Anti Villain / Western Animation

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• Adventure Time:
  • The Ice King does make a hobby out of kidnapping princesses and is shown to have sociopathic tendencies, but most of the time, he's just desperate for the same affection Finn and Jake receive but doesn't know how to get it, due to, again, him being a sociopath.
    • One episode revolved entirely around the Ice King spying on the duo using a creepy horse costume, not in an attempt to learn their secrets, but to learn how to have fun.
    • Later, it's revealed that he was once a human named Simon Petrikov until, one day, he bought an old antique crown and tried it on. It drove him insane, driving away his fiance and warping him into the Ice King we know today. He even apologizes in the tape where we find this out for anything awful he might do under the crown's power.
    • And NOW it's been revealed that he took care of a very young Marceline after the Mushroom War, and gave her her stuffed monkey Hambo, who she still treasures hundreds of years later. So now he's pretty much gone from an actual villain to genuinely kind and sweet man who is too muddled by the magic of the Ice Crown to realize when his actions are hurting people.
  • The Earl of Lemongrab isn't really a villain — just a huge prick — but the extent of his jerkassery certainly paints him in a villainous light. He sent everyone in the kingdom to the dungeon for one million years, terrorized and threatened the candy people for petty reasons, made a child cry in deleted scene, belittled his butler, screamed at and imprisoned everybody including his mother... But the reason he's so insensitive and such a huge jerkass is the fact that he's a science experiment gone horribly wrong. Whatever mistake Princess Bubblegum made while creating him resulted in him having a Hair-Trigger Temper, Obsessively Organized, No Social Skills, No Indoor Voice, and the general mannerisms of The Mentally Disturbed. Sure he's a jerk, but he's also "completely unadjusted to living," according to Adam Muto, a writer on the show. To make matters more puzzling, his motivations are far from malicious- he just wants the kingdom to be quiet, peaceful, orderly, tidy, clean, and free of pranks and pillow fights. It just happens that, in his maladjusted mind, Disproportionate Retribution is the proper way of dealing with disorder of any kind. Later on, he becomes much more malicious.
• Aladdin: The Series: Arbutus from the episode "Garden of Evil" seems to be just another Monster of the Week who kidnaps Jasmine. However, after spending time with him, Jasmine realizes Arbutus isn't actually evil. He loves and cares for his plants almost as if they were his children, and he took Jasmine as retribution because many years ago her father had taken one of the flowers from his garden. Arbutus has a low opinion of humans in general because of how casually destructive they are of nature, and so he treats humans with the same contempt they show for the plants they carelessly cut down. Jasmine even agrees he makes some good points, and almost gets him to see that not all humans are as bad as he thinks. Unfortunately, Aladdin shows up right then hacking and slashing his way through Arbutus' garden in a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• In the seasons preceding his Heel–Face Turn, Prince Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender had so many heroic traits and plot lines (not to mention horrific backstory) that fans were at a loss as to what to call him before this index was created. If not for the fact that he was constantly trying to capture the protagonist, he would be the most sympathetic character on the show. (And to many viewers, he is anyway.) Notably, they show Aang and Zuko's backstories in the same episode, via two plots that have nothing to do with each other, and show that despite Zuko's sour attitude he's also the kind of person who thinks nothing of risking his life to save one of his subordinates and even letting his target go if it means ensuring his men's safety, to hammer home that he'd be the protagonist if he was in any other show.
  • For a few episodes after his Heel–Face Turn, Zuko is arguably the purest form of this trope; his attempts to explain his change of heart to the Gaang and prove the sincerity of his intent only serve to convince them that he's gone from threat to nuisance, and after he burns Toph by mistake he cries unto the heavens, "Why am I so bad at being good?!"
  • There's also Zuko's uncle Iroh. Though it's heavily implied that he was more of a standard villain as a Fire Nation general before the time of the series, he never really does anything evil within the story and almost delves into Hero Antagonist territory.
  • Mai and Ty Lee would count as either this or Punch Clock Villains. Both only really act as villains because they're essentially bullied into it by Azula. Ty Lee is recruited thanks to some barely veiled death threats, and while Mai seems to go along with Azula more willingly, she's also more willing to disobey Azula and becomes the first person to turn on her, while Ty Lee is absolutely terrified of Azula and really just wants to be in the circus. (Or failing that, to simply avoid becoming the target of Azula's wrath.)
• In Barbie: The Pearl Princess, Scylla is a reformed witch who's forced into being evil.
• Charmcaster is the Ben 10 franchise's reigning queen of this trope.
  • In Ben 10 and Ben 10: Alien Force, she tends to do one good deed to further her villainous plots in many of her appearances (saving Ben and Grandpa Max from Hex, stopping two thieves, preventing an evil teammate from attacking Gwen, and saving a little boy from being run over by a truck with her magic.)
  • In Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, it's revealed that Charmcaster's villainous attempts to gain great power were all to free her enslaved home world and to resurrect her father. Unfortunately, neither one of these ended up working well for her.
  • In Ben 10: Omniverse, she's only a villain because she's recovering from a breakdown and doesn't know what else to do with her life, but is kept mentally unstable through her magic power addiction and is thus open to suggestion from two manipulative bastards she has under her control. She spends most of the series just living her own life in Ledgerdomain and only does evil deeds when something or someone provokes her. Also, the powerful artifacts she seeks are rightfully her's, and the heroes only prevent her from getting them because her current psychosis makes it too dangerous to let her keep them.
• In Bojack Horseman, villains as figures of hatred don't really exist as much as simply oppose the protagonists in any capacity, be it because they're obstructive, irrational, petty or simply have a different opinion. Rarely are any of them irredeemable and any could switch back and forth in any direction if motivated by interest, morality or simple curiosity.
  • BoJack and Princess Carolyn easily tick this box as well, being Lighter and Softer versions of Villain Protagonists from time to time. BJ's not a bad guy but he can just as fill the role of protagonist and antagonist within the same scene by his rather twisted reasoning, damaging vices and asshole behavior. PC, on the other hand, leans more toward this alignment as time goes by, as she's not above crushing people if it creates some benefits for her client and earns her more money, be it lying, manipulating or betraying loved ones; not to say, her Control Freak nature and refusal to accept defeat.
  • Neal McBeal, the Navy SEAL? is a petty high-ranking fella who believes his rank entitles him to respect from civilians and stars, even if he's out of duty and not hot shit material, no matter how much he screams about it on national television. He's right on one thing: Stars shouldn't be above judgement, even if stars and stripes shouldn't be, either.
  • Angela Diaz is a cold and stoic executive who's primary motivation is to earn money for the network. She frequently dishes out Breaking Speeches like candy and thinks nothing of destroying people's lives. Her decision to fire Herb, however, comes out of professional necessity: Herb was caught getting it on in a public restroom with another guy at a time where gays were hated by the general public. The worst thing Angela does is keep BoJack from signing his career death sentence by standing up for Herb. BJ's decision to demonize Angela for what happened comes partly from an inability to accept the complicated situation and his part on it.
  • Lenny Turtletaub is a business-savvy producer who doesn't care about any of his movies's quality or budget as long as he gets his investment back and is honest about seeing each crew member as a commodity. Oddly, he's a strangely sympathetic jackass who can be reasonable, pragmatic and willing to work again with problematic celebrities. Not to say, he embodies some of the pros and cons of executive approach to film.
  • The two bird paparazzo fit the bill only because of their ineffectual attempts at blackmail don't even amount to Poke the Poodle.
  • Tom Jumbo-Grumbo –- cushy mouthpiece for Hollywoo's grand and powerful, dismissive of genuine issues in the industry, an ass to his crew and a rather gruff father figure to the people who work in his newscast. Not to say his zigzagging on hating and loving his ex-wives. He also deeply cares about the people he works with, shows genuine concern when Randy passes out on his keyboard, and admonishes the other newsroom workers for not treating each other as a family.
• Beastly from Care Bears: Welcome to Care-a-Lot and it's spinoff sequel Care Bears & Cousins sometimes dips into this when he's not the Anti-Hero. Most of his actions spurns from the bears not inviting him to an event they're holding, or that their actions are bothering him.
• Dracula from Castlevania (2017). His wife Lisa was unjustly burned at the stake, and it's been noted in-universe by Trevor Belmont that Dracula's anger at the people who killed her is understandable, perhaps even justified. However, Dracula never exactly had much love for humanity before he met Lisa, and her death made Dracula start a plan of human genocide. He's also shown to have a human side, still grieving the death of his wife after so many years, and getting tired of the endless bloodlust of his vampire generals. He was even a Death Seeker, all for the sake of seeing Lisa again. Alucard calls it "history's greatest suicide note," and when Dracula realizes that fighting Alucard means killing the one thing that Lisa left for him, Dracula just lets himself be staked to end it all.
  • Isaac and Hector both also qualify. Despite the fact that they are helping Dracula attempt to destroy humanity, both have suffered a great deal at the hands of humanity and Dracula was the first one to show either of them kindness. Since Dracula's death, Isaac has been reevaluating his plans to some extent, while things have only gone downhill for Hector.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog has had a few of these:
  • Snowman only stole Eustace and Muriel's Melting Genes and froze all of Nowhere into the West Pole in order to preserve himself as the Last of His Kind since all of his friends were melted to death by global warming. Once Courage fixes the hole in the ozone layer and revives all his dead friends in the process, he's more than happy to reform and leave Nowhere in peace.
  • The Duck Brothers only kidnapped Muriel to help bust their brother out of Area 51 before he's made into a duck dinner. Once Courage learns the whole story he's more than happy to assist them and they leave in peace.
  • Fred isn't really evil so much as he is insane and slightly NAAAUUUUUUUUUGGGHHHTTYYY, yes he does have an obsession (and maybe a fetish) for shaving people completely bald, but it's not like he ever tried to hurt anyone.
  • Conway the Contaminationist wanted to share his secret to a longer life with Eustace and Muriel, unfortunately his methods involved turning their home into what amounted to a landfill, it made him very healthy, Eustace and Muriel? Not so much.
  • Kitty had a racist hatred against dogs because of the cruelty that she suffered from a dog gangster. Her worldview was remedied though.
  • Similarly the Goat attacked and brutalised all people who came to the mountain because humans colonised the mountain and threw all his friends off a cliff.
• Bushroot in Darkwing Duck was once described along the lines of "not so much a villain as just desperately in need of a peer group".
• Moordryd Payyn from Dragon Booster qualifies. It's implied rather often that while he is a jerk most of the time, he is really only doing the evil stuff for his Big Bad dad's approval (shown best in episode 11, "Pride of the Hero", when he was shocked out of a With Great Power Comes Great Insanity state when his father (under pressure from The Hero, the Dragon Booster) admits to being proud of Moordryd. From Moordryd's reaction, one must assume that he doesn't get that praise often).
  • Also, when things got really dangerous for the whole city (including his friends), Moordryd saved the city from the Brainwashed and Crazy Dragon Booster, foiling his father's scheme. It's also implied in the final episodes that he might go Anti-Hero, but as the second series never materialized, it's impossible to know.
• The titular trio of Ed, Edd n Eddy. Technically they are three con artists trying to scam their peers. It just happens that Ed and Edd have stronger moral code than their targets and Eddy has a Freudian Excuse, namely a sociopathic older brother.
• Denzel Crocker from The Fairly Oddparents is more or less this in the recent seasons.
• Sarmoti from Father of the Pride.
• The majority of the Rogues Gallery in Gargoyles qualifies to some degree or another — it's actually easier to list off the truly evil characters in Gargoyles, as there are fewer of them. Sevarius, Jackal and Hyena, Thailog, Proteus, the Archmage, and a few historical characters who were bastards in real life. Everyone else is various shades of Anti-Villain (or at least, more realistically human in their villainy):
  • Xanatos, if he didn't start out this way, he would be there by the end, when he became a Friendly Enemy to the clan and found a pair of Morality Pets in his wife, Fox, and son, Alexander.
  • Demona, a mostly immortal gargoyle who has watched her species driven to near-extinction over the course of her life and wants to Kill All Humans as revenge/to protect the few that remain. Aside from her Freudian Excuse, she has her daughter, Angela, as a Morality Pet, and is generally portrayed as being deeply wounded deep down.
  • Macbeth is another immortal with a history with Demona, and his early actions are mostly centered on finding her so that he can finally die, since only she can kill him. Later on, he drifts more into Anti-Hero territory, though it's hard to say where he stands by the time the comic ends.
  • The Emir, a one-off villain associated with Xanatos, tried to control the spirit of death so that he could resurrect his young son.
• Glitch Techs: Ridley's this in the two episodes she appears. While she's not malicious, she's incredibly selfish and short-sighted and only cares about her modded glitches and herself. Justified as she is often made fun of for being "weird" and is worried about going through that again.
• Hazbin Hotel: Adam is a downplayed example due to the fact that most demons in Hell are Always Chaotic Evil so his annual purge of Hell's citizens is somewhat justified. However, it's important to note that Demons are capable of possessing positive qualities and that it's very easy for a decent person to end up in Hell for a petty reason after they die.
• Inside Job (2021): They work for Cognito Inc and have dealt with all of the company's corrupt deeds in stride, and all of the members of the gang have used the company's power for selfish or destructive purposes. That being said, none of Reagan and her colleagues can be described as wholly evil, as they each have their own Pet the Dog moments, Freudian Excuses and, when push comes to shove, turn out to genuinely care for each other, even though its not super apparent.
  • Reagan is a Mad Scientist who has moments of intense selfishness and cruelty, but she's also trying to fix Cognito from within and create a better world, has to constantly manage the dealings of her negligent father, and she's not above helping other people and doing the right thing.
  • Brett is an upbeat, friendly and somewhat dim Token Good Teammate to the point where it's easy to forget that he is complicit in the shadow government's antics and can possibly only be excused by his incredible naivety.
  • Andre is a corrupt supposed doctor who has created diseases that likely have body counts in the thousands, but he's also a neurotic mess who uses drugs to cope with his unmedicated OCD, Tourettes and anxiety, and is implied to have grown up with strict Christian parents.
  • Glenn is a violent, bigoted warmonger whose life has basically been ruined by the shoddy experiment that transformed him into the deformed half-dolphin he is now, despite his brutal personality, does hold somewhat positive relationships with his coworkers and is usually the one who is the least hard on Reagan and the most eager to help the others out. For example, in "The Brettfast Club" he is eager to follow Brett's disguise plan, and later gives Reagan a card to rent from Blockbuster to make Brett feel better.
  • Myc, despite being the most crass and verbally abusive of the gang, is also ironically a Non-Action Guy who is the least culpable for Cognito's violent crimes, although this seems less out of kindness and more out of laziness.
  • Gigi is complicit in the violent crimes of countless celebrities and officials, but she's occasionally concerned about Reagan's health, and, while she keeps her coworkers at an arms-length, later on does prove to genuinely treasure their friendship in "Inside Reagan".
• Whether or not Invader Zim qualifies for this trope is a heavily debated topic amongst the fandom. Those against cite his Psycho for Hire-like eagerness to cause The End of the World as We Know It, while those for cite his failure to Just Kill his arch-nemesis and his partly "I just want to be loved" motives. See Alternate Character Interpretation for more.
• Titan in Invincible (2021) is a villain for the sake of providing for his family, and goes out of his way to avoid harming innocents when possible. After burning down an apartment complex under his boss' orders, he gave some of the displaced residents cash for a hotel out of his own pocket. After Invincible helps him take down his boss, he usurps his criminal empire but maintains that he's going to work to make life better for the common people.
• One-shot character Inge Magnusson in the episode "Rowena's Abduction" of Ivanhoe: The King's Knight is raiding England and abducts Rowena to hold her for ransom but only because he wants to buy back his throne in Norway.
• The Jonny Quest franchise isn't known for its sympathetic villains, but Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures did a number with Ezekiel Rage, primarily in his initial appearance, where he was a delusional man, driven mad by the brutal loss of his wife and child, who mistook Jessie for a hallucination of his own daughter and wanted revenge against anyone he could find. His subsequent appearances, however, are much less sympathetic.
• The Legend of Korra continues the Avatar tradition:
  • According to Amon, when he was a child, his family was poor. Eventually, a firebender killed his family and burned his face to a grotesque degree. Because of this, he became violently prejudiced against benders, and the act of bending itself. While comparisons can be drawn between Amon and various historical figures; most notably Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin, there is at least a grain of truth to Amon's assertion that benders are oppressing non-benders.
    • While it turns out that Amon lied about his backstory, the real one isn't that much less depressing; he himself is a waterbender, and his father, Yakone, forced him and his brother Tarrlok to master bloodbending, and saw them as nothing more than tools for revenge. Not only would the emotional and psychological abuse by his father be enough to warp him mentally, but bloodbending too much screws with your head. This makes him even more similar to people like Adolf Hitler, since he leads a revolt against what he sees as the impurity of the world even though he is a bender himself (Some believe that Hitler had Jewish ancestry, and at the very least wasn't part of the 'Master Race' of Aryans he was trying to make).
  • The Red Lotus in Season 3, particularly, their leader, Zaheer. They, like Amon, sincerely believed in their cause, namely to destroy all world governments in order to achieve global freedom and equality. Unfortunately, they were rather extreme with their methods, being fine with, among other things, terrorism, kidnapping and murder, and ultimately caused the ascent of Kuvira, an actual tyrant.
    • Later though, Zaheer does regret unintentionally causing the rise of Kuvira, and even helps Korra so that she can undo his mistake.
  • Kuvira herself is shown to have noble goals in reuniting the Earth Kingdom after the chaos that followed the death of the Earth Queen. She also has a fiance, and she avoids outright war if she can. Eventually, she goes way too far, creating a superweapon from spirit vines, forcing people into "re-education camps" if they don't obey her (or simply have non-Earth Kingdom ancestry), and trying to destroy Republic City after she finally does reunite the Earth Kingdom (and renames it to "Earth Empire").
• Sylvester the cat and Elmer Fudd in Looney Tunes, who, beside their personal vendetta against their respective foes, are quite nice fellows and star as the good guys in one or two cartoons.
  • And on the Disney side, Pete was nothing more for Mickey Mouse than what Sylvester was for Tweety in his debut. While Pete is more Machiavellian these days, most other Disney villains would still able to smash him in a villainy contest. And in few instance, he, too, would have a good (if slightly anti-heroic) role once in a while.
• My Little Pony:
  • My Little Pony 'n Friends:
    • My Little Pony TV Specials: Both specials feature one of these. First is Scorpan, a demonic-looking ape who reluctantly serves Tirac to protect his young dragon friend, Spike, and ultimately turns on Tirac to save Spike. Next is Rep, a lizardman who only works for Catrina because he used to be in love with her before she became an addict to witchweed potion.
    • In "Through the Door", the monster from the Land of Legends doesn't especially enjoy being a villain, and lacks any actual malice behind his actions, but he antagonizes the heroes and menaces the land because that's the role he's been given to play in stories.
      I was born to be a monster,
      The fates gave me no choice.
      I've got the monster's nose
      And the monster's toes
      And the monster's gravelly voice.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: The show's villains, for the most part, either change their ways or are too minor villains to really need to in the first place. It is considered more jarring for a villain in the show to be genuinely vile.
• The Owl House:
  • In season one, Lilith Clawthorne is the chief enforcer of the oppressive magical regime and is trying to capture Eda, but she truly believes that working within the system is the best way to make the world a better place and The Emperor will lift Eda’s curse and recruit her into the regime if she's captured. In the season finale she does a Heel–Face Turn when she realizes that none of that is true.
  • Season two replaces Lilith with The Golden Guard, Emperor Belos's right hand man and nephew. While the Golden Guard tends to just obey orders without question and typically acts smug and haughty, he's still very Affably Evil. Later episodes reveal that the Guard is actually a 16 year-old boy named Hunter, who grew up isolated and abused by Belos, and just wants to help his uncle fulfill the Titan's wishes and heal his curse. After learning in "Hollow Mind" that Belos is a witch hunter who wants to commit genocide in the Demon Realm, Hunter has a panic attack and goes on the run, before pulling a Heel–Face Turn two episodes later, and season three reveals that Hunter is actually an incredibly sweet and excitable kid when he's not being pushed onto the wrong path.
• The Brain from Pinky and the Brain treads the line between this and Anti-Hero — he's a well-intentioned Villain Protagonist trying to take over a world that actually desperately needs someone like him in charge.
• One episode of Samurai Jack is entirely from an enemy Mook's perspective. It is revealed that this robot was given emotions and that a dog he cares for is held hostage, which is why he fights Jack, only to be immediately killed.
  • Another episode focused on a group of bounty hunters who wanted to kill Jack. One of them, Princess Mira, wanted to kill him to trade to Aku for her kingdom's freedom.
  • Season 5's Daughters of Aku are a group of semi-demonic assassins who have been forced since birth into that role by their abusive mother, who convinced them that killing Jack would restore peace and beauty into the world. Most of them die horribly, and the survivor eventually shifts her worldview.
• South Park:
  • Surprisingly, Satan himself and his son Damien qualifies. In fact, Satan is actually the least evil of all the villains that may exist in South Park.
  • Kyle Broflowski also becomes one of Type II and III in "Super Hard PCness". He believes that all the abuse he endured, the meanness appearing in South Park, and the girl he likes becoming another Eric Cartman were all a result of the vulgarness of Terrence and Phillip and Canadian media in general and tries to an end to their shows so they can no longer corrupt the morals of people in other countries It leads to Canada getting nuked by the President much to Kyle's horror.
  • Eric Cartman himself would become this in South Park: Post Covid: The Return of Covid where he tries to prevent Stan and Kyle from fixing the Bad Future, with his reasons for doing so is out of fear that he'll lose is family if the future changes
• Sheldon Plankton in the seasons of Spongebob Squarepants following The Movie.
• Steven Universe:
  • Bismuth has good intentions, but her Pay Evil unto Evil tendencies regarding Homeworld and her developing The Breaking Point was the Breaking Point for Rose to bubble her away, having become too aggressive to allow her on the battlefield any longer. As of "Made in Honor", this no longer applies.
  • The Diamonds are ultimately proven to be this for the entire series, as it's revealed that Blue, Yellow, and Pink have spent their entire lives following White's doctrine, doing whatever they could to live up to her nigh-unreachable standards and whatever they think is necessary for their empire, and never bringing themselves to object prior to Pink's rebellion. Simply put, they simply view themselves as the rulers of an intergalactic empire, not realizing how miserable their empire has been for eons, even themselves, until Steven gets through to them. Yellow even lampshades it after Steven stops her from destroying Blue's physical form by knocking back her lightning with his shield:
  Yellow Diamond: This is what White Diamond expects of all of us, from the thinnest flake of mica to the deepest, hardest stone — We all must make sacrifices for the sake of our perfect empire!
• Many (if not most) of the villains in the first season of Super Friends qualify. Goodfellow invented the GEEC so as to free mankind from tedious chores, then offered it as a free service to everyone on Earth. The ocean-polluting aliens were filtering silicon from Earth's seas for fuel, because they were stranded and their space ship ran on silicon. The global-warming aliens were heating up the Earth because their own planet had frozen over^note admittedly, by their own industrial air pollution and they needed a new home.
• Rick and Morty: In spite of everything Evil Morty has done throughout his appearances, it all really boils down to him wanting to just escape Rick's Central Finite Curve after putting up with his Rick for so long and once he has it in a Rick-less multiverse, he never causes any further trouble unless his solitude is disturbed.
• The second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 'toon has several of these, but three stand out. Karai begins as a Worthy Opponent, who, despite disagreeing with some of the Shredder’s more destructive tendencies and secretly stopping them when she can, stands by his side because he is her adoptive father. Bishop is a Well-Intentioned Extremist, who truly does care about his stated mission to protect Earth and will fall in with anyone who aids that goal. Baxter Stockman, although amoral and unrepentant, becomes one of these due to getting the short end of the karma stick during his systematical reduction to a Brain in a Jar. By the time his Day In The Lime Light comes along, he's more tragic than anything.
• In some Tom and Jerry shorts, Tom qualifies, due to him either not starting the conflict, just trying to protect the house, doing his job, or other things. At some point, the writers allowed him to win a few times.
• Scourge in Transformers: Cybertron, whose iron-fisted rule over the Jungle Planet began with the intent of bringing law to a lawless world, and is about halfway down the Slippery Slope when we meet him, slips down further, then manages to claw his way back towards the top near the end of the series.
  • An even greater example is Sky-Byte from Transformers: Robots in Disguise, who sometimes found himself trying to protect human lives. He's also flamboyantly comical, prone to singing songs and writing haikus, and seems to desire appreciation by his commander. By the end of the series, rather than be incarcerated with the rest of the villains, he escapes to live peacefully on Earth.
    Sky-Byte: "Now, more than ever before—my dear hostages need me!"
  • Transformers: Generation 1 had at least one in Thundercracker, one of the original three Seekers. He was constantly shown to have Noble Demon tendencies, did not enjoy the suffering of humans like most 'Cons and was at times capable of compassion, and would question his allegiance (contrast his colleagues Starscream and Skywarp — one a Smug Snake backstabber, and the other a Stupid Evil psycho). It's strongly implied the main reason he continued to serve Megatron was out of fear rather than loyalty. Skyfire/Jetfire may also count, but since he underwent a Heel–Face Turn so quickly it's debatable.
  • Transformers: Prime has Breakdown and Dreadwing.
    • Breakdown has a lot of history with Bulkhead, but they seem to share a common respect for one another, and their battles often contain a lot of Trash Talk. In addition to that, he's shown a degree of sympathy for the Mooks.
    • Dreadwing values loyalty and honor above all else and regards his alignment with the Decepticons to be one of duty. He displays the utmost respect for bots like Optimus Prime, and despite being a Combat Pragmatist Mad Bomber, isn't beyond calling a truce when both sides will benefit for the greater good. While he was planning on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge after hearing about his brother's death, he became even more infuriated when he learned about Skyquake's ultimate fate at the hand of Starscream.
    • Season 3 adds Predaking to the list. Something of a Proud Warrior Race Guy, he only fights for the 'Cons because they promised to resurrect an army of his extinct brethren for him to lead. They did create an army of beasts, but realized that he could use it to turn on their diminished forces, and thus hatched a plan to indirectly destroy the clones. This gives us a reason to feel bad for him, adding a bit of woobieness.
• TRON: Uprising: Paige is the most obvious of the lot. Yes, she's a former medic turned loyal Dragon to Tesler, and (like everyone else who supports Clu's forces) prejudiced against Isos, but that was because Quorra knocked her out so that she would be spared while Tesler and his forces massacred everyone else in the hospital. Tesler lied and told her that Quorra and Ada (fugitive Isos) killed all her friends and patients. She's not so much loyal to Clu and those "perfection" ideas as she is loyal to Tesler, because she believes he saved her life, and during the course of the series, starts to suspect her "benefactor" isn't what he's cracked up to be.
• Sargeant Hatred of The Venture Bros., once he finally enters the spotlight, turns out to be far more benevolent than his name would suggest, treating the Venture family well and not taking his position as their "arch" all that seriously. In Season 4, he even becomes their bodyguard and attempts to be a good role-model to Hank. Unfortunately, he's severely emotionally unstable, not to mention a recovering pedophile, so the love is not exactly reciprocated.
• On Wacky Races, Dick Dastardly is your standard issue villain. On his own show a year later, he's a military officer with his villainous DNA still present at times who is merely following orders but failing miserably at his job.
• Nox from Wakfu arguably qualifies for this despite stealing the life force of hundreds of thousands of people and plants, considering how he thought that when he traveled back in time to save his family that everything would be undone. This makes it even worse for him when his plan fails, making the lives he took utterly pointless, and he's hit with such a My God, What Have I Done? that he commits suicide.
  • Oropo from Season 3 is of the Well-Intentioned Extremist variety, simply wanting to replace the current pantheon, which he sees as irresponsible at best and monstrous at worst, and make a better world. He also sincerely cares about his comrades, and gives up once they're in danger.
• The titular character of Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? gradually became this. She played many related tropes straight, too: the Friendly Enemy, often partnering with her rivals Zack and Ivy; the Worthy Opponent, shown to enjoy her "game" with ACME and harbor no ill feelings against them; and occasionally the Villain Protagonist, particularly in the last two episodes of the series when she met her long-lost father only to see him abducted by proper villain Lee Jordan.
• Carl the "evil" cockroach wizard from Yin Yang Yo!! certainly qualifies. While his attempts to defeat Yin Ying is always a failure, he still has an Freudian Excuse to show his mother that is more "villain" that his brother Herman. He even still has heroic traits, such as having helped Yin and Yang to defeat the Nightmaster, a villain who is far more intimidating.

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