Why wasn't Barry Allen effected by his mother's death like Bruce was

[Random4]

it seems like Barry was able to get over it unlike Bruce.... why is this? i know that people are different and react to things differently, but is their some reason for this?

[Lee Stone]

Because Bruce has been sufferering from manic depression since the '70s?

[MajorHoy]

Maybe you should ask Geoff Johns . . . he introduced the stupid [and a lot of EXPLETIVES DELETED!!!] retcon when he brought Barry back from the dead.
(Barry's parents had been alive when he originally died in Crisis on Infinite Earths back in the mid-1980s.)

[Kao]

Because people react differently to trauma.

[NeoStar9X]

Because people react differently to trauma.

I always figured it was that combined with Alfred not being prepared to take care of a child on his own likely playing a part. Ultimately people just respond differently to things. Also Bruce lost both parents. Just Barry's mother was killed and he knows his dad didn't do it. Unless that's different when you compare the comic and the show.

[Trey Strain]

Because people react differently to trauma.

Batman is never wrong, so Barry must have been wrong.

[codystarbuck]

Because Bruce has been sufferering from manic depression since the '70s?

More like the 80s (and mid-80s at that). He didn't mope around as much in the 70s.

Barry is a lighter figure; plus, the mother's death is a recent era concept.

[SmokeMonster]

Well everyone's different, but are some potential 'reasons':

1. Bruce saw his parents murdered in front of him. Barry didn't.

2. Both of Bruce's parents died. Only one of Barry's did.

3. Proving his father's innocence gives Barry a different drive or focus than Bruce had.

4. Environmental factors. Gotham is different than Central City. Bruce living in that mansion with all that wealth probably allowed for an unhealthy amount of alone time.

5. Although this is more of a reason about why they continue to be different rather than why they are different in the first place, Batman's reason for being is tied to his parents death, so Bruce being Batman every night in a sense is about Bruce never forgetting that pain and loss. He utilizes it. Getting over it would mean no more Batman in a sense. But Barry being the Flash and helping people is not about his mother's death. It's not what drives his heroics. Getting over it would mean a better Flash (one who doesn't create awful alternate timelines).

[Lightning Rider]

Because Barry's personality did not originally include his mother being murdered and his dad imprisoned.

That's the real answer. That crap was shoehorned in and most of the time simply sharply contrasts with Barry's purpose as the Flash and his personality.

The in-story answers given about the circumstances differing and people responding differently to trauma make sense. But it did strike me odd how much Barry sounded like Batman in his Rebirth issue narration; "I wanted to make sure this never happened to anyone else", something to that effect. So strange that being a good person on his own, the purest of concepts, just wasn't enough.

[JackDaw]

Because Barry's personality did not originally include his mother being murdered and his dad imprisoned.

That's the real answer. That crap was shoehorned in and most of the time simply sharply contrasts with Barry's purpose as the Flash and his personality.

The in-story answers given about the circumstances differing and people responding differently to trauma make sense. But it did strike me odd how much Barry sounded like Batman in his Rebirth issue narration; "I wanted to make sure this never happened to anyone else", something to that effect. So strange that being a good person on his own, the purest of concepts, just wasn't enough.

Yes normally I'd blame it all on Geoff Johns....he does like his "death in the family let's prat about with time to put it right" stories.

But he did manage to write a long Wally West run without inflicting it on the ginger Whizzer, so I suppose Geoff J can sometimes resist the siren call.

[Jim Kelly]

Lets not forget that Alfred himself was a gigantic Retcon too. He didnt' originally show up till after Robin was around. So any failing of his parenting was added in later.

This is true. Even before the Alfred retcon, a lot about the Waynes was retconned in later--like Thomas Wayne being a doctor or just what happened to Bruce after his parents died and before he became Batman.

Because Barry's personality did not originally include his mother being murdered and his dad imprisoned.

That's the real answer. That crap was shoehorned in and most of the time simply sharply contrasts with Barry's purpose as the Flash and his personality.

The in-story answers given about the circumstances differing and people responding differently to trauma make sense. But it did strike me odd how much Barry sounded like Batman in his Rebirth issue narration; "I wanted to make sure this never happened to anyone else", something to that effect. So strange that being a good person on his own, the purest of concepts, just wasn't enough.

Barry's career path doesn't ring true, if based on his father being stitched up for the murder of his mother. I can see him becoming a forensic scientist to prove his father's innocence, but why join the police or fight crime? As a police scientist how does he know he isn't doing exactly the same thing to other innocent men, as his father?

The extraordinary circumstances would even make him doubt regular science. If some time traveller from the future can manipulate events to frame his father and murder his mother, what else is going on? Barry would likely become a tin foil hat conspiracy theorist living in a cabin in the woods.

It's like Geoff Johns imposed this fantastic origin story on Barry but stopped right there and didn't follow through on it. Because if you took some random character (one that wasn't already supposed to become the Flash) and did the same thing to him, it could set that character on a "Man in the High Castle" profound trajectory away from a normal perception of reality and into something else.

[8BitRedBeard]

Alfred raised Bruce, Joe West raised Barry. It's all about upbringing. Besides, once Barry got his powers, didn't he dedicate it to seek out his mother's killer?

[MajorHoy]

Alfred raised Bruce, Joe West raised Barry. It's all about upbringing. Besides, once Barry got his powers, didn't he dedicate it to seek out his mother's killer?

Wouldn't know . . . that wasn't the way the story went for more than fifty years.

[Lightning Rider]

Alfred raised Bruce, Joe West raised Barry. It's all about upbringing. Besides, once Barry got his powers, didn't he dedicate it to seek out his mother's killer?

Yeah, on the show. Which only expands on the last 5 years of Johns's retcon. Decades and decades saw Barry with no kind of life

In the majority of Flash comics, Joe West is nonexistent, this foster childhood didn't happen, and Barry is not a wounded character drowning in grief and driven by a sense of an incomplete life. He became a hero because he grew up reading comics and had a good heart and wanted to help people, the same reasons he became a police scientist.

[Mia]

Because Bruce Wayne is a type A personality who likes to fix things...or at least won't stop until justice is achieved. Or to be crude Bruce can't live with being a victim and he feels that's what happened when his parents were murdered.

Whereas Barry is more of a c'est la vie type of guy. Remember with the retcon Barry was more interested in exonerating his dad than finding out who killed his mother. But honestly it's all just lazy writing by Johns who decided that the only way for a super hero to be interesting is to copy Batman's background.