Times where somebody is Made Out to Be a Jerkass for reacting to an actual Jerkass in Fan Works.
Crossovers
- Infinity Train: The Kid and The Wolf: One of the reasons why Handlebarb ends up on the Infinity Train is because an argument she gets into with her friends is caught on a Wetube livestream. Cassandra gleefully uses this to trash her reputation, painting her as a Bad Boss who's willing to hurt the other members of her skate team for the sake of her own ego. Making matters worse is how her mother and brother accept One Side of the Story without hearing out hers, showing absolutely No Sympathy for her plight.
- Dance with the Demons: Bruce Wayne is subjected to this when someone shoots Selina Kyle with a poisoned dart during their wedding. As Batman, Bruce has no option but to leave Selina alone in order to search and capture the culprit, leaving people puzzled when they call and are told Bruce Wayne isn't in his manor taking care of his bedridden, sick wife.
- Angel's Breath: During his Heroic BSoD, Ryusuke decides he's had enough of Cyrus being an utter Jerkass and lashes out at him, only to be treated as though he's the one that's gone too far.
- Feralnette AU:
- Marinette is naturally a victim of this thanks to Lila. Even after Marinette Stopped Caring about trying to expose her, shelving all aspects of her social life to focus more upon her responsibilities as Ladybug, Lila continues to try and turn the rest of the class further against her with Malicious Slander, claiming that she's becoming a delinquent.
- After Ladybug and Chat Noir call out Lila for her Blatant Lies — and Ladybug gives Alya a blistering "The Reason You Suck" Speech over providing a platform for those falsehoods on the Ladyblog despite knowing about her "lying disease" — Lila convinces Alya that Ladybug is being 'ableist' and refusing to listen to their side of things.
- The Karma of Lies: After being forewarned that Chat Noir is going to be needed later that day, Adrien decides to pass the time by throwing a party at the Agreste Manor, inviting all of his classmates. This naturally causes problems once the fighting starts; Lila latches onto his arm and wails for him not to leave her alone, and he realizes he can't extract himself and slip away without their friends judging him for it. Since Adrien cares more about his reputation than being a hero, he decides to stick around, telling himself that Ladybug can handle herself... despite seeing on the news that she's apparently trapped inside a burning building.
- Discussed in Lady Luck: Following the Chameleon incident, everyone who's aware that Lila is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing agrees to hold off on trying to expose her specifically because they want to avoid this.
- Marinette Dupain-Cheng's Spite Playlist: Remix:
- Even transferring out of Francoise Dupont to another school isn't enough to spare Marinette from this treatment, as Lila implies that she didn't tell anyone that she was leaving because she simply didn't care enough about any of her former classmates and friends. She also tries to convince the others that Marinette is petty enough to continue harassing her even after leaving their school, when in reality, Lila is the one doing all the harassing.
- Lila also paints Ladybug in this fashion, gradually convincing Alya that the spotted superheroine is secretly a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing. Alya latches onto this mainly because she doesn't want to face the notion that she might have actually done something to warrant losing Ladybug's trust.
- Adrien worries that the same thing will happen to him if he tries to expose the truth; this fears are partially borne out once he finally starts publicly standing up to Lila.
- Smart Adversaries AU: In Mayura Mayhem, Lila uses the Peacock Pin to create a fake akumatized version of Marinette, who seemingly takes Lila hostage while 'revealing' that her claims of having tinnitus and a sprained wrist are real. Her plan works; however, the broken Peacock's magic makes said claims become true for real.
- In Who You Know
, Lila tells Alya that she can arrange for Marinette to meet hot new fashion designer MDC. Not only does she not have any ability to do so, she knows that Marinette wouldn't fall for it... and so doesn't even make the 'offer' to her at all. Instead, she insults and riles her up so when Marinette gets annoyed, she looks like she's being unreasonable and cruel. - The Wolves in the Woods plays with this:
- Firstly, Lila pretends that Marinette is bullying her. Unlike most Salt Fics with this plot, however, Lila doesn't intend for their classmates to go as far as they do, and is honestly horrified by the results. This doesn't stop Alya from claiming that Lila was completely responsible for everything they did, despite how she convinced everyone to turn on Marinette while knowing about the deception the whole time.
- When Lila confronts Adrien about his refusal to defend Marinette against the abuse, Adrien treats her as though she's childishly throwing a temper tantrum instead of bringing up valid points that he simply doesn't care to acknowledge.
- Alya 'digs up dirt' on Lila's past and presents her classmates with some of Lila's past victims... except that said "victims" were the ones that attacked Lila, with one nearly strangling her to death.
- Alya also insists that one of Marinette's new classmates at St. Catherine's is "Chloé 2.0", due to being the daughter of a politician who was previously attacked and slandered by one of her father's political opponents. She ignores that this mudslinging was completely baseless, and in fact had gotten said opponent into trouble for attempting to ruin an innocent girl's reputation.
- In this what-if scenario, Adrien quite literally twists Marinette's arm while attempting to extract a promise that she'll stop trying to expose Lila, forcing her to give him an Indignant Slap to make him let go. Adrien then turns around and tells the whole class that she slapped him "for no reason," Playing the Victim Card and giving Lila and Chloé more ammunition to claim that Marinette is "just a bully".
- Adrien then gets A Taste Of His Own Medicine when Marinette reveals to everyone just how he reassured her after the seating drama. Lila uses Exact Words to make it appear that Adrien lied to Marinette about her being a liar in order to manipulate Marinette, much to the fury of Alya and most of their class.
- In a private conversation afterwards, Felix affirms that this wasn't a case of Didn't Think This Through: Adrien was fully aware that he was prioritizing Lila over Marinette and was intentionally trying to turn their friends against the latter in order to "punish her" for not doing what he wanted.
- Mean Rabbit: Izuku constantly runs into this problem. Sure, he's pretty abrasive, but given what he has to put up with, it's a bit hard to blame him:
- Aizawa tries to kick him out of U.A. for being Quirkless by blatantly rigging the results of his assessment test, then punishes five of his classmates for failing to beat him in a rematch? The majority of Class 1-A blames him for standing up for himself, accusing him of selfishly putting his dreams before others and acting like he KNEW what Aizawa would do.
- Bakugou uses a potentially lethal attack against him during a training exercise? How dare he defend himself and turn his assailant's own attack against him!
- He calls out three of his classmates for considering leaving him behind during a villain attack? While he's already injured, no less? Obviously he's the one overreacting and blowing things out of proportion, and it's his fault when two of them get expelled for it.
- He calls out Monoma for claiming that he's happy about said villain attack for the 'publicity', pointing out how badly he was scarred in the assault? All the crowd sees is him yelling at Monoma until he's brought to tears.
- Think Before You Speak: After Izuku avoids an explosive assault from Katsuki, Tenya is unintentionally caught in the crossfire. Aizawa then gives Tensei a deliberately skewed account of the incident where he pins all the blame on Izuku, spurring Tensei to tell the media that his brother was injured by 'a careless student with Super-Strength'. This winds up getting Tensei into serious trouble, as he finds himself accused of slandering an innocent student and trying to ruin Izuku's career before it could even get started.
- We're Not Friends Kacchan: Thanks to his own past experiences, Aizawa mistakenly assumes that Katsuki is a victim of this, and that Izuku is secretly a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who keeps Playing the Victim Card and lying/exaggerating in order to get Katsuki into trouble. As a result, Izuku winds up facing this, with Aizawa misinterpreting all of his actions in the worst possible light. Aizawa is understandably horrified when he finally learns that he's been enabling a Barbaric Bully and Blaming the Victim all this time.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- Bitter Tears: An Anon-A-Miss Fic: When Adagio is confronting the heroes at the hospital, she reveals that she witnessed Flash's ill-fated attempt to get Sunset to open up and snapped a picture of Sunset injuring herself. While Flash was really trying to catch Sunset when she lost her balance, the photo's staging makes it look like he's deliberately shoving her down into the park bench. Adagio gloats about how she only needs to circulate the photo to ruin his reputation. It ends up being averted, though; after the Sirens leave the hospital, Adagio deletes the photo, satisfied with the Evil Gloating she's gotten in.
- Loved and Lost: This occurs with Twilight's loved ones at the wedding rehearsal just like in canon. Except this time, because Prince Jewelius helps Twilight in thwarting the Changeling invasion and reveals the heroes' mistakes to the public, they pay the price for it with their reputations and social status.
- The Nuptialverse: Post Nuptials revolves around the fallout of how Twilight's friends treated her attempts to expose Queen Chrysalis, with Twilight initially suppressing her feelings on the matter and insisting that everything is fine.
- In Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide, Ritsuko tampers with Asuka's brain activity until Asuka is driven mad and beats fellow pilot Keiko up, which in turn makes the Nerv's staff believe the Second Child is a psychopath.
- Liquid Fighter Gold: Ranko is a self-aware Liquid Unit; however, others don't recognize this, so Ranma is frequently blamed for her actions.
- Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness:
- In Act III chapter 12, after Mizore and Felucia explain to the others that Dark's claim that he's only keeping Tsukune alive long enough for Kokoa to repay her debt to him was merely an act to fool the headmaster and buy time to find out how to repair the Holy Lock, they outright accuse them of being Ungrateful Bastards and giving Dark too little credit. Of course, the rest of the gang had good reason to take Dark's words at face value, since he had openly stated on more than one occasion that if he even suspected that the Holy Lock wouldn't hold and the ghoul would roam free again, he would kill Tsukune without hesitation.
- In Act VI chapter 17, Mizore and Arial get into a fight over Dark that leads to Mizore pinning Arial down and literally beating Arial to a bloody pulp all while screaming at her to stay away from Dark and outright calling her a bitch. It's only after she's beaten Arial senseless and flat-out tells the other girls that "the bitch had it coming" that she realizes that during the fight, she broke into the boys' room and beat Arial to an inch of her life right in front of Dark, who considers Arial his guardian angel; by that point, Dark was the only one in the group who was unaware that Arial was obsessively in love with him to the extent that she nearly killed Mizore in front of everybody in a jealous ragenote , so to him, it appears that Mizore attacked Arial without provocation. With this, Mizore is forced to reveal the Awful Truth to Dark.
- In Professor Arc, Jaune's family shows up at Beacon, unaware of the fic's events and expecting to meet with the awkward wimp Jaune was before successfully reinventing himself as Professor Arc. To their bewilderment, everything they do to try to bring him back home, especially framing Jaune as an incompetent bumbler who has no business being in Beacon, makes them look like unpleasable jerkasses who hate him for being generally better than them.
