James Bond’s enemies thought of some weird ways for him to die. Its been a while, but I think that Batman and Superman both had nemesises with intricate homicidial* plans.
What’s the most outlandish death intended for a character? Which character has had the largest numbers of creative ends planed from him/her?
*Since Superman is extraterrestrial, does killing him count as homicide?
It would be Kryptocide.
When I was a kid I watched The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, a cartoon show in which the villainous Hooded Claw concocted ridiculously complicated deathtraps to bump off the title character.
“Do you expect me to talk?”–James Bond 007
“No Mr. Bond. I expect you to die, after the marble rolls down the track & falls, setting off a chain of dominos which flips a switch releasing the trained rat, which jumps up on the model railroad control…”~~ Rube Goldberg.
What Tim Robbins does to Jeff Bridges in Arlington Road is entirely dependent on 50 different factors all coming together without the slightest deviation. I love it when movie psychos are omniscient like that.
See also: Seven.
I just looked up the Penelope Pitstop entry on Wikipedia, and was struck by the similarities between this show and Kim Possible. I saw an episode a few days ago in which Kim is locked in a box at the bottom of a deep, water-filled pit and must extricate herself, fight off a giant squid and a shark, swim her way to the surface and break the thick layer of ice on top of the pit, and still get to her school in time to sing at the talent show.
He’s the last son of Krypton, so technically I think it would be genocide.
Speaking of: One of Supes’ foes from the 1970s was a fellow known as the Master Jailer, whose entire gimmick was designing insanely elaborate death traps in a futile attempt to outwit Superman. (The guy was originally an architect whose masterwork was an escape-proof prison specially designed to keep supervillains confined. Then Superman accidentally upstaged him by carrying the prison into space, thereby making it EVEN MORE escape-proof; as a result, the prison was nicknamed “Superman’s Island” by the public. This so enraged the architect that he became a supervillain himself.)
The one I recall offhand was a giant maze designed on a circular turntable, which would rotate at random intervals so that the exit was never in the same place. Superman couldn’t use his powers to escape because the entire maze was lit by red solar radiation, AND also a memory-erasing ray to prevent him from memorizing the layout of the maze itself. In addition, each section of the maze contained multiple death traps, such as a live tiger (which he escaped by using his super-tough suit as a protective shield, and then strangling the tiger into unconsciousness with his cape), and a hall of mirrors that turned into a drowning pit (which he escaped by using the edge of his metal belt buckle to score the glass enough for the weight of the water to break it).
He managed to escape from all this with no powers and no memories.
In a pinch, Clark’s pretty wily for a Kansas farm boy.