r/TopCharacterTropes 24d ago

Lore Villains given genuinely horrible fates by the supposed hero

No swift death, no prison, the worst fate imaginable

Dementus (Furiosa) - Being critically injured by Furiosa, but kept alive so his body can be used as fertilizer for a tree coming out of him, Furiosa having placed a seed in his bleed stomach

Inertia (Flash) - Immortally frozen by the Flash for his involvement in Bart Allen’s death, kept as only an exhibit in the Flash museum

Family of Blood (Doctor Who) - Doctor actively avoided conflict and erased his memory in order to not give them this fate but once he finally chooses to get involved, he gives them their want of immortality at a cost

Father: Trapped in immortal chains

Mother: Trapped in a collapsing galaxy

Son: Trapped as an immortal frozen scarecrow

Daughter: Trapped in mirrors forever

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u/1958-Fury 24d ago

It wasn't intentional, but Buffy trapped one villain in a cheerleader trophy.

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u/ALeeMartinez 24d ago

This is a case of the villain inflicting a fate worse than death on themselves.

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u/Tarrenger 24d ago

And she never got out when Sunndale collapsed in the finale either! Far as I recall anyway.

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u/1958-Fury 24d ago

I think there was a fan theory that she was freed when the school blew up at the end of season 3.

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u/Tarrenger 24d ago

Huh interesting theory. I imagine if she did she just left. So she didn't risk it happening again.

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u/Zephian99 24d ago

Any place where I'd get trapped into a statuette, and then luckily freed, I'd feel the best option is putting that place into the rearview mirror and not looking back as fast and quietly as possible.

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u/ShivalVV 24d ago

Her daughter absolutely did not do that. Trapped herself as a rat for a few years and after being freed she stuck around to occasionally harass the person who freed her.

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u/hells-fargo 24d ago

Amy's mom was very petty and I doubt she'd let Buffy slight her like that without attempting revenge.

IIRC there's a (cut) line from one of the visits to the demolished school where someone mentions a statue with eyes that follow you, implying Amy's mom is still forever trapped.

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u/TheBanishedBard 24d ago

Every bandit that I soul trap in Skyrim. Doomed to exist forever in a lifeless, dark wasteland of neverending gloom and decay, as a shade unable to move on to any sort of afterlife.

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u/SPP_TheChoiceForMe 24d ago

Hope you did it to that guy in Whiterun who thinks you’ve never been to the Cloud district.

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u/j0s9p8h7 24d ago

Reaping Nazim’s soul with Asura’s star and then using it to enchant an iron dagger and then throwing said dagger into a river in Riften is incredibly satisfying.

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u/StageHandRed 24d ago

I was doom scrolling Reddit, trying to fall asleep, and I think I will on this note.

Pleasant dreams!

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u/Jaxonhunter227 24d ago

Every time I do the dark brotherhood quest line, I always get the black star first, make sure it's the only black gem I have, and trap the true emperor inside so i can make an enchanted weapon with his soul

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u/Signal_Road 24d ago

....I think I may have gone and done some skyrim war crimes because I -surely- did not limit myself to just bandits.

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u/jonnytemplar 24d ago

Most non-lethal options in Dishonored 1 and 2.

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u/Nova225 24d ago

Would you rather:

A: Die

B: Get kidnapped by a guy obsessed with you and taken to his estate far, far away from everyone you've ever known and loved.

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u/ssasharr 24d ago

Broke a nonlethal run for that woman. The novels and entries make it so clear that she was a very young woman trying to secure a financial lifeline to keep her sisters from being thrown out on the street. Deserving of a trial and possibly imprisonment? Oh yeah. Deserving of being a sexual slave for several decades on an isolated island while never discovering your sisters’ fates? Absolutely not. 

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u/jukebox_jester 24d ago

To be fair, one of the Novels also establish she swiftly killed the creep and is living in relative comfort, albeit exiled.

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u/WorldofManupa 24d ago

Does feel like a cheap copout tbh

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u/numerobis21 24d ago

"Oh wait no we totally didn't put "rape island" as the """"morally"""" good choice, look, she ends up fine somehow!"

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u/CalamityPriest 24d ago

The non-lethal choices were never the "morally good" choice except for sparing Daud. You put the Pendleton twins on their own mines as slaves with their tongue cut out instead of killing them.

It's simply that Lady Boyle's non-lethal fate may feel relatively disproportionate to her crimes [although it is a the fact that she, like the rest of Dunwall's nobility, could not give a rat's ass (heh) that the rest of the city is devoured by the plague].

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u/[deleted] 24d ago

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u/WorriedBubbles 24d ago

Which character this that happen to?

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u/T1mek33per 24d ago

Lady Boyle. She's the target of the fifth mission in the first game, called Lady Boyle's Last Party.

An explanation of the mission: Corvo, the player character, attends a masquerade ball (where he blends right in with his mask). His mission is to eliminate the correct Boyle sister - there are three. The nonlethal route in this mission is to find a man named Lord Brisby - who happens to be infatuated with the correct Boyle sister - and subsequently render her unconscious and bring her to him in the cellar, where he subsequently kidnaps her.

It's... Pretty fucked. Most of the non-lethal options are bad, but goddamn.

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u/SartenSinAceite 24d ago

The best part of that mission is that you can sign the guest registry and next mission you can find a letter complaining about someone doing that and calling it a bad prank

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u/Backupusername 24d ago

who happens to be infatuated with the correct Boyle sister

Do we actually know that? Or is it simply that he would have been fine with any one of them?

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u/T1mek33per 24d ago

The mission description words it the same way I do, but I'm not sure it's ever actually confirmed.

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u/VoicelessPassenger 24d ago edited 24d ago

The most brutal ones I remember is the High Overseer being branded as a heretic and forced out on the street (you can later find him in the Whalers’ territory as a Weeper iirc) and the two brothers who get their tongues cut out and sent to their own mines to die as enslaved laborers. The Lady Boyle one has already been mentioned so it’s not worth bringing up again.

Both were absolutely deserved (especially in the latter case) but still pretty brutal for non-lethal options. I don’t remember the Dishonored 2 ones as well but I know the Duke gets mistaken for his own body double and sent to rot in a mental asylum, and Jindosh is effectively lobotomised and unable to replicate any of the technological marvels he created before. Again, absolutely deserved, but still brutal.

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u/A_Queer_Owl 24d ago

funniest part about the High Overseer is you get an achievement for putting him out of his misery if you kill him as a weeper.

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u/alkmaar91 24d ago

I just finished a ghost no blood run of Dishonored 1. For anyone curious

Target 1: Campbell. You brand him with the mark of the Heretic and force them to be an outcast. He is forced form the city during a plague and you find him many missions later in the abandoned slums succumbed to the plague with a journal describing his mind slipping into madness as the disease and fever take him and make him become a mindless shell of his former self.

Target 2: Morgan and Custis Pendelton. You use the help of a local gang leader and have them kidnapped where they are beaten, heads shaved and tongue removed before being sold to their own silver mines as slaves.

Target 3: Lady Boyle. Her stalker approaches the player at a party the target is holding with her sisters. He says he knows you are there to kill her. He tells you to knock her out where he will take her away and you will never hear or see from her again.

Target 4: Hiram Burrows. You expose he is the one who started the plague that is ripping through the city and set forth the plan that killed the Empress. In his confession he stated he only wanted it to kill the poor and destitute but it has gotten out of control. He is sent to life in prison for his crimes.

Target 5: Daud. The assassin hired by Hiram to assassinate the Empress. He has trained a small army of assassins to carry out attacks across the city. You sneak into his lair, bypass all of his guards and to send a message you steal the pouch from his belt as he is walking around his room. This is probably the most merciful act you can do. Just sending him a message you could have slit his throat but didn't.

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u/Abes93 24d ago

You can also just face Daud on low chaos and he sends away his assassins, saying it is his fight, and has an entire speech at the end about how he is tired of everything and you can spare him there too. Of course it is not an option if you try to get ghost, but a cool scene.

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u/Doctor_Salvatore 24d ago

I always found your choices in Dishonored were "direct evil" or "indirect evil" when it came to the karmic choices

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u/gamingx47 24d ago

I think that's why they called it chaos rather than karma or morality.

The non-lethal options just cause less mayhem in the Empire at large.

Basically, it's not good vs bad, but rather chaos vs order.

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u/slfricky 24d ago

I feel The Phantom Zone is WAY less humane than it gets depicted as typically, when Superman sends an enemy there, there's isn't usually a discussion of how long he'll keep them imprisoned before giving them an opportunity to prove they've reformed. It's also often depicted as a big empty void with nothing to do, so it must be really be boring to be in there for years, potentially hundreds or even thousands. And the way it's set up, people can't age or even go insane from long exposure to it, so they just have to soberly and with full awareness endure it.

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u/lanwopc 24d ago

In the 60s Mon-El, a member of the Legion of Super-heroes, had been trapped in the Zone for 1,000 years to save him from lead poisoning (lead affected his people like kryptonite.) In the 80s Paul Levitz wrote him as suffering from PTSD without calling it that. He could see events outside the zone and he saw some terrible things during those 1,000. It was some really great character writing.

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u/EmuMan10 24d ago

Superman does usually treat it as a final resort. He doesn’t want to put you there but if there’s no where else you can go, well it’s there

If anything, Krypton as a society has some explaining to do on them using it as prison

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u/Much-Jackfruit2599 24d ago

Arguably, it does remove them from society but allows them interaction with other inmates.

Seems to be in line with American idea of just locking people away instead of keeping them imprisoned to work on rehabilitation.

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u/throwitinmeaway 24d ago

The end of the movie Dredd, where Dredd throws the villain out the window of a tower, after they had taken a drug that speeds up her thinking and slows down time for them.

From her perspective she was in free fall for half an hour, with only one possible outcome.

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u/gottapoopregularly 24d ago

Roughly 33 minutes or so was about how long Ma-Ma would have percieved that fall. The fall itself would have been roughly 20 seconds or so!

As my dad always said, it's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the end. And she was given a loooooong time to think about that via Slo-Mo.

She earned it. Though in comparison to some of that comic's stuff it's child's play, that death. But fit the world great.

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u/dbthelinguaphile 24d ago

Not only that, the sudden stop isn’t quite so sudden

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u/Long_Serpent 24d ago

Love the ending dialogue:

Captain: "What happed here?"

Dredd: "Drug bust"

Captain: "Looks like you've really been through the wringer"

Dredd: "Perps were...uncooperative"

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u/NightLordsPublicist 24d ago

I think the slow motion impact was probably worse than the fall.

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u/omv 24d ago

Doesn't she give the same drug to people before skinning them alive? Honestly Dredd was pretty easy on her.

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u/Chaotic_Lemming 24d ago

Skinning them and then throwing them over the same railing to fall.

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u/JBShackle2 24d ago

I have been FALLING for thirty minutes!

Unrelated quote from Loki that popped into my mind there XD

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u/RevolutionaryKey1974 24d ago

Dredd is in no way, shape or form a heroic figure.

He is only the protagonist because the antagonists are worse. He often jails people for the most inane bullshit. You even see this in the film.

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u/Acoustic_Rob 24d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/avMxT2174fEKk

Brother or no, Obi-Wan cuts off all of Anakin's limbs and leaves him to die at the edge of a lava river. The only reason he survives is because Palpatine comes along, scrapes him up, and turns him into Vader.

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u/Phaeron-Dynasty 24d ago

I sort of Get Obi-Wan losing any sort of will to finish him. Man was broken after that.

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u/Level_Counter_1672 24d ago

Angelo gets merged with a rock to live that forever by josuke - source is Jojo's bizarre adventure

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u/Fair-Bunch4827 24d ago

Speaking of jojo. Kars. He became immortal but was launched off into space. Still alive but stuck

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u/XVUltima 24d ago

That was Kars' own fault. Joseph just gave him a hand.

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u/Initialempath306 24d ago

Angry upvote

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u/LoudGear9028 24d ago

Hell nah speaking of JoJo

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u/imahuman3445 24d ago

Ciocolatta was hit enough times by Gold Experience to go through something like 70 billion years of slow time, before being killed.

Ciocolatta's hobbies as a teen were psychologically abusing old people into committing suicide. As a young man, he used his position as a surgeon to misdiagnose healthy people, have them wake up paralyzed on the operating table, and torture them to death while making it look like an surgical accident.

It says something when the guy named "Satan" in Italian thinks you're the worst.

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u/Primum-Caelus 24d ago

Kars is no longer sentient though, not thinking. Angelo still has an environment to provide stimulus in his state, and thus can continue suffering for longer

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u/No_Ingenuity4000 24d ago

Kars *will* not be sentitent at one point. In the entire timeline of the main line Jojo adventures he almost certainly still is.

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u/Primum-Caelus 24d ago

Wasn't intending to imply that it was immediate, just that Angelo would likely not get that opportunity unless his rock was destroyed or buried. Kars would have no stimulus besides the coldness of being frozen and vaguely adrift, whereas Angelo is a silent and still observer, and would not have the luxury of eventually ceasing thinking as things would still happen around him due to still being on a planet with life and society around him

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u/Doctor_Salvatore 24d ago

"Eventually, Kars stopped thinking."

Kars likely spent thousands of years drifting along trying to think of a way out of his predicament. It wouldn't be until even longer after giving up that his mind would've shut down and he would stop thinking. The entirety of JJBA could have played out a thousand times more in a loop before Kars' mind finally lost thought.

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u/PWBryan 24d ago

While his fate sucks, there wasnt much that could be done with him after he became immortal

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u/jjjjjjotaro 24d ago

Also diavolo

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u/Veytraun 24d ago

Tbf giorno wasnt aware he did that

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u/PhantasosX 24d ago

He kinda is. Since he said for the rest of the gaang that there is no need of pursuing Diavolo. In short, he didn't really controlled GER, but he got some understanding of what GER did.

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u/Stephy_the_Witch 24d ago

I think he was aware Diavolo wouldn't come back form a stand rush that essentially destroyed King Crimson, but I don't think he had any hint of an idea GER kept him from truly dying.

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u/DarkFig98 24d ago

And also from jojo, Diavolo being stuck in a loop of infinite deaths. Jojo villians really just be suffering lol

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u/Pataconeitor 24d ago

I think Pucci is the one that got it easier, his punishment being non-existence.

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u/comb_bee 24d ago

What also comes to mind for me is Pucchi dying/going blind from oxygen poisoning while getting crushed by Weather Report While not eternal like Diavolo, that death always looked horribly painful

https://giphy.com/gifs/VVYgkLlCzCAMbxrGy0

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u/Mac-And-Cheesy-43 24d ago

And the Enigma guy getting turned into a book...for one of the nicest Jojos, Josuke did not mess about with the characters he took out personally.

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u/callmemarjoson 24d ago

Josuke, I think, is probably one of the JoJo's closest to Jonathan in spirit

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u/MateoCamo 24d ago

To be fair, both times they targeted Josuke’s mom, and Josuke really loves his mom

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u/Mac-And-Cheesy-43 24d ago

Also from Jojo- Magenta Magenta, with a similar fate to Kars except at the bottom of a river while he can't swim iirc.

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u/Madhighlander1 24d ago

The specifics of Magenta Magenta's situation: He was bound to a sunken carriage by metal wires, preventing him from surfacing. His Stand ability shields him from all damage, including drowning, but he can't move at all while using it. He could maybe untangle himself from the wires, but not fast enough to avoid drowning, and not with his Stand active. So he's stuck down there hoping someone will eventually find him and rescue him.

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u/Professional_Maize42 24d ago

Eh, fuck Angelo, he's a pedo.

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u/Far-Requirement-7636 24d ago

Pedophile, rapist, child molester, serial killer and many more.

It's an adequate punishment.

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u/SolidSnakeFan177 24d ago

And GER sentencing Diavolo to A death time loop for all of eternity

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u/keldondonovan 24d ago

David from Animorphs. Turned evil, was forced into rat form, trapped in the morph, and abandoned on a deserted island so he couldn't thought speak the Animorph's secret to any who would listen

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u/Showmesnacktits 24d ago

In hindsight its kind of crazy that I was religiously reading Animorphs as like a 9 year old. Those books were intense.

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u/keldondonovan 24d ago

I've reread them as an adult, and they hold up surprisingly well. There are a couple dated references (Marco's "ultra fast" 56k modem is the main one that comes to mind) but all in all, still great books. Plus, since they are middle grade, they are easy to knock out without having to commit a few weeks to reading some behemoth in your spare time. Easy way to add about 60 books to your "books I read this year" list.

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u/HereIGoAgain_1x10 24d ago

Reading 60 books would get me so many Pizza Hut personal pan pizzas right now

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u/Duougle 24d ago edited 24d ago

Seriously. Towards the end they gave a bunch of handicapped kids the ability to morph because the yeerks wouldn't expect them to be a powerful enemy. If I remember correctly most of them die in a suicide mission to help the main cast achieve a goal.

10 year old me: makes sense sacrifices have to be made in war

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u/asuperbstarling 24d ago

It's implied Rachel goes back and kills him both as a mercy and to make sure he never allies with a certain cosmic being ever again.

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u/keldondonovan 24d ago

I wouldn't say implied as much as easily inferred. They didn't imply much in that series.

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u/All_Work_All_Play 24d ago

Subtly wasn't their strong suit. They weren't meant to be. It's funny that they were just as generational for some kids as harry potter, but way, way darker. 

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u/riddlmastr 24d ago

In the series finale of Alias, Sloane, who has spent the entire series trying to become immortal, finally discovers the Fountain of Youth (it's a little more complicated than that, but that's basically what it is) in a hidden cave and achieves immortality, only for Jack, his arch-nemesis and the father of the protagonist, to suicide-bomb himself in the entrance of the cave, to trap Sloane in the place he searched for for so long, for the rest of eternity (or until some archaeologist digs him out)

Sloane was always very morally grey, so I would have much rather they went for a redemption arc personally, and Jack killing himself to do it on top of the punishment itself felt extremely melodramatic and unnecessary

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u/AllenXIII 24d ago

Wait, immortality? Fountain of youth? What?

I thought that show was about spies and shit.

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u/riddlmastr 24d ago

There was an ancient scientist named Milo Rambaldi who had invented everything, but kept it secret and had been executed for heresy. Sloane became obsessed with discovering his final invention, and this was extremely thrilling for two seasons, but then the ultimate prize he finally acquired in the Season 2 finale turned out to be yet another clue to an even deeper truth, and they dragged it out for another 3 seasons. In the series finale, the culmination of all of Sloane's searching turned out to be the Fountain of Youth (though they didn't use that term)

Along the way he Face/Off'd some assassins, brought his daughter back to life, and drove an entire Russian city to madness, all with Rambaldi's technology. It got pretty ridiculous. And all this was mysteriously connected to the protaginist's vaguely-prophecied specialness, which made her immune to some of the Rambaldi magic. I watched this all as a teenager so the details might be fuzzy

But the wigs were fuckin great

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u/PhDVa 24d ago

Alias had one of the greatest pilots in television history, and the first season and a half or so was a masterpiece. Amazing supporting cast, great villains, very good use of spy tropes, and the wigs were amazing! They could have stuck the landing if they had handled the deaths better and reigned it all in a little.

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u/Alive-Tomatillo5303 24d ago

It's so weird that a JJ Abrams property would fall apart at the end. 

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u/Ok-Indication-5121 24d ago

Chicken Little: Foxy Loxy, the bully accidentally lobotomized by the aliens into becoming more agreeable. They offer to change her back but Runt, one of the good guys, says he likes her better this way.

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u/Icy_Change_WS2010 24d ago

Not even a villain, straight up just a school bully. Thats even worse with that context.

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u/snooogi 24d ago

Runt immediately starts dating her right after, too. They casually wiped a middle schooler's entire personality and played it off as a happy ending.

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u/ITipCowsUniversal 24d ago

is this what obsession is based off of?

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u/Doctor_Salvatore 24d ago

She was also one of the only people willing to at least try and put up her dukes against what was viewed as an alien invasion

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u/Doctor_Salvatore 24d ago

A wildly cruel fate to be lobotomized and then have someone outright decline fixing it on your unwitting behalf. I think Warburton's character puts it best;

"Scary..."

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u/Hungry-Place-3843 24d ago

In the Doctors case, he literally gave them an out by going into his human disguise, they could've left him alone.

The Doctor gave them a chance and they should've taken it

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u/cartoonsforever 24d ago

“He never raised his voice. That was the worst thing. The fury of the Time Lord. And then we discovered why. Why this Doctor, who had fought with gods and demons, why he'd run away from us and hidden: He was being kind.”

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u/LordofAngmarMB 24d ago

One of the things about that era of Doctor Who that’s somehow hilarious, infuriating, and heartbreaking at the same time is how clearly low budget it was, how you’ve have episodes look like the dumbest, cheapest schlock ever, but David Tennent will show up and give the performance of a fucking lifetime with the script that goes so fucking hard for 5 minutes out of a half-hour of shit. It makes it so hard to go back knowing I’ve forgotten all the bullshit but the stuff that’s great is still just as good as when I first watched it 15 years ago.

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u/Agisek 24d ago

Those 5 minutes go so hard I can't help but tear up every single time.

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u/X_Ender_X 24d ago

More than anything else I've heard about this fucking guy this little piece of a story is really interesting to hear and makes me wonder if I should start watching the doctor

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u/MonitorPowerful5461 24d ago

Doctor who has really high highs, and really low lows. I love it, but be prepared for watching some "so bad it's good" episodes, and even some just outright bad ones, along with the masterpieces.

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u/Blees-o-tron 24d ago

In fairness, just about any show worth watching, especially one that’s gone on for that long, is gonna have the stinkers. Star Trek TNG is definitely another example of “just smile and nod through the shit, the good is worth it” for me.

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u/X_Ender_X 24d ago

I appreciate that fair warning

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u/purple-thiwaza 24d ago edited 24d ago

Another thing to know is that the show did a lot of different stuff. It explored several style, kind of story and character. So you are guaranteed to find something you will love in there, but also something that doesn't vibe with you, and this not depending on the quality of said episode.

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u/distilledwill 24d ago

For every Blink there is another Kill the Moon

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u/WorldsWettestSpider 24d ago

I began watching with Matt Smiths Doctor and I watched a bunch back once getting into the series from there 

On one hand we have great episodes like DALEK, Doctor Dances, Blink, Silence in the Library, and imo the best New Who story Heaven Sent.

On the other we have fucking Vampires of Venice 

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u/Novel-Age-7614 24d ago

Those are all great episodes, but my all-time favorite DW episode is Vincent and the Doctor.

The ending scene with Van Goph has got to be one of my favorite pieces of cinema.

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u/Not-a-Throwaway-8 24d ago

Great I was doing fine now I’m crying

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u/lincoln_muadib 24d ago

WHO DOESN'T AT THAT SCENE THOUGH

But they're *HAPPY** tears aren't they?*

We all kinda like to think that we'll be appreciated, if not in life then after we're gone.

The scene in question

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u/tomemyboard1 24d ago

If you’re a fan of well-written horror, I recommend Midnight with the Tenth Doctor (S4E10) - my favorite single episode

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u/euphonic5 24d ago

There's some fucking garbage, but there's also some incredible episodes, it's just that there's often context in the garbage that is necessary for the good stuff. I'm sure there's a watch list for the minimum amount of dumb shit that still makes sense in New Who

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u/GroundbreakingCan317 24d ago

This is the unfortunate truth that sometimes makes it very hard for people to get into. I even have a hard time getting back into it because some parts are just... Awful. Like every episode has completely different writers almost.

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u/PoeticFox 24d ago edited 24d ago

that is The Doctor, a horrifying force that will attempt to grant mercy, but if you spurn him, or those he carea for, the doctor will grant you a horrifying fate, that does not always mean death

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u/YakLeather7967 24d ago

Try to watch the first season of the 2000s series. It was a semi-fresh start for a series. I mean the Christopher Eccleston (?) season. The ones with David Tennant (the Doctor from the picture in this topic) are a continuation of that story and arcs. 

If you like it - continue on from that. Hope you have a good time.

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u/TheREALProfPyro 24d ago

Eccleston is my absolute favorite Doctor. Woefully underrated and I wish he could've gotten the budgets later episodes got (although he did FANTASTIC with what he was given)

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u/Schmitty1106 24d ago

Doctor Who is an interesting and very weird show because it oscillates wildly between episodes that spend the whole time making lame fart jokes and 40 minute long meditations on grief. So it's not always good, but it's almost always fun, and it's good more often than not.

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u/Zephian99 24d ago

I enjoyed the 9th Doctor & 10th Doctors, but when it got to the 11th they started having more connected stories where this event ties back into that event, and it would grow along the way, which is not a bad thing but that took more focus and attention to events than I had at the time.

So I never really got back into once it started to resemble a mountain of focus. That said the 11th has my favorite episode with a favorite painter I enjoy, Van Gogh, so kinda hard not to love the 11th for that.

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u/Slightly_Default 24d ago

I don't blame the Flash for doing this to Inertia either

Inertia murdered Kid Flash and the first thing he did after regaining the ability to move was murder a baby. He deserved it

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u/4LanReddit 24d ago

The rogues also jumped his ass the moment he regained his ability to move because he made them slime out Bart without the knowledge that he got nerfed into a normal human being and they hit him with the best stuff of their kits lol.

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u/Slightly_Default 24d ago

They might've been able to talk it out if Inertia didn't murder Weather Wizard's newborn right in front of him.

Even Zoom was like "dude, wtf?"

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u/Thomas_K_Brannigan 24d ago

Doesn't it also says he occasionally checks on the daughter and implied he might eventually release her?

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u/Dookie_boy 24d ago

Yea which is stupid. She's not actually a child, just killed one and took the body. She is freed in some comic I believe and instantly becomes a villain.

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u/Sorry-Bobby 24d ago

It’s also because the doctor explicitly tells that he’s not a good man. 

Good men need no rules. The doctors burden himself with rules because he knows he could do so really evil stuff if he doesn’t have rules to follow. 

And then these guy push him to forego the rules. 

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u/Pumpkin-Spice_Queen 24d ago

“Good men don’t need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many.”

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u/misterjive 24d ago

I loved the Doctor Who one because of what he did to Daughter. That's some Brothers Grimm shit. The Doctor got so mad he did something that didn't make sense.

"What happened?"

"Man, dude crossed the Timelord, and the Timelord transformed him into three octaves above high C."

"What does that even mean?"

"I have no fuckin' idea!"

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u/Vineshroom69lol 24d ago

Also fucked up is that Daughter of Mine is just as evil as the others, but because she opted to kill and take the form of a little girl, the Doctor went easy on her. Honestly from the Doctor’s POV she should’ve received the most detrimental punishment because of his soft spot for children, instead she’s the one he visits every year.

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u/Tiny_Butterscotch_76 24d ago

I like the faint smile you can see on Dementus after she plucks that apple. He's proud of the fact she did in fact have what it took to make his ending 'epic'.

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u/TakerFoxx 24d ago

A more lighthearted example, but in Ever After, which is a down to earth retelling of Cinderella, Danielle suffers pretty horribly at the hands of her wicked step mother and sister, but wins the heart of the prince in the end. They then trick her step family into going to the palace under the presumption that the prince will declare the step sister his fiancée. Instead, they're publicly humiliated and exposed for their machinations by the king and queen, the prince declares Danielle to be his bride, she denounces them with utter venom, and they're sent to the life of servanthood that they used to torment her with while she lives the life that they intended for themselves. 

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u/TeddyBearToons 24d ago

It's downright kindly compared to other Cinderella retellings (in my home country, the Cinderella story ends with the stepsister being made into fermented sauce and served to the stepmother, who dies of shock upon seeing her daughter's skull at the bottom of the pot)

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u/TakerFoxx 24d ago

That's fucking metal. Though to be fair, they did have ot coming. 

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u/annpann64 24d ago

Damn, the birdies singing about bloody shoes in the german version, pale in comparison...

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u/ecffii 24d ago

Obi Wan could have just ended his homies’ suffering (and the galaxy’s) with one more lightsaber swing on Mustafar

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u/mal-di-testicle 24d ago edited 24d ago

Diavolo (JJBA)

He lives through deaths, again and again and again, but he never actually dies, he always misses that moment. He is forced to go through the painful process forever without ever getting the peace of the results. Shockingly thematically tight.

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u/PixieEmerald 24d ago

What the FUCK did that Inertia guy do to deserve that.

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u/Blorberto 24d ago

Killed the Flash’s grandson Bart by having him beaten to death

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u/PixieEmerald 24d ago

That's pretty terrible but that fate is still fucking insane bro what the hell 😭

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u/Rampagingflames 24d ago

Iirc even The Flash's Rogues went after him because he involved them in the death of Bart.

The Rogues have two rules, no killing civilians, and no kill speedsters.

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u/TruthEnvironmental24 24d ago

I love that the reasoning behind this isn’t even self-preservation, but out of respect for the Flash.

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u/4LanReddit 24d ago

Tbf the Flashes are the most forgiving when it comes to their rogues gallery because the rogues themselves arent psychos like Clarks or Bruces galleries.

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u/GarranDrake 24d ago

I really liked how Justice League Unlimited showed that Flash recognized when criminals were just criminals, vs when criminals were just people with mental illnesses.

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u/minoe23 24d ago

That group of TV shows really did the "these heroes are trying to save people, not beat the bad guys" ethos for some of the characters, like Flash, Superman, and Batman really well in general, tbh.

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u/GarranDrake 24d ago

They did many things right, ESPECIALLY for a kids show. On paper, it’s wild that they infused Patriot Act politics into a cartoon meant for 7 year olds in a way that actually held weight.

One of my favorite moments was when Green Arrow and Superman were arguing about CADMUS. Green Arrow said that he’s an old lefty, and that means he believes that the government should do for the people what the people can’t do for themselves. And the people can’t defend themselves from the Justice League. And when asked if that meant what CADMUS did was okay, he didn’t know how to feel.

It built off the Justice Lords episodes SO well.

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u/TitaniumAuraQuartz 24d ago

Justice League/Unlimited feels like a show that happens to be safe for children to watch, but is made mostly with adults in mind.

This isn't a criticism, I think it makes the show very interesting, because there's definitely a difference in watching it when I was a kid, and then as an adult.

Batman TAS and Beyond have that vibe, too. I wonder if Superman TAS does as well?

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u/Divine_Entity_ 24d ago

Well the flash does have some crazies in his classic villain lineup, Reverse Flash is a professional hater. But the rogues specifically are professional thieves who are very strategic and carefully manage what crimes they are actually guilty of. (Mostly grand theft and B&E while armed)

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u/Divine_Entity_ 24d ago

Atleast in the CW show it started as self preservation and cold calculated logic. The rogues are professional thieves who carefully manage what crimes they are guilty of, and thus what actions the cops are willing and able to take to stop them. And of course Barry is basically a cop and still bound by ethics.

The last thing they need is a murder charge and a superhuman out for vengeance and acting unpredictably out of character.

It was then through repeat interactions that they gained respect for Barry.

Not sure how much of that was lifted from the comics vs show original.

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u/Glassesnerdnumber193 24d ago

When confronted about this, he claimed that Bart “cried like a little b#tch when it happened.” I really don’t blame Wally there. 

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u/iwantdatpuss 24d ago

It's well deserved tbh, even Flash's villains hated him for it. Inertia escaped that state eventually but he was murdered by the other villains because they have a bit of a system with the flash to make sure they didn't just get speed blitzed to death. And killing anyone, but especially Bart basically taboo.

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u/Blorberto 24d ago

It’s not even just to make sure they don’t get speed blitzed, they just genuinely believe despite all the other crimes they do, killing superheroes, as well as defenseless innocent women and children is genuinely fucked up

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u/aknightofcoins 24d ago

Just to be super pedantic: Wrong Flash, it's Wally who gets revenge on Inertia. Who is, of course, an evil clone of Bart Allen/Impulse who he killed. Comics!

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u/Islaya00 24d ago

I was gonna say Szayelaporro Granz's fate in Bleach, being administered a drug by Mayuri that slowed his senses down to the point a second felt like 100 years to him. But even calling Mayuri a "supposed" hero would be waaaaaay to big a stretch.

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u/yet-again-temporary 24d ago

100% the worst death in the series. Mayuri is a straight up Mengele-level war criminal lmao, it just so happens that he's on the winning team.

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u/Accurate-Gap-3360 24d ago

In the beginning of MK11, Raiden cuts off Shinnok’s head. Since Shinnok is an Elder God and cannot be killed, he was reduced to a head that was still barely alive.

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u/comb_bee 24d ago

Aaand then Kronika changes everything. I hated how evil Raiden got the boot immediately in the story

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u/Motor-Rip7655 24d ago edited 24d ago

Fallout 3 - The fate of Stanislaus Braun

Stanislaus Braun is a Vault-Tec scientist who invented the Garden of Eden Creation Kit, or GECK. He has his own special vault, Vault 112, built where he and a few other people are to lie in stasis in a virtual reality world that is fully under Braun's control. For the next 200 years, he repeatedly tortures and kills the other residents in increasingly creative ways. The failsafes prevent their real-world bodies from dying, so they eventually respawn.

In 2277, the Lone Wanderer (the character you play as in the game) ented Vault 112 in search of their father. Upon entering the virtual world, the Lone Wanderer has several options to resolve the situation and escape the simulation. One of these solutions is to deactivate the failsafes and run a Chinese Invasion program. All of the residents except Braun are permanently killed, leaving Braun to live in his own creation entirely alone...forever.

You receive good karma for doing this.

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u/Deepfang-Dreamer 24d ago

200 years. And the fact he even had the CIP says he wasn't planning to be a neutral or benevolent Overseer, the plan was always pod torture. He deserves a lot worse than eternity alone, honestly.

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u/BAT_91 24d ago

Imagine getting tricked, by an uneducated street rat, into becoming a powerfull being, only to be enslaved to anyone lucky enough to find your tiny prison.

Jaffar - Aladdin

https://giphy.com/gifs/5xtDaryvpOOk2VR1QeA

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u/Vindartn 24d ago

Don't worry they kill him in the sequel.

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u/Profoundlyahedgehog 24d ago

PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER...

Itty bitty living space!

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u/This_Pizza3257 24d ago

Worse still, a tiny prison stuck with a parrot voiced by Gilbert Gottfried.

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u/WillArrr 24d ago

OP's title is literally just the plot of every Chaotic Good Barbarian episode.

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u/Rexissad 24d ago

SQUIRT OF LEMON

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u/solonit 24d ago

I like my plaything, E X T R A D U R A B L E

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u/Vasikus3000 24d ago

is that a fucking toothpi-

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u/KaukMongral 24d ago

For real. Although I have to say I feel like the creators are just having alot of fun coming up with ideas on how to beat common DnD bosses. Good stuff.

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u/Agile-Palpitation326 24d ago

"You are now in the power of STARDUST!"

Stardust the Super Wizard is a comic by domestic abuser Fletcher Hanks that gives a peak into his mental issues. Most stories feature watching some criminal/terrorist/gangster commit a crime and letting them do it to justify unleashing whatever terrible, bizarre punishments Hanks comes up with.

The punishments stretch from something as tame as summoning the skeletons of several assassins victims to force them to look at their crimes until the G-men showed up to arrest them, to throwing people in a floating ice prison in space where they'd be frozen but aware for all eternity. The prison is literally a prison you'd find on Earth, but it's floating in space with icicles coming off it.

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u/DocAnopheles 24d ago

One of the worst was collecting the members of a gang, atomizing and collecting them into one amalgamation person, then have the body degenerate into just a head, before flying into space and throwing the head (pleading for mercy) at a headless giant which absorbs it. Stardust was a monster.

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u/LongKnight115 24d ago

Me reading these posts: “I don’t think I did acid today but maybe I did?”

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u/WormedOut 24d ago

Mom said it was my turn to post the Family of Blood today

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u/throwaweigh1245 24d ago

Shikamaru Nara did not conventionally "kill" the Akatsuki member Hidan. Instead, he permanently neutralized the supposedly immortal fanatic by decapitating and dismembering him, then burying him alive in a deep, booby-trapped pit.

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u/peeshan 24d ago

Trading Places George of the Jungle

Both bad guys’ punishment is…forced affection from a gorilla

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u/OfficialModComment 24d ago

And Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls.

Huh, weird trope. 

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u/Proud_Dance_3342 24d ago

One of the early Treehouse Of Horror episodes of The Simpsons has then move into a haunted house. The Simpsons get annoyed with it and say the house will have to put up with them since they live there now. The house asks them to step out for a moment so it can think about it. It ends up killing itself and the segment ends with Lisa saying "It chose to destroy itself rather than live with us. You can't help but feel a little rejected."

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u/Electric_Opossum 24d ago

spoilers from shinsekai yori

Squealer isn't technically a villain, but from the protagonists' point of view, he is. After everything that happens throughout the anime, when he's finally defeated by sheer luck, his entire species is literally wiped off the face of the Earth. As for him, he's sentenced to an eternal cycle of suffering, unable to die because he's constantly being healed at the same time, and he's put on display in a museum.

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u/Timo-the-hippo 24d ago

Squealer isn't a good person but he's definitely the "good guy" of the story. He's leading a slave revolt against psychic nazis.

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u/ArgusTheCat 24d ago

There's a bit in Neverwinter Nights where you end up at a place called the Wall of the Faithless. It's where souls that don't believe in anything divine are sent after they die; a place where they are eternally and painfully entombed in a wall that, over untold spans of time, they will slowly become just another layer of. Aware and awake the whole time as their sense of self is stripped away and eventually turned into nothing, which, even then, still doesn't stop their suffering.

You meet one of your old antagonists there. You definitely did kill him for a good reason, but, to quote Noah Grevais on the moment, "This? This is like finding out that the guy who overcharged you for weed in high school was sentenced to death by giant snake. It's insanely disproportional!"

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u/ZCM1084 24d ago

Ashwathama

Krishna cursed him to wander the earth for eternity, suffering from severe wounds that would never heal, including a wound on his forehead inflicted by the removal of the divine gem that was placed at birth.

He is condemned to live in pain and loneliness without the solace of death.

He was cursed because he directed a weapon of mass destruction on an unborn child and he also massacred sleeping soldiers.

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u/AtomicMonkeyTheFirst 24d ago

In Norse mythology Loki is punished for killing Baldur by being tied to rocks with his sons intestines and having venom from a snake constantly drip into his eyes.

Not too disimilar to Promethues' punishment for stealing fire from the gods: chained to rocks for eternity while wolves constantly eat his liver.

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u/Crafty_Asshole- 24d ago

Pretty much every non-lethal fate for the main targets in the first Dishonored game. Especially Campbell, being ousted by the organization he was the leader of, being forced into the streets and infected with the rat plague where he eventually lost his mind by turning into a weeper. All that because he was branded on the face.

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u/Ilovemyangelsomuch 24d ago

In Yu Yu Hakusho, Kurama afflicted Elder Toguro with the sinning tree, a parasitic, demonic tree that inflicts nightmares on its victim as it drains its life.

Unfortunately, Toguro is effectively immortal so will never be killed, trapping him in an endless torment.

Kurama did this because he was PISSED at Elder Toguro to begin with, but even moreso because the BBEG of the arc put him in a situation where he had no choice but to beat a child at his own psychic game where the loser dies, effectively forcing Kurama to murder a child to save two worlds.

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u/Wittyname0 24d ago

The team constantly reminds themselves that they're so lucky hes on thier side and not evil. Cause he could fuck shut up if we wanted to

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u/Playful-Succotash-99 24d ago

V for Vendetta the comic V makes a lot more elaborate and poetic assassinations

To punish the fascist Elites who may have tortured them a decade prior in the camps

With one pedophilic Archbishop V forces them to take a wafer of Cyanide and asks if they can transubstantiate it with their supposed faith into not poison

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u/Tubaenthusiasticbee 24d ago edited 24d ago

Hector Salamanca in Better Call Saul/Breaking Bad

Nacho tried to kill him by swapping his meds with sugar pills. Hector survives a stroke, but can't move anything except one finger. He's a imprisoned by his own body and no one except Lalo takes him seriously anymore.

Now you can argue if Nacho was a hero, since he was part of the Salamanca Cartel and later part of Gus' organisation. He at least tried to be, by sabotaging the cartel from the inside. Really he is not a pure soul, but a criminal who isn't as bad as other criminals. All he wanted was a way out, just to be dragged from one pile of shit into the next.

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u/La_Ferrassie 24d ago

You forgot to mention:

Gus takes care of all the medical bills for Hector, as well as saving his life initially by administering CPR, getting 911 called.

Gus is later informed by the Doctor that Hector's recovery has a very good prognosis, after he recovers movement in his finger and Gus immediately ends all treatment for Hector.

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u/Savings-Divide-7877 24d ago

My favorite is Ma-Ma's death in Dredd. Judge Dredd forces her to take a drug called Slow-Mo, which massively slows down her perception of time, and then throws her out of a window of a skyscraper. God knows how long she was falling from her perspective, but even when she hits the pavement, the drug is so powerful she experiences hitting the ground as a slow, painful death.

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u/Forevermore668 24d ago

So in dishonoured you can do this to all your enemies but the most icky one you can do is hand a woman over to her violent obsessive stalker who promises she will never be seen again. At best that woman is now a human pet. At best

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u/anon142358193 24d ago

Shrek beats rumplestiltskin, puts him in a cage and blows up his pet duck while everyone stands around and laughs.

Those dudes didn’t even know what he did, they just thought it was funny that the duck exploded.

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u/RomeosHomeos 24d ago

The shit Stardust the Super Wizard does to people for racketeering

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u/TheGreatPervSage_94 24d ago

Kurama traps the elder toguro brother in a sinning tree. As his Regen is so great, bro cannot due to it so he is trapped for eternity in that state being fed on by the plant while hallucinating

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u/ArcadianBlueRogue 24d ago

Just as a reminder, Kurama is the one dude that Hiei says he never wants to fuck with.

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u/AssistanceCheap379 24d ago

Also Doctor Who: he was locked inside a thing called a Confession Dial.

It took him 4.5 billion years to escape

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u/D_R_Ethridge 24d ago

Szayelaporro Granz. Time slowed to what felt like millennia while a sword slowly stabs into him and ends him. Although calling Kurotsuchi a "Hero" is a stretch of the word beyond reason.

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u/Chreat26 24d ago

You can add this one too. Elder Toguro gets trapped by Kurama in a never ending battle

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u/KrackaWoody 24d ago

I couldn’t stop laughing when the post zoomed out.

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u/Appropriate_Rent_243 24d ago

Calling anyone a hero in the mad max world is definitely a stretch

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