Designated Villain / Western Animation

• American Dad!:
  • Stan in multiple episodes. He borders a Villain Protagonist at times, but a lot of other cases those he opposes are enabled to act even worse. "Bullocks To Stan", "Stan Time" and "The Kidney Stays In The Picture" are perhaps the most ludicrous cases where he is "the bad guy" to his family's immoral actions, despite his approach, while still flawed, being at least somewhat justified. Even in some cases Stan is undisputedly being an immoral asshole, his adversary will be treated as the good guy by virtue of being a non-Stan Jerkass.
  • In cases such as "School Lies" and "Daddy Queerest", very little of what went wrong was actually down to Stan's actions; the events were down to circumstances that would have happened either way (Steve's school being fumigated in the former; Terry's dad being a homophobic Jerkass in the latter) or were actually planned by another character (in both cases, it was actually Francine who suggested the plan that set up the Disaster Dominoes ^note sending Steve to a private school and revealing Terry is gay to his father respectively). Stan is still blamed when it goes wrong, by her.
  • Done against Hayley in "Jack's Back", where Roger is giving her internship credit by working at his makeshift bar. While Roger's tasks are ridiculous, Hayley blatantly has no intention of doing any work to earn her credit. She actually outdoes Roger of all people with dress up acts and gets her way again.
• The Brothers Grunt: The Detective tries to find the Grunts and arrest them for their constant mayhem to the public, but he is painted as the villain regardless.
• In the short-lived series Camp Candy the antagonist was a real estate developer who wanted to buy the camp so he can build condos. However, more often than not, he's in the right. The camp counselors are incompetent to the degree that the campers could get hurt, and overall they're horrible bad role models. In reality the camp would be shut down immediately.
• Camp Lakebottom: Everyone in Camp Sunnysmiles who isn't Suzi or Buttsquat is treated as guilty by association.
• CatDog:
  • Cat, when he's not being selfish or greedy. Multiple times he is treated as cruel for trying to make Dog behave or just give him a moment doing what he wants. In most cases, Dog acts like a hypocrite and sulks about Cat being inconsiderate until he gets things his way, and continues ignoring Cat's well being entirely. In all cases, the Idiot Houdini trumps pushy social climber.
  • Rancid Rabbit can border as such. In some cases he's just a corrupt authority figure, in others he is merely punishing CatDog for genuine misbehavior. In "All You Can't Eat" he bans Dog from his restaurant for taking liberties last time he came (Even Cat was on Rancid's side for that one). His only truly unscrupulous act was waiting till after they'd already paid to throw them out (and even that could be considered a small back payment for all the damage they caused).
• Chaotic: In "Earth to Kaz" we’re supposed to see the school psychologist, Dr. Tanner, as the bad guy for basically assuming Kaz is, in a polite term, "unable to distinguish reality from fantasy." The risk being Kaz might never be able to go to or play Chaotic ever again. But concerning the reason why Kaz was sent to him (writing about a Perim adventure as a school report, among other things) and how hard it is for people to believe Chaotic is a real place? Dr. Tanner is right to doubt Kaz at every turn and his frustrations become more and more reasonable.
• Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad Island: Mr. Greenrind just wanted some peace and quiet. He has all the right to hate Fred, especially considering Fred's Designated Hero status.
• Sissi Delmas was often this during the first season of Code Lyoko. While she was the Alpha Bitch, several of the heroes were as guilty of just as reprehensible behavior, including against her and her cronies, yet we are supposed to root for them and against Sissi for no really defined reason. The prequel makes this worse, as it reveals that the heroes' feud against Sissi was their fault to begin with and she became the Alpha Bitch in response. Thankfully, Character Development for both parties in the progressing seasons fixed things.
• Codename: Kids Next Door:
  • Professor XXXL (Triple Extra Large). In all of his appearances he is never truly a villain. The worst thing he does is try and make a perfect snow cone. Yes, he does lure Numbuh One into a trap to test it, but that was because he needed him as a proper test subject due to XXXL himself being susceptible to brain freeze. Once Nigel learns what’s going on he's more than happy to oblige.
  • Some characters like the truck driver from "Operation: P.I.A.N.O." are sometimes included in villain team shots despite being just people doing their jobs.
• Danger Mouse: Isambard King Kong Brunel is presented as one of the villains, but for his episodes he seems a pretty decent guy who just wants some attention and to make the world a better place. Even when he does dangerous and stupid things willingly it's usually because he wants his inventions to go well, and he always seems just as concerned as anyone else when the world is in serious danger because of them. He even seems to quite like Danger Mouse and Penfold and in the episode "Squawkenbard Kingcluck Brunel" he's genuinely overjoyed when they actually like his inventions.
• Daria:
  • Brittany and Kevin get this at times. At worst, the two of them (separately and together) are Innocently Insensitive and Lethally Stupid in making off-handed remarks to Daria and others and their own ditziness driving others to annoyance and anguish, but neither are actively bad or even spiteful. Helping their case is that they both suffer from Depending on the Writer (they can be portrayed as being typical high school teenagers or legitimately friendly or even friends with Daria).
  • Quinn, in "Antisocial Climbers", gets all the blame when the school's food and supplies get left behind. Meanwhile, Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie get no heat despite being the three idiots who left the food and supplies behind so that they could carry Quinn's bags even though they were fully capable of carrying more than one bag.
• Deputy Dawg is a full time case of this. While he at least gets some moments of justice, most of the time we are supposed to root for the mischievous, thieving animals the law-abiding dog is trying to keep in line. Used most erroneously in an episode where a beaver is flooding the forest with his dam. Despite the beaver refusing to take it down solely out of pride, Deputy Dawg is the one presented as being unreasonable and ends up humiliated and submitting.
• Donald Duck can be this, mainly in shorts where he faces off against his nephews or Chip 'n Dale. Sometimes he is indeed the one that starts the conflict, other times he is just minding his own business, and whatever character he is facing off against decides to antagonize him for no other reason than because he is there.
• Doug:
  • Often Guy from Disney's Doug. While he may be egotistical, Guy's actually a fairly nice... well, guy, it's Doug's feelings for Patti and chronic insecurity that lead him to see Guy as a jerk.
  • In the Nickelodeon run, the villain in his (solo) Quailman fantasies is either Roger or Mr. Bone.
  • Anyone that hates Patti or Patti dislikes becomes this for Doug (Muffy Silverson and the Junior Daughters club by extension; Cassandra Bleem and her clique of older popular kids are examples of this). Also anyone Doug thinks is trying to go after Patti gets upgraded to this (which is why Guy is usually this).
• The Dragon Prince: Going with King Harrow's Designated Hero status, Viren before his Then Let Me Be Evil moment is hard to see as a proper villain when all of his actions are done as damage control for King Harrow being either particularly stupid or selfish depending on the situation. For example, he saves hundreds of thousands of lives through a dark magic ritual after King Harrow was going to let them die of starvation due to his inability to prioritize his kingdom's subjects. Instead of being thankful, Harrow blames him for the death of his wife on this mission and treats him like dirt over and over again. By the time Harrow chooses to simply allow Elven assassins to kill him and Viren proposes that he swaps bodies with someone else, Harrow disturbingly rejects this proposal in a Kick the Dog way that makes Viren deciding to take advantage of the situation out of anger seem almost reasonable.
• Dragon Tales: Cyrus isn't really doing anything wrong. He's doing what nature intended for him to do and the gang is messing with nature by preventing him from eating eggs, which is what he's SUPPOSED to do; however, he does commit one outright villainous act when he steals Emmy's detective kit.
• Most of the Urpneys in The Dreamstone, but especially Frizz and Nug. The heroes generally consider them the highest form of scum, however in early episodes they were more or less established as unwilling slaves of Zordrak who got their numbers thinned out the longer he had to wait to get the stone. Even their zeal and motives come off far less petty than the heroes, who inflict Disproportionate Retribution on them every time they try to give them nightmares. Later episodes made some tweaks to ease their treatment and allow the heroes to look genuinely heroic against them, but even then they are primarily sympathetic bumblers, over evil in any way.
• Played for Laughs with Melvin in Duck Dodgers. The episode where he appeared suggested people should hate him for opening a rival restaurant next to I.M. Neighborly's and taking Neighborly's customers away by offering them free sodas. It also suggested that it was okay for Dodgers and Neighborly to sabotage Melvin's in a way that, in real life, would get them arrested for not only damaging private property but also endangering the lives of everyone inside. Dodgers treated it like a space battle.
• There's a few cases on The Fairly OddParents! when characters are designated villains as the result of a wish (Jorgen in "Action Packed", the popular kids in "Scary Godparents", as well as Timmy himself in "Nega Timmy") or the circumstances, as Tootie in "Dread and Breakfast". Oddly enough, Timmy is this in "The Masked Magician". Bickles came dangerously close to destroying Dimmsdale simply because Timmy (unknowingly!) showed up his own magic show, and yet its Timmy that's presented as being in the wrong and the one who has to apologize in the end!
• Freaktown: Cuddles falls under this sometimes, as despite his Jerkass tendencies and attempts to sweetify Freaktown, he is occasionally justified against Ben and Lenny's antics, such as when they fed his car to Wereshark
• Blendin Blandin of Gravity Falls is portrayed as an antagonist for being a stressed-out guy who doesn't want 12-year-old twins Dipper and Mabel using a time machine device because it's his own property. This unfair treatment is brought up in "Blendin's Game", where the twins make it up to him for unintentionally ruining his life. In his second appearance he does claim he'll use his Time Wish to ensure Dipper and Mabel were never born which seems like Disproportionate Retribution, but of course this could've simply been a bluff (especially since he already threatened to go back in time and prevent their birth at the end of his debut episode, and yet seemingly never got around to it). That being said, Blendin is absolutely terrible at his job, so much so that after he gets his job back due to Dipper and Mabel in “Blendin’s Game,” he gets tricked by Bill and nearly causes the Apocalypse. So maybe we shouldn’t feel too sorry for him.
• The Groovenians: The parents and Norman. While Norman is meant to be greedy and the parents are way too pushy and controlling with their children, they mostly just want their kids to get jobs instead of putting on plays for nobody on their lawn, and Norman just wants the money that he's rightfully owed as a landlord.
• Harvey Beaks:
  • The Spirit of the Lake just wants to make everyone happy in the lake and make reasonable actions like not letting Harvey be banned since he never caused problems. But the episode he aired in sees him as this for that reason.
  • Randl is probably the most notable example yet. He may also double as a Jerkass Woobie, considering he has a senile mother and shop vandals to deal with.
• Hilda: The Trollberg Safety Patrol during Season 1. Their efforts to capture The Black Hound are depicted (at least by Hilda) as being wrong, despite the fact the Hound was responsible for eating (Albeit, not killing) 3 people, and had already caused massive amounts of destruction. It lessens in Season 2, wherein the Safety Patrol comes under leadership that's pointedly cruel to the magical communities within and out of Trolberg and not putting people's safety first.
• Horrid Henry:
  • Peter on occasion. He does tell tales a lot, true, but he's sometimes treated as the bad guy even when he has a good reason for ratting out Henry.
  • Miss Battle-Axe can be seen as one despite her doing her job as a teacher.
  • While one can argue that Henry's Mum and Dad aren't exactly parent of the year material, there are times where they're treated as evil even when they have a good reason for punishing Henry.
• Invader Zim: Sizz-Lorr, who only does his job and retrieves Zim to give him the punishment he deserves for fleeing the Irken authorities. What the show tries to do to make him look like the Big Bad of the episode is his Evil Laugh and his super accuracy of keeping Zim from finding any escape routes.
• Jem: In one episode, however, Minx becomes indebted to Rio after he saves her from drowning and undergoes a Heel–Face Turn. She ends up becoming Unwanted Assistance to Rio and his friends, but she really didn't do much wrong despite being painted as a villain. She gave some of the Starlight Girls toys and sweets, which causes Jerrica to get mad at Minx when the kids get stomach aches from eating too much candy and make messes with their squirt guns. This is despite the fact that Jerrica is their guardian, not Minx, and Minx didn't make the girls do anything. She also installed a house alarm for them, which causes the Holograms to get mad at her when Kimber forgets the alarm's code. It wasn't her fault that none of them remembered the password. Minx was being overbearing, but she didn't need to take the brunt of their anger and isn't wrong for getting angry at the end of the episode.
• Johnny Test: In "Johnny Test in 3D" (and other episodes), the hotel manager is the bad guy simply for trying to enforce the no-pets policy.
• Kaeloo: Even if Mr. Cat hasn't done anything wrong in the episode (yet), he still gets tortured and the audience is supposed to find this funny. In episodes like "Let's Play Cops and Robbers", he even gets punished for things he didn't do.
• League of Super Evil:
  • Kat Chatsworth. She's classified as a villain, but she doesn't have a costume, and all she does is bore people to sleep and doesn't seem to be doing it on purpose.
  • Voltar in the episode "Swimming With the Sharks". His actions are completely understandable. The pool belongs to him, and it's on his property, yet some neighborhood kid just randomly shows up like he owns the place, takes over the pool, refuses to leave when asked nicely, and mooches food off of the L.O.S.E., mainly due to Red's kindness. Yet when Voltar finally gets fed up and tries to get the kid out by force, he ends up getting attacked by a genetically enhanced dolphin, and by the end of the episode, the pool is ruined when Red has an accident.
• The Legend of Korra:
  • Humanity in general during the Era of Raava. The spirits moved in on their turf (essentially an alien invasion), forcibly separated all of mankind and drove them to live on the backs of the lion turtles, and then killed and mutated them with capricious spite whenever they had to go into the Spirit Wilds to try and find food. How are they not justified in their anger?
  • President Raiko is given this treatment due to rejecting Korra’s and Iroh’s plan to launch an unauthorized attack on the Northern Water Tribe forces which would drag New Republic City into the conflict and massively escalate the war into the largest conflict since the 100 year war. While his stance of neutrality isn’t perfect, it’s hard not to see his point of not wanting to commit his forces to a conflict that his nation is either divided or apathetic towards.
• The Lion Guard: One episode revolves around the Lion Guard stopping a family of jackals from hunting "little ones" (baby animals). The problem is that the episode presents them as villainous for hunting young animals, despite this being how many predators hunt. Two of the Lion Guard, Kion (lion) and Fuli (cheetah), are large carnivores themselves, which adds to the confusion of stopping the jackals from getting food. The jackals are antagonistic for "invading" on Prideland territory, as the family was previously banished to the Outlands for being sneaky and malicious, but the episode puts a lot of emphasis on the jackals being evil baby eaters.
• Friz Freleng took this view of Elmer Fudd in Looney Tunes, arguing that Elmer, as presented, ended up being too sympathetic and too low on actual evil: as opposed to more obviously abrasive or villainous characters like Yosemite Sam (which Freleng himself created as a result of avoiding this trope), Elmer is just a guy who wants to hunt a rabbit, and he never seems to be much of a threat to Bugs, since Bugs always gets away from him easily. In his view, Elmer came across as less of an antagonist and more of a bullying victim.
• M.A.S.K.: In several episodes, VENOM's main objective is finding a historical treasure in a remote location, without being a danger to society. However, the show still treats these schemes with just as much urgency as the ones where they do deliberately endanger people, as MASK still attacks them in full force. These episodes always end with MASK getting their hands on the treasure, making it seem MASK is exploiting the hard work VENOM put in their schemes.
• My Life Me: With Amelia, the show makes the mistake of having her be the Alpha Bitch and assume that personality alone will warrant audience hate, but seldom does she actually do anything wrong and often the protagonists are the bigger assholes with their actions. It doesn't help that her Small Name, Big Ego is only secondary to that of Birch, the main character!
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In Once Upon A Zeppelin, Iron Will where he uses "pushy and manipulative" tactics to get customers aboard his Princess-themed cruise, but the fact remains that he gave Twilight's entire family a free cruise and clearly outlined the terms of it in a consent form which Twilight Velvet didn't bother to read before signing. In fact, when Twilight takes offense to the terms he even offers to tear the contract up and free them from their obligations, but understandably cancels the cruise and points out how disappointed the guests will be if they do, and Twilight not only refuses but actually offers to take on additional responsibilities so her family and friends can enjoy themselves. Pushy and manipulative or not, he was well within his reasonable right to expect them to honor the agreement and Twilight was only so overworked because she decided to do the work of multiple princesses, making it very hard to blame Iron Will for any of the events that happened.
    Twilight Sparkle: Iron Will, I'm not sure it was entirely honest of you to offer this cruise to my family without telling us that ponies bought tickets just to see Cadance and me!
    Iron Will: Iron Will outlined all the details of the cruise in the Prize Acceptance and Consent Form that you signed.
    Twilight Velvet: Well, when some pony offers you a free vacation, who reads the fine print?
  • For Trixie, this trope is played straight in "Boast Busters", which displays her as a showy magician who is merely establishing mystique in a manner very much akin to real-life performers. After some of the Mane Six come to the conclusion that she's a braggart and begin heckling her, she reveals herself as a Miles Gloriosus, accepts their challenges and makes fools of them to bolster her own image, even bullying Twilight who played no part in the heckling. Later, however, a monster destroys her caravan (and presumably causes loss of her livelihood) and none of the protagonists express sympathy for her but continue to comment on her arrogance, while Snips and Snails who brought the monster into town on purpose in the first place get "punished" with free mustaches. While a nasty and arrogant Jerkass, she's no villain, though.
• The tendency of people in certain occupations to be considered this by default is highlighted in an episode of The New Scooby-Doo Movies. The entire gang (and Special Guest Tim Conway) immediately suspect the grouchy land developer who's been hired to tear down Velma's old high school of being behind the Monster of the Week, with no real evidence apart from his being a land developer and threatening a place to which they personally happen to be attached. Sure enough, come the big reveal it turns out that it really was just a job for hire, the actual mastermind was somebody else, and the developer had no idea that the people who hired him were up to something illegal until the gang inadvertently clued him in, whereupon he pulls a Big Damn Heroes at the end of the episode.
• The Penguins of Madagascar:
  • Frankie the pigeon in "In the Line of Doody" wanted to poop on the parks and recs manager... for trying to get rid of all the pigeons around all the parks. Pigeons are being treated as Always Chaotic Evil while the Penguins support this man just because he's providing them with extra fishes.
  • The episode "Field Tripped" has the penguins targeting a young boy and his overworked teacher, thinking they're villains plotting to reveal their secret, even though they know that most children are harmless in any other episode. While the boy exposing them is a possibility, nobody took him seriously when he tried to tell someone and they ended up erasing the memory of the teacher (with a prototype) after she found the boy's notes, even though she was clearly laughing it off.
  • Blue Hen, at least in her first appearence. Her plan involves fooling everyone into believing she is a psychic chicken, and use those influences to become the president. The only issue is that she never planned to do anything bad once she got to that position of power. The only reason why they decide to stop her is because Skipper believes a chicken would accidentally press the doomsday buttom, which Privates lampshades is unlikely to happen.
• The Pink Panther:
  • The Little Man/Big Nose can qualify as this, especially in the early shorts; a lot of the time, he's just doing his own thing when the Pink Panther interrupts everything, and he suddenly becomes prone to a majority of the slapstick in the cartoons.
  • The dog in "Slink Pink" is certainly aggressive towards Pink Panther, but it's hard to fault him; he's simply trying to protect his master from an intruder, and keeps getting on the wrong end of his master's rolled-up newspaper thanks to Pink's trickery.
• Popeye: In "What — No Spinach?" Bluto is running a diner and not being villainous about it. He only picks a fight with Popeye due to a misunderstanding Wimpy causes.
• The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder: The general premise of "It All Started With An Orange Basketball" makes it seem like Wizard Kelly is the antagonist to be beaten, but even though he's still a douche, not once does he do anything underhanded in this episode.
• Benson in Regular Show is shown to be a hot-tempered, hostile, and petty mean boss, but it's still his job as park manager to keep the park in order and actually cares about the park being tidy and shows a great dislike for Mordecai and Rigby's constant lack of productivity and is usually chewing them out for it, but he's really doing it to get them to work more and slack off less and wants them to look good for their future.
• Rick and Morty: Jerry frequently falls into this, especially in the first three seasons. He's certainly a selfish, pathetic weasel and a jerk, but he generally makes very valid criticisms of Beth and Rick that are dismissed and treated as him being unreasonable, and tends to be blamed and/or punished for either making these points or for things outside of his control. Later seasons bring him out of this trope, but the narrative tends to treat him as being just as bad as Rick and Beth for being an Extreme Doormat, when both of them tend to be far worse and when his family actively sabotages any attempt he makes to be assertive.
• Rocket Power:
  • Merv Stimpleton is a short-tempered jerk, but he rarely does anything more than react to Otto and the gang's shenanigans.
  • Milton from "Welcome To The Club". While the country club's rules were absurd, Milton was just doing his job enforcing them.
• Happens all the time in Rugrats, often deliberately due to the skewed naive perspective of the babies:
  • Didi hires a dog groomer for Spike. The babies, thinking she's a "dog broomer" who kidnaps dogs, cause all sorts of mayhem for her ("What else could a dog broomer be?"). True, Spike didn't want to get groomed, but that would make Didi the villain here, not the groomer.
  • A teenager hired to work in the Java Lava is a bit moody and surly but the babies assume she is Angelica's doll grown huge and try to shrink her by pulling out her belly button ring. And they mess up the coffee shop and when the girl tells everyone that they did it they almost fire her for "blaming it on the pups," but she quits in agitation and disgust before they can.
  • Angelica herself in the episode "Silent Angelica". Drew and Charlotte promise to buy her toys if she stays quiet and watches the babies. Angelica actually tries her best to stay quiet but the babies take advantage of this and run wild around the house. Angelica finally snaps after they've caused so much mayhem, but then Drew and Charlotte punish her for it when she had done nothing wrong at all.
  • Some of the babies' theories on "villains" run so much on Insane Troll Logic that it's lucky some of them aren't even real. For example they hear the story of the Sand Man, and worry about the off chance that he may accidentally bury them with too much sand while putting them to sleep. They ultimately come to the conclusion they must kill the Sandman. Naturally there is no Sandman for them to murder, though they spend most of the episode mistakenly beating up Chuckie's dad in the process.
• Samurai Jack: The Elemental trio from "Jack and the Gangsters". Sure they try to kill Jack, but only because he's trying to steal the jewel they're guarding which they're trying to keep out of Aku's hands. It's almost odd that the show treats them as monsters of the week while similar characters like X9 were given a sympathetic POV. Perhaps this is why they're ultimately incapacitated after accidentally shooting each other rather than killed by Jack.
• The Simpsons:
  • Played straight with the tenants Marge invites to live in the house for the holiday. They are supposed to be seen as selfish and evil for constantly complaining, ruining Marge's Christmas, but this ignores the fact that the only reason she was able to have a Christmas was that she invited an inordinate amount of people to her house, promising them a ludicrous amount of activities which she didn't have any hope of providing.
  • Bart and Homer's attitude towards George Bush Sr. in "Two Bad Neighbors". Bush is repeatedly portrayed as a fun-hating sourpuss, despite the fact that a lot of his frustration comes from Bart's annoying behaviour. Homer's beef with Bush is that he's more popular with the neighbours than Homer. The episode ends with Bush having to apologise to both of them and Bart and Homer get away scot-free.
  • Itchy and Scratchy are a parody of this in cartoons such as Tom and Jerry. It's very rare that Scratchy's even doing anything before Itchy murders him.
  • Evelyn and the other country club women, save for Sue-sin, in "Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield". While constantly referred to as snobs throughout the episode, none of the women were intentionally rude or even catty to Marge (and, at worst, could only be seen as Innocently Insensitive) and had she and the rest of family went to the big party at the club, they would have welcomed them in with open arms. Even Sue-sin comments she wasn't serious or malicious in her attitude.
  • In "Bart the Fink", the IRS is portrayed as antagonistic for utterly destroying Krusty after his fraudulence is exposed, even though Krusty should have paid his taxes and exposing him was the right thing to do.
• Space Ghost: The heat thing from the episode of the same name qualifies simply because it was attacking Jan, Jace, and Space Ghost. Nevermind that it possibly was just simply protecting its territory and itself from unintentional intruders.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • Plankton during seasons 6-8, in which he's become much more of an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain, and Mr. Krabs is more of a Jerkass Knight Templar. The only reason he doesn't become a completely undeserving target of the show's increasing Comedic Sociopathy is the few stray episodes where he actually acts like a villain, and the role he takes in the movie.
  • Squidward comes across this way too, in spite of a few moments here and there where he actually deserves what he gets coming to him. All he really wants is for SpongeBob and Patrick to allow him some peaceful and quiet time to himself. But apparently wanting some downtime and respite from his well-meaning, yet loud and obnoxious neighbors makes Squidward a Jerkass... somehow. Honestly, many viewers end up sympathizing with Squidward's desire to have some time to himself to relax, away from SpongeBob's loudness and intrusiveness.
  • Mrs. Puff too. Before she attempted to murder SpongeBob, all she wanted to do was to not have to deal with SpongeBob's bad driving, and because of that, it makes her a jerk who deserves the abuse she gets, Disproportionate Retribution simply because she dislikes SpongeBob, when really, fans sympathize with her because SpongeBob is un-teachable and Mrs. Puff shouldn't have to put up with him.
• Steamboat Willie: Pete is supposed to be seen as the bad guy for being mean to Mickey, but Mickey was slacking off, and he isn't that nice to the animals in this short either, making it come off as karma.
• During the Blasts from the Pasts two-parter in Superman: The Animated Series we're introduced to Mala, a Kryptonian criminal trapped in the Phantom Zone that Superman just happens to discover by chance one day. Looking into her history, he learns that she was a member of the military under Jax-Ur, a Composite Character of General Zod and Comic!Jax-Ur, who was imprisoned for being part of a traitorous rebellion initiated by her aforementioned superior. Because she was merely an accomplice, her sentence was scheduled to end around the time Krypton exploded. Superman decides to release her in the hopes that she'd become a hero like him (also because he wanted another Kryptonian to hang out with). Long story short, she listens to Clark and helps him thwart some crime but goes a bit overboard and causes damages to civilian property, which causes Superman to genuinely consider sending her back into the Phantom Zone, presumably forever. This, along with an unrelated altercation with Lois Lane about Superman's affections, causes her to return to her former leader and attempt to take over the Earth. You have a character that is genuinely trying to be a hero, and their minor mistakes are treated as catastrophes, and all mentions of her after the fact are as though she was a violent psychopath the entire time.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987): Baxter Stockman's worst crime (before turning into a fly) was helping out Shredder, but the way the Turtles treat him you'd think he killed their mom or something.
• ThunderCats (2011):
  • In the episode "The Duelist and the Drifter", Master Swordsman the Duelist appears guilty of nothing more than challenging swordsmen to duels for their swords and winning, but is set up as a villain to Kid Hero Lion-O, who foolishly takes up his challenge unaware of his rep. While the Duelist does eventually prove to be less-than-honorable — he insists that Lion-O Duel to the Death and attempts to kill him after Lion-O wins — there's no evidence of wrongdoing before that, apart from goading Lion-O by implying his dead father was a coward, and some unadvertised deck-stacking through the use of two blades to Lion-O's one. After all, he introduced himself as "the Duelist". It's not his fault that Lion-O failed to pick up on the homonymic pun.
  • The Wood Forgers. They first make their appearance rescuing the ThunderCats, only to be revealed as being villainous because they aren't re-planting the trees they use in their paper magic. While that IS a mark against them, they do show themselves to be genuinely heroic, rescuing people and doing good, while Viragor tries to eat the heroes and aggressively attacks anyone he considers an outsider. This could have been a good opportunity to show that both sides had merit, with Viragor convincing the Wood Forgers to replace the trees they cut down and use their resources more sparingly, while Viragor could have learned not to be so openly hostile and possessive about 'his' forest. But nope, the Wood Forgers are just evil and need to be beaten up and driven from the forest, all the good they've done be damned.
• Time Squad: Tuddrussell in "Planet of the Flies" is treated as irresponsible because he swatted a fly in the very distant past, which leads to flies taking over the world. However, considering that they significantly alter history with no repercussions later on, it's not much of a stretch for him to assume that killing a fly wouldn't alter the later past. Later, he is chided by Larry for killing a giant fly attacking a medieval town, even though killing said fly was their mission.
• Tiny Toon Adventures:
  • Plucky may be a self-centered, rude, and narcissistic jerk, but there is the somewhat common occasion where he isn't being a jerk or bothering anyone, yet even during those moments the show still wants us to see him as a spiteful jackass who deserves every bit of what happens to him.
  • Furrball is somehow treated as the villain in cartoons starring him and Sweetie, but most of the time, he's just minding his own business and Sweetie usually goes out of her way to make Furrball's life a living hell.
  • Even Calamity, he's usually a nice guy and is never sadistic, but is constantly a victim of Little Beeper's sadistic pranks and he gets run over by a truck with Little Beeper driving it plenty of times and somehow he's treated as the villain since coyotes chase roadrunners.
• Tom from Tom and Jerry is usually attacked by Jerry unprovoked. Jerry is portrayed as the hero. No matter what happens, Jerry is viewed as being right and Tom is always punished. The worst examples are when Tom is, in an episode set in the past, executed when he was just doing his job. Tom's job in this short was simply defending his home's supplies and nothing malicious. Hanna-Barbera did seem to wise up to this in many of their later shorts, which often made Jerry more altruistic and Tom more sadistic and deserving of his abuse. The majority of times Jerry drew the first blow or got a bit too vindictive in his retribution, Tom actually claimed a victory.
• Total Drama:
  • Heather is the legitimate villain of season 1, but after that, she becomes mostly ineffective because everybody knows how manipulative she is. As a result, she goes through seasons 2 and 3 being snarky and rude at times, but never doing anything wrong... and yet, the other characters still constantly act as if she is still evil. Probably the best/worst example is when Leshawna knocked Heather's tooth out when Heather tried to explain that the new villain, Alejandro, was manipulating her; even when Leshawna finds out that this is true, she still openly brags about attacking Heather and never seems to consider that it was completely unjustified.
  • Gwen (in-universe) in Action, World Tour and All-Stars.
    • In Action, when Trent's teammates discover that Trent was throwing challenges for Gwen's benefit, they immediately blame her for it, despite her not knowing about it at all. Later, she gets demonized for breaking up with him despite having a perfectly valid reason for doing so, and on the next challenge she repays the favor by throwing a challenge, and voting herself off.
    • In World Tour, she gets the most harassment and blame for Duncan's adultery, even though she wasn't the one who initiated their kiss. This also extends into All-Stars, where she's placed on the Villainous Vultures despite having done more good than bad. To make things worse, every time she tries to apologize or do something nice for Courtney, she ends up either injuring or humiliating her instead, resulting in a delighted Chris telling her she's on the right team after all.
    • In All-Stars, despite the whole love-triangle façade being only partially her fault, she ends up receiving the full blame and the villainous status to accompany it. Immediately getting treated as the "evil boyfriend stealer" and is put on the Villainous Vultures despite "three seasons of niceness".
  • Courtney in World Tour. She had recovered her original characterization after her Sanity Slippage in Action, and then Duncan starts cheating on her with Gwen, who she had just befriended, shortly after their reunion. The narrative sides with Duncan and Gwen while portraying Courtney's subsequent breakdown and manipulation by Alejandro as karma. The writers ended the love triangle in a de facto deleted scene with Courtney knocked out by a sandal while Gwen and Duncan happily kiss. It gets worse in All-Stars where Gwen claims that Courtney and Duncan were broken up at the time, even though Courtney clearly thought differently, and thus she never actually did anything wrong, therefore Courtney is just being unreasonable.
  • Lightning in Revenge of the Island, due to needing a villain to accompany Cameron to the finales, but having both of the season's original villains Scott and Jo eliminated a few episodes earlier. Lightning is immediately granted status as the new Big Bad, previously being just Dumb Muscle who remained fairly neutral (albeit a bit arrogant), he and becomes the villain (with little reasoning) that Cameron faces-off against in the finale.
  • Anne Maria in Revenge of the Island. Because of showing an interest in Mike's alternate personality Vito, she is treated as a mistress or someone trying to steal Mike from Zoey despite the fact they weren't actually dating yet. Also, she is only mean when provoked as such by her conflict with Jo or when she led to believe that Dawn stole her brush. Also, the only reason why she pushed Zoey was because of the fact that Zoey was stepping on Jo's oxygen supply.
  • Alejandro in All-Stars, who showed a fair bit of redeeming qualities as he shifts towards Anti-Hero status after discovering the greater evil that is Mal. However his heroic acts are rejected by everyone due to his history, and is continuously treated as the real villain up until his elimination.
• Totally Spies!: Sometimes, Mandy gets unfair treatment when she hasn't actually done anything outwardly antagonistic to the Spies, this includes when she’s trying to be nice.
• Transformers: Animated: Prowl in his backstory in "Five Servos of Doom." He's supposed to be an undisciplined maverick who learns to be more humble and fight for a good cause under Yoketron, but the reason he's brought to Yoketron in the first place is because he's a draft dodger. Prowl states he doesn't want to fight in the war, and he's shown to have been rounded up and forced to participate by Warpath, who even threatens to take him outside and beat him up until he agrees. In essence, he was pressed into service and villainized for not wanting to go out and risk his life for the people forcing him into the war. While the Decepticon threat was so great that the Autobots were forced to make certain moral concessions so the Decepticons wouldn't win and make life even worse for people under their oppression, it certainly doesn't paint Prowl as in the wrong like it wants to since he is, in essence, an untrained civilian and a conscientious objector being threatened with physical harm for not falling in line, which only makes the Autobots look worse instead.
• VeggieTales: In "The Grapes of Wrath", the eponymous grapes are supposed to be a bunch of jerks, but the only ones among them actively causing trouble are the children, Tom and Rosie Grape. Their parents, on the other hand, are shown to be quite a bit saner, especially Ma Grape, who gets on her children's case after Junior Asparagus gets humiliated trying to get back at them for their latest prank. This is pretty much justified considering the story is intended to teach the value of forgiveness^note On a side note, the "70 times 7" thing from Matthew 18:22, a Biblical verse taught in the middle of the story, is taken literally, with the characters trying to figure out what 70 times 7 equaled as Junior tried to find it in himself to forgive them again, which he ends up doing after that multiplication problem is solved.
• Wabbit: A Looney Tunes Production:
  • In "For the Love of Acorns", a kind of conceited baseball player is treated as a villain for wanting Bugs and Squeaks to stop vandalizing the field looking for an acorn and disrupting the game.
  • Carl the Grim Rabbit is treated as a villain for doing his job.
• The Wild Thornberrys: The customs agent in "Chew if By Sea." Admittedly, he's a Jerkass who keeps animals in uncomfortable conditions so it's hard to like him. But the show treats him doing his job (preventing the smuggling of exotic animals) as villainous, in and of itself, as if he's to blame for Eliza bringing Emily the wombat into the country.
• Winx Club:
  • The witches of Cloudtower are considered evil and malicious by most of the fairies, but they're more on the level of the average "mean schoolgirl" and some of them even seem to be rather good-hearted.
  • Diaspro. Bloom blamed her solely for ruining her relationship with Sky, despite the whole thing being Sky's fault for not telling Bloom about Diaspro (or about his real identity for that matter).
• Magneto in X-Men: The Animated Series was often a victim of this, due to the fact that the series treated him as a villain even while adapting storylines where he was at most a Well-Intentioned Extremist. This leads to many sequences of him being referred to as "our most intractable foe" despite having actually fought the X-Men only a few times and spent the rest of the series in Enemy Mine situations at his worst. (Granted, the way they were introduced was the X-Men foiling his attempt at nuclear terrorism, so it's rather understandable if they got a bad impression of him.) "Sanctuary" in particular is this, where Magneto creates a new nation in space where mutants can live peacefully, and the only hostile action he takes in the episode is freeing mutant slaves from what is essentially a concentration camp so they can live there. Everyone treats this as a horrible thing that will have grave consequences, but the only reason the plan doesn't work is that Magneto got betrayed by one of his subordinates. If he'd been a bit choosier in Acolytes, he would have done more to advance mutant rights in that episode than the X-Men had in the entire prior season.
• Ranger Smith to Yogi Bear, he was treated as an antagonist to Yogi even though Ranger Smith is trying to stop Yogi from stealing people's lunch. In real life, wild animals getting hold of human food is a very serious thing - it can lead animals to associate humans with food, meaning that they have to be killed or relocated to areas where humans are not very plentiful, otherwise the animals might get aggressive and start attacking people. Not that this show's universe has many things in common with real bears. Reasoned in one episode, where Ranger Smith finally gets sick of Yogi's antics and delivers a "The Reason You Suck" Speech on all the felonies he's caused. Yogi defends himself by pointing out the forest belonged to the animals first, then humans such as himself took over and tried to enforce rules onto them. Yogi steals food, but Smith stole his entire habitat.

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