How much can a character be altered and still be the same character?

*neatoman* · 07-04-2014, 12:12 PM

So here's something I've been thinking about for a while now, how much can you alter a character before it is hardly recognisable?

I noticed this a lot with the Nickelodeon cartoon. It uses a lot of character's that were created for the first cartoon (Metalhead, Mutagen Man, Slash etc) but at closer examination, they're not quite the same as before are they? As an example Slash may look like the old Slash (or the Archie Slash at least) but none of his trademarks are there. The old Slash was dumb and obsessed with palm trees, new Slash is a psychotic beast with respectable intelligence.
A more extreme example is Bebop (or the guy who is very obviously going to be Bebop), we all remeber Bebop as the dumb manchild street thug but this new Bebop is a skilled, jive talking master thief with high tech gadgets and a crazy attitude. Pretty much the only similarity is that he's going to be a mutant pig.

I'm fine with both examples as I didn't really like either one of the original characters but the IDW versions of them are noticably different but still roughly the same, just tweaked enough to be more enjoyable. So I'm not so sure they needed to be as different as they ended up being.

Anyway, my point is: Is Bebop still Bebop if he's not an immature and stupid street thug or does he just become some other mutant pig?

View Poll Results: How much should a character be allowed to be altered?
Not at all	2	5.41%
Very little	3	8.11%
Noticable are fine, just not too much	27	72.97%
Very much, don't matter to me	5	13.51%
Voters: 37. You may not vote on this poll

07-04-2014, 12:12 PM	#1
neatoman Overlord Join Date: Jul 2014 Location: Stockholm Posts: 11,080	How much can a character be altered and still be the same character? So here's something I've been thinking about for a while now, how much can you alter a character before it is hardly recognisable? I noticed this a lot with the Nickelodeon cartoon. It uses a lot of character's that were created for the first cartoon (Metalhead, Mutagen Man, Slash etc) but at closer examination, they're not quite the same as before are they? As an example Slash may look like the old Slash (or the Archie Slash at least) but none of his trademarks are there. The old Slash was dumb and obsessed with palm trees, new Slash is a psychotic beast with respectable intelligence. A more extreme example is Bebop (or the guy who is very obviously going to be Bebop), we all remeber Bebop as the dumb manchild street thug but this new Bebop is a skilled, jive talking master thief with high tech gadgets and a crazy attitude. Pretty much the only similarity is that he's going to be a mutant pig. I'm fine with both examples as I didn't really like either one of the original characters but the IDW versions of them are noticably different but still roughly the same, just tweaked enough to be more enjoyable. So I'm not so sure they needed to be as different as they ended up being. Anyway, my point is: Is Bebop still Bebop if he's not an immature and stupid street thug or does he just become some other mutant pig?