I know it’s fighting the hypothetical, but I wouldn’t call being afraid of a gun pointed at your head as a “failure”.
I meant that he was chosen to be green lantern before Hal but failed the test so now he is trying to instill a complete lack of fear on his sons. Obviously it only worked on John.
I’m pretty sure that John’s dad was not a rejected Green Lantern candidate. I guess it’s possible, anything is possible because the writers can go in any direction they want, but there was no indication of that in the show and that doesn’t match any of the previous stories in other media.
It just seems like the test coupled with the question is TOO specific to be random abuse.
It wasn’t random. His dad was in the USMC (he was wearing the uniform) and presumably this was part of that. Maybe he had PTSD, maybe he was brainwashed into being some kind of killing machine by the military and was trying to pass that down to his son. That’s some kind of back story we haven’t been shown. But I don’t think it had anything to do with the Lanterns, and certainly nothing that suggested that he himself had been in consideration.
Maybe John’s dad was trying to push his son into being the next Hal Jordan, I’ll concede that. It’s definitely possible. That could be part of what was going on there.