Roy Harper, a.k.a. Speedy/Arsenal/Red Arrow, has narrowly skirted the edges of this trope. His most memorable moment was his 1971 battle with heroin addiction◊. While he hasn't lapsed back into addiction, the fact that he's a former junkie is a significant part of his backstory, and comes up regularly — almost to the point of being a Disability Superpower ("That was tough, but nothing compared to giving up drugs!"). An issue of Titans established that this actually wasn't the last time he did heroin, though, partially justifying the fact that it's constantly mentioned.
It's worth noting that Roy's battle with drugs only lasted two issues. Compare to Iron Man's alcoholism, which lasted much longer and was portrayed more realistically.
He lapsed back into addiction after his daughter was killed and he lost an arm. When people talk about Roy post-Lian's death people always tend to mention how he hallucinated a dead kitten was his daughter while on drugs. However, this got retconned in Green Arrow (2023) so that he did actually see his daughter. The fact that he relapsed still remains though.
In one issue of The Outsiders, Dick Grayson, his best friend, used his past as a junkie against him when the two were having a really ugly argument. That's when the fists started flying.
His addiction may no longer be in-continuity as of the New 52 — though he's indicated to be a recovering alcoholic.
In Titans, Roy's mention of "that wasn't the last time I did heroin" may have been a reference to the Arsenal Special from the mid 90s. In that story, Roy had traveled to China and was briefly held captive by a mob boss who injected him with heroin before having him locked up. Roy had since tried to keep that incident secret because he was afraid people would think he took the heroin willingly.
Nightwing gets a rather unfair reputation as being a womanizer, despite having been involved in two different healthy and monogamous relationships at two different times in his life. It was in the second Nightwing Annual in which (in a flashback retcon) he slept with Barbara Gordon (after seeing her for the first time since her injury), and then proceeded to invite her to his wedding with Starfire. Prior to that, he was honest and committed in his relationships, and the notorious Dick-Kory-Babs love triangle was never a realization until that Annual.
Fans rarely remember that Killer Moth was a serious bad guy in Gotham, until he was beaten by Barbara Gordon in her first ever costumed outing as Batgirl, which destroyed his rep for all time.
Thanks to Internet memes, it's now pretty hard to forget that Batman himself once slapped Robin in a moment of anguishnote And that was a "What If" story, or that he once threatened to spank a woman.
The infamous Weaksauce Weakness of a Green Lantern's ring having no power over yellow objects has been a frequent source of mockery for non-fans, persisting well after the weakness was changed to be the outcome of the central power battery imprisoning the fear entity Parallax, only be a problem with rookie Lanterns and a complete non-issue for experienced GLs who can handle yellow objects with ease by overcoming fear.
Hal Jordan's relationship with fellow Green Lantern Arisia didn't sit well with a lot of readers due to Arisia being underage. Not even the retcon of Arisia actually being far older than most living human beings was enough to fully offset the creepiness.
Jordan's run as the supervillain Parallax.
Guy Gardner, "One Punch!", and his '80s "complete pig" behavior tend to overshadow his current Boisterous Bruiser status. That, and the fact that he used to be a milquetoast schoolteacher, a lawyer, and a grating pantywaist at various points in his life. On top of that, there's nothing at all unusual about a single well-placed strike ending the fight. It happens in MMA all the time. Batman knew what he was doing and didn't want the conflict to escalate any further, is all. Plus, it was Batman, probably the strongest normal human on Earth and a master of hand-to-hand combat who specializes in beating superhumans unconscious and fought and killed a god. More than once. But honestly... if Gardner had been on his guard and hadn't idiotically taken his ring off first, Batman would never have been able to lay a finger on him.
Kyle Rayner's first girlfriend Alex was the trope-namer for Stuffed into the Fridge (she even appeared as a Black Lantern inside a fridge construct in Blackest Night!) and since then, things have not gone well for his love life. Since he lost the position of the star of Green Lantern, many writers and fans seem to remember him only for this, and the list of his loved ones killed has gone on to include Jade, Donna Troy (although both have gotten better - and Jade has moved on), and his mother. His latest girlfriend, Soranik Natu, escaped being killed, but her fate was hardly better - Kyle put his foot in his mouth and broke her heart, and last we saw she's now a bitter ex.
It seems as though John Stewart will always be remembered for either being the angry black man in his first few years or for causing a planet to blow up due to his cockiness. His character development is almost always tied back to at least one of those two things even though they occurred over some 20 plus years ago.
DC Comics supervillain Doctor Light was a largely unused character who gained some relevance when it was revealed that he had raped the wife of a superhero. Since then, the fact that he's a rapist has become such an integral part of his character that he could very well be renamed Doctor Rape. To quote Plastic Man, "It's like that's his power now."
This was basically a calculated use of this trope by DC writers, which turned Light into a major villain overnight (albeit one whose major goal seems to be raping women instead of world domination). Note that before the rape revelation, he'd never been portrayed as possessing any sort of sexual deviancy. Even when he was killed off, he was in the middle of an orgy with a bunch of hookers dressed as superheroines.
The way he keeps mentioning it over and over makes him seem more of a joke character: a Harmless Villain by The 'Verse's standards constantly reminding us of the one time that he managed to do something nasty in a failed attempt to assure heroes that he's evil, no, really, he is!
Green Arrow and Black Canary had a twenty-year-long romantic relationship, during which time GA's total non-Dinah activity consisted of a) being raped and b) kissing another woman (once). Somehow, both writers and fans take from this that Oliver is a total slutwho constantly sleeps around on the long-suffering Dinah. To justify this, writers added him sleeping with Black Lightning's niece, and later Manitou Raven's wife, to make his 'total manwhore' status valid.
Bane, Batman's foe, received a number of augmentations, such as subcutaneous shields, and the "Venom" drug that increased his already formidable strength. He beat Batman mostly through simple intelligence, and was captured by "AzBats" pulling the Venom tube out of his head (but he was still far from helpless). In the comics, he weaned himself off the drug while in prison, has allied himself with and fought Batman on several occasions without any chemical assistance, and is established as a Batman-level strategist. Most interpretations of him in other media (up until the past few years) are of a thug who goes down the second he's deprived of Venom, and is often Dumb Muscle to boot.
Batman: Arkham Asylum is... a bit mixed on this. Although it portrays him as still a Venom addict, and has him almost completely paralyzed when Dr. Young removes all traces of it from his body, merely being unhooked from his Venom pump barely slows him down. The roof collapsing on him manages to buy enough time for Batman and Commissioner Gordon to get out... but he turns out to have been feigning defeat to try to catch Batman off guard. Unfortunately for him, Batman actually anticipated this, and knocks him into the river with the Batmobile when he tries to ambush them. Not quite "Batman-level strategist without chemical dependencies", but a step in the right direction. And, his mannerisms and speech also show that he's anything butDumb Muscle.
The sequel game Batman: Arkham City has him team up with Batman in a side mission to round up and the remaining supplies of the Titan formula, in order to maintain his lock on super-drug-enhanced market. Turns out he was only pretending so Batman would retrieve the supply, and was pretty pissed at Batman for destroying it; he wanted to keep it for himself. It also turns out Batman anticipated him, and let Bane round up his half of the supply so he wouldn't have to look for it himself. Then he traps Bane and destroys it.
The prequel game Batman: Arkham Origins offers an explanation for Bane's being a mountain of muscle in Asylum, as well as a potential explanation for his not being as clever as in the comics. The game initially portrays him close to the comics, with a bulky but still realistic physique and smart enough to figure out Batman's Secret Identity, which he uses to attack the Batcave and kill Alfred (Bruce manages to revive him). Then in the final battle Bane wants to beat Batman, and therefore injects himself with TN-1, an experimental "upgrade" of Venom (and the precursor to the Titan drug from Asylum), which makes him grow into a giant but also damages his brain, especially his memory center.
This was also averted in the most unlikely place of all: LEGO Batman where Bane is calmly reading a book while he beats Killer Croc at arm wrestling. Amazing how a dialogue-less video game shows his intelligence better than most cartoons.
In Batman: The Animated Series, Bane only uses Venom at a strategic point of the decisive fight, and is defeated when Batman opens the valve to his tank, severely overdosing him with the drug. It seems to be played straight in Batman Beyond, where Bane is a cripple on life support due to the Venom use, but once you take into account that he's in his eighties and the condition of other users after mere weeks...
Young Justice shows Bane to be a cunning tactician without the use of Venom. In his normal human form, he is even able to use his knowledge of martial arts to briefly overpower Superboy during a struggle. However, he does go down rather easy once Superboy and Miss Martian work together to beat him up, making it a bit of an inversion of the other examples; he's extremely intelligent, and is a Badass Normal, but he's obviously outclassed by the two super-powered aliens. But the fact that it took both of them says something about his durability.
The Dark Knight Rises actually portrays Bane's tactical skill and physical strength, and omits the Venom completely (instead, he's hooked up to anesthesia to dull the pain from an old injury).
Christopher Nolan: Bane, to me, is something we haven't dealt with in the films. We wanted to do something very different in this film. He's a primarily physical villain, he's a classic movie monster in a way - but with a terrific brain.
Though ironically this depiction has created anotherNever Live It Down for Bane, in the form of the voice that Tom Hardy used for him. The voice sounded dissonantly cheerful (due to the medication that the character was using), but proved divisive and quickly became a subject of mockery. Ever since, every less-serious take on the character has incorporated a parody of the voice.
An earlier film incarnation of Bane, in Batman & Robin, is a 98 pound weakling before the Venom, and is dumbed down to the point that most of his dialogue consists of him shouting his own name. Though it's doubtful anyone considers this a canon representation of the character, since just about everyone wants to pretend Batman & Robin never happened.
Also, when Bane appears in any sort of media that doesn't outright depict the scene in question, expect some reference to his "Breaking the Bat" moment in Knightfall. Probably the few times a character can't live down an achievement rather than a failure.
This is often how J'onn J'onzz feels about his time with the Justice League International. Ironic in that previous to his International days, he had just come off of the "Detroit" League, which was one of the lowest points in the Justice League of America's history. One would think he would be more ashamed of that. Most of them died at the end.
The Joker and, well any writer who portrays him as a poor fighter who goes down with one hit. Some have actually written him as a very capable fighter, due to his unpredictable nature and high pain tolerance. In "Mad Love" he even held his own against Batman. But the fandom seems completely blind to this.
Raven can't really live down her '90s Audience-Alienating Era in which Marv Wolfman killed her off, then had her return as an evil sexual dominatrix who ruined Nightwing and Starfire's wedding, made out with Starfire and implanted her with a "demon seed" (later revealed to be her actual good soul), and attacked and made out with other Titans to turn them into her servants. Especially controversial among one group of fans is the implication that she might have sexually abused Changeling when he was under her thrall, and had him either rape or cannibalize another woman in his madness. Although Wolfman would have "Dark Raven" and the good Raven confirmed and established as separate personalities and entities by the end of the run (with the Dark Raven persona having taken another woman's similar body in order to do her evil bidding and unknowingly transferring the purified Raven's soul into Starfire), there are a number of fans enraged that Raven was easily forgiven by her fellow Titans and will never forget this arc, Continuity Reboot aside. This especially gets brought up in "Raven vs. Terra" arguments, where those on Terra's side will argue that Raven was not any better than the teenage sociopath for these actions, as well as citing her early actions of mind-controlling Wally West (into loving her) as a way to get him to rejoin the Titans. Then there's the period where she tried to seduce Nightwing, even though it was resolved and Raven gave up on her feelings after being convinced that it was only platonic love that she felt.
This has created a continual cycle of Raven walking through the Heel–Face Revolving Door ad nauseam, where the moment she sports red skin and/or four eyes, fans immediately know what's about to go down. There are large portions of the fanbase that can't help but view this as a flaw in itself: Raven is so easily corruptible into evil that whether she's currently good or not doesn't matter. Looking at it cynically, one could see her as a fair-weather friend who is on your side one minute, but so naive and unguarded that anyone can manipulate her into being hostile or turn her against you with one mood swing.
As if that weren't enough, a Marv Wolfman-penned "Raven" miniseries during the run of Teen Titans volume 3 had the tagline on the first cover: "Now in her own EMO series". Fans still snark of it many years later, as well as the incomprehensible art style that seemed to clash with the writing.
Wonder Girl: It was difficult for Cassie Sandsmark to live down the period of volume 3 where Geoff Johns and every writer after seemed to turn her into an increasingly catty, abrasive and overbearing team member who was supposedly powerful and leader material, but condescending and demanding to her teammates and who took up screentime from other characters.
Bryan Q. Miller had Aquagirl attempt to seduce Blue Beetle in volume 3 and make him stray away from his girlfriend (Traci 13). Despite a completely different characterization beforehand by other writers, Aquagirl was now deemed the homewrecker and team slut by a vocal group of fans with many cries for her to be killed off. JT Krul didn't exactly kill her, but swiftly wrote her and Bombshell off the team in an offhand remark when it came to his run (Cassie had fired the two for a lack of experience).
Ted Kord, the second Blue Beetle, had a bit of a weight problem towards the end of the Giffen/DeMatthies run on Justice League International, and then there was a story in Justice League Quarterly #8 (March 1992) where he went on a diet and exercise regime and looked set to stick to it. And in the comics, that was that. In fandom he was "the Fat Slob superhero" right up until he died (although some used his weight issues to make him more of The Woobie). This weight problem is not forgotten by some authors either, as it was referenced in Chuck Dixon's run on Birds of Prey and in Countdown to Infinite Crisis when Ted reflects on his past.
Lois Lane often gets mocked for being a supposedly brilliant journalist who can't tell that Clark Kent and Superman are one in the same. Leaving aside she became Clark's Secret-Keeper in the 90's, stories about Lois strongly suspecting (but being unable to prove) the truth date all the way back to 1942.
Supergirl: In 1962 storyline "The Super-Steed of Steel", Supergirl kisses rodeo star "Bronco" Bill once, completely unaware that man is her sidekick Comet (a centaur who had been turned into a horse by an evil wizard). Kara never discovered Bill's true identity, and Comet's unrequited crush on her was dropped after that story and never brought up again...except for comic fans, who still joke about Silver Age Supergirl "dating" a "horse" many decades after the fact.
No matter what she does, Power Girl will always be mostly known as the patron saint of giant boobs.
No matter how he might top himself in pure despicableness, Lex Luthor is best known among geeks for stealing 40 cakes, even though it happened in The Super Dictionary (a non-canon children book).
Superboy-Prime had become an immature whiny sociopath in Infinite Crisis, but still had some motives that made him slip near Well-Intentioned Extremist. But in Countdown to Final Crisis, he said one line, after which fans forgot about that and marked him as an complete idiot and nobody could treat him seriously after that. This line was:
People will probably never forget the time that New 52 Harley Quinn slaughtered hundreds of innocent adults and children by having bombs hidden in handheld video game machines. It was so deplorable and so beyond the lighter tone and characterisation of Harley's solo title that began soon afterwards, that it became Fanon Discontinuity almost immediately. However, it is still constantly brought up, right down to the story being included in the character's "best of" TPB in 2015.
Zatannamind wiping Doctor Light to make him less dangerous, and then mind wiping Batman, in Identity Crisis has become this. It's got to the point that before the 2011 reboot that every single one of Zatanna's main appearances referenced her mind wiping. First issue of Gotham City Sirens even had Poison Ivy call her "Miss Mindwipe." Zatanna will ONLY ever be known FOR the mind wipes.
Writer Ron Marz will never live down killing off Kyle Rayner's girlfriend Alex and having her body stuffed into a refrigerator, the original Trope Namer for Stuffed into the Fridge. Even though the death of a loved one, male or female, to give a hero's backstory more tragedy was already an old trope when he did it in the early Nineties. It was in no small part due to Gail Simone and her website "Women in Refrigerators" that was used as a rallying cry against what was perceived as sexism in comic books. Then later, Simone and Marz met and actually became somewhat good friends... and now some people will never let Simone live down the fact that she railed against Marz and the character death. Not only supporters of Marz, but those who felt that Simone betrayed her past actions by associating herself with a man who would do such a thing and sold out.
The JSA will likely never escape jokes about how how their first female member, Wonder Woman, was relegated to the role of their secretary.
While DC has made a huge amount of effort to change the public perception of Aquaman after Superfriends, which has been fairly successful, there will still never be a shortage of jokes about him being "the useless one who talks to fish".
The fact Jason Todd died tends to be the one thing casual fans knew about him. Making it worse is that until about the time of DC's New 52, even the writers seem to blame Jason for his death, with characters saying he "failed" or brought his death on himself. What actually happened is that Jason, a teenager with abandonment issues, tried to find his biological mother who immediately sells him out to the Joker.
◊. While he hasn't lapsed back into addiction, the fact that he's a former junkie is a significant part of his backstory, and comes up regularly — almost to the point of being a Disability Superpower ("That was tough, but nothing compared to giving up drugs!"). An issue of Titans established that this actually wasn't the last time he did heroin, though, partially justifying the fact that it's constantly mentioned.
