The Ice King receives no end of sympathy from most fans, continually painting him as harmless and misunderstood. While he is a Jerkass Woobie with a Freudian Excuse, he still harasses, stalks, kidnaps, imprisons, mind-controls, and at one point mutilates around a dozen different women, all for the purpose of forcing them to "marry" him.
Ash, Marceline's Jerkass ex-boyfriend, who unlike this previous two is a completely straight example - he's good-looking, and that's his one positive attribute.
This happens to Lemongrab a lot. He has a small but LOUD fanbase that often forgets just why everyone hates LG so much. However, a lot of it is tongue-in-cheek because Lemongrab was intentionally written to be as obnoxious and unlikable as humanly possible. Also disturbingly ironic when, in one official comic, he does actually wear leather pants.
Many Waul/Tanya shippers in the An American Tail fandom tend to get this way, and seem to gloss over the fact Waul tried to kill and eat Tanya's family.
Many of the Fire Nation, especially Azula, Zhao, and Ozai. Sure, it's revealed that Azula has a Freudian Excuse towards the end, but that doesn't excuse her evil deeds, and Zhao and Ozai have no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
Sozin gets this treatment quite a bit, another case of his fans focusing on the "well-intentioned" and ignoring the "extremist" aspects of Well-Intentioned Extremist. They see nothing wrong with him wanting to spread the fire nation's glory, power, and advanced civilization with the rest of the world, which apparently justifies 100 years of war, the first act of which after disposing of the only man who could stop him was a complete genocide, and many other genocidal actions to follow.
Zuko got this treatment back when he was an Anti-Villain, with many fans saying all his wrong actions can be excused because of his angsty backstory and conflicted nature. Mike and Bryan themselves have brought this up in commentary for episodes such as "The Warriors of Kyoshi" and "The Beach" that, as sympathetic as Zuko is, he's not supposed to be justified in his bad actions, and in fact a big part of his Character Development is learning that he needs to take responsibility for his bad actions. This internal struggle of good and evil, which has still crept up even after his Heel Face Turn, is kind of the entire point of his character.
Recurring character and Well-Intentioned Extremist Jet had a lot of fans rationalizing his act of flooding a village that was filled with civilians to kill a few Fire Nation soldiers (to the point where only a handful seem to remember that it was an Earth Kingdom village, not a Fire Nation one), which is missing the point. Even Jet himself later seems to realize he went too far there and that his psychological desire for revenge really overcame his heroic desire to be a freedom fighter, and works to atone for it.
Long Feng and his Dai Li are sometimes given this treatment, with their Orwellian methods and repression of Ba Sing Se painted as the act of true patriots who were compelled to do whatever it took to keep their city safe.
Dag from Barnyard could be justified by the fact that coyotes have to eat, but did he really have to antagonize that one farm in particular, kill Ben, make Otis feel small, and attack during the day when no one was expecting them?
Fanfics about Batman The Animated Series often depict the Rogues Gallery as a fun-loving bunch of lovable misfits who are unfairly and brutally harassed by the humorless Caped Crusader. Never mind that even in the kids' show's context, most of the Rogues were originally apprehended for attempting ruthless murders on hapless civilians for imagined or exaggerated slights, and that when Batman was put on trial for supposedly creating his foes, the jury of villains found him not guilty in the end and decided that they were responsible for their own messed-up behavior. Then they tried to kill Batman anyway.
Likewise is the more recent The Batman series, where many villain origins are reimagined and many characters are portrayed as younger, and therefore somehow less corrupt and more tragic, especially the Riddler and Poison Ivy. The fact that the former was later revealed to have a Freudian Excuse probably helps.
Kevin 11 from Ben 10, despite being an Ax CrazySociopathicEnfant Terrible, was often this among his fans, even though the show flat-out presented his Freudian Excuse as not being valid enough for his unrepentant villainy. Amusingly enough, when the sequel Ben 10 Alien Force was made and had him actually committing a Heel Face Turn, becoming part of the main cast, and developing a relationship with the protagonist's cousin Gwen (which had been until then a Crack Pairing), a lot of fans complained about the show suffering Running the Asylum and criticized this. Can't please everyone, huh?
After Alien Force made Kevin a good guy, this trope went to his new Evil Counterpart Darkstar instead. Darkstar is a pure creepy Jerkass stalker who had no problem with manipulating innocent schoolgirls and turning them into zombies to increase his powers and is never portrayed as sympathetic in any way, even during his Enemy Mine with the heroes. Other villains like Vilgax, Charmcaster, Albedo, and the Forever Knights at least have varying shades of nobility and moral ambiguity to them. Darkstar has none.
Charmcaster must be the first runner up. Introduced as being a minion afraid of her evil uncle Hex, tells Gwen a sob story about how she never wanted to do any of this... then proves she was only acting sympathetic to fool the team, and goes Starscream on Hex. She shapes up to one of the more competent members of the Rogues Gallerywith or without Hex around, and by now has put in more appearances than him. In the sequel series, she does the "sympathetic... psych!" routine again - her world was ruled by an Evil Overlord and she lost her father to him, she goes back to settle the score, and when we see her next, that world is still under a mad dictator's control... then we find out it's a different mad dictator; namely, her. She tries to sacrifice the souls of everyone to an Eldritch Abomination to get her dad back - everyone in her home dimension. From what we get onscreen, Even Evil Has Loved Ones, but evil plus loved ones definitely doesn't equal not evil. As of the end of Ultimate Alien, we last saw Hex chilling in his library; we last saw Charmcaster as a Dimension Lord. However, fandom seems to have missed the point, believing the "sympathetic" bit before the "psych" bit and ignoring the knife in the back that always follows. All too often, the fanon version is poor, poor Woobie Charmcaster, dragged into a life of crime by her evil scary uncle and just wants to save her world For Great Justice. Ironic when you realize that in-universe, that's just what she wants you to think, and believing it can get you dead.
Some Captain Planet fans find the show so Anvilicious that they like the Eco-villains better. Draco in Leather Pants may ensue, but it's mostly either tongue-in-cheek or a conscious Take That to how pointlessly nasty they are in canon.
Lahwhinie from the Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers episode "Gadget Goes Hawaiian" is Gadget's Evil Twin. Period. At least in canon. But for some fans, she is Gadget minus her quirks and geek attitude and lack of social skills, but plus a dress and make-up and actual passion, and sometimes have her do a more or less spectacular Heel Face Turn.
Vlad Masters/Plasmius based his life around revenge for an accident and the title character's father "stealing" his one true love Maddie. He uses deception and mind control to amass his fortune and uses it and his ghost powers to attempt murder and cause mayhem, which he somehow thinks is a good way to get Maddie to fall in love with him and Danny to consider him as a better father than Jack. Yet because all he wants, essentially, is to be loved, numerous fans ignore that he's a selfish, maniacal narcissist.
Dark Danny (AKA: Dan Phantom). Apparently, a buff body and hypnotic voice are enough to forget that he's one of the worst villains in the series, a mass murderer who destroys everything in his path purely for fun.
Ember McLain gets this treatment, mostly for her loss, but some fans think that her song was about her suicide after being cheated on by her Bastard Boyfriend.
Mozenrath from the Disney's Aladdin TV series. For many fans, his hotness outweighs the fact that he's a sadistic psycho, turned his father-figure into a zombie, devoted his life to ruining Aladdin's, and wants to take over Agrabah just "because it's there". The belief that Mozenrath was intended to be Aladdin's brother seems to be an unfortunate (and persistent) side-effect of this trope.
The Urpneys from The Dreamstone often maintain a higher popularity than the heroes, due to an excessive Sympathetic P.O.V., their half hearted villainous streak and just being Ineffectual Sympathetic Villains of the highest order, even if still displaying an indifferent obedience to Zordrak's schemes as well as some of his crueler acts. Even the far more genuinely malicious Zordrak and Urpgor gain sympathy from fans due to their ineffectual qualities.
Duck Dodgers deconstructs this trope in one episode. There's a villain called the Magnificent Rogue who basically terrorizes people, yet is worshipped because he's so attractive. Even when he flat out admits that he is indeed insane. Porky snaps out of it and ultimately thwarts his plot. IQ also states that being beautiful doesn't give you the right to terrorize people. It could easily be trying to mock this trope.
Eddy, mainly because of his Freudian Excuse, which is understandable. However, fans tend to ignore the bad things that Eddy does that are completely his fault with no influence. They forget that his Freudian Excuse doesn't necessarily justify his bad deeds. They will try to shift the blame to another character, or to even say that Ed/Edd/one of the kids deserved to be provoked or humiliated by Eddy. Fans also try to make him look like a saint compared to the kids, but sometimes, he's just as bad as Sarah and Kevin.
Marie Kanker and her sisters, the latter to a lesser extent. They are depraved, messed up stalkers and bullies yet shippers tend to forget about their flaws and/or give them a Freudian Excuse to pair them with an Ed. (Double D, usually).
Eddy's Brother also qualifies. Him having a smooth voice makes fans forget he's an abusive older who has beaten Eddy his entire life.
Norm from The Fairly Oddparents gets this bad. He's often portrayed as The Woobie, locked up in his lamp and was forced to serve several masters like Timmy. This is ignoring the fact that he is a Card CarryingJerkass and such a Jackass Genie that he was that page's picture. Also, he had tried to sell Timmy (who was originally apathetic toward Norm) on the prospect of having a genie, and the fact that he plans to destroy Canada once he's free should erode his sympathy.
Vicky is a destructive, abusive sociopath, but so many of her fans go to incredible lengths to justify or outright ignore these traits. Others simply fabricate a Freudian Excuse for her out of thin air, despite being repeatedly established that she has no such excuse, and indeed is the Freudian Excuse for several other characters, Timmy included.
Family Guy: Jeff, the abusive boyfriend. Because he's seen as "attractive," fans tend to forget that he's a jerkass Domestic Abuser with no redeeming qualities.
Hexxus, the Spirit of Destruction and pollution embodied in Ferngully The Last Rainforest gets this (similarly to the Captain Planet examples above), even though he's trying to level a rainforest full of plant and animal life as well as sentient fairies that depend on its existence to survive. It doesn't help that the movie is Anvilicious, the protagonists (save maybe for BattyKoda) are bland and rather uninteresting, and Hexxus himself is voiced by Tim Curry, with all the implications this entails. And he gets one of the best Villain Songs of all times.
Demona from is often a victim of this. While the character is definitely a three-dimensional villain, and you understand where she is coming from, a lot of fanfic authors spin this off into either being an apologist or completely re-writing the character to the point where she is Demona in name only. Add in the fact that she's already somewhat sympathetic by design and there you go. Usually, her daughter Angela will either wave a finger in Demona's face, and Demona magically gives up her hatred to have a relationship with her, or Demona magically falls in love with a human and sees that humans are not all bad. A lot of the time, Goliath is portrayed as an evilmisogynist. Generally, most of these fanfics are just an excuse to get Demona naked, and some authors have admitted that canon Demona is too difficult to write. Word Of God states that Demona will still be plotting against humanity long after Angela and most of the cast are dead.
While Xanatos does get a whole slew of Pet the Dog moments and arguably evolves into an Anti-Villain by the end, he still commits a lot of ruthless or downright evil acts (especially early on) and never seriously regrets any of them (except maybe creating Thailog). There are nonetheless a disturbing amount of fans who portray Xanatos as little worse than a brilliant trickster, with more than one declaration that he isn't really evil or villainous. This probably wouldn't happen half as often if he didn't look like a physically-idealized Jonathan Frakes.
Rounding out the trifetica of the show's major villains is Macbeth. He's easily the most sympathetic even in canon- he's as tragic as Demona but not a tenth as vicious, and as affable as Xanatos without being nearly as manipulative- and he has an old-school warrior's sense of honor, but his fans have a definite tendency to treat him as a Hero Antagonist, which several of his actions (notably deciding to use Broadway- with whom he had no personal quarrel- as target practice for newly-acquired spells) show he's not. Per Word Of God, he's an ends-justify-the-means kind of guy, and his ends are pretty questionable on their own. Character Development, however, does end up moving him into Hero Antagonist territory by the end of the series.
The only recurring villains who aren't in some way sympathetic are Tony Dracon and Sevarius, and they sometimes get the DILP treatment.
Breach. She isn't without sympathetic qualities, but sometimes people forget that she's completely insane and has happily kidnapped people to use them as toys in her "playhouse," throwing them away when she gets bored of them.
Murdoc of the Gorillaz is often seen this way, despite being a canonically alcoholic, exhibitionist, verbally and physically abusive megalomaniac. The trope is even employed in-universe, since despite many of these traits being publicly known, Murdoc does not lack for bedmates.
Zim from Invader Zim. It turns out all those ridiculous failed plans? They mean nothing; Zim is really a totally badass mastermind. But don't worry, he's not really evil; he would seriously regret destroying humanity, and would probably give it up if a kind-hearted human or Irken girl would just show him some love. Oh, and also, isn't Dib just such abastard for trying to stop him so much? There's a bit of this for other Irkens too, particularly the Tallests. Apparently galactic conquest and repeated genocide and enslavement of the survivors is a-okay.
Some of the fans have tried to justify this by pointing out their motives: Zim trying to impress the other Irkens especially the Tallests, Dib wanting to prove to everyone he was right about the aliens and look like the hero; forgetting that trying to impress someone, although sympathetic, isn't moral nor is enough to justify trying to destroy humanity & Take Over the World and that wanting to look like the hero is the exact same thing just more specific.
The Legend of Korra: Amon. He's the charismatic leader of the Equalists, and just wants to bring about equality between benders and non-benders. By ending all bending. Like certain protest movements, he has absolutely no problem harming the very people he claims to be helping. He's so charismatic, in fact, that he's even managed to convince some of the fans.
Tahno, while eventually becoming somewhat sympathetic after Amon takes his bending and leaves him a broken man, had fans wishing he could give them "private lessons" even when he was a total Jerkass.
RS-Protoman is arguably not as bad as most of the examples on this page, but some fans seem to think that his switching alliances would instantly rid him of his less pleasant traits. (Possibly so they can offload them to their idealizedversion of RS-Bass)
Gilda the Griffon from "Griffon the Brush-Off" is an obnoxious bully who thinks all the ponies of Ponyville (except her old friend Rainbow Dash) are "lame-o", and who literally scares Fluttershy to tears at one point. When her true colors are exposed at a party thrown by Pinkie Pie in an effort to get her to lighten up, screaming her head off at her so-called best friend and refusing to take her own medicine, she's quick to turn against Dash for being a "flip-flop" by sticking up for the other ponies, and leaves town in a huff. Fans were quick to portray her as a Jerkass Woobie wracked with guilt and self-hatred over alienating her oldest and best friend.
Trixie from "Boast Busters" had fans protesting she was just a traveling entertainer (true) whose audience was being unnecessarily mocking and hostile, that she was justified in humiliating Applejack, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash in front of their friends and neighbors, and that she was unjustly punished at the end of the episode, largely ignoring that she's a boastful, lying egomaniac both on- and off-stage. She did seem guilty about one of her lies indirectly leading to an Ursa Minor attacking Ponyville, but after the threat is dealt with she's right back to being all bluff and bravado.
At the end of "Magic Duel" though, Trixie does legitimately have a Heel Face Turn and even renames herself as "The Great and Apologetic Trixie". Funnily enough, the reason she initially stated for her revenge (having her reputation and livelihood destroyed) were the exact same things her fans complained about.
Nightmare Moon (Princess Luna's Superpowered Evil Side created from the jealously over ponies being more fond of Celestia's day and sleeping through Luna's night) gets this a lot from fans that see Celestia as a tyrant, treating her as just wanting to free Equestria from Celestia's rule, despite Luna herself admitting that what she did was wrong and becoming The Atoner in canon.
Fans latch onto the Flim-Flam Brothers' stylishness, catchysong, and that their Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 can actually produce quality cider. The fact that they're also a pair of aggressively greedy jerks who tried to completely and utterly drive the Apples out of business and gloated about it when they seemingly succeeded, and who are perfectly willing to sacrifice any semblance of quality in the name of quantity, tends to escape the minds of these fans.
Queen Chrysalis. "She just wanted to feed her children!" say the fans. While she did mention feeding her subjects, she put more focus on gathering power for herself, while laughing cruelly, and then proceeds to enslave all of Canterlot; she doesn't display the slightest shred of remorse for any of her actions and seems entirely incapable of empathy.
Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon are the school bullies, so they're not especially villainous, but they're the only recurring antagonists. More than a few fanfics make them out to be Jerkass Woobie types, usually due to emotionally or physically distant parents. (Silver Spoon at least has been hinted to be less of a jerk than Diamond Tiara.)
Even King Sombra gets some. One theory has it that he was in love with Princess Luna and that her rejection of him made him turn to evil. Hilariously enough, this almost exactly parallels a theory about the aforementioned Discord and Princess Celestia, only with even less basis in canon. At least Discord and Celestia seem to know each other pretty well, there is no indication Sombra was involved any with Luna.
Scarab from Mummies Alive. Never mind that he was something like a cross between Mr. Burns and Mumm-Ra; Fan Fic still has him suavely hooking up with Mary Sues and heroes of the show alike. Considering that relatively few people even remember the show, the sheer amount of Slash Fic it generates around an aging Corrupt Corporate Executive who powers up into an insectoid monstrosity is rather disturbing.
Rico. Okay, so he's not evil, but he is a loose cannon who needs to be kept under tight control. All that craziness is very often tossed aside in the interests of pairing him up with whichever penguin the author chooses.
King Julien. He's not evil, but he is a jerk. Again, it's abandoned for the purposes of bedding him down with Skipper or Marlene. The weird thing is, the movie, while he's not all that nice, he at least is concerned for his subjects, and demonstrates sincere gratitude toward Alex and the others, but is listed under Jerkass. While in the series he's abusive to Mort and Maurice, malicious toward the Penguins for the sake of it, rude in general and self-serving, with his few decent moments usually having at least partially selfish motivation, yet is listed under Jerk with a Heart of Gold, despite his negative qualities FAR outweighing his arguable positive ones.
The Rowdyruff Boys also tend to be toned down and glamorized into being misunderstood little boys who secretly long to be loved and in relationships with the Powerpuff Girls, the only ones who can tame them.
Princess also qualifies. Fans sympathize with her wanting to be a Powerpuff Girl and always getting rejected, ignoring the fact that she doesn't have superpowers or crime fighting experience, and only cares about being a Powerpuff Girl for the cosmetic reasons (being popular, powerful, and loved). They seem to ignore the fact that her jerkass personality is what keeps her from becoming liked by the girls and the fact that she's evil.
The Simpsons gives us Sideshow Bob. While his intelligence, menacing aura, and highbrow/Deadpan Snarker attitude combined with the perpetual clown-like mishaps to which he's subjected make him a cool and funny villain, there is a considerable fanbase determined to overlook the fact that his life revolves around murdering Bart and those who stand in the way of his murdering Bart, instead making him into an angster hiding his suffering under an antisocial exterior. Extra annoying in that they overlook the canonical explanation for any angst (his being Krusty the Klown's Butt Monkey for years), instead giving him a depressingly cliched tragic backstory.
The South Park fandom does this a lot, especially with characters like Cartman and Damien, who set Pip on fire and turned Kenny into a duck-billed platypus.
Plankton in Spongebob Squarepants. It has been established that he's evil as he continued to try to take Krabs' secret formula in myriad ways. One episode even had him as a Jerk With A Heart Of Jerk with him saying "Being evil is just too much fun!" He's also been shown to be a big Jerkass with all his screaming and being angry. In The Movie, he had definitely crossed the Moral Event Horizon. But due to Flanderization and Took a Level in Jerkass on the parts of the main characters in the later seasons, some fans sided with Plankton, forgetting all the evil and nasty stuff he did in the earlier seasons. It sometimes seems that the writers forgot all the evil and nasty stuff he did in earlier seasons. Plankton's evil schemes once involved him trying to Take Over the World, but in later episodes all he wants to do is compete with the Krusty Krab. Not even destroy them or run them out of business, just compete.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars has some. Since Darth Maul was brought back in the fourth season, he has fans (as seen with the films). General Grievous, although he's a cold-blooded cyborg who killed hundreds of people receives this in spades. Young!Boba Fett also gets this, though in fairness, he is portrayed during his appearances as a sympathetic character.
While Superjail! has a cast filled with characters that are corrupt or despicable to some degree, there are a few examples that tend to stand out when it comes to this:
Some tend to ignore the fact that while Alice has a bit of an unfortunate backstory, she's also described by the creators as a sadistic bully who intentionally abuses her power to get herself pleasure from the inmates. Any of her flaws can get easily glossed over for her to be simplified and painted as a saintly Woobie who just needs one good man (when fans aren't going in the other direction to demonize her for not returning Warden's feelings).
Lord Stingray gets a bunch of this treatment from certain fans, who feel as if he's been unfairly wronged and misunderstood for being imprisoned in Superjail. Some decide to depict him as physically attractive in order to play up suaveness to make him a viable partner for the Warden, if they don't go with outright Foe Yay.
The Twins are sometimes simplified into harmless innocent young men who just want to have fun in the jail, even though they're shown to take visible amusement in causing death and destruction. Sure, they start trouble to relieve boredom, but they aren't any less questionable in their morality than the rest of the cast.
Mad Scientist Dr. Viper in SWAT Kats has a few fans despite being arguably the series' most sick, twisted and sadistic villain in his very first episode alone, and not being what would generally be considered attractive (even before he got mutated). Many early fanfics by one "Kikki Viper" revolved around the evil biochemist converting to Christianity, gaining a magical sword and saving the day. The fanfics have been given the MST treatment by many a SWAT Kats fan. Artist Ignigeno sexifies Viper while at least retaining his evil, sadistic personality.
Agent Bishop from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003. Compared to the Shredder, he's a much more sympathetic and well intentioned villain, however while an undeniably a complex villain a lot of fans definitely romanticise him a little too much, especially considering the countless acts of murder, espionage, torture, and other dirty dealings that come close to, if not outright rival, the Shredder's. By the sixth season, set decades into the future, Bishop does renounce his evil ways to become one of the good guys, so he's not an entirely unsympathetic or irredeemable character. However, he achieved DILP status far before "Fast Forward" and there are still a disturbingly large amount of fans who prefer to sweep all his evil deeds under the rug and act as if he's nothing more than a heroic savior of the world with no flaws.
Teen Titans has Slade, whose intelligence, competency and "cool" factor results in many fans forgetting that he's a mind-raping adult who takes pride in stalking and fighting teenagers.
Tygra from Thundercats 2011, the reboot of the 1985 series. While he does have his share of redeeming qualities, is one of the good guys, and is confirmed by the creators to be a Jerkass Woobie instead of a tamed version of Big Brother Bully, a lot of his fan are a bit too willing to forgive him for and justify him leaving his adopted brother, Lion-O, to die twice, being somewhat of an unapologetic bigot, undermining Lion-O's authority and not supporting him on occasions.
Tom and Jerry of Tom And Jerry. While something of an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain, fans have taken to downplaying Tom’s flaws completely and treat Jerry as if he's the bad guy in all their altercations. The truth is that neither one is by any means innocent, being victim and provoker in almost equal measure, but Tom just gets the DILP pass because the writers worked so hard to depict that Jerry (who, at the time at least, automatically got audience sympathy by not being Tom) wasn't (and at that they let Tom win a lot of times he genuinely deserved it).
Duncan. It's invariably difficult to keep him in character seeing as his softer side overrules his bad-boy charm in the eyes of most fans. If you find a fanfic involving Duncan/Courtney, Duncan/Gwen, Duncan/anybody expect Draco in Leather Pants to come into play. (Although, those that ship him with Gwen do have some justified argument, she is the only one he is rather nice to.)
Gwen and Courtney also have this problem. Some fans on different sides of the CxDxG conflict believe the girl they support is blameless while demonizing the opposing character.
Decepticons as a whole can be called Robots in Leather Pants. It's about a 50/50 split and Deceptifans tend to downplay their villainy a lot. Notable examples include Starscream, Ravage (especially after his upgrade in Beast Wars), BW Rampage, Animated, Starscream, Lockdown, Megatron, and more of Starscream.
It started with Beast Wars; technically, the Predacons are an oppressed minority on a "peaceful" Cybertron kept in the paranoid grip of the just-as-atrocious Maximal Elders, but their role is more akin to between-World Wars Germany, with Megatron and his troupe attempting to get them to put on the Reich. Like the Animated Decepticons, this goes unnoticed by fans, blinded by Beast!Megatron's Magnificent Bastardry, Tarantulas' delightful craziness, Waspinator's Butt Monkey-ness...
Transformers Animated deepened this. The Decepticons in this series are in some ways oppressed resistance fighters trying to overthrow a regime that is outdated at best and downright corrupt at worst, but they're less "Rebel Alliance" and more "Al Qaeda". Fans tend to miss this part because Megatron is awesome, Blitzwing is funny, and Starscream is, well, Starscream.
Starscream's usual Draco in Leather Pants treatment is taken Up to Eleven in Prime. Because of his skinny physique and how badly he tends to get punished, fans are quick to paint him as a Jerkass Woobie and some even write Hurt Comfort Fics that ship him with his Arch-EnemyArcee, glossing over the many dogs he's kicked; said dog-kicking includes killing Cliffjumper and throwing his death in the other Autobots' faces whenever he can, threatening Miko in front of an immobile Bulkhead, and taunting a T-cog-less Bumblebee about his inability to transform while holding said T-cog at gunpoint right in front of him.
One-shot villain Madame Catastrophe from Tuff Puppy is often hit with this trope, usually being brainwashed instead of evil.
Not old enough to make it you know what, though it is Older Than the NES: in the old Voltron cartoon, many girls adored the self-proclaimed evil Prince Lotor, despite his attempts not only to kidnap Princess Allura, kill the Voltron Force and raze her planet to a pile of ash, but also (and repeatedly) to force her into marriage, brainwash her, or commit various other despicable acts; he has never shown an ounce of remorse for any of this. Many fans will attempt to argue that he was forced to do this by his father, even though he hatched and enjoyed half these plans, and though he continued making them after he usurped his father. Others will say it's all out of love for Allura, even though he was willing to throw her away for another princess that looked just like her. But he's just so pretty.
Sincline's mother was a kidnapping victim from Altea (over a century ago, since Sincline has his 106th Birthday in-series) who bored Daibazaal/Zarkon when she begged for better treatment for the other slaves and then was killed. Sincline once shoved Fala/Allura's face into his crotch, and while the abuse is never shown on screen, one gets the serious impression he did something to her lookalike, Princess Amue/Romelle. Even in Lotor's case, in the final Voltron season, the one made new for WEP by Toei, he uses a woman's love for him and openly mocks ideas of his redemption in the final ep. A Take That at this trope?
The Brotherhood of Mutants in X-Men: Evolution. Though they were portrayed somewhat sympathetically, and shown at times to be manipulated, they still were jerks that often caused lots of trouble. Their numerous fans usually defend anything Avalanche, Quicksilver, and Toad do and consider the X-Men to be the real villains.
The most extreme example is Quicksilver. While Avalanche and Toad showed that they had some good in them, Quicksilver was a borderline sociopath who had little concern for anyone but himself.
Avalanche himself is an enigma, similar to Terra from Teen Titans, in that while the comics version of the character was indeed an asshole, the character in the show was an Anti-Villain, and ends up getting both Leather Pantsed and Deatheatered. It's virtually impossible to find a fanfiction where he isn't either a saint or a villain, and anyone who dares to even try to take middle ground will be torn apart for 'bashing' or 'purifying' them. Some people refuse to see any good in him, and others refuse to see any flaws in him, and trying to do both is dangerous to your sanity.
