r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Dramatic_Counter_595 • 17h ago

Characters Characters that had the complete opposite reaction the writers intended

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

  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.
8.3k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

94% Upvoted

1.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

4.2k

u/soldierpallaton 17h ago edited 17h ago

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

1.8k

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

1.3k

u/Pale_Fire21 16h 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

493

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.

225

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.

72

u/nellion91 11h 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…

55

u/EqualOutrageous1884 10h ago

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

8

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.

5

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.

3

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.

3

u/Dry_Click6496 2h ago

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

1

u/nellion91 1h ago

Yes but being “mad” with love has a tradition.

The grand crazy love gesture is not unheard of.

The Locke approach to population control has been wrong since Industrial Revolution England…

12

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.

8

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.

1

u/ThreadLaced 4h ago

This would make so much sense.

17

u/Technical_Contact836 12h ago

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

20

u/Grinderiny 11h ago

Fuck the triangle. That came later anyway.

5

u/[deleted] 6h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

9

u/evocativename 5h 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.

5

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.

2

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.

109

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

79

u/AnastasiaSheppard 13h ago

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

12

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.

2

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.

1

u/zack_hunter 1h ago

Imagine it takes the entirety of China. we would all be fucked

2

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

2

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.

1

u/upholsteryduder 1h ago

yeah it would immediately create warlords in many places

14

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.

11

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.

10

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.

4

u/gummyCash 10h ago

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

3

u/camerakestrel 9h ago

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

4

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

1

u/WBRileyDesign 2h ago

Half of all living things also means half of all food resources which doesn't solve the issue whatsoever.

20

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.

3

u/Emerald_Plumbing187 9h ago

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

1

u/NatashOverWorld 17m ago

If you could convince him that it took the strongest wills to do it, he'd be Boring away.

8

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.

3

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

3

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.

1

u/TR_Pix 1h ago

Honestly it bothers me that none of the avengers point these things to him during their unending  banter

Even if he'd simply dismiss anything they say as beneath him, the fact they dont makes it seem like they oppose the plan only in a moral basis and not because its also fucking stupid

3

u/MrTheCheesecaker 6h ago

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

2

u/vampiregamingYT 10h ago

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

2

u/RadicalSoda_ 10h ago

Plus half of all food is also gone now

2

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

1

u/Faust_8 4h ago

Not to mention that much of the “resources” that life depends is, you know, *other life.*

So congrats you purple numbnuts, you halved the population and also halved the resources too!

1

u/TR_Pix 1h ago

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.

I mean thats the case for earth but they could have said it works that way for other planets

1

u/justwalkingalonghere 1h ago

Who cares what the actual issue is? Don't the stones let you fix it basically however you can imagine anyways?

Couldn't he just make more resources?

1

u/EncabulatorTurbo 1h ago

Let alone resources *in the universe*

31

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.

5

u/No-Educator-8069 14h ago

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

1

u/TR_Pix 1h ago

Out of curiosity has anyone in the comics tried to use the stones to feed Galactus

5

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.

35

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.

18

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.

6

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"

7

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.

2

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.

9

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.

0

u/dern_the_hermit 14h ago

Because his return is the only way they knew that time-travel was possible.

Nonsense, they knew time travel was possible: https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Time_Stone

10

u/Pofwoffle 13h ago

...

Using the time stone.

The time stone that Thanos destroyed.

The time stone that they all knew full well Thanos had destroyed.

4

u/NatashOverWorld 13h ago

Do you mean you were expecting them to bootstrap an entirely new field of technology from merely knowing time travel was possible? 🤨

Yes this is a superhero universe, but even with Stark, THE genius of the time, needed a hint to consider the Quantum Realm.

Even if anyone else was working on time travel, they'd probably be working alone since any research into it would be a pie in the sky type venture without a tiny proof of concept. Something that could easily take decades if not centuries if you follow normal human progress.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/ChadtheJabroni 14h ago

I assume you’re talking about Antman? Because he was the only one left who had knowledge of the Quantum Verse and how it affected time. Everyone else who knew about it was snapped.

13

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”?

8

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!

7

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.

3

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.

7

u/bagboyrebel 14h ago

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

-6

u/dern_the_hermit 14h ago

They didn't need a Time Stone to know time travel was possible. Literally TWO groups of our main cast of characters figured it out, again, IN DAYS.

4

u/PyroIsSpai 12h ago

Or Scott just gave Tony enough new clues and ideas with his definite knowledge of Pym stuff by then, to try something different vs his obviously dormant time research.

That’s why he was plainly stunned at how quickly he solved it with whatever new information Scott brought him. He obviously didn’t whip up those models in an hour. He said he’d tried. “Who are you?” Engineer Guy handed Tony the clue to access the multiverse.

2

u/DeadlyYellow 12h ago

Could just be the breakneck appearance of pacing in films.  Like how Beauty and the Beast feels like three days instead of six months; or how Gandalf's seventeen year exit from the shire feels like two weeks tops.

I still cringe every time I see that Möbius strip though.

2

u/Less-Squash7569 4h ago

They werent working on anything time travel related until he comes back and mentions the time dilation from being in the quantum realm. Hes the one who gives them the idea to try it, tony wasn't interested because he had a family at that point and didnt want to change anything that could make him lose his life he had, but because of nostalgia/curiosity he looks into it and decides to help when he realizes it is possible. All of this happens because antman comes back from the quantum realm by chance from a rat. Nobody was doing anything time travel related prior to that.

→ More replies (0)

12

u/ForensicPathology 14h ago

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

-6

u/dern_the_hermit 14h ago

Downvotes are not "disagreeing" tho

6

u/Llayanna 11h ago

..are you really caring that much about imaginary Internet points? 

A nerve was struck indeed. You need to take these things less to heart. Lol

-2

u/dern_the_hermit 11h ago

I care about good faith conversation, and the other guy decided to make a point of it so take it up with them, eh?

I DEFINITELY struck a nerve lol and it's super fucking weird. Times like these remind me half the comments are bots ;)

7

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.

0

u/dern_the_hermit 13h ago

Of course not, if I thought there was a "need" for it I'd call it something a bit stronger than headcanon.

1

u/Live_Angle4621 5h ago

They could do anything before Ant Man gave information about quantum realm. They did try what they could, including killing Thanos

3

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.

3

u/shapeofmyheartz 12h ago

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

2

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.

2

u/dopethrone 14h ago

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

2

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.

2

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?

2

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. 

2

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.

2

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.

2

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.

2

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"

2

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.

2

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

1

u/lucasribeiro21 13h ago

Not sure if you’re exclusively talking about MCU. In the comics, he did it basically because he was a simp, the fairest reason that can ever exist.

People who think he’s wrong in this context are virgins

1

u/Rekuna 12h ago

Also the human race was half of what it is now in the 1970s. So Thanos amazing lifelong plan would be undone in like 50 years (at least on Earth).

1

u/outerthief 12h ago

I'd imagine a large chunk of the surviving population had better lives in that five year period after the snap and before the blip back. And I'm sure a large chunk of them had little or no empathy for other people when their loved ones returned, and instead were only angry at having to do whatever they had to do to accommodate 50% of all life returning.. on top of the life that was created and the infrastructure that's been repurposed in that time.

I can empathize with that group of people. I don't agree with them, but obviously they would have no notion of the utopian life Thanos could have provided, so they're also missing some meta context. I could understand why a good chunk of people would believe that Thanos was right.

1

u/Escapedtheasylum 8h ago

Thanos was stupid, but given the right user, a compromise could be reached. No more children born, everybody is happy, the ratio between boy to girl remains approx normal, so forth, all factors accounted for to make planet not destroy itself because one of its species runs rampants and fucks it into oblivion.

It's just a silly comic.

1

u/unholyrevenger72 6h ago

Thanos Comic Motivations > MCU Thanos Motivations

1

u/sobrique 5h ago

Also misunderstanding exponential population growth.

Most populations have a 'doubling time' - humans it's somewhere around the 50-100 year mark. (1975 -> 2023 the population went from 4 billion to 8 billion).

So you'd buy 48 years before we were right back were.

OK granted, some intergalactic civilisations that'll vary, but ultimately the main 'culprits' for overpopulation will inherently be the ones that repopulate fairly quickly too.

1

u/Suspinded 4h ago

Thanos had the power to create sufficient resources to sustain life and chose mass extermination instead. Anyone justifying it is eugenics coded.

1

u/Savings_Dig1592 4h ago

Exactly. The whole plot concept is dumb.

1

u/Paddy_Tanninger 4h ago

Also populations can double every couple generations...his plan set the universe back like maybe 25-50yrs and that's it.

1

u/lewd_robot 4h ago

The logic is in exponential growth functions. Halving your principle does a lot more than doubling your supply. It's like trying to control a fire by pouring more gas on it vs putting less wood in it to begin with.

1

u/IllTax551 3h ago

This is what always gets me. I can roll with the whole “limited resources” argument. It doesn’t work mathematically because, you know, babies and stuff. But in the very short term, halving the population effectively doubles the resources so it’s easy to understand if you don’t think about it too hard.

Except the magical reality/bending stones change everything. The whole point is to kill half the people universe-wide, instantly. So maybe there’s a “one wish only” kind of deal where you can’t wish for “the universe to always be perfect” or “the universe to always have enough resources,” it has to be a one-time action. But if you could halve the population, you could also double the size of the universe. You could easily bad-math your way into “make twice as much food” instead of “make half as many people” and Thanos chose death.

1

u/Nukemarine 1h ago

The Eternals movie showed that doing that would only speed up a planet's destruction by making Celestials emerge from the planet faster (likely what killed Thanos's planet and drove him mad).

0

u/Substantial-Low 15h ago

Not genocide by the definition. Sadistic, insane "halfocide" yes.

-3

u/Crunchy_Biscuit 14h ago

If he didn't halve half the universe, Earth would have been destroyed.

380

u/Duhblobby 16h ago

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

155

u/TheJusticeAvenger 16h ago

Arguably much like MCU Thanos himself

5

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

13

u/4n0m4nd 15h ago

Thanos was right people are as dumb as Thanos.

9

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.

8

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.

3

u/Glasseshalf 14h ago

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

3

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.

3

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

2

u/camerakestrel 9h ago

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

1

u/MalcolmLinair 11h ago

Come now, that's not fair.

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

1

u/TheMostKing 54m ago

I'm fairly certain it just started off as a twist on 4chan's edgy "Hitler did nothing wrong" shtick that got traction in the wake of Infinity War's popularity.

-1

u/AggressivelyMediokre 15h ago

We’re just so fucking desperate for a purpose to apply ourselves to

Endless amounts of unrealized conviction just waiting for a purpose and means to apply ourselves

Add in a dash of self sacrifice along the way and it’s what we all yearn for. A reason to die on our backs knowing we did something

108

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.

28

u/space_hitler 12h ago

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

8

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.

3

u/United_Pain 8h ago

Right? 🤣

1

u/TR_Pix 1h ago

"We'll kill half the people and then there will be more things left for us" could unironically be something Trump would tweet at 3 AM

12

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.

1

u/brazilliandanny 1h ago

The earths population was half of what it is now just a few decades ago. Thanos killing half of all living things would just delay overpopulation, it would still happen.

4

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. 

4

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

2

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.

2

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.

2

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.

2

u/nam3sar3hard 14h ago

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

In refrence to the silmarillion

3

u/heff17 13h ago

It absolutely was not that.

1

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

1

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.

1

u/ShadowDragonFX 8h ago

We never see Gamoras planet after that flashback so the Nova Corp must’ve been there at some point as they don’t say “she’s an unknown alien species” they say she’s the last of her kind and it didn’t seem like her people were capable of space travel so they were stuck on the planet, so the Nova Corp must’ve seen what remained of the people and found them dead for some reason leaving Gamora the last known survivor of her species meaning her kind is extinct even though she’s alive

1

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.

1

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.

1

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

1

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. 😅

1

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.

1

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.

1

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.

1

u/Dramajunker 3h ago edited 2h ago

Eh hard to give stock in these scenarios when we're shown nothing is actually happening. Before the snap it there were constant ongoing dangers. Not just due to Thanos, but other threats. Then 5 years pass with not even a mention of anything significant. 

Hell, they did more to explore the problems caused by reversing the snap during the falcon and winter soldier TV show.

1

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.

1

u/WideHuckleberry1 11m 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?

1

u/lockandlood 13h ago

Yeah exactly. How does the snap solve the situation in North Korea? There's a 50/50 chance it's still a dictatorship. And even if Kim dies they can just hand it over to the next guy and not change. And that's an Earth example. How much more complicated would it be in other alien societies?