Crisis on Infinite Earths: Supergirl and Barry Allen were the main A-Lister deaths, as well as B-Listers Clayface, Mirror Master and Dove. However, C-List casualties included Angle Man, Psimon, Nighthawk, Sunburst, The Ten-Eyed Man, Prince Ra-Man, Kole, The Bug-Eyed Bandit, Icicle, and, most ironically, Immortal Man. Kole probably deserves a special mention: she was introduced in New Teen Titans while the Crisis was already ongoing, with very strong implications that she was created just so the event would have more no-names to kill.
Infinite Crisis: The whole thing was kicked off by the deaths of certified B-Listers Maxwell Lord and Blue Beetle. C-List casualties included Rocket Red, Monocle, Black Condor, Baron Blitzkrieg, Star Sapphire (Debbie Darnell), Wildebeest, Pantha, Air-Wave, Bushido, Ratcatcher, Geist, Doctor Polaris, Human Bomb, Chemo, Peacemaker, Breach, Judomaster, Technocrat, Psycho-Pirate and Phantom Lady. And those are only a few in comparison. This was supposed to be averted by offing Nightwing, a certified A-lister (especially for a former sidekick), but instead Superboy was killed, and he can be considered low A-list or high B-list.
In a particularly extreme instance of this trope, Infinite Crisis featured the deaths of the entire main cast of the infamously terrible '90s series Blood Pack in the space of a single panel.
When James Robinson wanted to kill off an ex-Justice League Europe member in Starman #38, his editor suggested he kill off more, since they weren't using them at the time. Robinson did so, taking a whole issue to depict The Mist's slaughter, eventually having a part of Jack Knight's Shut Up, Hannibal! being mocking her for taking on innocent, easy targets. The Justice League also has a pretty storied history of C-listers who ended up being brutally killed off, ranging from Vibe and Agent Liberty to Triumph and Black Condor. Robinson had already kicked off the series by killing off the single-appearance son of the original Starman, in favor of the previously unmentioned other son of the original Starman (which didn't stop David being a significant presence in the book).
DC'sMini Series "Death of the New Gods" did exactly what it said on the label, killing off the entire suite of these well-known-yet-rarely-high-selling characters. While their original creator had "Everybody Dies" Ending as part of their original planned arc, it was wildly different than the story we got here.
DC's 52 event killed off the cult-favorite, yet clearly C-list, The Question. He didn't return until the New 52 reboot. His mantle was taken by yet another fan favorite, Canon Immigrant Renee Montoya.
Preparatory to kicking off the dramatic Mordru arc, DC's post-Zero Hour: Crisis in Time!Legion of Super-Heroes comic introduced a set of minor characters — specifically new Legionnaire Magno, Workforce recruits Radion and Blast-Off, and Uncanny Amazers member Atom'x — in order to brutalize them to lend impact to the climactic battle at the end of the arc, which saw Blast-Off and Atom'x killed, Radion disfigured, and Magno permanently depowered.
The Legion of 3 Worlds limited series quickly killed off several lesser-known Legionnaires—the Threeboot Sun Boy and Element Lad, Kinetix, and the second Karate Kid—and a large handful of minor villains. Minor character Rond "Green Lantern" Vidar, on the other hand, was given an extended send-off and proved instrumental in moving the plot along.
Thanks to a resurgence of nostalgia and a desire to improve old characters, at least one C-List Fodder massacre, Zero Hour, has been almost entirely undone, with the Hawks and the first Hourman brought back to life. Similarly, other heroes have been shown to survive the Eclipso event of that same time.
Teen Titans makes so much use of this that at least one person has made the rather morbid observation that the superhero group made of teenagers has one of the highest death-rates of any team in DC Comics. In-story, Beast Boy once lamented that several of the team's recently deceased C-list members were destined to be quickly forgotten after their funerals.
This isn't even taking into consideration how many of them have children who are either dead (Lian Harper, Robert and Jennifer Long, Cerdian, and Baby Wildebeest) or have been dead (Jai and Iris West).
The cover to Teen Titans (vol. 3) #74 said it best: "Another Titan Dies". Oddly, it was the most emotionally satisfying Titans death in that decade.
The spinoff miniseries, Terror Titans, seemed to exist for this purpose. Throughout the course of the series six characters bite it: Molecule, a Z-list Titan during the post-Infinite Crisis year long gap, is cleaved in half by Persuader. Bolt, a minor villain with teleportation powers, is killed by his son. TNTeena and Pristine are new characters created solely to die. Disrupter is one of the main characters and killed at the end of the series after less than a dozen appearances. The most prominent character killed is Fever, one of the main characters from the 2001 Doom Patrol series.
The event that formed the revived Teen Titans was the 2003 Bat Family CrossoverTitans/Young Justice: Graduation Day. There were two deaths that dissolved the teams and brought back the Teen Titans: Lilith Clay/Omen and Donna Troy. The former, being the lesser-known of the two, had her death treated as a way to show off how dangerous their opponent was, and it was heavily downplayed by both the characters and narration compared to the latter, who's death was played up for as much impact as it was worth. Furthermore, Donna got to come back to life just a few years later, but Omen wasn't so lucky as she had to remain dead for the rest of the continuity until the New 52. Even then, she had to wait until 2016's DC Rebirth to come back as a hero, as when she did return the first time, she was made into a villain. To say the least, the way this was treated was a very sore point for the fanbase.
This trope and its connection to the Teen Titans was pretty much lampshaded during Infinite Crisis when Jason Todd drops in at Titans Tower and confronts Tim Drake. As the two Robins fight, Jason blows up when he realizes that there were statues of Titans who have died and people probably never knew existed, yet he never got a statue of his own, though he was a member for about one mission and, being a Robin, was probably more well known than they ever were.
Legion of Super-Heroes: In this case, the sheer number of characters attached to the team may help to explain the higher body count. (Because of the Legion's frequent reboots, though, dead characters frequently turn up alive in the team's next incarnation. To date, the only Legionnaire who was killed off and stayed dead is Monstress.)
Green Lantern: Sometimes, it seems like the bulk of the Green Lantern Corps exists to provide this for the latest Crisis Crossover. Green Lantern (vol. 4) #27 revealed that the average life expectancy for a member is "four years, three months, one day, thirteen hours and seven minutes".
To set up their new addition to Batman'sRogues Gallery, Hush, in the aptly titled comic Batman: Hush as villainous enough, they have him Kick the Dog by killing Harold. Who is Harold? Well, he's a character that's barely ever been mentioned in Batman comics in the last 10 years, a mute and deformed homeless person with a gift for mechanics that Batman took in and hired to work on the Batcave. No, you're not really supposed to know about him.
In Batman, following the year of 52 where Harvey Dent protected the city, to have a Face–Heel Turn again, they had the Great White Shark frame Harvey for the murders of C-Listers Magpie, the KGBeast, and Orca (to add insult to injury, her corpse was later found partially eaten by Killer Croc). He also took out certified B-Lister (or should it be certiglied g-Lister?) The Ventriloquist, so that has to give them some solace. Also, a new version of C-Lister Tally Man appears during the story, and lasts for all of three pages.
The Knightfall event also indulged in a little house cleaning of minor baddies: Film Freak was killed by Bane, Abattoir was killed by Jean-Paul Valley, and the two puppets of The Ventriloquist shot each other in what ended up being a form of suicide.
One of Damien Wayne's first actions after his introduction was to decapitate The Spook, a craptacular recurring Bat-villain from the 80's that only the most dedicated of Batman fans even know existed. note However, seeing as the Spook's whole shtick is being a master of illusion, it's possible (though unlikely) he could've faked his death and resurface again.
Interestingly handled in The Sandman (1989): Forgotten minor character Element Girl gets a story about being minor and forgotten, with powers that make it impossible to have a normal life or death.
Seemingly averted at the start: the first victims of the Black Lanterns were relatively well-known heroes Tempest, Hawkgirl and Hawkman, with the latter two resurrected by the end of the event. However, C-list former Teen Titans Damage and Hawk (not that one, but his partner's sister, which is the point) are killed, as is Gehenna (Firestorm's girlfriend and partner) and Doctor Polaris (who is killed offscreen).
The Justice League of America tie-in issues lampshade this a bit. The resurrected Arthur Light mocks Kimiyo Hoshi by telling her that she'll quickly be forgotten after her death due to her relative obscurity. He then lists several deceased D-listers (such as Triumph and the Blood Pack) who were indeed quickly forgotten about by heroes and fans alike after their deaths.
Ons spin-off has the most blatant and lampshaded example ever: the Rainbow Raiders, a group of legacy Flash villains who'd made two appearances ever and never actually fought the Flash, drank poison in the hope of becoming Black Lanterns. But since the black rings are attracted to dead people through their emotional connections, they weren't resurrected. That's right, they literally stayed dead because nobody cared about them!
Happens twice in DC's Identity Crisis (2004), wherein Sue Dibny (the Elongated Man's wife) is killed and raped (in a flashback) and Firestorm explodes after being stabbed through the chest with another C-Lister hero's (Shining Knight) sword by a C-Lister villain (Shadow Thief). The whole series was a C-List-fest! Elongated Man even lampshades it in his narration. Saying that since he and Firehawk are relatively minor characters, the reader cannot be assured they won't be killed.
Spiritual SuccessorHeroes in Crisis largely follows on from that example. The biggest casualty of the massacre to kick the story off that isn't reversed by the end is Green Arrow's former sidekick Roy Harper/Arsenal, who is at best a very low B-lister. After that, you have a lot of also-ran Teen Titans (Hot Spot, Lagoon Boy, Solstice, Red Devil, Protector, Gnaark) and some long-Out of Focus characters (Nemesis, Tattooed Man, Gunfire, Blue Jay). About half these characters hadn't appeared since the New 52. This left such a bad taste in everyone's mouth, especially concerning the accidental murderer Wally West, that a good chunk of The Flash (Infinite Frontier) was spent undoing this (except for Arsenal, who had to stay dead for story reasons, and poor Solstice, who was embarrassingly forgotten)
In Justice League: Cry for Justice, the villain Prometheus mentions having killed off several members of the little-known Global Guardians team in passing with a brief flashback. One member, Tasmanian Devil, was eventually revived by a friend in the one-shot Starman & Congorilla special, after the implication of Bury Your Gays was pointed out. An ill-fated version of the Blood Pack (again!) also tried to challenge him, resulting in one being hit by a Portal Cut, another losing his hands, and a third being killed offscreen. Also killed were Winky, Blinky, and Noddy, Golden Age Flash supporting-cast characters who were so C-List they had not been seen in over sixty years.
The Global Guardians in general have a habit of this. Aside from the ones killed by Prometheus and Roulette, Bushmaster, Thunderlord, Doctor Mist, Rising Sun, and two different Jack O'Lanterns bit the dust over the years. Their status as a team of Captain Ethnics with a large roster make them an easy target for this trope.
Most of the heroes created during the 90's Bloodlines event ended up quickly falling into obscurity, only to be brought out of limbo in order to be used as cannon fodder in events such as Infinite Crisis and Faces of Evil. The high mortality rate of the Bloodlines heroes was referenced in-universe several times, with the Flash chalking this up to a general lack of competence on their part. In addition, certain writers (Jamal Igle being most vocal) have gone on record stating that these characters' deaths were due to the fact that they (the writers) personally didn't like them and found them to be one of the worst parts of '90s DC canon.
JSA Classified: Similarly, Roulette (who runs the House, where kidnapped metahumans fight for their lives on the wagers of supervillains) has a wall of pictures depicting all the heroes who fell under her supervision. These include Maximan, Impala (of the Global Guardians, even), and the third Firebrand. Yeah, who?
This was the original point of Suicide Squad. They would send C-list super powered scumbags on dangerous missions because they were expendable. As of late, the cast has become famous on their own, so no one dies any longer. One of the more recent iterations of the Suicide Squad featured a revamped version of the Mercs, an old 90's supervillain team from the pages of Stormwatch, who were all unceremoniously killed off.
The Atom (Ryan Choi) was killed to show how dangerous Deathstroke's new Titans team was, which occurred during the same month that the company was launching a new one-shot and co-feature starring Ryan's predecessor. After some controversy regarding killing off one of the company's few Asian heroes to push his white originator, DC decided to retcon Ryan's death.
The Ur example of this one for comic books has to be Doom Patrol. At least two entire incarnations of the team were destroyed. The only survivor of any of these teams has been Cliff "Robotman" Steele, and he often wonders if it wouldn't have been better to join them. Proving that even a trope like this one has its merits, said wipe-outs are arguably what made the team as famous as it became, and the team's dignified response in the face of certain death has become a core part of more recent incarnations of the team. Although admittedly, said versions of the team have consisted mostly of resurrected versions of the old characters.
This trope gets explored in the Suicide Squad arc "The Chosen Juan", sure the Suicide Squad are expendable but they're also valuable assets and their missions are often so vital that failure could mean the end of the world. So sometimes the Suicide Squad are given some nameless superhuman criminals to be human shields for them. These punks are even given red uniforms.
The miniseries Arkham Asylum: Living Hell introduced seven new supervillain characters (Great White Shark, Death Rattle, Lunkhead, Doodlebug, Jane Doe, Humpty Dumpty, and Junkyard Dog) only to have all but Shark, Doe, and Humpty Dumpty killed off by the end of the story.
Lampshaded and played for laughs in Power Girl. The Blue Snowman, an obscure Wonder Woman villain from the Golden Age made her Post-Crisis debut. A helpful caption noted that "Life Expectancy: Panel 4, Page 14". True enough, she gets devoured by an alien monstrosity on that page.
Wonder Woman (1942): Pretty much any and everyone who dies in the book is quickly brought back using Paula von Gunther's modified purple ray machine even if said characters only appeared for a panel or two. Then Doctor Psycho killed one of the very few recurring but definite c-listers Lila Brown by blowing her up which ensured that she stayed dead and Psycho was established as a more dangerous threat that the usual foes.
