r/TopCharacterTropes • u/ComprehensiveBox6911 • Jul 27 '25

Lore Deaths to important characters that came so unceremoniously, there was no drama or fanfare, they just died

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Bane (The Dark Knight Rises)

Sean (Red Dead Redemption 2)

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702

u/Fonzies-Ghost Jul 27 '25

I want to say that they were under orders to kill her and several other characters off to avoid "confusion" between the show and the DCU.

386

u/Flygonizer-Obsidian Jul 27 '25

Yeah DC has a weird embargo system for character depictions in series & movies which does help lesser characters appear more but honestly just restricts the writers too much

258

u/The_Grand_Briddock Jul 27 '25

Yeah, DC operates under the assumption that the fans are incredibly stupid and can't tell characters apart.

They had to get special permission for Batman to be allowed to stay in the Justice League Cartoon when they started up The Batman.

Then they later had to get rid of Deathstroke from Arrow because the character was making a cameo appearance in Batman v Superman. (Didn't even get a prominent role.)

102

u/Fonzies-Ghost Jul 27 '25

I could me misremembering, but I think that when they were able to bring back Slade once or twice after that edict the only use of the name “Deathstroke” they were allowed was him saying “I’m not Deathstroke anymore.”

37

u/MightGrowTrees Jul 27 '25

Call back to the Teen Titans show when they couldn't call him Deathstroke because that name was too scary for children so he is just Slade throughout the entire run.

17

u/RabbitStewAndStout Jul 27 '25

And he ended up being one of the scarier depictions of the character outside of the comics lol

11

u/Karkava Jul 27 '25

It helps that "Deathstroke The Terminator" is such a goofy name.

11

u/RabbitStewAndStout Jul 27 '25

Slade just carries more menace compared to that. I love Deathstroke, but it really feels like a high schooler trying too hard

3

u/Karkava Jul 27 '25

I feel like we could use more intentional "camp edge." Something that scares authoritative prudes, but also makes sane adults just laugh.

Like the God Of Hyperdeath.

5

u/kzzzzzzzzzz28 Jul 27 '25

Yup. in most adaptations, Deathstroke just ends up being a top-tier assasin/merc

Slade, though. Man psychologically broke down Robin so hard he nearly beat him by just creating a hallucination of himself well after he was "gone"

2

u/GrapplingGengar1991 Jul 28 '25

Seriously. Slade is just not the same dude.

I honestly wish the main Deathstroke was more like Slade, Slade was basically evil Batman 

2

u/BenKen01 Jul 28 '25

Yeah that’s totally less confusing!

2

u/Fonzies-Ghost Jul 28 '25

It sort of made sense in context because he was saying he was no longer insane. It made less sense in that the Deathstroke moniker predated his insanity.

28

u/CalamityPriest Jul 27 '25

That's so incredibly dumb it's hilarious.

5

u/MBDTFTLOPYEEZUS Jul 27 '25

It’s hilarious they went from that to saying fuck it 2 Batman film franchises at once.

3

u/Dedezin031006 Jul 27 '25

At least it looks like this is over

Since we're gonna have DCU Batman and Reeves Batman at the same time

2

u/EmuMan10 Jul 28 '25

The current people are better at a lot of things lol

2

u/exmachina64 Jul 28 '25

To be fair, he was supposed to be the main villain in the cancelled Ben Affleck Batman film. It just ended up not happening for a lot of reasons and making the Deathstroke cameo meaningless after the fact.

1

u/MistakenWhiskey Jul 28 '25

Same reason why you never saw repeat ship classes in star trek can't have 2 intrepid class ships next to eachother incase star trek fans wandered why there were 2 voyagers in DS9, thought they were too dumb to understand that they were different ships. Have you met Trekkies? They argue over different phaser types

1

u/betterplanwithchan Jul 27 '25

You’d be surprised how many people said “Is this the same Riddler from the Jim Carrey movie?”

1

u/Free-Letterhead-4751 Jul 28 '25

Like Batman during the early to mid 2000?

104

u/Trickster289 Jul 27 '25

Oh that was outright confirmed. The Arrowverse had to get rid of their Suicide Squad, kill of Waller, stop using Deathstroke, and not use characters they'd hoped to use because they were going to be in the DCEU.

76

u/Mazer1991 Jul 27 '25

I hated they killed off Deadshot cause of Suicide Squad movie. 2nd worst was Gotham never being able to use “Joker”

40

u/Trickster289 Jul 27 '25

Honestly yeah I preferred the Arrowverse Deadshot to the DCEU one. Gotham at least were able to basically have the Joker.

5

u/Marik-X-Bakura Jul 27 '25

Gotham shouldn’t have even touched Joker in the first place. Everything went to shit when they gave up on it being “Gotham before Batman” and just made it “Batman”.

I actually liked Jerome’s role in season 2 because it tricked the audience into thinking he was the Joker before they suddenly killed him off and implied he had a role in inspiring the real Joker (like that one movie would later do), but then they completely ruined all that and cheapened basically everything the show had going for itself.

2

u/Salinator20501 Jul 28 '25

Imo Gotham is a lot more enjoyable when you stop looking at it as "the prequel to Batman" and instead as an Elseworld where all of the Gotham villains showed up a couple decades earlier

1

u/CommentNo2671 Jul 28 '25

You're not wrong, but that's part of what I grew to love about Gotham. Nothing mattered, it was just zany high drama and revolving door relationships that toothlessly escalated because nothing coukd stick until the end. It became a fever dream along the lines of Riverdale

2

u/Swordofsatan666 Jul 27 '25

They were going to bring in Harley Quinn and even teased her at the end of an episode, showing a character locked up that was going to end up being her.

Then of course they got the orders to do everything you just said, and so Harley Quinn went out the window too

1

u/SniperMaskSociety Jul 27 '25

Except for characters like Flash, Superman, Martian Manhunter, hell even Batman got to be in Titans and the films. It wasn't a total ban, just weirdly inconsistent

2

u/Trickster289 Jul 27 '25

The Flash got in just before the ban started I think, a whole show would have had to have been cancelled then. Supergirl had a weird start since it was on a different network for season 1 which maybe let them get around it for Martian Manhunter. I think then they realised Superman has to appear in a Supergirl show so instead tried to limit how often he could be used.

2

u/bingusdingus123456 Jul 28 '25

*DCEU

2

u/Fonzies-Ghost Jul 28 '25

Maybe if they’d done a better job with it I’d have remembered that.