"Don't tell me you liked that filler stuff about a ring."
Bart Simpson: Alan Moore! You wrote my favorite Radioactive Man comics.
Alan Moore: Oh, really? You liked how I made your favorite superhero a heroin-addicted jazz critic who's not radioactive?
Bart Simpson: I don't read the words, I just like it when he punches people.
Alan Moore: Oh, really? You liked how I made your favorite superhero a heroin-addicted jazz critic who's not radioactive?
Bart Simpson: I don't read the words, I just like it when he punches people.
Anyone who creates works of fiction will often try to make it big and large to justify your money's worth. They want to make each new installment bigger and better than the last, adding in new stories and conventions, and just make it a lot more fun than the last title in a series. In short, development.
Many fans of anything watch movies, or play games, for exactly one reason (generally Rule of Fun) and one reason only. To them, your work has only one purpose: they're Just Here For Godzilla.
Simply, people are paying their own money for their own entertainment. Any other stuff that comes along with what they actually paid money for may be only seen as a minor distraction from that. Though in the best case scenario, those other things can actually add to the enjoyment of their one true goal, whether it be comedy relief in a usually dark film series or any new quirks in gameplay. Often, these things become cool only by association: "Look, it's a clip from that movie/show where this awesome thing happened!" or "Look! It's that actor/actress who was in that sweet movie one time!"
Depending on what you came for, however, it can feel like the creators are deliberately putting obstacles in your way to that destination. If you came to a movie for the action sequences, you could find yourself waiting well over an hour for the first big one, for example. Or maybe your favorite character in a video game is unplayable unless you accomplish some arbitrary task like playing the same mode a few dozen times. In fact, this is precisely where the term "cut to the chase" originated, as plenty of movies made during the early days were thoroughly uninteresting to their audience, but included an exciting chase at the end that people would come for. Named for the Godzilla franchise, well known for its long and sometimes awful human plotlines- that we'll all sit through just to see the awesome giant-monster fighting at the end.
Speculative Fiction tends to run on this. Many people will read/watch it strictly or primarily for the elements that make it Speculative Fiction, with the actual plot being, at best, secondary.
Sister Tropes are: Bile Fascination; Play the Game, Skip the Story; Enjoy The Story, Skip The Game; Preview Piggybacking; Watch It for the Meme; Excuse Plot and Developing Doomed Characters.
Compare I Read It for the Articles, Complacent Gaming Syndrome, Cult Soundtrack, Black Sheep Hit, Estrogen Brigade, Mr. Fanservice, Ms. Fanservice, Testosterone Brigade, Dancing Bear, Wolverine Publicity (when the publishers attempt to invoke this reaction), Come for the X, Stay for the Y (where something besides the Godzilla comes into play), Watched It for the Representation (when portrayals of minorities drive viewership) and Best Known for the Fanservice (which is not necessarily what they come for).
Examples:
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Advertising
- Safe Auto insurance invokes this in some of their advertisements, pointing out that many insurance companies offer the chance to save by "bundling" additional services like home insurance, motorcycle insurance, RV insurance, flood insurance, etc. etc., so and so forth. They, however, just offer a low rate on auto insurance that you can get without having to bundle anything.
- Most of the people watching one AT&T ad were there to see Gumball Watterson make his first commercial appearance.
Anime & Manga
- Anime became the only reason a lot of people were attracted to the Cartoon Network [adult swim] line up. Another group of people just came to watch it for the re-runs of Family Guy, American Dad!, King of the Hill, and (formerly) Futurama, and were reeled in by the network's original comedies. Afterwards, Network Decay hit Cartoon Network badly and, for the first group, [adult swim]'s management started relegating such programming to increasingly late in the night, with little promotion. Most fans have since abandoned [adult swim] nowadays for the Internet or other networks, until Toonami was relaunched, which started this trend anew.
- Odin: Photon Space Sailor Starlight isn't generally regarded as a good film, but it may be of interest to fans of the band Loudness whose music is featured in the film.
- Geneshaft, which includes music by the guitarist from Loudness.
- Gate: The series's right-wing themes have led it to be critically disliked in the US. Despite this, there's something satisfying about modern militaries destroying fantasy ones that is near-univeral.
- Many people who watch Hamtaro only watch it for its human characters (mainly Laura and Kana).
- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha was initially intended to be a cute little spinoff for people Just Here For the cute little sister from Triangle Heart 3: Sweet Songs Forever. Halfway through the first season, which had by then pulled more viewers than the Toraha 3 OVA released around the same time had, the game cast starts to fade out and the plot gets complicated. By the end, Nanoha is the only game cast member with a major role, the universe has made many major breaks with the originals, and most people seeking the Triangle Heart games and OVAs are Just There For Nanoha.
- Happiness is an anime that was originally a Visual Novel. Most agree it's a fairly mediocre high school drama with a really generic magic system attached. It doesn't matter though, because nearly everyone watches it to see Jun, who steals every single scene she's in.
- DARLING in the FRANXX is a very controversial series and has a ton of rivalries from other mecha anime, but many people, even some detractors, admitted that they're just watching it for Zero Two and how her love story with Hiro would play out anyway.
- Future Diary: Just here for the Ax-Crazy Yandere.
- A lot of fans watch My-HiME for Shizuru and Natsuki (be them individually or together). But it's usually "watched". Not so much with My-Otome though.
- While the manga has a bit more existent plot, the only reason most people watch Kanokon is because it should have just been titled Fanservice: The Anime.
- Many watchers of Black Butler stick around simply for the sheer awesomeness that is Sebastian. He is, after all, one hell of a butler. And a lot of others came for the apparent Ho Yay that fans always boast about.
- The film adaptation of "Buddha" by Osamu Tezuka seems to be shaping up to be this, due to the soundtrack including "Scarlet Love Song" by X Japan.
- A lot of people watched Elfen Lied for the Gorn and fanservice.
- People check out the When They Cry series for the gore but typically stay for other reasons.
- How many fans of Hetalia: Axis Powers actually have read or watched a majority of the series? You're in here for the fandom, Ho Yay, and the fact the series is based upon Bishōnen and Bishojo personified masses of land.
- Most Wandering Son fans who began with the anime came for either the Scenery Porn or the realistic representation of transgender people.
- A lot of Bokura no Hentai fans came to notice the series because one of the protagonists, Marika, is a trans girl.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: Bonds Beyond Time is watched to see Yugi, Judai, and Yusei dueling together.
- An amusing inversion in the Digimon series. There are plenty of fans who ignore the Digimon and prefer to focus on the interactions between humans. As the anime is considered to be a rare positive example of a Human-Focused Adaptation, this is understandable.
- Gundam: Despite the complicated plots and the overbearing characters, people still watch the show just to see giant robots beat each other up.
- Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury: Unusually for the franchise, the series has drawn a large portion of yuri fandom who never had interest in Mecha before, and just wanted to see the relationship between Suletta and Miorine develop.
- Whenever the topic of Initial D comes up on a forum, you can be certain that someone will say "I only watch it for the cars", followed by someone else responding with "We all only watch it for the cars.". Additionally, many people also watch Initial D just because of the Eurobeat music.
- Fans of the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure OVA, mainly watch it for the final, unique fight with Dio and Jotaro. Also, the manga has a small group of fans who read it just for the many musical shout outs. That or the fabulous, over-the-top poses.
- Some of Pokémon: The Series' early Western fandom started from this; even though the games were the origin of the franchise as a whole, the English dub of the anime was intentionally released in the U.S. several weeks before the games were. As a result, it became a promotional vehicle for the rest of the franchise, and some fans initially watched the show to familiarize themselves with the series before the games were available. Even now, sneak peeks of upcoming game material are often showcased in the anime, giving people who don't normally watch it a reason to do so if they are fans of the games. After the initial hype had died down, with new Pokémon being revealed in CoroCoro Comic before the anime can begin a new region and Ash losing the Indigo Conference, there are some fans who still watch the anime mainly to see if Ash wins a Pokémon League. There are also fans who only stay tuned to the anime of the franchise just to see the Pokémon battles that take place.
- It's not uncommon to hear disgruntled viewers of Guilty Crown say they're only watching the show just to hear the awesome soundtrack, the fluid animation, and the action scenes.
- Many Robotech fans looked forward to Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles because it would feature the long-awaited return of Rick Hunter, the hero of the Super Dimension Fortress Macross-based portion of the franchise. They were, understandably disappointed when he had less than two minutes screentime in an 85-minute film and only appeared on a viewscreen.
- Goodnight Punpun's protagonist looks like a bird. This attracts people, who would pass it off as an ordinary Slice of Life if he was a normal boy. The series goes off the deep end quickly and people now know it as a dark Widget Series manga with a bird-thing for a main character.
- Yuki Yuna is a Hero:
- Magical girl fans aside, Yuki Yuna is a Hero got noticed due to the Handicapped Badass Togo. She's one of the few physically disabled characters in mainstream anime, never mind Magical Girl series, and doesn't get "fixed" when in magical girl form... Alas, a lot of people also stopped watching because the series has a bit of fanservice, especially around Togo (who probably has the largest chest out of the girls).
- After the series hits Cerebus Syndrome it got a huge leap in popularity due to people watching it for the characters' suffering. This also caused complaints when the original anime ended on a Surprisingly Happy Ending.
- Dragon Ball:
- In spite of how popular the supporting cast members may be, most storylines pretty much amount to them holding off the Big Bad at bay while waiting for Goku to show up and defeat him.
- The Broly trilogy of Non-Serial Movies has the famous Breakout Villain and title character. Most people only want to see Broly destroying stuff and beating the crap out of the heroes. Even though the second and third movies are inferior to the first one, people are glad to see Broly doing his thing in the second movie at all. Most fans hate the third movie because the Broly in the movie isn't the real Broly and he's not as awesome as the original.
- The Potafeau arc of Dragon Ball Super is considered a dud by fans, but the English dub has people wanting to watch it thanks to the inclusion of Brian Drummond, the voice of Vegeta in the original Ocean Group dub of DBZ, playing the Copy-Vegeta opposite Christopher Sabat as the regular Vegeta.
- Many people come to Berserk to check out its gritty nature and badass protagonist Guts, but have since stuck around despite lengthy release periods (and more traumatizing events) for the intriguing character line up and the mythos of the world; in later volumes, much more attention has been focused on these elements rather than the grim-dark themes and a sizeable portion of the fanbase is actually grateful for the relieving shift in atmosphere. However, another portion of the fanbase wants the series to get back to what it's really about: senseless violence, Gratuitous Rape, and darkness darkness everywhere.
- Much of the adult fanbase watches Pretty Cure either just for the epic Dragon Ball Z-style beatdowns of their enemies and monsters of the week, or the quite visible lesbian subtext.
- Sailor Moon:
- Sailor Moon is also quite popular among fanboys, mainly for the fights and the attractive lead characters.
- The series has an LGBT Fanbase because the anime was many people's first time seeing a happy, explicitly lesbian couple in media.
- Sailor Moon Crystal has many fans tune into Season 3 just to watch Sailor Saturn turn up and showcase her actual destructive power.
- Most people watch Puella Magi Madoka Magica to witness Mami getting decapitated in episode 3, or to experience the other horrifying twists and Gut Punches. The show is a tragedy and does have some dramatic twists, but it isn't meant to be one giant Trauma Conga Line; many people find the twists too predictable because they were hoping for something shocking. And occasionally there's the opposite extreme where some seem to only watch the series for the Yuri despite most of it being subtext and Homura's attraction to Madoka only being confirmed via Word of God (Not that's the most stable either as shown in Rebellion). The show has the dubious distinction of frequently winning "best yuri series" polls despite technically not being one. This is not helped by Japan's Misaimed Marketing focusing more on the Moe aspects of the series to the point of being borderline-Schmuck Bait for those excepting to just watch it for cute girls.
- Interstella 5555. It was created by one of the biggest names in anime, but since he doesn't have as much recognition outside of Japan, most western viewers likely saw it due to the fact that the whole thing is set to Daft Punk's most famous and critically acclaimed album.
- Some people watched Kemono Friends expecting Bile Fascination, because it was an adaption of a mobile game whose service ended before the show even premiered, and it had low-quality animation. In a unique recursive example, it became well loved among anime fans, and suddenly people were watching it for being a great show despite having bad production values.
- Yuri!!! on Ice was watched by many just for the fact that it portrays a realistic gay relationship, although a comparable number probably came for the figure skating.
- Many people got into Yo-Kai Watch just to see why it was a big deal in Japan and why it was a rival to Pokémon: The Series.
- As you might guess from the title of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, its main appeal is the novelty of an isekai where the protagonist starts his new life, not as a uniquely powerful human but a uniquely adaptable slime — i.e. a small animate blob of goo.
- Most people end up watching Samurai Flamenco to witness the infamous twist where a real super sentai villain appears and brutally murders several cops with its guillotine-torso. The show made a name for itself mainly because the first several episodes are one giant fake-out.
- Isekai Quartet biggest appeal is that the characters from Re:Zero, Overlord (2012), KonoSuba, and The Saga of Tanya the Evil interact with each other in the same classroom. Disregarding the part where all four series are "isekai" (another world) stories, the fact that four different franchises all in the same anime has never been done in anime history.
- Most Jewelpet fans are only in it for the titular pets. A lot of Lady Jewelpet viewers were disappointed due to the pets' severely diminished role and screen time. But even then, it's the debut season of Luea, the main reason to watch Lady.
- This trope also helped vindicate Jewelpet: Magical Change. It favors the pets and makes Luna and Larimar main characters alongside the aforementioned Luea.
- While the series Onegai My Melody has a mix of the super cute creatures Sanrio is known for and humans who don't take too much screentime, there's some who enjoy watching the show mostly for the antics of My Melody, Piano, her rivals Kuromi and Baku along with the other cutesy creatures from Mari Land, this could possibly be a reason why in Season 4 Onegai My Melody Kirara★ focused more on the cutesy creatures of Mari Land with only a few humans commonly seen who are also chibified in Mari Land possibly to have fit in with the residents of Mari Land.
- If you've heard of Tribe Nine, it's likely for one of two reasons: it was created by the same people that gave us Danganronpa, and the English dub includes several popular YouTube and Twitch streamers in its cast (the most notable being Corpse Husband as major antagonist Ojiro Otori).
Comedy
- Leo Gallagher made the Sledge-O-Matic closer into such a signature routine that he had to get the courts to stop his brother from performing it. Given the splatter protection fans came up with so they could see the "carnage" up close and protect their outfits, it's clear they were just there for it.
- Many comedians have a love/hate relationship with their more famous bits. Many of their fans show up to hear "the classics" and get impatient with them trying to do new material. Keep in mind the majority of comedians prefer to perform new material once certain routines are "public" on CDs or stand up specials. Andrew Dice Clay got completely sick of his most famous bit doing dirty nursery rhymes. He'll now do them as an encore if he's in the mood and the crowd was responsive to his regular set. Surprisingly, Patton Oswalt often averts this, depending on his mood (and his drunk level), and will also do older bits as an encore, taking requests from the crowd.
- A lot of people showed up to Sam Kinison shows purely to hear his trademark howl.
- Lenny Bruce had a problem with people showing up purely to hear him swear (during an era where it was considered public indecency, even in a private adults only club), and would get bored with his regular non-profane bits.
- Dave Chappelle famously would get incensed with people showing up to this shows demanding bits from his sketch show (particularly the Rick James sketch) and yelling out the catchphrases, interrupting his set.
- Some fans show up purely to heckle, either just to upset the comedians or to get yelled at (thinking they're "helping" the comedian).
- Jeff Dunham opens his "Spark of Insanity" special by acknowledging that the applause he gets isn't for him but for his dummies.
Comic Books
- Marvel has been known to place Wolverine prominently on covers of comics he barely appears in because of this.
- Lampshaded when during one promotion where each cover in one particular month featured Wolverine whether or not he even appears in the story. On some (such as the short-lived adaptation of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series) the cover (always showing Wolvie teaming up with the comic's hero(es)) there was a small disclaimer, obviously suggested by Marvel's legal counsel that read "Wolverine does not actually appear in this comic."
- Also parodied by The Sensational She-Hulk, where they have a cover of Wolverine and a couple of other heroes at the charge and the blurb "Wolverine is on this comic!"... and a crumpled bottom having been pushed up by Jen, who looks at the reader while glibly saying "Note the cover doesn't say he's actually in this comic!"
- Similarly, a lot of publicity for 2000 AD revolves around the fact that it's the magazine that originated Judge Dredd. Dredd is on roughly 98% of covers nowadays, and the title on the cover used to have the subtitle Featuring 'JUDGE DREDD', a tradition continued by the iOS app.
- Some people read Hulk comics for the same reason they watch the television shows and movie adaptations: To see Bruce Banner Hulking Out.
- One of the trends of The Dark Age of Comic Books was the artists and fans placing emphasis on art over story such that superstar artists even started their own publishing companies. Eventually, backlash shifted things back in favor of the writing especially as the novelty of the stylized and exaggerated art of that era wore off.
- Many readers of Convergence are happy to see their favorite characters again in their pre-Flashpoint versions, if only to see them get a proper closure to their stories.
- Body Bags is about a father-daughter bounty hunter duo, Mack and Panda. Despite both characters getting equal amounts of focus in the story a lot of readers really only care about Panda, mainly because of her attractive design and she provides a lot of the humour for the series. Mack is more of a typical brooding anti-hero, just a bit more violent. It's extremely telling that the vast majority of fan content of the series is of Panda.
- Spider-Men II: Many people may not be as much interested in the plot about the Miles Morales from the Prime Earth, but for the reveal of the ending: The return of the Ultimate Marvel universe.
- Wonder Girl (Infinite Frontier): Some WW fans only read the book as popular Wonder Woman supporting characters such as Cassie Sandsmark and Artemis popped up for a few issues to get some spotlight.
Fan Works
- Godzilla, the Trope Namer himself, is a member of the Department of Hotness in "Hottie 4: Even Better Sequel", the sequel to "Hottie 3: The Best Fan Fic in the World".
- 90% of site traffic on Literotica is to the incest section, with many users never looking at any other section.
- Dekiru: The Fusion Hero! is a well-written story by itself; however, a portion of the readership is only there to see what kind of crazy, badass fusions the author can make up using Izuku and the rest of Class 1-A.
- God Slaying Blade Works: Many reviews say Godou Kusanagi is boring and they don't care about him, wishing he would just go away and let the fic focus on Shirou Emiya, to the frustration of the author.
Films — Animation
- Wreck-It Ralph: Fans all over the Internet are having Nerdgasms from seeing their favourite video game characters make cameos. Subverted for many when the cameos stop coming about halfway through the movie and the audience is hooked on the film's own characters and plot. Even then, you'll still hear complaints that Bowser got no lines (though it was probably for the better). The film's sequel, Ralph Breaks the Internet, got a similar reaction, as while fans who were just there for the video game cameos and references dropped out upon learning that they'd be a severe lack of them, new fans came in that were excited to see their favorite Disney and Disney-owned characters having cameo appearances, including all the Disney Princesses.
- Hotel Transylvania: A good deal of the interest (at least among adults) came solely from the fact that Genndy Tartakovsky directed the film. Many people were not interested in the film itself and just wanted to see it because they thought it would help his career if they did.
- FernGully: The Last Rainforest: The few fans it has mainly just watch it to see Robin Williams as Batty Koda and/or Tim Curry as Hexxus.
- Frozen: Some people went to see the film only because of the Mickey Mouse short playing before it, and a large part of the fanbase enjoy the film because of Elsa. A few people just want to see the movie because of "Let it Go" (and seeing as the song itself is on the Disney website...)
- It is safe to say that some fans only went to see Rise of the Guardians because of Jack Frost. Same with furries watching it for Bunnymund.
- There are 2 well-known fangirl types in the The Hunchback of Notre Dame fandom: "Frollophiles" and Clopin fans. Most of these fans only watch merely for the times they show up, with Clopin's side complaining about how he doesn't get enough screen time.
- The first My Little Pony: Equestria Girls film features a load of Fandom Nods, with countless references to popular memetic lines such as "20% cooler" and the camera regularly jerking away from the action to showcase a much beloved supporting character or background pony as a human. A good number of bronies who did not like the movie watched it just for those elements, and some bronies who did consider it redeemable just for those drops. Then the surprisingly improved sequels, specials, and shorts came along, and many bronies' reason for watching became "Just Here For Sunset Shimmer", as the character transformed from a rather flat and boring antagonist to a well-rounded protagonist with a two-film redemption arc and tons of Fanfic Fuel.
- The Book of Life:
- Some fans are more interested in Xibalba and La Muerte's story and relationship than that of Manolo, Joaquin, and Maria.
- Some people are also intrigued more by the gorgeous art style and animation as opposed to the story/dialogue.
- The LEGO Movie:
- Many people had an interest in the film simply because Batman was in it and had a major role.
- Other fans are just here for Uni-Kitty.
- Many older LEGO fans are just here to see all the classic LEGO cameos, including Johnny Thunder and 1980-something space guys.
- And others might come just to see if their favorite themes will make an appearance *cough* BIONICLE *cough* Blink and you'll miss them, but a shot of the Toa appear during an exposition dump.
- For that matter, who else is just going to watch this movie just to see Morgan Freeman voice an animated character for the first time?
- It also marks the very first time Wonder Woman appears in a major motion picture!
- Many mature viewers went to see The Secret Life of Pets because of the trailers featuring Leonard, the headbanging poodle. Too bad he only has about 30 seconds of screen time in the whole movie and no spoken lines at all.
- The Aristocats: While the film was very successful throughout the 1970s even gaining two spin-off comics in the early 1970s. The film is mostly viewed as So Okay, It's Average from the general public. Starting in the early to mid 1990s (or early to mid 1980s), Marie suddenly caught the attention from the general public and immediately become the most popular character of the film. As a result, people (especially from Japan, Asia, and Brazil) mainly watched the movie for any scene featuring Marie (and her brothers to a lesser extent). Disney took notice of the character's popularity and made tons of Marie merchandise, Aristocats books starring Marie, and attempted on making two animated projects starring her in the early 2000s. Due to Marie's popularity, The Aristocats is the only 70s era Disney movie from the Disney Animated Canon that gets tons of representation alongside films from the Classic Era, the Disney Renaissance Era, and The Modern Renaissance of the 2010s.
- Quite a few South Park fans are only interested in Despicable Me 3 because the villain of the film is voiced by co-creator Trey Parker.
- Many Angry Birds fans only watch The Angry Birds Movie for its climax (an assault on the Pigs' Castle, with all the catapulting and demolition action like in the games) since the rest of the movie (and more particularly the first act) is like a sitcom: Red needing anger management and being made to take such a class, and then having to argue with people who don't believe that the Pigs are unfriendly.
- There are two reasons why people watch the infamously bad Titanic: The Legend Goes On: 1. The rapping dog and 2. The reviews by The Nostalgia Critic and JonTron.
- Similar to the Legend Goes On, viewers are only interested in The Legend of the Titanic because of how terrible it is and reviews on YouTube. The same can be said for its even more awful sequel Tentacolino.
- Some of the Disney sequels, while often divisive at best, manage to gain fans from one key draw appeal:
- For Bambi II, even those not interested in an Interquel for the first film will often admit enjoyment from hearing Patrick Stewart's portrayal of The Great Prince.
- The same stance often occurs for scenes of Tony Jay's take on Shere Khan in The Jungle Book 2.
- The Lion King II: Simba's Pride is quite popular for its Rogues Gallery, the Outlanders, especially Zira. The songs are also considered to be a high point of the film.
- The Fox and the Hound 2 is best remembered for Dixie and her singing.
- For many people, it being Adam West's last outing as Batman before his 2017 passing and the Ham-to-Ham Combat between West as Batman and William Shatner as Two-Face are enough reason to see Batman vs. Two-Face.
- If people watch (or remember) G.I. Joe: The Movie for anything, it's the Ameri-tastic Action-Hogging Opening.
- Many only watched The Queen's Corgi for its inclusion of the one and only Donald Trump.
- As soon as it was announced that Family Guy and American Dad! creator Seth MacFarlane would be starring in Sing, many Family Guy and American Dad fans have only shown an interest in the movie just to hear Seth star in it.
- A lot of people were only interested in Spies in Disguise for having Will Smith and Tom Holland as a duo. Some were only interested in the premise of Will Smith as a James Bond-like spy, and were disappointed to find that he spends most of the movie turned into a pigeon.
- For those people not sold on Generation 5 and its' divisive premise note probably only watched the beginning of My Little Pony: A New Generation to see the Mane Six for one final time.
- Coco: Some fans of Frozen (2013) went to see the movie in theaters during the first two weeks just to see the new Christmas special, Olaf's Frozen Adventure, which played before it. Conversely, others who didn't care about the short deliberately showed up to their screening late to avoid having to watch it.
- Home (2015):
- Some people consider the character of Tip to be the only thing that is executed well in the movie, given that she has a strong, likeable personality and character arc.
- On the other hand, some people (especially fans of The Big Bang Theory) only enjoy this movie because of Jim Parsons' voice acting as Oh.
- Turning Red: After it was announced that Billie Eilish and FINNEAS would be writing songs for the fictional In-Universe Boy Band 4*Town, and that FINNEAS himself would be voicing Jesse, many of their fans are seeing the movie to hear their music and voices.
- The Super Mario Bros. Movie:
- Much like Pokémon Detective Pikachu, many longtime fans of the franchise mainly saw it just to try to spot all of the references and cameos to the original source material, as well as references to Donkey Kong Country and Nintendo as a whole.
- There are other people who mainly wanted to see it just to see how some of the infamous casting choices are executed, such as Charlie Day as Luigi, Jack Black as Bowser, and especially Chris Pratt as Mario himself.
- Some came solely for the inclusion of characters like Cranky Kong and Foreman Spike who, for one reason or another, were unexpected.
- Others admitted to seeing the movie because just to see Mario and Luigi's extended family for the first time.
- Hulk Vs. contained two stories: Hulk vs. Wolverine and Hulk vs. Thor. A lot of people just watched it for Deadpool, who was only actually in one of the stories.
Literature
- Older Than Radio: When Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was released, it was the illustrator, John Tenniel, who was the big draw to the book — he was very popular and well-regarded, and who had heard of "Lewis Carroll" anyway? But it turned out, children were delighted by Alice's nonsense world, and especially the gift of a story without a moral in it!
- Carnosaur: The escaped dinosaurs attacking people and eventually battling the military takes up less than 40% of the book, but is the main draw for many readers.
- Many people who love Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and its myriad adaptations are just there for Mr. Willy Wonka, who doesn't actually appear "onstage" until the 1/3 mark of the novel and the halfway point of most adaptations. This has often been counted as a mark against adaptations, including the 2013 West End musical, with many complaints on theatre message boards boiling down to "He should appear sooner than the end of Act One, who cares about that boring poor kid and his family?" When the show was retooled for Broadway and all subsequent productions, it introduced Mr. Wonka and his Zany Scheme at the top of the show, killing all the mystery the novel tries to build up in one fell swoop.
- With the Fu Manchu novels, at least some readers found the villain and his devious plans a bigger draw than the heroes who opposed them.
- Ghost Radio drew more praise for the frightening excerpts of the titular radio show, than it did for the main plot, detailing the surreal drama its host Joaquin experiences in between broadcasts. This appeal increases for the audiobook, which amounts to the vocally expressive and versatile Pedro Pascal reading spooky stories for several hours.
- A lot of new readers of Good Omens are just there for Aziraphale and Crowley, who are the only characters you hear about online 95% of the time due to their very easy to see UST. For those who don't know, it's more of an ensemble cast type book.
- Saving Charlie was written largely for Heroes fans who loved Ensemble Dark Horse Hiro; Hiro himself went on to become a Breakout Character in the TV series.
- The novel Soon I Will Be Invincible has two POV characters, but few people read the book for anything but Doctor Impossible's side of the plot — after the all, the title is all about him, not Fatale.
- The Star Wars Expanded Universe and Legends does this. Even if it's about someone unique to the EU, you'll see cameos by your favorite characters and Jar Jar. For a specific example, most fans read the anthology Tales from a Galaxy Far, Far Away Volume 1: Aliens because they heard that the short story "The Crimson Corsair and the Lost Treasure of Count Dooku" featured a twist appearance from the clone trooper Kix, a character from Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
- A lot of fans are only interested in The Adventures of Teebo because it was written by future renowned movie director and producer Joe Johnston.
Music
- Before digitally distributed music (ie. iTunes), people bought whole albums for a single song, even if the 45 was available. This was especially true of cassettes. Unless the song was at the very beginning of the tape, people would have to patiently wait through other songs 'til they got to the track they wanted. Greatest Hits Albums were made for this reason, as they were comprised of only the most well-known songs without all the Album Filler.
- In the days when people could only buy whole albums, this was the reason fans of specific acts often bought compilations – because there were one or two songs on it that they actually wanted.
- If a popular musician contributes songs to other artists, fans will often buy releases containing those songs whilst having no interest in the artist's other work. This was common with The Beatles, who gave songs to other artists all throughout the 60s (for example, Cilla Black). It also happens with musicians who retired from music, such as Gregg Alexander, whose songs written for Ronan Keating helped sustain both their late 90s successes well into the 2000s.
- This can happen at double-billed concerts or festivals if you're a fan of only one of the artists playing.
- Many classical music concerts often feature the more melodic tunes by popular composers ("William Tell Overture" (Gioachino Rossini), "The Blue Danube" (Johann Strauss), "Bolero" (Maurice Ravel), "5th symphony" (Ludwig van Beethoven) "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart),...), because most audiences just want to hear the most famous portions and not the obscure, less danceable work. In fact, many well known classical tunes are played as a stand-alone piece instead of in the context of the original work. For instance, everyone knows the first part of Beethoven's 5th Symphony but are unaware that there are more lesser-known portions to the work.
- And if the "William Tell Overture" is on the playlist, take a second look. Many classical stations only play the finale of the overture (a.k.a. The Lone Ranger theme). The full overture is 12 minutes long.
- A similar fate befalls another overture, Tchaikovsky's 1812: do you just listen for the cannons to come up at the end, or do you enjoy the choral introduction and development that leads up to them?
- Often happens at concerts of older bands that were once more popular, but are still putting out new material. Fans want to hear the older hits, not the new stuff, especially if the new stuff just isn't up to par. Along those lines, Michael Jackson The IMMORTAL World Tour was criticized for giving too much stage time to songs from The '90s onward, most of which are not nearly as well-known and loved as his songs from The '70s and The '80s except by the Vocal Minority of his fanbase.
- Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band's 1972 hit "Garden Party
" tells the story of Nelson being booed off the stage at Madison Square Garden, seemingly because he was playing his newer, country-tinged music instead of the 1950s-era rock that he had been successful with earlier, and his realization that "you can't please everyone, so you've got to please yourself". The full story goes as thus — on October 15, 1971, a Rock 'n Roll Revival concert was given at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The playbill included many greats of the early rock era, including Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and Bobby Rydell. Nelson came on stage dressed in the then-current fashion, wearing bell-bottoms and a purple velvet shirt, with his hair hanging down to his shoulders. He started playing his older songs "Hello Mary Lou" and "She Belongs to Me", but then he played The Rolling Stones' "Country Honk" (a country version of their hit song "Honky Tonk Women") and the crowd began to boo. While some reports say that the booing was caused by police action in the back of the audience, Nelson took it personally and left the stage. He watched the rest of the concert backstage and did not reappear on stage for the finale.
- Featured spots in popular music (i.e. "Song X" by Alice feat. Bob) exploit this. You take a popular or respected artist and put them on a lesser known, slightly less popular or rising artist's song, either dropping a verse or just doing the hook. The goal here is to advertise the lesser artist to the masses using the star power of the featured artist. Unfortunately, many of the lesser-known artists end up being One-Hit Wonders as the fans only buy the song solely for the featured artist.
- Multiple reviewers noted that Queen's collaboration with David Bowie, "Under Pressure", is typically the only reason that most people checked out and remember the otherwise maligned Hot Space. This got so prominent that the song was included as a bonus track on the 1995 reissue of Bowie's better-regarded album Let's Dance, and it remains a staple of both artists' Greatest Hits Albums to this day.
- Michael Jackson definitely started this — Paul McCartney's "Say Say Say" and Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me" would not have sold nearly as well had he not done guest vocals on them. Rockwell is a special case since he is not known for anything else. The only reason why Jackson sang on The Jacksons' "Victory" and one track on 2300 Jackson Street is that his family begged him to use his star power to make them money.
- Let's face it, Mark Ronson's song "Uptown Funk" was a (worldwide) megahit only because of featured artist Bruno Mars. A lot of people outside of the U.K. aren't even aware that it isn't a Bruno Mars song.
- "Bang Bang" by Jessie J, Ariana Grande, and Nicki Minaj was only a hit in America because of the latter two artists.
- "Where Are U Now" by Skrillex and Diplo only became a hit because Justin Bieber sang it.
- Papa Roach is by no means an obscure band, even well after their peak. However, 2015's "Gravity" became the most well-known song from its album F.E.A.R. primarily because it features Maria Brink of In This Moment.
- "The Hanging Tree" by James Newton Howard only became a hit because Jennifer Lawrence was the featured vocalist.
- "Stereo Hearts" by Gym Class Heroes and "Locked Away" by R. City only became hits because they both featured Maroon 5's Adam Levine.
- Puerto Rican artist Luis Fonsi has always been a very popular figure in the Latin music community, but only scored a pop crossover hit with "Despacito." While in some regions he was able to hit the charts on the song's own merits, its success in other regions (particularly the Anglosphere) was mainly because of the remix, which featured Justin Bieber singing in Spanish. This has posed a problem for Bieber after the song blew up; since he neither knows Spanish nor can remember the song's lyrics, he can't sing the whole song live.
- Z-Trip's "Walking Dead", featuring Chester Bennington - the song was never officially released as a single, but started getting some radio play on alternative rock radio stations because of association with Linkin Park. The song's popularity unintentionally sparked some minor Fandom Rivalry: Z-Trip's label noticed "Walking Dead" was selling more as an individual download on iTunes than the rest of the album Shifting Gears was, and, in a misguided attempt to boost album sales, made it so that you could only get the song by buying the whole album. Linkin Park fans flooded the album's iTunes page with negative reviews as a result, often ones that Misblamed Z-Trip himself.
- In the early 1970s, Neil Young played backup instrumentals on other artists' recordings. Listeners who recognize his distinctive sound may discover albums by lesser known folk artists like Elyse Weinberg and Joanne Shenandoah (Oneida) this way. Shenandoah is one of the most celebrated of Native artists, but little known outside of indigenous rock/folk/jazz fan circles.
- Lizzo's "Good as Hell" went to #3 after the release of a remix featuring Ariana Grande, while "Rumors", released well after her meteoric peak, went to #4 thanks to a Cardi B feature.
- Disclosure's "Latch" went to #7 in the US in 2014, a year after it was released, due to it featuring vocals from Sam Smith, who had become a worldwide sensation at the time.
- Alesso's "When I'm Gone" only became a hit because it featured Katy Perry on vocals.
- In one of the most amusing instances of featured artist abuse to date, many Family Guy fans wound up listening to "Self Medication" by Logic solely because the former series' creator, Seth MacFarlane, is a featured artist.
- During the height of dubstep's popularity, it became known that many fans of the genre weren't there necessarily for the music, but for the portion of the song known as "the drop" – the end of the song's buildup when the drum beat and the layers of wobble bass would start up again. Many dubstep artists have cited this as one of the reasons why they've distanced themselves from the genre, and it's also cited as one of the reasons why the US electronic music boom faded out by the mid-2010s.
- The Vocaloids Kagamine Rin and Len come packaged together. Some buy them and only use Rin for their songs, and some will only use Len and never touch Rin. The same could be said for ZOLA Project's Yuu, Kyo, and Wil, to a lesser extent.
- This happens to a lot of bands when they have a popular song, especially if it's a One-Hit Wonder or Black Sheep Hit. A lot of musicians will have Creator Backlash and be annoyed when fans beg them to play it at concerts.
- Radiohead fans often demand from the start of the concert that "Creep" be played, then leave as soon as it's over. Radiohead is less than happy with this state of affairs, as documented in another song, "My Iron Lung." It became much less of a problem when OK Computer and Kid A introduced a whole new legion of fans.
- According to King Missile frontman John S. Hall, around 1992 or so, their live audiences were entirely made up of people who were either long-time fans or were just there for "Detachable Penis" - they dealt with it by always playing the song live, but deliberately making sure it came very early in the set. Thus, everyone who was just there for their hit would stream out of the club and they could play the remainder of the show to an audience that would pay attention to their other songs.
- Nirvana employed the same tactic with "Smells Like Teen Spirit". They also very seldom performed encores, and when they did, "Teen Spirit" was always part of the main set.
- The B-52s have pretty much always played "Love Shack" as the last track of their main set, which generally cleared out the radio fans, then when it came to their encore, played an older fan favorite and concluded with their first hit "Rock Lobster".
- Microdisney subverted this, they would often play their current single early in the set but conclude with an encore of it (most often with "Town To Town").
- This became a major point of contention for Pink Floyd after The Dark Side of the Moon put them in the mainstream spotlight: much of their new audiences were disinterested in anything that wasn't "Money". This reached the point where a scene in the feature film adaptation of The Wall features a schoolteacher explicitly decrying the lyrics to "Money" as "absolute rubbish."
- The Australian comedy group Tripod had a song on this subject, with particular reference to the Peter Jackson's King Kong (2005); the refrain being "Get to the fucking monkey."
- This is often why Hank Williams III gets concert bookings. He sounds just like his late grandfather Hank Williams Sr. and so starts off every concert by doing some country songs and his grandfather's hits. Once that's done he informs the country fans that the part they came for is done with and that they can leave before launching into the Psychobilly Death Metal songs from his group Assjack that he actually likes to perform.
- Hawkwind attribute a large portion of their live audiences from mid-1971 to mid-75 (particularly in Germany) to Stacia, a statuesque brunette standing a little over 6 foot tall, who would dance on stage. note
- Inverted for a while by Bob Dylan, who went through a phase of playing "All Along the Watchtower" third in the set for no particular reason; although it wasn't the intention, it let people who'd followed him on tour and didn't want to hear it know when they could go for a smoke or toilet break.
- Make no mistake, whenever Cyriak makes a music video for a band/musician, that's the only thing people are there for.
- Cake is notorious for pointing out "fake fans" who obviously only know their big hits. When they catch people up front who are only singing along to The Distance and what not, they will point them out and shame them into moving to the back so the hardcore fans who know all the words to every song can get up front and really enjoy the show.
- Most people (at least most young people) only bought Cheek to Cheek by Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga because of the latter.
- Before it was possible to buy single tracks digitally, there were many film music fans who got song-heavy soundtrack albums for the score cut(s).
- The primary reason Korn's songs "Narcissistic Cannibal" and "Get Up!" stayed well-remembered despite them being released long after their peak in relevance was because Skrillex was involved on them.
- If you look at the comment sections on pretty much any of Low Roar's songs, you can guarantee that 99% of the comments will be about Kojima, with only some even about the songs themselves.
- This trope is pretty much what Ville Valo has said drives his creative process. To summarize, he says that while he's not really a fan of everything J. R. R. Tolkien wrote, he is a big fan of Uruk-hai. As a result, when he writes songs, he doesn't necessarily write about a whole work or corpus, but about something in it.
- Obscure Norwegian rapper Mr. Pimp-Lotion released a single titled "Hvem Stjal Spenolen?", which features singer Didrik Solli-Tangen and World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen as guest artists. Most of the YouTube commenters — many of whom don't even speak Norwegian — admit that they're only there to hear Carlsen rap.
- Non-fans of Drake's music no doubt tuned into his music video "I'm Upset" just to see a reunion of Degrassi: The Next Generation cast members.
- In an appearance on Ken Reid's TV Guidance Counselor podcast, John Hodgman explained a quiet acknowledgment of this trope as one of the greatest pieces of showmanship he's ever seen: Attending one of Jeff Goldblum and the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra's jazz concerts at the Rockwell Club in Los Angeles, he was surprised to see that the meet-and-greet with Goldblum was before the music began, rather than after the show as is typical. But the reasoning is clear: Goldblum is a professional-quality jazz pianist, but because acting is what he's best known for he knows that many people attending his concerts are there for him more than the music. By doing the meet-and-greet at the top of the show, those fans are already satisfied and everyone is able to relax and enjoy the show that follows (which goes on to alternate songs with banter and trivia about his films).
- While Jimmy Reed is a capable guitarist and harmonica player, his voice tends to be the main draw for many fans. He could sing a song about the most boring subject imaginable, and his fans would still listen for his voice. It is for this reason that his album, "Jimmy Reed Plays 12 String Guitar Blues", has never sold very well - despite the popularity of his other early records.
- Eminem is increasingly well known for his Motor Mouth speed rapping. A look at the YouTube view data on any of his songs tend to show the most viewed segments of the video are his fast verses, such as the climax of his song coincidentally called "Godzilla".
- Tim Maia's Racional Vols wound up Vindicated by History because of listeners who only wanted to hear the soulful music and clean vocals, ignoring the lyrics that are basically indoctrination for a cult.
Music Videos
- Miserable: There are a lot fans of the video who aren't actually fans of the song but tune in to the video just to see a giant Pamela Anderson reclining in a bikini and high heels while a band explores her body, and/or the Twist Ending where the guys get eaten by said giant Pamela. Even the song's lead singer has acknowledged this, encouraging people to "watch it on mute if you must" if it means checking out the video.
Pinballs
- Many older electro-mechanical and early solid-state pinball games fall under this, as manufacturers were not above using sexy art to compensate for an average game or a mediocre playfield design. Examples include Playboy (Bally), Viper, and Mata Hari.
- Pinball machines with big, over-the-top gimmicks often wind up with this approach, especially if the rest of the game is bland or unbalanced otherwise. Apollo 13 is an example, with its 13-ball multiball overshadowing everything else. Indiana Jones gets this too; its 8-ball multiball is less extreme, but there are much more of them in public locations than Apollo 13. Batman (Stern) is a non-multiball example, with the pivoting crane being such a well-liked gimmick that many step up to the machine just to be able to hit the weight at the tip of the crane's arm again and again.
Podcasts
- True Capitalist: As the name suggests, the show has some good information on the economy, as well as detailed (albeit biased) insight on current events. As far as its Periphery Demographic is concerned, however, the only reason to listen to it is for the Trolling, as well as the host's reactions to it.
Print Media
- Many writers have readers who are reading it because they're interested in the time period and/or country where it takes place.
- A subscription to Nintendo Power in the late '80s could net you a copy of Dragon Quest. A full version of a game worth roughly half again (at the time) the value of the subscription. Not a bad promo. Probably brought in a lot of business for the magazine.
- Amiga Power knew some readers would only care about the score given to the reviewed works, and in their final issue gave Alien Breed 3D 2: The Killing Grounds a score of 98% (one of their highest scores in the entire run of the magazine), adding in the review itself that they'd always wanted to give a fake score and that it was actually only worth 59%.
- Pornographic mags. Subverted and lampshaded, as most like to say it's just for the articles but, for a good half the readership, it's closer to "Someone get these words out, they're blocking my pictorials!"
- A good chunk of the readers of Toyfare magazine only read it for Twisted Toyfare Theatre.
- Take a look at the back cover blurb of a Chinese novel that's been translated into Swedish. You'll find that it's written under the assumption that the book's potential readers are looking for a novel to teach them about China as a country, and not just a plot and characters and the other stuff you usually look for in a book. The Cultural Revolution is bound to be mentioned. The book Beijing Doll is just an autobiographical novel about life as a rock music-loving teen, but the Swedish back cover makes sure to mention that it takes place after The Cultural Revolution, just so that the publishers could include a mention of it. It's very rare to find a back cover blurb that assumes that the readers just want a good novel and don't care one way or the other about the country where it takes place.
- Gerald Ford's memoir was 30,000 words long, but the main reason anyone wanted to read it was to see why he pardoned Richard Nixon. This was actually acknowledged in court — when magazine The Nation excerpted the entire relevant text (300 words) for their review, the publisher sued them, and it was deemed not Fair Use, on the grounds that those 300 words were "the heart of the work".
- CoroCoro Comics has a lot of people who buy it not for the manga but for the Pokémon announcements. Pokémon Blue could originally only be brought through CoroCoro, so that also helped boost magazine sales in the '90s.
Pro Wrestling
- Roger Ebert once confessed that when he was a boy in The '50s, he and his friends would go to see women's wrestling matches at carnivals in the hope that there would be a Wardrobe Malfunction.
- The story Hulk Hogan and The WWF want you to believe is that the American Wrestling Association was done as dinner after Hulk Hogan left it. The truth is, there were still two guys that enough fans wanted to see for the AWA to remain a viable competitor to the WWF. They were the The Road Warriors Hawk and Animal.
- In the '80s, WWF used to put Hulk Hogan's matches on last regardless of whether they were the actual main event or not, as they noted that, when Hogan went on in the middle of the card, a shocking number of people would simply get up and leave after his match instead of sticking around for the rest of the show.
- The Montreal Screwjob at WWE Survivor Series 1997. "Ring the fucking bell!" There were six other matches that night; does anybody ever talk about them?
- For several years during the Attitude Era and sometime thereafter, WWE showcased their Divas in strip matches (called variously "Evening Gown Matches" or "Bra and Panties Matches") - and many teenage boys tuned in just for that.
- In the Attitude era many only watched for The Rock or hardcore matches, and later on, were only interested in Rey Mysterio or John Cena.
- The Undertaker is a walking one, especially concerning WrestleMania. It does not help that the last couple WMs have had his match the best match of the night (and some times the only match worth watching).
- This mindset led to the rapid expansion and gradual decline of Pro Wrestling NOAH. It was a breakaway from All Japan and fans tuned in and turned out in droves to continue seeing Kenta Kobashi, Mitsuharu Misawa and the other All Japan stars. Unlike most cases of this in pro wrestling, the old guard did try very hard to pass the torch onto newer wrestlers, but the fans, for the most part, didn't bite, causing NOAH to shrink as the former AJPW stars moved on, aged or got injured.
- IWA Puerto Rico had become the undisputed leader in pro wrestling for the Island, to the point many people had only continued to pay attention to former top promotion WWC because they liked watching Carly (who was one third The Rock, another "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, another badass shovel-wielding scientific technician in a wife beater and completely unlike anything else the local product had to offer at the time) his brother Eddie, for being more of a throwback to their father's prime or Ray Gonzalez were other popular names.
- By 2007, WWECW was the CM Punk show, because he was the only reason anyone watched it. After he got drafted to RAW (and won his first world title) Matt Hardy became the focus though he had a more varied and interesting roster to work with, so he didn't have to carry the show as much. But then he turned heel and returned to SmackDown to feud with Jeff, so a returning Christian (who was originally supposed to be involved in the angle Hardy was in) took over the place. To be honest, Christian shouldn't have been there either considering his level of popularity (at one point, he was more over than Cena) and talent, but somebody had to carry the show until WWE NXT came along, and with his original return storyline spoiled on the Internet, he and Matt had to take each other's places.
- Many hardcore wrestling fans and some pro wrestlers themselves only watched post-brand extension WWE for CM Punk or Daniel Bryan. After Punk left the company and Bryan got injured, it became The Shield, pre- and post-breakup (minus Roman Reigns). Otherwise, the only WWE anyone in those demographics watched after that point was WWE NXT.
- Similarly, some fans who still struggle through TNA watch solely for Austin Aries, Kurt Angle or Bobby Roode. Samoa Joe is also common and in the early years, you might have heard Monty Brown or AJ Styles. Between 2007 and 09, Gail Kim, Awesome Kong or, surprisingly, Daffney might have been mentioned as well.
- While those asked would mostly admit to finding all the ROH matches at least decent, the crowd in the baseball stadium for the 2014 Field Of Honor was a particularly drunken and rowdy one up until AJ Styles came out. In 2016-17, the major reasons to watch ROH are Dalton Castle and his Boys and the Bullet Club (mostly The Young Bucks, bolstered with Cody Rhodes as champ).
- There is a three-way split amongst wrestling fans in general. Some watch for the drama and promo segments and fast forward through matches. Others watch the matches and skip the talking segments. Only the third watch both.
- Invoked/discussed by Chris Jericho:
"There's nothing wrong with the 'Smart Mark' there's nothing wrong with wanting to see the ultimate match, but a lot of people just want to sit back and be entertained as well."
- Wrestlemania III has its share of moments but the biggest reason for many to watch is the main event of Andre the Giant vs. Hulk Hogan, to see Hogan bodyslam Andre, and to see Andre lose cleanly because it is a HUGE moment in wrestling and WWE history.
- King of the Ring 1998- The event that had the infamous Hell in a Cell match between Undertaker and Mankind. Does anyone remember that Steve Austin (at the height of his popularity) actually lost the World title in the main event?
- WCW's Bash at the Beach 1996 is an event you can fastfoward through. What you're looking for is the main event. Hulk Hogan legdrops Randy Savage, thus turning heel and creating the nWo.
Radio
- Shortly after the turn of the new millennium, longrunning Christian radio program Haven Today (formerly Haven of Rest) had to make a decision regarding their long-standing in-house vocal group The Haven Quartet. Throughout the decades, said vocal group has prompted many people to start listening to the radio program. Ultimately, though, they decided that the message of the program was more important than the music meant to enhance the message. So they decided it was more financally efficent to appeal to the portions of the audience who appreciated the message more so than the music.
- Referenced in The BBC Radio 4 panel game We've Been Here Before, talking about Bill Clinton's autobiography:
Clive Anderson: For anyone interested, Bill Clinton's book is an in-depth analysis of the limitations of geopolitical power in a post-bipolar world. The bit about the cigar is on page 76.
Sports
- Michael Jordan. Once he left (and came back, and left and came back, and left and came back) the NBA saw a drop in their ratings that they still haven't fully recovered from.
- In the same way, a study by the NFL has shown that a big part of their ratings decline has come from the retirement of Peyton Manning.
- LeBron James. As far as Cleveland is concerned, the pre-2003 Cavs only existed to fill the gap between football and baseball. And considering the apocalyptic tone of the coverage of his move to Miami, apparently, many think James was the only reason to be in Cleveland period.
- Most basketball fans only watched the late-2000s and early-2010s Oklahoma City Thunder to see Kevin Durant.
- Tiger Woods brought in a lot of new golf fans. The Nielsen ratings often go way down in golf tournaments where Tiger isn't playing, but go way up when he has a chance to win.
- The Minnesota Lynx had trouble getting butts in the seats before Lindsay Whalen and Maya Moore showed up.
- The US women's soccer team has gotten a lot more popular since Alex Morgan joined; Hope Solo could pack the crowds, too. (In this respect, Christine Sinclair would be the Canadian counterpart.)
- Summer or winter, it's a well-known fact that the Olympic Games are riddled with Godzillas. Some people only watch for the team sports, some only watch to see their country and don't care about events that don't have a hometown hero, some only watch to see the current big star(s) (e.g., Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt in 2008 and 2012), and some just watch for the events where women compete in skimpy outfits. The one universally understood constant is that no one on Earth is actually interested in every single event (and hardly anyone is interested in the non-competition portions of the television coverage).
- Lance Armstrong. Ever since he stopped competing in the Tour de France, American interest in that event has been tepid at best. And conversely in the UK interest in the Tour, and road cycling in general, increased massively after the success of the Sky team, Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome.
- How many people who watch NASCAR really know what "track bar adjustment" and "bump drafting" mean, and how many just want to see the big wreck? This is a common joke throughout motorsports fandom in general: that a sizable contingent of fans are there just to see the crashes. NASCAR is simply the most famous for this, given that the oval circuits favored by the discipline inevitably produce both very high speeds (200 mph is normal cruising speed on some speedways) and tightly-packed fields of racers — meaning that it is not uncommon to see multi-car pileups that send vehicles flying through the air.
- In the same way, a lot of hockey fans watch solely for the fist fights.
- Watching the Super Bowl for the high-budget commercials, or the half-time show.
- Often seen in Major League Baseball when some player is about to tie or break a record, even if doing so doesn't mean anything for the team since they're out of contention and it might not even matter to the game outcome.
- A lot of male teens spend a lot of time at high-school or college games staring at the cheerleaders. Bonus points for the short skirts.
- Pop singer Paula Abdul once complained that when she was a Laker Girl, Los Angeles Lakers superfan Jack Nicholson would spend much of the game creepily ogling her.
- In general, any sport in which female athletes expose their panties while playing will fall victim to this trope for some people. Cheerleaders, figure skaters, tennis players...
- Tennis:
- The sport became very popular in Israel for a while when Shakhar Pe'er and the duo Andy and Yoni became prominent.
- Women's tennis has increased ratings in the U.S. when Serena and Venus Williams are playing, in fact, the 2001 U.S. Open match between them was moved to prime time because of the positive effects they had on ratings. This similarly happened in the 2015 U.S. Open: Venus and Serena's quarterfinal match drew more fans than the women's final, which was not helped that Serena got upset in the semis after beating Venus...and further exacerbated that that loss foiled Serena's bid for a Grand Slam (all four major tournaments won in a year, something that hadn't happened in any singles play in 27 years).
- MMA. Some fans simply watch for either the knockouts, or one of the major names such as GSP, Anderson Silva, or Chael Sonnen.
- Particularly, these type of fans have no appreciation for technical chess matches on the mat and are quick to boo if the two fighters aren't throwing haymakers wildly the entire fight, though they may pop for a crazy submission.
- During Brock Lesnar's time in the UFC, many fans went to his matches or ordered the PPV's strictly to see him lose.
- In all combat sports and in professional wrestling sports entertainment, some fans will tune in for the one fight between superstars or the fight with a gimmick and not care who else is on the card. For example, when Mike Tyson or George Foreman climbed back into the ring for some dubious "comeback" fights, plenty of fans tuned in despite the high odds of severe disappointment.
- Ronda Rousey. The growth of UFC's female fanbase can be attributed to her. And her Testosterone Brigade can't be ignored either.
- How many people wear clothing with a sports team logo on it strictly for fashion, and aren't fans of that team or even the sport?
- Any big soccer event, be it the UEFA Champions League, The World Cup or any other hyped matchup is bound to draw "fans" who will ask what offside is or who was playing again. One can't help but wonder what they are actually doing there. The fact that many games are now shown on big screens in public has only made this worse.
- Several countries - most notably the USA, Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia - have invoked this in an effort to spur interest in their domestic leagues, by signing legions of high-profile players in the hope that people will start watching the league just to see those players in action. In 2023, for example, Lionel Messi moved to Inter Miami, and when he was substituted off during his second game, half the stadium got up and left because they'd been there just to see him.
- Any team where fans only follow them when they're on a winning streak or in a championship game.
- Just the presence of a single world-class player in a team-based sport can greatly increase the interest of their nation towards it. For example, interest for the NBA in Argentina grew to unprecedented levels with Manu Ginóbili's success in it... and dropped after he retired.
- Men’s singles figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu was this for his fans when he was competing. Any event with Hanyu was guaranteed to sell out very fast, and people returned/sold their tickets in droves if he withdrew. After he performed, fans would throw gifts of Winnie the Pooh plushies on the ice, a phenomenon dubbed the “Pooh rain” that was stopped due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. He became a household name even in countries with little presence of figure skating, and has been remarked to be “bigger than the sport”. He’s even very publicly loved in China, whose history with anyone and anything Japanese is a bit fraught.
Tabletop Games
- Every Game Master who has focused on plots has encountered this. The entire joke about The Munchkin File's archetypes reveals three of the four are there just for Godzilla. The Loonie is there for a laugh, The Real Man is there to put the hurt on something in a power fantasy, and the Munchkin is there just for whatever gives the most plusses. Other RPG guides talk about players who just want to play out their personal fantasy over and over, those who like outfoxing the GM's best antagonists, and gamers who are there just to hang with their friends.
- This happens in war games with extensive historical backgrounds or in-universe mythologies. Some players are trying to recreate the Roman Legio XX, refight Midway, or celebrate the Expanded Universe of their favorite setting. Others just want things to die and couldn't care less about any of the supposed backdrop. And some players want the big win so bad, they'll try to make the most deadly force the rules allow, real-world doctrine (for historical games), in-universe fluff, or even sportsmanship be damned.
- Exalted Second Edition had a notable example of this. The Infernals, who get their power from the Yozis (the defeated and imprisoned creators of the world), were themed as demonic, warped heroes. However, a supplementary book noted that, at high Power Levels, Infernals could break away from their masters and write their own power sets. Many players began creating Infernals and playing them exclusively for this last bit - only to be disappointed when most campaigns never reached the levels where it opened up (in part due to player dissatisfaction at having to play a demonic, warped hero in the meantime). (To put this in perspective: most Exalted character start at Essence 2. Reaching Essence 5 is relatively easy if you have a long enough campaign, but hurdles beyond 5 mean that very few campaigns reach Essence 6, the minimum needed to start the breakaway.) This got bad enough that the series developers took note and corrected it for Exalted Third Edition: Infernals remain demonic and warped, but then there is this new thing called Exigents who define their custom power sets from the start.
- This is more or less how Games Workshop got into the miniature business. Early on, GW gained the sole distributing rights to Dungeons & Dragons. Soon after, the company began to manufacture miniatures for the game. After GW lost the rights to Dungeons & Dragons, they soon found that players were still buying the miniatures. This time to use in numerous wargames. As a result, GW began to create their own in-house games that used the miniatures. Even today, there is a good number of players who buy GW products for uses other than Age of Sigmar or Warhammer 40k.
- A lot of children who owned Mouse Trap (1963) would often skip straight to building the ridiculously elaborate mouse trap and watching it go, even though building the mouse trap one part at a time is supposed to be part of the game.
- Trading cards. Some people just enjoy collecting things, and don't actually follow/enjoy what sport/activity the cards represent. There's also a group who only tries to build their perfect deck and cares neither about the lore behind the cards, nor about having a complete collection or the rarest cards in existence.
Theatre
- This is the origin of modern musical theatre. Some people were putting on a play, the ballet house next door burnt down, so they offered the ballerinas a part in their show. They threw together some songs and dance numbers et voilà, they had created a five and a half hour abomination against all that has ever been held as art: The Black Crook. But, having women in pants, which, in an age where women wore skirts, was considered very sexy. Similarly, the modern burlesque evolved out of a segment of the minstrel shows devoted to a parody of famous works. After the minstrel show disappeared and its segments were scattered the burlesque continued as parody, but as more and more women entered it playing men's parts, more and more men showed up to see women in pants. Wasn't long before they just gave up the pretense and started giving the audience exactly what they wanted.
- Many major "spectacle" musicals sell themselves as much (or more!) on Scenery Porn, Costume Porn, and especially giant special effects as on the songs and the actors:
- The incredibly detailed costumes in Cats
- The barricade and turntable in Les Misérables
- The falling chandelier in The Phantom of the Opera
- The helicopter in Miss Saigon
- The titular flying car in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
- The hefty Wire Fu in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark
- The Great Glass Elevator in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
- The Mountaintop is a play centered on the civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. which took a new perspective on him. But a lot of people simply watch it to see Samuel L. Jackson play Martin Luther King. This happens a lot when Hollywood actors do theatre. (Of course, while stage actors may not have the huge fanbases that movie stars do, there are those with loyal fandoms who will see a show simply because they're in it.)
- Many of the people who went to see the 1992 production of Tom Stoppard's Every Good Boy Deserves Favour were there because the primary roles were filled by Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Gates McFadden, and Colm Meaney.
- In 19th-century French opera, the selling point was the mandatory ballet sequence, to the point where the big-money patrons often skipped the rest of the show to dine at their clubs and only came out to watch the ballet (in large part because they had romantic affairs going on with the dancers). The opera itself was treated as window dressing.
- In contrast to Tuxedo Mask's memetic uselessness perpetuated by the '90s Sailor Moon anime, many fans of the 25th-anniversary staging of Sera Myu are Just There For Yuuga Yamato, and/or seeing Haruka/Michiru as played by Shuu Shiotsuki and Sayaka Fujioka. All three are alums of Takarazuka Revue (in fact, each of the five musicals in this run has at least two or three former Takarasiennes in the cast, mostly playing villains), with Yamato and Hatsukaze Midori (Queen Beryl in La Reconquista) being the most big profile ones (respectively, former top star of Cosmos Troupe and former nibante of Moon Troupe). Zukafans, therefore, turned up alongside Sailor Moon fans at the musicals.
- The King Kong musical is a nice play, but most viewers are really interested in the Kong puppet itself. It's considered an engineering marvel.
Video Games — General
- For console gaming in general, some people may get a video game console just to play a few specific games that appeal to them and nothing else.
- Not unlike Falcom below, Arc System Works releases sometimes get the same reaction for their soundtracks, particularly Daisuke Ishiwatari's hard rock compositions in Guilty Gear and BlazBlue. Though not taken 100% seriously, fandom exposure to the new character themes in Guilty Gear -STRIVE- birthed the joke in English-speaking circles that "Daisuke's latest album came with a free game."
- Epic Games. In the Unreal franchise, the single-player side of the franchise was left with Unreal II: The Awakening, (2002) so everything which was left was the multiplayer side of it. It took until the creation of Gears of War (2006) for them to make people play single-player games and focus on the story. And even then, most of the people were more interested in the multiplayer rather than the singleplayer or the story of the game. The same could be said for Epic's mega-hit Fortnite. And still on the topic of the company, ask anybody who uses the Epic Games Store, and there's a fair chance that the person will say about Fortnite, or the weekly free games.
- Some players only played Falcom games for their music. And those who pre-ordered Ys vs. Sora no Kiseki crossover game, would be presented with Falcom's best soundtrack collection album arrange version. Not to say the game itself is not desirable enough but many bought it for that. One 2channel user said it best:
"The game is just bonus, the soundtrack is the real deal."
- id Software made the decision with the Quake series to move towards competitive multiplayer-only gaming. They eventually abandoned single-player entirely with Quake III: Arena. When they tried to return with Doom³, half the fandom hated it. Doom had already implemented a deathmatch mode, but it was also strongly designed with co-op in mind, making deathmatch only an extra. Quake fans disliked Doom 3 for its focus on singleplayer. Doom fans disliked Doom 3 for not making it co-op.
- For the PlayStation line as a whole:
- Sony Interactive Entertainment banked on the trope with its consoles acting as secondary devices. The PlayStation was also a CD audio player, the PlayStation 2 could play DVDs, and the PlayStation 3 played Blu-Ray. While there were stand alone devices at the time each of the consoles came out, they were very expensive due to new technology generally being very expensive. Since the PlayStation brand was cheaper, people would buy them just to play their music and movies while the ability to play video games was either just a bonus or a feature they didn't care about using.
- For some in the West, the reason they chose a PlayStation console over an Xbox is purely for Occidental Otaku reasons: Since the Xbox has historically been unpopular in Japan, most JRPGs and licensed anime games are PlayStation exclusives.
- Some games become popular because their achievements are very easy to get, leading them to be highly sought-after by novice achievement hunters. Cheap tie-in games in particular tend to be notorious for this.
- There is a game based on Avatar: The Last Airbender that has a total of 5 Achievements worth 1,000 Gamerscore, which you can unlock within the first five minutes of playing the game. The game gained a thriving aftermarket on Amazon and in gaming stores on the basis of this alone, and was eventually included in the backwards compatibility program on the Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, a rarity for a licensed kids game.
- There's an early 360 game based on the TMNT franchise, which is similar. No hidden achievements, just 100 chevos per level till you beat it. You can put it on Easy and breeze through the game in an hour and get 1000 points. It's also easy to pick up the game for 5-10 bucks used at game stores and online. This game in particular is said to be a reason game designers were mandated by Microsoft to put a degree of difficulty in at least SOME of the Achievements.
- Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: For the easy Platinum trophy.
- Hannah Montana: The Movie: For the easy Platinum trophy.
- Megamind: Ultimate Showdown: For the easy Platinum trophy.
- Sound Shapes: For the easy Platinum trophy due to Cross Save, transferring Trophy unlock data along with the actual saves. This allows people to automatically obtain a Platinum Trophy (which requires getting every other Trophy) in a matter of seconds.
- Ratalika Games: Their entire MO around is pumping out cheap, low quality games that give you a platinum in an hour or less, and have it available in up to six different regions so people can buy the game six times for six easy platinums. Unsurprisingly, they're very successful for people who release nothing but shovelware and very controversial in the trophy hunting community.
- Tim Schafer was aggravated when he was playing his game Brütal Legend online, only to find a player send him a message "surrendur plz," which meant the player was just trying to trade wins for Achievements without trying to play. Tim Schafer tweeted "surrender plz? SURRENDUR PLZ? Is that what I go online for? To be asked to surrendur plz at my own game?!"
- With the rise of Kickstarter and a trend of big-name developers leaving their companies to go independent, many of these developers have attempted to leverage their reputation or their association with popular franchises such as Mega Man or Sonic the Hedgehog in order to secure anticipation for their new games.
- Mighty No. 9: For Keiji Inafune (longtime director and producer of Mega Man) developing.
- Yooka-Laylee: For former employees of Rare developing. Partial subversion, as the studio behind Yooka-Laylee, Playtonic, was founded by the former Rare core team who left Rare as it was acquired by Microsoft, and the game is designed to be a spiritual successor to one of their most popular game series, so their reputation only promised what they were planning to deliver.
- Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night: For Koji Igarashi (best known for his work on Castlevania) developing.
- Balan Wonderworld: For Yuji Naka and Naoto Ohshima (co-creators of Sonic the Hedgehog) developing.
- For a lot of MMORPGs, there are people who don't care about the story or the content that players can progress through and play only reach and play in endgame content, which is where the hardest challenges lie. Some games allow the player to skip everything just to hit the endgame faster.
- Sports games such as Madden NFL, FIFA Soccer, NBA 2K and others are a huge draw for people who are otherwise uninterested in video games, and many buy consoles just to play them. This demographic is likely why these games continue to come out on Daddy Systems for years after other types of games abandon them, because such people are unlikely to run out and buy newly-released consoles just to play a handful of games.
- Players who get deep into Speedrunning, glitch exploring/exploitation, or who tend to set their own goals and ignore the game's intended objectives tend to fall into this sooner or later. Who cares about the plot/dungeons/bosses? I'm going to pick flowers/beat the hundred hour game in 3 minutes/get 400% completion in a game that only has 100% on paper. They enjoy the game as much or more than a player playing in the intended manner, but what they do can leave you wondering if they're even playing the same game at all. Ultimately they're enjoying mastery of the holes in the game's systems or engine, rather than all the other stuff the developers pasted on top.
- Games like The Legend of Zelda CD-i Games, Hotel Mario, and I. M. Meen are less known for their gameplay, and more for their weird-looking animated cutscenes that became YouTube Poop fodder. Most "fans" would be perfectly content just watching a cutscene compilation on YouTube so they won't have to deal with that pesky "gameplay" thing that's in the way of seeing the off-looking characters say unintentionally-funny things.
Video Games — Specific Series and Games
- Most people that buy ARMA II and its expansions only get it in order to play the DayZ mod that turns the game into a zombie survival horror game. Valve Software, the creators of Steam where the ARMA games can be bought from, are well aware of this, and mention on their store pages for each individual part of the full ARMA II: Combined Operations package that you need all of them for the mod version of DayZ.
- Most people that aren't interested in video games usually play Assassin's Creed because of its focus on world history and near-perfect recreation of various monuments and other architectural wonders.
- For many, the big draw of BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle will be RWBY characters being playable in a 2D fighting game for the first time ever.
- Bomberman always adds something new to single-player mode, but it gets ignored for the multi-player. It's come to the point where the seventh-generation Bomberman games are multiplayer-centric download titles with little to speak of in the way of singleplayer.
- Bullet Witch: Few care about the storyline or gameplay or anything, most just want to shoot stuff.
- While Call of Duty: World at War was a fun game in its own right, many people got the game for Nazi Zombies. Same with Call of Duty: Black Ops where fans just wanted to play with political characters, alternatively movie stars or TV stars and directors.
- Part of what made Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles sell was its inclusion of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
- Code Vein has attracted a number of players who were just there for Io, the protagonist's mysterious companion at the start of the game. Others were only interested in the game's in-depth Character Customization.
- All the gamers who only bought Crackdown to get the enclosed Halo 3 beta key.
- Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball is often considered one of the better volleyball simulators on the market, not that there are many to begin with. Most people only played it for the Fanservice. Naturally, the sequels focused on fanservice at the expense of gameplay. Mind you, given that it was created as the video game equivalent of a fanservicey Beach Episode (with mini-games where you buy bikinis for the other characters), the players who are just there for the volleyball are the ones who fit this trope.
- Donkey Kong Country's main draw (and the obvious key to its staggering success) was the superb pre-rendered CGI sprites, which were nothing short of jaw-dropping for a SNES game. All without any add-ons or even a Super FX chip, as the commercials bragged. This ironically became a source of criticism, with it being rumored that even Shigeru Miyamoto believed it wouldn't have been as loved or as fun without the graphics. In the years since, while the graphics are dated now and its sequel receives far more love, the game is still acclaimed as a legitimate platformer classic, once again owing to its still first-rate gameplay, and the appealing cartoon art has helped take the burden off the dated CGI.
- The Driver series doesn't really need a story either. It's just an unlimited supply of interactive chase scenes for many.
- All the Dungeons & Dragons Online advertisements make it seem like you start at level 20 and fight epic creatures right from the get-go.
- Dwarf Fortress features weather simulation, realistic geology and climates, elaborate history simulation and genetically-controlled character appearances. People play it to slaughter horrible monsters, find the most gruesome ways to execute goblins and flood the world in boiling magma.
- Some people bought the GameCube version of EA Sports Fight Night: Round 2 because the game included Super Punch-Out!! as a bonus title.
- When it comes to Eternal Darkness, a lot of people play the game or watch lets plays of it just to see the bizarre sanity effects, including those that involve Breaking the Fourth Wall. There are also players who play the game with their character's sanity meter at rock bottom just to make the game more interesting.
- One of the only reasons to see Air, Kanon, or One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e or play the visual novels is because their characters are in Eternal Fighter Zero.
- Evolve built a fictional universe with a rich history and interesting characters. All that is shoved into the backseat and hidden under a blanket by how you get to play as the giant alien monsters that serve as the threat of the game. For bonus points, one of them is even described as "Godzilla crossed with King Kong".
- Farming Simulator 2013 is surprisingly popular, not for the game itself but for its hilariously broken physics engine.
- Some people just play the Final Fantasy titles for the pretty boys. Or for the slash potential. And some only play it for the scantily-clad women. Or the femslash potential.
- Ehrgeiz is most commonly known as "that terrible fighting game that had Final Fantasy VII characters in it."
- Final Fantasy XIV has attracted a lot of players who play the game just to roleplay with other players, have their own personal house to decorate, trying to collect every minion (pets) and mounts as possible, or to play dress-up with gear.
- The Fire Emblem series originally got a humble boost from two of its characters being featured in Super Smash Bros. Melee, but later received an even bigger Newbie Boom with the release of Fire Emblem: Awakening. One of the biggest reasons for this was the ability to marry your Player Character to one of the many attractive characters in the game, leading to many topics on many websites discussing their "waifu" and which "waifu" is better. Additionally, the "support" system was overhauled — originally reserved for important members of the cast in previous games, it now provides multiple unique interactions between any two members of the game's cast, which is prime fodder for shipping and Ship-to-Ship Combat. It's generally agreed that the increased amount of fanservice in the Fire Emblem Fates is Intelligent Systems' response to this trend. Fire Emblem: Three Houses has less overt fanservice, but plays significantly into shipping, with strong focus given to supports throughout all of its branching storylines. It’s no wonder why Fire Emblem Engage decided to go for a more colorful and Animesque art style, with more over-the-top character designs (in a good way). Quite tellingly, a remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden, with virtually no fanservice and less in-depth supports, didn't sell as well as Awakening or Fates.
- Forza Horizon has something of an Excuse Plot, people don't care as they mostly play it for the cars and customization options for said cars.
- Many fans of Alternative Hip Hop only know that Freedom Finger exists because it features original music by Aesop Rock.
- The creators of Freedom Planet deserve to be commended for trying to tell a story and shed some light on the characters, but some simply just don't care about the plot and just want to run around really fast and beat things up while enjoying the soundtrack and the graphics. Fortunately, the devs seemed to have anticipated this and included an arcade mode that skips the majority of the cutscenes.
- God of War: We will all buy it mostly just to see in which interesting ways you get to kill monsters after softening them up. And the jaw-dropping graphics.
- Gradius: One reason to play Salamander 2 is the Final Boss Doom, who unlike other final bosses in the series averts Zero-Effort Boss hard.
- Grand Chase advertisement: "GRAND CHASE HAS ONE OF THE MOST "SKILL BASED" PVP SYSTEMS EVER! Wait... there's dungeons too? WHO CARES? NEW TOURNAMENT! CASH IN NOW TO BE THE BEST!!"
- Some people only play Grand Theft Auto to explore and cause mayhem in the cities. Or drive around and listen to the soundtrack, especially in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. But Grand Theft Auto IV insisted on thrusting the story on the player, with occasionally harsh wake-ups from the escapist fun. There's story, but players who are only here for the fast cars, gunsgunsguns and explosive sociopathy can race right over such speedbumps. Grand Theft Auto V is more multiplayer-oriented compared to its predecessors thanks to the open, dynamic world of Grand Theft Auto Online, but there are players who bought the game twice (some even buying a new console in the process) for the Stallion, Dukes, and Blista Compact, three vehicles that appeared in past games and many players see as GTA classics. note
- Valve had made its impression with a story-rich single-player game, but with even deepening story through Half-Life 2 + Episodes, they left behind the survival horror that brought many players back. However, many returned just to see "Gordon Smash", and later "Dog Smash", and of course Alyx shoot.
- A good portion of fans who came to Toby Fox's EarthBound (1994) Game Mod, The Halloween Hack, just played it to hear the original version of his now Signature Song "Megalovania", now better known for appearing in Homestuck and Undertale.
- HarmoKnight (and other games produced by Game Freak for that matter) are often known less for their own merits, and more so for getting people to say "Wait, they do make games other than Pokémon?"
- The Wii version of the otherwise bad Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings included the much loved and difficult to obtain Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis as an unlockable. This one saving grace was also rendered moot when Lucasarts released the game (along with many of their other old adventure games) on Steam a month or so later.
- In a case of this overlapping with Sidetracked By The Golden Saucer, many fans of CAVE were only interested in their 2011 Visual Novel Instant Brain because it includes an unlockable port of the popular Bullet Hell shooter DoDonPachi, being the only official rerelease of the game since its 32-bits ports.
- Many fans of Istaria play it because it's one of the few MMORPGs where you can play as a dragon.
- In the early years, many played Kingdom Hearts just to see the Final Fantasy and/or Disney characters, particularly the latter, which were a major focus of the advertising. It didn't take long for this to be completely reversed; these days, many people only care about the Original Generation and how the story unfolds. As time has gone on, the crossover elements have taken something of a backseat — while the overall tone of the series can still be described as "Disney meets Final Fantasy", and Disney characters still play important roles, they're often relegated to background material, and Final Fantasy characters have become even more irrelevant (in one case, being replaced with the cast of The World Ends with You). This goes to the extent that when Sora was brought into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, his representation was focused solely on the series' original content. However, the Disney elements still play a prominent focus in the gameplay sector, as many curious onlookers only bought Kingdom Hearts III to see what worlds based on Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., and Frozen would look like.
- Kirby:
- Kirby Air Ride is most fondly remembered for the Wide-Open Sandbox City Trial mode, in which the player boosts up their stats through items and events and can potentially assemble the Dragoon or Hydra. The other two modes, Air Ride (a rather standard racing mode) and Top Ride (a top-down racing mode), are generally considered So Okay, It's Average at best. People might end up playing them anyway after the City Trial, with a much better chance at winning depending on customization.
- Several people bought Kirby Star Allies because of the Dream Friends, Ensemble Dark Horse characters from thought the series history, many that hadn't been seen in years.
- Kirby and the Forgotten Land drew in many people who were simply curious to experience Kirby's first mainline 3D platformer, as the series was slow to make the Video Game 3D Leap. Thankfully, it's also a solid game on its own merits.
- Left 4 Dead has graffiti all over the maps to give subtle cues on what had happened before the survivors arrived without giving too much away. However, most people prefer to just blaze through the maps and kill zombies.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- Fans of the franchise tend to focus on one of the series' many Godzillas. Some fans play the games to explore the vast worlds. Other fans want to do Dungeon Crawling. Still, other fans want to fight goblins and other monsters. Even other fans want to solve puzzles. And even still other fans want to experience the vast lore of the series. Different games in the series put different amounts of focus on each of these aspects, and arguments regarding which element is the "core" of the series creates part of the series' Broken Base.
- For the spin-off game Hyrule Warriors:
- When the game was first announced, many Zelda fans were hesitant due to the reputation Dynasty Warriors games had for being mindlessly repetitive and because the main series game for Wii U wasn't released yet. When it was announced that the game would feature previous One-Shot Characters such as Midna, Darunia, Ghirahim, and Zant, interest went up exponentially, as many wanted to see these characters again in another game, and the game delivered that promise.
- Another major factor that increased interest in the game was its portrayal of series Big Bad Ganondorf. Due to the disappointment many had in Super Smash Bros. for its own portrayal of Ganondorfnote , many were overjoyed when the game revealed its own sword-wielding, magic-using incarnation of the King of Evil, and decided to buy the game just to play as him.
- There are fans of Marvel Ultimate Alliance that couldn't tell you anything about the story if you held a gun to their head... they just play to break things and hurt people. There's also Deadpool, who gets all the best lines of the first game and is even more advertised for the second.
- One of the reasons Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite was so poorly received leading up to its release was the omission of several previous characters on the Marvel side whose movie rights were with Fox at the time, like Magneto, Deadpool and even Wolverine - who had been in every other Marvel vs. Capcom game. The community manager tried to explain that there are other characters with similar movesets, but to most people angered by this the movesets weren't the issue: they just wanted to be able to play as their favorite characters.
- Metal Gear has a lot of fans who couldn't care less about the story, cinematics, or underlying themes, and are just there for the great stealth-action gameplay or finding all the truly insane little details and Easter Eggs put in at the behest of Hideo Kojima's OCD. Similarly, there are fans (mostly women, but some men too) who are into it because you play as a drop-dead gorgeous man in a skin-tight sneaking suit that leaves nothing to the imagination in a game that revels in sexual and homoerotic humor and constantly finds excuses to remove his clothing (or in one case strip naked completely for an entire level).
- Lots of M.U.G.E.N players don't actually play fighting games; they're just here for the sheer amount of crossover potential the engine offers. It's also not uncommon to see people mainly stick to watching AI fights instead of playing the game themselves.
- Namco High's main gimmick was that you could date various Bandai Namco characters. However, many people only played it because Davesprite, Jane, and Terezi from Homestuck were guest characters you could also date.
- A good number of people bought and/or played the DS sports game, New International Track & Field for the purpose of unlocking and/or playing as their favorite Konami character(s). Two of the most notable examples in the game are Pyramid Head from Silent Hill and Sparkster from Rocket Knight Adventures.
- Some of Nickelodeon's Periphery Demographic played the Nicktoons Unite! series just for Stimpy, Rocko, Zim, Dib and GIR. Well, pretty nice of THQ to acknowledge what Nick would rather forget, even to the point of getting the characters' original actors to reprise their roles.
- Many people just play the Nicktoons Unite series because they are a fan of SpongeBob games, to the point where in Japan, the series is known as "SpongeBob and Friends"
- Ōkami. The ones who played it were attracted to it by the music and the extensive & vibrant Scenery Porn.
- Pokémon:
- While the storylines in the main games have become more complex and detailed, players still mostly want to catch, collect, breed, train and battle others with the eponymous monsters. For a significant chunk of fans, the main reason to even pick up the game is for the multi-player battle system. (It says something when in Gen VI, the developers changed breeding to the point where it's now possible to easily breed Pokémon with maxed out stats in nearly everything.) Players also play the games for the exploration and each generation seems to offer something unique. The base goes onto high alert whenever rumors for new games or new Pokémon surface, no matter how insignificant it becomes in the long run.
- Charizard was very popular in Pokémon's heyday, despite Pikachu being the mascot. A substantial amount of people bought Red because it had Charizard on the cover. A lot of people got into the card game just because they wanted to find a rare/holographic Charizard, which were legendarily rare (hence why they would sell for 100s of dollars even though they were mass produced). Similarly, a lot of people only train the Pokémon they find the coolest, and in Red/Blue this was usually Charizard. A lot of kids couldn't understand why certain types were weak to others when "Charizard is so strong." Gen IV experienced a similar thing with Garchomp and Lucario, which endures to this day.
- A good bit of the reaction to Pokémon Conquest and "Day One buy" reactions to this were solely because of how out-there the crossover idea was.
- Pokémon Colosseum inverts the usual "just here for the multiplayer" aspect of the series, with almost all the attention it gets being for its Story Mode, despite its Battle Mode that was essentially "Stadium 3". It's likely that 3D battling was meant to be the main draw of the game, and Story Mode was just a vehicle to allow players who didn't own the GBA games to obtain Pokémon to use for Battle Mode. The developers seemed to catch on to this, as the sequel was focused almost entirely on its story mode, with its Battle Mode being an afterthought. Similarly, many people only play Pokémon Stadium for the minigames.
- Pokémon GO became one of the most downloaded and popular smartphone apps in recent memory despite having an extremely simplified premise (walk around outside and capture Pokémon) and not even having the same kind of battle system that's present in the main games. There's also no hint of a story, and only monsters from the first games were even available at the time.
- While Poker Night 2 has more than its fair share of humorous content to be enjoyed among five great characters, the main reason why many players bought the game was just to unlock the Borderlands 2 character masks and skins for that game (and/or the items for Team Fortress 2, which also applies for the first game).
- Quite a few players picked up Project × Zone and/or its sequel because of a particular character making an appearance in it.
- As soon as the trailers for Resident Evil Village revealed Lady Dimitrescu, lots of people, even outside the series' fandom, got interested in the game just to see that enormous (nearly 2.9m / 9'6") vampire lady..
- Most fans of Rez play it for the trippy visuals and audio. Playing Score Attack mode is seldom heard-of (unless you're achievement grinding on the 360 version, although this does get repetitive). A lot of people know it solely for the "trance vibrator" add-on, which was intended to immerse you into the music by pulsing to the beat, but soon found other applications.
- RollerCoaster Tycoon. Creator Chris Sawyer insisted that the only "proper" way to play the game was to complete the scenarios; most people played it solely for the park designing/simulation aspect, and at some point the developers of the third game just shrugged and added a sandbox mode. Even then, very few care for creating well-working, beautifully designed amusement parks. Most just deliberately crash rollercoasters into their peeps instead.
- Rule of Rose features an interesting inversion to the usual trend, as the fans of the game typically consider the mediocre gameplay completely uninteresting compared to the complex Mind Screw storyline, and dig out the most minute details for further speculation about the character motives. Elitism isn't dead.
- The Saints Row games are made with the trope in mind. While the first game was just a Grand Theft Auto clone, the second game bumped up the violence and ridiculousness; you can spray literal shit at people, run over old ladies with a golf cart, watch people ragdoll high in the air when you run them over, and the main story itself boils down to "kill everyone as awesomely as possible." Being released after Grand Theft Auto IV, the adverts for Saints Row 2 knew what the fans wanted and made a Take That! against Grand Theft Auto 4 for its friend activities and gritty realism. The later Saints Row installments only escalates the wackiness and while the games do have a decent story, the devs also know that people want to play to fuck shit up.
- Quite a few people were drawn to Sakura Wars (2019) purely due to the news of Tite Kubo being the character designer. Conversely, fans of Sakura Wars bought the issue of Weekly Shonen Jump that followed the reveal of the game at SEGA Fes 2019 just to get the poster Kubo made for the issue.
- Shin Megami Tensei:
- In the main series, being able to beat up God, Lucifer, or in some games, both. This is the basic premise known by most outsiders, though it's generally more complicated than that. Atlus, picking up on this, marketed the return of YHVH, otherwise a massive spoiler, as a selling point for Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse.
- Persona 2 is mostly known for two things: Being a total and utter Mind Screw set in a World of Weirdness, and Hitler being the final boss. Kinda There's also a portion of LGBT fans who play Persona 2 for Jun Kurosu, a gay party member who plays a major role in the story, and is also the first and only Gay Option in the entire series.
- Likewise, when the MegaTen series (and Persona in particular) was still struggling to achieve the popularity in the west that it has now, Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne and Persona 3 pulled in players with its morbid gameplay and story elements (the former bringing about the apocalypse 5 minutes in and the latter featuring high schoolers shooting themselves in the head as a gameplay mechanic.)
- Many play SimCity just for the disasters. Since monster attacks have been one such disaster, including one in Tokyo in The '60s, this is a literal invocation of this trope.
- For The Sims people often play it either to just kill people in horrible ways, make their Sims miserable, or to make their character Really Get Around. Alternatively, they play just to be able to play as characters they like (true for a lot of games with Character Customization) or have a popular Game Mod.
- In Skylanders, some people are only interested in playing as Bowser, Donkey Kong, Crash Bandicoot and/or Dr. Neo Cortex.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- Despite Sonic Team's numerous attempts at adding alternative gameplay features to the 3D titles, most Sonic fans are just in it for the Sonic gameplay.note This has become one of the many fractures in the series' notorious Broken Base, as fans argue whether Sonic Team's attempts to incorporate variety adds to the game, or if Sonic Team should focus all their effort on the Sonic gameplay alone.
- On the other hand, there are people who only love the Sonic Adventure games for the Chao Garden, and see the rest of the game as an afterthought.
- Although he became a more divisive character over the years, there are a good number of fans (especially those who grew up with the Adventure-era titles such as Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Heroes) who will buy any game and indulge in any extended media if it has Shadow in it. Shadow even received his own game to capitalize on his Breakout Character status, though this ended up backfiring to some extent — the game, which had questionable decisions like interpreting the title character as a gun-toting, foul-mouthed '90s Anti-Hero, is commonly cited as one of the reasons Shadow's reputation became so hotly contested in the first place.
- Many fans bought Sonic Gems Collection, which otherwise consisted of spin-offs, solely because it was the first console re-release of the acclaimed Sonic the Hedgehog CD. A smaller group of people picked it up for the port of Sonic the Fighters, an arcade oddity that never saw a console release or wide distribution outside of Japan.
- Many people will only play Sonic Forces: Speed Battle for the Events, which reward players with reskins of characters showing off creative and fun costumes rarely seen in the main games and akin to that of fan art.
- Starting with their 3d games, the Sonic franchise begn experimenting with incorporating more human characters into the series, starting with scene-filling background NPCs in Sonic Adventure and then progressing to major NPCs in games like Sonic Unleashed and Sonic the Hedgehog (2006). The fanbase reception has generally been mixed at best, with most preferring the games to focus on the anthromorph characters. This attitude is especially prominent (and often hostile) amongst those fans gatewayed in by Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) and Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), as both those series used an all-anthromorphic cast to build their extensive worlds.
- Soul Series:
- Soulcalibur II is one of the few titles (if not the only major release) to sell more on the GameCube than the Xbox or PlayStation 2. The reason is that it included Link as a playable character. The other two guests, Heihachi Mishima and Spawn, were more polarizing choices than Link was and lacked the same excitement factor.
- Additionally, the Create-A-Soul feature that was introduced in Soulcalibur III has become a staple of the franchise, and for many people, the reason why they buy the games. Taken to a new level in Soulcalibur V, where the new and improved CAS was more or less the game's biggest selling point. It's just so funny watching a recreation of Cloud fighting a recreation of Abraham Lincoln online.
- Playing Space Channel 5 Part 2? There's a good chance you're playing it just for Purge.
- While the core focus and selling point of Splatoon is the online multiplayer, there are a good number of fans who barely engage with that aspect of the series, mainly picking up the games for their solo campaigns, which are regarded as among the best in any Third-Person Shooter to the point that a dedicated single-player adventure spin-off has been in constant demand from this segment of the fanbase since the first game.
- Many people only get StarCraft for the multiplayer ability. Interestingly, the free-to-play Starter Edition of StarCraft II includes full access to the Terrans... but only the Terrans, and only on certain maps/match types.
- Starlink: Battle for Atlas is an action-adventure space exploration game from Ubisoft with some optional "toys-to-life" elements. Pre-release interest for the game was lukewarm at best, with many dismissing it due to that last bit and even quickly forgetting its existence in the year following its original announcement. Then its second showing revealed that the Nintendo Switch version was a collaboration with Nintendo that would feature Star Fox elements, with Fox McCloud as a playable character and several exclusive missions. That was when the title would begin receiving actual attention, but it was mostly in the form of both the gaming media and Nintendo fans referring to it as the spiritual next entry in the Star Fox franchise.
- A large chunk of the Story of Seasons (formerly Harvest Moon) fandom is interested in the marriage system than actually raising animals and growing crops. This is probably why the bachelors and bachelorettes have gotten increasingly more attractive and elaborate over the last decade.
- The Chinese World of Warships clone Steel Ocean. Many Warships players flocked to it for submarines, something that Warships will never have.
- Super Mario Bros. and its spin-offs:
- Plenty of people only bother to play any of these spin-offs (Mario Kart, the multitude the Mario sports titles and Mario Party) Because they can play as Waluigi, Princess Daisy and Toadette (these 3 characters have both fanatical fandoms and fanatical hatedoms and their fans really want to see them in games other than spin-off Mario titles), luckily Toadette manage to breakout into main games since Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker which also could lead her fans to play them for her.
- While fans have divided opinions over which Mario Party has the best boards or features, many will agree that each installment has great mini-games. Some fans play the games just for the mini-games. Nintendo took notice and made a Mario Party title where it's only about the mini-games and there's 100 of them from the past 10 games.
- Mario Artist: Polygon Studio is a fairly involved art/3D modelling utility for its time, with its main single-player component being the "Experimental World", an open world where players can drive vehicles based on their creation and collect items to get new abilities and explore further. However, in part due to the obscurity of the Nintendo 64DD add-on, which only released in Japan, Western interest in the game is centered mostly just on "Sound Bomber" mode: a minigame side mode where the player must survive a gauntlet of short "microgames" that uses the user-created models as props that would serve as the foundation for the popular WarioWare series.
- As fun as a Super Robot Wars game can be, you play it not for the strategy, but to watch Mazinger Z grind Mobile Suits into scrap alongside GaoGaiGar, Max Jenius, or Combattler V. Also, you picked up Battle Moon Wars because you wanted to see the Nasuverse fight with/against itself. Super Robot Wars X-Ω is a quite literal example, with the titular monster himself appearing in the game.
- While some lament the lack of story modes in most Super Smash Bros. entries, most don't care and just want to play as their favorite Nintendo mascots and fight each other. Brawl and Ultimate are the only installments that sport them, with the latter serving as more of a blatant Excuse Plot than an actual story.
- Another huge draw to Smash Bros are the third-party characters. Fans get excited whenever a new Nintendo character is revealed as a fighter, but ever since Brawl, far, far more interest and speculation surrounds what outsiders might appear in the latest entry, with the reveals of characters like Sonic, Cloud, and Steve blowing up message boards and social media.
- The Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology series has a very simple plot of the player taking on the role of the Descender, a customizable character that is there to save the world. It features several classes the player can have their Descender be and a huge assortment of equipment that changes their appearance and a battle system very aligned with that of Tales of the Abyss. Most players, though, are only there to see the large cast of Tales of characters having a massive crossover and interacting with each other.
- Even the developers acknowledge and joke about it that Team Fortress 2 is only played because of the hats; they often refer to it as "America's #1 war-themed hat simulator."
- Tobal No. 1 for its demo for Final Fantasy VII.
- Some fans of Touhou Project don't really play the games; they're just in it for the music, characters and doujinshi.
- The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky gets a lot of attention, particularly among female gamers, for its beloved lead character Estelle Bright. To this day, a female-led RPG, let alone one where the leading lady isn't designed to be Ms. Fanservice pandering to the Testosterone Brigade, is still a rarity for the genre.
- Looking at Steam reviews makes it clear that the main reason most people are interested in Tunche is because Hat Kid from A Hat in Time is a Guest Fighter.
- Warcraft III: When Defense of the Ancients came out, some people bought it only for that and other custom maps, others stick purely to the latter, the majority doesn't care either way. Rumors of a story-heavy campaign mode remain unconfirmed note . Similarly, almost everyone in World of Warcraft is here to get epics and kill things, rumors of an epic storyline in both the quests and the instances are still unconfirmed.
- Yakuza: Dead Souls: For the opportunity to play as Majima.
- Zone of the Enders with its Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty demo (though ZOE managed to find its audience with 2nd Runner)
Visual Novels
- Did you actually read 428: Shibuya Scramble, or only start it because Kinoko Nasu wrote one of the scenarios? Either that, or for Kousei Amano.
- School Days actually features plenty of endings where the cheerful, well-adjusted protagonists live happily ever after; but no one cares about those. Most people playing School Days just want its infamous Bad Ends in which one or more characters are brutally murdered.
- The bigger initial draw of School Days (it was hardly the only VN with shockingly brutal bad ends) was actually the fact that the game was a fully-animated visual novel, like a controllable anime, rather than telling its story through static screens accompanied by text. However when the game was adapted to an anime series, this Dancing Bear was no longer special in any way when it was effectively being added to a dancing bear chorus line, so they went with possibly the most brutal ending of all, and the game became retroactively better known for the shocking violence than anything else about it.
- My Harem Heaven is Yandere Hell sounds like an awesome idea, right? Well, if you play through the novel on your own or watch someone else play it, you might want to grab some popcorn and be patient. The three love interests show Yandere tendencies throughout the novel, but it'll be eight hours or more before anything Yandere happens. Until that point, and you will know it when you see it, enjoy the long romance story.
Web Animation
- Most fans of Super Mario Bros. Z just mash their space bar through the dialogue to get to the stupidly awesome fight sequences faster. Same goes for its Fandom Rival Ed, Edd n' Eddy Z: most fans of the series just skip ahead in the video to see the fight sequences.
- Strong Bad and his emails on Homestar Runner, overlapping with Ensemble Dark Horse. Lampshaded in the "First Time Here?" cartoon:
Strong Bad: I'm Strong Bad, and you don't know it yet, but I'm the reason you're here.
Homestar: It's true. - The Neurotically Yours series have subtle and thought-provoking stories as a goth teenaged girl and a Brutally Honest foul-mouthed squirrel go through the daily grind of life. Half of the fan base watch the series just to ogle over Germaine's body while the other half are in it just to see Foamy bitch about whatever is bothering him.
- A good chunk of Overly Sarcastic Productions' fanbase are only interested in Red's videos on mythology, famous stories, and fictional tropes. With them having little to no interest in Blue's history videos.
- A chunk of RWBY's fanbase only watch it for the beautifully detailed fight scenes and complain whenever the show focuses on anything else.
- The RWBY fanbase was also brought into the Rooster Teeth anthology show Neon Konbini solely because spin-off RWBY Chibi would air its new shorts there.
- DEATH BATTLE! is the most popular series on ScrewAttack, to the point where the comments section on any of their other videos is flooded with suggestions for future Death Battles. A lot of Death Battle's fandom is happy to just skip the research and comparisons between the two fighters at the start and get straight to the fight scene. ScrewAttack seemingly developed the Spin-Off 1 Minute Melee for these people — two fighters, 60 seconds, no research. Taken to a more Meta extreme, most of ScrewAttack's YouTube page is dominated by Death Battle. The comments sections of Non-Death Battle videos are filled with suggestions for matchups, asking when the next episode is and at times demanding the next episode over other content, threatening to unsubscribe if they don't release it. Taken the logical extreme when it was announced at the end of "Yang vs. Tifa" that the next Death Battle matchup would be revealed at the end of the season finale of The Industry — many commenters deliberately spoiled the ending of the episode by posting the matchup ("Megaman vs. Astroboy") in the comments along with a message running along the lines of "There, now you don't have to sit through all this crap to find out the next Death Battle. You're welcome."
Webcomics
- In-universe example in Godslave - when a museum guide is talking about Egyptian burial traditions, one kid can be seen muttering "where are the mummies?"
- In the webcomic The Dreamer, a lot of people just read it for Nathan Hale and Alexander Hamilton.
- From the way some people talk about Freefall, you'd have no idea Florence isn't the only protagonist. Especially true if you're discussing it on a furry site.
- Many readers of Sandra and Woo only read it for the animal characters. A lot of the characters in the comic are human and many of the stories focus only on the human characters. The comic has been advertised for on Furry websites with ads that mainly showed the animal character, so many Furries were drawn to the comic thinking that it was mainly about animals.
- Off-White: Anytime the story switches focus to the humans there are people wanting it to go back to the wolves.
- There are two categories of Homestuck fans: those who are just here for the trolls, and those who look down on them. You're also more likely to read the comments of this video left by disgusted Homestuck fans than watch the video itself.Explanation
Web Original
- Some people are on Facebook not for the social or communication aspects for it so much as games like Mafia Wars and FarmVille.
- Botchamania is 450+ episodes of wrestler's mistakes, tables not breaking and broadcast failures, making up over 100 hours of footage, which for many people is more than enough to no longer be interested in watching the same fails with new wrestlers. Except that the creator Maffew includes multiple examples of The Stinger, with pop-culture references, memes & comedic skits involving wrestlers created by Maffew or submitted by the community that attract people as much as the botches do. These were so popular that Maffew once had such a backlog that he created an "Endingmania" comprised of just endings.
- Many people have the Internet for one reason and one reason only The Internet Is for Porn.
- Many Internet websites have both main site content/news/articles and a forum community. About three-quarters of their userbase ends up visiting for the latter. Similarly, back about ten years ago, there was actually a site with products/services/news over at Digitalpoint, with the forums being opened as more of a support community for said tools and services. Absolutely no one used it (with the forums becoming an absolutely massive success with hundreds of thousands of members and millions of posts), so eventually, the site was replaced with the forums.
- Very few people actually care for Smash World itself. Indeed, these days the Smashboards community has entirely replaced it.
- Many people create accounts on the YouTube-mimicking sites Zippcast and Vidlii just for the "Old Youtube" channel layout.
- Online contests. Many of them try to distract the entrants with things like e-mail newsletters, games, magazine offers, etc. etc. But those who are serious about it don't care. They're just there for the contest.
- Go to the comments section of any outlandish article on Yahoo and someone will have inevitably posted, "I'm just here for the comments", indicating that they didn't even read the article and are only interested in what equally outlandish comments a reader made.
- It's not uncommon for a lot of people on the Internet to follow certain artists only for their fanarts of a specific media or character within that media, or conversely, their original works or artworks of one of their own characters. This is the main reason why several artists have two accounts on social media like Twitter or Tumblr: one to post their art, the other for everything else.
- On Twitch, users sometimes subscribe to a channel not because they like or even watch its content, but because the channel offers custom emotes that they like.
Web Videos
- When the Toyota Sprinter Trueno AE 86 is reviewed in Regular Car Reviews, Mr. Regular rants that people don't like the car, they like a cartoon that features the car. A boring cartoon!
- The Escapist Magazine. You came for the Yahtzee, the rest is just window dressing. Though more videos (There Will Be Brawl, Unskippable, Movie Bob, Doomsday Arcade, Unforgotten Realms) are slowly getting equally as popular, there's no doubt Yahtzee was the Killer App for the site. This is lampshaded in their spoof news show ENN, a weekly episode of which comes out at the exact same time as Zero Punctuation.
- "We'll see you here next week, right after you watch Zero Punctuation."
- Even if you don't know or care about the film The Nostalgia Critic is reviewing, it's fun to see him break down in tears and/or rage over it. This was one of the reasons he brought the show back after the Grand Finale of To Boldly Flee. Doug started a new show that he'd been wanting to do for years, but too many people apparently came to the site to watch the episodes, and ad revenue dropped after the show ended.
- In a less mean-spirited way, TGWTG fandom only watches The Cartoon Show (a Cliché Storm Edutainment Show for kids) for Doug. Whoever wrote it used this to their advantage, as second episode in and Doug's character burst into tears, something that fandom greatly enjoys.
- You don't need to be familiar with whatever The Angry Video Game Nerd is reviewing (and it's likely you often won't; he's done some pretty obscure games) to enjoy the resultant emotional meltdown.
- Most visitors of Channel Awesome will only watch the videos of a handful of reviewers and, if it weren't for the yearly anniversary specials, may not even know that certain reviewers exist.
- Someone once commented that he only watched a 20-minute-long Cinema Snob review for a 1-minute-long Linkara cameo. The Snob was not amused.
- It's hard to believe people actually watch Miss Hannah Minx because they want to learn Japanese.
- brentalfloss of YouTube fame has done lots of skits and other videos on his channel, but what really got him high popularity was his "X With Lyrics" series where he makes up a song based on the chosen video game. Nowadays, most people who look up Brental Floss only look for his lyrics series.
- How many of you would have really watched The Tester had it not been for Egoraptor?
- There are some amateur adult videos online that some people only watch to see their pets prance around in the background, as the Tumblr user "indifferent-cats-in-amateur-porn" shows us.
- Although video game playthroughs online that feature commentary are common, there are lots of viewers who simply want to watch the footage of the game without the player's commentary to drown out the action. While Let's Plays are (usually) clearly marked as such, often a video simply titled "game — level playthrough" will feature commentary from the player, and it's not at all uncommon to find warzones in the comments over it or "thank yous" from viewers who had to put some effort into searching for a no commentary video before finding one.
- Judging by the comments, a large part of people subscribed to SBNation do so only to watch Jon Bois' videos.
- There are many people who watch Vinesauce just for Vinny or even Joel. And for Vinny, it's the video game corruptions that get him his highest views in spite of them being few and far between compared to his other vids.
- So This Is Basically... Pokémon pokes fun at the series' backstory with this:
Pokémon has backstory now! Once upon a time a nine-foot-tall king from 3,000 years ago used a war machine to rip the universe apart... so there were multiple universes... and uh the meteor went to ours and, uh... I... I just wanna catch a Bulbasaur, man.
- CinemaSins accuses Joker (2019) of this in the end, suggesting the movie would have been dismissed and ignored by a mainstream audience had it not had The Joker in it to draw in Batman fans:
So here's the end of this movie. It's pretty good... I guess. Would any of you watched this movie if it wasn't called "Joker?" My guess is that you wouldn't. So I guess the next thing that an independent production that has no chance in hell of getting an audience needs to do is somehow tie it into a Thanos origin story? Just a guy driving around L.A. traffic all day yelling, "I WISH ONLY HALF OF THESE PEOPLE EXISTED!" The. End.
- Up From The Depths: Discussed as part of the reviews. The reviews will note if a film balances the human and monster stories well, and if the human characters are interesting enough to hold their end up, or if a film is just one where you fast-forward through the human plot to get to the monster fights. Rarely, he'll note some films where the monster action is particularly lackluster. Called out almost explicitly in the preface for the "10 Greatest Godzilla Characters" video, where he states that the Godzilla franchise, and Kaiju genre as a whole, are not known for deep or compelling human characters, and a common sentiment is that they just get in the way of the monster action people want to see. Of course, said video is dedicated to the ten characters who most defy this trope.
- Many people (mostly the Periphery Demographic of children) watch SuperMarioLogan almost exclusively for the antics of Jeffy.
- Played for Laughs in the Screen Rant Pitch Meetings take on Cocaine Bear, here, where the producer constantly tries to shift the focus back to the bear while the screenwriter talks about the human characters.
Western Animation
- Whenever people watch Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, they mainly do so for the copious amounts of hamminess by Dr. Robotnik, courtesy of Long John Baldry.
- A lot of people only watch Phineas and Ferb for the Perry the Platypus and Doofenshmirtz segments.
- Ben 10 had people who just stuck around to watch Ben transform into an alien, or to watch Grandpa Max be incredibly awesome. Some furry fans only watch the Xingo episodes from the reboot as he has a moderate fanbase with the Furry Fandom.
- To promote Bunsen Is a Beast, creator Butch Hartman made a crossover short of all his cartoon shows at Nickelodeon. As the now-disabled YouTube comments will make clear, most are only interested in this because it's the first time in a decade the title character of Danny Phantom made an animated appearance.
- Family Guy: The episode "Jerome Is the New Black" is this to some fans who didn't care about the plot or the titular character, and just wanted to see Quagmire chew out Brian.
- A good portion of Generator Rex fans simply stick around because Agent Six is just plain cool.
- Some people watched Green Lantern: The Animated Series just for Razer and Aya's love story.
- There have been a number of people who only watched KaBlam! for one or two recurring shorts, usually Action League NOW!, the Henry and June wraparound segments, or Life With Loopy. In fact, after KaBlam! left Nicktoons, some of the shorts still stuck around as filler for programs that ran short. The Action League NOW! spin-off series itself aired on Nicktoons until late 2010.
- Many people watched The Hub exclusively for their favorite shows, such as Dan Vs., Animaniacs, and especially My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. The same logic applies for its successor, Discovery Family, with the latter show (especially after the relaunch wiped out most of The Hub's former programming).
- Some fans of the original Teen Titans tuned into the Teen Titans Go! episode "The Return of Slade" just because they heard Slade would be making a very special appearance in the show's 100th episode. However, despite all the commercials marketing and hyping up an epic appearance from Slade, when the episode actually aired, the creators gave the audience a complete rug pull by using a time-lapse to skip over 3 episodes and a made-for-TV movie of beautifully written story and an epic final battle with Slade.
- Tara Strong, (the voice of Raven) tweeted that if Teen Titans Go! To the Movies got enough people watching, the original Teen Titans would get another season. Most people only watched the movie for the sake of Teen Titans getting another season.
- Tara Strong, (the voice of Raven) tweeted
- South Park:
- There are some who only watch the show just to see how Kenny dies. These people must have been quite starved for the past decade plus.
- A few people watched the episodes "#REHASH" and "#HappyHolograms" because PewDiePie was in them.
- Any adult cartoon featuring a Spotlight Stealing Jerkass character, such as Bender from Futurama, Eric Cartman from South Park, Stewie from Family Guy, etc.
- Even people who dislike Totally Spies! will sit through an episode if it appeals to their particular kink.
- The Smurfs and the Magic Flute was originally advertised as a Johan and Peewit movie, but because the Smurfs became so popular, they end up getting the top billing even though they don't appear until the middle of the movie.
- Most of the segments on Animaniacs were well-received, but a lot of people watched the show for the normal Warner segments, the Slappy & Skippy segments, or the Pinky and the Brain ones. The latter two would eventually get a full episode each and Pinky and the Brain would get their own spinoff.
- There are some people who watched Captain N: The Game Master just because they found out that Mother Brain, the Big Bad of the series, shares a voice with Audrey II.
- There seem to be not exactly few bronies who watch My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic just for Rainbow Dash being cool. So few are the bronies who are interested in anything in "The Last Roundup" beyond the scene with Derpy that the rest of the episode is almost obscure within the bronydom (aside from Pinkie's antics... Maybe). While Discord has become pretty divise over the years within the bronydom, outside of the bronydom, plenty of non-bronies who don't even like the show have admitted to liking Discord as a character part of it may have to do with being voiced by John De Lancia, the tombstone song, and his more antiheroic nature which contrast with the more light-hearted cast.
- There is also a divide between fans of the episodes in which villains appear and the Mane Six fight them and episodes that follow a more traditional sitcom format in which one or more characters encounter a personal issue and they need to get it resolved. Those who fall into one of these two groups tend to not be too interested in the other type of episode.
- Many fans of TUGS only watch its edited translation, Salty's Lighthouse, for the TUGS segments themselves.
- The Periphery Demographic of Jake and the Never Land Pirates is often mainly just there for the antics of Captain Hook and Smee, though sometimes they'll also get excited in those cases where other characters from Disney's Peter Pan put in an appearance, including Pan himself.
- Many fans of Inspector Gadget may not like Inspector Gadget (2015) for the Badass Decay suffered by Doctor Claw, the focus of the show being more comedic and so on, but they'll watch anyway simply to watch the interactions between Inspector Gadget's niece Penny and Dr. Claw's nephew Talon.
- The animation/live-action hybrid game show Skatoony is mostly known for and watched for the guest appearances made by Total Drama and Jimmy Two-Shoes characters as contestants in the Canadian version.
- Invader Zim's fanbase was notorious for a while thanks to the segments of the fandom that only watched it for the bits with GIR.
- Watching Sofia the First for the Disney Princess cameos is what caused a lot of the Periphery Demographic to come to enjoy the show.
- Watch My Little Pony (G3) for Minty. Speaking of which, A Very Minty Christmas is by far the most popular cartoon of G3.
- Episodes of Heathcliff & the Catillac Cats were divided into two segments; the first featuring Heathcliff and the second featuring the Catillac Cats. Fans mainly watch it for the latter.
- Among non-fans and those who stopped watching the The Simpsons regularly, the Treehouse of Horror episodes still have a massive following. Their view count on the now-defunct Simpsons World website was quite high compared to all the other episodes.
- Many Game of Thrones fans were drawn to Hilda like moths to a flame purely for the fact that Bella Ramsey, who played the Breakout Character Lyanna Mormont, voices the titular character.
- Transformers: Prime challenged even the movieverse at first with its attention to Jack's home life and Miko's love of being In Harm's Way. There's quite some time spent on Jack angsting about how his time with the 'bots is interfering with his mundane life, even though there's really no need for him to be with the Autobots. By season two, though, this is massively scaled back, with the story mostly about the Transformers' battles, with the humans occasionally helping out. Miko has come especially far, from rushing headlong into danger explicitly on "who cares if I'm endangering everyone's lives, it's fun!" grounds to actually being part of the solution (bonding with Bulkhead and helping him through is recovery after injury being an arc that wins over most of her staunchest haters), and you can at points see the kids being the Autobots' guides to an unfamiliar world. By the series finale TV movie, all humans are absent... but by the series finale TV movie, you might be shocked to find yourself missing them.
- In the Phantom Investigators episode "Omega Pizza Pi", Daemona attempts to join the debate team, despite hating debate as all the organization of it all is too much for her. Turns out the only reason why she wants to join is because the team goes on a field trip to France every year.
- A lot of people would tell you that the only reason why they watch The Wild Thornberrys is for Nigel Thornberry and his wacky antics.
- Interesting case with Dexter's Laboratory as it was one of Cartoon Network's beloved shows. However, a lot of fans will often tune in to see the exclusive "Justice Friends" and "Dial M for Money" segments that air in between episodes. If you had Boomerang from 2008-2012, then you could've seen the latter series as a standalone program.
- A textbook example with the Trope Namer is is The Godzilla Power Hour. The series is another low-budget Hanna-Barbera cookie-cutter cartoon with a forgettable human cast, Strictly Formula story, Limited Animation, and annoying Kid-Appeal Character. The only real reason anyone still mentions or watches the show is because Godzilla is one of the main characters.
- Face it, the only reason you tune in to watch Wacky Races is to see whatever scheme Dick Dastardly is planning.
- Skylanders Academy: Many fans only started watching because it was the first time that any version of Spyro would appear on TV. Others only started watching for the appearance of Crash Bandicoot.
- Whilst Star Trek: Prodigy captures a new audience, classic Star Trek fans, in particular those of Star Trek: Voyager, are drawn in by Holo-Janeway.
- Since Bill Cipher is one of the most iconic cartoon villains in recent memory, it’s not uncommon for people to watch Gravity Falls purely to see him. Ironically, all things considered, he doesn’t appear that much in the series.
Real Life
- Voting can even be like this. Depending on where you live, the ballot may contain dozens of positions or items to vote on, but most people will show up primarily to vote for the most prominent offices or candidates like President or Congress, and will often be indifferent towards everything else. And that's if they even came into the booth aware that all other stuff was even there.
- Subverted in most of the world outside the United States, where Parliamentary and Presidential elections are held on different dates, each dedicated just for one election, and this logic also holds for local elections and referendums... but the latter two might still get a lot of positions and items to vote on: for example, in 2015, Poland held Presidential elections in May, a three-question referendum in September, and a Parliamentary election in October.
- Most people frequent a particular restaurant, fast food chain, coffee shop, or bar because of one or two meals or drinks that place serves. It can get to the point where one patron can just walk into their favorite place and ask for "the usual" and the people behind the counter know exactly what to give.
- The concept of a fast food restaurant originally developed from exactly this phenomenon. Prior to their advent, the primary inexpensive option for dining out in the US was a diner, which might have dozens or even hundreds of different options on its menu. The short-order cooks working there might have been relatively quick to prepare the food, but everything was still made to order, which took time. In the 1950s, restaurant owners looked at their menus and realized that some items were vastly more popular than others; people would come to their restaurants for just one or two things and rarely order other items. By narrowing down the menu to only the popular dishes, they could vastly simplify the preparation process, in many cases starting to cook food before it was ordered, in anticipation of demand, and deliver it in just a few minutes, exploiting this trope to create a new type of food business.
- The Ernest Hemingway House is a tourist attraction in Key West, Florida. You could visit it to learn about the life of this famous author, or you could just look for the population of mutant "Hemingway cats" with Extra Digits who live there.
In-Universe
- Paige in FoxTrot goes to see The Return of the King just because Orlando Bloom is in it and wishes the movie would stop wasting time with that "filler stuff about a ring." Similarly, Peter takes Jason and Marcus to see Thor because Natalie Portman's in it ("Weirdo," Jason replies).
- One comic of Pearls Before Swine shows that Pig watches Alfred Hitchcock films just to find the hidden Alfred Hitchcock Cameos. He stops the film and goes to get more as soon as he spots the fat man.
- In volume 7 of the Lucky Star manga, Konata tells Kagami that Patricia is eager to see her family's shrine. Kagami asks if there's anything she should do in preparation, and all Konata requests is to get the miko outfits ready. Needless to say, Kagami is exasperated that they're more interested in gawking than in actually learning anything cultural.
- Family Guy:
- Chris' boss Carl just watches movies (some of which are fairly obscure) for the female nude scenes.
- Taken to the extreme in a cutaway gag: It seems that Peter only went to The Phantom of the Opera to see the Phantom's deformity, and shouts at the actor playing him to hurry up. "Come on, show the gross half of your face so I can get out of here! That nose better be piggy!"
- There is another cutaway gag in which Peter spoils Citizen Kane to everyone else in the room, implying he watched it only for the "Rosebud" reveal at the end and considers the rest of the film a waste of time.
- At the beginning of the Tiny Toon Adventures episode, "Hog Wild Hamton", a commercial for the Acme Clearinghouse Sweepstakes airs, featuring people who have won enough money to buy a new house. Hamton enters the sweepstakes solely for the subscriptions to various magazines that appeal to his interests. It's a good thing he entered the sweepstakes, though, as at the end of the episode, he wins it and is awarded a new house to replace the one that got destroyed as a result of Plucky throwing a Wild Teen Party behind his back.
- South Park:
- In the episode "The New Terrance and Philip Movie Trailer", Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Butters are watching a channel airing an episode of "Russell Crowe Fightin' Round the World", just so they could see the World Premiere teaser trailer for "Terrance & Phillip: Asses of Fire 2" during the commercials.
- Also, in the episode "Handicar," almost every adult in South Park were excited to hear that Wacky Races is going to air again and flood the stores buying milk and cereal. Why are they so eager to watch to show? Why, to see Dick Dastardly Stop to Cheat of course.
- Futurama: In "Fear of a Bot Planet", Fry and Leela duck into a cinema to escape a horde of robots, the movie being about a human rampaging around eating robots. At the end of the movie, Fry and two other robots declare there wasn't enough human-killing-robot action.
- Inazuma Eleven: In the beginning, before Raimon entered the Football Frontier, several schools like Teikoku and Occult challenged their team to a match only because they were interested in Gouenji's strength rather than the whole team, which was considered weak. Discussed when Occult's coach angers Someoka with this very statement.
- As Penny discovers at the Comic-Con in The Big Bang Theory episode "The Feral Kick Catalyst", quite a few people who watch Serial Ape-ist claim the shower scene Penny acted in as their favorite.
Penny: Been hearing that a lot today.
- DuckTales (2017): In the episode “Happy Birthday, Doofus Drake,” the only reason why anyone is attending Doofus Drake’s birthday party is because they get a bag of gold if they stay for the whole time. However, Doofus actually knows this, and if he finds out that the guest just wants the gold, then he kicks them out and they leave without getting anything.
