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Adaptational Villainy

Kaa in Disney's Jungle Book vs Kaa in the original.

"As many people have noted throughout the years though, Disney has been rather...lax when it comes to adapting books and fairy tales into movies. This is understandable in some cases. Still, it can be a bit galling when one knows that the fire-breathing, demonic witch on the screen was a kindly old lady in the source material."

—Top Five Miscast Disney Villains

The villain of an adaptation or retelling of a story is a familiar character who wasn't as bad in the source material. Sure, they may have been annoying at times, or couldn't care less about the good guys, but they weren't evil. Maybe they were even an ally of the main characters who leaned a little too far on the evil side, or a villain with standards or who was known to show a softer side. Maybe the character rubbed the heroes the wrong way, but never caused any real harm and was otherwise a decent person.

In any case, the character seriously Took a Level in Jerkass in the P.O.V. Sequel, The Movie, The Film of the Book, or any other reimagining of the original material. Where he was simply a pest before (and never treated as anything worse than that), or even nice, he now kicks puppies for fun.

This trope can take several forms, depending on the adaptation and the character. The True Neutral figure is actively villainous instead of simply not caring or choosing not to get involved. An imposing and potentially dangerous, but ultimately helpful, ally may become an enemy instead. The Anti-Villain and Tragic Villain will probably lose most or all of their sympathetic side and have fewer, if any, nicer moments. The Jerkass companion who is merely contemptible (but still entitled to the same protection as any other non-villain) in the source material will start committing acts in the adaptation that make him an actual enemy. This occasionally happens to characters who were explicitly good guys in the source material, and if it does it's sometimes a Take That to an unpopular one or to make the character Darker and Edgier. See also Character Exaggeration.

This is not always a bad thing, however, and indeed some iconic villains have come about in this way, although it will probably lead to accusations of Adaptation Decay or Character Derailment from purists. Unlike Ron the Death Eater, there is usually more justification for the change in the character. Sometimes Adaptational Villainy is a result of Composite Character - the composite mixes the harmless character and a more villainous one - or Adaptation Expansion, when there is no obvious villain in the original work, and a Ghost or another minor character gets the part. Sometimes it's to make the moral lines of an otherwise edgy story more clear or to simplify a complex character. A Perspective Flip often uses this deliberately to subvert the audience's expectations of who the hero and villain are. If the adaptation does well, the darker incarnation of the character may become more popular and eventually overshadow the original. This may happen for a variety of reasons.

It's not Adaptational Villainy if an entirely new character is created to be the villain. This trope only applies if the villain in question is recognizable from the original work, but was a more sympathetic or tragic figure, had some form of standards or was less menacing, had sympathetic moments, was strictly neutral, or wasn't evil at all.

This trope is Older than Dirt, since this sometimes happened to religious or mythological figures who, over time, became more malicious then they were in the older versions of their myths due to displacement or conquest.

The Super Trope to this is Demonization.

Compare Everybody Hates Hades, which is this trope applied to certain Dark Is Not Evil gods in mythology, and Historical Villain Upgrade, which is a variant for Real Life figures. Ron the Death Eater happens when a section of a fandom demonizes a character rather than one specific adaptation.

Contrast Villain Decay, in which an established villainous character becomes less frightening or villainous over time and isn't taken as seriously by the heroes or the audience as a result, and Took a Level in Jerkass, in which the character becomes more unpleasant canonically, either because of Character Derailment or Character Development.

For the inverse where a villain or Anti-Hero is softened in the adaptation, see Adaptational Heroism.

Example subpages

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Fan Works

In fan-written humanizations of Finding Nemo, Sherman is converted from a well-meaning but oblivious dentist to the evil leader of a kidnapping ring that sells children for profit.
Sonic The Comic Online does this with many games characters. Shadow, Rouge, the Babylon Rogues, Bean, Silver... even Cream the Rabbit! Blaze is immune to this, being almost identical to her game counterpart.
While Discord in canon was certainly malicious and powerful, he was presented more along the lines of a misbehaved brat than anything else and he did ultimately have a Heel Face Turn. However, many fan stories (most prominently the Pony POV Series and The Nuptialverse) present him as an unrepentant Ultimate Evil.
Damion, a one-shot character from Pok�mon, was originally just a Jerkass becomes a dangerous psychopath in Symbiosis. He is willing to kill Ash to get revenge on Brock and Misty for reporting his crime.
Count Mott of The Familiar Of Zero is "merely" a decadent noble who sexually harasses his servants. In Unfamiliar, he's an outright psycho who tortures, murders and tortures to death anyone who crosses him.
All examples of Ron the Death Eater.

Literature

The Doctor Who Expanded Universe novel The Resurrection Casket is Treasure Island IN SPACE! Drel McCavity (the Squire Trelawney character) turns out to be a villain, but not quite as much of one as Salvo (the John Silver character) who's been "upgraded" to Faux Affably Evil.
In the original story of Saint George and the Dragon and most reworkings of it, Saint George is the hero. For example, in The Reluctant Dragon, he becomes the title character's friend. In the Dragon Keepers series by Kate Kilmo, Saint George is a Villain with Good Publicity who enslaves magical creatures and drinks dragons' blood while the princess he saved is an evil witch. The dragon from the original tale tells his own side of the story, in which he was a benevolent sorcerer betrayed and killed by George.
Inverted in Myth-O-Mania - mostly with the help of Hades, encounters with famous monsters from Classical Mythology tend to be resolved peacefully, and many of them are friendly and misunderstood rather than evil. The Hydra becomes one of Hercules's True Companions, and killed humans with her poisonous breath by accident rather than malice. The Minotaur is a perfectly decent vegetarian whose human "sacrifices" are found alive and well, intended as wrestling partners instead of food, while the Calydonian Boar is a down-on-his-luck wrestler who just wants his job back.

Music

In the picture book The Butterfly Ball, Sir Maximus Mouse, the cheese tycoon, is simply a workaholic who's too busy to go to the Ball. In Roger Glover's concept album adaptation, he's a borderline-demonic Corrupt Corporate Executive.

Theater

The Wizard in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, although he becomes one of Dorothy's friends, isn't nice in his early appearances (after all, he did have Ozma kidnapped to prevent her from interfering with his takeover of Oz). However, in the Perspective Flip Wicked and its musical adaptation, he is much worse. The musical version, though, is more sympathetic than the book version, who doesn't shy from personally murdering the Ozma Regent, violently suppressing Animal protesters, and attempting to exterminate the Quadlings just to get at the rubies on their land. In the musical, he's a sort of a Well-Intentioned Extremist who is puppeteered by Madame Morrible and generally seems to want the best for Oz, as long as he remains its leader.
This happens to several characters in Love Never Dies, the sequel to The Phantom of the Opera. The trope applies in two ways, both because characters from the first musical undergo villain transformations and because in The Phantom Of Manhattan (the Frederick Forsyth novel that was the result of early work on what became this show) contains no such transformation, instead having the villain be a completely new character who didn't make it to the stage.
In Wonderland: Alice's New Musical Adventure, the Mad Hatter becomes female and the play's main antagonist, with the March Hare as her Dragon. In the book, he's scatterbrained, but not particularly malicious about it.

Web Originals

This page lists five well-known characters who were reimagined into villains through Disney movies in this way.
The Day Of The Barney Trilogy takes Barney and Baby Bop, who are portrayed as sincere and good friends to the kids on Barney & Friends, and portrays them as villains who successfully get the world's children to kill any adult they come across, kill their male Special Friends when they turn thirteen, and take the thirteen year old girls away to fatally mother mutated offspring. They're even revealed to be Really 65 Million Years Old and to have been the harbringers of many of the world's evil dictators and catastrophes.
In the movie Downfall Hermann Fegelein is simply Heinrich Himmler's Number Two man who Hitler killed for trying to leave the Bunker and flee Berlin. In Hitler Rants, however, he's portrayed as a malicious Trickster Archetype and Screwy Squirrel whose "antics" constantly bamboozle Hitler at the drop of a hat, making Fegelein the Big Bad. Granted, this stuff is Poke the Poodle compared to the real-life Fegelein's "antics" in Byelorussia.