Final Fantasy has pretty boys in leather pants to spare, not surprising given the poster child.
- Final Fantasy VII's post-meltdown Sephiroth was a sociopathic madman who killed Aerith, burned down Cloud's hometown, betrayed his trust in a glorious way, and led him on a wild goose chase all across the Planet simply to manipulate him into bringing him a magical Doomsday Device, which he then used to attempt to destroy the world. There isn't even the faintest hint of sympathy portrayed for him by any of the game's characters. However, this doesn't stop the fandom declaring him to be a Hive Mind puppet of Jenova, and relegating him to the level of innocence commonly reserved for The Woobie — even though this theory was never implied in the game, and was blatantly disproven by Word of God and the supplemental materials.note This seems to be purely an effect of his good looks, as similarly bad but creepy villains in the story get no such sympathy, though it might also be due to remembering the pre-meltdown version and trying 'badly' to merge the two personas.
- Crisis Core: Genesis to a far lesser extent has fans who will rabidly defend him as the victim, in spite of all of the terrible things he did. His injury was his own fault from getting reckless, trying to kill (or at the very least injure) Sephiroth (who had yet to go crazy at the time), and not stopping when Angeal tried to stop him. He didn't really get any character development and he would recite Loveless obsessively (some fans argue this was from him going mad as his death drew nearer), he told Sephiroth what they were at the Nibelheim reactor, and if it is made canon, it's his fault, which just fuels Sephiroth fangirls' attempts to make him more sympathetic. Some like to ship him with Tifa for Love Redeems in fanfiction. On top of that, in the end, he gets no real punishment. His injury is healed and the degeneration stops and he survives for Dirge of Cerberus.
- Seifer Almasy from Final Fantasy VIII. Many fanfics are making him out to be a heroic Jerk with a Heart of Gold instead of an immature, selfish jackass.
- Kuja from Final Fantasy IX is a smug bastard that manipulates people to gain power, kills the princess' mother, taunts Vivi on how he was manufactured instead of being a real person, and throws a cosmic tantrum when he finds out that his life span is short, so he destroys a planet and seeks to end all forms of life as a response. Many fans view Kuja as a poor sympathetic guy who is brainwashed to destroy and just needs some affection. While he gets an Alas, Poor Villain death, this assessment is inaccurate. The Dissidia version of Kuja is more sympathetic, though.
- Seymour Guado from Final Fantasy X also receives plenty of sympathy from fans despite the fact he murdered his father in cold blood, tried to kill the daughter of Braska, murdered two fellow maesters to go One-Winged Angel, and tried to merge with the destructive force that is Sin just so he could destroy Spira and "save" it. While he does have a legitimate excuse, he nonetheless is whitewashed by many fans acting like he never did anything wrong and gloss over his crimes just because he looks good, much like Sephiroth, Seifer, and Kuja before, and ship him with Yuna even though it was very clear Yuna hated the guy.
- Final Fantasy XIV:
- Gaius van Baelsar is seen as the most sympathetic villain in the whole game. He's a commander for The Empire and imposes their views and justifications on the people of Eorzea no matter what their stance is. Gaius has no qualms with having beastmen being slaughtered left and right to prevent them from summoning the aether-sucking primals, even if some of the beastmen are innocent. Gaius also believes that only a powerful man is fit to be a ruler and that he (or at least the empire itself) is fit to rule over Eorzea since the people are nothing but "savages" that should be subjugated by the empire to quell the chaos and disorder in the land. Anyone that doesn't surrender to the empire is either killed or forced to serve in the empire's army. Despite everything that Gaius does or says that should paint him as immoral or at least questionable, a lot of fans wish they were given the option to join him since they believe he is not completely wrong in how Eorzea is chaotic and a mess with irredeemable qualities. Even after Gaius supposedly died in an explosion at the end of 2.0, fans refused to believe that he actually died, since his body was never shown and they feel that he is too much of a badass to die. This eventually turned out to be the case, with Gaius making a formal return as a sort-of ally late in Stormblood's patch cycle.
- Zenos, another Garlean commander, was written to be as unlikable as possible for his debut in the Stormblood story. He casually kills off his soldiers when they fail him, had two of his soldiers undergo horrific experiments, treats the death of rebels he killed as if it were just another Tuesday, and only gains interest in the player character because they eventually match him in raw power and he needed someone to give him a rush in battle. Even Lyse calls Zenos out on using the war as an excuse to be able to feel something besides boredom. The last thing that Zenos says to the player before killing himself is "Farewell my first friend, my enemy." That single line alone sparked a surge of fans rushing in to defend and sympathize with Zenos, claiming that he was a Tragic Villain who didn't have anyone to confide in and how he was abused by The Empire.
- Yotsuyu, the acting Viceroy for Zenos in Doma, is portrayed as a cruel, twisted, and sadistic woman that gets pleasure from watching people squirm and suffer under her heel; at a fishing village in the Ruby Sea, she orders a man to shoot another villager on the suspicion that he was a rebel. After he kills him, she then orders the guy to kill his parents just because they were too old to be of any use to the empire (he aims to shoot Yotsuyu instead, but is quickly shot and killed by her guards). In another scene, she has some Kojin beastmen killed for failing her and then she flat-out admits that killing beastmen doesn't give her the same pleasure as killing a Doman citizen. When she is confronted by the heroes for the last time, she breaks down into a Motive Rant, stating that she enjoyed torturing Domans since she was abused by them (physically and sexually) since childhood. Even though Yotsuyu was shown to clearly be in the wrong, many fans feel that her actions were totally justified.
- Emet-Selch, an Ascian with serious Super Supremacist personality who doesn't even consider the inhabitants of the 14 shards to be alive, created the Garlean Empire solely for the purpose of causing Calamities, and was also the mastermind behind the Allagan Empire, thus making him responsible for causing two Calamities and most of the other tragedies in both lore and game. In Shadowbringers, while he tries to integrate into the Scion's circle, it is revealed that he was behind the creation of Vauthry, the twisted lord of a decadent, hedonic "paradise" that had a serve class system and fed its people grounded-up Sin Eaters, all in order to cause the Eight Umbral Calamity, and later backstabs the Scions by shooting and capturing the Crystal Exarch in order to ensure that his backup plan to turn the Warrior of Light into the Prime Lightwarden of all of Norvrandt works, and subsequently kickstart the Eight Calamity anyways. And yet people can say "Emet-Selch did nothing wrong" because of his tragic past and wish to save his race from a cruel fate that destroyed everything that he held dear.
