving more human like realistic qualitys to someone like this a bad thing for the gimmick and character? Does it take away some of the edge?? As i said about Raven,,,he was dark,,,angry,,,moody ,depressive,almost crazy at certain points,,but ive heard several times that he was never the same once he smiled in WCW,,and it may have been the sames story line,,not sure,,but they even had his mother come in a few timesw,which lead to a very realistic backstory..and what about the Undertaker? kane came in,,giving him a more realistic,family orientated backstory,,making him seem almost human,,but we all saw through the feud with kane this didnt hurt the Lord very much,maybe it was the angle in general,hell we even saw something very similar with abyss...Mitchell was his father,,his mother used to show up periodically through the angle,,mitchell was shot three times( i believe) in the back ,,and abyss did prison time,,,something very realistic you could say,,so his brother mesias comes in,,once more the whole down to earth family aspect.....

Well i know this has gotten a bit long for a usual poll,,but ,Does explaining how dark characters got to be that way and giving them human like backstorys hurt the gimmick and credibilty as a whole?

[Big Red Machine]

It all depends how it is done, and how it is followed up on.

[cero2k]

it definitely depends. Sometimes it's necessary to stay relevant with the current direction the promotion is taking, kinda like Taker had to become a bit more "human" to not look all that goofy in WWE.

[Lynas]

It depends... nearly all gimmicks, nearly all characters need freshening up every couple of years or so... people get bored of seeing the same shite different night.... sometimes "Humanizing" a character is the only way to freshen a guy up (see Undertaker circa 2001)... sometimes, it just destroys everything you previously said & built about a character... (see Kane).

I agree in some cases it has to be done... but in most cases... it probably shouldn't... you crap on your fans cereal... take Kane for example... they spend years building up Kane being in a fire set by Undertaker, Kane being so badly scarred & burned.... but over time... it turns out he does have a voice (Fine okay... he can do promos now...).... oh wait a couple years later he has a face...? and aside from that contact lens... his face (though naturally ugly) is relatively normal... what's that WWE? His scars were "mental"... that's not what your company has been saying ever since 1997... Boooo...

[Big Red Machine]

It depends... nearly all gimmicks, nearly all characters need freshening up every couple of years or so... people get bored of seeing the same shite different night.... sometimes "Humanizing" a character is the only way to freshen a guy up (see Undertaker circa 2001)... sometimes, it just destroys everything you previously said & built about a character... (see Kane).

I agree in some cases it has to be done... but in most cases... it probably shouldn't... you crap on your fans cereal... take Kane for example... they spend years building up Kane being in a fire set by Undertaker, Kane being so badly scarred & burned.... but over time... it turns out he does have a voice (Fine okay... he can do promos now...).... oh wait a couple years later he has a face...? and aside from that contact lens... his face (though naturally ugly) is relatively normal... what's that WWE? His scars were "mental"... that's not what your company has been saying ever since 1997... Boooo...

On the Kane thing... F*ck McHugh for killing the other two sites, because RBomb and I had an AMAZING discussion on the kayfabe history of Kane the psychology of the character (not in the wrestling sense, but rather the psychology of the man that is the character that Glenn Jacobs portrays), where I theorized just that. We were told that the scars were physical because that is what everyone, including Kane himself believed. He was in an asylum for a long time (I'm pretty sure this is kayfabe canon, but might actually be from the tidbits of Journey Into Darkness that I have read)... there must have been a reason for this: So maybe the reason was that, while the scars actually healed, Kane himself was mentally scarred to the point where he didn't believe that the physical scars had healed. Bearer (his actual father and legal guardian) took him out of the asylum for nefarious purposes (to assault Taker) and thus (as he showed during his Ministry run) didn't care one bit about Kane's health, so he wouldn't care if Kane was healed or not.

Thus, the Kane we first met believed himself to be scarred, and acted accordingly. One of the things this scarring lead him to believe was that he was impervious to pain. As he was around positive influences in his life (initially Tori and X-Pac, but later on Taker, RVD, Terri Runnells, Hurricane, etc.) he realized that these scars were actually mental, and was able to get over them (which is why it was only with encouragement from X-Pac that he was able to first speak, and why he reverted after X-Pac and Tori betrayed him). Eventually, the scars have healed to the point where they cannot come back, thus making Kane more human.


Yeah, some things like Katie Vick don't make sense, but this explains most of it.

[cero2k]

you should really work on re-writing that theory as a column or something.

[Verdun]

I really didn't like American Badass Undertaker. It just annoyed the hell out of me.

And every time he talked about dogs and yards I wanted to go into someones yard and punch a dog.

[KILLdozer]

I really didn't like American Badass Undertaker. It just annoyed the hell out of me.

And every time he talked about dogs and yards I wanted to go into someones yard and punch a dog.

yea,i dont like when boys are standing in my yard either to this day..

[e-moose]

Humanizing, and in essence, changing the character in their present form is a bad idea. Telling more of the story of the character's history though is a good thing and writers can basically make that stuff up at any time as long as it makes sense. Fans are curious and it creates more interest in the character without changing the character.

[badnewzxl]

I really didn't like American Badass Undertaker. It just annoyed the hell out of me.

And every time he talked about dogs and yards I wanted to go into someones yard and punch a dog.

I LOVED this Taker! I was def thinking of this as I read the first post. I think that this is the way to do it right. If you're gonna humanize a dark character, just make him a human and detach him from the darkness for a little while. I loved the Biker Taker bc he was a real dude, but a real dude who could still call himself the Undertaker. Instead of being fearsome as the Lord of Darkness, he was fearsome as a take no shit biker who'd just beat the ever living hell outta you. Plus, it allowed Taker to further expand his moveset and show that he CAN work the mic and perform as a more REAL character.

And before it got old or ruined him, he went back and the ppl loved it. I think Undertaker and the Great Muta/Keiji Mutoh are the perfect examples of how it's done. The whole Abyss was in prison with Tomko angle is the way it can go wrong....

[Big Red Machine]

The whole Abyss was in prison with Tomko angle is the way it can go wrong....

I don't think that ruined Abyss. What ruined him was them constantly changing his personality after that. If they had kept on the humanizing path (via things like his relationship with Lauren), it would have worked. The problem was that they changed the character 93 times since then.