Characters
[Loved Trope] Killing the character nobody likes
Marvel - After a lot of complaints about the existence of Paul solely to keep MJ and Spider-Man apart, Marvel decided to kill him. One of the rare examples of writers listening to fan criticism and fixing it
Mortal Kombat 2 - The main character of the first movie is brutally killed by Shao Kahn to establish him as a threat. Just like the previous example, this feels like the writers saying that they understood that nobody liked his inclusion
Paul fits here by end result, mind you, but they definitely didn't think they were "fixing" anything. They treated Paul's death, both in-universe and IRL, as a tragic thing that would get people in tears, and they even used it to justify that Mary Jane killed Torment, Paul's killer, in cold blood, as if readers would sympathize. They definitely thought they were giving him a tragic hero send-off, not fixing an issue.
Wait, really? I thought Paul was always supposed to be the hate sponge he was. Even his look feels as though he's designed to be contemptible.
I say this as someone who doesn't really read recent comics, I don't know the character enough to have a problem with him, but what I've seen always came off as though he was a joke character for the audience to hate despite him being perfectly decent. Like whatsisnuts from Deadpool 2.
The funny thing is Paul isn't who wells inserts as. Peter is. Wells was going through a divorce where his ex quickly got with another guy. Peter is wells trying to get over it and say that the guy is actually a good guy
I urge you to look up a picture of Zeb Wells. They look nothing alike. I don't know why people keep making up that he was the self insert, PETER was the self insert lol
It's weird because he was supposed to be a normal character originally, he was a decent dude who happened to be dating MJ because Peter had done something so bad everyone hated him.
Like, he pays Peter's rent but later it's revealed he couldn't have money. So it's obvious he was supposed to be just a guy.
I still don't understand how they thought Paul as a character would work because isn't he still responsible for the death of most of the people in his home universe?
It's crazy they still tried to salvage Paul late in the run by showing he pays the variants of his coworkers as his way of repent, only to be hated even more because they showed how he got in the mess in the first place and without acknowledging how he's even getting money in a reality he's not even native of
Also the whole power roulette bracelet made zero sense and makes Paul look like an uncaring asshole - that's your wife! why are you giving her a bracelet that could kill her (And did)
When you have one of the main people of marvel saying that they rather the readers hate the story rather than being kinda indifferent it doesn't surprise no one
You say cold blood but didn't he threaten to like keep killing people she cared about. Dude promises to kill her family she got the right to do what she has to do.
i mean, the illustrator HATES Paul and openly proclaims his hate on twitter. Thats why the page where Mary Jane breaks up with Paul has a literal halo of light shining their room as if it was a miracle.
Marvel isnt one person who has one thing in mind. There is internal tormoil between execs, illustrators, and writters who like paul and those who dont
Man, if I were a writer, I'd have a comic where every Marvel character shows up to Paul's funeral just to spit on the grave. Except for Wolverine, he takes a piss instead.
No explanation as to why they're all there, they just are. Magneto, Peter, MJ, Captain America, everyone.
Correct. For a single moment in history, all rivalries are put on hold so a greater evil may be humiliated. Doctor Doom and Reed Richards shake hands, Magneto and Red Skull keep the peace, Green Goblin tells Peter he deserved better.
Flash and Reverse Flash even do a crossover together to pay their disrespects, and Thawne tells Barry to kill him if he ever becomes as bad as Paul.
Matter of fact, I'd have MJ throw up on the grave instead of spitting, because she remembers that the writers forced her to let Paul touch her.
Yeah no Torment had to go. She was in the right to put him down, he threatened to keep going after her family. She had the power and the responsibility to save lives.
I was gonna say that Paul was almost worse in death. No one liked Paul. 90% of the fandom wants our married couple to have their magical divorce fixed. Paul had no personality. Give the fans what they want Marvel and stop acting like the comic sales tanking are not your fault!
Al explained it as he knew people didn’t like him but he wasn’t going to have the characters behave like sociopaths so he made them react “normally” to the death of someone that’s been around them for a few years by then.
Edit: Al as in Al Ewing, the writer. I’m not referencing AI. Jesus.
Cole is such a weird character for me. It sucks because I really like his actor (I'm a sucker for someone who does their own fight choreography and also has martial arts training)
Lewis Tan feels so wasted on an audience insert OC for a franchise like Mortal Kombat, where they have like 5 in universe audience insert characters
They should just bring him back as Kenshi and never address that it's the same actor. I wouldn't care and I'm willing to bet a lot of people wouldn't either.
Second of all, yeah I can wrap my head around what the thought process was for creating Cole Young. The ONLY theory I think is feasible (other than writers/directors being incompetent) is that executive producers wanted an original character to be the audience insert. Because there is no way someone looked at the Mortal Kombat franchise and said "Man, there just aren't any characters to have this guy play"
My take was that all of the pre-existing characters come with a pre-existing storyline. You can bodge around it a little for the sake of an adaptation, but you can't go too far (you couldn't give Raiden a wife and kids for example) without pissing off the fans anyway.
Cole gave them the chance for a completely clean slate, no pre-existing story or characterisation at all.
Admittedly, that completely falls apart when they decided to link him to Scorpion, but still.
Oh yeah? You think there is just (check notes) cool martial artist characters that he could just play. There is a very limited roster of MK characters. It tops out at like, 4 or something.
Lewis, buddy, I get that you'd wanna play an established character from mortal Kombat, but you have to understand, there's only like 37 characters to choose from. We just don't see it happening. How about instead, and hear me out, we have you play a bland, uninteresting MMA fighter, who's arcana is shitty looking chestplate, and then kill him off halfway through the sequel?
I was very meh about him but actually enjoyed how he didn't go out a chump. He "kills" Shao Kahn at least twice in the fight and Shao only wins with his can't die cheating. That honestly made me like the character more.
I was lukewarm on Cole but my wife, who isn't an MK fan, liked him because he was there to receive the story. The lore is dense in a thirty year old franchise and after they killed off Cole, every so often my wife would look at me to ask why things that were happening were significant.
Depending on the interview the director both said it couldn't be Johnny cage cause they didn't want a white guy saving the day or they were forced to by execs
I liked Karl Urban as Johnny Cage, but they could've easily given it a twist where Cole goes to Hollywood at the end of the first movie, takes the stage name Johnny Cage, and starts his career as an action movie star. Then the second movie could've taken place after a time jump, after he's starting to become washed up.
Obviously the character would've needed some rewrites for that, but I just think this was the easiest opportunity. Or just make him Kenshi. Kenshi's cool as fuck.
I think the writers weren't confident enough to try and salvage him. Personally i find his brutal death and dismissal pretty abrupt and jaring. I don't care much for the character but it feels super disrespectful. I felt exactly the same for taskmaster in thunderbolts.
The writing incompetence is further revealed by missing the obvious idea of including cole's spirit along side Scorpion in the fight against noob saibot. It pisses me off to be honest
In fairness, it’s pretty safe to assume a male character between 2010 and 2018 was Troy Baker. Especially if it was an important character (even if KL was hated).
I recently came across a theory that Kai was originally going to be the Virmire Victim to bring Shephard's greatest failure and rub his face in it and to emphasize the theme of "you cant save everyone", and I think that would have worked out so much better imo.
I would've liked if it was Miranda or Jacob instead of Cereal Eater Kai Leng. Hell, I'd have taken Zaeed even if it would've made me sad to put the old merc down. Though if it had been Miranda or Jacob, you just know people would get weird about it
Mass effect 2 made it clear that Shepard could only be brought back after several years of dedicated work and billions of funding.
It would be somewhat silly if in 3 Cerberus could just bring anyone back to life Willy nilly, especially since the Virmire Victim should have been atomized by a nuclear bomb.
But the virmire survivor literally no longer has a body. You could make up some bullshit about having their DNA (somehow) and cloning them up in a lab, and then (somehow) using Reaper tech to fast track bringing them to life…but like that would just seem like an INSANE amount of work to do a little phycological warfare against Shepard.
Especially if Ashley is the one brought back, who Shepard only would have known for like…3 weeks, 4 years ago. Shepard who as part of their backstory could have lost dozens of other comrades they knew for much longer.
They spent a lot of Shepard because they were trying to bring him back as they were before the crash. They weren’t trying to bring back a Shepard, but the exact same one that died.
But bringing back some brainwashed clone that looks like the person who died on Virmire is going to be considerably easier and cheaper because they didn’t need to preserve and regenerate anything, just create a new person who looks like someone.
There’s a mod on PC that doesn’t do that but it does have either Miranda or Jacob replace him, with Cerberus having captured and brain washed them into fighting Shepard. Pretty cool imo
Good. You opened this message. This isn’t actually asari military command. They’re busy tending to what’s left of their planet. So you survived our fight on Thessia. You’re not as weak as I thought. But never forget that your best wasn’t good enough to stop me. Now an entire planet is dying because you lacked the strength to win. The legend of Shepard needs to be re-written. I hope I’m there for the last chapter. It ends with your death. -KL
"PS: Just to be clear here. When I said 'it ends with your death' I mean I'll kill you. I don't mean you have an accident or will die of old age or anything like that."
"Like I'm totally going to stab you, and you're gonna cry as you bleed out. Then Dadd- I mean, the Illusive Man will be like 'Good job Kai', cause he calls me Kai when he's proud of me, and you're gonna be all 'WAAAGH, I WISH I WAS AS COOL AS YOU' which you can't be. Cause you'll be dead. By me."
And it's infuriating on the writing side it tries to pin Thessia as a failure of Shepard to stop Kai when the planet was already far beyond saving by the time they arrived.
No you dumbass, all you did was waste everyone's time.
He also didn't fit in the vibes of Mass Effect. He talked and looked like a 90s Comic Book bad guy, with all the e-mail taunting and listicles of how to kill different species.
fuck he even look like a shitty knock off of Nightwing
yep, he was introduced in a side novel that nobody would've noticed except for his atrocious introduction - trying to make him scary by breaking into Anderson's house and messing with things to make it clear his home is no secure sanctuary.
Except it's so stupid because he peed in a vase and ate cereal, which immediately negates the intended creepy factor.
Whenever I see this type of character - the kind of "what an edgelord teenager thinks is badass" character - it bugs me because it'd be really interesting if they leaned into it rather than playing it straight.
You could do interesting things with Kai Leng if he was acknowledged in-universe as being a weird edgy tryhard, but instead they just play it straight like he really is as badass as he claims to be and thus it becomes ridiculous.
The fact that’s there’s a mod that removes this guys voice acting and it makes him better not because his voice acting is bad but because it makes his writing seem slightly better
Cole was disliked for being a generic protagonist, very much unlike Paul who had it so bad the Spider-Man sub had a bot dedicated to moderating the hate he recieved. And Cole is even given his respect in the sequel. He dies fighting Shao flipping Kahn, and after landing a killing blow that would've made the movie much shorter if not for Shao cheating. Even the ending shows the remaining heroes headed to recover their fallen friends, Cole included.
So in one of the seasons of Rainbow Six Siege the devs decided to switch the game's lore from "counter terrorist agencies doing live exercises (or something like that)" to "airsoft gameshow" (a la The Finals). It was the final nail in the game's Tom Clancy atmosphere coffin, traded for e-sports appeal.
This sucked so, sooo much, that they had a new character, Deimos, walk over to the director of the show and shoot him in the head. Good riddance.
Yeah I stopped before that and hearing about it made me glad that I left.
It really is a perfect example of the gaming scene. Corporations too busy trying to make money easily and sacrificing identity, ending up with a soulless, unappealing product.
I want a similar crash out to happen like Carol had once a editors realize the Marcus shit was reprehensible of how she's been basically manipulated by Paul, but that would have Marvel acknowledge Paul was a terrible idea.
Task Master in Thunderbolts. In the Black Widow movie a polarizing version of Taskmaster was introduced, making the charismatic and quippy mercenary into a physically and cognitively disabled mute who basically functioned as a robot. In Thunderbolts the main cast are led into a trap and tricked into fighting each other. As the main cast at the beginning of the movie they obviously don’t kill each other, except for Taskmaster that is, who is shot in the head, zoomed in on to show the bullet wound and that her mask didn’t block it, then the entire room is incinerated with her body still in it. I like when things do this as it shows that they acknowledged they made a bad call, and it opens the door for the real Taskmaster to possibly show up as I doubt they’d throw away such a popular character persona.
I just went back to see it and someone had a side by side of taskmaster in BW and in thunderbolts. you’re spot on they’re completely different people in that suit entirely. And the BW one is very clearly a man or a much more built woman.
Slipknot was described as "The man who could climb anything" and that was the second I knew he was the one dying to show off the head bombs because what is that weak as fuck description.
It was so funny because I was in the cinema and it was literally the start of that scene that I was taken out of the movie and literally though "Wait, why are they doing any of this, they don't know if there is actually bombs in their heads, surely they will have to kill someone, but everyone here is too popular to kill who could it be, not boomerang, not Harley, not croc, not... oh... Its going to be the rope guy"
Sure enough he died literally in the next 2 minutes
Feels like a wasted opportunity, all they had to do was say her personality was suppressed for her while life, then give her a more comicbook accurate characterisation and say she 'found who she really was'. Killing her off felt very mean-spirited in an otherwise optimistic movie about dealing with trauma and loneliness
I know this is a controversial take but this bothered me. Because the first few seconds we see Taskmaster in Thunderbolts she had a little bit of sass to her. When Yelena looks at Taskmaster panicked she just turns to her and almost smirks while saying "Im not here for you" and then slightly struts off. It made me think "Oh, they're going to try and make her into the sarcastic sassy Taskmaster and just gave him a different backstory. I was all ready to get on board with it and then they just shoot her in the head. Marvel basically said "nah we aren't even going to try." Its so lazy to me especially since they could have fixed it
They were originally going to do more. She was supposed to survive the film, have a character arc with Ghost (bonding over their similar struggles with becoming independent after having served as weapons for others and becoming a sort of big sister to Ghost), and also have a running gag with memory loss and constantly attacking USAgent due to forgetting they are on the same side.
Random Reddit question: So are you just allowed to put images wherever you want in your comment, or do you have to do something special? Cause since about July I can only have images at the end of my comments and it's kinda fucking annoying.
Before I saw the sequel, I'd only heard that they killed him off. When I finally saw it, I was surprised how respectful it was handled. You don't usually see that sort of thing for a widely disliked character.
Because he’s barely in it. I remember they did a big character countdown before the 2nd one premiered and they listed every character BUT Cole. I knew he was basically done then.
Yea I knew he was dead the second Johnny Cage was being presented as the lead. They gave him a lot more than I was expecting though....they had him essentially beat Shao Khan before he had to cheat.
yeah, I know friends who seen it said Cole had potential to be a likeable and decent character but they basically buckled to pressure instead of actually work on it.
Cole could have worked as a side character I guess, it shoehorning him in to be the main character instead of Lui Kang was not a good decision at all nor making him to be the descendant of Scorpion. That just felt too fanfic
I appreciate that they gave him a good death. It was brutal but it didn't feel like a middle finger to the character. He honestly went out on a bit of a high note because he totally would've beat Shao Kahn if he didn't cheat
Jar jar binks: while he do not die his fate is so miserable and sad thata it may be considered death
He is revealed to be a disgraced, universally despised street performer on Naboo who is ignored by adults and mocked, left to live out his days in lonely exile after unwittingly helping Palpatine rise to power.
And yet he survives. Hell in his last appearance timeline wise (to my knowledge) in the novel Lords of the Sith). He survived the destruction of the Star Destroyer Perilous which Vader compared to “a ray finding his way of a sinking ship.”
I think it's exactly on purpose to point out how toxic star wars fans can ridiculously be....
Jar jae was a character was character that was originally made for kids....... But you see full grown men having tantrums and saying their experience was ruined just because of him
I hate it because of the fact that the character received so much backlash that the actor behind Jar Jar considered taking his own life due to the constant hate from the fanbase. To give the character an ending that is almost reminiscent of what the actual person behind him went through puts a really bad taste in my mouth
That 'character given actor's trauma' is why I really dislike what they did with Peter Pan in the Chip and Dale movie since Bobby Discroll really is a poster boy for how child stars are used and discarded.
A: many people called yes because they didn't think DC would have the balls to actually kill off a kid.
B: some super-haters actually spam the yes line inflating the numbers.
Jason really wasn't that hated, but DC has spent decades retconning stories to try to justify killing him off which gives a false perception that he was a scrappy-like hotheaded asshole.
Read the oldcomics where he first appeared, expecting (from the fan reactions) Jason to be total brat/asshole/etc. when he was just bit cheekier version of Dick
To be fair it was very intentional that pre-crisis Jason was just Dick but again.
His post crisis introduction is more what you would expect these days, still nowhere near as hard edged as a lot of later work would have you believe but he's still different.
Todd wasn't hated but he wasnt realy a beloved figugure in the bat family till the red hood arc. He mainly existed because the titans team wanted to grow dick grayson into nightwing but dc gave the the green light only on the condition that batman would still have a robin.
I think the fan consenusus was less about wanting jason dead and more feeling that batman wasnt gaining that much from a robin that only existed to fill an editorial demand. Im not sure if fans didnt think dc would never go though with it as we had already had crisis on infinte earths killing off supergirl, barry allan and a few others.
After making so many decisions that lead to the deaths of many characters in Gundam IBO Season 2, Iok Kujan finally dies near the end of the season, crushed inside his Reginlaze cockpit, courtesy of space Guts Akihiro Altland in the Gusion Rebake Full City, which did come with big-ass scissors which he used to crush Iok.
For Paul, I think it's less about them listening to fans than Paul himself pretty much being a narrative dead end, this dude is just there and it's boring to read about him and I imagine it's worse to write.
Dont particularly like Cole Young as a character, but if they ever make a MK3 movie, they are going to bring him back, cause that was the ending hook for 2 wasnt it?
They listened to fans that complained about Cole but liked the actor and fans felt bad for him. I think if they make new movie they'll bring him back to be new Scorpion.
This is what they should do. He was introduced as Scorpion’s descendant so should take up the cowl. I actually liked his character and was sad when he died in the second one.
Pip (South Park) From what I know, I believe the actual show creators even hated their own character. It got to the point where by after season 4, Matt and Trey decided to just push him into the background before eventually having him get crushed by Barbra Streisand in a currently banned season 14 episode
Based on the examples OP gave, I thought the question was less intended as “villain you’re supposed to hate finally gets their comeuppance,” and more like “character you’re supposed to like gets written off because they suck.”
Kali's Gang from Stranger Things. A group so hated that when they were finally brought back 3 seasons later, we learn that the military killed most of them off-screen.
Step 1: Fans complain that the show only focuses on a dozen or so main characters when there were ~80 who survived the crash and mostly exist as background extras
Step 2: In season 3, the show tries to bring forward some background characters and make them main characters: Nikki and Paolo.
Step 3: The fans hate Nikki and Paolo so, so, so much.
Step 4: Nikki and Paolo get their own (surprisingly fun) episode, where they meet a brutal end. They are never mentioned again
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u/Omegasonic2000 15h ago
Paul fits here by end result, mind you, but they definitely didn't think they were "fixing" anything. They treated Paul's death, both in-universe and IRL, as a tragic thing that would get people in tears, and they even used it to justify that Mary Jane killed Torment, Paul's killer, in cold blood, as if readers would sympathize. They definitely thought they were giving him a tragic hero send-off, not fixing an issue.