Designated Villain / Animated Films

• Animals United: The Leopard. Everyone hates him and considers him to be the biggest threat in the film up until the human beings get involved. But the Leopard doesn't personally hate any of the characters; the only reason why he attacks them is because he's a predator, and that's what predators do. And considering that a rooster managed to make the Leopard run away from his prey just by insulting him, you have to wonder why the other animals feared him to begin with. In regards to the last thing however, the leopard didn't seem fazed by Charles' insults, but rather fled the scene because there was an angry polar bear, an obviously bigger and more intimidating predator, roaring in his face.
• Ken from Bee Movie is supposed to be an unpleasant jock and poor boyfriend to Vanessa, but he mostly just seems to be a pretty decent guy who just has some severe anger issues, and even those are comically over-the-top and mostly harmless and never directed at Vanessa personally. He does attempt to murder Barry, but even then, Ken accurately points out his severe allergy to bee stings means Barry could kill Ken just as easily as Ken could kill Barry (not that Barry wants to harm Ken, to be fair). It's hard not to feel sorry for him when everyone treats him like a racist jerk because he gets upset when his girlfriend dumps him for a bee.
• Mr. St Peter the appliance repairman from The Brave Little Toaster. He rips apart appliances and uses the parts to build new ones, and since the film is from the viewpoint of the appliances he is equated to Doctor Frankenstein. The ones trapped in his shop have gone mad from watching it over and over. Like Sid, he has no clue at all that the appliances are sentient and isn't operating out of any malice, though he does sell used parts by claiming they are new, which really is fraudulent.
• Dinosaur: The Carnotaurs and Velociraptors are all carnivores doing what they can to survive in a highly unstable ecosystem. They can only be seen as antagonists because they are hunting the heroes, who are all herbivores.
• The Emoji Movie: Smiler is played up as a Control Freak when really, she is only trying to prevent Textopolis' death. Smiler is clearly protecting the city out of altruism, as opposed to a desire for power; she actually allows some compromise, until it gets rejected by the designated heroes. At worst, she is a mildly unstable Well-Intentioned Extremist and, even then, Smiler had very few options. Overall, it is difficult to view Smiler as a monster because she is justified in marking Gene as a threat and, even otherwise, Gene himself is not particularly endearing in the first place.
• Fantasia 2000:
  • It's hard to qualify Nasty Nanny as a villain, as the only 'evil' thing she does is to take Rachel to her many classes despite that she doesn't perform well in any of them. In other words, she just does her job. However, her act of grabbing Rachel against her will, not letting her to say goodbye to her parents before they go to work, can count.
  • The Firebird, in a way. For how destructive it is initially, its intervention was necessary for the Nature Sprite to not only revitalize the forest, but make it even more lush and green than before due to the ashes and lava rock in the soil. Basically, the actual fire ecology that's often part of a forest's natural life cycle.
• Ferdinand: The ranch hands. They take quite a lot of physical abuse before all's said and done, but they're just doing their jobs.
• Injustice (2021): For the first half of the film Superman is still treated like a pariah by half the Justice League and especially Batman for "abusing his power". Said abuses were stopping a genocide, ousting tyrannical dictators, preventing the U.S. military from committing war crimes, and sending the most dangerous Arkham patients to a more secure location, and he did it without killing anyone. While he does eventually go off the deep end, seeing Batman reprimand him before he jumps off the slippery slope comes across as nonsensical.
• The Legend of the Titanic:
  • Maltravers's manservant Geoffreys is a total Minion with an F in Evil, who even feels immense guilt just for spying on Elizabeth and Don Juan, and it's shown that he's mainly serving Maltravers out of fear of retribution, as the latter makes it abundantly clear that he'll feed Geoffreys to the sharks should he fail him, and yet Geoffreys is never given a chance to perform an Heel–Face Turn and suffers the same fate as his boss and Rachel at the end. Though he finally does get redemption at the end of Fantasy Island.
  • Taken to the extreme with Rachel and her sister's two cats. Unlike all the other animals, they are entirely non-anthropomorphic, and they spend all of their screentime either in the women’s arms or being carried around in pet carriers, never once do they cross paths with or menace the mice or cause trouble for Smiley and the other dogs. And yet they somehow still deserve to get lost (and presumably die) in the polar waters with the human villains, just because of Cats Are Mean. Connors does have a throwaway line where he tells Ronnie that they are "snotty rich cats who kill for fun". The thing is, we never see them kill anything, let alone for fun, and neither does Connors. So it just comes off like he's profiling them.
  • The elderly officer who tells Don Juan that he needs to keep his dog on a leash. Mind you, the man was just doing his job and spoke to Juan in a polite manner, and yet the latter just snubs him and lets his entourage gang up on the man and intimidate him into submission with threats of violence. And then, Smiley comes back to urinate on the man's leg, just because he thinks it's funny.
• The Man Upstairs from The LEGO Movie falls into the same category of "didn't know his victims were sentient." Though that conflict is purely a metaphor for his relationship with his son, Finn, wherein he acts as a "Stop Having Fun" Guys and squashes Finn's imagination and creativity, which one could argue qualifies as non-designated villainy.
• Leo: Coach Kimura refusing to take a detour from going to the amusement park to find Leo at the Everglades is treated as an obstacle in the path of the rest of the class, and they dupe him and leave him behind the first chance they get. However, he was right in that the Everglades is established to be a long way away from school, and taking a detour to go there before the amusement park would likely cause parents to worry about what's keeping their children. On arrival, he is willing to buy a large bundle of candy, drinks, and other souvenirs for the kids without hesitation, which the kids use as a distraction to commandeer the bus and take it to the Everglades, leaving him behind, having been hit by a car and squirted in the face with hand sanitizer for his troubles.
• Little Princess School: Madam Drastic. She's supposed to be evil, but all she does is try to keep the girls from skipping school.
• The Littlest Light on the Christmas Tree: Mr. Girthmore. While he's greedy and kind of a jerk, he never does anything outright evil, and is simply a storekeeper with lofty ambitions.
• Monsters University: Some consider Randall to be this, assuming that you consider him prominent enough to be considered a villain, as his role is drastically reduced from the first film.
• Over the Hedge: Vincent the Bear. On-screen, the only thing he does is make RJ replace the food that he lost because he was stealing it. He makes a monologue about a bunch of Offscreen Villainy, but without that, he's really just trying to survive.
• Pinocchio: Lampwick. He's a bit of a brat and hardly a good role model, but he's still a kid. Plus, he isn't exactly heartless as it's shown he cares for Pinocchio, and judging by his heartbreaking screams, his mother too. He's much less malicious than the other Karma Houdini villains (Honest John, Stromboli, The Coachman), yet he's the only one who is punished for his actions, and the punishment is a horrible Disproportionate Retribution.
• Percy in Pocahontas is designated as a villain simply by being the pet of Ratcliffe. Although Ratcliffe is a racist, genocidal jerk, Percy is actually a pretty decent dog. While aloof, he certainly isn't arrogant, and he doesn't attack anyone without any provocation. He just seems content with staying on the ship and enjoying his well-off, carefree life. Then, Meeko bursts in and steals his food for no reason other than to be a Troll. By the end of the movie though they've made up, and have even exchanged accessories. Their rivalry is kept strictly a friendly one in the sequel, with Flit as a third party keeping it under control.
• Princess: Charlie. His only crime is getting Christina involved in the porn industry, but other than that, he doesn't really do anything else making him worthy of being an antagonist. Ironically, August is much more of an antagonist compared to Charlie.
• Sausage Party: The humans, who need to eat food to survive, but are nonetheless portrayed as being evil, monstrous murderers. Probably intentional, as the food characters clearly don't know that and the humans aren't actually portrayed as "evil" (except for Darren, but he's more of just a typical jerkass). According to Firewater, the reason that humans kill food is because it makes them stronger.
• The Sea Beast: While Gwen Batterbie is portrayed as an evil witch, all she does is sell weapons that are not especially cruel (probably because this film is aimed at children).
• Shark Tale:
  • Don Feinberg doesn't do anything evil at all. There is more good in him than Don Lino.
  • Luca also counts. He's too stupid to be considered a villain after Sykes was fired.
• Dr Ivan Krank in Disney's Teacher's Pet,. The film tries to tackle the topic of animals being abused by science but does so poorly as Krank's creations may be deformed but they show no sign of pain or suffering, if anything they show gratitude for creating them (much to his annoyance). On top of that his motives were somewhat justified in the film as all he wanted was credit for his accomplishments. Yet the filmmakers seem to think he's the villain for whatever reason.
• Titanic: The Legend Goes On:
  • Gaston is a bit slimy and dumb, but there's the fact that he's treated like a jewel thief when the worst he did was pick Angelica's locket up off of the ground and give it to a girl he was wooing. He never actually stole anything. Then again, the fact he didn't take the necklace to the Lost and Found section might make some people consider him just as bad as a thief.
  • Tiger is treated like a villain for being Corynthia's pet and "looking like a bat."
• Sid in Toy Story. He is portrayed as a budding sociopath for his cruelty to toys, but he can't be faulted for the way he treats his toys since he doesn't actually know that they're alive; the worst thing he knowingly does is bully his younger sister Hannah. Amusingly, a few of Pixar's employees have said that they too used to mess with their toys, and jokingly called Andy "a freak" for treating his so nicely. His dog Scud plays it even more straight. While he is still considered a threat, he can't be faulted for chewing up the toys since his aggression was most likely brought on by Sid and chewing toys isn't exactly an unusual thing for dogs to do.
• Walking with Dinosaurs: Gorgon. He's treated as the main villain, and yet he's just a predator trying to survive and feed his pack. Probably justified, though, as he is still a dangerous predatory animal and the story is told from the point of view of his prey.

---