In case you don’t know what I mean:
‘Flanderization’ is a trope used to describe a character who has very clear and complex personality when they’re introduced, with their obvious good and bad traits that makes people like and relate to them.
However, as the series goes on, said character is simplified into being very one dimensional, and kind of unlikeable. Usually by making their more negative traits more prominent and exaggerated.
(The word was named after ‘Simpsons’ character Ned Flanders. Who went from a friendly, well-manned Christian dad, to just… and overly obsessed, negative Christian stereotype.)
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In my opinion, Shadow The Hedgehog might be the most infamous example in term of video game flanderization.
Starting off as the edgy, more cutthroat version of Sonic, only to show that he’s just a severely damaged individual who lost everything he cared about, and with the help of the other characters, is able to move past him trauma and become one of the heroes.
Only for the later games to portray him as just some edgelord douche who just wants to prove he’s better than Sonic.
For a recent example
Phillip Graves in the Modern Warfare reboots. In Modern Warfare 2 he is a likeable, charismatic, but ultimately competent and shrewd leader. In Modern Warfare 3 he is reduced to a bumbling background player whose every line contains some form of an attempt at a joke and who becomes inexplicably a moron.