Designated Hero / Web Original

• Jay Naylor, author of Better Days, actually created a porn series sold online called "Haukaiu the Hero". People have pointed out that the title character hasn't done anything heroic, by either the old use or the current one, but has in fact so far been so blatantly unheroic as to not really care that his brain-damaged mother is being used as a sex toy by the men of the village. It is a porn series, so it's not really supposed to make sense to begin with, and the series are still incomplete, but still...
• Gordon Freeman is depicted as being like this in Freeman's Mind. Everyone hails him as a great hero, but really he just sort of bumbles around and saves the world by an accident, while at the same time trying to negotiate with enemy soldiers (it doesn't work), looting things around Black Mesa, and trying to find anything he can to get high (such as animal tranquilizers). A good example is episode 19: throughout the last few episodes, he had been randomly wandering around, pressing buttons because they looked shiny and shooting zombies who attacked him. Turns out he accidentally turns on a rocket engine that burns a giant monster to death (that he had avoided being crushed by due to sneaking and sheer dumb luck). The creator justifies that if a scientist shoot his way out of an alien invasion, chances are he had a dark side before hell broke loose.
• This was not uncommon in the early days of the "angry reviewer" style. Reviewers would often craft storylines in which their character would fight against superpowered foes with fantastic abilities and technology. Outside of that, they mostly spent their time yelling at pieces of media and using those same powers to threaten anyone who disagreed with them.
  • The Nostalgia Critic started off like this, frequently spending his time yelling at and destroying movies he didn't like. Not to mention he once conquered a micronation for fun. He did gradually become more heroic over the course of the show, but the revival made him more of a Villain Protagonist.
  • The Blockbuster Buster: E-Rod himself. As much as he tries playing himself off as a superhero, he acts a lot more like a bully to the movies he's reviewing. This is especially bad in the Retool, where he goes into the movies he's reviewing to assault or even kill the characters, regardless of whether or not they deserve it. He also berates and insults the characters when they do things he doesn't like. It's suppose to be played off for laughs, but it seems unsettling to have some random stranger yell at you when things don't happen the way he wants.
  • The Spoony Experiment: Spoony is an implied rapist, has stated to have killed people for sexual pleasure, and expresses his desire to kill people that liked Final Fantasy X.
  • Atop the Fourth Wall: Deconstructed in the "Gun and Sorcery" arc, where Holokara does all the usual angry reviewer stuff, only now we see it from the perspective of someone else and it's clear how incredibly unhinged someone like that would be to still call themselves a hero. Linkara himself is called out on his actions, particularly as Holokara's behavior was an extrapolation of Linkara's own, which resulted in Linkara gradually becoming a more genuinely heroic person after seeing the results.
  • The Irate Gamer himself. He blew up a harmless alien mothership because of E.T. on Atari, murdered the Kool-Aid Man for doing what he does... ON CHRISTMAS, casually pals around with Satan, blew up Ubisoft's headquarters because he couldn't get into their E3 conference, and we're supposed to treat him as the hero. If he was just an asshole that would be kind of understandable, except he has an Evil Twin character that hasn't even killed anyone or done anything remotely evil outside of stealing something.
• Mutants in the Whateley Universe. A number of the mutant characters seem to hold the opinion that mutants are just another minority, cruelly segregated and persecuted by 'normal' people... which, to be fair, is true, except for the fact that most mutants have powers that could easily kill a baseline, many at the school are living weapons of mass destruction, and the superheroes can be deadly- for instance, the case of the Flying Bulldozer, who tried to stop his long-time nemesis by throwing cars at him. It worked, while injuring dozens and causing over a million dollars of damages.
  • Especially the main characters of most stories and any of the school staff.
• A lot of people felt this about Meridell in Neopets' Meridell/Darigan war: The shiny, pretty town of Meridell is threatened by the evil, ominous Darigan Citadel. Lord Darigan demands that Meridell give him their magic orb and makes it clear that he'll not take no for an answer. Obviously, we're meant to side with Meridell... except that the orb originally belonged to Darigan, and was stolen from him by the people of Meridell, so he understandably wants his property back- and while it's true that Meridell stole the orb only because they were doomed if they didn't, apparently nobody realised that if having the orb will make your land prosper, then maybe taking it from somebody else is a dick move.
• Most of the protagonists in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series qualify, though Yami Yugi is undoubtedly the worst offender.
  • If one were to consider Seto Kaiba one, then he definitely qualifies.
• Matthew Santoro is portrayed as a hero for locking up Hugo in a cage for being crazy, and it's implied that it wasn't Hugo's fault that he's crazy.
• Das Sporking has had to put up with a lot of them. The most well-known examples are Bella and Edward from Twilight, and their expies Anastasia and Christian from Fifty Shades of Grey, but there have been others, like Rose Potter.
• Parodied in How to Write Badly Well, with a “thoughtful” king who spends most of the kingdom’s tax money on food and wine, sentences innocent people to death to “keep his kingdom safe”, and rapes a servant girl under the guise of “courtship”.
• In Dragonbored: Jimbroth is meant to be seen as the hero of the story, but he doesn't really do anything heroic at all. The script clearly wants the audience to feel happy for him because he's a Fish out of Water who found satisfaction in the everyday treasures that his creator Carl took for granted. However, Jimbroth never learned any lessons, underwent any character development, or overcame any obstacles at any point in the story; he just had his friends, girlfriend, and job handed to him on a silver platter without any effort or even intention on his part. Jessica just dumps Carl immediately after meeting Jimbroth for the first time, even after Jimbroth made some hideously misogynistic comments right to her face; he got his job by accident after tackling LeBron, who decided to hire Jimbroth on the spot for doing so; and he basically uses his natural charisma and multiple talents to manipulate everyone into abandoning Carl and taking Jimbroth's side. He even vandalizes a school bus, kidnaps a child, and gets her drunk, only getting away with it because he didn't know any better. Despite all this, he's still intended to be seen as a better person than Carl who, while idiotic and self-pitying, certainly didn't deserve the Fate Worse than Death to which Jimbroth callously abandons him without a second thought.
• Dragon Ball Z Abridged:
  • Lampshades are constantly hung on how Vegeta is one of these: he's still pretty evil, thinks nothing of destroying other lives if it means getting the one he's targeting, and is willing to endanger humanity just for the sake of a good fight. He's only still considered a hero because there's always someone worse coming along.
  • When they adapted 'Episode of Bardock' Team Four Star did not bother giving Bardock any of the Adaptational Heroism and Nice Guy traits he picked up in recent years, instead keeping him the bloodthirsty genocidal Jerkass he was in 'Bardock: The Father of Goku'. The only reason he's the 'hero' of the story is because his attacks are aimed at Chilled and the Primitive Saiyans don't know any better.
• Final Fantasy VII: Machinabridged: While most of the characters were hit with this for comedic purposes (especially Tifa), Aerith comes off as a legitimate example. She's supposed to be the Token Good Teammate, but there are times where she could be just as malicious as Tifa, if not worse. The most notable example was how Aerith attempted to murder Tifa by refusing to heal her just because she didn't like her, but she never gets hit with any sort of Karma and she doesn't even apologize after she and Tifa started getting along.
• SMG4's Mario is a more comedic example of this trope. He's destructively idiotic and stacks up a bodycount in almost every video he's in. (heck, in "Ssenmodnar 10", he destroyed the Earth while trying to saving it) This is of course, Played for Laughs. What helps his case more than most others stuck with this trope is that he winds up yielding some consequences, again, for comedy. For example, in the Animal Crossing video alone, he uses a villager as bait for a shark, then moronically gives said villager's skeleton to a museum for money. The director then tries to call the police. Then Tom Nook's nephews pop out of a painting to shoot him. Later in the video, he wreaks havoc on the village, forcing Isabelle to call in the Doomslayer, who promptly kicks in Mario out of the village. Despite Mario being a protagonist, this is treated as a happy ending.
  • It reaches its apex in "If Mario Was In Undertale", where in the first few seconds of falling into the Underground, Mario plucks Flowey because he thought he was a Fire Flower, and from there, manages wreak so much havoc the police get involved, and summons a psychotic Teletubby in a tank, and Sans decides to intervene, all ending with Asgore deciding Mario is so evil he doesn't even have a SOUL worth taking, so they just send him out. A lot of these videos end with Mario getting arrested or kicked out when you think about it.
• Discussed in Screen Rant Pitch Meetings when the writer is describing the heroes' first contact with the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park 3:
  Producer: So Amanda and Paul have immediately gotten two people killed just by being loud liars?
  Writer: That's right, yeah!
  Producer: So they're like the human antagonists in this thing if I understand correctly.
  Writer: No sir there are no human antagonists in this thing these are the people we're supposed to be rooting for!
  Producer: Yikes! Well, they seem very unlikable!
• When OneyPlays takes on Resident Evil 4 they constantly joke that Leon is just some sociopathic maniac running around in a village, breaking into homes, and shooting the "innocent" villagers for "no reason".
  • And even more so during the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy when they fight Papu Papu, and note that Papu really didn't do anything to Crash and was busy napping on his throne when Crash showed up to start the fight:
    Oney: Why did Crash break into this guy's house and fuck him up for? There was no point! He just broke into a poor guy's home and fucking beat the shit out of him!
• Mangs constantly brings this up during his Let's Play of Advance Wars as, much like the rest of the game's fans love to point out, the main characters basically just slaughter each other's troops for entirely pointless reasons like proving a point, distracting each other, or just for fun:
  So THAT's the reason! (Bursts out laughing) that's the dumbest reason for killing each other's soldiers, to distract the bad guy! We are monsters! Jesus Christ, what are we doing?!
• From JaidenAnimations' Dungeons & Dragons session, Tholomew. While Paul has understandable reasons for wanting to take out Mark Thompson, and Zoot is meant to be a Nominal Hero, Tholomew is The Paranoiac who sees Mark as their Arch-Enemy, despite Mark saying that Tholomew ruined his life by spreading false rumors that caused his wife to divorce him. Despite this, Tholomew is still portrayed as the Big Good in spite of not being substantially heroic.
• Ask Princess Molestia: Many fans consider Molestia's character to be more fitting as a villain or at the very least an anti-hero considering what she does on her prime time and how she sometimes acts rather insincere and selfish. Yet many of her friends treat her like a hero and it's not hard to see why at times.
• Unwanted Houseguest: The Houseguest doesn't really seem to care about evil that doesn't affect him personally. He seems only slightly uncomfortable with his friend, Doctor Wolfula, openly torturing Ghoulash.

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