Death Note = Breaking Bad, but with death instead of meth

[Captain_Heavy]

Death Note is a story about a guy who starts committing crimes and killing people all under the delusion that he is doing good for others. All the while he has to evade suspicion from a law enforcement agent in his close family.

Breaking bad is a story about a guy who starts committing crimes and killing people all under the delusion that he is doing good for others. All the while he has to evade suspicion from a law enforcement agent in his close family.

 

[Pirate Of PC Master race]

So is Dexter. So.... The point?

 

[Captain_Heavy]

Then it's everywhere!

Is there a name for this trope?

 

[RikuoAmero]

You leave out the massive difference between the two. Death Note features a magical notebook that kills and a magical invisible god of death. Breaking Bad (haven't watched it, but I haven't that it does) does not feature anything magical.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

You leave out the massive difference between the two. Death Note features a magical notebook that kills and a magical invisible god of death. Breaking Bad (haven't watched it, but I haven't that it does) does not feature anything magical.

The magical element, really is pretty modular isn't it? I mean you could turn the death note book into any object that can kill individual people that way, and it really wouldn't matter to the story THAT much... I know at certain points the Shinigami are Deus Ex Machina to keep the story going but, really it just feels to me like extra world building.

I don't see a connection between the two at all.

You got a guy being a meth dealer in one, and even if he's trying to evade the law I think thats radically different situation that Death Note which at it's core is a cat and mouse thriller between a Serial Killer and The Worlds Greatest Detective outside of Batman. Death Note has more in common with the movie Se7en than Breaking Bad

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Breaking Bad had an interesting story that many people can relate to, at least in a cynical way. Death Note was badly written shonen angst tripe... They're not at all comparable.

 

[FalloutJack]

I haven't seen Breaking Bad, but some things in Death Note - to my opinion - get a bit bullshit ridiculous.

 

[Dalisclock]

One thing you're missing is that the Death Note has a bunch of arcane and complex rules about killing people which drives a lot of plot and intrigue. So unless Breaking Bad has something similar where Walter White can kill anyone in the world with an untraceable method as long as he imagines their face while writing their real name.....yeah no.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

So is Dexter. So.... The point?

Dexter is fully aware that he's a psychopath who can't control his urges.

Is there a name for this trope?

Please, just don't. Talking about tropes is one of the lowest forms of conversation.

 

[wizzy555]

So you want a trope for a villain who doesn't consider themselves evil? Christ...

 

[The Philistine]

Then it's everywhere!

Is there a name for this trope?

Pretty sure that falls under Anti-Villain. Or Byronic Hero.

 

[WonkyWarmaiden]

Death Note is more like the younger emo brother of Breaking Bad that hates their parents and thinks My Chemical Romance is the best band to ever exist.

 

[Drathnoxis]

I always saw Death Note as a kind of reverse Sherlock Holmes, where Moriarty is the protagonist. You've got the ridiculously intelligent characters who's every assumption is always correct and the only time they ever make a 'mistake' is when it's actually completely intentional, just like Sherlock Holmes.

 

[Nazulu]

I haven't seen Breaking Bad, but some things in Death Note - to my opinion - get a bit bullshit ridiculous.

My opinion too. I reckon who ever wrote Death Note started pulling video game rules out of their ass when they didn't know where to go with it next.

I thought it was alright though.

 

[mduncan50]

Death note at least had a few likeable characters...

 

[Blitsie]

Ehhhh I don't see it really; Breaking Bad is about a man who is basically fed up with how bad his life turned out and - his cancer being the breaking point - decides to "break bad" (raise hell/challenge authority) in an effort to take control of his life and, in his own twisted way, live a little.

Death Note is just about a teenager who gets to be judge, jury and executioner on a literal level due to possessing a magical book that kills people, and all the power goes to his head and you get to see the result of it.

Granted, both feature a central item which has the protagonist go downhill (meth/death note) but that's pretty much where the comparisons stop, everything else from there wildly differs. Sooo...yeah...no.

 

[Dimitriov]

If you reduce stories down to their simplest elements most stories can be easily placed into one of several categories.

There's even a book written about the subject, The Seven Basic Plots.

This is certainly worth being aware of, but is not particularly revelatory. All you've really described is an anti-hero who believes he is doing good, but ultimately becomes the villain of his own story. There are an awful lot of stories that fall into that category, and at its most basic it is really just a form of tragedy.

The incidentals of Law enforcement and someone in his own family aren't really any more important than the differences created by magic, meth, geographical placement or even character names.

Basically, the two stories are no more similar than are Hamlet and the Lion King, and perhaps even less so.

 

[The Bucket]

You leave out the massive difference between the two. Death Note features a magical notebook that kills and a magical invisible god of death. Breaking Bad (haven't watched it, but I haven't that it does) does not feature anything magical.

The magical element, really is pretty modular isn't it? I mean you could turn the death note book into any object that can kill individual people that way, and it really wouldn't matter to the story THAT much... I know at certain points the Shinigami are Deus Ex Machina to keep the story going but, really it just feels to me like extra world building.

I don't see a connection between the two at all.

You got a guy being a meth dealer in one, and even if he's trying to evade the law I think thats radically different situation that Death Note which at it's core is a cat and mouse thriller between a Serial Killer and The Worlds Greatest Detective outside of Batman. Death Note has more in common with the movie Se7en than Breaking Bad

I wouldn't call the magic stuff modular, the supernatural way he was able to kill people was a big part of what fed into his god complex, Light would never have turned to murder through normal means (in fact we see that without the corrupting influence of the Note he would have been on the side of justice). L's whole point was to prove that despite possessing the powers of a god, the killer was no more than a common murderer at heart.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

Yeah, I loved that part where this ultimate genius detective who was really just a kid was so dangerously close to exposing Walter's meth operations that he had to hypnotise himself into forgetting that he was Heisenberg, and ended up becoming an ally to the detective until he took a hit to the head and remembered who he really was just in time to murder the detective.

What, you didn't see that episode?

 

[Silvanus]

They have one or two overlaps, sure, but the plots follow vastly different paths, the characters aren't analogous, the themes are almost all different, the tone... they're very, very different.