There were a lot of hints that Future John and Cameron were having lots of weird, kinky robosex before she was sent back to the past.
And it was never directly mentioned in a “this is why I act like a robot now” but Cameron did say in the first episode how she’s been tracking John for months and was programmed specifically for that moment. After the moment passed, she reverted to a regular Terminator.
On Happy Days, Chuck Cunningham very suddenly transformed from an assertive older brother to being strangely vacant most of the time . . .
Anya on Buffy had a total 180 personality shift. When she first appears in the episode, The Wish, she’s a vengeance demon, impersonating a high school girl, and she does a good job of it.
Later, when she became mortal and a regular member of the cast, she had very little understanding of human interactions or what was socially acceptable to say in front of an audience.
(Anya: That’s so very humorous. Make fun of the ex-demon! I can just hear you in private: “I dislike that Anya. She’s newly human and strangely literal.”
Willow: Anya, I don’t say that. No one says that. No one talks that way.)
It was bizarre. I don’t know if the writers had completely forgotten that Anya had once been able to at least fake being a human, or what.
Several from The Office have, really.
Phyllis used to be quiet and unassuming and then grew a big ol’ bitchy streak
Kelly was one of those who just hadn’t found a place at first and was just sort of in the background and then suddenly she was… Kelly.
Pam changed when she started dating Jim
Kevin has gone from just slow-talking and a little dim to barely functioning
and so on.
Also in the “goofy slacker -> functionally retarded” category is Eric Matthews from Boy Meets World.
I remember on one episode he was shown wearing a big, flashy diamond ring, and he said he won it in a huge poker tournament in Vegas—If he was really as moronic as he has been portrayed as of late, (didn’t he actually wear empty kleenex boxes on his feet after his shoes were destroyed at Jim and Pam’s wedding?) that would be pretty unlikely…
That’s the problem: Stupid characters are funnier than merely dim ones. There is a long history of TV characters charging down the slip-and-slide into full blown retarded just for the comedic value it presents.
Margaret yes, though it was hardly rapid. Charles no. In that show, competence was the crucial determinant between good guys and bad guys, and Charles was competent from the beginning. Arrogant, sure, but IIRC he stayed that way. Never a rat like Frank Burns.
When my kids watched Dennis the Menace reruns, he seemed to change from true brat to fine upstanding young man as Jay North aged. Again, not very rapid.
Those are true, but some of those changes, IMHO were warranted. Kelly works in the annex (which is down a hallway in what is essentially another office). We started seeing more of her when she started dating Ryan. Also, Phyllis had her big change when she took over the party planning committee and got to rule over Angela. But, Kevin…Kevin has become a characterization of himself. Kevin’s character jumped the shark when Holly thought he was retarded.
Yeah, it Kelly’s case it wasn’t so much that she changed as that she got a lot more screen time. With Phyllis I think she started showing an occasional “dark side” fairly early on, probably because she got a bit full of herself due to her involvement with Bob Vance of Vance Refrigeration. And Pam didn’t just suddenly change when she started dating Jim, she gradually became more assertive over the course of the third season.
Anya simply became the stand-in for Cordelia when Charisma Carpenter moved over to Angel. She filled the same role and basically did the two things that Cordy was most useful for on early “Buffy” episodes - bluntly address the big “elephant in the living room” and provide Xander with sex. Although with Cordy, irritating as she could be, the character worked as a counterpoint to the Scooby-gang, while with Anya she was more often just irritating.
I think the difference stems from the fact that Cordy was an ordinary mortal girl. For all her bitchy snobbery about being the ‘most popular girl in school’, the truth was that she was just another teen-aged girl in a small-town high school. That gave her an identifiable humanity. You may not have liked her, but you could have some pity for her short-sightedness, and her small world-view. Anya, who had lived for thousands of years and had near omnipotent levels of power, had no such excuse.
Other then Kevin, I think most of the changes to people on The Office were pretty organic. Most of them were just responding to their environment. People change when they start dating, or stop dating, or have to much stress in their lives or are up to HERE with a co-worker.
Dr. Kutner on House M.D. took a pretty drastic turn.
Andy from the “Andy Griffith Show” went pretty quickly from being a friendly, but clever, bumpkin to a pretty strict “take no shit” semi-hardass in later shows.
IIRC I also think Lorne Greene as the father on “Bonanza” got a lot more hard edged personality-wise over the course of the show.
Does the episode when Clark Kent got exposed to the Red Kryptonite count?
And at the very beginning it certainly debateable how “friendly” he really was. In the episode of “Make Room for Daddy” that was the de facto back-door pilot of the “Andy Griffith Show”, Sheriff Andy Taylor came across as more of a rural Sgt. Bilko who hid his caginess behind a smiling “good ol’ boy” persona. As I recall, the episode involved Sheriff Andy setting up a speed trap to shake down unsuspecting Yankee tourists.
I had a bit of a “huh?” moment watching re-runs of the office. Specifically, the episode in the first season about diversity training.
Michael is trying to get Kelly to participate in his “diversity training” but she refuses, saying (in a very professional way) that she has a meeting with a customer. Michael launches into his best and most offensive “apu” impression, and she just glares at him, offended and angry, gives him a sharp slap across the face and leaves.
Basically, it’s not even Kelly. A customer service rep probably wouldn’t have a “meeting” with a customer, plus she’s not ditzy or shallow.
Fonzie originally was a real greaser, very intimidating. He quickly changed to the “cool big brother” role that Chuck vacated.
Diversity Training was the second episode so I’m not even sure if we can count that. I’m not sure about that episode but the pilot didn’t even have everyone in it (I think maybe Phyllis and Angela were missing) and it had a few people in it that were only in that episode. Beyond that I don’t think Kelly has really changed at all.
On Star Trek: Voyager Captain Janeway underwent some pretty big personality shifts in between episodes to suit the plot.
Go back and watch the first few episodes of The Simpsons. Homer isn’t nearly the buffoon he later became.