King Neptune Effect

When a character suffers a catastrophic glow-down — not just a visual downgrade, but a full-on aesthetic and narrative collapse. Once majestic, cool, or powerful, they’re redesigned into a weird, goofy, or straight-up embarrassing version of themselves.
“They Neptuned him. Dude used to look like a legend.”

“This reboot is suffering from major King Neptune Effect.”

“Her redesign has big Neptune Energy… in the bad way.”

“From silver fox to gas station cryptid — that’s the King Neptune pipeline.”

Variations:

Neptuned (verb) – “They Neptuned my boy!”

Neptune Energy (noun) – “His current look is giving Neptune Energy, and not in a good way.”

King Neptune Syndrome (rare alt form) – “It’s a classic case of King Neptune Syndrome: dev god to gym teacher.”
by Black_lunger May 13, 2025
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