10 Batman Moments That Shocked The World

Before his triumphant return as the Red Hood, Jason Todd was about as popular as a turd in a swimming pool. After Dick Grayson had given up the mantle of Robin to branch out on his own as Nightwing, it fell to Jason Todd to fill that rather large role. Sadly for him, he was roundly rejected for a myriad of reasons, the main one being that he wasn't Dick Grayson.

This all came to a head in the Death in the Family story, when DC would decide to allow the general public to decide if Jason lived or died. As you probably know by now they chose the latter option.

After Batman fired him, Jason went off in search of his birth mother. This led him to Lebanon where he found her but, unknown to him, so had the Joker. This led to his mother betraying him and the Joker beating him half to death with a crowbar, before locking both mother and son in a room with a giant bomb.

What followed has since gone down in comic book history, as Jason sacrificed his life by taking the brunt of the explosion to protect the woman who had readily betrayed him.

If the fact DC's readers voted for this to happen wasn't shocking enough, then the image of Bats emerging with Jason's corpse surely was.