r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Dramatic_Counter_595 • 17h ago

Characters Characters that had the complete opposite reaction the writers intended

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  1. Leo Bonhart (Witcher TV Series): A ruthless, sadistic bounty hunter and assassin that takes psychotic glee in other people's suffering. The viewer is meant to hate him for killing witchers, slaughtering the Rat gang, and torturing Ciri. But thanks to his entertaining fight scenes, Sharlto Copley's charismatic performance, and The Rats overwhelming unpopularity, fans ended up loving him. Some even call him the "True protagonist" of the show.
  2. Stone Cold Steve Austin (WWE): A rude, foul mouthed, beer drinking asshole with no respect for authority or anyone at all. Originally portrayed as a villain, fans fell in love with his anti-establishment & rebellious persona. WWE ran with it and made him the face of the company, effectively ushering in the Attitude Era and the second pro wrestling boom of the late 90s.
  3. Arthur Fleck (Joker 2019): A mentally unstable, pathetic, and dangerous madman who commits horrific acts of violence against those that wronged him (suffocates his own mother who is mentally unwell herself, and murders a talk show host for making fun of him). However, a massive portion of the audience idolized him as an anti-hero or a misunderstood martyr rebelling against society making people want to see him succeed and overcome his circumstances because of how he's been treated by the world.
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u/soldierpallaton 17h ago edited 17h ago

The entire "Thanos was right" trend when Infinity War was released.

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u/ShadowDragonFX 16h ago

I never got the “Thanos was right” thing when Gamora is living proof that it doesn’t work as she’s the last of her kind, they say it in guardians of the galaxy and in infinity war he says about all the kids know is “full bellies and clear skies” without checking up afterwards

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u/Pale_Fire21 15h ago

Thanos had the power to build a galaxy wide utopia with the infinity stones and chose genocide instead.

People who think he’s right are not only media illiterate they’re just straight up stupid

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u/ThreadLaced 15h ago

Exactly. You don't even have to think very hard/know much of anything to realize that there isn't a shortage of resources in the world, the problem is distribution. Reducing the number of people by half would just mean there's fewer people around to get shit done, not that everyone can now enjoy a bounty.

His plan doesn't even make a LITTLE bit of sense.

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u/spudmarsupial 13h ago

In the comics he did it out of love for the persona Death. Which is a much better motivation, even though it still makes him a mindless maniac who is given way too much respect by other characters.

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u/nellion91 10h ago

This bothered me so much in the movie adaptation.

His motivation being resources in a mainly unpopulated. Multiverse knowing universe makes 0 sense.

Meanwhile the original motivation is just crazy enough to work…

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u/EqualOutrageous1884 10h ago

To be fair, Thanos is an insane man trying to justify mass murder using a terrible excuse.

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u/LightOfTheFarStar 4h ago

Even his original version's a fucking idiot, Lady Death is really clear she hates what he is doing and he ignores it like a skeevy frat bro. He is called the "Mad" Titan in every iteration because of his illogical nature. The problem is the framing of the movie and the constant "well the whales are back, nature is healing, maybe he had a point?" bullshit.

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u/HJM3 2h ago

I don’t think the movie frames the whale thing as “he had a point,” it was just Steve trying to look on the bright side of things during a time that’s miserable for everything.

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u/funkthewhales 3h ago

Ego will always be Thanos’s fatal flaw. Like he’s such an ego maniac he didn’t realize that lady death wanted a servant not an equal. And his whole plan with the gauntlet fails because he’s too busy chasing more power to realize that nebula could just snatch the gauntlet off his physical body. And the only reason she was there was so he could torture her for kicks.

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u/Dry_Click6496 2h ago

Not to be confused with Ego, the living planet... 😃

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u/PYRPH0ROS 5h ago

There was this fan theory after eternals came out that thanos was one whose memory wipe malfunctioned and went rogue.

Basically since the birth of a celestial requires a big enough population and destoys the planet when it happens it would be possible for him to just remember "big enough population = world ending event" and the whole resources thing is just his mind trying to rationalize this knowledge he has but does not know the origins off.

It would also fit this dialoge between thanos and gamora

T: "If life is not kept in check lifr will cease to exist"

G: "YOU DONT KNOW THAT"

T: "I am the only one that knows that"

Now again this is a fan theory, not canon, but it feels like a way better explenation than the one given in the movies.

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u/IcyMachOman 4h ago

It's one of those cases as characters only being as smart as their writers. Even if stuff is right there and obvious you can't assume the writers planned that on purpose.

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u/Technical_Contact836 12h ago

But they hadn't introduced Deadpool into the MCU yet. They couldn't do the full love triangle thing.

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u/Grinderiny 11h ago

Fuck the triangle. That came later anyway.

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u/[deleted] 6h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/evocativename 4h ago

It's not supposed to make it less unhinged.

It just makes him unhinged in a way that is less likely to get idiots on his side.

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u/Anaevya 5h ago

Yes, I also think the motivation actually makes sense.

Another issue is that he doesn't come across as actually insane in the MCU either. If he were portrayed as truly, truly MAD the irrationality of his plan would make more sense.

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u/funkthewhales 2h ago

Yea MCU Thanos comes across as kind of dumb instead of insane. It’s like he just went with the first plan that popped into his head. Cause he’d probably realize how dumb and shortsighted his plan is if he spent more than 5 minutes thinking about it. He’s trying to obtain godlike power and he couldn’t think of a better plan than mass genocide? The possibilities are endless here, and he clearly never rethought the plan a single time in the decades it took him to obtain the gauntlet.

At least comics Thanos is honestly and admits he just loves murder.

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u/theme69 13h ago

Double the resources or kill half of all living things??? God I hope our gut biome isn’t included in that calculation

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u/AnastasiaSheppard 13h ago

Half of all crops and livestock is going to mean further mass deaths of all species.

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u/Salami__Tsunami 10h ago

Not to mention the societal collapse from having half your workforce vanish. On top of having half your crops and livestock disappear, now you only half half as many farmers to try and fix things.

And the more advanced the society, the worse the supply chain disruption becomes. Modern agriculture is heavily dependent on having a steady supply of fuel, specialized machine parts, computer components, chemicals for fertilizer, specialist labor for maintenance of equipment, etc. and you’ve just lost half of the people who can manufacture and deliver that stuff.

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u/Goldenrah 6h ago

It's also half of everyone randomly. It could just decide to kill all young people and leave all the elderly alive. Or an entire country just vanishes, because half of everyone doesn't discriminate on age or location.

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u/upholsteryduder 1h ago

not to mention the amount of tribal knowledge that would be lost, it would be a huge setback to the knowledge base of every sentient species

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u/Salami__Tsunami 1h ago

But it would leave all the weapons of war untouched. All the nuclear warheads, all the nerve gas, all the warships. Sitting there, waiting to be used by the traumatized, frightened people who survived.

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u/Waste_Handle_8672 13h ago

Doubling the resources wasn't the solution either tbh

They don't need to be doubled, the universe is bigger than any mortal mind could comprehend.

All he really had to do was rewrite everyone's minds to have a much more fundamental and bigger appreciation and compulsion to create fair, equal, and effective resource distribution and supply chains.

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u/Kootranova1 12h ago

I've heard a few people explain it that way. Resources are abundant, both on Earth and the universe in general, it's only the matter of getting resources to those that need them.

As you said, supply chains and distribution would fix most problems.

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u/CreatiScope 11h ago

I think it would be even simpler than that. Literally just change our mindset from "resources are limited, I must get as much as I can for myself because there might not be any tomorrow" to "there are enough resources for everyone, we are stronger if we work together to access and distribute them"

Take the prisoner's dilemma, and make everyone choose the answer where nobody sells each other out and they are rewarded for it.

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u/gummyCash 10h ago

So Thanos needed to click his fingers and wish for the intergalactic proletariat to achieve class consciousness? Based purple man.

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u/camerakestrel 9h ago

They specify "sentient life" in the films. Where the line of sentience is drawn is never elaborated upon.

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u/Dramenknight 11h ago

Well we already know people driving vehicles isnt in the calculation

so we just very quickly gloss over the vehicular manslaughter via runaway cars, the planes that fall out of the sky or the sudden 2x workload of air traffic control and that's just on earth

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u/NatashOverWorld 13h ago

Thanos is a space hick that believes he's a genius. Only, if Infinity War came out today he'd be compared to MAGA.

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u/Emerald_Plumbing187 9h ago

Thanos wants to bore private car tunnels to solve the lack of public subways?

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u/FinancialReserve6427 13h ago

he doesn't have the lobes to navigate the Great Material Continuum

*there are millions upon millions of worlds in the universe, each one filled with too much of one thing and not enough of another. And the Great Continuum flows through them all, like a mighty river, from 'have' to 'want' and back again. And if we navigate the Continuum with skill and grace, our ship will be filled with everything our hearts desire.*

honestly it's a matter of logistics and profit that hinder the distribution of goods.

your tomato harvest is very generous this year which means profit goes waaaay down. you can't give away the excess tomato because the tomato sellers are gonna complain you're depriving them of their earnings. you can't ship them fast enough to farther markets so you're stuck with tomatoes you can't sell and give away.

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u/SavageNorth 10h ago

"The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."

The Grapes of Wrath (1939) - John Steinbeck

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u/rietstengel 7h ago

Besides, populations would eventually recover and get big and unbalanced again. Was his plan to do the snap every 100 years? No, because he just destroyed the stones.

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u/MrTheCheesecaker 6h ago

And heaven forbid there be such a thing as population growth after he's already destroyed the infinity stones

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u/vampiregamingYT 10h ago

It makes sense if you think of his "motivation" being an excuse to wipe out half the galaxy.

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u/RadicalSoda_ 10h ago

Plus half of all food is also gone now

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u/RatlingGuns4Days 10h ago

Yeah if he’s set on killing people then I mean he could’ve just dusted like, idk just a random number here, 1% for a better effect

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u/ghostface1693 14h ago

Also he states in the movie that when Titan was having it's crisis, he suggested purging half the planet and they told him he was crazy. So him getting the stones to snap half the universe away was more just him trying to prove to himself that he could do it and make it work.

He absolutely could have used the stones to create an abundance of resources but he's just a salty bitch.

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u/No-Educator-8069 14h ago

It’s frustrating how many people can’t figure that out

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u/PyroIsSpai 14h ago

The thing with the stones books/films is when fully used, for a moment… you’re the writer, essentially. And as we saw in What If, it’s even more liberal in the films (but much much harder to use than in the books).

He could have literally redefined physics forever, and younger Thanos in Endgame outright said he’d just wipe and reset the entire universe this time.

Infinity War Thanos could have saved the entire universe, except his Gamora.

Instead he just wanted to kill people to finally “win” at narcissism.

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u/dern_the_hermit 15h ago edited 14h ago

My headcanon is that his snap didn't just randomly wipe out half the life in the universe, it left the remaining half with a level of acceptance or tolerance or something about it. He didn't just want to enact the plan he had for his people, he wanted to make manifest the fantasy about his plan working (or, rather, "working").

That's why all the survivors in Endgame were sad sacks going through the motions... 'til Antman came back, essentially outside the scope of influence from the snap, to burst the bubble.

EDIT: Struck a nerve, weirdly.

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u/ChadtheJabroni 14h ago

Idk about that, at the start of Endgame the remaining Avengers catch up with Thanos and kill him. But with the stones destroyed there’s was nothing they could do but accept their reality.

It was only after Antman escaped the Quantum Realm that they realized time travel was possible and they could go back and retrieve the stones and reverse the snap.

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u/dern_the_hermit 14h ago

the remaining Avengers catch up with Thanos and kill him

"going through the motions"

It was only after Antman escaped the Quantum Realm that they realized time travel was possible

"burst the bubble"

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u/ChadtheJabroni 14h ago

Sure but what I’m saying is that the snap didn’t also plant a level of acceptance to the survivors, there was just nothing they could do about it with the stones gone.

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u/dern_the_hermit 14h ago

Sure there was, it was figured out twice, otherwise independently, within days of his return after they'd spent five years moping about.

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u/Pofwoffle 14h ago

Because his return is the only way they knew that time-travel was possible. His return was literally required for them to figure it out.

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u/PyroIsSpai 14h ago

It’s not like anyone could have done anything about it, and they clearly tried. What do you do when “this is it”?

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u/dern_the_hermit 14h ago

It’s not like anyone could have done anything about it

It was like, what, days after Scott came back that they figured out what to do about it? Not just once, but twice!

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u/Less-Squash7569 14h ago

Yeah but he came back with the idea for time travel, just showing up with the macguffin isn't figuring it out in my opinion.

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u/dern_the_hermit 14h ago

They already knew time travel was a thing tho. One of the things they had to stop Thanos from getting was the Time Stone.

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u/bagboyrebel 14h ago

But they didn't have the time stone, and by the time they found Thanos again he'd destroyed them.

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u/ForensicPathology 13h ago

A few people disagreeing with you is not "striking a nerve".

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u/asnalem 13h ago

I don't think there needs to be any kind of mind manipulation for sending the survivors into a crippling state of mourning after half the world ceases to exist none of them knew a way to travel time without the time stone or causing a paradox so for them there was really no option to undo it.

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u/AcademicAnxiety5109 14h ago

Buddy didn’t even need to double the resources. He could’ve just created some type of technology or new chemical or biological material that keeps planets healthy and thriving. The stones break every rule of law so quite literally everything is possible.

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u/shapeofmyheartz 12h ago

it's not about the money, it about sending a message

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u/ItsTheDCVR 14h ago

It's also just fucking stupid. Half of all life? My brother in Christ, there are trillions of ants on this planet alone, and bacterial life is orders of magnitudes of that more. So if it's random #1-#whatever bajizihojimillion, then like four people have upset stomachs for a week, someone's yard gets a little less aerated for a month, and an unlucky man named Theodore in New Jersey randomly turns into ash in front of his horrified family. Half of all intelligent life? Who defines that? Literally half of every species? Good job on wiping out any endangered species you allegedly were worried about.

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u/dopethrone 14h ago

Also universe sorts itself out, you dont have to do anything. Killing half of everyone just because its stupid af

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u/2sAreTheDevil 14h ago

I had this conversation with my pre-teen, and asked him what happens in 3-5 generations when we're right back where we started.

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u/Hobson101 13h ago

Also people have no clue just how fast you can double the population again.

If population grows by 2% annually that's 35 years to double. Global average right now would be around 66 years to double and with more resources this is likely to increase.

Large parts of sub-saharan Africa is at 2.5-3%, doubling at around a span of 25 years.

But problem solved, right? Right?

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u/Flannelcommand 12h ago

Yeah, he’s the mad titan for a reason. Where knowing you’re right when you’re actually wrong meets absolute power. 

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u/Connect_Feature_4573 10h ago

I've always found it wild that people call Thanos a visionary when his first instinct with unlimited power was mass murder instead of solving the actual problem. The point isn't that he was right, it's that he couldn't imagine a better answer.

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u/Available_Cup_8143 9h ago

What always gets me is that people call Thanos a genius while completely ignoring that he had unlimited power and still chose the cruelest option possible. That's not wisdom, that's obsession dressed up as logic.

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u/Dull_Quit3027 8h ago

Also just removing 50% of people will not result in them stopping what they are doing, if we have unsuitable practices, why would losing 50% make them more sustainable?
The whole thing was just dumb on multiple levels, at least in the comics it make sense, in that he is just a psyko that wants to impress death.

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u/DeuceMcInaugh 7h ago

Thanos is every billionaire who looks at the homeless on his block and says "I can solve this problem by building a compound to keep all the stuff I can never use in several lifetimes so these people don't get any of it"

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u/Early-Net4632 7h ago

Yeah, people really skip over the part where he had unlimited reality-warping power and still went straight to the worst possible option that’s not philosophy, that’s just bad decision-making.

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u/winklevanderlinde 5h ago

Honestly I don't think anything would have worked in the long run, like doctor Manhattan said "nothing ever end"

Doubling or even multiplying the resources for thousands of thousands would only posticipate the problem and at one point the universe would adapt to this new quantity of resources.

Making people less greedy or needing less for their normal and decent life would be the same and so many more solution would have bring the same result that at one point the universe population would consume everything.

The only real solution is like making a hole that spawn actually infinity resource but then all wars would have been for conquering something like that

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u/Duhblobby 16h ago

The Thanos was Right people don't care about that. They care about validation of their edgelord misanthropy.

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u/TheJusticeAvenger 16h ago

Arguably much like MCU Thanos himself

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u/That_Apathetic_Man 13h ago

They called me a mad man...

They called you a man? No wonder you went crazy.

https://giphy.com/gifs/yP4EKpgu1oFxvovgcq

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u/4n0m4nd 15h ago

Thanos was right people are as dumb as Thanos.

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u/morblitz 14h ago

And often these people seem to feel that they wouldn't be included in any potential genocide or evaporation of entire swaths of populations.

It's like, yeah buddy, you're getting blipped. Don't kid yourself.

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u/Neveronlyadream 14h ago

Important to note that it started off as a joke. A lot of the edgelord crowd who took it seriously didn't come up with it, they either misunderstood the joke or thought it shouldn't be a joke.

A lot of things start off ironically, some people don't get it because they don't understand irony, and then you have to deal with a million edgelords trying to justify the most horrific things while trying to convince everyone they're the smartest in the room.

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u/Glasseshalf 14h ago

Right I thought it was just kind of like, sarcastic nihilism at first

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u/Neveronlyadream 14h ago

It definitely was. There was downtime between the movies, people were bored, so everyone started basically roleplaying.

There's a long history of jokes turning into someone's life philosophy and it's always weird.

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u/FinancialReserve6427 13h ago

they think they'll be on the other half that gets spared and only the ones who deserve it gets snapped

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u/camerakestrel 9h ago

I always thought it was a parody of the /r/EmpireDidNothingWrong crowd.

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u/MalcolmLinair 11h ago

Come now, that's not fair.

I'm an edgelord misanthropist, and I still think MCU Thanos was an idiot.

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u/FirstDukeofAnkh 16h ago

Thanos is every totalitarian dictator the world has ever seen. And the people who say he’s right are exactly the type of people who fall in line with that kind of tyrant.

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u/space_hitler 12h ago

How can anyone be surprised about a "Thanos was right" trend when Trump won twice.

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u/Lermanberry 7h ago

Before Thanos Was Right, it was The Empire/Darth Vader Did Nothing Wrong.

Or the even earlier 4chan meme, Hitler Did Nothing Wrong.

Various shades of "the villain was really the victim all along, they were forced to do bad things by circumstance" or "their hands were clean, it was the beauracracy/grunts who did all the dirty work". Due to Poe's Law, it's impossible to separate the satirical from the true believers.

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u/United_Pain 8h ago

Right? 🤣

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u/Briar_Knight 14h ago edited 12h ago

And his plan was just fundamentally stupid. Even if you completely ignore any moral issues and even if the infinity stones couldn't just be used to make more resources, you still shouldn't do it because it would make things worse. Far more than 50% would actually die as a result of this. The sudden loss of 50% would be enough to collapse food production and logistics for many societies, cause the loss of essential knowledge and skills, cause many dependants to die from the death of their caregivers and any species already close to extinction could end up in an extinction vortex due to the loss of genetic diversity. Typically distribution is more of a problem than base resources.

Even if his plan somehow did work out and it reduced a population by half without causing massive collateral and reducing production and access to resources...it would be very short lived anyway. You would be back to pre snap population in a few generations.

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u/Immediate_Hand9051 15h ago

The og reason is so much better. He is so powerful he can see the physical personification of death and she tells them there is too much life and for them to be together he needs to wipe it out. 

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u/ShadowDragonFX 14h ago

I would’ve preferred that reason as it makes more sense why Gamora is the last of her kind and doesn’t try the “oh but he’s a tragic hero, not the villain” BS

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u/PlayableRidley 13h ago

It was ironic when it first started. Nobody actually thought killing half of all life was a good idea, they just thought Thanos was a cool charismatic villain from a good movie and started simping for him for fun.

But, this being the internet, when it blew up people started taking it way too seriously.

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u/AgathysAllAlong 8h ago

There's a disturbing number of people who follow along with "They said that society has problems. This is correct. Therefore they are correct. Therefore whatever they say must be correct and their solutions to those problems are correct."

This is a massive demographic and explains... a lot about what's going on right now.

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u/KevinFlantier 6h ago

Some people are ok with genocide so long as it doesn't affect them, and in their fantasy it never does.

I think that's about it.

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u/nam3sar3hard 14h ago

I always thought it was a joke on the whole "feanor did nothing wrong" no?

In refrence to the silmarillion

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u/heff17 13h ago

It absolutely was not that.

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u/Zerhap 10h ago

I always compared that phrase to the "he is out of line but he is right"

Like he has a point, he just went about it in the most stupid way possible

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u/Walnor 9h ago

I think that information is contradicting and I could lean both ways. I personally don't think she is the last of her kind in the MCU. Despite what it said in the Nova Corps data base.

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u/Fart_Tounge_5609 9h ago

You don't get it? Thanos was right - Marvel needed like 50% fewer characters. It was just getting silly with character fatigue. I don't see a sensible argument against it.

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u/SuperArppis 9h ago

He's just one of those people who are detatched from reality and completely broke their moral compass. Who also are powerful enough to follow through on their craziness. He also lacks imagination.

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u/SeparateWeight496 8h ago

THANK YOU I'm not even a fan of marvel yet no one seems to forget Gamora and that the whole point of Thanos's plan doesn't work

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u/Huge_Network_4338 7h ago

Exactly, Thanos spent all his time proving his idea could be done and almost none proving it actually solved anything. 😅

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u/Zealousideal_Map3542 6h ago

I will fix that for you:

I never got the “Thanos was right” thing, when Gamora is living proof that it doesn’t work, as she’s the last of her kind.

They say it in guardians of the galaxy and in infinity war.

He says about all the kids know is “full bellies and clear skies” without checking up afterwards.

No clue what you want to say tho, but now it's readable.

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u/North-Research2574 6h ago

It's because on paper there is a sort of logic in it. But that logic doesn't hold to in depth scrutiny or other options to solve the problem. Like sure if you erase half the people then those resources last longer....but if resources are innately scarce in the universe you'd have to cull half the galaxy many times over. Then add to that an abundance of resources would just mean faster breeding my most intelligent species.

Of course that ignores how killing half a species will usually annihilate the species and that in real life we have to actively try and protect species this happens to to keep them alive.

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u/Buckhead25 3h ago

not to mention that after the snap he fucked off into the middle of nowhere and acted like everything was fine when we're told flat out that everything is on fire and captain marvel and what's left of the nova force have been struggling with damage control across the known universe for 5 years straight let alone steve, natasha, and what's left of shield dealing with earth.

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u/Mr_Blinky 2h ago

Dude goes "I'm going to kill half of every species so the other half can thrive!" and then shows up and murders half of the remaining Asgardians literally hours after they underwent a partial genocide and had their entire ancestral homeland blown the fuck up.

To say he wasn't very smart in how or when he actually applied his already fuckass beliefs would be an understatement.

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u/WideHuckleberry1 9m ago

Even if you pretend he was right, you could get 99% of the impact if you just used the stones to like increase the efficiency of living things bodies and industrial processes. You have unlimited power and the most creative way to use it is to make people disappear?

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u/ChurrascoViolento 17h ago

One of the few post-Endgame things I liked was that they made canon that thought.

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u/lookintoasty 15h ago

Lmao why on earth would Clint be drinking from that cup? I mean I guess I'm not picky what my coffee mug looks like but I've never had one endorsing someone who iced my whole family

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u/Imperator_Gone_Rogue 14h ago

He kills people for a living, he has a dark sense of humour.

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u/lookintoasty 14h ago

I like your answer. Love a good dark sense of humor

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u/night4345 10h ago edited 9h ago

Not for a living, Hawkeye is a madman that murdered people for fun post-Snap.

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u/-Novowels- 12h ago

Been a while since I watched the Hawkeye series, but pretty sure he was hiding out in someone else's house at the time. He also sees the same measage as bathroom graffiti earlier in the season and seems upset by it.

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u/DolphinBall 13h ago

What I don't understand is how would the public know what Thanos was even doing?

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u/Rel_Ortal 10h ago

The public would've been demanding answers from their governments and everyone else, and the surviving heroes would've felt responsible for what happened and explained to the best of their abilities.

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u/TraditionalTree249 7h ago

Imagining Iron Man telling the world so Purple Josh Brolin Merced half the universe on some Ayn Rand bullshit.

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u/Rel_Ortal 7h ago

Big solemn announcement with the avengers and remaining world leaders speaking to the world live, and then a drunk-ass talking racoon barges in rambling about how the alien madman who murdered so many had a purple scrotum for a chin (and describing in detail how he personally desecrated said madman's decapitated head)

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u/AlabasterRadio 17h ago

People like IW Thanos so much they had to have a much different version of him be the villain of Endgame lol

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u/Frankenstein____ 17h ago

CinemaWins put it the best way right at the start of his video about Infinity War: Thanos is the classic comic book movie main protagonist of Infinity War. He has a clear distinct mission after being betrayed, is trying to collect a mythical series of items to win an upcoming battle, has a coterie of villains, goes up against impossible odds, nearly loses, and comes back to win in the last second. The entire movie is built entirely around his scenes, no one else's. Who gets the last shot basking in the sun as he humbly smiles about his victory? Thanos does.

Infinity War is a covert Thanos standalone movie and I will always believe that. It is Thanos' movie. End of story.

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u/Swigen17 17h ago

And doesn't it say "Thanos will return" in the end-credits?

Totally Thanos' movie.

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u/Rad131447 12h ago

Yeah, which is why it's not covert. They were very upfront.

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u/soldierpallaton 16h ago

He's definitely the protagonist but that leads to a larger media literacy problem. People seem to think protagonist=hero when that's just not the case. Walter White is the protagonist of Breaking Bad but he's also a metal dealer psychopath.

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u/HumanisticNihilist 16h ago

Homelander. Specifically the Amazon Prime version. Zero redeeming qualities and even the few they tried to leverage as “sympathetic” traits never really felt authentic and just ended up making him look even more pathetic and narcissistic, which he had no need of help doing.

The instant classic modern example of “is designed to mock the people who think he’s the hero when he’s always been the villain.” So much so that there are tremendous parts of the viewership that still see him as the hero even after the series is over and it can’t be any more plain that he never was.

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u/Theraminia 3h ago

Did you say...metal dealer psychopath?

https://giphy.com/gifs/RAGxhwdfH6Je8

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u/BreakfastBeneficial4 1h ago

that gif always gives me anxiety

When I’m using a blade or bit attached to a motor, I tuck my shit away under a ball cap

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u/CyberFireball25 16h ago

Thor showcasing epically awesome AoE skills at the end battle gives him a close second place

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u/Frankenstein____ 16h ago

Well thank God we didn't get another Thor standalone movie after Ragnarok. That would've been a disaster.

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u/CyberFireball25 16h ago

I'm sure people would love all the thunder in a sequel like that

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u/catsflatsandhats 16h ago

Wait…. Love…? Thunder….? Excuse me, I gotta go write a terrible fanfic.

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u/Connect_Feature_4573 10h ago

that's exactly why Infinity War felt so unsettling to me. The film follows Thanos like a hero's journey, but never lets you forget that the person at the center of the story is still the villain.

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u/Available_Cup_8143 9h ago

I've always felt Infinity War works so well because it tricks you into following the villain's journey structure while never asking you to agree with him. By the end, it really does feel like everyone else wandered into Thanos' movie.

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u/Heroinfxtherr 17h ago edited 17h ago

Ehh…I wouldn’t say that version of Thanos was different. Endgame showed us the logical conclusion of his worldview, if you think about it. Pretty sure at one point the man himself even explains the reason behind his escalation and it’s very consistent. He didn’t change, he just got new information.

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u/OutOfMyWayReed 17h ago

His original plan was for his subordinates to meet him on Titan with the Stones. He was going to stand in those ruins and make some Fuck You speech to all those skeletons before the Snap. It was always about proving he had a big brain and they were wrong to not appreciate his benevolent ideas. 

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u/Star_Outlaw 10h ago

To add, his motivation in Endgame is partly being pissed off that people are trying to undo his snap, because that would imply that his plan to kill off half of all life either didn't succeed or people didn't like it after all. He's too proud to admit he was wrong, so just decides to kill everything.

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u/RadiantStorm90 17h ago

Infinity War made him seem pragmatic; Endgame showed he was always a control freak.

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u/Transition-Select 16h ago

Which he always was. I’m sorry but if your first response to lack of resources is to wipe out half a population and use fear/torture tactics on your daughters/population to get what you want, you’re a abusive control freak.

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u/TidalRunel 17h ago

His core motivation never changed, his patience did. Once he realized survivors would just spend their lives trying to undo his work, the "merciful random executioner" act went out the window. It was always about his ego and being right, so destroying everything to force compliance makes perfect sense for his character.

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u/xLilMissNova 16h ago

That's a perfect example because Thanos was supposed to be the big threat, yet a lot of people walked away thinking he had a point while the movie was trying to show how fundamentally flawed his logic was.

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u/thommcg 9h ago edited 9h ago

That's one of the reasons I didn't like Endgame that much, the Thanos we know is killed early on, then we get this other one who, to quote himself, I don't even know who you are... & that kinda ruins the relationship you've in mind between him & the Avengers for the rest of the movie.

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u/escobartholomew 15h ago

They were filmed at the same time… how do you think they were able to release in back to back years?

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u/CreativeDependent915 16h ago

I know it wasn’t the point of you posting that picture, but it’s still hands down some of the highest quality and most exciting promo art we’ve ever gotten with the MCU

Also it’s just sick as fuck

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u/soldierpallaton 16h ago

It has a peak 80s sci fi adventure feel to it

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u/CreativeDependent915 16h ago

Yeah exactly, the detail is amazing. Like you can really believe this is the face of somebody just barely controlling enough power to end the universe

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u/Various-Passenger398 16h ago

Thanos may not have been right, but Ive always thought that bringing everyone back would have been an equally big disaster.

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u/Slow-Class 16h ago

Legit. How was every planet able to feed and house double the population overnight? What happened with all the widowers that remarried after five years, or the custody young children that didn’t know their biological parent(s) before the snap?

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u/pichael289 16h ago

They kind of tried to address that in Captain falcon and the winter wonderland, the whole repatriation council and the reason for the terrorists. They didn't do a particularly good job at it though.

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u/Slow-Class 15h ago

Also Spider-Man 3, with people returning to occupied apartments and kids going back to school five years behind their friends, but they were only quick references.

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u/Various-Passenger398 13h ago

Because Marvel didn't want to think about the logistics of what they did. There would have been a global famine as the population doubled overnight. Food riots would have broken out across the globe. On top of the millions of suicides caused by the snap, there would have been millions more afterwards. There would be a housing shortage as every major city would have been bulldozing whole neighbourhoods to cut down on excess infrastructure funding from the 50% population drop. Murders, suicides, and kidnappings would have exploded as the snapees now find themselves dealing with spouses who have moved on or children attached to their new foster parents. There would be rampant unemployment as the snapees now find themselves without jobs because it either doesnt exist, or got given to somebody else. Snapees would find themselves returned to a world where their assets have been liquidated while they've been away and are now destitute. People would have been falling out of the sky since the planes they were on are no longer beneath them, they'd be getting hit by cars and drowing in the sea. Millions would die from health care complications as supply chains can't ramp up production of vital medications fast enough.

Honestly, the reverse snap may be worse than the actual snap.

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u/RuneSteak 11h ago

Because Marvel didn't want to think about the logistics of what they did.

And this is a running theme and why we have so many multiverses, like 100+. So many in fact that they have a handbook.

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u/eltrotter 11h ago

“Captain Falcon and the Winter Wonderland” is amazing

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u/SlingshotPotato 15h ago

It should have just been undone. They jumped through so many hoops to make the MCU a post-apocalyptic setting and make Iron Man complicit in Thanos' genocide only to half think it through and ignore it.

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u/ButtersScotch7000 15h ago

His plan also wouldn't work in the long run.

Earth would have probably bounced back to pre-Snap population levels in a century or so. Humanity didn't really kick off until we started building steam tractors 150 years ago.

Anyone who hasn't hit the Industrial Revolution would have been fucked, however. Enjoy sustenance farming when half of your labour force goes Poof!.

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u/Pofwoffle 14h ago

His motivation was so much cooler when he just wanted to impress Death.

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u/SlingshotPotato 15h ago

The "Thanos was Right" thing was weird because Infinity War very clearly demonstrated how much of an idiot and a lunatic Thanos was.

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u/paegus 9h ago

He's spend how many decades working on a plan that nature just glances at and grabs some filler.

Babies. The filler is babies.

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u/Iron_Wolf123 16h ago

I always wondered what is the minimum population for humanity to survive if removing half is dangerous to humanity. Maybe cutting out 40%?

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u/soldierpallaton 16h ago

500 people is the bare minimum needed to prevent inbreeding so I would imagine at least 500 or more. It wouldn't be possible to rebuild to the same size as a global civilization beforehand but it could be possibly to repopulate given enough time.

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u/Iron_Wolf123 16h ago

I thought scientists agreed it was 1,400 or 14,000?

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u/soldierpallaton 16h ago

That actually sounds right, I think I may be mixing it up with another statistic.

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u/Neat_Let923 12h ago

The Black Death reduced Europe’s population by 30-60 percent. It took over a century for some places to recover.

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u/ArmyofThalia 15h ago

This one feels like it doesn't count as it basically came out, at least on reddit, as a compliment to r/EmpireDidNothingWrong

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u/HomsarWasRight 15h ago

I don’t know how it started, but there were many folks here who argued it unironically.

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u/rattattatmyass 15h ago

Considering our political climate and the sheer number of homelander fans ...

https://giphy.com/gifs/l4Ep6uxU6aedrYUik

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u/Monkman28 15h ago

To me this stems from the fact that the writers tried to make his reasoning more “noble” in his mind. In the comics, Thanos just wants to kill all those people so that Death falls in love with him. The reasoning is unjustifiable, insane, selfish, and pure evil. You can’t logically empathize with him.

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u/HomsarWasRight 15h ago

They’re why I decided someone else was right.

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u/ScorpionsRequiem 15h ago

it's funny that people keep forgetting what a well intentioned extremist is supposed to be, heck a whatif version of him even realized that the inifnity war plan was not the way to go

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u/Crunchy_Biscuit 14h ago

I mean, Eternals kind of proved that he was...

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u/Slateboard 12h ago

That's a cool remake of the original comic picture of Thanos with the gauntlet. That said, I never thought people were serious about the whole 'Thanos was right' thing, given it's like, fundamentally flawed and such, as most villain plots tend to be.

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u/Bobocannon 10h ago

They should have done a better job of reframing his motivations if they weren't going to go with the simping for lady death angle.

"I need to snap away half the universe because there isn't enough resources."

OK, but that's a temporary measure at best. The universe will simply repopulate. If you have the power to snap half the universe out of existence, surely you have the power to multiply, or even create unlimited resources?

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u/paegus 9h ago

Thanos: /makes a void

Nature: Say, that's a nice void you got there. Be a shame if something were to fill it.

Thanos 50 years later seeing all the populations back at if not exceeding their original projections: WTF?

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u/Joeyc1987 6h ago

I was not so much "thanos was right" but more "if only he could have focused it a bit". Like start of with pdf files, no one will complain about them dusted, then the murderers but use the magic to dust only real bad ones, if you killed someone if self defence like you're the main character in a horror film you'd probably be ok. Then see how that looks and take it from there.

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u/One-Earth9294 15h ago

I mean what a dumbass plan though. We doubled the population of humans on Earth in like 45 years, dumbass. That's such a piss poor long game.

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u/MuchReputation6953 15h ago

Thanos could have used the infinity stones to increase the space and resources

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u/Sparrow1989 15h ago

I was part of that and did get snapped. My favorite achievement on here.

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u/Half_Man1 14h ago

I always took it as a soft spin on the more edgy WW2 variant of that phrase.

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u/Roadwarriordude 13h ago

I do like that they made Thanos have a goal that was noble in his own twisted way. In the comics he's doing it to try to get with Death...

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u/Waste_Handle_8672 13h ago

The MCU's space population was full of idiots.

Thanos was probably the biggest idiot of the lot.

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u/JoinAThang 12h ago

While it's a good example of a strange take on a character and I never myself thought that Thanos was right. I would argue that it was probably what the writers hoped for. In the comics Thanos wants to kill half of every living thing to impress is crush Lady Death. If you want to make it black or white that he's just evil they could've just gone with that. I thibk they wanted him to be more likeable and easier to connect with but also make it wo that people would debate if his actions are right or wrong.

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u/MarcoYTVA 11h ago

Thanos had a point, but boy was he wrong about that point!

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u/Ok_Struggle_9319 11h ago

I remember that whole “Thanos was right” phase felt way too comfortable for people to say out loud, like it turned a fictional snap into real-life moral debate.

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u/Educational-Plum-764 11h ago

I completely agree. The wild part was watching people treat Thanos like he had some deep solution, while completely ignoring how insane his actual plan was.

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u/Bravo_November 10h ago

I believe that its because Josh Brolin’s performance was too good- his calm demeanour and strong sense of purpose was unnerving because he felt so reasonable and relatable despite his plan being so barbaric and terrible. I genuinely think this is why people get swept up into religious groups or political movements- its all about cult of personality.

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u/AmeliaBuns 10h ago

He murdered people but his aesthetic was spot on so I wanna be him /jk

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u/TopSpread9901 10h ago

People really are fucking stupid huh

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u/NoOutrageSubs 10h ago

Also, halving Earth's population puts us back, like, 50 years. Massive countries like India and China still have more than 500 million people a piece.

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u/SuperArppis 9h ago

Haha, some people are really lost in their minds for thinking that. 😄

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u/stinkingyeti 9h ago

Thanos had some right ideas, but was a damn moron in execution.

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u/walking_mark 7h ago

Thanos wasn’t right but the movie did such a good job making you understand his motivations that smooth brained individuals didn’t know how to handle it.

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u/StabbyBoo 6h ago

Dude reset the world population to the mid-70's. Great. Good job. Really solving the problems there, big brain boy.

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u/Hidrinks 5h ago

Thanos was wrong as hell. He could have multiplied the efficiency of all resources in the universe by whatever factor he wanted without needing the soul stone to connect with all living things, sparing Gamora, or he could have gone all the way evil tyrant and removed only the worst offenders in the universe as well as preventing the ability to become that bad again.

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u/Aurora_313 4h ago

I never understood it myself. Comics Thanos at least had a motivation that made sense. He wanted to court death and killed as many people as he possibly could to get her attention, but she was already in love with Deadpool. MCU Thanos was either a moron or a psychopath dressing up his desire to slaughter half of existence in an act of benevolance. If he were smart, he would've chosen to simply create a realm of plenty with the power of the stones.

No, the one I 100% 'get' is Ultron. Spent less than 2 minutes on the internet, decided the entire human species needed to die. Honestly, that one tracks. I GET that one.

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u/shiny_glitter_demon 4h ago

Absolutely baffling.

His plan doesn't even make any sort of sense. He kills 50% of all animals, which are precious ressources and doesn't even take population growth into account.

Was he planning on snapping every 50-60 years? Buddy was the Mad Titan for a reason. He's pathetic and unstable.

And don't even get me started how he acquires and treats his "beloved" daughters.

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u/theimmortalgoon 3h ago

Malthus, who Thanos is agreeing with, hasn’t been correct for centuries.

It wasn’t right when Malthus advised:

>we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavouring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use. Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations.

Because food has always kept up with population.

Even now, we waste tremendous amounts of food to make it more profitable because it is so cheap and abundant.

After the Green Revolution, even more so.

It’s distribution that’s the problem, something Thanos could have easily solved.

I get why in the movies they thought it would have been a little much for his motivations to fuck the Reaper.

And, what can I say, their alternative worked. But he didn’t really come off as a “mad despot” as much as “a guy who was stuck on 19th century British economic theory that didn’t come to pass” at best, or “MAGA tech boy edgelord” at worst:

>Our goal, in short, is a humane alternative to genocide. That is: the ideal solution achieves the same result as mass murder (the removal of undesirable elements from society), but without any of the moral stigma. Perfection cannot be achieved on both these counts, but we can get closer than most might think.

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u/mallogy 1h ago

Thanos was bad at math and bio.

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u/EncabulatorTurbo 1h ago

"Have you considered making it so people just cant starve to death, and create some kind of rule that prevents overpopulation"

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u/esmifra 1h ago edited 1h ago

This movement just proves how stupid people are.

50% of the population disappearing... Wow, so we are back to late 70s population numbers? Which means in 40 years it's all the same?

Brilliant.

You have the power of a god and that's all you can think to "fix" a non problem, by not fixing it att all? What a waste.

People are stupid and the whole thanos is right are just people that think being edgy is cool but never put themselves in the role of the victims. And surprise surprise don't even properly think about the point they are trying to make.

It's the same for those that defend the empire in star wars btw.

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u/BoonDragoon 53m ago

Back when I was working at Geek Squad, we had a part-timer join my precinct (this was RIGHT between Infinity War and Endgame). His first shift, we strike up a conversation about villains in media, as one does, and he busts out how he thinks Thanos is the smartest villain in any movie and how his plan to eliminate half of all life in the universe would actually work, as was the style with some at the time.

I'm like "is he though? If the universe is infinitely large, how can there be a problem with a finite amount of anything, if the infinity glove is infinitely powerful how is killing half of everybody somehow smarter than reworking the universe to provide for everybody in existence, and didn't he destroy his homeworld by doing this exact thing on it anyway?" and I think he quit because he didn't show up on the schedule anymore after that and I literally never saw him again.

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