Assassin's Creed III has people claim that Haytham is totally heroic and cool, ignoring that he brutally murders unarmed prisoners, tries to emotionally manipulate Connor, and plans to basically create a dictatorship with him at its head.
Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning: Strangely enough, this is done to Baldi. Baldi, unlike most of the other examples on this page, isn't attractive in the slightest, being a poorly-made polygonal person with a weird face, has only a single strand of hair that sticks up on his head and no visible hands or feet. He also happens to be a deranged teacher who gets incredibly mad at students who aren't able to solve questions to a math quiz that are stupidly impossible to solve, hunts them down like some sort of monster from a horror film and even outright kills them, yet fans portray him as Troubled, but Cute.
Baldur's Gate has this to spare — there are mods and fanfics centered around relationships with everyone from Sarevok (Magnificent BastardBig Bad of the first game, and your frigging brother) to Irenicus (Big Bad of the second) to Edwin (Ineffectual Sympathetic VillainSmug Snake), and more. And yet the only romance the game gives to female characters is Anomen (or maybe that's why there are so many mods and fanfics).
Viconia also has quite a fanboy following, many of whom try to justify her (alluded) murderous actions. It should be noted the game gives her a Freudian Excuse already, with an eventual Love Redeems option, and as a supposedly Always Chaotic Evil Drow, she is much less evil than she should be. That said, she is a willing servant of the evil goddess Shar; and attitude-wise, she is only nice to the player, and treats everyone else like dirt. She picks several fights with others out of sheer contempt or sadism, like making fun of Aerie for losing her wings, sneers at Jaheira's parentage and calls her a "crossbreed mongrel" and scoffs at Cernd's druidism (and she's not the only one, either). So she may not be a monster, but she's still a bitch.
Dr. Steinman and Sander Cohen from BioShock have tons of fangirls, in spite of them both being serial killers who horribly mutilate people for fun. Same goes for Frank Fontaine/Atlas, an amoral gangster who takes advantage of hundreds of innocent Rapture civilians by introducing them to addictive, physically disfiguring Psycho Serum, and profits off of war and conflict. Apparently, all it takes to get around any of these crimes is to look handsome in their radio message portraits.
Similarly, Daisy Fitzroy from Infinite is turned into a martyr by people who find the game and its message of non-extremism racist. They see her later heinous actions (trying to kill both the main characters when she no longer found any use for them and threatened her cult of personality, following it all up by trying to kill a small boy) as the writers heavy-handedly attempting to demonize a good cause.
Daisy Fitzroy has been negated due to the revelation in Burial at Sea that she didn't want to kill Fink's son in the first place, and argued with the Luteces when they told her the plan. She only went through with it as Elizabeth killing her would cause her to develop from a girl to a woman, and even though she would not live to see the revolution succeed, she knew that Elizabeth and Booker would win.
As of Burial at Sea, Atlas has lost all love from the fandom due to crossing the Moral Event Horizon several times, his first big one by trying to do a trans-orbital lobotomy on Elizabeth, and threatening to do the same to Sally. The one that made the entire fandom turn against him was that, at the ending, he mercilessly beat Elizabeth to death with a wrench while shouting at her for information. Worse was that he didn't really kill her, causing her to suffer badly at the end.
Hazama/Terumi Yuuki. Being a master Troll, snazzy dresser, and having a patronisingly nasty but funny attitude makes some people forget that he's evil per excellence and has a habit of mindrapingladiesFor the Evulz, and also quite defines It's All About Me. There are even fans who think that he's a Guile Hero who went to the extremes for a certain goal for humanity… The rest of his fans love him precisely because he's a ReconstructionCard-Carrying Villain, so yeah. When it turns out he's deconstructing the whole Gambit Pileup thing by first getting some mishaps on his plans, panicking a bit, getting killed by Hakumen, and then being revealed that his boss Izanami was just playing him off and leaving him to die, some of these 'reconstruction' fans turned their backs on him. The other 'misaimed' fans instead directed their vitriol to the resident puritarian, Celica A. Mercury, for making this event possible.
Nu-13 as well. If anything's blatant, she hates everything else except Ragna, and her preferred method is 'stab everything on her path in a jealous rage, even if the world goes boom'. She's a Weapon of Mass Destruction only hell-bent to get laid with Ragna and no one else shall have him. Fan reaction? Because she executes such 'love' with such adorable (if creepy) love and cute look as well as some crazy representation like 'Pirate/Valley Girl Nu', everyone thinks she's just a pitiful, lonely soul who longs Ragna's love. Never mind that she hates the world and only wants Ragna for herself.
Kokonoe is a Villain Protagonist version. Because of her physical attractiveness, snarkiness, being the offspring of two Six Heroes Jubei and Nine, and the fact her main opposition is the vile Hazama/Terumi, many of her atrocities, including her treatment of Lambda, helping Relius Clover create Ignis, and having nukes trained on Kagutsuchi ready to fire as a plan B if her revenge gambit backfires, are glossed over (though to be fair, she actually felt bad about those first two and wanted to atone in her own way). Since this goal was so 'important', she also usually gets excused for not helping Litchi save Arakune despite her soft spot for Litchi (and her being Forced into Evil is treated like it's never Kokonoe's fault), and going every way to ensure Bullet will never get the information she wants or get near Tager (and even gave Tager the order to kill Bullet for whatever reason). The story seems to pander to it, too, as up until Chronophantasma, although she received several calling-outs, the storytailoredit so that no one becomes sickened enough of her to boot her from the team lest she removes the 'protagonist' part of the Villain Protagonist on her and no other 'great genius with better morals' popped up, so Kokonoe will always be protagonistic and always treated as a Face. A portion of fans finally turned against her when she attempted to liberally use Celica A. Mercury, her aunt, as the power source for a doomsday machine to destroy another doomsday machine, but the admirers of Kokonoe's DILP still remain at large, not helped with the fact that the reaction to Celica in general isn't... pleasant.
Blue Archive: With the exception of several really evil ones like Beatrice, pick any character and there's a very high chance discussions about them is going to degenerate into memes or fanservice because of how fanservicey almost everything in the game is. Even characters that are otherwise taken very seriously such as Mika, Shiroko Terror and sometimes Black Suit and Kaya are going to be played for jokes and/or fanservice. Makes you almost forget the whole thing is around as dark as something like Pinocchio or any Guardians of the Galaxy movie with some extremely horrible or nightmarish villains prowling around for an ostensibly light-hearted work.
Ghost Widow of City of Heroes generally has her fanatical loyalty to Arachnos (more of an inescapable obligation), along with the fact that she's physically bound to its existence, downplayed when discussing her, mostly because "She's so pretty…". It helps that the storyline which shows the less pleasant side of her nature requires unlocking quite early in the game, so most players don't get to see how she treats her employees.
It is revealed in one mission arc that she is incapable of not being compassionate. Her last living emotion was compassion toward Paolo, now named Wretch, and however evil, however vicious she may get, she feels that compassion 24 hours a day. Indeed, the first time the player actually meets her, she asks them to help Wretch because she cares about him.
There is a mission chain that requires the player to betray her. Many players refuse to even begin those missions. Some choose to turn hero instead.
Tyrant, the Praetorian counterpart to Statesman, gets some of this treatment, though thus far it is more of the Misaimed Fandom variety than quasi-romantic.
Kane, the leader of the Brotherhood of Nod in the Command & Conquer series. It doesn't help that his motivations seem to change every game, or that the developers themselves seem infected with Evil Is Cool.
At one point in the first game, he tells the player that "people believe what the media tells them to believe… and I tell the media what to believe". Quite fitting that this is exactly what happens among the fandom — another cutscene has Kane MST the "origin of Tiberium" scene from the GDI campaign, interrupting it at one point to explain that, as opposed to Dr. Mobius finding it and naming it after the Tiber River the first meteor crashed near, Kane himself actually discovered it first and named it after the Roman emperor Tiberius Caesar. Now, if one were to look up Tiberium on Google, almost every result except the C&C Wiki won't even mention Mobius' version of its discovery and naming, much less assume that that's how it actually was discovered.
A Dance with Rogues has Vico, a violent and cruel Blackguard who works for the game's criminal organization that the Princess is forced to be a part of. Although he saves the Princess' life at the beginning of the game, he also callously informs her of her family's gruesome fate, after which he rapes her as revenge for what her father did, constantly mocks her later, makes snide comments towards her, including Slut-Shaming her, and so on. In Part Two upon asking him why he raped her, Vico will blame her for it. Throughout the game, it's also shown that he's incapable of normal communication, hates people for any perceived weakness and inability to protect themselves and loves fighting, killing, and sex, and will enjoy doing so every time he's allowed. For some reason he's apparently the most popular of the romance options. And while true that Vico has some good qualities and a Freudian Excuse past, he only reveals that if the Princess accepts his advances and will only then apologize for raping her, and only if she asks him about it. If rejected as a lover, even if still on friendly terms, he opts instead to turn on her, and even if romanced, at one point he shows he's willing to sacrifice the Princess if it means saving his own life. Choosing him as a lover also doesn't make any exceptional change in him. But because he treats her better when romanced, is apparently good at sex and even comes around to accepting that the Princess carries his baby and refuses to abandon her even so (being a well known former casanova that refused commitment and all), apparently a lot of players are willing to overlook everything else.
Higgs from Death Stranding. He's a leader of a terrorist group that kills people and leaves them to necrotize, causing them to blow up and leave craters. He also attacks Sam, the protagonist, on multiple occasions, risking not only his life, but also the lives of people who would get caught by a voidout nearby. He also spies on Sam, made his old friend and co-worker run through timefall (rain that ages everything it touches) naked to ruin her body, and taunts her about it. He also tried to nuke a whole city, with a population of about 40k people, twice, and shoots the pod strapped to Sam's chest that has a living baby in it. In fanon, he's often portrayed more as a troll, who likes to push Sam's buttons and is obsessed with pizza (there's a questline that involves more and more absurd deliveries of pizza to his lair). Some works also use the Freudian Excuse in the form of his canon backstory: he used to be raised by an abusive uncle who beat him and forbade him from leaving their bunker. Higgs killed him in self-defense when he was a teen. Some people also believe he got swayed by Amelie, whose power left him insane, and he had no desire to hurt people before. Slashfics often take place post canon, leaving him without powers, making him mostly snarky and cute, in a way, totally ignoring his bloodthirsty tendencies and delusions of grandeur.
Deltarune: Spamton's status as a fan-favorite and a Jerkass Woobie meant this was a little inevitable. Spamton in canon is a remorseless and deranged individual who, if you follow through his quest, attempts to kill Kris and take their soul so he can be "free", and never really regrets it at all. In the Weird Route, he outright assists the player in corrupting Noelle into a killer so he can take over Queen's castle, only fighting Kris at the end so he can stay the "king" of Queen's castle. Many of his fans tend to not acknowledge this, with many fan works portraying Spamton as either having a remorseful side over what either he's done or thinking Kris has gone too far or as a sad and lonely man who just needs love and affection. As for the latter, given the multitude of Spamton/Reader fics on Archive of Our Own (over 400 fics and counting) it's safe to say that a lot of people outright ignore Spamton's Godhood Seeker and conman aspects just to woobify him.
Vergil in the Devil May Cry series, although he is not as egregious as some other examples. His lust for power might be enough to make him villainous and the nature to excuse that because he's such an aloof badass is certainly there but his character has more nuances that skew towards Anti-Villain (namely that his driving motivation is the Dark and Troubled Past of demonic forces killing his mother, much the same as his brother, who simply chose a more heroic outlet in pursuit of the same goal of making demonkind pay for it). This arguably no longer applies as of Vergil's Heel–Face Turn at the end of Devil May Cry 5. Though granted even in V you still people all to willingly to forgive Vergil for hurting Nero both before and after learning that he is his son.
Loghain mac Tir of Dragon Age: Origins gets the Leather Pants treatment, both in terms of fans who excuse his every horrendous action and those who actually lust after him. It's due in part to Loghain's literal Pet the Dog moments if you recruit him to the Grey Wardens, the fact that everything he does is to defend his country, and his backstory in the prequel novels seems to encourage it. But even aside from that, a lot of fans like to insist that he is actually the true hero of the story. This usually involves insisting he was right to abandon the unwinnable Battle of Ostagar and suggesting the Orlesians would have taken over Ferelden if he had allowed them into the country. It doesn't help that Word of God confirmed that Cailan's plan was to ditch Anora after Ostagar in favor of the Empress of Orlais, which would have united the two rival nations. This makes Loghain's paranoia less insane. A lot of the actions that can't really be justified (selling citizens as slaves, torturing dissenters, slaughtering entire families) get blamed on Arl Howe, who is somehow the only one responsible for these things despite the fact that he is Loghain's direct subordinate (and despite the fact that Loghain outright admits responsibility for some of it, then scoffs in the Warden's face if they try to call him on it later). This even seems to be in the case in-universe — there are still people defending him years later.
Word of God also added some retroactive whitewashing, i.e. claiming that while he did arrange for the poisoning of Arl Eamon, he didn't mean to poison him to death (though the poisoning was apparently so effective that it could only be cured by a miraculous relic).
Anders in Dragon Age II became possessed by a spirit of Justice/Vengeance, and blows up a Chantry, a place of worship, killing dozens of people, but some extreme fans excuse and absolve his actions. Some of this is due to the damage from Anders' bombing being rather ambiguous (though this gets excused as "only" killing a few "bad" people, when the figure named is in fact hundreds). The fact that he is a love interest for a male or female protagonist in the second game doesn't help matters either — it is popular to pair Nathaniel Howe or Fenris (the latter of whom hates him, and the feeling is mutual) with Anders for some reason. These fans apparently forget that Anders' method of dealing with a problem is to run away or destroy it, that he is astonishingly cruel to anyone he views as an "obstacle" to his cause for any reason (including other mages), and that Anders being bisexual and a mage doesn't absolve him of his crimes. The general Grey-and-Gray Morality doesn't really help, nor does the fact that, well, he's possessed (though willingly). That being said, just like with Loghain, there are those who fit him for leather pants, and then there are those who paint him as irredeemable. Depending on the World-State, Hawke can state in Inquisition that both extremes are a serious oversimplification of who Anders is.
Samson from Dragon Age: Inquisition is now getting this treatment. Despite committing horrendous atrocities for Corypheus, many buy into his excuse that the Chantry had abused templars for centuries by using their lyrium dependency as a means to control them. Despite his unflattering looks, some also insist that he's quite attractive — which is no doubt helped out by him being voiced by Gideon Emery. Also, he's (supposedly) one of the most mage-sympathetic Templar antagonists; in his initial appearance in Dragon Age II, he was living on the streets after being drummed out of the Order for passing a mage's love letters, and he's still looking after the now-Tranquil mage in Inquisition. This goes hand-in-hand with a view of Commander Cullen as Ron the Death Eater and alleged Creator's Pet, as some of Samson's fans note the differing treatment of their lyrium addiction and actions (or inaction) in the previous game — but they forget that Samson willingly worked for Meredith too (and will happily return to his position in Dragon Age II if allowed), that the mages who couldn't pay for his help got shipped off into slavery, and that after joining Corypheus, he abuses the Templars under his command in exactly the same way he claimed the Chantry always has, by feeding them lyrium until they're loyal to him for no reason other than to get more. Except using red lyrium, which rapidly mutates people into violent, agony-wracked horrors, and requires a constant supply of live victims. He also did nothing for the dozens of other Tranquil abducted and murdered by Corypheus's forces.
A lesser example in Inquisition comes from Thom Rainier, a.k.a. "Blackwall". While guilt over their past actions is a large part of the character, some fans still minimize some of their deeds — for example, arguing that he was entirely unaware of the family he had inadvertently ordered his men to kill, which Blackwall makes pretty clear wasn't the case.
Drawn to Life has Wilfre. He's evil, rages againstthe Creator, and is bent on covering the world with darkness or taking its colors away. Then he kills the Mayor. But fans will overlook this because they find him attractive (for the record, his non-shadowy form is that of a silver-haired man). And due to the Dream ApocalypseGainax Ending of the third game, fans will say he's justified in all his evil acts, which isn't actually the case. But to be fair, more or less every character is a race of Ridiculously Cute Critter, including Wilfre.
Elden Ring has Lunar Princess Ranni. With her charming personality, importance to the plot, engaging questline, and touching relationship with her immediate family and servants has naturally captivated the fanbase. Yet zealous supporters like to portray her as the single umambiguously good Demigod left, whose ending may as well just be the Golden Ending with no strings attached and no risk of worsening the state of the world. They appear to downplay or even ignore that she needed to steal the Rune of Death so her soul could be free from the observance and control of the Greater Will, and that she enchanted the Black Knives' blades with it to enable them to kill Godwyn. Even if you ignore her flat-out agreeing with the PC's assertion that "you were behind the Night of the Black Knives" and instead head-canon that she didn't know who would be killed, she's still indirectly responsible for the death of innocent, beloved Godwyn, which lead to the Shattering, the Demigod civil war, and all the damage that caused. The manner of his death also directly resulted in a continent-wide disaster that disrupted the cycle of reincarnation and infected every area of the Lands Between with murderous respawning undead like the Putrid Corpses and Skeletons. She is also willing to make morally dubious alliances when necessary, such as allying with Rykard and enlisting the services of the vile Seluvis and giving him some allowance to indulge in his perverse hobby. Finally, she herself acknowledges the Age of Stars maybe full of uncertainty and risk. It won't have the safe beauty and comforts of the Erdtree's age—for worse, or for better. Such is the nature of the freedom she values. And even her love of freedom tends to be overblown to turn her into a hero. There is controversy surrounding possible mistranslations making her desired world possibly sound worse than intended, but even with corrected translations her motivations and what her desired world actually entails are still vague at best, and a lot of fans love to use this ambiguity to fit whatever meanings they need to make Ranni look good. And while she does mention not wanting to be controlled by the gods, she only ever says this in reference to herself. At no point does she express any love or desire to help the rest of humanity.
Vivec is an interesting case. A man who, along with Almalexia and Sotha Sil, betrayed and murdered their patron Lord Nerevar (assuming Dagoth Ur didn't do it), used ancient technology to become a living god and illegally ruled over Morrowind, presiding over a regime rife with slavery and inequity.
Almalexia. Not particularly surprising with her being a red-headed, gold-skinned, Stripperificliteral goddess. Her appearance as a Quest Giver and one of the leaders of the Ebonheart Pact in The Elder Scrolls Online has brought new growth for her in this regard.
While we don't know much about Sotha Sil, Almalexia seems to be the only one from the Tribunal that can really be considered unambiguously "villainous" (at least during the time of the game). Vivec is no paragon of virtue, but unlike most examples of this trope, he's more black and gray, and a case can be made in his favor. He's done good for Morrowind and its people over the millennia, and he does protect his people… as long as they worship and love him.
Lucien Lachance. Evil? Yes. Creepy stalker? Certainly. The Dragon to a death-cult of assassins who kill people mostly just to appease a cosmic entity that probably doesn't even care? Obviously. Perhaps the greatest Mr. Fanservice in the game? Oh yes. And it doesn't stop at the fans — since the Dark Brotherhood, to whom Lachance belongs, is a joinable faction for a Villain Protagonist character, his status as the player's mentor makes him widely praised even though he is an acknowledged avid supporter of all the atrocities committed by the Dark Brotherhood and encourages the player to carry these out. Lucien is popular enough that, come Skyrim, he's back as a summonable spirit.
The Blackwood Company, the rival guild of mercenaries to the Fighters' Guild and the main antagonists to the Fighters' Guild questline. They appear as merely slightly more unscrupulous, edgier mercenaries than the Guild for much of the questline, until you're asked to infiltrate them and discover that the Blackwood Company keep a tree known for its hallucinogenic sap in the basement of their headquarters, bottle the sap, and give it out to new members during the initiation ceremony, making them hallucinate monsters and unknowingly slaughter innocent civilians. Which you get to experience firsthand. But does this do anything to stop the fans from wishing they could join the Company for real? No. Maybe it's because of the uniforms.
For the most part, the Thalmor came off exactly the way the devs intended. One commentator noted that most people hate the Nazi elves more than they hate Alduin, the dragon-god trying to eat the world. And yet some fans inexplicably like them. Maybe it's the uniforms again, or maybe they're just being contrary. Surely they don't support religious persecution, genocide and purges, or forcing a treaty at the point of a sword.
Cicero. A creepy, babbling madman wearing a jester costume in the employ of the Dark Brotherhood Assassins. He's an Ax-Crazy murderer for hire, who giggles and sings about killing people, admires a serial killer, and mutters frequently about oiling the Night Mother in "all the hard to reach places". Yet many fanfics turn him into a misunderstood Broken Bird with many sympathetic qualities and ramped up sexiness and sensuality, often paired romantically with a Dark Brotherhood aligned Dragonborn. While his journals reveal a somewhat sympathetic backstory behind his madness, it should be noted that he was already an assassin for hire long before he went insane.
The Evil Within has Ruvik. Even before the game made it to shelves, the disfigured madman who rules the Dark World had a substantial legion of fans. After release, they only multiplied. His attiredoesn't help either. And this is all whilst fully acknowledging his physical disfigurement and love of dissecting things.
Fable II and III: Oh, Reaver. You kill people who speak against you, destroyed all of Oakvale, you're a complete Jerkass, and you have no morals. At all. So why, why do the fans paint you as a broken, tragic soul whose sociopathic, self-centered behavior is only a mask to hide the poor, sweet soul underneath? Why is your entire personality ignored? Could it have something to do with being voiced by Stephen Fry?
Colonel Autumn has legions of fans. Never mind that he's part of a racist, genocidal fascist group. Never mind that he murders an innocent woman in cold blood and drives the player character's father to Heroic Sacrifice. Never mind that even at the end, the only difference between his and Eden's plan is that he doesn't plan to commit genocide, but still intends to use his control over Project Purity to turn the Wasteland into an oppressive, iron-fisted fascist dystopia…
The Enclave in general gets this treatment with a fanbase trying to spin them into having some sort of noble intentions. The Enclave were a shadow government organization that instigated a nuclear war that they assumed only they would be prepared for in order to wipe everyone else out. They are anti-mutant, but their definition of "mutant" is anyone that isn't pure-bred Enclave. Their ultimate goal is mass genocide, and their largest detractors tend to be former members of the Enclave.
John Henry Eden gets this as well. Though in this trope's defense, he does genuinely seem to not be malicious in the game, and as a machine, may not even be capable of wishing people ill-will. A lot of the fandom will, however, completely ignore or downplay his genocidal plans.
Mr. Burke, due in large part to having exactly the same voice as Lucien Lachance from Oblivion further up this page. It's no coincidence that a lot of female PCs take the Black Widow perk around the same time they enter Megaton.
In a few cases, many players felt this effect about themselves after they acted in a way that they felt was right, but didn't gel with what Word of God held to be. A notable case is Roy, a ghoul victimized by prejudice in Tenpenny Tower and wanting revenge. The policy certainly comes off as unjust, and indeed, the ruler of Tenpenny Tower is very evil, and killing him is treated as good. Roy's revenge scheme, however, is letting legitimately insane ghouls in to slaughter all of the occupants, including one who once had a beloved heroic ghoul as a friend. Yet the game treats killing him as evil, and most players unsurprisingly disagree. Similarly, the game heaps scorn on players for going against Ashur in The Pitt, despite the fact that the game never gave any hint that he had a sympathetic side until after the fact.
This isn't helped by the fact that even when the situation is resolved with getting both sides to live together peacefully, Roy still ends up leading a revolt and slaughtering all the human residents of the Tower.
Caesar. According to many players, he's simply a perfectly lovely fellow who's only using the Legion's brutality to bring order to the Wasteland. This convientantly misses the slight quibble of him wiping out an entire city and attempting to exterminate a further two tribes simply to spite Joshua Graham. Or his blunt admission that he enjoys murdering his enemies. Or his scolding the Courier for not enjoying violence for the Hell of it if you try to save Benny. Or him threatening to torture you to death for his enjoyment if you quit the Legion. Or making thinly veiled death threats if you ask about his defeat at Hoover Dam. And then there is the whole issue of him running a giant empire where slavery, human sacrifice, sadism, and the extermination of the elderly, ill, and homosexuals are accepted practices. Admittedly, he does have some Pet the Dog moments with the Brotherhood of Steel (or at least Strapping Soft Cotton Onto His Boots Before Kicking That Particular Dog), but that still leaves his treatment of everyone else unaccounted for.
Much of the treatment of Legion characters goes to the heavy Grey-and-Grey Morality of New Vegas; no faction path is truly bloodless and every side ends up with a bit of an Inferred Holocaust on their hands. Even then, though, Caesar's Legion has by far the fewest moments of sympathy, and the wasteland under their control offers seemingly very few advantages over any other path. Funnily, this is probably closer to the original intention, where the Legion were intended to be more sympathetic but suffered from having a lot of content cut, but this doesn't much change the Legion in-game.
Pagan Min of Far Cry 4 has more than his fair share of fans, largely due to being pretty hammy himself, being unafraid to get in touch with his feminine side, and being polite and friendly towards Ajay Ghale. A lot of his sympathizers overlook the fact that he's a murderous drug-addicted tyrant who kills people for selfish reasons (he executed his chef because he thinks Ajay didn't like his crab Rangoon, for crying out loud!), forced human rights' activist Dr. Najjar Noore to serve as one of his governors by taking her family captive (and then we learn he killed them quite some time ago and continued stringing her along on false hope), hired a Torture Technician to run another part of his empire, and is first introduced stabbing one of his own soldiers to death for going against his orders. He does have a Freudian Excuse for his cruelty — namely, Ajay's father Mohan sent his wife Ishwari to Go Seduce My Archnemesis, but Pagan and Ishwari fell in love and had a daughter called Lakshmana. Mohan decided to kill Lakshmana in response, whereupon Ishwari killed him, took Ajay, and left Kyrat and Pagan behind — but Pagan himself acknowledges that he would've carried out such atrocitiesregardless of Lakshmana's murder. He does have Pet the Dog interactions with Ajay, and lets him complete his goal of placing Ishwari's ashes next to her daughter if you wait for 10 minutes at the start of the game, but those interactions are tinted with pragmatism — if Pagan treats Ajay well, he'll be easier to corrupt into a successor to Pagan's throne. It doesn't help that Amita and Sabal, the two co-leaders of the Golden Path, ultimately prove to be even more callous than Paganif you bring one of them to power by the end of the game.
Berkut from Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia gets a lot of this. It's true that he has a sad backstory, being raised by his very strict parents and uncle, and was Locked Out of the Loop in regards to Alm being Rigel's true heir instead of him. However, quite a few of his fans use this to sweep his more pridefuljerkass moments under the rug, behaving as if it's all Rudolf's fault and Berkut is just a poor victim of circumstance. It doesn't help that Berkut is rather Easily Forgiven in-universe for things like trying to kill Alm several times and willingly sacrificing his fiancée Rinea to Duma for more power.
Despite being absolutely horrifying, the animatronics are often portrayed as being much goofier and/or cuter in fan works. This may be due to the characters the robots are supposed to represent, rather than the bots themselves. It also doesn't help that the actual protagonists of the game tend to be of the featureless variety, so people feel more compelled to make art relating to the much more memorable, colorful animatronics, but the "mindless Killer Robot" characterization does not give one much to work with.
Foxy gets to wear the leather pants more than any of the main animatronics due to his popularity with furries, as well as the initial belief that he was the one that committed The Bite of '87 and therefore caused Pirate Cove to be closed to the public. There is even a theory that he is even a good guy in-universe: according to this theory, he becomes worried about Mike if he notices his camera hasn't been checked for a while and runs to the office to make sure the guard is okay, only for a malfunctioning voicebox to trigger a heart attack which kills Mike. In fairness, he is the only robot in the original game who does not get in the player's face when attacking; instead, the Game Over is caused by him "leaning" into the office through the door, almost as if he's just popping up to pass Mike a message. Was later jossed.
There's also the implications through the series that the animatronics are tragic villains, which was eventually confirmed by Five Nights at Freddy's 3. They're haunted by children who were murdered by a man dressed as one of the mascots. But at the same time, they're also vengeful spirits who distrust and hunt adults, believing them to be the same killer.
And then there's the theory which gives William a Freudian Excuse and makes him a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds. He is the father of the Child (which is later heavily implied, if not outright confirmed to be the case) and after the Child's death, he fell in despair and started killing children so everyone will feel what he felt. Some even go so far as to say he killed the Child's four murderers, one of them being his own son. Was later jossed, showing that Afton is an abusive father that couldn't give a shit about his kids.
Among the animatronics, Springtrap rivals Foxy in terms of leather pants-wearing, with many interpreting him as a remorseful anti-villain of some kind, despite being just as deadly as — if not more than — the other animatronics and being haunted by Afton.
Henry Emily, while not a villain per se, and he certainly had good intentions, many fans often depict him as the pure hearted opposite to William while neglecting his own flawed actions, such as how he built what was essentially a torture machine to lure in his daughter and keep her contained before burning her alive, as well as sending the player to be lobotomized in Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator if they find out of his true intentions.
The Glamrock Animatronics from Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach are a special case: on top of being Ridiculously Human Robots, they canonically are not normally murderous, and are only hostile after becoming Brainwashed and Crazy, so overlooking their roles as antagonists is NOT a case of DILP. That being said, they also possess a variety of inherent personality flaws, so they are still not immune to this trope:
Roxanne Wolf, having clearly been designed with furries in mind, was bound to get this, though it's fairly mild compared to most other examples in the series; while she isn't normally homicidal, she is a Narcissist with an Inferiority Superiority Complex who enjoys teasing people for their insecuritiesnote In-game, her dialogue towards Gregory is cruel and mean-spirited, however the tie-in books indicate she isn't normally that mean when not brainwashed/corrupted, though people overlooked her insults even before the books were published. Fans tend to downplay or ignore these traits for one reason or another, whether it be portraying her as some kind of wholesome mother figure towards Gregory or shipping her with another Glamrock (usually Chica). All that said, even before the sequel DLC Ruin revealed that Roxanne has a hidden heart of gold, she was already a fan-favorite, with plenty of fans that liked her without giving her leather pants, leading to her being labeled as a Jerkass Woobie with an Awesome Ego (she does have a Humanizing Tears scene, after all).
Montgomery. Gator. Given how a number of fans find him attractive and/or badass, this kind of treatment was pretty much inevitable; on top of downplaying his Hair-Trigger Temper, fans frequently lump him in with Chica and Roxy as a tragic victim who deserved better, despite the heavy implications that he murdered Glamrock Bonnie to take his place in the band; if a fan portrayal shows Monty to be responsible for Bonnie's death, it will usually be depicted as either something Vanny brainwashed him into doing, or an accident that he feels guilty about. His implied desire to kill Glamrock Freddy in order to become the face of the Pizzaplex is also commonly overlooked in favor of portraying Monty and Freddy as friends or even lovers, likely not helped by the fact that said desire is shown in an optional-to-play minigame. In general, fans portray Monty as more benevolent than canon implies him to be, and have even expressed interest in the idea of him as an ally.
Although Childe is, at best, an amoral ally of the Fatui who summons an ancient god to threaten Liyue with destruction in order to lure out Rex Lapis, his powerful and unique fighting style, bad-boy coolness, and Pet the Dog moments with his kid brother have made him popular enough that some are willing to overlook his flaws, if not outright ignore them or call him an Anti-Hero. Even he acknowledges his role as the "bad guy" more than that particular portion of his fanbase does.
It would appear that the attractive members of the Fatui in general are getting this treatment. La Signora and Scaramouche upon his official reveal as a youthful-looking man have had their alignment with the Fatui downplayed because they're visually appealing. Their chosen voice actors in Japanese dub (Yui Shouji and Tetsuya Kakihara respectively) and the fact that at least one of them is bound for playable status has lent a bit to their popularity as well.
We don't actually get to see the face of the Electro Cicin Mages underneath their masks, yet fanartists draw them like cute teenage girls, usually with Sucrose's face as a reference primarily because of their similar hair.
While downplayed for Zhongli as he was never an outwardly villainous character, his role in the Fatui plot that put Liyue in danger is more often than not ignored by a majority of the fanbase, despite his good intentions making him come off as a Well-Intentioned Extremist in the context of the story.
The Raiden Shogun is the tyrannical ruler of Inazuma who has closed off the nation and is confiscating people's visions which has been shown to have terrible effects. Her design and similarity to Raiden Mei from Honkai Impact 3rd has caused her to be very popular to the point her tyrannical actions tend to be downplayed.
Kratos of God of War, whose badassery is enough that fans make excuses for his more evil actions. Some people say that his actions were somewhat justified because the Greek gods messed with his life; of course, a list of people whose lives were ruined in actualGreek Mythology because the Greek gods "messed with their lives" (compared to, say, Heracles, Kratos was lucky) would fill a very large book, and lots of them turned out to be far more benign than he was. Granted, he Took a Level in Kindness by the time of the fourth game, but not even Kratos feels his actions were justified.
Apart from Kratos, his father Zeus also gets some sympathy from the fans, largely from those who found Kratos too callous to sympathise with by the time of the third game. Never mind the fact that he separated Kratos from his brother for years, put a curse on Kratos' mother to turn her into a monster if she ever tried to reveal his father's identity to him, or that he took his son Hephaestus' surrogate daughter Pandora prisoner and beat Hephaestus up to the point of deforming him. Or that he abandoned Athena — the mythological Zeus' favorite daughter — to die on Kratos' sword, despite the fact that her sacrifice saved his life. It doesn't help that the majority of Zeus' atrocities take place off-screen (apart from when he destroys Sparta in God of War II), or that the whole reason he turned on Kratos and tried to kill him was because Kratos infected him with Fear from Pandora's Box after opening it in the first game. Additionally, right after stripping Kratos of his divinity, Zeus gives a Villain Has a Point moment to Kratos: Kratos was directly posing a danger to Olympus itself, so he was the one who would betray Zeus, not the reverse.
He does, however, attempt to destroy Vale in the epilogue of the second game, for seemingly no reason except to test his new powers. So it's probably more that he just doesn't like to get his hands dirty when he doesn't have to than any moral qualms or hidden heroic motives.
Even the Grand Theft Auto series is prone to this every once in a while.
Grand Theft Auto III: Salvatore Leone, while justifiably paranoid ever since getting his casino robbed in Las Venturas just years prior to the storyline of this game, is still an Ax-Crazy, hotheaded mobster who constantly mistreats Maccer and Paul in San Andreas without a reason other than the fact that it amuses him (and this is before he was even betrayed), and, in Liberty City Stories, goes on murderous rampages against the Sindaccos. Plus, in this game, Claude hasn't even begun to betray him and showed no signs of attempting it, making his attempted murder on Claude all the more useless.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City: Lance Vance, thanks to his charismatically smooth demeanor, has received this from his fans who actually justified his betrayal of Tommy as the reason being that they felt Tommy was mistreating him throughout the storyline and not giving him a fair slice when in reality, Tommy has only berated Lance for his mistakes twice (once for his impulsive attempt to murder Diaz and the other for lazing around the job), and the fans completely ignore the fact that Lance has done very little to help out Tommy and acts incredibly childish when he is chastised for his indolence instead of simply owning up to his mistake and promising to better himself in the future.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Surprisingly enough, Catalinaofallcharacters has even gotten this by the fans of the game who actually like her. They often ignore the fact that she's a psychopathic murderer who only likes to kill and rob because it amuses her by pointing out how lovely they think she looks, and when they do acknowledge it, they try to pass it off as her having a bad childhood. Sure her mentioning a stepdaughter being poorly fed by her stepfather while her stepbrother is giving a much healthier feast might give away a hint, but it doesn't prove that this has actually happened to Catalina herself, since her childhood is never explained in either of her appearances, and it still doesn't excuse her treatment of CJ throughout her missions in the storyline.
While definitely not to the extent of Trevor, people also tend to downplay Michael's negative qualities. While yes, he wants to change for the better, he betrayed his gang to be with his girlfriendnote while this is completely understandable if he had no other choice, he was onboard with the idea of them dying in the process, despite knowing he'd be in witness protection regardless, cheated on said girlfriend before the events of the game, complains when she cheats on him for revenge, ignores his kids, and has an It's All About Me mentalitynote most noticeably, he makes Franklin work for someone so he'd get to work at his dream job. He does get better, but only after his family leaves him.
On the other hand, there's also a lot of people who try to paint Amanda as an innocent victim of Michael's psychotic impulses, when she's basically as bad as him aside from not being murderous. She cheats frequently (even beyond the one time she cheated on him "for revenge"), disregards her husband's incredibly generous ground rules for said cheating (like not doing it in his house, or with anyone he has to pay for the privilege), and blames every problem in her life on Michael even if he had nothing to do with it, or no choice in the matter. She also seems to think not being a murderer makes her morally superior to him and gives her full license to hypocritically ridicule every aspect of his life. Even in "Reuniting the family", it's clear she still doesn't feel she should be held responsible for her share of the friction in their marriage.
The Origami Killer (a.k.a. Scott Shelby) in Heavy Rain. Not only is he the most badass player character in the game, he also has numerous Pet the Dog moments long, long before The Reveal. This is compounded when you see how crappy his childhood was, and that he's doing all this to get back at fathers that don't love their kids. The problem? He's murdering children. By the time the game starts, he's already killed at least eight people, not counting the parents that vanished trying to save their sons. Even if you find Shaun, he'll gladly shoot you in the back and let your son drown.
Many of the Hunters from Identity V are likely to become less scary and more attractive in fan art, especially if it has to do with shipping. Jack, The Ripper; Joker/Smiley Face; and Wu Changnote who doesn't even need to be redesigned because fans think they're handsome enough are among the most noble examples.
As for Identity V, we have Joseph the Photographer. A very handsome, young-looking Frenchman with Occult Blue Eyes — who also happens to have a rather freaky-looking alternative form and traps people in photographs. Naturally, fans (especially Rule 34 artists) usually ignore the latter form and his lore all because of his appearance.
Erol from Jak II: Renegade. He tortures people for the sheer pleasure of it and isn't picky about whether he kills members of the Underground or Metalheads. In Jak 3: Wastelander, he's driven completely insane and desires to kill everyone by blowing up the planet. And yet, pairing him with Jak or Torn is rather common.
Organization XIII act to regain their hearts so they can become complete. People tend to forget that, in pursuit of this goal, they manipulated Sora and erased his memories, they tried to corrupt Riku, they kidnapped Kairi, they unleashed The Heartless, and they messed with many worlds. This attitude is still the same even after a game specifically about the Organization was released, with said game showing that the members of the Organization do not give a damn about each other and are complete assholes. The only one who did was Roxas, who is clearly noted to be a special case.
It has been revealed that the Organization were lied to about the state of their hearts and were pawns for Xemnas's Evil Plan. While they do start out as heartless, their hearts can be restored through connections with people, which happened to Axel, Roxas, and Namine. Xemnas and Xigbar were misleading them and manipulating them to keep them from making connections so they could become vessels for Xehanort's heart. This, however, does not change the fact that they were outright antagonistic towards Sora and company and were putting lives in danger.
Axel, despite showing very few admirable qualities in Chain of Memories and only helping Sora out as part of his own agenda, gained an immense following due to his striking good looks and badass charisma. That, combined with his general coolness, lead to his role being tweaked in Kingdom Hearts II and the character becoming an Anti-Villain. Early trailers (like at 1:36 here and 1:12 here) shows Axel looking much more evil than he was in the finished product. He has, like Riku, undergone a genuine Heel–Face Turn in later games, but it doesn't change what he did.
Vanitas from Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep gets this treatment, despite the fact that he's sadistic and Ax-Crazy. And unlike the Organization, who do have the sympathetic backstories, Vanitas has none and is, quite literally, pure evil. He's claimed to be The Woobie being manipulated by Xehanort (he's very willfully his follower), only for the twoo wuv of Aqua (a girl he's tried to kill multiple times and was willing to possess if Ventus didn't work out) to redeem him. The fact that he looks like Sora doesn't help matters.
The Eldritch Abomination Zero of the Kirby series has some fans rationalizing that it wants to spread misery as a result of jealousy towards those who experience positive emotions, or rather that it's just lonely and wants friends. This stems from an old Japanese Kirby encyclopedia, which gave Dark Matter the latter exact Freudian Excusenote though a Nintendo Dream interview confirmed much later that HAL did take that backstory into account during development, but Zero wasn't introduced until Kirby's Dream Land 3, yet the fanbase usually applies the guide's words to only Zero and not the rest of Dark Matter.
Dark Matter itself counts, really. While it does have a sympathetic backstory, it tried to flood Pop Star with dark clouds and possessed King Dedede. A Japanese Kirby's Dream Land 3 guide even suggests that it's the same Dark Matter that fights Kirby and Gooey in the Hyper Zone, showing that it's perfectly willing to serve its boss to whatever end. Some fanart even portrays it as being friendly with Gooey despite Gooey being thrown into a sack along with Kirby's friends by its minions (Dream Land 2) and being outright attacked by it (Dream Land 3).
Two other villains who constantly get this treatment are Marx from Kirby Super Star and Magolor from Kirby's Return to Dream Land. Many fans ignore or refuse to accept the fact that these two are Manipulative Bastards that tricked Kirby into helping them take over Pop Star (Marx) and the entire universe (Magolor). A lot of fanart for these two portray them as cute innocent guys who mean no harm instead of being evil. It doesn't help that both of them do look pretty cute.
Susie from Kirby: Planet Robobot gets a similar treatment to Marx. While she did join forces with Kirby before the Final Boss fight, it was an Enemy Mine situation driven by Pragmatic Villainy, not a genuine Heel–Face Turn. She's still firmly in villain territory by the game's end and Star Allies suggests she's perfectly willing to rebuild the HWC.
However, it's worth noting that this is mostly a translation issue; The Japanese version of Star Allies instead suggests that she intends to use science to make people happier and her backstory combined with a certain line implies that her hijacking of Star Dream was not simply wanting money, but also to give her father a desperately needed wake up call.
The Cult of the Jamba Heart from Kirby Star Allies get this treatment. Even Lord Hyness, who treats the mage generals like garbage, is sometimes portrayed as a Nice Guy that regrets his abusive behavior and wants to be friends with Kirby. Speaking of the mage generals, they aren't exactly innocent either. Yes, what Hyness does to them is messed up, but keep in mind that they are part of a cult.When Hyness summons them after getting his hood knocked off during his fight, the generals can be heard cheerfully giggling before he drains their life energy, implying that they're willing to be used as tools if it means they can finally kill Kirby and proceed with their mission. Regardless of whichever members deserve redemption, it doesn't change the fact that all four of them are guilty of attempting to murder Kirby and his friends, reviving an eldritch horror that's hellbent on destroying the universe, and being presumably so dangerous that they were not only banished but nearly had all proof of their existence erased.
As of the 4.0 update, this has been retroactively Justified in Heroes in Another Dimension with the Jambastion mages pulling a Heel–Face Turn (or at the very least, not being as hateful and vengeance-driven) with Hyness heavily implied to follow suit.
The infected in Left 4 Dead. There is a disturbing amount of shipping works starring them, and the Witch is often branded The Woobie because she's always crying. The Hunter, on the other hand, is often depicted as an attractive young man beneath his hood despite how decayed his face looks in the actual game.
While Kain of Legacy of Kain isn't without sympathetic qualities and somewhat noble motivations, he is still a vicious Evil Overlord who will kill anyone who gets in his way and laughs in amusement as he drinks the blood from helpless prisoners chained to walls who beg him for help. Many fans, both those trying to justify his evil because he's such a badass and those trying to justify their Perverse Sexual Lust for him, try to gloss over his less heroic aspects and focus on the fact he's trying to save the world, ignoring the fact that he's trying to save the world so he can rule it and enslave humanity. Of course, there is a large section of the fanbase that not only acknowledges the evil side of the character, but love him for it. He also strides around in a pair of actual leather pants.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel has Crow Armbrust, also known as "C", Big Bad of the first game as the leader of the terrorist group Imperial Liberation Front. His crimes he and his subordinates have done involve kidnapping the royal princess (and the protagonist's adopted little sister), nearly starting a war with Erebonia and the Calvard Republic (two nations that have a lot of friction with each other), hijacking the empire's most powerful fortress and attempting to fire the railway guns stationed at said fortress to bombard the international trade conference for all of the nations of Western Zemuria at Crossbell (which wasnever going to happen because the guns were fired at a later time), raiding the mines owned by the royal family, attempted assassination at the Evil Chancellor in broad daylight (while the chancellor was giving a speech about needing to start a war with Crossbell due to the events of Azure) which then starts a civil war in Erebonia between nobles and commoners, and putting Rean in a coma for an entire month after he curb stomped the latter in the final boss fight of the first game. While fans don't necessarily forget his crimes, they still forgive him thanks to his backstory of wanting revenge against the chancellor for driving his grandfather to die due to his hometown becoming a part of the empire (though not because of invasion, but rather its citizens wanting to be a part of the empire because of all the money trade they have made with the empire). This isn't helped by the fact that Rean is willing to forgive him a little bit too much and really wants to bring him back to school.
Ganondorf is a complicated example, as he is almost always depicted as a thoroughly unrepentant and power-hungry villain, with even the one exception that gave him remorseful and melancholic traits still portraying him as especially ruthless and ambitious. The typical Ganon kills innocent people, plans hostile coups, makes people suffer, and generally passes the villain test with flying colors. However, he has his fans, due to his rugged good looks, high intelligence, and charisma, though most of them don't go as far as excusing his actions. There are some online theory videos that will insist that Ganondorf may actually be good, however, despite everything he's done.
Given that Ocarina of Time already showed a very clear and decidedly bad outcome if Ganondorf were ever to acquire the power he's after, it just means that he's either legitimately less arrogant having already failed once before, hiding behind a more humble facade since his powers aren't restored until late in the plot, or he sincerely believes that he won't unleash a flood of evil once he acquires the complete Triforce this time.
Nathan Prescott from Life Is Strange gets a lot of this treatment. Many of his fans tend to excuse every awful thing he's done by saying he was driven to it by his mental illness and the abuse his fatherand Mark Jefferson inflicted on him. Regardless, he still kills a girl (or two, depending on your choice in-game), kidnaps Kate Marsh, drugs and sexually abuses Chloe, physically attacks several students, throws a handful of misogynistic and homophobic slurs throughout the game, and several other actions that seem to go unnoticed by a large portion of the fandom.
Luigi's Mansion: Melody Pianissima often gets this from fans who adore her for being a beautiful pianist and a Gamer Chick, toning down her Hair-Trigger Temper and often ignoring the fact that she attacked Luigi for getting her quizzes right.
Mass Effect has plenty of examples, some played straight and some even deliberately exploiting the trope.
Saren Arterius of Mass Effect is occasionally a subject of this. While the ending has him being convinced by Shepard that he screwed up on trying to contain the Reapers and only made everything worse because he fell to their indoctrination, and it is even possible to get him to shoot himself in the head and end his cooperation with Sovereign, this does in no way negate the fact that he was a very horrible person with thousands of bystanders as casualties when on missions for the Council, only to prove his racist points.
In the second game, he's evidently considered this in-universe as the Shadow Broker DLC reveals that there exists a documentary entitled Saren: A Hero Betrayed. Watching this (amongst other things) apparently drove Captain Anderson into drinking.
Cerberus and its leader, the Illusive Man, are initially the only ones who believe Shepard about the Reapers and provide them with an enormous amount of tools to aid in the fight against them, including literally bringing them back from the dead. Indeed, the galaxy would have been screwed without them. They're also a human supremacistterrorist organization that want to secure human dominance in the galaxy by any means necessary, including experimenting on children, attacking the Quarian flotilla, and collecting Reaper technology. Inevitably, there are some who ignore the latter in favor of focusing on the former.
In fact, this is deliberately invoked in-game. As Shepard will learn in the subsequent game, the Illusive Man made sure Shepard's crew consisted of the people who knew the least about Cerberus' true agenda and whose attitudes were most in line with Shepard's, which makes player sympathy for Cerberus almost inevitable. Not only that, two of Shepard's squadmates saw this coming, but their point was lost due to Cerberus invoking the opposite trope on them.
Kai Leng, a xenophobe who tortured and killed various aliens (and a human) in horrific ways. It helps that he looks like a cross between Raiden and a Final Fantasy character.
Bizarrely enough, the Reapers themselves. Some fans attempt to justify their unfathomable acts of repeated mass genocide, Mind Rape, and torture through the Reapers' own insane and easily disprovable reasoning for their actions, even arguing that allowing the galaxy to fall under their rule or supervision is somehow a good thing.
Mass Effect 2 introduces Secret Character Morinth, who is an asari "Ardat Yakshi", or "vampiricspace succubus" whose own mother describes her as a monster. She's a sociopath who is quite literally addicted to killing people by overloading their nervous systems during her Mind Link Sex, favors preying on the emotionally weak and vulnerable, and will gladly sacrifice entire villages to cover her tracks. Despite this, she gets a lot of supporters who defend her actions because "she didn't ask to be born an Ardat Yakshi" (she inherited the genes from her mother as a result of her mating with another asari) and because of the rather draconian measures Asari take to keep Ardat Yakshi under control (enforced chastity and imprisonment in a monastery-colony for the rest of her life, or execution). Her own mother sadly praising her as the "brightest and best of my daughters" only fuels the flames. Most arguments in Morinth's favor ignore the fact that her sisters are also Ardat-Yakshi and did not become serial killers.
Vile from Mega Man X. Fans like to pair him with X, forgetting that he loathes X in canon and tried to kill him. Repeatedly. Later though, Maverick Hunter X made Vile a playable character and changed the story to accommodate him as a Nominal Hero instead of completely evil (though he still hates X).
Dynamo, who admittedly has a cool design, a double-sided beam saber, and awesome boss music. Too bad fans forget that he tried to drop a colony on the planet, was creepily subservient to Sigma, tried to stop the heroes from saving the planet, and had a cheerily fun time doing it. Yet people like to write him as a lovable goofy prankster who joins the Hunters.
The Bonnes from Mega Man Legends. Granted, Capcom treats them as anti-heroes more than anything (Tron in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is a great example) and they do have their standards (they don't steal toilet paper nor appreciate wanton murder), but they're pirates, deep down. They invade random islands and destroy buildings, all for profit. And yet they're still the most well-liked villains in any Mega Man game.
Vamp. Fan Fic writers tend to treat him as this utterly tragic figure who just wants to be loved, all the while conveniently forgetting that he's a terrorist and a blood-drinking murderer who killed an innocent, defenseless girl for no discernible reason. This treatment seems to be the result of his bisexuality and the massive amounts of subtext he has with Raiden.
Colonel Volgin, a mass murderer, gets a surprising amount of leeway from many fans purely because of his Morality Pet lover Raikov.
Big Boss himself, although his is a special case. His backstory in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater revealed him to be a genuinely sympathetic character, causing fans to go so far as to excuse, if not outright defend his less-than-admirable actions in Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. Some have even gone so far as to call Big Boss the true hero of the series for his intention to rebel against the Patriots' control, never mind Big Boss himself calling his son, Solid Snake, a better man than he ever would be.
Senator Armstrong from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance has little screentime, but happens to have good enough charisma to deliver a speech that seemly nails The American Dream, albeit with the extreme Darwinism where he is willing to cause international warfare, legitimize a Child Soldier program, and condemn the weak, many of which are the reasons for the main character's anguish. The lack of any counterarguments against him convince fans that the man is potentially a legitimate candidate for President for the United State in real life.
Fangirls of Metro: Last Light are sometimes a bit too fond of Pavel. Yes, he's something of an Anti-Villain who's more honorable than his fellow Red Line soldiers, but they all too easily forget the fact that he unrepentantly stabbed Artyom in the back and betrayed him to the Reds, doing nothing to stop his subsequent torture and interrogation, and from there proceeds to carry out his part in Korbut's genocidal plan without a single hint of hesitation. Yes, he shows some remorse when fighting Artyom in Red Square, but in spite of all his talk of mercy, he never actually stops doing any of the nasty stuff he does. As far as his fans are concerned, all it takes to absolve all of that is a pretty face and a sexy Russian accent.
There are quite a few of the villains in the franchise as a whole (especially Mileena, Shang Tsung, and Sektor) who have quite a few more fans than you'd expect.
You are wanted, and you're haunted. You're the Bad Guy, but I feel for you. You're the danger, a fallen angel. But I like you, you're the strongest of them all.
Mortal Kombat X newcomer D'Vorah (the only villain to have her own chapter in the Story Mode of X, incidentally) has gotten mixed feelings from fans. Some love her for outwitting everyone and being The Mole for Shinnok, but others despise her for killing Baraka and Mileena (who, despite being villains, are fan favorites of the series). One must not forget, of course, that she's a murderer and a sadist either way. That said, most of the fans lost their love for D'Vorah by the time of Mortal Kombat 11, thanks to her killing Hanzo Hasashi and never getting punished for it on-screen.
However, the absolute king of this is Eddie Gluskin, who is more or less the Big Bad of the Whistleblower DLC due to being the Variant with the longest interaction with the player. This individual is the only named Variant confirmed as having been a case of Insane Equals Violent even before the twisted experiments, having originally been a misogynistic Serial Killer who abducted, tortured, and murdered women as part of his obsessive quest to find a "perfect" women to become his bride. A psychological report on him that you can find in-game notes that he's an Attention Whore who refuses to acknowledge things he doesn't want to and will tell anyone whatever he thinks they want to hear in a transparent attempt to manipulate them. During the events of the Mount Massive Massacre, he takes to assaulting random inmates; as transmisogynistic as he is misogynistic, he's become fixated upon the idea that he can turn men into his ideal woman. Such unfortunates are shaven clean before he brutally hacks off their genitalia in an attempt to "make" himself a vagina to use, which of course kills them. The player character Waylon Park narrowly avoids taking a circular saw to the crotch during a prolonged scene of Controlled Helplessness and has to play a cat-and-mouse game with Gluskin throughout the penultimate chapter, listening to him alternatively cajole the player to become "his woman"note Waylon is canonically a straight man, Happily Married, with two sons and spouting misogynistic slurs. In the end, he gets a Karmic Death when he ends up impaling himself painfully through the guts whilst trying to hang Waylon. And yet he has a huge fandom amongst female players and especially amongst the Yaoi Fangirls, to the point that Eddie/Waylon romances make up the vast majority of Outlast fanfiction, approached only by Eddie/female original character romances. Why? Because of his stated goal to be an old-fashioned chivalric loving father and husband, his politeness (when not spewing slurs like "whore" at you for evading him), for being a cute guy who remains Ugly Cute after being turned into a Variantnote his Facial Horror is mostly a case of Red Eyes, Take Warning, running around in a sharp tuxedo outfit (albeit one covered in blood from his victims), the fact he begs Waylon for help in the prelude of the game, and his Dark and Troubled Past, which involves being raped by his father and his uncle and which he denies ever happened.
Really, the Leather Pantsing is so extreme that not only is Waylon Park sometimes outright slapped with Ron the Death Eater treatment due to "rejecting poor, sweet Eddie's love" or refusing to help him at the start, the biggest Broken Base is between Eddie's adoring fangirls and the irate fans who despise the idea of giving him such treatment, given he's canonically one of the sickest individuals in the series.
The mostly hopeful tone of Overwatch's lore generally adheres to the principle that evil is cultivated, not born, which means even the game's vilest bad guys have some measure of humanity to be found in them, if even just a vestige. Naturally, some fans take a mile when given an inch and see this as an invitation to excuse or justify any wrongdoing committed by their favorite character, even if they're part of a warmongering cabal of terrorists with a history of murdering civilians. Reaper and Widowmaker in particular have fans who tend to focus so much on their sympathetic backstories that they either forget or ignore how they've both acclimatized to their new roles as sadistic killers who take pleasure in making innocent people suffer and who are both actively abetting a plot to start a meaningless world war.
Symmetra is an Anti-Villain who genuinely wants the best for humanity's future. She is also the only one of the game's villainous characters who tries to avoid hurting people and appears genuinely remorseful when she can't, which has garnered her a lot of sympathizers. What they tend to forget, however, is that her idea of a better future is stiflingly unquestionable order through whatever means necessary, and she's not shy about expressing her disdain for the poor and those who disagree with her, even if they're just civilians standing up for themselves. Overlaps with Ron the Death Eater, as some interpret her to be just as malicious as the killers and warmongers who comprise Talon, whom Symmetra herself recognizes the need to stop.
Roadhog and Junkrat are both violent murderers, but still entertaining and a bit lovable (mostly Junkrat). But fan perception often turns them from insane murderers into a pair of harmless jokers with a propensity for cuddling (mainly Roadhog, who canonically views his partner more like a client than a friend and doesn't even seem to like him very much).
The traitor, Tohru Adachi, of Persona 4. Keep in mind that he threatened Nanako to get to the main characters, and arranged for her appearance on the Midnight Channel so Namatame would abduct her, which would have killed her if they didn't catch him in time. Many fans like to take the fact that he seems to turn around in the end as a sign that he's not as evil as he seems.
Mitsuo Kubo, whose nihilism fits well with some of the people who think he is much cooler since he rejected his shadow completely, and then there are the people who feel sorry for him because they find him so pathetic. The drastic lengths he goes to just for attention, his Shadow, and the extreme ostracization he's implied to have gone through make him a Jerkass Woobie taken to the extreme.
Wheatley: While he's a lovable character, and there's a certain amount of personal interpretation involved as to whether he was good and Brainwashed and Crazy, or Evil All Along, there's no doubt that he had his flaws — something that his fangirls very frequently forget. So much so that it's a common fanfic plot to have him end up back on Earth, and subsequently be Easily Forgiven by and hook up with Chell. The awfulness of what he did, brainwashed or not, is rarely addressed.
GLaDOS sometimes gets this. While most of her fans embrace her evilness and love her for it, there are also those who completely ignore her murderousness and reduce her to a somewhat bitchy, but ultimately good-hearted, Deadpan Snarker. This is often done in the name of making their favorite ships more plausible.
Cave Johnson provides the series' entry on Misaimed Fandom, and for good reason. Some players see him as a Crazy Is Cool industrialist, as opposed to the man who ran Aperture Science into the ground and casually killed untold numbers of people through product testing, and who ultimately had his best friend and secretary uploaded into a computer against her will.
Aran Ryan in Punch-Out Wii. Just take a look in deviantART and see him turn from "Complete Lunatic" into "Irish Hottie".
Albert Wesker, the Big Bad of the franchise, himself. This is a man who has betrayed and tried to kill the main characters, subjected innocent civilians to an experimental zombie outbreak, abducted and brainwashed Jill Valentine, and tried to wipe out the majority of life on Earth via bio-terrorism so he can play God. But due to his intelligence and voice actor, there are fans who legitimately think he should get to take over the world. It was lampshaded in Resident Evil 5 with Excella, who fetishized every screwed-up thing he did and acted like they were destined to be together. Not only does Wesker not care about her advances, but he turns her into a monster to slow down the good guys.
Ada Wong, is easily one of the biggest examples of this within the franchise and in Capcom in general. She’s a stunningly beautiful and alluring mysterious Chinese American Femme Fatale Spywho wears red and is in a Dating Catwoman with Leon and for that fans simply adore her with plenty of fanart and cosplay devoted to her… never mind the fact she’s actually a villain with Chronic Back Stabbing Disorder within story. Hell Ada’s actions in the franchise can ultimately be considered evil as by stealing viruses and selling to other employers such as Simmons she is definitely getting thousands of innocent people killed yet a lot of fans only focus on the appealing Classy Cat-Burglar part of her character and just ignore the more insidious implications altogether. Just to show much people love Ada, in Resident Evil 6 the fans had a Like You Would Really Do It reaction to Ada seemingly being portrayed as a genuinely ruthless antagonist who killed Chris’s men with it instead turning out to be her Evil Knock Off Carla committing the crimes, even though Ada really is no less guilty than Carla in the long run. Fans were also disgruntled at Ada being portrayed in a more sinister light and Leon treating her more coldly in RE2make and RE4make which are more grounded, even though camp put aside it makes more sense for Leon to treat a person who manipulated and betrayed him in such a manner. The fact Ada is a morally suspect “bad girl” compared to good girls Jill, Claire and Rebecca probably helps as well.
William Birkin who first appeared in Resident Evil 2. Never mind the fact that he (and Albert Wesker) killed a fellow scientist just so he could take over his research, never mind that he conducted inhumane experiments on human test subjects and was responsible for the creation of several monsters (he was the one who created the Hunters), never mind the fact that he injected himself with his own creation (the G-Virus) and tries to mutate his own daughter into another G-Mutant (granted, only after he turned into a mindless monster)… all the fans really care about is that he's a Tragic Monster. It doesn't hurt that he was a loving husband and father as well.
Eveline. She's an Artificial Human with a loveless background whose entire motivation in the story is to have a family. Some players will use this to insist that she's a tragic WoobieAnti-Villain who only does what she does because she's scared and lonely, ignoring that she's a gloating, tantrum-throwing monster who kills countless people in cruel ways for petty reasons, and whose desire to have a family was possibly a result of her design to ease infiltration.
Despite the fact that he's a sadistic, murdering lunatic who enjoys coming up with horrific death traps and is very much Not Brainwashed, unlike his parents, Lucas Baker has managed to rack up a nice fanbase that is in no small part divided between players who think he's fun as a Black ComedyTrickster villain... and those who try to downplay or distract from his awfulness by suggesting that his murder of a classmate as a child didn't really happen, that everything he's doing goes back to his having been bullied for being eccentric as a kid, that he was a victim of Parental Abuse (for the record, Lucas mentions mild physical punishment for rude behavior in Daughters, but Jack's uninfected character is portrayed as kind and warmhearted, if conservative and strict), and so forth. He's even fairly-commonly shipped with Ethan, despite Ethan having nothing but contempt for Lucas and Lucas ending his ongoing attempt at killing him on a note of loathing.
Resident Evil Village: All of the Four Lords, and even Mother Miranda, have fans that either excuse their actions or claim they sympathize with them:
It didn't take long for fans to claim they sympathize with Lady Dimitrescu and her daughters. Many say they didn't want to kill them or they portray Alcina as a vengeful Mama Bear who's just fighting to protect her children like Ethan is. This is ignoring the fact that the entire family's likely killed dozens if not hundreds of innocent people, as the notes and various areas of the castle show, and they introduce themselves by attacking Ethan then leaving him hanging off of two meat hooks with the intention of coming back to eat him. Her damning Ethan for killing her three daughters is also massively hypocritical, as the Hypocrite and Moral Myopia tropes on her character page show.
To a lesser extent, Heisenberg has a fair number of people wanting Ethan to side with him to fight against Miranda and sympathizing with his desire to be free from her control. This also ignores the fact that Heisenberg very clearly wants to use Rose as a weapon against Miranda and there's no way Ethan would ever allow this. That and he's just as morally bankrupt as the other Lords are given his factory filled with tech zombies and his Lycans which raided the village and murdered everyone.
Various fans have expressed opinions that Donna Beneviento isn't as bad as the other Lords or isn't a bad person at all, likely going off her tragic backstory. All the same, Donna deliberately inflicts psychological torture upon Ethan by tormenting him with his fears and traumas about his marriage and his baby turning out wrong, and the way she expresses herself through Angie is quite nasty. As with all the other Lords she's still ultimately trying to kill Ethan to stop him as well note which the dolls she controls, if not the Baby as well, can absolutely do if given the chance, and is also heavily implied to have murdered her gardener in the events leading up to the game after using him to test her abilities.
At least some players have expressed pity for Moreau due to his awful physical condition, his earnest desire for Miranda’s love, and his Psychopathic Manchild demeanor making him come across as more pathetic and pitiable than his other siblings. Like the rest of the Lords he’s trying to kill Ethan, was complicit in kidnapping and chopping up Rosemary and notes indicate he experimented on innocent people just like the rest of the more intelligent Lords.
Mother Miranda gets this the least. While her motivation, wanting to revive her daughter, has caused at least some players to sympathize with her the vast majority dislike her at least in huge part due to her actions forcing Ethan’s Heroic Sacrifice. Others also claim that she’s at least morally superior to previous bad guys due to her refusal to spread the Mold and become a god like Spencer planned with the Progenitor virus when it’s much more likely that she simply didn’t see the benefit of how it could help her goals. The fact that she sold Eveline to the Connections shows she doesn’t actually disapprove of bioterrorism provided it doesn’t interfere with her plans.
Some players of Shadow Hearts: From The New World claim that the villains are the most sympathetic people in the game. Said villains are Lady, a soulless mass of evil trying to destroy the world and killing almost anyone standing in her way, and Killer, a serial killer with no motivation beyond sadism and loyalty to Lady.
Shantae: Risky Boots gets this a lot, especially in fics that ship her with Shantae. While Pirate's Curse does reveal a softer side to her, she also makes it clear that she is not going to reform. Most fans, however, will have her make a Heel–Face Turn from Shantae's influence. Helps that she's extremely good-looking, giving fans an even bigger reason to give her the leather pants.
The Chaos alignment as a whole. Many fans see it as a more reasonable alternative to the iron-fist theocracy often touted by Law-aligned factions, as part of Chaos's ideals is a world of freedom. However, fans tend to forget that it means absolute freedom, up to and including the strong abusing and crushing the weak to defend their right to do whatever they want, and those unfortunate enough to be weak will not survive for long.
Lucifer. People forget that he's the premier Fallen Angel, a Magnificent and Manipulative Bastard, whose goals, when viewed logically, wouldn't look out of place in Warhammer 40,000 — the ultimate destruction of all worldly law and order, the release of all the madness and chaos of the human heart. He's literally Chaos incarnate — and while he honestly wants Humanity to survive, it's because the human spirit is the key to everything in the SMT'verse. He's vicious and ruthless, calmly planning a Z-Class Apocalypse Howone day, popping up for a test match the next, tampering with established history tomorrow, and playing with some humans for fun some other day.
And speaking Lucifer, Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne has an unusual example of a story beat getting this. While the True Demon Ending is admittedly badass, it also involves precluding the Light of Creation from ever existing again, in the process destroying an unknown number of alternate worlds and countless billions of innocent humans, all just to lead demonkind in an apocalyptic war against YHVH. While the narrative paints this as a desirable outcome, that's coming directly from Lucifer's mouth. But being by far the most difficult ending to get, people tend to focus on the fact it ends a destructive cycle, never mind that it does so via destroying the entire multiverse and leaving the winners to inherit literally nothing. In an attempt to highlight how misguided fans were, Shin Megami Tensei IV goes out of its way to demonstrate how utterly empty and pointless this state of affairs is in its Nothingness ending which cuts the game short and skips any illusions of a glorious final battle to jump right to the futureless wasteland that would result, but it still didn't stick. Probably not helped by all of Demi-Fiend's later appearances being from implied or explicit True Demon Ending timelines.
Pyramid Head of Silent Hill 2 gets this treatment because he's "sexy". Even though he's a rapist and murderer. Doesn't matter, he's "sexy".
Walter Sullivan of Silent Hill 4 is most certainly screwed up beyond all reason, but his fans have an unsettlingly common habit of ignoring the nearly two dozen innocent people he brutally murdered, two of them children. It's just hard to hate a guy whose dying action is to reach for the sky and sadly ask for his mother. Part of the problem probably stems from the fact that the game portrays his child self and adult self as two separate characters. As a child, he was extremely sympathetic. He was abandoned by his parents and raised by an abusive and demonic cult. Of course, such a messed-up childhood did not create a sane adult. It's likely that since the child appears regularly, a lot of people are given the impression that it still represents who he is when it more accurately represents who he thinks he is.
Commander Tartar sometimes gets this treatment despite being a xenophobic AI who hates both Octarians and Inklings. Despite this, some fans, jokingly or not, have commented on how it was right, even though the game portrays it as a Jerkass that only cares about its own twisted vision, even if it was initially supposed to Fling a Light into the Future.
Marina invokes this in-universe during the "Super Smash Bros Ultimate Heroes VS. Villains" Splatfest. She's on the Villain side and, according to her, villains are just misunderstood people who want to break the establishment. Considering she was a victim of Octavio's propaganda for her whole life and having only just learned that the idea of peace between Inklings and Octarians was a concept that exists when the Squid Sisters interrupt Octavio's mind-control music with Calimari Inkantation, it's not hard to see her reasoning for this.
From the Spyro the Dragon franchise is Malefor, from The Legend of Spyro, who could easily be the runner-up to Sephiroth in this department. Fans tend to interpret him any which way, despite his in-game character being the most despicable villain in the franchise, and has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Many other villains, including Ripto from the PS1/GBA games and Red from the PS2/DS games, also suffer from this, but to a far lesser extent. (None of the villains from Skylanders seem to have suffered from this trope, at least so far.)
ZEX from Star Control 2 is not exactly a nice guy (he does try to add the Captain to his menagerie, and all), but a startlingly large portion of the fandom sees him as a poor, misunderstood, mistreated woobie who just wants to live happily ever after getting it on with the Captain.
The Star Wolf mercenary group in Star Fox. Leader Wolf, while honorable, is a self-centered jerkass who pined at least nine to eleven years (spanning the time frame of the series) for revenge against one guy, and tried to kill him and his group for an unclear reason beforehand; Leon is supposedly an Ax-Crazy killer, and though Panther is The Dandy and the least aggressive of the group, he still commits crimes and will kill anyone when he must. Expect all three, especially Wolf, to be painted as woobifiedBroken Birds who had the most brutal of backgrounds and are really innocent souls on the inside. Also expect them to find solace in a romance with another male member of the cast.
M. Bison, perennial Big Bad of the series gains some of this, perhaps because of how goofy the American adaptations sometimes portray him. Never mind that he's a sadistic dictator who kills so many people he doesn't remember them (including his own parents) just for the fun of it, brainwashes innocent teenage girls to use them as slaves, and murders his henchmen for failing to do the job. Then, of course, there's his unforgettable potrayal by the dying Raul Julia in the movie version, done solely to cheer up his children, which lends a heavy subtext of sympathy.
Vega also qualifies to a degree. He killed his ugly. abusive stepfather in retaliation for his mother's death which traumatized him to the point that he became an obsessively vain serial killer who believes ugliness to be synonymous with evil. His attractiveness also scores him points in this department. Many Vega fanfics usually tone down his sadistic behavior.
Bowser was heightened to this status by some, after Paper Mario confirmed that he's had a crush on Peach since the series began. What seems to be conveniently overlooked in these fantasies, however, is that he's an uncompromising brute who is seemingly incapable of expressing any feelings softer than "I get what I want or I punch your nose in," which is all part of his charm, of course. Still, in some of the latest games, he has unwittingly proved to be even slightly capable of some goodness, which is a bit contradictory for an Evil Overlord, Big Bad, or Card-Carrying Villain. The uncompromising brute he usually is is currently more of a selfish, immature Jerkass than pure villain and might not get him what he wants anymore, just likely piss off everybody.
We probably have the spinoffs to thank for being heightened to this status, especially the RPGs. Even when he's the villain (Paper Mario) or central to the story (Bowser's Inside Story), Bowser is always a goofy comic-relief oaf who tends to sway between Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain and The Woobie.
A far, far worse offender is Dimentio. Unlike Bowser, he has absolutelynoredeemingfeatures and is probably the single most evil character in all of Mario history. This completely goes over the heads of his fangirls, who insist on portraying him in a sympathetic light or just outright forgetting that he's supposed to be a villain.
Simply being a Death Seeker is reason enough for many fans to Woobify someone like him. Just look at Shu Shirakawa, who killed countless people, helped start at least one war, and was willing to destroy the Earth to achieve his only-a-little-bit-sympathetic goals.
Amara Balshem from 2nd Super Robot Wars: Original Generation. Her first appearance is shooting down the entire Huckebein series, a fan-favorite mech thanks to their likeness with the Gundam mechs, shot down Ing Egret twice, the second one being a sneak attack, and is very fanatical to her boss till he gets rid of her. The first point alone would have already marked her as The Scrappy for even thinking of killing an entire line of fan-favorite mechs. Instead, fan reaction is that the entire thing is not her fault but rather by Bandai Namco Entertainment (granted, Namco Bandai have been shuffling out the Huckebein series due to likeness to Gundam since The Inspectors anime, but the act of having someone destroy it in-universe is still a pretty low blow), and true to the trope, it's because she's at least an attractive female when she's not putting up her 'fanatical' face, and being voiced by a voice actress who voiced in an anime that became something of a regular series in the mainline SRW. She became so popular that they made her into a playable character in Coffin of the End and actually becomes an ally in The Moon Dwellers. It also helps that while her act of destroying the Huckebein series was a dick move… it's not a Moral Event Horizon, someone else has done worse. Additionally, years later, it's revealed via Super Robot Wars DD that Amara failed to actually destroy the Huckebein line, another OG character, Shizuki Shizukawa, managed to fool her into thinking she destroyed the Huckebein, while in truth, Shizuki just faked the destruction and sent the last machine for repairs in secret, noting that one day, it will fly again. Therefore, Amara lost yet another damning point and gets another favor.
Albel Nox from Star Ocean: Till the End of Time is one of the most popular characters in the game's fandom — in great part because he's incredibly hot and is voiced by Crispin Freeman (or Isshin Chiba in the Japanese version) — despite the fact that he's a sadistic jerk who tortures some NPCs for fun and insults everyone from your party members to his own king. To his credit, the game does give you the option of having him join your party permanently, which can unlock a PA that shows he's very aware of his flaws, although he's still a ruthless prick even then. His DILP status is made all the more ironic by the Double Standard many of his fans have; they like to bash MariaTraydor for being bitchy, angsty, and self-centred, even though Albel is a far more bitchy and self-centred character.
Leon Magnus in Tales of Destiny. In the first game, he is one sadistic Jerkass who even laughs in the face of death. But fans latched into him due to his cuteness and his background, and he ends up becoming an Ensemble Dark Horse who got brought back in the sequel as Judas, who had far more good qualities and far fewer bad ones than he did pre-mortem. The developers further pandered to this fanbase in the Japan-only PS2 remake, giving him a less antagonistic personality and making his death more honorable. Tropes Are Not Bad for his case, however, as this pandering made him more believable and liked rather than increasing his controversy.
Sync the Tempest from Tales of the Abyss is quite a depraved character, wanting the destruction of the world and all, without much care of the others and wouldn't think twice to break a character's emotion whenever necessary. He is also one of the more popular God Generals thanks to his huge woobie points, and the fact that he is a much cooler (and evil) version of Ion, the resident Non-Action Guy and Distressed Dude. The fact that there are shippers of Sync/Arietta must be caused by Sync's awesome leather pants (he'd probably just break Arietta for the lulz…)
The characters from Team Fortress 2 got this even before they showed any good tendencies (particularly The Medic and the Spy), their psychoses and enjoyment of murder being utterly removed in favor of depictions by fanfic authors as Shell-Shocked Veterans.
While Tekken's Nina Williams isn't explicitly a villain, she's described in-game as a cold-blooded and ruthless assassin. She had no problems attempting to assassinate her son (until backing out at the last moment), and in the games, she is, at best, an amoral mercenary. But because she's a gorgeous blonde and the most badass of the female characters, she's become such an ensemble darkhorse that she even got her own spin-off game.
Kazuya Mishima is another example. After apparently being Killed Off for Real, he amassed popularity enough to return. And he is still a massive bastard after resurrection, or even more. Still, he's a badass at doing his job and at least has a bad enough past and a soft spot of sorts on Jun Kazama, so there are some who justify in making him less monstrous than he is in the game. Granted, Heihachi is more or less responsible for the utter mess that he is right now. On the other hand, Heihachi himself also gets his pass for his utter Badass Normal credentials, more visible Pet the Dog with Kuma (his pet bear), and the fact that Kazuya's practice as the head of Zaibatsu is just utterly brutal and open while Heihachi's more benevolent… never mind that in the end, those benevolent acts are just masks to cover Heihachi's own nefarious plans. So right now, Kazuya and Heihachi are competing on whose leather pants are shinier.
Terra Invicta has Hanse Castillo, leader of the Absolute Xenophobe Humanity First faction. Leaving aside his actions in the game, arranging the genocide of the Hydra through a bioweapon that causes an agonizing death, his past is a litany of war crimes. He has canonically participated in Operation Condor, and nonchalantly admits after his faction captures a Hydra that he's quite good at Cold-Blooded Torture. The fandom tends to portray him as an Anti-Hero whose dark methods are fully justified in the face of the Alien Invasion, even though the Resistance and Academy are just as capable of fighting it off without resorting to his methods.
Chara/The Fallen Child, a young kid who ran away from their village, may or may not be this, as the game is very ambiguous about how they were like in their past life. If the interpretation that they were rotten to the core is canon, then all portrayals of "Narrator Chara" and other positive representations of them fall into this. If the inverse is true, however, then it's a case of Ron the Death Eater.
The most blatant example is Selvaria. She essentially murders some 150,000 people by feigning surrender so she'll be taken into custody, and dropping the setting-equivalent of a hydrogen bomb on a castle full of people, not including how many she killed before Ghirlandaio, and feels no remorse for any of it. She gets a pass because not only were most, if not all, of her victims, Asshole Victims, but also because of her reason for being in Maximillian's service. The moment he figured out that Selvaria was in love with him, he began subjecting her to repeated emotional manipulation and Domestic Abuse to make her do his bidding. And in the end, he coldly ordered her to become a suicide bomber at Ghirlandio, which she goes through because the revelation that he saw her as nothing but a means to an end from day one causes her to cross the Despair Event Horizon.
Maximilian himself also gets this despite his Lack of Empathy and being a womanizingManipulative Bastard whose treatment of Selvaria basically amounts to Domestic Abuse. The fact that he's an unrepentant jerk is brushed off by his supporters, pointing to the fact that he "rescued" Selvaria from Imperial experimentation (ignoring that he himself uses her as a disposable weapon and coldly ordered her to become a suicide bomber after being defeated at Naggiar) and that he (apparently) objects to war crimes and punishes those who commit them (while committing several himself).
Jaeger, because he's rugged and cool and has a big cool tank and he's fighting for his nation's freedom. Never mind the fact that to achieve that freedom, he's willing to sell any other nation he can down the river to the empire while being a smug idiot who thinks only his problems matter. Some also give him flack for being a passive bystander (and essentially an Accomplice by Inaction) towards Selvaria's situation. Weirdly enough, he realizes his mistakes after he's defeated and leaves.
Lezard Valeth of Valkyrie Profile. In the game itself, he's depicted as a creepy stalker, callous to everyone, needlessly cruel and murderous, and completely unethical. In fact, his appearance in the Bonus Dungeon of the original game involves him Breaking the Fourth Wall and describing all of the terrible things that the developers themselves said about him during development. However, a combination of outrageously hammy dialogue, character design that makes folks think "evil Harry Potter", and being a Purposely OverpoweredSecret Character in the bonus dungeon results in way more fanfics pairing him with the center of his stalking than there should be based on his canon personality (said personality resulted in his appearance in the second game making him into the Big BadFinal Boss).
World of Warcraft has The Lich King (more specifically Arthas), Illidan Stormrage, and Kael'thas Sunstrider. To be fair, all three of them have very sympathetic backstories, Arthas had his soul cut out and still shows signs of being a Benevolent Boss sometimes.
Both Kael'thas and Illidan have similar issues, thanks to RetCons that have essentially split both of them, particularly Kael'thas, into two completely separate characters: one pre-Burning Crusade good guy (or at least anti-hero) and one post-Burning Crusade straight-up villain. That fact has even led to Blizzard vowing to bring Illidan back with a redemption story while regretting that they already wasted their chance with Kael'thas' resurrection.
Sylvanas as well, as players tend to sympathize with her tragic backstory (her homeland gets destroyed by the Scourge, she gets killed and raised as an undead), and tend to view her as the leader and protector of a race of undead outcasts. Unfortunately, she was responsible for ordering the creation of the New Plague, (even if Putress used it at the Wrathgate and was working for Varimathras, she's still using it in Cataclysm), betrayed and killed the humans whom she promised to help retake Lordaeron (who admittedly were led by a racistAsshole Victim), and even raising the undead to give the Forsaken the manpower it needs to fight the Alliance. It doesn't help that she's one of the most beautiful female characters, even after her death, and many fans even argued that she didn't order the creation of the new plague and didn't even know it was being produced. (The theory goes that all the questgivers were either lying or misinformed when they said they were making the plague for Sylvanas. Many other fans of her character would rather have her evil than this incompetent.)
Garrosh Hellscream got a lot of this early on, when he appeared more sympathetic, though even after he's been firmly established as a villain, you can still find people claiming he's the best Warchief the Horde has had. Initially, Garrosh was a depressed man ashamed of his father's villainy. Thrall explained to him that his father redeemed himself and he became a major player in the Horde. It didn't take long, however, for him to be revealed to be a brash, violent person, and that recklessness even stopped the Alliance and Horde from working to contain an Eldritch Abomination (leaving the players to handle it themselves). While there were times when it seemed that his sense of honor prevented him from being truly evil, he seemed to believe that killing children was okay if you had a reason to believe they'd become your enemies in the future, and Mists of Pandaria finally revealed that his orcish sense of honor is deeply tied into his sense of orcish superiority. There are still plenty of non-orc Horde players that insist he's a hero to the Horde who just wants his citizens to have a good life with lots of land and resources, despite the fact that he is now a genocidal tyrant who wants to murder every living thing that is not an orc absolutely devoted to him. At least one short story shows a vision from a possible future that shows that if he got his way, the world would ultimately be destroyed because there would be no one but him and some orcs to stand up against all the other evils in the universe.
It didn't help that Cataclysm presented him as sympathetic or badass most of the time and that a lot of game developers actually defended his views, and even continue to do so in Mists of Pandaria, so it's very likely that Metzen himself was either dissatisfied with the character or caved in to complaints from Thrall fans and did so on their behalf.
Maiev Shadowsong at least gets a misinformed version of this, due to most World of Warcraft fans never having played Warcraft III, and having their first exposure to her being in the final fight against Illidan, where she's your ally. In Warcraft III's expansion, she was introduced as Illidan's Inspector Javert. She was responsible for keeping watch over Illidan and did not care that it was her own queen who released him in order to help save the world. She massacred anyone who stood in her way on her search for Illidan, and expressed disgust toward her sister race, the Naganote admittedly, justified due to the fact that the Naga are the descendants of evil Night Elves who allied themselves with demons under the reign of a mad queen millennia ago, and remain loyal to her even today. Eventually, she risked the life of her own queen and religious leader by lying to Malfurion about Illidan. Fortunately, Kael'thas was able to reveal that Tyrande was probably still alive, and gave Furion and Illidan time to save her. Afterward, Maiev chased Illidan to another planet that her leaders had banished him to, and was ultimately thought to have died. Then when she reappears again in the Wolfheart novel, she searches for purpose and ultimately turns against her own people for accepting the Highborne, Worgen, and other Alliance races into their fold. She goes on to decide that only she knows what justice is, and frames others for murder as part of a plot to assassinate many of her own people. Ultimately, most of her allies are killed and she is chased off once more. Many World of Warcraft fans called this a betrayal of her character since they never saw how she was originally, and have been characterizing her themselves as the only sane one in a world of collaborators.
The Scarlet Crusade is a bunch of insane Knights Templar and Crazy Survivalists who have been shown killing on sight anybody who wasn't human (and even then this generally isn'tenough), burning down villages just in case they might carry the undeath plague, and routinely torturing and executing innocent civilians. But since they are enemies of the Forsaken mentioned above (among, again, everybody else), and one of their leaders is a white-haired woman with a thong-revealing outfit, this hasn't stopped many fans to argue that they never did anything wrong and are actually noble people who should join the Alliance to fight the despicable Forsaken. The same Alliance which, by the way, also wants the Crusaders dead for killing its citizens on sight.
Many Alliance fanboys try to excuse Daelin Proudmoore's actions, claiming that he was right about the horde being evil and that Jaina should have just killed them all. They ignore that Daelin's actions played a massive role in making Orcs hate the alliance, meaning that if anything the events of Garrosh's rise are at least partially DAELIN'S fault.
World of Warcraft loves this trope so much that even the OLD GODS are getting draco'd.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Some fans have been willing to overlook Shania throwing in her lot with Moebius and painting a target on the City by seeing her as a victim of circumstance, citing how Ghondor was unknowingly worsening Shania's self-esteem with her Brutal Honesty, her mother showed No Sympathy towards Shania's aspirations that didn't involve the City's protection while doing little to help the City herself, and Sena was acting as a Morality Chain who could've kept Shania on the straight and narrow. It also doesn't help that There Are No Therapists, as is standard with many JRPGs, so Shania's defenders often believe her to be more of a victim than the assailant she actually is.
Albedo from the Xenosaga series has a good amount of fans who claim that he's "just misunderstood", despite the fact that he put Cute Realian Girl MOMO through horrible Mind Rape, tortures his twin brother Jr. with mind tricks and taunts, destroyed an entire Federation battalion with Proto Merkavah for a warmup, his merging with a space-time anomaly that he would put to use by wiping out the world, and the fact that he's a psychopath who's a Nietzsche Wannabe with A God Am I complex. This results in him getting paired with MOMO (albeit sometimes an older version, but sometimes not), Gaignun Kukai (a.k.a "Nigredo"), and even Jr. himself.
Yakuza: The number of people, especially new fans and especially especially yaoi fangirls, who are willing to see Goro Majima as some form of misunderstood Tragic Hero, given his tragic backstory, rippling abs, rampant and thinly veiled homoeroticism and occasional moments of genuine affection, is frightening. These things, and the fact that he generally is on the side of the heroes (such as they are), take nothing away from the fact that man is an Ax-Crazy lunatic. Majima has, on camera: Beaten a subordinate to death for not laughing when Majima was hit with a baseball. Attempted to kill another subordinate for picking a fight with the wrong person, in spite of the insulted party requesting he not, and was only stopped when someone intervened. Stalked and attacked the protagonist for no better reason than that he was bored. Held a woman hostage at knifepoint because he was bored. Beaten his subordinates because he was bored. Kidnapped a traumatised little girl in order to goad the protagonist into a fight. Beaten his wife. Driven a truck through a wall, not knowing who was on the other side. And that doesn't account for what he gets up to when the camera is somewhere else. Put simply, Majima might be one of the good guys, but he is definitely not a good guy. This may have been intentional on the developers' part in response to his unexpected popularity, given how most of his worst actions are exclusive to the first game and he's become more heroic ever since.
Capital B in Yooka-Laylee is a big hit with the fanbase, especially female fans. Fans are attracted to his pompous mannerisms and his excellent sense of style, despite him being a fat bee man. It helps that he was eventually revealed to just be a cog in the machine to the real villains. So there are plenty of Original Characters in the fandom who are in some way connected to him.
(though the poisoning was apparently so effective that it could only be cured by a miraculous relic).
Chaotic Evil The Social Darwinist ranger from Neverwinter Nights 2 who turns traitor near the end of the final act, sabotaging the player's castle's defenses and joining the Big Bad. The fans who don't subscribe to this trope tend to blame it on All Girls Want Bad Boys: Bishop is ruggedly handsome and hilariously sarcastic, and is even shown to have standards. It doesn't help that he was originally supposed to have a Romance Sidequest, but it got cut due to time constraints, or that his romantic "rival," Casavir, was spared the same fate despite having the personality of a piece of driftwood.