Please don't list this on a work's page as a trope. Examples can go on the work's YMMV tab.
Designated Villain
"Therefore, since I cannot prove a lover To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain And hate the idle pleasures of these days."
A Big Bad is a common driving force behind conflict in stories, so it makes natural sense to write one in. But villainy requires villainous acts...so a villain who doesn't really perform those is a bit hard to swallow.
If one is written in anyway, the result is a character who is treated as a bad guy by the plot, despite never actually doing anything as to justify the amount of hate that they receive from the good guys. Any astute arguments and observations by this character are to be dismissed by the audience, because they are Obviously Evil™, just as the Designated Hero is regarded as 'good' despite having no significant virtues.
In fact, this may only prove a character a Jerk Ass, especially in regards to the protagonist. This isn't a case of a deliberately over-the-top villain, it's a personification of being an ass for its own sake. That being said, there are cases where just being a jerk can qualify one for being the antagonist by itself.
Alternately, it might be a character that could fall under Hero Antagonist...except, since they're an antagonist, they can't possibly be on the side of good. Keep in mind that antagonists and villains are very different things.
Compare and contrast Designated Hero, Poke the Poodle, Villain Ball Magnet, and Villainy-Free Villain. Also see What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?. Not to be confused with Designated Evil.
Not to be confused with Offstage Villainy, which is where the bad guy did bad things...but not on screen.
Please note that Tropes Are Not Bad, as this can sometimes be done on purpose to add more shades of grey to a story, or to show that the heroes are not completely perfect.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
About halfway through the anime Fafner In The Azure: Dead Aggressor, it seems that the writers realized that they made their Designated HeroHidden Elf Village too unlikable, and the alternative, the U.N. backed "Human Army", too sympathetic in trying to survive against the Cosmic Horror threat. Sweeping changes were made in personalities to ensure that the audience knew who was right and who was wrong.
Dinosaur Ryuzaki (Rex Raptor) from Yu-Gi-Oh! is more of a "villain by proxy", as his best friend is the downright rotten Insector Haga (Weevil Underwood). He is shown helping Jonouchi on occasion, and is more just a jerk than an actual villain, but ends up selling his soul for power in the Doma arc anyway.
King Gurumes, the villain of the first Dragon Ball movie. He ruled his land with tyranny because he became addicted to blood rubies. So Goku and his friends try to stop the evil king from gathering the dragon balls and making his "terrible wish" of wishing himself free of the blood ruby hunger...which would pretty much solve the problem itself!
This was a dub only example, however—in the Japanese version, he wanted to use the balls to wish for finer foods.
Still an improvement over the current situation where he needs to exploit his country to feed himself.
Donan Cassim in Fang of the Sun Dougram. Sure, the reason why he's so determined to keep the colony planet a part of the Earth Federation is that he wants to use the manpower and technology to develop two nearby mineral-rich planets and save an exhausted Earth, but he's still evil. At some point, the authors realized that he's a little too sympathetic and installed his aide as the Big Bad instead.
Naruto was this in a scene in the third movie. After Hikaru wanted Naruto to be his slave, he justifiably said no. In response, Hikaru hit Naruto with a toy arrow. That was when Naruto finally decided to lightly punched him, and believe me, the little brat deserved it. However, Sakura heard Hikaru's crying and not only punched Naruto (because, you know, Sakura just has such a high ground against child abuse), but she tied him up and starved him until he apologized. Sakura wouldn't be the Designated Hero if she didn't taunt Naruto by eating food in front of him.
Technically, Konoha ninjas are considered adults, regardless of their age, and Naruto was older than the brat, and Hikaru was a civilian. Not that that justifies Sakura's actions.
Luc displays an odd case of this in the Suikoden III Manga, where he goes to considerable effort to hide the fact that he's trying to save the world (through mass genocide, but still). When the hero finds this out, he even rants about not needing sympathy for his actions. Mind you, he was a Jerkass even when he was a good guy.
Star Driver has a bit of this. Yes, the Glittering Crux Brigade kidnapped the maiden to allow them to summon giants to Earth for some reason that probably involves fighting, since we never see anything else happen, but when they aren't wearing their masks, they're pretty nice guys. Even the leader of Adult Bank, President, who is a schoolgirl wife who kisses men other than her husband through the glass because her husband is never around - Openly! Like, in class! - only has a massive boat to live in, not because she's uber rich and spoiled, but because she's pretty sure that volcanoes will explode when they succeed, and wants to evacuate everyone off the island, so no one dies. After asking why else she would possibly have such a thing, both of her subordinates - who give her drinks and massages whenever she wants - simply stare at her, bewildered.
Of course, the only real villain in the series is the deadbeat dad. Oh, and Vanishing Age, simply due to a lack of redeeming scenes.
The Computer Club President from Haruhi Suzumiya could be considered this. Yes, he cheated in the RTS game, but it was only to get back the computer that Haruhi essentially stole via some rather cruel blackmail.
In Valkyria Chronicles (the anime), Faldio's 'villainhood' is very poorly executed. He saves everyone's lives with his desperate gamble in activating Alicia, but gets only grief and reproach from everyone, even himself - though nobody ever suggests a possible alternative to his course of action. That Alicia survives to live happily ever after, whereas Faldio has an ignominious death off-scene, compounds the problem. Of course, many fans of the game hate his prominence in the anime *anyway*, so they're likely not to care.
Dumbledore is apparently a very mean and cruel teacher who tortures Ebony for being gothic. He was rightfully angered to see her having sex in the middle of the forest. He laughed at Draco being kidnapped by Voldemort, but you have to admit, it was pretty hilarious.
Britney. She's this and a Butt Monkey. Preps in general are treated as monsters, despite not even doing anything mean.
Generally common in fics that try to portray Dumbledore as a cruel, manipulative man (as opposed to the benevolent, manipulative man he is in canon). Often times, the author cannot be bothered to figure out what Dumbledore's big plan is, resulting in him coming across as manipulating the main characters purely for the sake of manipulating them. Or at least trying to, since, invariably, despite Harry having no clue of Dumbledore's malevolent intentions for however far into the series the fic takes place, he is suddenly painfully transparent and Harry or our new Mary Sue can avoid his manipulations with ease.
Sakura in For Your Eyes Only, largely the result of Die for Our Ship. She's labeled as a "slut", even though she does nothing more than brush off Naruto. And when she gets killed by Sasuke, no one mourns her death.
Sakura gets this alot to the point people makes her parents evil just because.
Fan fics in general of Naruto seem to make ALL of the Uchiha Clan evil and jerkasses, simply because the readers dislike Sasuke. So they think Itachi was right to kill every single baby, non-ninja, or elderly member of the entire clan. Simply because one member is a bit of a Jerk Ass, his entire genetic family tree must be like this and deserves to be wiped out to make space for the recently powered-up Naruto.
To be fair, Sasuke was the youngest person in the clan and everyone was in on the conspiracy. The fact they wanted to start a Civil War didn't endear them to people either.
Most of the antagonists in Christian Humber Reloaded. If you're not familiar with the source material, they hardly seem evil compared to Vash, since apart from marshaling their forces to attack the good guys, their canon misdeeds are rarely described in detail. This especially goes for one group of "snobs" that Vash attacks, killing thousands and doing trillions of dollars worth of damage in the course of doing so. And while there is no apparent reason for this, they are apparently meant to be seen as evil enough to deserve it.
Poor, poor Mai in the infamous How I Became Yours. True, she does one legitimately villainous thing: killing Katara's baby through poisoned fruit, as opposed to Designated Heroes Katara and Zuko who really have nothing to back up their "hero" status. However, she is totally right when she hides Katara's letters and eventually confronts Zuko about them, and is truly sad when Zuko tells her that he never loved her. And then, of course, Katara kills her. With bloodbending. In the middle of the day.
Orochimaru and Madara in Naruto Veangance Revelaitons don't come off nearly as badly as Ronan does. Even though Madara has quite a few Kick the Dog moments (using slave labor to harvest rice and eating the people whose work isn't good), at least he hasn't had people put to death for liking modern music. Edfred in particular stands out, since he is supposed to be seen as a jerk for not liking Ronan for assaulting him, but the fanbase likes him for actually standing up to Ronan.
Film
The Wizard has two villains: one is a true villain type - a jerk kid (Lucas) who goes against the heroes in the big video game contest; the other is a guy (Putnam) who tracks down runaway kids for a living, but everyone accuses him of somehow exploiting the kids. Given that he has an attitude and uses tactics more befitting of a child abductor than a professional private detective, there could be some off-screen truth to it.
He also actively tries to prevent Sam (the two boys' father) from finding them first just so he can collect the reward. At one point, he slashes the man's tires. Certainly doesn't justify all of Sam's interactions with him (such as trying to run him over later), but Putnam was hardly just some well-meaning authority figure caught up in a misunderstanding. The guy could actually be considered an in-universe Designated Hero.
Somewhat lampshaded in Tin Cup where it's stated that no decent person could hate children, dogs, or the elderly, so, of course, the love interest's Jerk Ass boyfriend, Don Johnson, chews out a child, an old man, and a dog in a single line of dialogue.
Sgt. Doberman from the 1970s love letter to anarchy, Over the Edge. His shooting of a teenager in the film is considered a Moral Event Horizon - and subsequently, his murder by anonymous teenagers is presented as a good thing - ignoring that the stupid kid was pointing a goddamn gun at him and screaming "Die, pig!!"*
In case you're confused, pointing anything that even LOOKS like a gun at a cop is basically granting him permission to blow your head off. And that isn't some new policy of theirs; it's always been that way.
Doberman didn't know the gun wasn't loaded, but the movie plainly doesn't care about that plot point and drops it rather quickly. 70s audiences no doubt were horrified, but modern audiences might instead feel relieved that the Sergeant took this moron out before he could get the chance to breed.
Jonas and his "evil, tornado-chaser crew" in Twister. Jonas used to be a "pure" tornado chaser, then he got corporate sponsors and a fleet of black SUVs. He also has a duplicate of the main characters' "Dorothy" system, which he rightly claims credit for building. Bill (a guy who had given up tornado chasing to get a job as a TV weatherman) even assaults Jonas while he's talking to reporters, and gets angry when Jonas snidely asks how his new gig is going. This motivates Bill to abandon his fiancee and team up with his ex-wife and her crew. Bill also looks down on Jonas because he relies on technology and not instinct in order to predict tornadoes. So, if you can't sense the weather like Bill, you're a fraud, because, apparently, the whole point of tornado chasing isn't scientific research... And at the end, Jonas gets killed by a tornado. Um...yay?
This is made even worse by the fact that Bill and Jonas have the exact same goal - using the Dorothy system to gain valuable scientific data that could lead to better tornado warning systems that could save lives. Not only that, Jonas does not once use evil means to achieve these ends. There's basically no difference between Bill and Jonas ... except that Jonas is a a big fat meanie to Bill.
High School Dean Edward R. Rooney in Ferris Bueller's Day Off is presented as a villain, even though it is his job to enforce school rules. The film makes him rather crazy about his job, resorting to breaking and entering, to make him the villain.
The disaster film Meteor had an American general be portrayed in a bad light for objecting to Russians getting access to a top secret American command center during the height of the Cold War. Straw Man Has A Point.
Of course, whilst his concerns are most certainly not without justification, an equally valid counter-argument could be made that a serious and immediate threat to human civilisation demands extraordinary measures be taken. Unfortunately, the film doesn't take much time to discuss the pros and cons, much less explore the possibility of a sensible compromise.
Mrs Tingle in Teaching Mrs. Tingle is really the only sensible and likable character. Most of the movie involves the jerkass protagonist and her friends trying to torture and murder her because she accused the protagonist of cheating when she had every reason to believe that the protagonist had, in fact, been cheating. The movie also heavily implies that Trudy, the protagonist's competitor for the stipendium, pretty much deserves to be killed merely for being studious.
Dr. Jarret in Man's Best Friend is an interesting case of this. He is performing unethical & illegal research on animals (bad) and he created the genetically engineered killer dog that causes all the trouble in the movie (also bad, but keep reading). His purpose was to build the ultimate guard dog after his wife and child were killed; he figured it would be a good product to sell. He also kept Max on a strict regiment of drugs designed to keep him from going berserk and insane. When the Designated Hero steals Max from the laboratory, the police and others don't seem too interested in taking Dr. Jarret seriously, despite the fact that he has explained that his dog is a ticking time-bomb that's ready to explode in a shower of mayhem...He made the monster, but he kept it under control, and it was only due to the acts of others that it escaped and was able to kill people. And we're supposed to believe that he's bad.
Well, the Designated Heroes may be to blame for the monster actually killing people, but turning a dog into a monster does, in fact, sound pretty villainous.
The human villains in The Lost World: Jurassic Park (the movie, not the book of the same name but a completely different plot) have this trait specifically so that their arguments can be dismissed. While they were shown to be quite ruthless when dealing with the dinosaurs, the Designated Heroes were directly or indirectly responsible for every human death in the movie. The 'villains' keep going out of their way to save the protagonists' lives, while the 'heroes' continue to heckle and even sabotage them. While a Tyrannosaurus is rampaging through the hunter group, the leader suddenly finds out that one of the heroes stole the bullets from his gun. They're even partly responsible for the Tyrannosaurus rampage in San Diego. The villains wouldn't have even considered bringing it to the mainland until the heroes released all of the herbivores they had captured already, forcing them to take the T-Rex to cover their losses, which were all caused by the heroes.
The film also falls headfirst into Strawman Has a Point. The antagonists are supposed to be evil because they claim that the dinosaurs were property of the local Mega Corp, when that's exactly what they are; they wouldn't even exist if they hadn't been deliberately created, which also nicely shatters the protagonists' argument that they should be left alone to live naturally, nature having nothing to do with it. A clear example of the "villains" being more like jerks than actually evil people.
A Deleted Scene would have thrown the Designated Villain trope out the window and thrown the movie into Grey and Gray Morality, showing the Great White Hunter character (who never does anything immoral in the rest of the movie besides wanting to hunt a T-Rex) defend a waitress from sexual harassment by beating the ever-loving crap out of the drunk idiots harassing her. Thus, Designated Villain happens by 'accident' by film-makers who had hoped to avoid it. Hell, the audience probably would have rooted for the Great White Hunter - much of them already did.
The hyenas in The Lion King are clearly not on the side of the protagonists and not exactly the nicest of people. But...that's largely the fault of the heroes themselves. Given a chance to actually have something to eat, the hyenas are completely loyal until they are betrayed. Before Scar, they were essentially banished to a barren wasteland.
Percy in Pocahontas is designated as a villain simply by being the pet of Ratcliffe. Although Ratcliffe is a racist, genocidal maniac, Percy is actually a pretty decent dog. While aloof, he certainly isn't arrogant, and he doesn't attack anyone without any provocation. He just seems content with staying in the ship and enjoying his well-off, carefree life. Then, Meeko bursts in and steals his food for no reason other than to be a Troll. And then it all goes downhill from there.
In the "Kick the Can" segment of the Twilight Zone film, the apparent villain is a man whose only concern is for the welfare of a bunch of octogenarians who shouldn't be engaging in physically strenuous activity. How's he supposed to know that it's really magic at work that will keep them safe?
The villain of the 1996 made-for-TV horror movie The Beast is Schuyler Graves. He's the bad guy because: 1) He's richer than the hero, and 2) He has a less manly first name.
Except that the humans who are struggling to save Earth are scientists who are presented as invariably good guys, and are also defending the Pandoran ecosystem and the Na'vi culture, while the corporate executives and soldiers have no interest in improving the situation on Earth, and in their profiteering are essentially repeating every mistake that made Earth a Crapsack World in the first place. The Na'vi also aren't inherently xenophobic — they turned that way after their lands were invaded and their people killed.
The Hannah Montana movie's villain was a land-developer who wanted to pave an empty field to build a mall. Todd in the Shadows pointed out that a mall would actually have greatly boosted the economy of the town, attracted more people (such as tourists or prospective home-buyers—which would have also improved economy) and that the guy wants to pave an empty field that has no real use. Yet we're supposed to think that the guy is scum just because he's a land developer in a kid's movie.
Vincent the bear in Over the Hedge. On screen, the only thing he does is make RJ replace the food that he lost because he was stealing it. He makes a monologue about a bunch of Offscreen Villainy, but without that, he's really just trying to survive.
The Machines in The Matrix become this in the fluff. It turns out that their "genocide" of humanity was an act of self defense after humanity randomly decided to become hellbent on destroying them, unprovoked, purely out of prejudice. And this was after humans had used them as routinely abused slave labor for years.
Christmas with The Kranks places the Kranks at the same level as Ebenezer Scrooge simply because their only flaw in the movie is that they do not want to celebrate the commercialism of Christmas for one year.
In most movies about saving the old theater, school, ball field, etc, the villain is someone who wants to tear down this location to put their own business there, a completely legal and understandable (if somewhat tragic for the protagonists) way to make a living. Often they're corrupt or try to achieve their goal of obtaining the property through dishonest or illegal means, but sometimes the movie has no way to paint them as an outright villain than to make them kind of a jerk.
Literature
Jill in The Girl Who Owned A City. Her arguments in favor of voting and collectivism seem rather reasonable, but are dismissed in favor of the Mary Sue objectivist main character.
For those who wonder what Clifford Simak was up to before writing Skirmish, seek out an old work known as The Goblin Reservation. Offstage Villainy is taken to the greatest extreme ever seen, with a single remark about rumors of atrocities combined with a hideous appearance being enough to condemn the entire species of the Wheelers as Always Chaotic Evil. To top it off, we find out towards the end that the Wheelers were a former slave race who Turned Against Their Masters, but said masters are never shown in anything other than a positive light.
Actually, they committed one murder, and then attempted to commit a multiple murder.
Before The Worm Ouroboros decided to ditch its framing device, the viewpoint character is guided around by a talking marlet, who identifies many of the main characters and pours a ton of adjectival condemnation on the villains. This is before they've done anything. Lessingham dryly concludes that "A fiery politician is my marlet", and resolves to make up his own mind on things. He and the marlet are never referred to again. As it turns out, the villains aren't much different from the heroes and certainly don't deserve titles like "the children of night everlasting". This is an odd example because the author seems to quite like them.
Technically, she's not a villain, but Leah in the Twilight series is considered to be a bitter, shrewish harpy who is usually ignored and dumped on. Turns out, the reason she's bitter is because her fiance was essentially brainwashed into loving her cousin and everyone blames her for being upset over this all while she has to listen to her former fiance's thoughts on his True Love for her cousin. Edward threatens to kick her over a river because she yells at Bella for stringing Jacob (who she sees as a friend later) along. Add in the fact that she is one of the few characters who actively tries to better herself and move on after losing a significant other (and her father dies after seeing her shape-shift), it's kind of hard to see why readers are supposed to dislike her.
It's because the character of Bella is (by Word Of God) supposed to be someone the reader (e.g. Meyer) can envision themselves as, and for the majority of the series, serves as a This Loser Is You. So, calling her out on something legitimately despicable is not going to fly.
This happens a lot in the Twilight series, in no small part thanks to Meyer's tendency to tell, rather than show what's going on in the narrative. For example, at one point in the first novel, Edward calls Mike Newton "vile" because...um...he's been shown as being nothing but nice? Bella's internal monologue and opinion of other people is often entirely at odds with what is going on around her, and pretty much every male except for Edward and Jacob is baselessly demonized at some point.
Ironically, Edward the stalker (and borderline-abusive boyfriend) and Jacob the paedophile aren't demonised at all.
Particularly jarring is Bella's view on her father. In every other series, this might be brushed aside because she'd be considered an Unreliable Narrator or it would be normal teenager behaviour, but in this case, we are supposed to see Charlie as the mean old guy who grounds Bella and just doesn't understand how much she needs Edward.
This is after Bella starting to distance him immediately after she started dating Edward, ran away from home because she 'broke up' with him, was stalked by him across states, was severely injured in very suspicious fashions, after which she immediately decided to get back to Edward's side, was abandoned by Edward in the woods, became catatonic and suicidal, ran away from home AGAIN, to a different country, because Edward threatened suicide on her...Yeah, I can't see why he would dislike the relationship.
Even people Bella allegedly gets along with act as Designated Villains if they're not vampires. Jessica, one of the first friends Bella made, is regularly considered to be a False Friend in Bella's mental commentary; Jessica, who was nothing but nice to Bella when they first met, instantly and repeatedly forgave Bella blowing her off again and again for the first supernatural pretty boy to waltz by, and generally appears to like Bella except during her blatantly insane phase in New Moon, despite Bella's ceaselessly condescending view of her. It never once occurs to Bella that any distance that develops between her and Jessica is due to Bella being a complete parasite that only acts friendly to Jessica when she wants something from her; Bella's first flirtations with deliberately endangering herself to hallucinate about Edward's voice also put Jessica in danger, and Bella is resentful and offended when Jessica starts keeping her distance for the rest of the book!
In fact, nearly all of the human characters are demonised in this book. It is an over-arching theme of the books that humanity is flawed and weak, and must be cast off. Supernatural creatures, no matter how antagonistic they may be, are always described in positive terms, and Meyer elevates the vampires to God-like statuses, describing members of the Cullen family as 'young god' and 'avenging angel'. Bella decides that she wants to become a vampire nine days after knowing about their existence, and instantly drops all of her human ties. She not only condescends to her friends, but she jeers about her parents behind their backs. All interaction she has with them are for specific, selfish interests, like getting herself out of trouble, or seducing someone for information. Thanks to the bland narrative, Bella actually displays more signs of sociopathy than the stalking, abusive, genocidal Edward.
Mr Rochester's wife, Bertha Mason, could be Jane Eyre's only real Designated Villain, because she is the main reason why Jane and Mr Rochester cannot be together. However, she was insane and her erratic behaviour came from what spread in her family and Mr Rochester locked her up for ten years in the third story room with no one to see but a maid. One cannot help but pity her.
Similar to the Leah example, Kayla in The House Of Night makes a whopping two appearances and is promptly branded a man-stealing jealous bitch by Zoey as a result. Kayla's crime, really, is hooking up with Heath after Zoey tells her several times, in no uncertain terms, that she's broken up with him. In Betrayed, Zoey acts like Kayla was being horribly spiteful and irrational in going to the police after witnessing Zoey drinking Heath's blood, and then having Zoey threaten to do the same to her. To really hammer this point in, Zoey's friends (who never even met Kayla before) begin referring to her as "skank-bitch Kayla" after learning that she went to the police.
Although it's probably not very nice to pick at a story written by a 12-year old, critics of Swordbird by Nancy Yi Fan have complained that the main villain isn't really evil, just annoying.
In the Fairy Tale"The Wonderful Musician", the wolf, fox, and hare don't actually do anything to harm the protagonist until he tricks and humiliates them because he wanted a human companion, not an animal. Then they come after him.
Done deliberately in Rosso Malpelo, a novel written by Giovanni Verga. In fact, the child miner protagonist is portrayed by the narrator (who embodies the Sicilian mentality of the nineteenth century) as a malicious and bad bully...due to his red hair. However, it is made pretty clear that Malpelo is just a poor Jerkass Woobie, brutalized by the cruel society where he lives, who sometimes even borders on a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, especially when he interacts with his ill friend, Ranocchio. (And no, this is not a case of Villainy-Free Villain: all the other characters, with the exception of his father and Ranocchio, are far bigger jerks than him, if not outright evil).
Michael Crichton'sTimeline features a Jerk Ass corporate executive Robert Doniger whose quantum teleportation experiments kickstart the plot. He supports all possible safeguards for his technology, all accidents and disasters are caused by people refusing to follow his orders, and he does everything in his power to help the protagonists. As thanks for this, they murder him at the end by sending him back in time to die of the Black Plague. For being a jerk.
Live Action TV
Helena Peabody in series 2 of The L Word. Viewers are supposed to dislike her because she chose to give money to help poverty-stricken families rather than Bette's art gallery, and because she winds Bette up even though she only did this after Bette was very rude to her (telling her that she was unwelcome when she came to Alice and Dana's party just because she didn't like her dating her ex). Tina has sex with Bette while she's supposed to be Helena's girlfriend and this is depicted as an okay thing to do, but after this, Helena starts dating other women while going out with Tina and is made out to be a villain for it. The main characters stand her up after she goes to a lot of trouble to organize a meal for all of them, and this is depicted as acceptable behavior. Granted, Helena could be bossy and a little stuck up, but no more so than Bette, and she never got any credit for her many acts of charity and generosity.
The Odyssey episode of Wishbone dealt with the main characters wanting to save a park from being bulldozed by a developer who wanted to build a slushee bar. Of course, the developer was labeled a greedy bastard for daring to pave the way for progress. He was not a good, honest person because the sign announcing the bulldozing wasn't in plain sight. (When really, there are numerous explanations as to why that sign could have been on the ground.) At the end of the day, the tree was saved, the developer had been humiliated in court, and this editor wished for a freak forest fire. Of course, many of the villains in the original work were like this, though it's doubtful that played into the original considerations.
Incidentally, this should give you some idea of how little the real-life storylines on Wishbone have to do with the book being summarized that episode.
In the new Battlestar Galactica, Tom Zarek. His stated positions (which are in opposition to those of the show's "heroes") tend to be credible enough to get significant audience sympathy, but his actions, especially in season 4.5, are intended to show that he is clearly a Bad Guy.
Since his opinions tend to be generally sympathetic, if opposed to the heroes, Zarek might be more of a Well-Intentioned Extremist than a Designated Villain. That is, until Season 4.5, where he goes just a tiny bit too far.
In Stargate Atlantis, Bates, Kavanaugh, and Ellis tend to end up in this role. They usually have legitimate concerns or complaints, but because these are against the main cast of characters (Bates seeing Teyla as a security risk, Kavanaugh complaining to Weir about Weir degrading him in public, Ellis wanting McKay to cut the exposition and get to the point), the characters are presented as reactionary jerkasses. There is also a trend of portraying Kavanaugh, in his few appearances, as a coward, even though, every time, he is up against a situation in which his fear is perfectly understandable.
In The Office, Charles was brought in to act as a buffer between Michael Scott and upper management, which was a valid action given that Michael really should have been fired for lying about a risky sales scheme he engaged in (or kidnapping a pizza-boy, or any number of others). When Michael quit, Charles took his place and took a hard line with the office, cutting a number of activities to save money and asking the employees to actually sit down and do their work.
This can also be the case for the conflict between Andy and Dwight: both were trying to get each other fired, but we're supposed to side with Dwight.
Wait, what? Dwight is hardly ever portrayed in a positive light and is usually a total sociopath, while Andy is a generally nice guy, albeit somewhat nutty.
This was when Andy was first introduced, and was an arrogant douche who sucked as a salesman, as opposed to Dwight who, at the time, had at least some Jerk with a Heart of Gold moments to his name and was genuinely dedicated to his job. Andy's portrayal as a somewhat off but otherwise perfectly nice guy who worked hard to get past his shortcomings came with Character Development that occurred after the above conflict.
The UK version of The Office features this trope in regards to Neil Godwin (Brent's boss) who, according to Word Of God, we are not supposed to like. His crimes are neatly summed up in The Other Wiki as "He is dismissive towards David's dog and shared a joke with Chris Finch at the expense of David's Christmas party date, Carol."
iCarly: Nevel starts out this way by trying to steal a kiss from Carly (which is apparently pretty bad if you’re not into gonk nerds). Then, he unbecame this trope when he decided that revenge was in order.
Even then, he comes across as more of a Jerk Ass than a true villain
"i Meet Fred": Because Freddie didn't like Fred's videos, Lucas Cruikshank decides to stop making them. This causes everyone in school to ostracize him, he gets kicked out of every club he was in, and his own relatives start to hate him. But then in turns out that it was all a publicity stunt by Cruikshank. Even after it turns out he was lying, he still makes Freddie apologize and say his videos are funny. While he apologizes, he still refuses to say he likes his videos. This leads to SambeatingFreddieand knock him out of a treehouse. Dear, Dan Schneider: If you want us to root for your protagonists, try making them likable first.
In the early Babylon 5 episode "Survivors", Leanna Kemmer is the Designated Villain for most of the episode...because, after a witness names Garibaldi as a saboteur, and plans for a bomb are found in his quarters along with a whole lot of alien money, Ms. Kemmer (who is in charge of security for an impending visit by the President of Earth) wants to lock him up. Yes, she has a personal grudge against him, but anyone in her position would want to lock Garibaldi up and would be right in doing so. Seriously, Garibaldi, Ivanova, and Sinclair should all have been court-martialled for their efforts to obstruct her.
The problem wasn't with her locking him up; as said above, she was right to do so. The problem was that she decided that he was the sole possible suspect; she wanted his head, period, and didn't even consider looking for any other possible suspects.
The Twilight Zone episode "Sounds and Silences" centered around a Large Ham owner of a model ship making company. His meets a cruel fate in the end because he commits the sin of...making too much noise.
In a particularly famous episode, "Time Enough at Last", Burgess Meredith plays a bookworm type who spends the whole episode being abused by every person he meets, and only wants to be alone with his books. Then a nuke wipes out the entire city while he's safe in a bank vault, and he's finally free to read his books in peace...until his reading glasses break. Unfair Cruel Twist Ending? No, Word Of God says that this was his just punishment for his misanthropy. That said, Meredith's character (while perhaps preferring books to people) comes off as very sympathetic in a world where people act like such jerks.
To be fair to the jerky characters, Meredith's character was shown reading books for pleasure while on the job. He even short-changed a customer at the bank because he was so wrapped up in his book that he miscounted her money (and she said he short-changed her again, implying that he's done it before). Look, this troper loves reading as much as anyone, but when you're so addicted to reading that it starts affecting your job, you've got a problem.
No arguments there...but everyone in his entire life is determined to ensure that he never gets any time at all to read anything. Small wonder he grabs any chance he can get, however ill-considered, to enjoy what seems to be his only pleasure in life.
Cara also helped overthrow the evil overlord who was in charge of the brainwashing. So, it could be argued that she had broken her brainwashing and was already helping people without anyone forcing her to. Cara was also happy for them to kill her.
Possibly used in Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains, where people like Sandra and Coach could hardly be considered villains (lampshaded when Jeff asks if anyone thinks they were put on the wrong team); and Rob, who (shockingly) played the game more heroically than most of the Heroes. The episode where he gets voted off is even titled "I guess I'm not really a good villain". Also subverted with Parvarti and Russel, who said "what did I do that was so bad?" and ended up being the primary antagonists season after season.
Diana Marshall (played by Jane Badler of V) was heavily publicized as a villain prior to her introduction on Neighbours, on the basis of her ruthlessness in her quest to bring down Paul and Rosemary. But given that Paul was responsible for embezzling thousands of dollars from his business and Rosemary's willingness to let her nephew get away with it, it's not hard to see Diana as justified in her actions and to want her to win.
Lex Luthor in Smallville is an infamous example of this, performing many selfless (and debatably noble) acts throughout the first few seasons (including risking his life to save Clark's class from a hostage taker and saving his semi-abusive father from a tornado), only to be persistently described as having negative motivations all along when very few have actually been observed in him during his screentime...Of course, in later seasons, he regularly commits murders and performs unethical experiments, having crossed the line into actual villain.
More egregious is the way Clark himself was depicted vis-a-vis Lana. While Clark was certainly never depicted as a villain in canon, the show did seem intent on convincing viewers that Clark being uncomfortable with revealing his secret to Lana somehow makes him a horrible, nasty Jerkass who needs to learn how to "be open about [his] emotions". Worst of all, whenever Lana did something manipulative or bitchy towards Clark, the show would try to portray her as being justified simply because Clark was uncomfortable with revealing his secret to her, and the showrunners would try to portray this as being an appropriate punishment for Clark's so-called crime.
A particularly controversial character in the Star Trek fandom is Captain Edward Jellico. Commanding the Enterprise D when Captain Picard was off on an espionage mission, he apparently was supposed to come off as a martinet, as evidenced by his changing everything for no good reason other than because he could, disregarding perfectly valid advice, and generally acting like a jerk. However, when the chips were down, he proved an outstanding commanding officer who singlehandedly stopped a war, recovered the captured Picard (who, caught red-handed as a spy, had no expectation of being returned), and refrained from tossing Riker out the nearest airlock which the character badly deserved it for his childish petulance during the two-part episode.
Author Peter David, in his Star Trek New Frontier novels, uses Jellico (now promoted to Admiral) as a recurring character. For most of the series, he remains a Designated Villain to the pseudo-Military Maverick main character, Captain Mackenzie Calhoun. Then, after a Time Skip, he's informed that Calhoun is missing and presumed dead. The reader is clearly supposed to expect Jellico to not be particularly upset by this...until it's revealed that some time during the Time Skip, the two had resolved their differences and were now close friends.
Heartland had a rather idiotic example in their Christmas movie. We're supposed to cheer for the heroes who, among other things, rallied an entire town against the old man who's trying to stop them from rescuing a bunch of horses trapped by a landslide, while they mount a rescue effort. Except, the old man owns the horses in question, so he IS entitled to tell them to piss off, and he DOES have the right to shoot the sick horses to put them out of their misery! Not to mention, at the end, they are even wondering if they should let him have them after he has his change of heart?!
To sum up those points, a bunch of strangers come into town, get themselves involved in his business, get everyone against him, deny his basic right to do what he wants with his property, and actually consider rustling them for themselves. They were going for a Broken Aesop, right?
Glee had a rather frustrating example during their Gay Aesop episode. Long story short, Finn and his mom move in to live with Kurt and his dad. Kurt happens to be Flamboyant Gay and has an unrequited crush on Finn, and he organized all of this to happen, including sharing rooms with Finn, in hopes of turning him gay so they can be boyfriends. Eventually, after suffering mockery from classmates and having to deal with his prejudice, he lashes out at Kurt using a gay slur. The rest of the episode is Finn having to learn how to respect others' differences. The problem, however, was that the entire altercation was based off the fact that Kurt had been blatantly trying to seduce him in hopes of turning him gay, Finn even let him down gently (explaining that he was flattered, Kurt was great and a good friend, but he's just not into guys and Finn was uncomfortable with that and all the other changes going on), yet only Finn is treated as being in the wrong.
In a later episode, Kurt is called on this by both Finn and Kurt's dad, who originally called out Finn about it before finding out what really happened.
And slightly later than that, the "Previously On" voice calls Kurt out on it.
Mordred from Merlin, who, in this version, is played by a child. We're supposed to view Mordred as a Creepy Child because the show plays ominous music over extreme close-ups of his large blue eyes, but all that's played out on screen is a kid who's been hunted, persecuted, and had everyone he's ever loved killed by the people who are generally considered "the good team". He uses his magical powers to kill a group of knights advancing on him with swords drawn, clearly preparing to kill him - this was apparently meant to prove to the audience that he's evil incarnate, even though the good guys make self-defensive kills all the time.
Morgana definitely counts. What she has done is no worse than what Merlin has done to his own kind, including her. Yet he is viewed as the hero and she the villain. Like Mordred, at first she is only a villain because Merlin believed the dragon when he said she was. All she did was fall victim to Morgause's plans, but was called evil for it. She, of course, did bad things of her own will in series three, but probably wouldn't have if she hadn't been declared evil in the first place.
Morgause as well. What exactly has this woman done besides try to expose Uther's lies to Arthur and then win back what she thinks rightfully belongs to her half-sister? In one episode, she puts the entire castle to sleep in order to assassinate Uther and claim Morgana without any innocent lives being lost - the writers must have realized that this put her in too' good a light, and later stated that the sleeping spell would have eventually proved fatal for everyone were it not broken in time.
Morgan from Camelot starts out this way. Sure, the second thing she does is kill her father — but that seems to be over a legitimate grudge, and the first thing she does is try to forgive him for it; it's only when he hits her in the face and tells her "I have no daughter" that she moves into murder mode. After that, she spends several episodes trying to claim her throne from what, so far as she can see, is a pretender plucked out of thin air by a manipulative sorcerer. And her methods for winning the throne? Well, after an alliance with the local warlord (a matter of necessity in the absence of an army of her own) falls through, she sets to work bringing justice to the kingdom, trying to demonstrate to the people that she's a better choice for ruler than Merlin's puppet.
Except Morgan also chains Igraine up in her castle and shapeshifts into her, pretending to be her when she returns to Camelot. While she's in this disguise, she meddles in Guinevere and Leontes's relationship just to mess with Arthur and ends up killing a child which she shows no remorse for. What else? Oh she's also raped two men Merlin, while disguised as Igraine and Arthur while disguised as Guinevere. Then there's all the plotting against Arthur which she chooses to do despite him offering to share the crown with her. Sounds like a proper Big Bad to me.
Sheriff Don Lamb on Veronica Mars can come across like this. While certainly a deeply unpleasant man who has done some shocking things (Dismissing Veronica's rape in the pilot may as well have been stabbing a puppy), He is not the Complete monster type the writers are clearly trying to show him as. The fact that people seem far more comfortable putting their trust in a teenage girl and rarely, if ever, actually report crimes kind of makes the argument for incompetence difficult. Don't forget he never really asked for the job but came into it when Keith was forced to resign for chasing a lead (Which later turned out to be wrong anyway) and that He is likely just trying to keep his job (Seeing Keith fired was probably a sobering lesson in the virtues of not upsetting the apple cart). This ,combined with his backstory of parental abuse, as well as the fact that He seems to at least somewhat liked and a good boss to his men can make one far more sympathetic to Him than the writers had probably intended.
Former Vice President John Hoynes on The West Wing . The writers obviously want us to view him as a sleazy backstabber desperately clinging His way back to the top. Instead He comes across as a broken man venting his anger at years of disrespect and mistreatment at the hands of the President and white house staff. The fact that Hoynes was almost a lock for the nomination before Bartlet came along (Only at the pestering of Leo and others) and sweeped the primaries goes without mention as does the work Hoynes put in to help the house get bills passed (Using methods far less devious than what Josh had employed). He even resigned as Vice President to spare the office and his family any more bad publicity. Not exactly the devious Smug Snake He's constantly painted as.
The treatment of Internal Affairs (aka "The Rat Squad") in Law & Order, especially Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, often veers into this, presenting the officers of the division as little more than self-important, vindictive assholes targeting the main characters purely out of spite, despite their usually deserving far more censure than they inevitably end up getting.
His feud with Randy Orton may be worse. To put it in Punk's perspective, Orton is putting members of your stable on the shelf with the same move with which he stripped you of the biggest accolade in the sport. So you want revenge on him for this, but you're treated like the villain, and the Complete Monster who said he wants to break your neck and paralyze you is treated as a hero.
This also occurred in the classic feud between "Macho Man" Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan. The former accused the later of stealing his spotlight and copping a feel of his wife; both of these things were clearly seen to be true by millions watching at home, but the glory-hounding, marriage-wrecking Hogan still wound up as the hero of the story.
Happened in a feud between Jillian Hall (a heel) and the Bella Twins (faces). Brie Bella used the twin switch to beat Jillian in a match. Jillian had wrestled the match cleanly and yet was apparently supposed to deserve it somehow. Next week, Nikki Bella did the same thing. The entire feud was basically the Bellas one-upping Jillian everytime, despite being the ones that started it.
R-Truth's heel turn. To clarify, he won a match to earn a shot at the WWE title. Next week, John Morrison convinced Truth to put his opportunity for the title on the line in a match against him. Morrison won the match and Truth attacked him afterwards, thus turning heel. So, apparently, in WWE logic, he's a bad guy when Morrison is the one who manipulated him into giving up his title shot.
Truth took up the challenge, lost clean, then he threw a tantrum over it and went paranoid. That's not something a sympathetic character does.
Truth wasn't manipulated. Morrison tried to manipulate him but it backfired. Ultimately, Truth left it up to the audience who cheered at the idea of him and Morrison having a rematch. The fact of the matter is that him losing his title shot was his own fault and he was a sore loser about it. The heel turn could've been handled better, but WWE immediately used him being a sore loser to show how much of an evil person he is.
Although you could probably still call Morrison out on being a Designated Hero in this situation, well up until the point where he gets beaten senseless. Truth won two straight matches cleanly, one of which was over Morrison himself, and the third only ended because The Miz interfered. Trying to manipulate Truth into the match, even though it sort of failed, still makes him come off as a sore loser.
In TNA, The Beautiful People had a match where, on their way to the ring, they reunited with founding member Angelina Love. At the end of their match, Angelina joins them in the ring to celebrate, only for her to attack them (Leaving BFF Velvet Sky in tears). Why did she turn on them? Because she was replaced with Lacey Von Erich (done because she was having issues with her Visa that kept her from returning to the states). Yet the Beautiful People are seen as the bad guys for wanting revenge against a cheap attack by someone who they thought was their friend.
Tabletop Games
The Ventrue of Vampire The Requiem are the de facto Designated Villains, although that isn't fair, as all vampires are villainous despite their best efforts. The Daeva, who have the explicit weakness of inevitable moral decline have far more reasons to actually be the Designated Villains, only the fluff of the manuals and supplements just don't write them that way. The Daeva are sympathetic, as being evil is not really their fault, they're just morally decadent. The Ventrue, however, are always portrayed, every last vampire jack of them, as conniving, cackling, sadistic, and evil sons of bitches who are evil because that's what the Ventrue are and do.
As far as fluff goes, the Nosferatu and Gangrel tend to get Designated Hero slots, but if an NPC in a supplement is marked "Ventrue Invictus", you can guarantee that the character is going to be portrayed in a villainous light.
Mekhet, however, are the Designated Morally Ambivalent. They might as well be Vulcans for all the White Wolf writing staff cares.
Could be somewhat of a Justified Trope in regards to the Ventrue. It isn't so much that they are any more evil than other clans, but they make much more interesting villains than most other clans. With the Always Chaotic Evil aspect to the clans, most clans really can only be a villain through being a Complete Monster. The Ventrue can be Complete Monsters, but they can easily be antagonistic without it.
Vlad von Calerstien in Warhammer Fantasy borders into this, depending how you look at him. While his successors were defiantly evil, the most he did was try and take over The Empire, which its Elector Counts are trying to do all the time, and if his enemies surrendered to him, he let them live. Though all the undead he kept around would take some getting used to.
Theatre
In the play Alcestis, King Admetus is the villain. He wins the favor of Apollo so that when it's time for him to die, another may take his place. The only person willing though was his wife Alcestis so that her children will know him and not be fatherless. Since she is the one dying for a noble cause, he is the de facto villain.
From the perspective of the real world, Shakespeare's Richard III. In the play, he is made into a villain who does plenty of vile stuff, so as to make him seem like a Complete Monster. But in real life, he was no more evil than any other King of England, and he was actually said to be quite affectionate towards children and horses. Shakespeare decided to villify him in order to suck up to the royal family.
Dick Deadeye in Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore is roundly hated and vilified by all his shipmates, mainly for being ugly, intelligent, and outspokenly opinionated. His opinions are, however, the only sane ones in the show. This doesn't make him any more liked at any time. On the other hand, when he deliberately betrays the hero and heroine in Act II, nobody expects anything else from him and he suffers no punishment either.
A Double Subversion happens in Fools. Count Yousekevitch is set up to be the villain by the other characters and is presented in a ridiculous "bad guy" outfit. His only real crime is trying to marry a pretty girl. Later, he even lampshades this. He then seemingly has a Pet the Dog moment...only to turn it into a Kick the Dog and prove himself to be just as bad as everyone else said.
Ellen in Miss Saigon is often perceived as this by fans of the show, as she is seen as the obstacle to Kim and Chris reuniting.
The Bad Baronets of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore are obligated by a family curse to commit one evil deed each day, or else die in agony. The reigning Baronet, Sir Despard Murgatroyd, is a Punch Clock Villain, who gets his daily crime over early in the day and does good afterwards. After the hero is unmasked as Despard's elder brother, Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd, he emerges from his Face Heel Turn as a Harmless Villain, who commits misdemeanors so small that the ghosts of his ancestors rise up to torment him until he agrees to prove that he can do something more nefarious.
Magnificently subverted in Ibsen's A Doll House with Nils Krogstad, who is repeatedly demonized as an unpleasant and weak dog kicker, but is, upon closer inspection, just trying to secure his job so he can feed his children, and is eventually talked into a total Heel Face Turn. The real villain turns out to be Knight in Shining Armor Torvald Helmer.
The Giantess in Into the Woods. Her only real crime is not being human. She treated Jack kindly and protected him from her husband, and, in return, he robs her and kills her husband. If she was a human, Jack (who admits that he did it) would have been hauled off to jail, if not the chopping block. All the deaths in the second half are either accidents (because she can't see without her glasses) or caused by humans.
There is even a scene in the second act deconstructing this, and discussing why she deserves to live less than Jack does. Eventually, none of them can tell who is supposed to be the hero anymore.
Age of Wonders. We're told that the Elves, Halflings, and Dwarves are good, and the Orcs, Goblins, and Dark Elves evil. While the good races are described briefly as having peaceful, wholesome habits and the evil races are supposed to be violent and aggressive, we don't really see any of this in action. In gameplay, the difference doesn't show up at all: both sides are equally warlike, and have the option of fighting or buying off neutral races. Furthermore, a central gameplay mechanic is the ability to repopulate captured cities with a population of a friendly race; it's plain cultural imperialism at best and the good and evil races do this with equal impunity.
Arc Rise Fantasia gives us Eesa. There doesn't seem to be any real reason why she shouldn't help bring about L'Arc's Law to save the world since she makes it clear that she only wants to choose the Laws that are best for everyone, yet she's still the final boss. Umwat?
She denies L'Arc's Law because it worked for neither Imaginal nor Real, because it did not depend on any god's power or guidance. Eesa made it clear that the world needed conflict to keep moving, and making a law where everyone benefitted was cheating. She DID want the best for the world, but at the same time, she wanted to be useful and depended on. If not, she would have ceased to exist. So she fought for her survival, as well as to see if humanity really CAN live without gods.
Touhou runs on this; the massive, borderline psychotic cast very eager to pulverize (non-lethally, granted) each other for the most flimsy of reasons. While there are those that don't invoke this, nearly all of the Excuse Plots are based on one of the two Designated Heroes being annoyed and endeavoring to beat up the person responsible, regardless of what they're actually doing. Undefined Fantastic Object is the worst by an enormous margin: the antagonists were merely attempting to release their friend from her millennium of imprisonment, who is herself almost saintly, but no, they're youkai and therefore must be stopped.
Undefined Fantastic Object offers a rare encounter: in one route, at least, Marisa and Byakuren seem to hit it off on the subject of magic use, end-up sidelined by a painfully short theological disconnect ("'youkai' protected from humans" versus "humans protected from 'youkai'"), and it's the last boss who demands the fight. Marisa might have been rude (as always) but Byakuren didn't even try hard.
Played with in Yggdra Union, where the heroes assume that Gulcasa and his army must be evil because they conquered Fantasinia and killed King Ordene. They eventually realize—while invading Gulcasa's country—that they are wrong, but continue their invasion (and in doing so, wipe out a third of Bronquia's able-bodied population in this campaign alone) because they think it's too late to turn back. The Royal Army spends the rest of this part of the game slaughtering civilian militias and the remnants of the Imperial Army, who insist that protagonist, Yggdra, will have to go through them if she wants to kill Gulcasa. There's also some vague nonsense about Bronquia trying to bring about The End of the World as We Know It by resurrecting an ancient demon, but from the way Gulcasa and his last few generals talk about this planned resurrection, it was actually supposed to be their very last resort in case Fantasinia retaliated by invading them. Welp.
Following this, we also have Nessiah, who is actually quite finished causing trouble throughout the world by the time you find him, and whose current major offense is that he's being a vindictive little shit.*
At this point of the game, all he wants to do is leave the world of Ancardia and finally get revenge on Asgard for the wrongs done to him—and keep in mind that Asgard is run by the Bigger Bad of the series and Nessiah's people are subject to horrific levels of Fantastic Racism even when they're not marching out of step. If he succeeded, the world would be a much better place; if he died trying, well, it wouldn't be any skin off the Royal Army's nose; either way he wouldn't be your problem any longer. Instead, the Royal Army insists that he must be killed in order to prevent any possible negative consequences for the world of Ancardia.
Daleth from Shin Megami Tensei II is a literal example. He was created by the Center to be the anti-Messiah so the main character can defeat him and grow more popular.
We're never really told whyThe Government in Mirror's Edge is evil. Okay, sure, they arrested Faith's sister, but the evidence against her is pretty incriminating. And sure, they have cameras everywhere and they control most communications channels, but this is no worse than what someone living in Europe has to deal with. And yeah, they keep everything clean, which is...absolutely despicable?
Most of the Portrait Ghosts in Luigi's Mansion don't even attack, and seem fairly content with just hanging around the mansion.
While this is debatable, in BlazBlue, the NOL is straddling this line. For the most part, the organization is filled with lots and lots of Punch Clock Villains, who were doing their jobs for their paycheck. However, because Ragna mainly opposes them and they employ several Complete Monster like Hazama and Relius, combined with the fact that they are mainly composed of rich people and make up some dictatorship rule (even if it's for preventing total chaos), it becomes easy to paint them as a tyrannical group of villains or a merciless Empire type organization.
Played with in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. During the search for Amelia, you run into Rodger, and then run into a bandit leader. He was willing to ignore you and go about his way, but the party members kept saying he looked 'evil'. The only reason you fight him is because they wouldn't stop saying that and the bandit snapped.
The Dark Ones in Metro 2033. Whether or not you choose to treat them as villains is central to the plot.
Simply going by what the players see, the UED in Starcraft Brood War turn into this. They don't come off as particularly evil when you're playing as them in the Terran campaign, and many players were glad that you force Mengsk off his throne playing as them. Yet in the Zerg campaign you find Jim Raynor, who loathes Mengsk with passion, and the Protoss, who the UED barely have any contact with, helping Kerrigan try push them out when she ultimately proves to be the worse of two evils.
Recently addressed in the comic after a Mistaken for Gay brief storyline:
Cole: It's not because of a girl, or because you always succeed where I seem to fail. It's just that, well, you're a better person than I am, or ever will be. Max: Stop it. Cole: It's true. I'm petty, selfish, jealous, and small. You're none of those things, Max. You never have been. You're a big reminder of just how flawed I am, and how very little I've grown. Sometimes that's hard to be around. But I'd like to try, Max. I'd really like to try.
Sluggy Freelance has an in-universe example as part of a Harry Potter parody. Gandledorf (a Captain Ersatz of Dumbledore) explains why House Wunnybun (the Ersatz Slytherin) must always be treated like scum:
"Wunnybun is the house for bad guys. Reward them amiably? Treat them with respect? They may become good. And then our paperwork would be all screwed up."
If the heroes of Sonichu are the definitions of Designated Hero, then the villains are easily Designated Villains. This can be easily seen due to the fact that the comic is a major Life Embellishment, thus the creator attempts to paint pictures of himself in a positive light and those who wrong him in a negative light. This include security officers, the dean of his community college, and simple, ordinary internet trolls.
Syphile from Drow Tales is "evil" for having an affliction she never asked for and has no control over, Mercy Killing an animal that had clearly become Tainted, and striking back at her mother for decades of horrific emotional and physical torture.
Web Original
In the Whateley Universe corner, the Goodkind family. The richest family on earth, they run Goodkind International, Goodkind Research, the Goodkind Trust, etc. They uniformly take the position that they don't hate mutants, they merely understand that mutants represent a terrible threat to baseline humans. Since the Whateley Academy is a high school for mutants, run by mutants, this makes the Goodkinds the bad guys. Only problem? It's clear that many mutants are a terrible threat to baseline humans. The Goodkinds do provide a lot of money for Humanity First! which is full of bigots, but they also subsidize the MCO and direct the Knights of Purity. Still, when all the main characters are mutants, anti-mutant = bad.
They claim that they don't hate mutants, but when you see CEO Bruce Goodkind in private, it's clear that he does. And funding bigots is the least of their crimes against mutants. They also shipping children (including their own son) off to be tortured by a Mad Scientist who horrifically tortures mutants, for example. However, other, less influential, Goodkinds are actually considered good, or at least neutral, characters. The MCO aren't particularly good guys either, thanks to rampant dog-kicking; the Knights of Purity are an enigma - it's not clear where they stand with two major characters having an argument about this...
Ayla — nee Trevor, son of the selfsame Bruce — Goodkind, a.k.a. Phase, is a mutant, a member of Team Kimba, and one of the main protagonists. This is relevant because the stories written from his perspective seem to make it fairly clear that the Goodkinds do believe in using their considerable wealth and power responsibly and aren't necessarily bad people at all...so long as you're a baseline human, anyway (it doesn't help the mutant cause that Ayla's own mother is clinically mutophobic thanks to a particularly monstrous supervillain eating her sister alive in front of her when she was six).
Spoofed (to a degree) with Blue Laser in the Cheat Commandos shorts at Homestar Runner. Blue Laser is frequently staked out and attacked by the Commandos (Gunhaver in particular) no matter what they're doing, including shopping or having Thanksgiving dinner. Gunhaver makes a point of exaggerating the "evil" potential of every action Blue Laser takes. Occasionally, Blue Laser does do evil or pseudo-evil things, but more often than not, they're only opposed to the Commandos because the Commandos are the heroes and Blue Laser are the villains.
Of course, sometimes, it turns out that whatever innocuous thing Blue Laser was doing actually was meant to help them crush the Cheat Commandos. Like the time the Cheat Commandos busted in on their grocery shopping; they were out shopping because a computer analysis had determined that the moldy grout in the shower was the reason they hadn't yet crushed the Cheat Commandos. Blue Laser is that kind of villain.
In Codename Kids Next Door, secret groups of children are locked in war with teenagers and adults. Yet aging inevitably happens, so to prevent former KND agents who have aged past 13 from knowing KND secrets, they are supposed to willingly subject themselves to Laser-Guided Amnesia, thus becoming clueless and hopefully harmless. Anyone who does not to do this turns evil at that very second, a type of evil that includes insults and fighting dirty. There are undercover exceptions but this is usually the rule. In the KND 'verse, puberty makes you evil. This is explicitly the case. While not all adults are evil, pretty much all their enemies are adults, and kids are mostly good. (There are exceptions on both sides.) Of course, the kid's parents are good, but perhaps that's because none of them were agents (that we know), and thus not subject to The Dark Side tempting them.
Numbah 86's father is Mr. Boss. Unusual because he loves his own child, but is one of the greatest and oldest enemies of the present KND and is the leader of some of the lesser villains. To be fair though, Numbah 86 is a REAL pain in butt most of the time, because she's aggressive and hates boys.
As he puts it, "What? I love my children! I just hate everybody else!"
Some villains don't even display malice toward the KND after their introductory episodes. The holding of events like villain barbecues and award ceremonies seems to indicate that fighting the KND is a hobby as well as a crusade.
However, Numbah 1's dad was once the greatest KND agent who had his memory erased and has shown no signs of being evil (though he does seem rather dippy). There's also the fact that Chad's parents only were villains on the show because Chad was a member of KND (they thought that he had "such a low number" and wanted to pick off the other agents so that he could be Numbah 1).
Squidward comes across this way too. All he really wants is for SpongeBob and Patrick to allow him some peaceful and quiet time to himself. But apparently wanting some downtime and respite from his loud and obnoxious Designated Hero neighbor makes Squidward a Jerkass...somehow. Honestly, many viewers end up sympathizing with Squidward's desire to have some time to himself to relax, away from SpongeBob's loudness and intrusiveness.
Heather on Total Drama Island is the legitimate villain of the first season, but after that, she becomes mostly ineffective because everybody knows how manipulative she is. As a result, she goes through the second and third seasons being snarky and rude at times, but never doing anything wrong...and yet, the other characters still constantly act as if she is still evil. Probably the best/worst example is when Leshawnaknocked Heather's tooth out when Heather tried to explain that the new villain, Alejandro, was manipulating her; even when Leshawna finds out that this is true, she still openly brags about attacking Heather and never seems to consider that it was completely unjustified.
While on many occasions, they could be genuinely mean, Sissi and Jim from Code Lyoko occasionally fall into this trope simply because they threatened to expose the heroes' secrets when the heroes were acting suspiciously or breaking the rules. Sure, it was usually for the greater good, but Sissi and Jim don't know that.
To be totally fair, Jim was almost never portrayed as villainous, even to this extent, after maybe the first two seasons. Afterward, he was basically on the heroes' side more often than not.
Doctor Doom in Season 5 of Spider-Man: The Animated Series. He's created a utopia in what is otherwise a wasteland and even helped out one of the heroes by improving his powers. True, he has ultimate power over the place, but there are no signs that he has abused it. To be fair, he later obtains power he can't handle, but it's not like the heroes knew that would happen.
Though Eddy's main schtick is scamming the other kids and being exceptionally greedy, he's often forced to pay the price for attempting legitimate business ventures. More often than not, he (or the other Eds) put a lot of effort into these businesses. An example of this is an incredibly elaborate theme park ride that showcases the sort of Bamboo Technology we might expect from the future, not unlike the kind people ride frequently at Disney World. They eventually manage to break out of their role in The Movie.
There's a few cases on The Fairly Oddparents when characters are literally designated villains as the result of a wish (Jorgen in "Action Packed", the popular kids in "Scary Godparents", as well as Timmy himself in "Nega Timmy") or the circumstances, as Tootie in "Dread and Breakfast".
Tom from Tom And Jerry is usually attacked by Jerry unprovoked. Jerry is portrayed as the hero. No matter what happens, Jerry is viewed as being right and Tom is always punished. The worst examples are when Tom is, in an episode set in the past, executed when he was just doing his job.
To clarify, Tom's job in this short was simply defending his home's supplies and nothing malicious.
To be fair, the shorts had plenty of other instances where Tom would pick on Jerry for fun.
Wile E. Coyote from Looney Tunes is just trying to get a bite to eat; in some cartoons, he's so desperate for food that he is seen eating shoes, cans, and flies, and he is almost always depicted as the villain despite the Roadrunner not being very heroic. Sometimes, the Roadrunner can be quite mean to him, like causing him to hit his head on the cliff walls, scaring him into jumping off the cliff, and he once got him to eat a stuffed toy of himself which was filled with metal, causing him to get caught in a magnet. Of Course, the Coyote IS trying to kill and eat the Roadrunner, putting him in danger every day of his life.
Indeed, one of the rules the writers always followed was that the audience should always sympathize with the coyote. If not for his motivations, than for the poor idiot's inability to go one day without hurting himself. For what it's worth, they generally never show the coyote starving even if he is hungry enough to chase after the roadrunner. The implication being that the coyote brings it on himself by choosing not to give up and chase something slower.
A better case is Sylvester in "Canned Feud" where he's not trying to hurt the mouse; he just wants the can opener that the mouse is spitefully keeping from him so he can eat cat food. Naturally, he fails.
Also, when Sylvester is pitted against Speedy Gonzales. Usually, like Tom, he's just defending a food stockpile.
The large majority of times Sylvester, similar to Tom, is treated in universe as a monster and a bully for going after "innocent" little animals, with many middle parties fending him off and punishing him harshly. This, of course, only happens when said animal isn't an invading pest, at which point, the very same people often lashing out at the cat for not doing his job. Adding to that how Sylvester has fewer vindictive moments than Tom and is almost always motivated by food or duties, and the guy comes off as highly sympathetic, but he's arguably one of Looney Tunes' most consistent Butt Monkeys because, well, Cats Are Mean.
The Giant in the Futurama episode "Benderama", whose only "crime" was getting mad that everyone was being ridiculously douchey to him. Though he likely wasn't meant to be seen as antagonistic as much as everyone else was meant to be the Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist
Worse off, Bender, who had been a real douche to him, eventually has his clones absorb and kill him.
A great many cartoons feature a slow-witted, loyal dog trying to defend some valuable property from a thief. We're supposed to take the thief's side. Probably the most obvious example is Chilly Willy, though Underdog's Klondike Kat also qualifies.
A possible deconstruction of this trope: in the pilot episode of Justice League, an American Senator has a proposal to rid the world of nuclear weapons by having Superman work round-the-clock to dismantle the nukes of every country on Earth (it's implied that all the countries agreed to this). While he's outlining the proposal, an angry American General stands up and declares that he shouldn't do it because "Those weapons are our only defense against aggression!" (Not to mention, in this continuity, the Earth had just barely escaped an alien invasion by Darkseid...and a brainwashedSuperman as well...only a few years earlier) The American general, of course, is accused of warmongering and shamed into silence and the nuclear disarmament begins. Then, after all the nukes in the world are disarmed, it turns out that the Senator was actually an evil alien in disguise and the disarmament plan he proposed was intended to keep the nations of Earth from destroying the alien ships that were about to invade. Oops. Guess you should have listened to the warmongering American General in the first place, eh? *
The funniest part of that episode is that when the invasion began, the Senator (who hadn't yet been revealed as an alien) appeared on television and announced that "no one could have predicted this would happen". Well, no one except for, um, the American General who said those nukes were, quote, "our only defense against aggression".
The Duelist in the ThunderCats (2011) episode "The Duelist and the Drifter" appears guilty of nothing more than challenging fighters to sword duels and winning, taking the losers' swords in the process as per prior agreement. Nevertheless, once the drifter (who lost a sword to the Duelist) tells his story to Lion-O, the young Thundercat becomes awash in righteous anger, and decides that he simply must challenge the duelist in order to right the wrong of somebody winning. While the Duelist does eventually prove to be less-than-honorable—he attempts to kill Lion-O after their duel had already ended—there is no evidence that he had been doing anything wrong before that, apart from some unadvertised deck-stacking in his favor through the use of two blades to his opponents' one. After all, he introduced himself as "the Duelist". It's not his fault that Lion-O failed to pick up on the homonymic pun.
The Urpneys of The Dreamstone, who are essentially Slave Mooks to the far more malicious Zordrak, ordered into stealing the titular stone with threat of Cool and Unusual Punishment or death if they fail. The heroes are generally apathetic to this situation and have no problem punishing them equally anytime they invade the Land Of Dreams (even using somewhat greyer solutions such as Heel Face Brainwashing or placing them in certain death situations, on a few occasions). Add to that their highly affable demeanor and camaraderie, and the Urpneys really linger as genuine antagonists.
Megamind is this in-universe - everybody were always seeing him as nothing but trouble and his attempts to blend in and get friends backfired. His main motivation of being a villain is that everybody thinks of him as one already, so why not play along? Of course he later learns he doesn't have to be what people want him to.
