History Main / BigEgoHiddenDepths

** "Put Up Or Shut Up": Bailey convinces Jennifer to accept a date with Herb in the hope that he'll get scared and back down.

* ''Series/TheRehearsal'': Angela spends most of her screentime judging Nathan and claiming to know the "truth" about how the world operates, and generally looks down her nose at anyone who doesn't share her very specific and strange beliefs. In "Pretend Daddy," though, she [[spoiler: not only quickly forgives Nathan for hijacking her own rehearsal, she also intuits that a lot of his problems stem from personal turmoil and encourages him to forgive himself, telling him that even if we forgive other people, self-forgiveness is an often overlooked part of the healing process.]]

* Papyrus from ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'' is a LargeHam who also thinks he's the greatest monster to ever live. He calls himself "the great Papyrus," and is always boasting about how great he is and how he will one day achieve everything he wants. However, he is far from malicious; indeed, he's one of the nicest characters in the entire setting. He doesn't just have high confidence in himself: he has high confidence in everyone. He always has great things to say about you during your trip through Snowdin and even tries to cheer you up when he thinks you're being too harsh on yourself (even if you were actually trying to insult him). Even when the player is [[VillainProtagonist the darkest they can be on a Genocide playthrough]], Papyrus still [[YouAreBetterThanYouThinkYouAre thinks they can be good if they really try]]. Papyrus is also easy to befriend, and [[FissionMailed losing to him in his battle]] just leads to your capture in a CardboardPrison, because he wants the protagonist alive.

** Similarly, in most episodes [[TheFashionista Rarity]] sits halfway between a DramaQueen and an AttentionWhore, but most episodes that are focused on her reveal that under the facade she's actually one of the most emotionally mature members of the cast and she just has a tendency toward histrionics.

* Brainy Smurf in ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs1981'' goes through this in the episode The Dark Ness Monster, where the loss of his glasses forces him to ditch his superiority complex and rely on his friend Clumsy for help. At a later point in the episode, Brainy writes a heartfelt quotation to express his feelings, in which he refers to himself as being weak and just pretending to be strong. Some other episodes hint at this hidden side to Brainy as well, particularly the episodes The Smurfiest Of Friends and Papa's Family Album.

* ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'': J. Jonah Jameson. Behind his gruff, skinflint exterior, Creator/{{Marvel}} has established that his hatred of Spider-Man stems from the fact that deep down, he knows Spidey '''is''' a selfless hero, and the fact that he can't compare makes him jealous. This close-up first happened towards the end of ''Amazing Spider-Man'' #1. I.e., he got his BigEgoHiddenDepths ''in the issue he was introduced''.

* In ''Fanfic/NeonGenesisEvangelionGenocide'', after having a long talk with Asuka about their mothers, where she tells him about her mother's death, her father remarrying and ditching her, her abandonment and loneliness issues... Shinji thinks her ego and anger issues are only a mask and she's more complex than people credit her for.

** In "The Coronation", he shows that despite his ego, he can freely accept criticism. When Mako tells him that while Kuvira is no saint, he's just as unfit for the throne, rather than become angry and defensive, he actually agrees with Mako and admits that he probably wouldn't make a great ruler, stating that no one ever told it to him like that before. [[spoiler: This partially influences his decision to ultimately dissolve the monarchy and let the various states govern themselves.]]
** In "Operation Beifong", he shows some surprisingly quick thinking when he actually suggests that they evacuate the city in preparation for Kuvira's impending attack. Both Raiko and Mako praise this suggestion, though he freely admits it was just to impress Korra.
** In "Kuvira's Gambit", he turns out to be an excellent public speaker whose oratory skills convince the citizens of Republic City to evacuate, especially when Mako's emotionless warning drove the citizens into a panic.
** In "Day of the Colossus", he again shows that he's surprisingly clever when [[spoiler: he uses his singing to convince the Badgermoles to dig a tunnel out of the city and even fakes a TakeMeInstead moment to distract three of Kuvira's goons when they corner them.]]
** In "Ruins of the Empire", he displays a working knowledge of the Dai Li's history of brainwashing to keep control of Ba Sing Se, which Toph commends.
** He also has a hallucination of his aunt, Earth Queen Hou-Ting, berating him for championing democracy not because he thinks it'll be better for the people, but because he doesn't want the responsibility of ruling when he knows he'll fail. This shakes him pretty hard.

* Franchise/SpiderMan has J. Jonah Jameson. Behind his gruff, skinflint exterior, Creator/{{Marvel}} has established that his hatred of Spider-Man stems from the fact that deep down, he knows Spidey '''is''' a selfless hero, and the fact that he can't compare makes him jealous. This close-up first happened towards the end of ''Amazing Spider-Man'' #1. I.e., he got his BigEgoHiddenDepths ''in the issue he was introduced''.

** In Ultimate Spider-Man, it was established that Jameson disliked costumed heroes because his son died on a mission to the moon with relatively little fanfare. Jameson saw his son as a real hero and vigilantes as glory hounds by comparison. Later, he came around and realized that Spider-Man and at least some heroes actually were the real deal.

* ''Franchise/TheFlash'':
** This was pretty much the main point of Wally West during the late eighties/early '90s; [[LegacyCharacter he took over the role]] of being The Flash but acted like a brash, often selfish, unthinking jerk, but he had just stepped into the role left behind by his beloved late uncle and was ''incredibly'' insecure about filling his boots, as well as not processing his death well ''and'' was dealing with other issues thanks to his AbusiveParents having messed him up quite badly. His CharacterDevelopment was largely based around him breaking down the Big Ego and wearing the HiddenDepths on his sleeves.
*** This is also the thing that sparked his relationship with Linda Park, who also had issues of this on her own. She put up an act of being a stuffy, no-nonsense reporter who was often antagonistic towards the Flash, but she was dealing with frustrations of not being taken seriously and was quite lonely, and didn't react well to Wally's acting out. They bonded when working on the same case caused them to see past their respective walls and became friends, which later blossomed into romance.
** The Snart siblings, Captain Cold and Golden Glider, are both career criminals who spent much of the Silver Age as being opportunist jerks and could never resist rubbing in their supposed superiority when fighting the Flash, which in Cold's case continued when he returned from retirement years later. Glider, however, was dealing with the loss of her boyfriend and wasn't handling it well (he was a supervillain and she was AvengingTheVillain) and later on, both would be revealed to have come from an abusive home, and used supervillainy as a means of escaping their shitty past.

* The title character of ''Series/KamenRiderBuild'', Sento Kiryu, has [[AmnesiacHero amnesia]], resulting in a severe case of IdentityCrisis and with him being just so at a ''lost'' at where his place in the world is, but nonetheless tries to be [[AllLovingHero the best person he can be with his new identity]]. This can come across as quite a shock to some who first meet him given how much of an InsufferableGenius ManChild Sento can be towards those around him.

* This happened every once in a while with Alex on ''Series/FamilyTies''.