You might have heard that Batman’s parents are dead—it’s sort of his whole thing. It’s inevitable, then, that any attempt to adapt the avenging orphan’s story to the screen—including the recently debuted Gotham—will at some point feature Thomas and Martha Wayne getting gunned down as poor little Brucie has to watch.
Vulture has put together a cool little supercut of nine different versions of comic-dom’s worst-planned alleyway shortcut, all playing out simultaneously across live action and animation. The amazing thing is how consistent the details of the Waynes’ deaths are over the years: theater, fancy clothes, shortcut, heavy shadows, menacing mugger, gunshot, sad baby Batman. Even the live-action versions use the same brooding, dark color palette as the cartoons (with the exception of the streetlight-colored Batman Begins, which also commits the blasphemy of having the Waynes gunned down after leaving the opera, instead of the traditional Zorro film.)