I generally dislike anime and tend to reflexively roll my eyes when someone suggests I watch it, but I've been complaining about VLC for at least 15 years.

Its main claim to fame is that it "plays everything," and it rose to prominence in the P2P file sharing era. During this time, Windows users often installed so many "codec packs" that DirectShow would eventually just have an aneurysm any time you tried to play something. VLC's media stack ignored DirectShow, and would still play media on systems where it was broken.

We're past that problem, but the solution has stuck around because "installing codecs will break my computer, but installing VLC won't" is the zombie that just won't die.