YMMV / The Substitute

• Retroactive Recognition: Raymond Cruz plays Joey Six.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Some fans think the Villain with Good Publicity public face Rolle puts on (a black cop who went to night school and became a Badass Bureaucrat principal to improve the black community through education in a rough inner city school) could have made a better Big Good than the Big Bad he turns out to be.
  • Rem and Wellman, two members of Shale's Badass Crew who seem more likable than Hollan and Joey Six, never get to be more than Satellite Characters.
  • Darrell Sherman from the first film and Kara Lavelle from the second are Cool Teachers who help out the protagonists of their respective films and have long-standing attachments to their Morality Pets, while being idealistic and non-violent people in contrast to the gung-ho protagonists. Many fans would have liked to see them accomplish more success with their peaceful methods rather than being killed for Collaterral Angst.
  • Mace, one of the most interesting and fleshed-out of the Inner City School students in the second film, is killed during a semi-random act of violence without ever seriously affecting the plot.
  • Sissy from the fourth movie is the racist Big Bad's daughter while rejecting his philosophy and clashing with her father about how she remains on good terms with her mother (who is engaged to a black man) and is hinted to be In Love with the Mark after being sent to seduce the main student in the movie. However, despite this interesting setup, she gets Put on a Bus after her only significant scene.

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