Green Arrow/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alternative Character Interpretation: According to this, he was a Stealth Parody of Batman during the Silver Age.
  • Die for Our Ship: There's a surprisingly large number of Black Canary fans who hate Oliver and want to see him killed off, allowing her to hook up with various members of the Birds of Prey - usually Oracle.
  • Freudian Excuse: Oliver was shown to have suffered Parental Neglect as a child. As an adult he became a stereotypical bored rich man who spent most of his time avoiding responsibility. After losing all his money he lost the one thing that made him happy, and tried to compensate for it by gaining the love of the masses as a hero for the poor and downtrodden of society. When in reality, he just wants to be loved, but even when he has friends and a family, and he doesn't know how to genuinely hold on to them and gradually drives them away with his jerkass attitude.
  • Growing the Beard: Quite literally; the new characterization that came with the beard made Ollie a standout character.
    • Ollie's new series in The New 52 reduces the beard to a stubble. And the series hasn't been overly well received.
  • Ho Yay: Connor Hawke and Kyle Rayner really had some chemistry.
    • There's also a few Oliver Queen/Hal Jordan fanfics (and wisecracks in the regular comics now) that give new meaning to the term "Hard-Traveling Heroes".
    • A meta-example could be Ollie and Identity Crisis writer Brad Meltzer who has admitted he has a man crush on Green Arrow.
    • There is also Roy Harper and Nightwing (Dick Grayson).
  • Never Live It Down: Roy Harper's two-issue struggle with drug addiction has pretty much defined the character ever since.
    • Also, the Shado rape incident, which was treated as though Ollie had cheated on Dinah.
    • On a lighter note: boxing glove arrow.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Mia was blamed for Lian's death by Roy, but most readers just shrugged this off as the anger of a grieving father. But then you realize that while Lian's death was the result of Prometheus' machine malfunction, Mia, who was supposed to be looking after Lian, left a child by herself to go after a supervillain. She couldn't have taken a minute to ask Ollie's neighbors, or even called someone, to look after the girl while she went out? James Robinson claimed that, due to Executive Meddling, he was asked to kill both Mia and Lian, but managed to spare Mia. He doesn't seem to realize that by sparing Mia he made her indirectly responsible for Lian's death.
  • Strangled by the Red String: Green Arrow and Black Canary's marriage felt very forced to many fans.
    • While he never got married, many fans believe Connor Hawke's few romantic relationships were forced as well, due to the fears of certain writers that the asexual monk might be viewed as being gay.