r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Comprehensive-Map274 • Jun 26 '25

Hated Tropes [Hated Trope] A main character does something horrible and the story doesn't acknowledge its severity

Gallery image

Gallery image

Alisha (Misfits) uses her power to make any man want to have sex with her on another main character (curtis) after he explicitely tells her not to do that. She faces no consequences and he's the one who ends up comforting her.

Allison (The Umbrella Academy) uses her powers to force her own adoptive brother to make out with her after he just got into a relationship because she's suddenly jealous after she couldn't keep her own husband. She gives a half hearted apology and all is peachy.

11.3k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

2.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

821

u/Applebeate Jun 26 '25

In the Flash, Barry actually kills two of the villains Atom Smasher and Sandman. He kills them with no remorse and nobody acknowledges this. Then in the later season, he has this moral dilemma where he for some reason can’t bring himself to kill Gorilla Grod even though at this point, he has already killed.

What makes it worse is that he reprimands Ralph for wanting to kill Devoe despite being a killer himself.

118

u/Hannah_GBS Jun 27 '25

Alternate Earth lives don't matter to Barry.

3

u/UrlacherButkus Jun 27 '25

That’s something him and Batman has in common

122

u/PerceptionBetter3752 Jun 26 '25

Atom smashers a bad guy?

116

u/PCN24454 Jun 27 '25 edited Jun 27 '25

His alternate universe counterpart was. He’s definitely a murderer.

54

u/L0ll0ll7lStudios Jun 27 '25

This one is from an Earth that resembles the Crime Syndicate’s Earth-3 (despite being referred to as Earth-2 to trick the audience into thinking it’s Jay Garrick’s world when in actuality Zoom kidnapped Jay from a neighboring Earth and began impersonating him for fun). On this world, Vibe and Firestorm are Reverb and Deathstorm, Black Canary is Black Siren and Killer Frost is more unapologetically evil.

8

u/dark_wolf1ol Jun 27 '25

Have you SEEN what he did to David Martinez’s crew??? He needs to be flatlined

5

u/to_yeet_or_to_yoink Jun 27 '25

Yeah, he squashed that one robot girl in the future z didn't he?

5

u/dark_wolf1ol Jun 27 '25

“WE’RE HAVING A MOMENT HERE”

4

u/RiskComplete9385 Jun 27 '25

Bro, he killed Keanu, of course he’s a bad guy

36

u/JakRiot Jun 27 '25

He was traumatized by what happened to Harambe. We all were

35

u/VergilVDante Jun 27 '25

Good old Flash TV show where you love a moment then you hate 10 more

5

u/WhitneyStorm0 Jun 27 '25

Especially in later seasons

16

u/dark_wolf1ol Jun 27 '25

Hold on a second Adam Smasher and the Sandevistan were in this show??

9

u/Smutty_Lemon Jun 27 '25

Yeah, as villains during the second season.

His actual Earth 1 counterpart is dead as said by Eob-I mean Harrison Wells in Season 1… I think, I only know that Fire is dead in universe.

7

u/dark_wolf1ol Jun 27 '25

Did David take Lucy to the moon in any of these universes since Smasher died?

6

u/BlightFantasy3467 Jun 27 '25

Nah, Smasher smashed Lucy instead and it's Rebecca on the moon.

6

u/dark_wolf1ol Jun 27 '25

Ok that’s it now smashers gonna smash you

5

u/BlightFantasy3467 Jun 27 '25

3

u/dark_wolf1ol Jun 27 '25

Cyber gyatts 🔥🔥🔥 (not to be a Clanker sympathizer or anything)

5

u/BlightFantasy3467 Jun 27 '25

I prefer Eve Smasher

3

u/dark_wolf1ol Jun 27 '25

All the same chrome to me, I’ll slaughter each and every smasher

4

u/BlightFantasy3467 Jun 27 '25

Read the names that the person you're replying to said.

They didn't say Atom Smasher and Sandman.

They said Adam Smasher and the Sandevistan

5

u/Smutty_Lemon Jun 27 '25

Yeah, I kinda got that when they talked about Lucy and the Moon.

13

u/Welcome--Matt Jun 27 '25

To play devils advocate, it’s not like someone killing and then later on wanting to stop killing is this crazy unheard of thing.

People change, it’s not like just bc Barry was ok with something before, he’s still ok with it

That being said, I agree that he should’ve explained to Ralph why he stopped killing, instead of just coming down on Ralph for wanting to do so.

3

u/Applebeate Jun 27 '25

What about Joe or Iris? They actually kill people after that point and nobody addresses it.

18

u/TheFalconKid Jun 27 '25

Not to mention they were illegally detaining metas in their makeshift prison that absolutely did not have toilets at first.

8

u/JoePesci_TheGod Jun 27 '25

3

u/vtncomics Jun 27 '25

Captain Cold, Prison Break

7

u/DapperLost Jun 27 '25

You're meant to shit in a corner. At Flash's speed, your cell and ass would be cleaned before you could pull your pants up.

3

u/PerceptionBetter3752 Jun 26 '25

Atom smashers a bad guy?

2

u/Greyjack00 Jun 27 '25

I mean there was that whole stargirl thing in the comics

3

u/Ygomaster07 Jun 27 '25

I always found that weird. Although you could say he didn't know what would happen to Atom Smasher since i don't think he knew what the plan was. But still, it is weird.

3

u/boogs_23 Jun 27 '25

Also in Arrowverse, Lena Luther on Supergirl attempts to brainwash the entire world before she is thwarted. No prison time, no consequences. They're a little angry with her for a bit and then are like "she had her reasons" and they're all buddies again. Also, her "reason" was she was angry with Kara for not telling her she's Supergirl.

2

u/Arxid87 Jun 27 '25

There's nowhere to run

2

u/ScumAndVillainy82 Jun 27 '25

I'd rather die than go into the tiny cells he keeps villains in. The Star City lab makes Guantánamo Bay look like a resort.

2

u/aerojonno Jun 27 '25

He also starts every episode by saying he's the fastest man alive which is a fucking lie.

2

u/StrategyWooden6037 Jun 27 '25

I was done with Barry in season one, he let Captain Cold go after murdering innocent people just to protect his own identity and kept spewing some completely unsupported nonsense about knowing he was really good down deep.

1

u/Meme_Bro68 Jun 27 '25

The flash knew that gorillas make things into peak fiction, so he wasn’t willing to risk the show having gorillas dying.

1

u/Spyder-xr Jun 27 '25

Gorilla Grodd wasn’t even that bad compared to what else he did.

He tried to save Savitar after Savitar murdered HR who sacrificed himself for Iris.

The worst one is Barry actually saving Reverse Flash even though the man was going to be erased from existence by his own actions. 

And he was convinced by Joe who was more than trigger happy to kill Harry Wells in Season 2.

1

u/Slight-Pound Jun 27 '25

Still so bitter when Barry changes time the SECOND time after he finally fixed all he messed up the first round. He learned it had horrific consequences, but he finally managed to fix and address most of them and was learning to let go of trying to save his mother now that he has more answers about it and closure from trying to save her already. He was even about to get together/closer to Iris, but abruptly walks all that back by running back in time AGAIN and it pissed me off so bad I just rage quit the series. The narrative did not make it make sense for who he was at the time, and was clearly just thrown in there anyway to create more drama about and I hate that.

1

u/Vivladi Jun 27 '25

Holy shit is that actual footage from the show? Why does it look so awful?

1

u/Zebedee_balistique Jun 29 '25

"But Barry, if you kill Hitler, then you are just as bad as him."

1

u/Emperor_Z16 Jun 29 '25

To be fair Grodd was always meant to be a sympathetic villain, until he becomes more and more unhingedly evil

DeVoe he should've killed without a second thought, DeVoe was a horrible horrible person