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As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.


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     Fridge Brilliance 
  • The root conflict of the story isn't just about the proper way to deal with the world's problems, it's about the influence that people with power have on society.
  • Lois Lane on bad people deserving to die might just be seen as the writers trying to make her be a little at odds with Clark's view, until you realize her father is in the military and that she would have grown up with such a viewpoint, then it makes perfect sense.
    • Just to point out, Lois says that 'sometimes' she feels that way. She seems to mean it as a 'heat of the moment' or 'in a moment of weakness or anger' thing. She's actively trying to stop the crowd from supporting the Elite when they hold Atomic Skull's impromptu execution.
  • How is it that the ultimate "boy scout" of the DC Universe knew how to put on so effectively the guise of a terrifying, brutal executioner who's lost all restraint when dealing with the Elite. Maybe its because he learned it - through observation or otherwise - from a certain fellow Justice Leaguer who regularly uses theatrics and intimidation like a finely honed scalpel.
  • Alternatively to the above as well, Superman is quite capable of being A Terror Hero. Batman himself has had crooks say they find Superman a lot scarier than Batman, to Batman's face, because the guy can and will pluck you two miles above the surface mid crime and tell you to knock it off. It's just when Superman does it, it usually comes off as sort of funny. Someone being yanked up mid crime and given a lecture is a funny image. What he did to the Elite is not a funny image. Alternately Superman is always clear that he can hear and see you. Everyone knows he is flying around all the time with super vision and stuff. It's just that to most people that thought comes across as more reassuring than scary. It is, however, a method of crook intimidation that Batman and Wonder Woman have praised as being so passive yet very effective.
  • While part of it was an act, The Elite definitely could harm Superman; that blood definitely wasn't fake and Coldcast knocked Superman out before he was acting. Still, Superman still tore them apart with ease afterwards. Perhaps the Elite should have thought it through a bit more before hitting a solar powered superhero with "15 suns exploding in his face."

     Fridge Horror 
  • Manchester Black proves himself capable of fighting on (mostly) even terms with Superman during his Beware the Superman phase. If Superman hadn't simply been acting, then no matter who won the battle, it's safe to say that the entire world would be several kinds of screwed.
    • Not really, Supes was still clearly holding back. Had he genuinely wanted to kill the Elite, he would have beaten them, taxidermied them and put on an insulting marionette show with their corpses in the span of 2 seconds.
      • You can tell that Supes didn't ever really use his super speed other than to dodge attacks. If he really wanted Black dead, he woulda been punching a lot faster.
      • Yeah, but it's obvious that they were doing damage to him. And Manchester was correct at the end that Superman could barely stand after his last telekinetic blast. You gotta remember, Superman is incredibly strong and can take a lot of damage but he's not invincible.
      • Keep in mind, Superman didn't beat any of them through brute force. While the comic version showed it more, all of the Elite except for Menagerie had the power to beat Superman on their own. The comic version of Coldcast was explicitly said to have far more power to throw around than Superman (although, then again, hyperbole is thrown around quite a lot in the comics). Even if he was holding back, during the head-to-head part of the fight Superman was still injured far worse by them than the Atomic Skull. If they'd taken the fight seriously instead of treating it like a Payperview event, things would have gone very differently.
    But then, if they were the type to think things through and treat their enemies with respect, it would have been a very different story.
    • Perhaps not so... Superman can break the planet in half and has a top speed of 137.8 times the speed of light (without sun dip; with one, his potential could very well be infinite). Also, Superman may not have had direct sunlight contact when he went up against Black (and he probably didn't have time to pick up extra rays beforehand). Finally, after a certain point, the Elite are clearly terrified and ready to go all-out against Supes. Superman could have dropped Black without saying a word to him, burning out his eyes with a single blast of heat vision.
    • There's a difference between Superman the members of the Elite: Supes can take as much as he can dish out and move so fast that even hitting him is an awesome feat by itself, but the Elite can't. And that's what really makes Superman going evil so scary: he's nearly impossible to kill. The Elite, on the other hand, would be vulnerable to anything that can kill a normal person (in fact, had they won I can easily see a number of superheroes make short work of them, including Green Arrow using the boxing glove arrows just to humiliate them).
    • The scariest part about the fight with Black is that, as demonstrated by the way he dealt with the other three and how he later lobotomized him, Supes could have finished him off anytime he wanted to, and there wouldn't have been a damn thing Black could do to stop it. And why did the Big Blue drag it out? To overpower, ridicule, humiliate, and ultimately Break Black.
  • The methods that Superman used to fake the death of The Elite were pretty dangerous out right: he shot Pam with a dart that made her heart (appear to) stop, collapsed The Hat's lungs with a tornado, and carried Coldcast into space. While it's true he didn't actually kill them, those methods could've killed them anyway simply due to the forces involved. Superman could have accidentally killed The Elite!
    • Not with his robots around, no.
  • The Elite killed two nation's leaders - what will that solve? Are they going to rule those countries themselves? What if the people don't want to make nice with each other? Are The Elite going to set up a police state run by themselves? Or just kill both populations?
    • They Didn't Think It Through. It would have been quite amusing to show what would have happened... Especially in the comic, where Lex Luthor was the president of the United States and thus in charge of the country that usually leads the humanitarian interventions.
    • Another horrifying factor about this? Those countries are nuclear capable. Let that sink in.
      • Not just nuclear capable, they also have advanced biotechnology and substantial bioweapons programs. Black would have simply screwed the world another way by opening the way for radicals in those countries to initiate unrestricted biowarfare...that will inevitably spread as pathogens are wont to do.
      • On top of this, what the Elite would do after their poorly thought out plan didn't work. They made it clear when they fought Superman that they do not care how many people they have to kill if they get in their way. If the countries had new leaders who resumed hostilities (and from what we have seen the two countries have some serious bad blood between them), than the Elite would probably plan to just keep killing them over and over until the new leaders who stepped up would bow their heads to the Elite. Given the number of people the Elite killed the first time, they could easily end killing every person with any leadership qualifications, leading to governments with nobody to run them.
  • We saw the a number of cars crash thanks to Coldcast's neutrino pulse in Bialya. The pulse hit the entire city, or at least a large chunk of it. Given how long it took for Superman to recover from it, in addition to the number people killed outright from accidents in the initial blast, how many more died from injuries because the state of the city kept them from getting to a hospital in time?

     Fridge Logic 
  • Superman reveals that he didn't actually destroy the part of the brain that gives Black his powers, but since the Elite is going to be de-powered anyway, what difference does it make?
    • It is one thing to deliberately suppress someone's superhuman abilities through science or removal of an alien parasite. That can be reversed eventually if the authorities judge that the person in question has paid their debt to society and is ready to reintegrate into the world. It is another thing entirely to perform impromptu brain surgery leaving someone with a slowly putrefying hunk of detached brain matter inside their skull that will eventually kill them by blood loss or infection.
    • That's part of Superman's point: Maybe the authorities decide to de-power them. But it's not Superman's place to make that decision.
    • Also, Superman's heat vision would have set fire to Manchester's eyes rather then just one part of his brain if he tried to do that.
    • Better question: if the ability to depower someone exists, and it is in the hands of the authorities, why are there repeat offenders of super powered criminals?
      • Perhaps, like with the Atomic Skull as a power source, some government officials believe they can use the Supercriminals as a resource.
      • Task Force X would also be an example of this
      • Also might be a case of different types of powers. Take Atomic Skull for example, his body is so physically warped that without his powers he would probably die immediately. Manchester, Pam, Coldcast, and Hat are all basically human though just with extra bits bolted on that can be removed or suppressed without risk to their own lives.

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