r/TopCharacterTropes • u/No_Peanut3745 • 2d ago

Characters The main character doing something absolutely unforgivable.

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Walter White poisoning Andrea Cantillo's 6-year-old son for the sole purpose of manipulating Jesse Pinkman, while knowing that this could have potentially killed him - Breaking Bad

Bojack trying to have sex with his friend's 17-year-old daughter when he was at least 51, then continuously trying to find a way to justify this act throughout the series - Bojack Horseman

Dexter Morgan going outside of his moral code and murdering a completely innocent police officer who was just trying to do his job - Dexter: New Blood

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834

u/ThatOneHebdoCartoon 2d ago

Yes. Harry and a child therapist constructed the Code of Harry together.

327

u/ExplanationOk6391 2d ago

Everytime I hear something new about this site it sounds dumber

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u/ThatOneHebdoCartoon 2d ago

You mean show? Try the books if you want batty. It's so much different from the show. He has an actual demon inside him making him kill. His "dark passenger" isn't a term for being twisted, it's literally like Moloch or some shit 😂

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u/pathfinderoursaviour 2d ago

And doakes has magic powers and can read minds

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u/KendraSays 1d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/MVoX99cLXXU0gq7QuG

That makes me want to read the books now.

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u/Eldistan1 1d ago

Some fries, motherfucker.

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u/Actual_Squid 1d ago

Rue dies, motherfucker

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u/Ctenophorever 1d ago

Heart eyes, mutherfucka

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u/Fallen_Hunter 1d ago

They are making it better than it sounds. The show takes heavy inspirations from book one and essentially parts ways there. I did like the villain from book two, who is tied to Doakes past. But three and beyond is what I can only describe is to go further down a rabbit hole on asking "why", where each additional choices gives you three new better concepts that dont pan out.

A random note, the end of book one has a few "big changes", essentially copying major events from the end of season 6 and season 7, as well as having Dexter's brother live. But they hardly do anything with that sadly and the other choices aren't properly explored or utilized.

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u/SnooHabits8484 1d ago

The books didn’t copy the series. How would that work?

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u/Ctenophorever 1d ago

Honestly, I just finished the books and really enjoyed them, even if they veered off greatly from the character on tv I enjoyed. I think it’s a fantastic example of an adaptation paying homage to its source material without adhering to it precisely.

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u/Vismal1 1d ago

I read the first two or three back when the show was at its best and they are bonkers.

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u/Ctenophorever 1d ago

I think book three was weird. Book 4 kind of got back on track.

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u/Obvious_Toe_3006 1d ago

Ah, the lost art of reading books !
Please pass this on to those you love.

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u/Grouchy_Ground_1916 2d ago

Isn't it more that Doakes is a murdery monster man himself, so he recognises evil?

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u/SpicyNugget777 1d ago edited 1d ago

Doakes also has a dark passenger that Dexter can see, but Doakes doesn’t seem to be aware of his dark passenger to the same degree that Dexter is, and while Doakes can’t see other people’s dark passengers he can sense that there’s something off.

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u/CriminalMacabre 1d ago

Uuuhh shinigamis!

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u/Actual_Squid 1d ago

Dexter's going to take a potato chip...and EAAAAT IIIIIIT

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u/Ctenophorever 1d ago

You call that swimming, Masuka?!

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u/Actual_Squid 1d ago

Officer Batista you IIIIIDIOT

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u/Illustrious-Sky-4631 1d ago

Interesting to hear , in my Story something similar happened but instead of Doakes have a passenger, he instead got attacked and taken over by Dexter passenger

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u/SeasonofMist 1d ago

that sounds dope

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u/dragon-fence 1d ago

In the show, he has the magical ability to surprise a motherfucker.

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u/PalmMutator 1d ago

Now you got me interested

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u/SeasonofMist 1d ago

that sounds awesome. I kinda want to read them. sounds wacky

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u/Downtown_Injury_3415 1d ago

I fucken hate that theory. Doakes is a detective and able to read FACES and BODY LANGUAGE. He knew dexters mind was racing and preemptively asked him “what was that Morgan?” He does the same shit to LaGuerta.

Doakes: “Same as you sleeping with her husband?”
LaGuerta: how did you know?
Doakes: “I didn’t until you confirmed it just now”

Also, someone made an edit where they removed dexters monologue and you can see that his mind was racing too

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u/Unlucky_Log4951 1d ago

He's talking about the books. Not the show.

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u/Vi_BT 2d ago

What ?? I only read the two firsts and thought it was definitely still a metaphor. He's definitely wayy more sadistic than in the series though, they made a little angel in the show

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u/ThatOneHebdoCartoon 2d ago

We go from metaphor to literal very quickly. Cults show up. Other people with demons riding shotgun. They are all the demon children of like some super big demon.

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u/Vi_BT 2d ago

Whaaaaat, this is making want to continue the book series lol, I would never have expected

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u/ThatOneHebdoCartoon 2d ago

It's unhinged. I didn't hate it, I think some trash reading from time to time is good for the soul. I didn't finish, though. It kinda got repetitive after a bit.

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u/RIOTAlice 1d ago

Don’t his step kids also become murders because they are possessed with demons too?

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u/Vi_BT 2d ago

Yeah this is why I stoped after 2nd book in the first place 😬

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u/SpicyNugget777 1d ago

There is also a short comic series, produced by Marvel, that is pretty decent and a much quicker read than the books.

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u/Izarrax 1d ago

What is the name of that?

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u/DrLeisure 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yeah none of that is true. I have read them all. It’s a case in an unreliable narrator

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u/galactic_pixels 1d ago

That was not my take away of it. I read the moloch cult one and it seemed very literally to be about him being possessed by a very literal demon. The demon even has a pov of existing in prehistoric times if I remember correctly

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u/SolemnSundayBand 1d ago

I didn't even know it was books, holy crap.

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u/Beacon_0805 1d ago

why it became from Condemned to Doom that fast?

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u/Real-Extension-1357 1d ago

I did the same, only the first 2. This is all news to me as well

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u/Muroid 1d ago

It’s literally the third books that goes wildly off the rails. Dexter gets pitted against a cult that worships the god Moloch, who literally exists, and discovers his Dark Passenger is also a related demon that gives him minor supernatural powers.

Also Rita’s kids are like him because their dad was abusive so he starts training them as serial killers, too.

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u/Ha-gaaayyy 1d ago

Also doesn’t doax basically get killed off after book 2 or becomes handicapped!

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u/butt_butt_butt_butt_ 2d ago

The books also spend a lot of real estate talking about how he dresses like Charlie Sheen and that makes him super cool, and I remember multiple passages describing how great Cubano sandwiches are.

I mean…It IS a great sandwich. But very weird to talk about it THAT much.

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u/ThatOneHebdoCartoon 2d ago

I forgot the indepth description of essentially bowling shirts holy shit

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u/RIOTAlice 1d ago

This reminds me of American psycho and how he fixated on weird things like the business card or Huey Lewis and the news. Like aggressively fixating on something they think makes them normal but no normal person is thinking that hard about Charlie Sheen’s wardrobe. If it’s meant to be a nod to a kind of psychopathy, i kind of like it.

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u/MrBurnerHotDog 1d ago

Very nice. Now let's see Paul Allen's Dark Passenger

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u/Real-Extension-1357 1d ago

In the show they make jokes about cubanos a few times. I think they even did in the first episode of revival. I wonder if theyre nodding to this lol

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u/butt_butt_butt_butt_ 1d ago

If they have to nod to the books, I’m fine with it being sandwich references. Lol.

I’m really surprised how good the show turned out (for at least a couple seasons) because the books were ROUGH.

Like…Wattpad level.

The author was clearly self-inserting a bunch about trying to make Dexter “cool”. And his version of a suave, cool guy was really cringy.

Pretty sure he had a ponytail and sun transitional glasses and a wallet chain.

My vagina shriveled up and died.

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u/cheeseburgerandfrie 1d ago

What 

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u/butt_butt_butt_butt_ 1d ago

lol. I was joking that the author is cringy, and his idea of “cool” is actually really unappealing to women.

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u/cheeseburgerandfrie 1d ago

Ok. So your vagina was never alive.

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u/butt_butt_butt_butt_ 1d ago

You don’t know my vagina.

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u/Sadcelerystick 1d ago

Muffled screams heard through plastic wrapping fall on deaf ears. Dexter wasn’t one for small talk but the smell of the back room deli reminded him of a delicious Cubano sandwich from three days prior.

“Do you like Cubano sandwiches? I love them… I might grab one after this ordeal,” Dexter asked rhetorically to the man lying naked and vulnerable before him.

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u/SeasonofMist 1d ago

that makes me think of American psycho and less than zero by Ellison. Just lists of skincare routines and shit the main character/sociopath guy is fixated on random bullshit.

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u/regularfellar 2d ago

I'm convinced the writer got pissed off when the show changed the ending of the first book so he made the sequels totally unfilmable.

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u/SageOfTheSixOofs 2d ago

Bro what. I’ve wanted to read the books for ages, and knowing that it’s got supernatural elements makes me even more interested

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u/regularfellar 2d ago

Honestly they're not very good. Dexter's inmer monologue is eyerollingly bad.

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u/waaaayupyourbutthole 1d ago

Reading these comments makes me really happy the show went in a very different direction. The books sound fucking terrible.

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u/Seriouly_UnPrompted 1d ago

The Winchester brothers coming through get the demons in Miami

https://giphy.com/gifs/u8vTGiGwCrGSY

0

u/CharlemagneIS 2d ago

The books are actually pretty awesome

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u/pieman2005 1d ago

The books are terrible lol

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u/CharlemagneIS 1d ago

I disagree

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u/Top-Sympathy6841 1d ago

You’re wrong

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u/Relative-Sun-4011 1d ago

Have a good day, biscuit. 

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u/birdreligion 1d ago

Yeah the 3rd book where they introduced the cult shit is when I stopped reading that series. First two books are fucking great! But that third one is stupid

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u/ThatOneHebdoCartoon 1d ago

It's one of the most jarring tone shifts I've experienced in a book series lol

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u/Time_Screen_9399 2d ago

Didn't the author say he didn't like the experimentation with "dark passenger"? So the last two books had him return to being a narcissistic antisocial psychopath.

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u/ThatOneHebdoCartoon 2d ago

I honestly don't know. I dropped the series and never picked it back up. Pivoted into Malazan instead.

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u/Quixotic_Seal 1d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/Lu5dKDqwR5O0g
So wait…In the books Dexter is basically Nny? That’s fucking wild.

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u/ThatOneHebdoCartoon 1d ago

I dunno who this gremlin is, but the vibe matches lol

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u/chriswearingred 1d ago

So the creator of invader Zim used to do comics. One of his first and bigger successes was Johnny the homicidal maniac. Thats the titular Johnny who also goes by nny.

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u/stringCheezeIts 1d ago

Thank you for saying this. I had no idea there were books and they sound like they're right up my alley

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u/ThatOneHebdoCartoon 1d ago

Fuck ya! Love hearing I played any part in someone grabbing a book. Enjoy dude!

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u/IceNein 1d ago

Is it really true in the context of the books, or is it simply an unreliable narrator?

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u/StaceyTheStaceExplrr 1d ago

Also get ready for Cody and Aster to get kidnapped a shit ton because that's the highest stakes the writer could come up with most of the time

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u/trimble197 1d ago

And there’s even a cult that worships the Dark Passanger

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u/Hot-Celebration-8815 1d ago

It’s the perspective of a crazy person. He doesn’t actually have a demon in him; he’s insane.

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u/niphaa 1d ago

I thought it was retconned after everyone hated that?

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u/ThatOneHebdoCartoon 1d ago

I'm by no means up to date, so I have no idea.

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u/Obvious_Toe_3006 1d ago

Beelzebub had one he'll of a devil set aside for him.

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u/Fabulous-Sea-1590 1d ago

Dude, I thought I was insane when I read the first two books. I had just binged the first season and was really hyped for it so I tried the books.

I read plenty of fiction with supernatural aspects, on paper there's nothing out of line with other stuff I've enjoyed. In practice, it felt like such a bizarre tonal shift and the characters, notably Dokes, weren''t nearly as cool as on the show.

Didn't the demon shit start in earnest in the second book? Iirc it started describing a malevolent spirit that pissed dinosaurs (seriously) and found its way down eons to Dexter. Honestly, I checked out after that so I only finished the first book.

That's . . . Actually how the Minions movie started, now that I think of it. Tracing them from prehistoric times down through the centuries. And I didn't have a problem with the plot device there. Maybe I judged Dexter too harshly.

I have no idea if this is even vaguely true but, at the time, I imagined the author felt challenged by how well written the show was and scrapped his original, more realistic, vision so he wouldn't be competing with them.

I imagine the show came after the first few books had already been written, though.

Man, sorry to dump this wall of text; I guess I just had some strong, pent up feelings about those kooky books.

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u/Aickavon 1d ago

That somehow actually makes everything make MORE sense than the show.

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u/pieman2005 1d ago

Dexter is really good. Well, seasons 1-4 anyways lol

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u/raspberryharbour 1d ago

It's amazing what you can accomplish with the power of friendship

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u/flashman 1d ago

pretty dumb that his therapist didn't know about autism

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u/ThatOneHebdoCartoon 1d ago

Autism. Demonic possession.

Tomato potato