Almost from the moment he first showed up in Detective Comics #38, writers have been coming up with ways to torture the heck out of Robin. The character, always a teen, wears bright colors and jumps around like a wild puppy, getting the attention - and the bullets - of whatever criminals Batman is looking to take down.

RELATED: The Many Robins Of Batman: From Best To Worst

As Robin turns 80 this year, every comic fan will be thinking back on the great moments in the character's history. There have been six characters to put on the red, green, and yellow in order to help Batman keep Gotham safe. While most of Robin's tales end with the sidekick winning, that isn't always the case. Here are the 10 worst things that ever happened to the Robins...

10 Batman Sends Robin To An Orphanage

Seeing our parents die is sure to create a whole lot of psychological issues for a young boy like Dick Grayson. One of them would probably be abandonment issues, but Dick probably felt pretty safe in that area right up until Batman kicked him out of Wayne Manor in World's Finest #153.

In a story that launched a million memes, Batman erases Robin's memory and sends him to an orphanage because Robin thinks Batman is wrong for trying to kill Superman. Why does Batman want to kill Superman? Batman has come to believe that Superman is responsible for his father's death. Turns out it was Lex Luthor. Well, actually, it turns out that the whole story was in an alternate timeline.

9 Robin Is Tortured By Batman

Alfred tested Batman's trust by refusing to allow Dick Grayson to hunt for rats

In Frank Miller and Jim Lee's All-Star Batman and Robin, which gives a new version of Robin's origin, Batman kidnaps Dick Grayson shortly after his parents are killed and tortures the young boy into becoming Robin. Part of that torture includes leaving Dick alone in a cave for days on end with only rats to eat.

RELATED: Batman: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Dick Grayson

Batman is really rough on Robin during the entire series, basically driving the young Dick Grayson insane so that he would have someone to hang out with during his war on crime. Miller claims that this story takes place in the same reality as his classic Batman tale The Dark Knight Returns. It really paints a different portrait of that Batman.

8 Robin Goes Evil, Batman Kills Him

The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Miller's sequel to The Dark Knight Returns, shows us just how crazy Robin had become. The story explains that after Batman fired Dick for "incompetence and cowardice," he went even crazier and underwent an experiment to gain superpowers.

Now able to shapeshift, Dick became the new Joker and started killing superheroes. In the end, Dick Grayson and Batman face off in the Batcave, which Batman blows up to reveal a river of lava that he tosses his one-time sidekick into.

7 Batman Turned Robin Into A Vampire

In the 1990s, DC released the Batman & Dracula Trilogy, where the Dark Knight becomes a vampire himself. A decade later, the world of the vampire Batman was revisited, and readers learned about the fate of that reality's Dick Grayson.

In the story, we learn that the vampire Batman killed Dick's parents and Dick became a vampire hunter. When Dick tracked Batman down, the vampiric Caped Crusader turned the hunter into a vampire and forced the boy to forever serve as his assistant.

6 Batman Blew Robin Up

With Batman: Odyssey, DC gave Neal Adams carte blanche, and Adams told one of the wilder Batman stories that has ever been printed. It has a wizard who looks like an old school cartoon wizard with a pointy hat that has stars and moons on it. It has Batman using guns and Robin riding around on pterodactyls. Weirdest of all, it has a Batman who is more than happy to kill Robin.

RELATED: Robin War: 5 Reasons Why Dick Grayson Is The Better Robin (& 5 It's Damian Wayne)

When Robin gets taken hostage by Sensei, Batman does what any vigilante with a strict no-killing rule would do; he sets off the explosives he lined Robin's suit with. The explosion kills Robin and a few of Sensei's thugs, but the battle raged on. So not only did Batman blow up his sidekick, he didn't even kill his target.

5 Robin Got Turned Into Joker Jr.

Tim Drake as the Joker in Batman Beyond Return of the Joker

Batman Beyond was an animated series set in a future where an old Bruce Wayne enlists high school student Terry McGinnis to become the new Batman. Part of the fun of the show was learning what happened to all of Batman's allies and foes. Barbara Gordon followed her father's path and became the commissioner of Gotham. Bane became a frail old man dying from the very drug that gave him powers. And the Joker... the Joker did some bad stuff.

As we learned in the direct to video movie Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, way back when, Joker kidnapped Tim Drake, the then-current Robin, and tortured the boy, turning him into Joker Jr. Batman comes to save Tim and stood there as Tim killed Joker.

4 Robin's Dad Is Killed By A Boomerang

Tim Drake as Robin sobbing on his knees in DC Comics' Identity Crisis

Identity Crisis opened a great many past wounds for the Justice League, and while it was all set off by the death of Sue Dibny, she wouldn't be the only person to die in the story. Captain Boomerang took on a job, and the target was Jack Drake, father of Tim Drake, the third Robin.

Jack, confined to a wheelchair, is warned that his life is in danger and prepares to protect himself with a gun. He also contacts Oracle, who informs Batman and Robin what is happening. Sadly, the Dynamic Duo don't make it back in time, and Jack Drake is killed.

3 Death of Stephanie Brown

Stephanie Brown in her Robin costume from DC Comics

After Tim Drake quit being Robin, his ex-girlfriend Stephanie Brown took up the role. Batman reluctantly took her on as the new Robin, but fired Stephanie after she disobeyed a direct order in the field. Wanting to prove herself worthy, Stephanie steals one of Batman's plans that would, in theory, take down all of the organized crime in Gotham. The plan is working great until it reaches the part where a low-level crook named Matches Malone is supposed to show up.

What Stephanie didn't know is that Matches Malone is a disguise Batman uses, and since Batman doesn't know this was happening, he didn't show up. Stephanie's mistake starts a city-wide gang war and before the Bat-signal can be lit, the new Robin is taken captured by Black Mask, who tortures her. Stephanie escapes, but died in the hospital.

2 Death of Damian Wayne

Damian Wayne, the fifth Robin, was trained by the League of Assassins to be a perfect killer. When his mother couldn't deal with him anymore, she dropped Damian off at his dad's cave for some tough love. Not long after that, Bruce Wayne "died" and Dick Grayson, the first Robin, took on the mantle of Batman, and Dick and Damian worked well together.

RELATED: Batman: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Damian Wayne

Shortly after Bruce returned from the dead, Talia and her secret organization, Leviathan, launched a massive attack on Gotham. Damian finds himself very outnumbered while fighting to protect Wayne Tower. When Nightwing shows up, things start to look better. But the Heretic, and aged up clone of Damian, arrives and impales him, piercing his heart and killing him instantly.

1 The Readers Kill Jason Todd

Batman-Death-Family

There's nothing worse than being the replacement for a popular character, and that is something Jason Todd, the second Robin, learned the hard way. Originally little more than a clone of the first Robin (Jason's parents were also acrobats who were murdered), Jason's story was changed after Crisis on Infinite Earths to make him stand out. In the revamped origin, Jason was a street thug who Batman caught trying to steal the tires off of the Batmobile.

Fans didn't like this new, brash Robin. Writer Jim Starlin didn't like the character either and wanted to kill him off. DC came up with an idea to leave it up to the fans. At the end of an issue there would be two numbers to call. One number was to vote to keep Robin alive, the other would kill him. "Kill" won by just 72 votes.

NEXT: Batman: The 5 Best Robin Costumes (& The 5 Worst)