History Main / IneffectualSympatheticVillain

* While he started off as a badass, by the end of ''WesternAnimation/KungFuPanda'', [[BigBad Tai Lung]] had become this due to a combination of FreudianExcuse, SympathyForTheDevil, revealing his StartOfDarkness and WellDoneSonGuy status, and an EtTuBrute from his past. This may have something to do with the HumiliationConga and KickThemWhileTheyAreDown which some viewers see in the final battle--it certainly can't be denied that what had once been a chillingly effective villain seemed rather pathetic and easily defeated, Po's [[BeYourself understanding of the Dragon Scroll]] notwithstanding.
** Of course, after his ArrogantKungFuGuy resume is firmly established and he has shamelessly brutalized the entire rest of the cast, others see this as simple karmic retribution. Pride goeth before the fall, after all, and a HumiliationConga was really no less than Tai Lung deserved at that point.

A potential villain who is consistently a failure or never gets the respect that he thinks he deserves, and may even be angry that the heroes don't take him seriously.

He or she may not necessarily be [[StupidCrooks entirely inept]] or have a [[PokeThePoodle laughably mild idea of what counts as villainy]]. VillainDecay is usually too simple an explanation. This is sometimes a relative situation, and the hero's RoguesGallery just happens to include people more showy, better financed, or just plain scarier than him. These guys are why people are found RootingForTheEmpire. A defining feature of such a villain is his [[SuperGullible gullibility]]: they are more often than not pitted against a [[TheTrickster Trickster]] who easily bamboozles them and leads them on their defeat, while it is obvious to the viewers that they should know better than listening to and believe their intended victim. A considerable number of them also tend to be [[TheKlutz Klutzes]] who are [[HoistByHisOwnPetard likely to fall in their own traps]] [[PlethoraOfMistakes thanks to poor judgement]], [[SmugSnake underestimating their foes to a ludicrous extent]] and/or [[DidntThinkThisThrough failure to think ahead]] or [[FailedASpotCheck pay any attention to their surroundings]]. And it is a usual way to showcase their stupidity by making them screw up their own plans and [[TooDumbToLive even die or get injured due to such mistakes]] in more realistic and grittier works.

This does not mean that he doesn't bear animosity; that's a PunchClockVillain. He's probably jumping at the opportunity to outdo his rivals and the hero. But there is something about his perseverance or attitude about the whole thing that is [[JerkassWoobie just short of sympathetic.]]

On the SlidingScaleOfCharacterAppreciation, these guys fall under "Villains we sympathize with"

* Sir Pentious of ''WebAnimation/HazbinHotel'', overlapping with SmugSnake (literally so, since he's a cobra demon.) His unironic DastardlyWhiplash shtick would be hard to take seriously at the best of times (to be fair, he died in the late 1800s and it wasn't a DeadHorseTrope ''then''), and the army of egg-shaped AdorableEvilMinions don't help. His multiple [[BigBadWannabe failed attempts to take over Hell]] cement him as ineffectual rather than just goofy.

* ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManAcrossTheSpiderVerse:'' The Spot is traditionally one of Spider-Man's C-List villains across media, often being a very minor and inconsequential nuisance at best, which holds true here as well... at first. [[spoiler: However, since nobody takes him seriously, he is able to fly below everyone's radar and discover and hone the true, devastating potential of his powers and becomes a trans-dimensional being that threatens the entire multiverse.]] This also serves as his BerserkButton as well because [[spoiler: Miles inadvertently ruined his life due to his actions in the first movie as he was one of the unlucky scientists to be caught in the aftermath, and being treated as nothing but a joke despite it drives him over the deep end to exact revenge on Miles and he eventually develops the aforementioned ability to do just that.]]

-->-- '''Michelangelo''' on '''Baxter Stockman''', ''[[WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012)]]''

The EvilCounterpart to FailureHero. Arguably a SubTrope of BoisterousWeakling. SuperTrope to TheFamilyForTheWholeFamily, which specifically requires the villain to be incompetent and their likely threat level sans said incompetence to be that of a KnightOfCerebus. A character who acts like a villain while genuinely not wanting to do anything truly evil is a HarmlessVillain.

* The Mane Six from ''Fanfic/TheDarkSideOfTheMirrorverse'' are a bunch of nuisances who are also extremely messed up from their various psychological hang-ups. To,list, they consist of:

** Captain Hook. Unlike other Disney villains, he has an understandable reason to want to destroy his nemesis (who seems to continually make his life miserable for no reason). He's constantly humiliated throughout the movie, seems disrespected by everyone in Never Land (besides Mr. Smee), and isn't feared in the slightest despite being clearly murderous. And there's the fact that the narrative oddly takes a sadistic liking making him the butt of the many comical injuries.

** Kami Steele from SpinOff ''The Program'' is one. Her first appearance had her pointing a gun GangstaStyle at a girl with the intent to kill her but ran away over being ''yelled at'' by said girl, who had started to poke holes in her plans. She has since started a body count, but still has her moments of incompetence. At one point, she attempts to give herself a CharacterNameAlias... in front of people who already know she's Kami.

* Wrestling/MontelVontaviousPorter on Smackdown after he lost the United States Championship and continued to lose every match he had afterwards, to the point Theodore Long refused to pay him the bonuses that were in his contract and took away MVP's NFL style inflatable tunnel entrance. Fans began to cheer for him out of sympathy.

* Wrestling/{{Layla}} El during the Wrestling/{{Laycool}} period. While they were both rotten people, Layla was also [[LaughablyEvil goofy]], small and tended to take the losing pin or submission hold when the team lost. And Layla also seemed to genuinely care about Michelle [=McCool=], who was growing increasingly tired of her.

* ''WebAnimation/BurntFaceMan's'' entire Rogues Gallery, whose nefarious schemes include harassing him over MSN and stealing his submarine (he doesn't have one, the plot was randomised). Taps Man splashes his opponents with water. "Hot, and cold. Hot, and cold, and a combination of them, which I call 'HOLD'." Despite that, Taps Man [[spoiler:managed to kill Burnt Face Man's rival, Slightly Bruised Man, with a spray of scalding water, followed with tepid water with lead piping and a faulty boiler.]]

* ''WebVideo/SMPEarth'': Tommy was perhaps one of the most hostile, yet also one of the weakest players on the server, constantly antagonizing everyone around him and getting absolutely trounced on the regular. His faction, Business Bay, followed a similar pattern of behavior. Tommy was also fifteen years old, so him trying to bully the adults of the server around ended up being endearingly ineffective. Out-of-universe, Techno actually praised him for this behavior, saying that a server like this ''needed'' a villain to keep things interesting, and he was very glad Tommy took that role upon himself.

* Wiki/SCPFoundation:

* While O'Malley from ''Machinima/RedVsBlue'' occasionally has moments of true villainy, far more often, he is completely, thoroughly, and utterly ineffectual throughout the ''[[Machinima/RedVsBlueTheBloodGulchChronicles Blood Gulch Chronicles]]''. How much of this is him and how much is actually due to him being in the head of [[spoiler:Doc, the pacifist medic]] is up for debate, but the fact still remains that his evilness generally consists of wacky plots to destroy the universe and illegally downloading music, and his robot army fails miserably because...well, let's just say that when he requested a robot army to take over a base in a day, he didn't expect that it would literally have to take exactly 24 hours for the robots to do it!

* Mario from ''WebVideo/SuperMarioLogan'', although not necessarily a villain, has failed in his numerous attempts to get rid of Jeffy, getting constantly annoyed and DrivenToSuicide by him and his handicapped behavior. Taken UpToEleven in "Jeffy's Bad Word!" where some fans genuinely felt sorry for him due to all the Mario torture porn he suffered from the video, especially the second half of the video starting from after he [[WhamShot spanked Jeffy]] due to the latter saying the F-word (no, not ''that'' F-word).

* ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/33584764/chapters/83453668 C-Listers]]'' subverts this trope. The protagonists are all C-list supervillains who are generally portrayed as awkward, socially inept dorks and TrueCompanions, [[NotSoHarmlessVillaim but it's frequently shown that they're all far from innefectual]]. Even the ones who most fit the archetype, [[LovableCoward Killer Moth]] and [[ShrinkingViolet Polka-Dot Man]], are unrepentant criminals who are willing to kill at the end of the day.

* '''' subverts this trope. The protagonists are all C-list supervillains who are generally portrayed as awkward, socially inept dorks and TrueCompanions, [[NotSoHarmlessVillaim but it's frequently shown that they're all far from innefectual]]. Even the ones who most fit the archetype, [[LovableCoward Killer Moth]] and [[ShrinkingViolet Polka-Dot Man]], are unrepentant criminals who are willing to kill at the end of the day.

[[quoteright:350:[[Franchise/{{Batman}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/81bab893_9428_49aa_82b8_0fd80ceba91b.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Is there anything sadder than a Franchise/{{Batman}} villain with PuppyDogEyes?]]

He may not necessarily be [[StupidCrooks entirely inept]] or have a [[PokeThePoodle laughably mild idea of what counts as villainy]]. VillainDecay is usually too simple an explanation. This is sometimes a relative situation, and the hero's RoguesGallery just happens to include people more showy, better financed, or just plain scarier than him. These guys are why people are found RootingForTheEmpire. A defining feature of such a villain is his [[SuperGullible gullibility]]: they are more often than not pitted against a [[TheTrickster Trickster]] who easily bamboozles them and leads them on their defeat, while it is obvious to the viewers that they should know better than listening to and believe their intended victim. A considerable number of them also tend to be [[TheKlutz Klutzes]] who are [[HoistByHisOwnPetard likely to fall in their own traps]] [[PlethoraOfMistakes thanks to poor judgement]], [[SmugSnake underestimating their foes to a ludicrous extent]] and/or [[DidntThinkThisThrough failure to think ahead]] or [[FailedASpotCheck pay any attention to their surroundings]]. And it is a usual way to showcase their stupidity by making them screw up their own plans and [[TooDumbToLive even die or get injured due to such mistakes]] in more realistic and grittier works.

* In ''Fanfic/NeitherABirdNorAPlaneItsDeku'', [[Characters/BatmanRoguesGalleryPart1 Kite Man]] is constantly name-dropped as a complete joke by Heroes and Villains alike. In Chapter 5, [[spoiler:the Ultra-Humanite]] sarcastically asks Izuku if he thought he was Kite Man. Later on, Shouto Todoroki initially believes that [[CowardlyLion Izuku]], who was busy [[NervousWreck sweating and quivering on-stage]], wouldn't last five seconds against Kite Man.