Hero With Bad Publicity / Western Animation

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• Believe it or not, Captain America is on the receiving end of this following the fallout of the Skrull storyline in The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. This thanks to the machinations of the Skrull impersonating Cap, who manipulated the Avengers and told the world to surrender to the Skrull forces.
• Some instances of Batman, such as in The Batman until Gordon becomes the commissioner at the end of the second season.
• Ben Tennyson in Ben 10: Ultimate Alien has this when his Secret Identity gets outed. Will Harangue, jerk reporter even breaks out the "threat or menace" false dichotomy. Not to mention the fact that Harangue is going a step above JJ with the hero he smears by actually trying to kill Ben outright at least once. Though this played with: kids love him, and the government will occasionally collaborate with him. Dwayne McDuffie actually stated that Harangue is despised by many people for his antagonism towards Ben, and his attempts to turn everyone against him are always unsuccessful.
  Ben: Maybe I can do more good as a public superhero than I did in secret. Sure, most people think I'm a menace now.
  Julie: Only 26% of adult viewers think you're a menace.
  Ben: See? That's not bad.
  Julie: 74% think you're a threat.
• Ziv Zulander from The Bots Master has been branded a terrorist by the RM Corp. Although not able to fully clear his name, he's able to get a few allies here and there who realize he's not the bad guy the media paints him as.
• Danny Phantom for the majority of Season 1 and the beginnings of Season 2, is believed by the public to be just as dangerous as any of the ghosts he fights, and has to contend with other ghost hunters (his parents included). He gains good publicity after "Reign Storm" when he's visibly seen saving the city from Pariah Dark; too much of it actually (plushies).
• Darkwing Duck parodies this a lot; the titular characters suffer a lot from bad publicity due to his dark looks and mannerisms, both from civilians and authorities, to the point when he dies in "Dead Duck", he is only granted a cheap burial, and Megavolt, who is believed to be the murderer, not only gets away with it without going to jail, but even becomes famous by writing a book about it.^note However, this may have been All Just a Dream.This reaches such proportions that Darkwing attempts in one episode to give himself a better image so he'll get better publicity, and almost succeeds until his Arch-Enemy Negaduck ruins it. Ironically, both the audience and Darkwing ended up grateful to Negaduck, as Darkwing realizes his obsession with good image prevented him from focusing on his cases, and the fans found Darkwing's new look ridiculous.
• In The Dragon Prince, Rayla is shunned by her fellow Moonshadow elves for supposedly fleeing from her mission to assassinate the king and crown prince of Kotalis as retribution for the destruction of the Dragon Queen's egg. The truth is that she discovered that the baby dragon was still alive, and refused to kill Prince Ezran in favor of journeying with him and his step-brother to return the egg (later hatchling) back to his mother.
  • Raylar's parents also received this treatment, which supported the Moonshadow elves' belief that cowardice was In the Blood. Her mother and father were members of the Dragonguard tasked with protecting the Dragon Queen's egg, and are reputed to have abandoned their post when attacked by humans. The truth is that they while others did flee, they were the last to take a stand against the dark mage Viren, and Rayla's mother actually convinced him not to destroy the egg before she was defeated. But, because Viren transformed them into coins, the lack of corpses made everyone else think they escaped.
• A DuckTales (1987) episode featured a reporter named Lawrence Loudmouth who started a smear campaign against Scrooge McDuck and later started to impersonate a new masked hero (who happens to be Scrooge) and then make a smear campaign against the real hero. He was eventually captured and Scrooge gave up the vigilante career.
• Catman from The Fairly OddParents!, and it's mostly, if not completely, justified. He often ends up attacking innocent civilians while letting real criminals like purse-snatchers get away, and constantly causes more trouble than he prevents. In fact, if it weren't for Timmy (and his fairies), he would've ended up in jail a loooong time ago.
• Gargoyles has... well, the titular gargoyles. Brooklyn even lampshades their "publicity problem" in "Hunter's Moon." Greg Weisman has alluded to that being only temporary. After saving the city a few times, the Clan becomes a branch of the NYPD and eventually, due to Goliath's sacrifice sometime in the future, the United Nations declares the Gargoyle Species a protected race, acknowledges its sentience and creates a nation for the Gargoyles to found.
• Rex in Generator Rex suffers from this very hard in "The Hunter", where the titular character Hunter Cain turns the general public against him by claiming he is infecting people with his nanites. Of course, Cain is lured into an Engineered Public Confession and exposed.
• The focus of G.I. Joe: Renegades which has most of the team being branded as criminals while trying to expose Cobra's operations who, in this incarnation, are Villains With Good Publicity.
• Dib, from Invader Zim, although he receives more contempt than outright hatred.
• Justice League Unlimited dealt with this quite a bit. 'Eclipsed' featured a downturn in popularity due to the efforts of a Glory Hound TV personality, while a much more drastic one in "Panic in the Sky" led to six of the League's founders turning themselves in to federal custody in order to clear their names.
• The Burners in Motorcity, especially Mike Chilton, the leader. Abraham Kane, the leader of Detroit Deluxe is likewise the Villain with Good Publicity.
• Princess Luna of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Her role as Princess of the Night and her love of creepy public display causes most Ponies in her backstory to shun her while loving her sister, which results in her original Face–Heel Turn. After her banishment, return (after a thousand years), defeat and redemption, many Ponies find it hard to believe in her new Heel–Face Turn. It certainly doesn't help that anti-Luna sentiment has reached a point where a national holiday is celebrated that claims she eats children (really, Celestia, thanks for letting it get that far). Status Quo Is God is averted, however, as eventually (though not before some misunderstandings), most ponies come to trust her again.
• Scooby and the gang in Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated are mostly reviled by their townspeople. This is because Crystal Cove enjoys having a bunch of Scooby Doo Hoaxes to attract tourists (mostly not caring about how the bad guys are mostly doing this to steal something), and they don't appreciate a bunch of meddling kids spoiling the extra revenue. Once the mayor is unmasked as a villain, the town officials become much more accepting of the gang, especially once they manage to catch the truly destructive Cry Baby Clown.
• Spider-Man:
  • In ‘’Spider-Man (1967)’’, J. Jonah Jameson has nothing but contempt for Spider-Man and is often dismayed whenever Spidey prevails.
  • Just like in the comics, Spider-Man suffers from this in The Spectacular Spider-Man. Oddly enough, J. Jonah Jameson at first shows some signs that he doesn't hate and simply views him as easy publicity but still tries to discredit him. However, similar to Ultimate Spider-Man, a story about Spider-Man in a rival newspaper outsells the Daily Bugle's own story on his son's heroic landing of a space shuttle. As a result, Jameson outright begins a smear campaign against the web slinger, which eventually turns to outright hatred when a series of misfortunes Spidey had to intervene in resulted in his son going insane.
  • In the earlier series, Spider-Man: The Animated Series as part of "The Alien Costume" trilogy, Spider-Man saves John Jameson's life (who mind you, is JJJ's son) after his spacecraft crashlands in George Washington Bridge. Unfortunately, Spidey gets into a tangle with the Rhino while doing so, and the Rhino steals off with a space rock than Spidey didn't even know about. Poor Peter Parker went home thinking that for once Spider-Man will get his due, only to learn that an incensed J. Jonah Jameson went on his own network accusing Spider-Man of stealing the rock, and offering a $1 million bounty on his capture. Parker even considered quitting being Spider-Man for a while, until a mysterious ooze bonds with him. This starts a new set of problems when Spider-Man acts more aggressively during this time, particularly with Jameson.
  • This is part of the series premise of Spider-Man Unlimited, as Spidey is blamed for the disappearance of John Jameson by Jonah to the point that his saving a fire fighter from falling debris was mistaken by the fire fighter to be an attempt to attack him and the debris stopped Spidey.
  • Spider-Man: The New Animated Series: Among the worst Spidey has ever received by the end of the series, where everyone in New York considers Spider-Man a menace in spite of all he's done for the city.
  • This is exaggerated in Ultimate Spider-Man (2012). In past series, Spidey has pulled pranks on Jameson and is technically a vigilante. Here, Spidey works for S.H.I.E.L.D. and has never met him. Despite this, Jameson's smear campaign goes on and Spidey is generally hated by the people of the city.
• In Seasons 1 and 2 of Star vs. the Forces of Evil, the citizens of Mewni mainly remember Star Butterfly as the princess that set fire to the kingdom. Her reputation starts to get better in Season 3 after she settles down and starts to finally take her royal responsibilities seriously, only for all that good will to go down the drain when she decides to Abdicate the Throne to the pro-monster Eclipsa.
• Star Wars Rebels: Any surviving Jedi are largely dismissed by Imperial citizens, who view them as traitors to the Republic/Empire, disappointments, inefficient, or any combination of the above. Considering there aren't many of them left, no one really cares anymore, let alone give a second glance.
• In the Steven Universe episode "Rising Tides, Crashing Skies", Ronaldo comes to the realization that the various monsters that attack Beach City are only there because of the Crystal Gems and that it would be safer for the humans living there if they left, using his vlog-documentary and "expert reporting" to stage his own one-man protest against them and tells them to leave... until it is brought to his attention that if they did leave, he would have nothing to blog, thus pleads with them to stay (not that they actually planned to leave anyway).
• The Street Sharks get this constantly, to the point in which one of their friends has to point out to the police that if they were really guilty of one of the crimes they're accused of, they'd have to have been in two places at once. The Big Bad also gets everyone to blame their dad for creating them, so yeah.
  • This ends when Dr. Paradign fails in a massive public plan to mutate the entire city thanks to the Sharks. Followed by him turning into Dr. Pirhanoid in front of everybody. Exposing his villainy for all to see.
• Superman has become this in the series finale of Superman: The Animated Series. Thankfully, he salvaged his reputation, but the events of the finale became a precursor to the Cadmus Arc in Justice League Unlimited.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987): The Turtles themselves get this a lot, courtesy of April's boss Burne Thompson. It gets even worse during the Red Sky seasons, where after Shredder blows up the Channel 6 building, Burne, blaming the Turtles for it, goes full J. Jonah Jameson on them and does everything possible to make them look bad, and when Dregg, the Big Bad replacing Shredder for the final two seasons, uses propaganda to turn the entire city against them and make himself into a Villain with Good Publicity.
• A bit of a problem for the Autobots in Season 2 of Transformers: Animated, presumably after the property damage of the first season starts sinking in. In the first season, it's mainly just Bulkhead who has a problem with this, as he's a klutz who's strong enough to throw cars.
  • In Transformers: Super-God Masterforce, Hydra and Buster attack Ginrai in a populated with the intention of causing considerable enough collateral damage to turn public opinion against the Autobots. They actually succeed for a short while.
  • The G1 two-part episode "Megatron's Master Plan" was all about this, to the point that the Autobots were exiled from Earth and their ship's navigation systems tampered with to send them into the sun.
  • Also, the Stunticons were mistaken for Autobots for the first few weeks of their existence due to conventional wisdom being "cars=Autobots". Oddly, no one ever seemed to think the Aerialbots were Decepticons...
• In Young Justice (2010), Justice League popularity starts to take a nose-dive in Season 2. At first, it's mostly fueled by political pundits, but then a group of new, popular aliens (who are actually preparing to take over) manage to make the JL look everything from inept, trigger happy to outright deceitful.

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