History AntiVillain / LiveActionTV

** In ''Series/KamenRiderDecade'', implied to be this for Taurus Ballista in the Agito Arc. He says that the reason he's attacking the Riders is because he fears that [[HumansAreBastards humans could]] [[DrunkWithPower be consumed by their desire for power]] and that they should leave the Grongi fighting to the Lords.

** His brother, [[spoiler: Gabriel/The Trickster, does this much better. After it's dicovered who he is, it's easier to see why he killed Dean so many times: he was trying to stop Sam from snapping and going after Lilith after Dean dies, therefore trying to stop him from breaking the final seal. He comes across as more the little brother who can't stand his brothers' arguing, to Lucifer's bratty persona. Sadly, in Gabriel's case RedemptionEqualsDeath and he's killed by Lucifer - but not before leaving Sam and Dean a DVD which tells them how to put Lucifer back in his box.]]

* Wanda Maximoff in ''Series/WandaVision''

*** [[spoiler:Micchy (Armored Rider Ryugen)]] [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope does a flying swan-dive off the slippery slope]], becoming a long-term antagonist because of his love for one person and his desire to save her. [[spoiler:Unfortunately, he makes a lot of terrible decisions and gets manipulated by more ruthless people in pursuit of that goal, and by the final arc he's reduced to a weeping shell of a man. However, the final episode gives him a chance at redemption, which he gladly takes.]]

*** [[spoiler:Roshuo, leader of the Overlords]] is another example; he has a power that could potentially save humanity, but keeps it to himself because he doesn't believe they're capable of using it responsibly. [[spoiler:He does eventually hand it over after DJ Sagara calls him out, saying humans deserve a fair chance. In the end, Roshuo just wanted to be reunited with his wife and was manipulated by others because of it, but he dies hoping that humanity will succeed where his people failed.]]

* Every single vampire on ''Series/TrueBlood''. While some of them are not unwilling to perform the occasional good deed, by and large they all seem to be willing to kill, torture, mind control and otherwise abuse the human population despite their [[ConsummateLiar public relations campaign]] about wanting to "mainstream" and [[FriendlyNeighborhoodVampire live peacefullly with humans]].

* Wanda Maximoff in ''Series/WandaVision

* Wanda Maximoff in [[WandaVision]]

* In ''Series/KamenRiderDecade'', implied to be this for Taurus Ballista in the Agito Arc. He says that the reason he's attacking the Riders is because he fears that [[HumansAreBastards humans could]] [[DrunkWithPower be consumed by their desire for power]] and that they should leave the Grongi fighting to the Lords.

** His son, Cesare, was at first a sort of anti-villain--the majority of what he did was for the good of the family. However, he really didn't have much pity for anyone beyond his family, and remained ruthless, cynical, and fairly cold-blooded. Nowadays, he's in solidly VillainProtagonist territory. [[spoiler: What with murdering his brother and all.]]

*** In all fairness, Sylar is a lot less of a villain than he used to be. In fact, in volume 4, he's had at least one "Big Damn Heroes" moment (saving Luke from the fascist agents under the employ of the psychotic bigot "Bastion" wannabe Danko), spared Luke's life on 3 separate occasions when it would have been easier to kill him, and spared the life of Luke's mother despite the fact that she was a potential witness. He's only killed so far when it was kill or be killed, or plain, old-fashioned revenge (to quote Anti Villain supreme Captain Cold).
*** And now he's gone back to being an unrepentant brain-eater, by joining forces with The Man, just so he can have access to a never-ending all-you-can-eat buffet of powers whenever they kill any harmless individual with a cool superpower. End of Season 4, he seems to be rehabilitated...again. Mostly because [[spoiler: Matt Parkman trapped him in a nightmare where he was the only person in the world, which was messed up by Peter Petrelli borrowing Matt's power and following him in after he had a dream that Sylar would save Emma, a friend of his. Which...Sylar does, with a SugarWiki/{{Funny Moment|s}} when he tied up Puppeteer Doyle like...a puppet.]]

*** This changed during season 3. While his goal had changed from being after immortality to trying to awaken Robert Frobisher-Smythe, he became very focused and serious about it, and treated the students much harsher than he used to. It definitely went away when he was a sinner and set up a ''guillotine'' in order to stop Sibuna. However, in TheMovie, he went back to being ''much'' more sympathetic and even ended up ''helping'' the Sibuna members for the first time.
** During his villainous phase in season 1, Jerome fit this. He was working with Rufus out of jealousy and loneliness rather than a desire to do harm, and then ended up only helping him out of ''fear for his life'' until he got the chance to join Sibuna.

* Carl Elias from ''Series/PersonOfInterest''. He served the role as the {{Big Bad}}} for a good part of the first season. He's even gone as far to [[MoralEventHorizon lock a baby in a freezer truck to gain Reese's cooperation]], but he's also helped Reese on several occasions. He often shares Reese's goals when up against the Russian mob or HR. [[spoiler: This comes to a close in season 3 when he has {{Dirty Cop}} Simmons killed in revenge for killing Carter earlier.]]

* John Frobisher from ''Series/TorchwoodChildrenOfEarth'' is a meek civil servant doing his best to serve his country -- and a corrupt, ruthless government -- and thus ordering the deaths of anyone connected to the previous 456 crisis as the new, terrifying one unfolds. For all his trouble, he is at last instructed to [[spoiler: give up his daughters to the 456 because ''they'' surely can't give up ''their'' children]], whereupon he [[spoiler: chooses to commit Pater Familicide to spare them that fate]].

** Of course, he's just following in the footsteps of [[spoiler:Tony Almeida]], though at his worst Jack still stopped short of shooting fellow agents. [[spoiler: Tony]] was willing to go much further into the dark side.

* Nucky Thompson, the main character of ''Series/BoardwalkEmpire''. Yeah, he's a corrupt SleazyPolitician who started looking into becoming a kingpin of the illegal booze trade the moment Prohibition started, but he's also often a genuinely kind man with good intentions, has much more enlightened views on women and minorities than his peers, has some genuine [[FreudianExcuse Freudian issues]] going on, and seems positively cuddly when contrasted with the viciousness of UsefulNotes/AlCapone or the cold-blooded sadism of Arnold Rothstein.
* From ''Series/TheBorgias'' Rodrigo Borgia genuinely wants to strengthen Rome as pope. He even takes an interest in alleviating poverty in the second season, and has always loved his family, perhaps to a fault. He also, however, blackmails/tricks virtually everyone he works with, orders a few assassinations, and is quite the lech. Like most Renaissance-era fathers, he also has very little regard for his daughter's freedom and will marry her off to whoever he wants, though he is trying to make sure she doesn't get a bad husband... this time around. Overall, he's still one of the least villainous members of his family.

* Khan Noonien Singh in his appearance in the episode "Space Seed" of ''Series/{{Star Trek|The Original Series}}''. Although fandom (and some of the writers of the later series) have made him out to be a evil, it's stated that he was the only good dictator in the Eugenics Wars. He was neither bloodthirsty nor a warmonger, and rather than assume a scorched earth strategy when he was defeated, he took his people and fled into space to find a new world. In fact, in "Space Seed" he doesn't even kill anyone (though he does come close in the case of Kirk and at the end, he is actually quite happy with Kirk's suggestion of leaving him and his crew on Ceti Alpha V, since he and his people will finally have what they wanted: a world to themselves. It was only after spending twenty years on a dead rock that he became the monster we saw in ''[[Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan The Wrath of Khan]]''.
* The Mirror Universe Spock from the "Mirror Mirror" episode of ''Series/{{Star Trek|The Original Series}}''. PopCultureOsmosis likes to popularize the idea of goatees (Mirror Spock's beard) as a shorthand for Evil Guy. Although he was harsher and colder than his counterpart in our universe, he was still decent enough to warn Kirk (who was posing as Mirror Kirk) that he was ordered to kill Kirk should he fail to carry out orders to exterminate the Halkans. It was Mirror Spock who ensured that Kirk and the other three got back to their own universe. Kirk also convinced Spock to at least think about acting to overthrow Kirk's evil counterpart and make a move towards abolishing the Empire, which Spock logically admits won't last another two centuries. Spock promised to "consider it". In Kirk's words, Spock was "a man of integrity in both universes."
* The Maquis from ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' are {{Determined Homesteader}}s with a minor in RoaringRampageOfRevenge. Also, Ben Sisko from ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' attempts to anticipate Maquis leader and former Federation officer Eddington's moves by casting himself as the 'villain' to Eddington's 'hero' in the latter's worldview. In this capacity, he performs an act that is rather callous for his character (flooding a Maquis controlled planet with a toxin that makes it uninhabitable to humans, forcing them to evacuate immediately or die horribly), but is still just a [[LighterAndSofter very]] [[WhiteAndGreyMorality light]] AntiVillain to Eddington's self-DesignatedHero.

* King Uther Pendragon in ''Series/{{Merlin}}'' tends to come off as one of these. He's a ruthless KnightTemplar {{Jerkass}} who blindly hates magic, seems to have two forms of punishment for those who transgress against him ("Put them in the stocks and throw fruit at them" or "Chop off their head") with little room in between, and has put children to death for fear of their magical heritage. He also clearly loves his son Arthur, is very protective of his ward Morgana, respects his old friend Gaius, cares about his kingdom, and [[PetTheDog pets the dog]] on several occasions. He's a villain, but even the good guys realize things would be worse without him there to keep order -- despite his extreme methods.

* Gideon, one of the [[CouncilOfAngels Elders]] and headmaster of the [[WizardingSchool Magic School]] in ''Series/{{Charmed}}'', went from WellIntentionedExtremist to this as his plans to prevent [[GooGooGodlike Wyatt]] from becoming the cause of a BadFuture (which Chris had travelled back in time to prevent, himself) progressed. To prevent the sisters (who are Wyatt's mother and aunts) from finding out, he allows at least one innocent to die (which, in an earlier episode, he established to be so unforgivable as to move to close the Magic School when an entity from there killed a random petty criminal), personally vanquished his friend Sigmund when he threatened to expose Gideon's plan out of concern, and even collaborated with his own evil counterpart from a MirrorUniverse (which threw off the cosmic balance between them, something that he actively wanted to avoid).

* Most of the bank robbers in ''The Kill Point'' are decent people who made a bad mistake and spend the rest of the show regretting it. Except for Mr. Rabbit, who is TheSociopath.
* ''Series/TheKillPoint'': Most of the bank robbers don't harbor any will towards their hostages, and are former soldiers who felt betrayed by their country. Over the course of the hostage situation, Mr. Wolf releases most of them, even when he doesn't gain anything tangible from it.

* Brother Justin Crowe on ''Carnivale''. His character development is given equal screen time as the DesignatedHero, and (especially in the first season) he's presented as genuinely ''wanting'' to do good, but being somewhat hampered by the fact that he's, you know, TheAntichrist; it takes some rather extreme measures on the part of his KnightTemplar of a sister to get him to stop worrying and love the dark side.

*** And now he's gone back to being an unrepentant brain-eater, by joining forces with The Man, just so he can have access to a never-ending all-you-can-eat buffet of powers whenever they kill any harmless individual with a cool superpower. End of Season 4, he seems to be rehabilitated...again. Mostly because [[spoiler: Matt Parkman trapped him in a nightmare where he was the only person in the world, which was messed up by Peter Petrelli borrowing Matt's power and following him in after he had a dream that Sylar would save Emma, a friend of his. Which...Sylar does, with a CrowningMomentOfFunny when he tied up Puppeteer Doyle like...a puppet.]]

** The Hound does terrible things in service to the Lannisters, but at least has the decency to acknowledge them as such and express a distaste for pointless sadism.

** A non-Luthor example would also be Major/General Zod, in an interesting twist as he's essentially simultainiously given AdaptationalHeroism ''and'' AdaptationalVillainy. He ultimately just wants peace, justice, and freedom for the Kryptonians, is a FatherToHisMen, respects Kal-El/Clark and still holds his former best friend Jor-El in high regard, and while he leads a ruthless coup, he's motivated by the fact his family was killed in the destruction of Kandor, and his plea to clone his son was rejected, pushing him over the edge. However, unlike most depictions, he was almost successful in taking over Krypton, and when he learnt his cause was lost, he decided to destabalize Krypton's core and, essentially, is the one responsible for its destruction. Ultimately, he's just trying to cope with the death of his son, [[{{Understatement}} but doesn't do it in a healthy means]].

** Season 3 gives us Daphne Millbrook, a professional thief who works for and with other villains, but is clearly disgusted by most of them, never kills anyone herself, and is eventually revealed to [[spoiler: have been working with Pinehearst because its leader would otherwise take away her superspeed, which is the only thing stopping her from being crippled by cerebral palsy]]. Most of her villainy seems to have been born of guilt and self-loathing for how she treated her father and (especially) her dying mother. When Matt helps her come to terms with her past and reunite with her father, she does a HeelFaceTurn and literally helps save the world. [[spoiler: Unfortunately, Daphne is shot while attempting to rescue specials kidnapped by [[TheHunter Emile Danko]], who later [[MoralEventHorizon removes her from the medical facility]], thus causing her wound to become septic and, ultimately, fatal.]]

* The Argent family on ''Series/TeenWolf''. While their side occupation as [[TheHunter werewolf hunters]] was originally motivated by [[MugglePower protecting humans from werewolves]], it has developed into [[VanHelsingHateCrimes full-blown sadism]]. They are willing and eager to kill werewolves whether they actually pose a threat to anybody or not. The family and their fellow hunters have also expanded their crusade to cover killing any humans associated with werewolves (such as the non-wolf members of the Hale family) or who simply impede their hunting activities. They have also developed a fondness for inspiring fear, and seem to enjoy torturing their targets before killing them. In order for Gerard Argent to take over as principal of the Beacon Hills high school, the Argent's abducted and tortured the current principal, who was wholly unaware of werewolves, just to create a vacancy in the position.

** Jaime is a man who doesn't hesitate to kill for his own benefit but does possess some sympathetic traits like a BigBrotherInstinct.

* Enos from ''Series/DukesOfHazzard'' is only really a villain by virtue of being an upstanding deputy sheriff and on the side of the Law, and thus antagonistic to our less law-abiding heroes. While he is willing to stand behind most of his corrupt boss' schemes, he is too righteous to be a part of them. He is the one lawman the Dukes have any respect for, and they have said as much in public.

* On ''Series/{{The 100}}'', ''everyone'' is just doing what they believe is necessary to keep their people alive; while our protagonists are usually more sympathetic than their antagonists, [[GreyAndGrayMorality they all have good reasons for doing the things they do]]. Except Murphy; [[{{Jerkass}} he's just a prick.]]
** Even Murphy gets better as the show goes on.
* Arguably, Babe Carey, from All My Children, circa 2003-2007. She never wants to do bad things and is usually, in some way, pushed into doing the wrong thing (for the right reasons) because of the effects of others' actions. She doesn't want to be bad and, in ideal circumstances, she would even be good. She strives and wants to be good. However, she is not strong enough to rise against her circumstances.