Fridge / Kingdom Come

• Fridge Brilliance: At the end, the Silver Age villains who formed the "Mankind Liberation League" to exploit the superhuman conflict receive a bout of Laser-Guided Karma by being forced to work in Bruce Wayne's hospital at the end. Notice, however, that a further level of of Karma is active in what duties they've been assigned; would-be world conquerors and mass-murderers Lex Luthor and Lord Naga are assigned demeaning roles like mopping floors and emptying chamber pots, while relatively low-level thieves like The Riddler and Catwoman get relatively minor jobs.
  • Another, not mutually exclusive possibility: those with some degree of compassion (Catwoman) or at least no desire to cause harm to innocents (Riddler) work with patients, while the murderous ones are given jobs that don't put vulnerable people within their reach. In particular, the Riddler is seen dealing with a small child, a role that someone of his talents would probably find about the right audience. Lex Luthor? Cleaning bedpans.
• Ibn Al Xuffasch, Batman's estranged son, is among the former members of the Mankind Liberation Front that have been drafted into service at the Wayne Manor ad-hoc hospital. He is not wearing a restraint collar like the other MLFers, as he was a mole for Batman, and he is at the bedside of a patient who has just passed away. The designated scion of Ra's Al Ghul and member of the League of Assassins cult/terrorist cabal is clearly distraught at the passing of this person; Batman notices, and places a comforting hand on his son's shoulder. Despite the mercenary indoctrination of the League of Assassins, the regard his birth father has for human life is evident in Ibn. According to Bruce in the Novelization, the concept of death is quite new to Ibn.
• Fridge Brilliance, in a meta sense. The event that forced Superman et al. out of retirement is the destruction of Kansas, which was caused by the death of Captain Atom. Captain Atom is somewhat obscure, but much better known is his Captain Ersatz: Dr. Manhattan. Just one of several interesting ties between the story that^note perhaps unintentionally launched The Dark Age of Comic Books, and its best-known Deconstruction.
  • This goes even further, as of Magog's Justice Battalion includes a lot of Charlton Comics characters (who were initially going to be used before the Watchmen were created), such as Nightshade, Peacemaker & Thunderbolt. Those last 2 in particular being the basis for The Comedian & Ozymandias respectively.
• At one point, as covered under Strawman Has a Point on the YMMV page, the '90s Anti-Hero characters imprisoned by the Justice League complain that killing was the only way to stop threats like Genosyde. However, a previous issue has Batman mention that Genosyde blew up Arkham Asylum, Blackgate Penitentiary, and Belle Reve, the three most prominent supervillain prisons in the DC Universe, killing almost all of Batman's villains (and scores of villains in general, one presumes). This would make Genosyde more like an especially extreme example of the "newblood" vigilantes, who have already been described as spending more time fighting amongst themselves than anything else.
  • Blackgate is not a supervillain prison, but a regular jail, so thousands of normal inmates were killed. Arkham is famous for its super-powered wing, but it's still just a sanitarium, and plenty of normal people, including out-patients, were probably there, too.
    • Not to mention guards, wardens, janitors, doctors, nurses and any other person who worked there and was not a criminal. This doesn't include members of the inmates families who were there on visitation.
  • Also, as Lex Luthor mentions, there are so many survivors from both Arkham and Belle Reve that (while undercover) they amount to 8% of superhero community — which is huge, given how many superheroes Kingdom Come has.
  • Let's not forget the rumbles between "heroes" in normal citizens' neighborhoods. It's part of why Wonder Woman becomes more and more edgy and angry.
• Many fans have noted that after all the build-up towards the inevitable conflict between Magog and Superman, with it being rumored and noised that Magog is such a dangerous badass that even the Man of Steel is ducking him. But when it comes down, the actual "clash" is a huge letdown, as Magog unleashes a single blast, and Superman is by and large unfazed by it, making the gold-clad vigilante look much less powerful than we as fans expected him to be. But what must be remembered is that the Superman of this timeline, after several decades or soaking up solar radiation, is far more durable than the mainstream version. Usually, a good indicator that Superman has been hit by an exceptionally potent force is his costume gets damaged, by beams fired by folks like Darkseid, Braniac, or one of Luthor's more powerful weapons. Magog's blast still manages to totally disintegrate Superman's cape, and scorch his dark but still blue costume to black. The Superman of old would have at least been knocked on his ass.
  • This adds a nuance to exactly why Superman was avoiding looking for Magog. There's a veiled suggestion of fear or even cowardice in the way others bring up the subject of the way Superman avoids confronting Magog, as if he's afraid that Magog might beat him. Given how we see the fight go down, this likely interpretation of Superman's increased strength, and also what happens at the end when a genuinely furious Superman finally unleashes all that rage and pain he's been holding in, it suddenly becomes a lot more likely that Superman wasn't afraid of fighting Magog — he was afraid of what he might unleash were he forced to fight Magog.
• After successfully evading Batman, a pissed-off Superman, and God knows how many other super crimefighters, how in the hell did The Joker get captured by regular cops? I think Joker, realizing the climate in the superhero community was changing, with the rise of "heroes" like Magog being much more willing to kill criminals like him, Joker decided it'd be in safer for him to surrender and get sent back to Arkham. But what he didn't anticipate was that even being arrested and in the hands of the authorities wouldn't save him from Magog...
• The Spectre bristles when Vandal Savage kills an innocent woman in front of him. Sure, just about anyone would be upset, right? Well, the Spectre is literally God's vengeance, placed upon this Earth to make murderers in particular pay for their crimes, with the spirit of a murdered policeman serving as his host. But on this assignment he's not allowed to interfere with the actions of anyone, even this senseless slaying taking place right before his eyes. Yeah, he's pissed.
  • There's another level to this - the Spectre can punish the living, and this usually results in the deaths of those being punished, leaving them at God's mercy. But Vandal Savage is immortal. He'll never die, so there's nothing the Spectre can do to make him pay for his sins, save for possibly inflicting a punishment on him for all eternity. Jim Corrigan's soul is unlikely to allow that.