Current Events > IYO, what are the craziest lightning-in-a-bottle media out there?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Stuff that could have gone wrong at a hundred different points but somehow came together in the most unlikely way to make the most iconic movie, shows, games or music of all time?

Stuff like

• Lord of the Rings
• Breaking Bad
• Witcher 3

Avatar The Last Airbender could have blown it so easily but they just kept on cookin'

Fleetwood Mac, Rumors.

That album probably should have ended in a fucking homicide, not as a masterpiece, what with how much everyone hated everyone.

Star Wars
Ghostbusters
LOST
Game of Thrones

Star Wars

Pokmon

Kenny vs spenny

Star Wars, seriously. Just a little research and youll realize how badly it would have failed if Lucas hadnt gotten help with the writing.

Star Trek

Columbo

Twilight

Pokemon Go

Tyranthraxus posted...

Twilight

I'd put 50 Shades of Grey above Twilight.

It's a Twilight fanfic with the proper nouns switched out.

DrizztLink posted...

I'd put 50 Shades of Grey above Twilight.

It's a Twilight fanfic with the proper nouns switched out.

That's less lightning in a bottle and more Coattail riding though.

Attitude Era

Goldeneye 007.

Not only was it a movie licensed game, but most of the devs had never made a game before. It went from being just a rail shooter to a literal game changer in the FPS genre.

Tyranthraxus posted...

That's less lightning in a bottle and more Coattail riding though.

That's a solid touch.

Goldeneye for the N64. It was a movie tie-in which came out a couple years after the movie. It was a first-person shooter on a console at a time when that wasn't considered a good combination. If I recall correctly the head of the project had never been in charge of game development before, and a lot of the team had never even worked on a video game before.

Twitch Plays Pokemon

Editors topic picks:

• Star Wars. Unbelievable that this ever got funding nevermind became so wildly successful
• Fleetwood Mac, Rumors. Yes. This album should have been a dumpsterfire. Somehow it's an all-time great. A truly perfect piece of art from track 1 to the last.
• Avatar The Last Airbender. Pretty incredible how this show broke so much ground and even across over 60 episodes barely had a dull moment.
• Goldeneye 007. This is a great example. Why was this game so good? It had no right being this good.

Kingdom Hearts is the king of this.

ECW in the 90s

BDSMKane posted...

Star Wars, seriously. Just a little research and youll realize how badly it would have failed if Lucas hadnt gotten help with the writing.

And his wife with the editing.

Dark Souls.

people mostly slept in Demon's Souls, which has the same basic aesthetic and formula, but due to word of mouth, it being multiplatform, and it having something new, yet nostalgic quality about it, Dark Souls ended up being a hit and one of the most influential games in the modern era.

besides that, John Wick - it could have been a generic revenge movie, but its dark humor and world building elevated it, and its level of intrigue had people wanting more.

Justin2Krelian posted...

Attitude Era

Boombam99 posted...

ECW in the 90s

Really just wrestling in general. It makes more money now than it did then, but the amount of mainstream attention and live viewership it got was due to it being a product of how pop culture was at the time.

Feels like an odd take, but Gilmore Girls. It worked in a sort of catalytic sense , where if it was even a bit worse than it was, the writing or characters being off or whatever, it would've gone from an A to an F, no in-between.

Guardians of the Galaxy (movie and game)

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


There's a few things involved but the two biggest ones are the scheduling conflict that led to casting William Shatner and the fact that the show was not expected to be a huge success in the first place. It completely crushed ratings when it first debuted.

^ iirc, also something about how Lucille Ball's company was willing to give the original series a chance, and how the re-run format helped with its success.

Resident evil.

You have to keep in mind that video games.....well they were slowly getting more popular than they were in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s, but they still weren't what we would consider mainstream like they are today. Video games was still in that more "mainly nerds play these games" kind of thing.

Resident evil's rise in popularity was insane. RE1 came out and was a modest success. RE2 freaking blew what part 1 achieved out of the water. The franchise quickly started getting comics, spin-offs in general, and a movie franchise despite not even being more than 10 years old at the time. This was a era in which video game movies tended to be absolute shit, with those extreme few exceptions like the first mortal kombat movie. While the movies did not follow the games like at all the very first movie was still a popcorn flick that people look back fondly on and really brought the series into the mainstream n' beyond just video games.

South Park.

I'm surprised it succeeded when it was exclusively on a channel most people don't really care about or don't have in their cable subscription. Despite the initial media backlash it someone how managed to last this long.

It's not really iconic, but Wall of Voodoo is the dearest art to me. They were all drugged up and mostly assholes to each other, fucked over by garbage ass Miles Copeland constantly, but all of their albums are easily my favorite musical contribution anyone or any group has ever made. It's just perfect to me and I've never heard anything really move on with their style at all other than individual members of the band

The news.

Lord_Ephraim posted...

South Park.

I'm surprised it succeeded when it was exclusively on a channel most people don't really care about or don't have in their cable subscription. Despite the initial media backlash it someone how managed to last this long.

Comedy Central was an absolute laughingstock, and the channel only took it because they had nothing else. It ended up being a phenomenon.

Since several people mentioned the MCU, have to say the biggest one, which was also the first.

IRON MAN:

In 2007 there was nothing that would suggest this would even be a decent movie. Robert Downey Jr was a joke. Tony Stark/Iron Man was not a well known character (to the level of Spider-Man Batman or the X-men), If they couldn't make the CGI look awesome the whole thing would flop.

Yet somehow it all worked perfectly. And the MCU was built on its back, and frankly a lot of other superhero media.

Jackass
It's weird how a bunch of crass pranks and dangerous stunts became so successful.

Donkey Kong for Gameboy. Basically hid the fact that it wasn't a lazy 1 for 1 port of the arcade game from the public and then went on to be one of the greatest platformers ever made.

Disco Elysium. What an unlikely game to ever receive funding... there aren't many people who would've taken a chance on such an unusual and risky premise.

And then the fraud that occurred in the aftermath of the game's success (and which almost guarantees a sequel won't happen) just further highlights how lucky we are to have it.

Iron Man 1
GotG 1

Vine. It came and left at the perfect time.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

That's because Lucille Ball was a badass.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Desi Arnaz (Ricky Ricardo) doesn't get enough credit as a producer either. He pretty much created syndication, which kept Star Trek popular afterwards.