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  • The Disney Animated Canon is known for having charismatic villains who steal the show, and who the audience often sympathizes with. Here are some examples:
    • Jafar in Aladdin has fans who see him this way. They say that he just wants to save his home from ruin that's caused by an idiot sultan, a con artist, and an irresponsible princess. Remember that he commits treason, tries to murder Aladdin twice, enslaves the ruler and his daughter, and turns into an evil giant snake and an evil genie. Also that he was pretty much already in charge by hypnotising the Sultan and tried to openly assume power out of egotism more than anything and irrationally hated the Sultan despite him trusting him and respecting him.
    • Ursula from The Little Mermaid (1989). In most websites, Youtube especially, many fans of the movie speak so well about Ursula and justify her behavior by saying that she explained the fine print to Ariel, and how Ariel was gullible for signing the contract. This is ignoring the fact that Ariel was just an Unwitting Pawn for Ursula to get close to the latter’s goal to rule the land and sea. It also doesn't help that it is never explained in the original movie why exactly Ursula was banished from Triton's kingdom (Later adaptations like the stage musical based on the Disney version reveal that Ursula was behind the death of Ariel's mother.)
    • Atlantis: The Lost Empire has two.
    • Beauty and the Beast:
      • No one wears leather pants like Gaston! Some people tend to see him as a victim who deserved to marry Belle, overlooking the fact that he's a rude, murderous, misogynistic Yandere. Occasionally, they even try to play Gaston trying to lock up Maurice as a mere honest concern, as opposed to what it is (namely, blackmail).
      • To a much lesser extent, the Bimbettes are often more well-liked and idealized than one would expect loyal fangirls of the villain to be. Although they're certainly not as villainous as he is, fans often gloss over their cattiness towards Belle in the beginning when expressing disbelief she dare reject Gaston's advances and their never-wavering worship of Gaston even after seeing him callously have Maurice, a man begging for help to save his daughter, tossed out from the tavern (some even going so far as to claim they have "more inner beauty" than Belle and demonizing Belle in the process). It might have something to do with having more obviously sexualized appearances than Belle and the fact they have little impact on the plot to the point of completely disappearing in the third act.
    • Brother Bear: Even though he isn't really a villain, many fans of the movie do not remember the fact that Denahi was trying to kill both Kenai and Koda for most of the movie's events, thinking that the former was "killed" by a bear when he was in fact turned into one by Sitka.
    • Claude Frollo in Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. There are many people who think he should have ended up with Esmeralda instead of Phoebus. It doesn't help that he's much more sympathetic in the book. Disney split him into two characters because they didn't want religious backlash for portraying a clergyman as a total monster, hence the good Archdeacon and the evil Frollo, who is a judge rather than a priest.
    • Hercules: While a lot of Hades fans find his evilness to be part of his charm, others take this route. The latter camp tends to present him as a fun-loving and sarcastic animal lover who was only driven into villainy due to being snubbed by the other gods. While the fun-loving part is true, his "fun" is usually at the expense of others and there is no evidence he wants anyone to be happy but himself. The animal lover comes from the fact that he has an army of monsters and of course Cerberus as a pet, but Hades dilpers tend to forget he also considers them quite expendable and was quite satisfied with the turn of events when he thought the Hydra and Hercules had killed each other. Besides that, he wanted to murder a baby, frequently abuses his underlings just because he's mad and has outright enslaved Megara and possibly Pain and Panic as well. His snarkiness and humor don't exactly change the fact that he's still an evil Jerkass. And then there's the fact that, in the original myths, he wasn't even a villain at all.
    • From The Jungle Book (1967), Kaa's DILP fanbase could be justified because, like Hades, in the source material he wasn't a villain. The true reasons, however, lie elsewhere. Cartoon Kaa is a Laughably Evil being, an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain, and a Chew Toy. Even when he is doing something that by all rights should be horrendous — namely, constricting Mowgli in preparation to eat him during "Trust in Me" — the potential for horror is underplayed. Disney made its snake a villain, wanted him for comic relief and so minimized the sense of villainy, but did manage to show Kaa had some charisma, lots of skill at hypnotism, and moments of competence. The fact that he's voiced by the same actor who voices WINNIE THE POOH doesn't hurt either.
    • Scar from The Lion King (1994) is a villainous murderer who committed fratricide and tried to even kill an innocent, young cub with no clemency. To add on to this, when he actually DID supplant his brother's position as the king, he did nothing to show for it and had the lioness do all the dirty work while he lazes around in the comfort of his own cave singing random tunes and throwing childish tantrums whenever his brother's name is mentioned around him. That doesn't even include the fact that he failed to keep his promise to the hyenas and even went as far to throw them under the bus after he begged Simba to spare his life when the latter confronted him. Not only do some fans overlook that, but there are even fans who claim that Mufasa has mistreated Scar his whole life and even say that Scar had the right to murder him.
    • Honest John and Gideon from Pinocchio: Two con artists who tempt Pinocchio into a life of luxury as an actor and treating himself to a good time at Pleasure Island. John and Gideon are anthropomorphic characters (a fox and a cat, respectively), unlike the human villains in the movie. They're also portrayed as comical with the former having the first Villain Song in the Disney canon. They also get huge amounts of sympathy from fans when the Coachman intimidates them into bringing Pinocchio to Pleasure Island. It helps that both are utterly terrified at the sound of the place. Fan works range from them being remorseful at tricking Pinocchio to standing up to the Coachman when they see what becomes of the boys who are sent there.
    • The Princess and the Frog: There are people who think Facilier and Lawrence were just poor, misguided folks who never would have tried to swindle an innocent girl of money and murder her father and let a pack of demons loose to prey on New Orleans if they had only gotten Mama Odie's message. Oh, and opening Naveen's jar a little so he could breathe apparently redeems Lawrence.
    • Mother Gothel from Tangled. Fans have debated back and forth on whether or not she truly loved Rapunzel, but by the way some put it, it makes it seem like the kingdom using the flower (that she found, not grew, and selfishly hoarded and kept to herself for centuries, and that they probably didn't even know "belonged" to her) to heal the dying pregnant queen was some horrible sin against her, and that her kidnapping, scare tactics, and stabbing Eugene were just because she loved Rapunzel so much. It's also pretty clear that her style of mothering was emotionally manipulative and abusive.
    • King Candy aka Turbo from Wreck-It Ralph. His backstory is not being the most popular racer in the arcade anymore. So he goes out and accidentally crashes the other game (and his own) ether killing the characters or leaving all of them homeless, then ruins a child's life. Sad, maybe, but not exactly an excuse.
    • In Frozen, it's Hans who turns out to be evil, revealing that he only romanced Anna because he wanted to take over her kingdom, while laughing about how convenient the royal sisters have made it for him to gain power, before leaving Anna to freeze to death while he tries to murder Elsa. Despite this, he has accumulated a fairly large fanbase, largely due to the way he acted prior to the big reveal (which most definitely was an act— other fans have noticed he's deliberately imitating Anna), plus his status as a Tragic Villain (as seen in the Tie-In Novel A Frozen Heart, his father and brothers were really nasty and abusive towards him, so he wanted to become king to prove they underestimated his potential, but being thirteenth in line made that unlikely, and offing all twelve of his older brothers would have raised some eyebrows, so he decided to go to Arendelle and kill Elsa and Anna for their throne), rumors of his possible redemption in the sequel, and yes, his good looks.
    • In Zootopia, Dawn Bellwether (Mayor Lionheart's assistant) gets this treatment due to being mistreated by Mayor Lionheart. Of course Mayor Lionheart is a Corrupt Politician who does belittle Dawn and even calls her "Smellwether" at one point, but there are fans who ignore Bellwether using the Night Howler serum to dart the predator animals, make them savage, have the prey animals segregate the predators, and rule a city where only prey animals live.
    • Many people defend Yzma, claiming she's the real hero of the film, and only wanted to save the kingdom from an arrogant and despotic ruler. Some going even far enough to say she actually cared for the kingdom and its people, forgetting that in her first scene she scolds a man for being poor, she regularly abuses Kronk, and her entire motivation for killing Kuzco is being fired for attempting to rule behind his back. It's also implied that she's responsible for much of Kuzco's behavior.
    • Tamatoa from Moana, to his credit, does very little in the movie. However, he's still a cannibalistic narcissist who would gladly use the power of a goddess when presented the opportunity to do so for Papatūānuku knows what, a trait that's usually overlooked in order to make him the flamboyant friend of the main characters. And that's not even counting how he tried to eat the titular character, you know, a sixteen-year-old girl without shame.
    • Wish: Even before the film's release, King Magnifico gained a subset of fans who claimed he was actually a Designated Villain since his decision to limit the wishes he grants didn't seem completely unreasonable or baseless, a view bolstered by both his natural charm and the fact that it took a bit for the full depths of his malevolence to be shown in previews. These same fans usually downplay or outright ignore his narcissistic, unsavory character and his selfish reasoning for hoarding the wishes in the first place, and also believe that because it's his right to use them however he wants to, since it's his magic, he also has a right to hoard them all in his lair. There's also the rare case of some audience members outright denying that he's a narcissist in the first place. Some even go so far as to make him out to be an innocent victim possessed by the book of forbidden magic who didn't deserve his fate in the end. This is dispite there little indication that he was being possessed by the book and thus not in full control of the terrible things he did afterward, and that he only resorted to using the book in the first place because of something he perceived as a threat to him (and only him) and his authority as well as to forcefully make the people of Rosas stop asking questions and fall back into line once they began questioning what he was doing with their wishes, hardly heroic or noble reasons, making him already a terrible person from the start.
  • Steele from Balto and his sequel counterpart Niju from Balto II have received this treatment in the Furry Fandom, similar to Scar and Zira above.
  • Barnyard: Dag. Many view him as a sympathetic antagonist who is only trying to feed his pack. Notably, while he does seem to resent the fact that him and his pack are starving (angrily telling the chick Maddy that "meaners" like him have to eat too), this doesn't excuse the fact that he clearly kills for his own pleasure and loves to make his victims feel powerless before him.
  • Akiko Glitter, the Just Dance dancer from The Emoji Movie, is usually treated by "fans" of the movie as just a random innocent victim of the heroes' stupidity, and Gene not saving her when he has the opportunity is considered the movie's biggest Tear Jerker, if not outright exaggerated into Gene's Moral Event Horizon. This ignores that she forces the heroes to dance with her, which will kill them if they make three mistakes, on top of giving Smiler's bots time to catch up with them.
  • Dagda from Epic (2013), who has barely been seen in clips and trailers, already has a small female following on Tumblr.
  • Soto from the first Ice Age film. He can appear Unintentionally Sympathetic due to his pack being wiped out by the human hunters with some fans ignoring that he caused the death of Roshan's mother for the sake of revenge against Roshan's father and wanted to kill the baby Roshan, not stopping at anything to get his vengeance. And they ignore that he threatened his own pack with death for failing him, which apart from rather nasty also makes his motivation even more questionable. And in the script, it is said that he never helped the others and left each one to fend for himself.
  • The Incredibles:
    • Syndrome from The Incredibles. There are some who think he had a point in accusing Mr. Incredible of being biased against non-supers. And it doesn't bother them that he murdered dozens of other superheroes to get back at Mr. Incredible, or gleefully shoots down a plane with children aboard. And though he did intend to sell his inventions to the public, the publicity campaign for the launch would kill thousands while he played hero, all of which is motivated entirely out of spite. And when that plot fails, his Plan B is to kidnap an infant and raise him as a murderous villain, like himself. And yet some people want to frame this as a Pet the Dog moment for him on the Insane Troll Logic that he can't really be bad because he didn't kill the baby instead.
    • Incredibles 2: Screenslaver, aka Evelyn Deavor, has a large set of fans who excuse their actions due to their backstory. Screenslaver is responsible for trying to derail a train, brainwashing multiple supers into attacking a boat, and trying to have said boat crash into a pier. However, there is a lot of fanfiction out there that tries to portray them as the hero of the film and demonizes the heroes for trying to come out of retirement. Furthermore, a lot of these fanfics will take their brainwashing of Helen, something portrayed as a villainous action in the film, and instead romanticize it or play Evelyn as a far better romantic option for Helen than her actual husband Bob, who they often turn into an abusive glory hound.
  • Kent Mansley from The Iron Giant is praised by some fans as a "patriotic American just doing his job" and "the real hero". They're overlooking the fact that Kent is a paranoid McCarthyist with a "destroy them before they destroy us" mentality who performed an unauthorized (and therefore illegal) interrogation on a minor (doubly illegal) whom he assaulted and threatened to abuse with his government connections, knowingly and needlessly escalated the situation with the Giant multiple times (mostly by lying to and withholding information from his superior officer) thereby endangering both soldier and civilian lives, almost nuked a populated American town, and immediately attempted to desert his post while screaming "Screw our country, I want to live!" once he realized what he had done. Real "American hero" there.
    • To be fair, he does on one hand raise the legitimate point that Hogarth has absolutely no idea where the Giant came from or what he's doing on Earth. On the other hand, not only are those points also raised by the far more likable Dean, but Mansley also ruins his case by being paranoid and completely unreasonable about dealing with the Giant. Something which, in a movie that speaks out against xenophobia and in favor of Odd Friendships, only serves to make him more hate-worthy.
  • Kung Fu Panda:
    • While Tai-Lung is sympathetic to a degree, many fans ignore that he's an entitled, self-centered brat who was willing to take his frustration out on a valley of innocent people just because he didn't get his way. Fans often try to pin blame on Shifu for making Tai Lung want the Dragon Scroll so bad, even though Shifu never said Tai Lung was destined to be the Dragon Warrior or Oogway for denying him it despite the fact that his reaction to being told no indicates that Oogway's belief that there was darkness in his heart was completely right.
    • Lord Shen, Big Bad of the sequel, seems to be well on the way to his pair of leather pants as well, even though he, albeit not a flat villain, is a genocidal murderer, with a fraying grip on sanity and a Freudian Excuse that the creators deliberately made very weak in the final version of the script. Originally, his Parental Abandonment issues were going to extend much further, with his albino coloring and sickly stature causing his parents to neglect him and leave him solely in the care of the Soothsayer. Shen gets the leather pants treatment because a lot of fans still treat this as canon, despite it not being mentioned in the final film.
  • The Once-ler in The Lorax (2012). Many fans portray him as a Jerkass Woobie who was doing his best to heed the Lorax's words instead of a Corrupt Corporate Executive who realizes his errors just a little too late. The fact that he's surprisingly pretty as a youth has very little to do with it.
    • The original Once-ler has gotten hit with this too. Fanon often has him as near-identical to the young movie Once-ler, but wearing flamboyant green clothing. He's more greedy than the movie version even within fandom, but it's toned down a lot.
  • There are genuinely a minority of people who romanticize Hal Stewart from Megamind as a Woobie who just needed a chance, and likewise interpret Roxanne as a superficial and shallow bitch. Granted, the moment when he invites her to his "party" is awkward to watch, but this is more Hal's fault than Roxanne's. It was bad enough that he hired a DJ and a bouncy house for a party that was just meant for the two of them, in the vague hope that she would attend, but the wedding photographer took it to a whole other level. Not to mention his unsubtly rude behavior around Bernard/Megamind, and of course his actions later on speak for themselves. It's also noteworthy that Roxanne, while clearly (and rightly) creeped out by Hal's actions and attentions, nevertheless consistently makes a clear effort to be nice to him (or at least let him down gently), and that Hal's rant that she never took the time to get to know him is yet another example of how deluded and entitled he is.
  • Randall Boggs from Monsters, Inc. has an enormous Scaly Fandom, especially after pictures of him from the prequel film came out, which showed him as a shy, nervous nerd. But it subsided after he ended up being a minor character with not that much of a backstory. It also helped that in the movie proper, it was made clear that although he wasn't an asshole from the beginning (more of an earnest, awkward kid who desperately wanted to be popular), his Start of Darkness was very clearly on his own terms.
  • Sonata Dusk of My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks. Despite being The Ditz, she's presented as just as bad as the other two Dazzlings, Adagio Dazzle and Aria Blaze. Sonata willfully engages in kicking Sunset Shimmer while she's down, taunting the heroes, and trapping them so that they can't interfere with the Dazzlings' plans. Sonata also has, at best, Teeth-Clenched Teamwork with the other Dazzlings, especially Aria, whom she argues with a lot. Fanon tends to portray her as being tricked or forced to help Adagio and Aria (with the two of them portrayed as even worse than canon), being regretful over having to spread hatred and anger to survive, and potentially pulling a Heel–Face Turn, none of which was hinted at throughout the film.
  • Oogie Boogie of The Nightmare Before Christmas tends to get this a lot, often making Jack into a bully to do so. Also, Jack is probably one of the rare, if not the only, heroes who get this. Fans bash the military for shooting Jack down, even though they were justified in doing so.
  • Thrax gets this treatment in a lot of Osmosis Jones fanfics, even though he is ruthless and has absolutely no problem with killing people, and does it For the Evulz. There is even a series of fics where he marries a human (after being given human size, granted) and, to add insult to injury, is also a vampire.
  • Pitch Black from Rise of the Guardians. Many feel sympathy for his despair at not being believed in and longing for a family. Then, some take this too far and say, without a trace of sarcasm, that he's a complete woobie who should be forgiven for all his misdeeds (which include his attempts to murder the Guardians and a child who was standing in the way of his plans), is justified in his actions, or has done nothing wrong in the first place.
  • Chelsea Van Der Zee from Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken quickly gained this kind of following as soon as she was introduced as a villain in the trailers. When the trailers presented the “Kraken vs Mermaid” as case of Black-and-White Morality, it was popularly theorized that the trailers were misleading; that the conflict would be more nuanced; or that Chelsea may genuinely befriend Ruby despite starting out as the antagonist. When the movie showed that, yes, Chelsea was really evil and manipulating Ruby the whole time, a portion of the fandom still prefers the theories to the final product. DreamWorks even seems to parody this trope by having Chelsea deliver the textbook defense of most DILPs when caught:
  • Trolls World Tour: Even before the movie was released, fans were quick to paint Barb in a sympathetic and likable light. The entire fandom basically can't stay mad at Barb for all her antagonistic actions since she's so cool and relatable.
    • Near literally, Chaz has gotten great amounts of this treatment after the Trolls: TrollsTopia episode "Smooth Operator". Besides fans of the Trolls franchise already liking him, many were a little surprised at his turn as a villain, still finding him sympathetic because the trolls were somewhat insensitive about his self-expression, as well as taking his statement of being unbearably lonely as the unvarnished truth: he is the only Jazz Troll shown to be around. While every other subtribe is shown to have at least one other person to share their music with, Chaz is truly alone, and it's not unsympathetic to watch him do anything to make sure he'll never be alone again.
  • Charles Muntz from Up, while not as extreme as the above examples (well, not very often anyway), is often painted as a young-at-heart adventurer who was simply doing what he enjoyed and pursuing a life's dream, and Carl and Russell were trouble-makers who had no business sticking their noses in, never mind the fact that he tries to kill them and is implied to have killed people who come within 100 miles of his prize.

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