Do you think that if Bruce Wayne had been killed w/his parents, Gotham would have been better for it

[feygan]

Do you think that if Bruce Wayne had been killed with his parents, Gotham would have been better for it? Think about it, would the Wayne fortune have gone to Alfred? Without Bruce and his drive for vengeance, I think that Alfred would have kept up with the Wayne Foundation and laid the basis for a lot of Gotham betterment projects

Comments

[ffutures]

There's probably some sort of distant family somewhere - I have no idea why Alfred has been left in charge, it always seemed implausible to me, but maybe they would be worse if they inherited. Come to think of it, you'd think that various criminal masterminds would have tried for the Wayne fortune and/or control of Bruce - see e.g. Obadiah Stane in the Iron Man films.

It's established that he's probably the largest employer in Gotham, so probably does do quite a lot of good there and through the foundation. There's an interesting theory about that in this video.

[feygan]

"It's a very bad school district," lol. That video just spawned its own fanfic.

It was weird in the Nolan movies that Alfred would inherit all of Bruce's stuff once he was declared dead. Like, way to give someone a motive for murder. (And no one ever suspects anything about Alfred once Bruce "ran away," leaving no trace and no body. Hm. Do they even give the returning Bruce Wayne blood tests to make sure he's the real Bruce, or do they just accept his identity as good?)

I have a darkfic idea floating in my head where Thomas Wayne changes his will to leave everything to Alfred, the family's beloved butler and employee/friend. Alfred hires Joe Chill to take out the family, only the guy backs out on killing a kid. So Alfred raises Bruce up to be revenge-guy in the hopes that Bruce will get himself killed.

There was a comic variant where Alfred is the Joker.