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Curated playlist

Deceased fictional characters

  • Luke SkywalkerLuke Skywalker was originally going to be named Starkiller. George Lucas dropped the surname months into filming.
  • Tony Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe)Marvel's Tony Stark was created in 1963 to be the quintessential capitalist. Stan Lee based him on Howard Hughes.
  • Darth VaderThe actor inside Darth Vader's suit never knew his voice would be replaced. James Earl Jones voiced him instead.
  • Wanda Maximoff (Marvel Cinematic Universe)Wanda Maximoff, the character played by Elizabeth Olsen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, spent two days buried in the rubble of her family's apartment in Sokovia, a country in Eastern Europe. A missile had just killed her parents. Her…
  • Princess LeiaPrincess Leia began as a spoiled teenage princess in George Lucas's early drafts.
  • Gwen StacyGwen Stacy is a college student in Marvel's Spider-Man comics, and her murder in 1973 is still argued over by readers and writers. In 2004, the artist John Romita Sr. looked back on the uproar. Fans had threatened him, writer Gerry Conway…
  • Han SoloHan Solo was first written as a green-skinned alien with gills. George Lucas's earliest draft gave him no nose.
  • SarumanTolkien did not know Saruman existed when he began The Lord of the Rings. He grew out of a plot problem.
  • Albert WeskerAlbert Wesker begins the original Resident Evil of 1996 as an ally. As captain of a police special forces unit, he hands the player supplies and useful information. That helpfulness is a disguise. Wesker was created by the Japanese game…
  • HomelanderGarth Ennis, who created Homelander together with the artist Darick Robertson, offered a blunt way to picture him. In Ennis's words: "It might help to think of the Homelander as having all the self-control of… let's say… a…
  • Billy ButcherBilly Butcher hunts gods, and he does it with no superpowers of his own. He is a fictional character, one of the two main protagonists of the comic series The Boys, created by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. He leads a group of…
  • SauronSauron, the villain of The Lord of the Rings, never speaks in the novel. He is almost never seen.
  • Black NoirBlack Noir is the name shared by three characters in The Boys, a story created in comics by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. Eric Kripke later developed it for television. In both versions, Noir belongs to the Seven, a hedonistic and…
  • Lady MacbethLady Macbeth talks her wavering husband into killing King Duncan by questioning his manhood.
  • YodaYoda, the small green Jedi Master of the Star Wars films, dies at the age of 900. That is not the end of his story. His voice returns decades later, and he keeps turning up in new tales. He is tiny and elderly, and he arranges his words in…
  • Daenerys TargaryenDaenerys Targaryen stepped into her husband's funeral fire and walked out unburned.

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