History Main / HorribleJudgeOfCharacter

** Thrall is big on offering people second chances. His entire race was guilty of horrible deeds just short of genocide and they got a chance to redeem themselves -- it'd be hypocritical to deny others the same opportunity.

* The adaptation of ''{{The Count of Monte Cristo}}'', ''{{Gankutsuou}}'', has Albert as a Horrible Judge of Character. He ignores the strange coincidences when the count arrives in Paris, the horrible turns of events, the letters to his father. Even when his childhood best friend pleads with him that he be careful around the count, all he gets are ''tantrums''. The count, being a {{Magnificent|Bastard}} and ManipulativeBastard counted on this, and systematically destroys Albert's remaining confidence in him by slowly spelling out how he was a piece in his schemes for revenge... and does so precisely in the most heartless manner possible to get him to challenge him to a duel and get a legal excuse to kill him as a revenge against his parents.
** At the start of the book, the young Count himself is a terrible judge of characters, trusting as friends the same men who will completely ruin his life and get him started on the quest for revenge that will occupy the rest of the story. In fact, he will never realize, by himself, the reason of his downfall: only with the help of old Faria will he be able to finally get a clue.

** Played straight with Rem, however. In the Yotsuba Arc, having shadowed the greedy and egocentric [[spoiler:Higuchi]] for a while, she begins thinking Light's 'as pure as Misa'. Well, until he [[spoiler:manipulates her into suicidally killing L and Watari]], anyway...

* CodeGeass is just chock full of them, from Suzaku to [[spoiler:the Black Knights, when Schneizel fools them into betraying Lelouch]].

* Dio Brando in the first part of ''Jojo's Bizarre Adventure'' (if I recall correctly) manages to manipulate and convince about everyone for quite some time that he is just a nice orphan despite a lot of dickish moves.

** Yeah, because the obvious and correct answer that she wasn't really all that bad couldn't be right, right?

* Terra from KingdomHeartsBirthBySleep.The same way some blind people keep a seeing-eye dog to make walking around safe, Terra should really be keeping an EvilDetectingDog around to make heroics safe, because there's being bad at noticing bad guys, and then there's ''needing someone to order you to kill an innocent to realize they don't have your best interests at heart''. NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast, ObviouslyEvil appearance with horns, flames, GlowingEyesOfDoom, and temptations to TheDarkSide... it all swooshes right over his head as he assumes them to be perfectly nice people.

* Almost everybody on Dexter at some point, but especially Rita.

*** That isn't fair yeah it's obvious to us who've had Shakespeare's lovely foreshadowing. But for Duncan he was just going to hang out with the guy who just helped saved his kingdom. With out knowledge from the witches there was no reason to assume that Macbeth was going to murder him. (Why the hell Banquo didn't do anything is another question)

* Although it's not a theme throughout the whole series, in ''MegamanBattleNetwork 6'' Lan shows an incredible ineptitude at differentiating friend and foe. He looks up to and almost idolizes [[spoiler:''two'' members of the quirky miniboss]], and is indifferent to a third, only correctly identifying one villain before he strikes for the entire game (and that villain is the one who thinks it is shameful to try to hide your villainy and chastises the others for being discreet). He also only learns that [[spoiler:the mayor]] is a villain by walking in on a conversation while going to ask him for help. Meanwhile, he is instantly suspicious of two figures who turn out to be [[spoiler:Chaud and Protoman, his longtime allies throughout the entire series]], nor does he connect the two even after the first reveals himself. The writers never seem to notice this trend.

* [[MegaMan Dr. Light]] seems curiously willing to trust Dr. Wily when he claims to have gone straight (''Mega Man 3''), to have his lab ransacked by a renegade robot (''Mega Man & Bass''), or to be searching for the cure to a mysterious robot virus (''Mega Man 10'').

* In ''BobAndGeorge'', Dr. Light has problems with this in the ''MegaMan 3'' story arc, completely ignoring every obvious sign that Wily doesn't have the amnesia he claims to have, taking the WallBanger in the actual game and turning it way, way UpToEleven. Then subverts it at the end when it is revealed he deliberately gave Dr. Wily faulty power crystals, which caused Gamma to fail.

If it's romantic, expect a LoveMartyr or MadLove. If the "friend" is [[XanatosGambit Xanatos]], then they're a XanatosSucker. If the horrible judge of character causes a horrible plot development by doing this, they are a SwissMessenger. Contrast EvilCannotComprehendGood.

* Joey from ''[[http://www.agameoffools.com A Game of Fools]]'', who doesn't seem to realise that the aliens that have abducted him mean to [[http://www.agameoffools.com/comic_30.html kill and]] [[http://www.agameoffools.com/comic_28.html rape him]], can't see anything weird about an [[http://www.agameoffools.com/comic_32.html insane naked man who's "backpack smelt like dead people"]] and thinks the AxCrazy hitchhiker they've picked up, who openly admits to multiple murders, [[http://www.agameoffools.com/comic_33.html bizarre sexual fetishes]] and [[http://www.agameoffools.com/comic_34.html necrophilia]], is a perfectly nice guy.

* ''TransformerGeneration1'' had its fair share of examples. Arguably the worst case happens in "Megatron's Master Plan", which revolves around the Decepticons' plan to make the people of Earth (or at least Central City) believe that they were in fact the good guys all along... after how many very obvious instances they are not? And everybody actually believed it! Then when they were proven complete morons, the enslaved humans all blamed Shawn Berger, who while not having a great reason to help the Decepticons at least had the most reason to trust them, as the second main cause of their misery.

* Every abused girl on any daytime talk show who says "But he really loves me!"

As a remedy for being unable to write such a character convincingly, writers instead make the manipulated victim carry an IdiotBall. That means that everyone else, especially the six-year-old target audience, can and will immediately identify the manipulator as evil. How does this work? The manipulated victim is simply a HorribleJudgeOfCharacter! Compare to when only the protagonists see through the manipulator and everyone else holds him in high regard, in that case it's a DevilInPlainSight. Compare to TheLibby who is quite often also transparently mean, abusive and treacherous to everyone (who doesn't have the authority to punish her for it), yet inside her clique (read: "popular" and/or upper-class people), magically everyone likes her.

* [[TalesOfMU Amaranth]]. FriendToAllLivingThings taken to the logical extreme, or just an idiot? You decide.
** And Mack, who has yet to learn that an awesome rack does ''not'' a good person make.
** To be fair to Amaranth, she really can't help the way she is, due to [[spoiler: her creation process being tampered with.]]