going off my vague and admittedly rusty memory, there were at least three major examples of this that I personally encountered:
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- The Marvel Civil War story arc in the comics
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- The Twilight Saga Edward Vs Jacob marketing for the movies (which admittedly was handled somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I seem to recall a fast food commercial taking it to what I hope was an intentionally absurd degree)
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- The MCU retread of Civil War from the comics, adapted to the silver screen
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*** 4) Edit: Injustice: gods among us (thanks to u/Kinglion for pointing that one out)***
Whether this was intentional or not is beyond the scope of this screed, but it is interesting to note how many real-world examples of this phenomenon occurred during and after these campaigns, gamergate, the ghostbusters fiasco, the trump/anti trump movements, etc.
maybe it's nothing, or maybe it's something. I honestly have no idea, but the timing is certainly interesting at the very least.
Originally it was, and then Superman became more and more of a caricature of evil as time went on. Batman's fuck ups got reconned away and Superman got the shit kicked out him to remind everyone which side they were supposed to be choosing. The reason of course, is that Superman's brand of law abiding, criminal killing and imprisoning, "fascist" way of doing things... Well, it was shown to have worked and a lot of people made the "incorrect" decision of choosing Trump... I mean Superman.