I think you're misinterpreting my argument. We discussed our characters together before session zero when the DM was present. Then we made those exact characters during session zero.
The problem I have here is that you basically ignored any GM input in session zero. You say below you incorporated the GM's hooks, but no such evidence has been presented. Your character doesn't have any connection to the setting, for instance, and another character refused a house in the area. You went with your preconceived ideas -- there was no attempt to align with the setting or adventure hooks as far as I can tell. Please, if I'm wrong, present the evidence.
We play online. He was in the Discord call when we had our discussion. He was involved in the discussion in so much as he provided what generation method we would use, what races and classes were available, etc. If he didn't like one of the characters during that process, he had an option to completely veto that character then. The interesting thing about his instructions to not make characters before session zero is that all 5 of these players made their characters before session zero. Some of us waited to finish our characters during session zero.
You're overselling the "GM was present" angle, here and trying to make it seem like the GM was actively engaged with whatever character creation the players performed. However, when you present specifics, there's nothing here about discussions with the GM, or the GM providing hooks for characters. Instead, you present the rather anodyne statement that GM involvement was telling you the generation method and races/classes available and then providing instruction to not create characters until session zero. That you ignored this and did so anyway does not indicate the GM was okay with that.
So, there are a few scenarios here; either he didn't communicate that requirement as well as he thought he did, or, as I suggested, all of us are in the habit of presenting our characters during session zero for DM approval and to discuss how we are connected. Hussar's mini-game helped us establish that connection to each other and to the town. What difference would it have made if we had created characters prior to session zero to play that mini-game, or to make the characters during session zero to do the exact same thing?
No, there cannot be multiple scenarios here -- the thing has happened; there is just the one scenario. When you present things like this -- counterfactual arguments about what might have happened -- it undercuts your credibility. You've already indicated you were aware of the instruction to not create characters prior to session zero, so there's no failure to communicate for you. Perhaps another player failed to hear this, but you're hypothesizing, and doing so in a way that undercuts your argument that the GM was present when you created characters and so knew about it. If one of the players could fail to understand or hear the instruction to not create characters, and this is a plausible and valid argument, then it cuts back to say that the GM could have failed to understand any discussion wasn't just spitballing ideas prior to actual character creation. You cannot have it both ways. Regardless, you cannot speak for others, so the hypothetical doesn't apply when asking you for your recollections.
If you are in the habit of making characters beforehand, so what? In what way does that actually excuse not paying attention to the GM? I mean, you certainly don't have to, but you can't claim a moral high ground in the discussion by effectively saying you ignored him because it wasn't what you were used to.
What makes you think my character wasn't tied to the setting? I explained several times in this very thread how I was connected; I was a charlatan who was selling my wares to the town. Someone in the town thought of me as a fraud, so I was doing good deeds for the town to gain the good-will of the townsfolk so I could continue with my scam. One of the other PCs was my guard. That ties me to the town, ties me to an NPC, and ties me to another character. All established during the mini-game.
Perhaps my understanding of connected is different from yours, and perhaps the GM's. I don't see anything in there that suggests actual connection. Your story is utterly generic -- it works in any town -- and doesn't give you any motivation to actually do anything except for money, which, presumably, if the task is too dangerous or too onerous then you just move to the next mark of a town. The connection to another PC is mercenary -- he's your hired hand. No loyalty, no personal connection, nothing. The NPC connection is similar -- a NPC thinks I swindled them? That's not a connection, it's an accusation -- there's no motivation to do anything for or against this NPC.
Maybe that's what the GM thought was a good connection, although, given his posts, that seems unlikely. It seems more like that was the maximum extent to which you were willing to accommodate, and seems in line with many stories where a player doesn't actually want levers on their PCs the GM has access to. As such, none of the hooks you're touting for your character have a barb -- they're pain free to ignore.
I will give Hussar the benefit of the doubt in that he didn't have time to do anything with it...as I stated before, I had to drop out early. Things might have gone differently in the game if I had remained; one of the players likes the tactical aspect of the game...i.e. combat. Another is a bit loud and has a tendency to talk over other players (this happens sometimes...Hussar does that too. Nothing negative about either of them because strong personalities do that). He tends to try to tell everyone else what to do. A third likes to make unique and quirky characters, and the 4th likes to role-play. Me, I tend to think that I am a balance of all of this and try to be the one to keep focus (not always successful). Maybe if I had stayed, I could have helped keep focus. But life happens.
The GM has said that they were not a good fit with the group -- that the play goals were misaligned. Nothing you've posted in this thread suggests that you were the one to align them. After all, your participation in this thread has been to defend your own actions and place blame on the GM, which isn't a strong sign that you'd have been the voice of reconciliation.
Look, I hate pregen adventures for precisely the reasons shown in this thread -- they work best with strong direction of PC generation by the GM. I don't like that. I do, however, insist that players work within the themes we've decided to play. My current 5e game is a Planescape game, and so anything goes PC wise. However, I did insist that the PCs must be ones that would seek adventure and that they would be willing and able to work in a group and to not finalize characters until the first session of play (session 1/2, as it was a mixture of 0 and 1). In the first part of that session, we ran a mini-game where I had the first select player select another player and tell me what they were doing together when they met or became friends -- ie provide the scene. I then provided a setting NPC or organization that complicated things and we rolled a die to determine how that scene went, and the second player narrated the result of what happened. This way, each character had a story binding them both to the setting and to each other. We repeated this for each player selecting a different character and then reversing the result of the first die roll. So, each character had close connection and shared stories with two other characters, the group as a whole was tightly interconnected, and each character has a positive relation with a setting NPC or organization and a negative one. This set the scene for the game, and we finalized PCs (one player made a large change because he thought it better fit with the fiction generated) and proceeded to play. The first adventure was pre-done, but also not very consequential, and was used to set up campaign themes more strongly, but since then it's been character backstories and the rogues gallery we created together to see what happens next.
I say this because if you followed what you've outlined you did here, we'd probably have strongly clashed, especially given your position that you were correct to do as you did because that's how you always did it.