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alt title(s): Designated Antagonist 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.
— Richard III, Act I, Sc. i.
The Designated Villain is a character who is introduced with a score of petty acts in a very short period of time. This is a heavy-handed way to tell the audience this character is not to be liked. Any astute arguments and observations of this character (who is often an intellectual or authority figure) 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 is a jerk. This isn't a case of a deliberately over the top villain, it's a personification of being an ass for its own sake. In certain genres, like Romantic Comedy, one doesn't need to be anything more than a jerk to be a legitimate Shallow Love Interest type of antagonist, but the more "serious" the genre, the more immoral the villain has to be to truly qualify as such. It becomes the case that often the things the Designated Villain points out make a lot of sense, but are Hand Waved away due to their "evil"ness. The Resenter is a potential subtrope of this aspect.
An occasional reason for this is that the heroes themselves engage in actions of dubious morality, and need someone completely odious to look good in comparison. To this end they're forced to carry the Villain Ball.
Recently, writers are much more likely to give even the most ruthless villains deeper motivations and provide them with a potentially sympathetic backstory, even for "classic" villains who normally get Anvilicious passes. Designated Villains are rarely tolerated except in the simplest stories. Alternatively, characters of this type may be set up as a subversion of the trope, becoming genuinely sympathetic villains (or antiheroes) despite their initial boorish characterization.
Designated Villains are sometimes given examples of Offstage Villainy, loosely hinted, vague "bad deeds" or reputation that the audience never gets to see, happening to characters that the audience never gets a chance to care about. Either that, or they may commit acts of Designated Evil, where all the cues are there to indicate that the writer wants the audience to think these are evil, horrible actions even if they're not so bad (or even understandable). Occasionally, their "evil" consists entirely of being mean or rude to the hero... while being very nice and even heroic to everyone else. Expect "heroes" with Protagonist Centered Morality to consider them evil regardless.
A sign of this is when the writer uses "and that's terrible" for actions that, in fact, aren't really that terrible at all. Contrast A Lighter Shade Of Grey, where the "acts" are much smaller and make the Designated Villain only slightly eviler than the protagonist.
A small note: while the alternate title might say "Designated Antagonist", being an antagonist and being a villain aren't the same thing. The redirect stays because the mistake was left uncorrected for so long and spread quite a bit.
Examples
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Anime
- About halfway through the anime Fafner In The Azure Dead Aggressor it seems the writers realized that they had made their Designated Hero Hidden 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 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 himself 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 (of course, it's important to note that the Doma arc was a filler arc...)
- The current bad guy of Rosario To Vampire has the evil actions of... agreeing to marry a young girl to save her village from dying out, trying to enforce said contract, kissing his fiancee (and pointedly saying he stopped there because doing anything more with a girl that was crying would be pretty creepy) and saving the life of Kahlua by breaking up a fight even though she could clearly have killed the protagonists. How evil. Admittedly, he does act kinda slimy but the characters all react like every single thing he does is crossing the moral event horizon to the point it's laughable.
- To be fair, it almost seemed like he wanted them to think badly of him for some reason; he was acting that slimy. And stealing a kiss from a girl is a pretty big deal in Japanese culture, especially if it's her first one. It's subverted later anyway when he stops Kahlua from killing Moka. The main characters aren't sure what to think of him after that.
- Let's not forget he's part of the reason the village was dying and he was coming very close to RAPING the girl and mocking her for being upset about it...
- King Gurumes, the villain of the first DragonBall 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!
- 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 realize that he's a little too sympathetic and install his aide as the Big Bad instead.
Film
- The villain in any Marx Brothers movie is over-the-top, so as to cast Groucho's abrasive, often morally-ambiguous characters in a good light.
- Subverted in Peter Jackson's King Kong. Bruce Baxter starts off as a typical vain, cowardly Hollywood pretty boy but comes around and saves the day in the end.
- Magnificently subverted in the 1986 version of The Fly, with Stathis Borans, who is the heroine's boss as well as her ex. He's introduced as a creepy, skeptical, jealous, asshole, and we all think he's going to somehow exacerbate the situation, but he turns out to be a great guy.
- The Wizard has two villains, one a true villain type as a jerk kid who goes against the heroes in the big video game contest. The other is a guy 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.
- 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.
- Wizards! does this to an entire species, according to David Brin's description of it in Tomorrow Happens. In sum, he rather identifies with the mutants the main characters do their best to slaughter.
- Probably not a valid example, as the mutants' misdeeds were either played for laughs or were an Aesop about the dehumanizing effects of warfare on participants and bystanders, alike.
- 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 SU Vs. 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. Then Jonas gets killed by a tornado. Um... yay?
- In the Fantastic Four movie, Dr. Doom becomes one of these through Adaptation Decay; in the comics, his grudge against Reed Richards is based around Disproportionate Retribution and the fact that he erroneously and irrationally blames Reed for all his problems, despite the fact that Reed had nothing to do with them. In the movie, however, Reed really is pretty much responsible for everything bad that happens to Doom. So, whilst Doom is still a villain and behaves accordingly, his actions suddenly become a lot more sympathetic.
- The Son'A from Star Trek Insurrection. Originally part of the Ba'Ku race, they grew fed up with their people hoarding a miraculous life and youth extending substance native to a planet they colonized, and in exchange were banished from the planet. By the time the film takes place, their bodies are falling to pieces from no longer having access to the substance, which takes things pretty far into Unfortunate Implications when we're supposed to see them as evil over the young, sexy Ba'Ku.
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, is 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.
- This troper recalls a short novel he read in his first year of middle school (he was 11 at the time). Taking place during a war between France and Prussia, it was the tale of two French friends who always used to go fishing together... and decide to pick a place within the Prussian occupied territory to do so. Of course, the Prussian commander has them captured and interrogated as spies, and when they don't answer his questions, he keeps them as POWs. It was clear, by the tone of the story, that the reader is supposed to consider the Prussian commander as a Complete Monster, yet this troper always thought that the guy had only done his job (after all, for what he knew, they could very well have been spies), and the two protagonists were extremely stupid for willingly going beyond enemy lines.
- Galbatorix from the Inheritance Cycle. A closer look at his reign usually shows that it's hard to see why he's supposedly such an evil tyrant. He is never shown doing anything other than sitting on his throne, so it's easy to blame all those evil actions commited by the empire on his rogue subordinates. He did kill off the original Dragonriders, but for all we are told they were a racist military junta. He does everything in his power to defeat the Varden, but that's exacly what a ruler, good or evil, is expected to do against a rebellion. In fact, it is said that the empire was running along fine before the Varden started the whole mess of a war. There's indications that he's not a great person, like how in Brisingr he asks Oromis to join him to bring peace and prosperity to the Empire using the above arguments, but Oromis refuses. After Oromis refused said offer Galbatorix admitted that he would have made Oromis into a slave if he had accepted the offer, which shows he's not a good guy, but there's still a lack of evidence that he's such an awful ruler that it's worth starting a war over.
- Yeah, aren't you forgetting something? He slaved the immortal souls of pratically ALL the dragons in the world, and only wants Sapphira for breeding, since she's the last living female of the species. Imprisioning the souls of an entire sentient species to gather their power and wanting to turn the only living female of said creatures into a baby making machine with no other use seems quite evil to me. Of course, this doesn't explain why all the humans hate him so much, since I doubt most of them care that much about dragons
- A better example from the series is Murtagh. He was an extremely sympethetic character even before his Face Heel Turn, and after he does it he makes it completely clear that he doesn't want to follow Galbatorix, but has to because he is now physically incapable of disobeying him due to Mind Control. And yet Eragon treats him like the most irredeemable of traitors and everyone agrees with him.
- To Eragon's credit, he realizes he was a bit unfair to Murtagh and comes up with a way to free him from the spell. Thing is, the cure would basically destroy his identity turn him into a different person. When Murtagh realizes that's a pretty crappy way out and refuses, Eragon goes right back to the previous treatment.
Live Action TV
- 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 labelled a greedy bastard for daring to pave the way for progress and that he wasn't a good, honest person because the sign announcing the bulldozing wasn't in plain sight. (When really, there are numerous explanations 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 its doubtful that played into the original considerations.
- 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.
- To be fair, he was supposed to be ambigious. In the end it was reminded that no matter how good complaints this guy has, he still has terrorist's instincts when it comes to deciding the method of action.
- 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 reactionist 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.
- In Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Section 31 is basically the black ops of the Federation. While they appear to believe in the values of the Federation, they have no problem breaking them violently to protect them for everyone else. Most notably, they poison the Great Link (Which would have resulted in the near extinction of Changelings, and complete destruction of thier society), which ends up leading to an early surrender of the Dominion (When promised the cure). They are, however, viewed in a solely negative light by the characters. Considering the activities the characters get up to, it's hard to tell if this was intentional or not.
- 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 to do so. Seriously, Garibaldi, Ivanova, and Sinclair should all have been court-martialled for their efforts to obstruct her.
- Seems to me that it wasn't so much her wanting to lock up Garibaldi as the fact that she became fixated on him and only him being behind it ignoring any other evidence or explanation.
Western Animation
- In 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 chooses 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 evil, and kids are mostly good. (There are exceptions on both sides.) Of course, the kid's parent's 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 to evil.
- Erm... Numbah Zero?
- And also Numbah one's mother, actually maybe also Numbah two's dad. He did pass down to his son a 2x4 powered tube which he used for that tube race episode, buts thats This Tropers Wild Mass Guessing
- 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.
- A bit of a double subversion in the shopping episode though, because at the end it's revealed that they went shopping for cleaning products, because mildew is (inexplicably) a reason for not crushing the Cheat Commandos.
- Plankton in Sponge Bob Square Pants in recent episodes, in which he's become much more of an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain, and Mr. Krabs becoming more of a Jerk Ass Designated Hero.
- Courtney from Total Drama Island in season two, since Justin left. But really she is nothing more than a whiny spoiled princess who thinks she is right, than really evil. Her scheming involves manipulating Justin's feelings for her to get ahead of the game, but Justin did the same in earlier episodes.In the Get A Clue episode, she tricked Lindsay for a DNA sample, but gave her a nice spa treatment in order to get it.(Heck Lindsay's friend, Beth tricked her into giving up her DNA sample as well.) Courtney then convinced everyone to listen to her and not Lindsay.That this whole thing about Chris being dead is all fake,which is understandable since Lindsay is not the brightess, and with past episodes, it's just common sense. And spends most of her time whining to Chris for prizes, or to her lawyers for help. Is no Heather that's for sure.
Sympathetic Examples
Anime and Manga
- 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.
- Mamiina from Simoun, who tried to sexually assault one of the protagonists and murder the other in her first appearance, but grew from The Libby into a much more sympathetic character.
Film
- Extreme example: The human villains in Jurassic Park II: The Lost World (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. Otherwise, the filmmakers would have to acknowledge that the Designated Hero was more or less directly responsible for every death in the movie.
- I feel that this deserves a bit more elaboration, considering how much of a Wall Banger it is. The Corrupt Corporate Executive and his mercenaries commit the horrible act of capturing dinosaurs (which his company made btw) to put in a zoo. Seriously, the only real Kick The Dog moment they had was when one of the mercenaries tasers a procompsognathus (In the opening scene, a pack of these animals attacked a young girl, and later in what I assume the writiers thought would be a fitting Karmic Death, kill that mercenary). So, what do the heroes do in order to prevent these guys from building a zoo? They sabotage the mercenary camp, which leads to everyone being stranded. Then, one of the heroes sabotages the head mercenary's elephant gun (He wanted to hunt down a T. Rex.). So when the T. Rex are rampaging through the merc camp, the head mercenary can't take them out. Another failed attempt at dog kicking involves the CCE ordering the T. Rex shot later on... when it's rampaging in San Diego and does kill a few innocent civilians. And yet, it's the mercenaries and CCE who are "evil" for wanting to build a freakin' zoo!
Literature
- Aaaand 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 Super Hero School high school for mutants, run by mutants, this makes the Goodkinds 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 they don't hate mutants, but when you see CEO Bruce Goodkind in private its clear he does. And funding bigots is the least of their crimes against mutants, shipping children (including their own son) off to be tortured by a mad scientist who studies mutants, for example. However, other, less influental, 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 yet to show up.
- It's worth noting that 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 her 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, of course.)
- On the other hand, they take their own offspring and let a mad scientist 'experiment' on him —stretched on a rack, injected with poisons, chunks of flesh cut off him, electrodes attached to his genitals, even driving an I-beam through his torso—— while they watch. It is indicated they have done this to dozens or possibly hundreds of other mutants unfortunate enough to fall in their clutches and not powerful enough to escape them. Interestingly enough... Ayla doesn't break out. They willingly let him go...and he gets back in contact with his family later on. Furthermore, Emil Hammond sees Ayla AGAIN to verify that Ayla's changing into a girl...and the only thing he does that's 'evil' is restraints. "Because 'it' would most likely kill me if 'it' could..."
- This is possibly a more literal example of the Trope. They are against the heroes because the heroes are mutants, but not all of them are actually VILLAINS. The MCO is also an example of this in a different way. The MCO sets up important laws that keep things from going apeshit, and would normally be relatively okay. Except that 90% of them are apparently biggots. They're only villains because they constantly kick dogs. Their normal motives are pretty sane.
- The Knights of Purity have just shown up. Currently its not clear where they stand with two major characters having an arguement about this.
- Deliberately invoked in Typewriter in the Sky, L. Ron Hubbard's Deconstruction of swashbucklers. The protagonist of the story is the antagonist of the story-within-a-story, but does his best to subvert the author's wishes. Even the editor can't tell who's supposed to be the good guy, so he forces a bit of rewriting and, among other things, has the newly revisioned baddie attempt I Have You Now My Pretty on the heroine.
- A particularly controversial character (at least in 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 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 in a Designated Villain position 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 not to 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.
- The confusion is particularly pronounced among people who have served at sea IRL — Jellico acts precisely as a good captain is supposed to act as regards maintaining good order & discipline, holding drills, etc., and we honestly can't grasp what the hell the Enterprise's crew is whining about.
- Three words: Change of command. It's the God-given right of any captain to engage in institutional schizophrenia just to get everything the way he wants it (and usually the way the last guy didn't).
- In the BBC's recent Robin Hood series, Sir Guy of Gisbourne was designated as the black-leather-clad, stubble-wearing, raspy-voiced Dragon to the Sheriff's Big Bad. Unfortunately, he spent most of his time working hard to uphold fairly reasonable laws, trying to honestly win the heart of Maid Marian, and challenging Robin Hood to a fair fight. On one occasion he was tricked into killing an innocent man, and then appeared shocked and horrified when he found out. Every couple of episodes he'd tax someone unfairly or kill an unarmed outlaw, just to remind people that he was really a bad guy, but mostly he came across as the most inherently noble character on the show. Admittedly the competition wasn't exactly stiff...
Theater
- 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 the ghosts of his ancestors rise up to torment him until he agrees to prove he can do something more nefarious.
- Parodied as early as Gilbert & Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore. Because of his Meaningful Name, nobody trusts Dick Deadeye. His opinions are even criticized when he's simply agreeing with everybody else. Their inexplicable dislike causes him to become, if not evil, then extremely obstructive.
- 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 Armour 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 said 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 said humans.
Webcomics
Western Animation
- X-Men Evolution set up Avalanche as a villainous character on his first appearance, despite the fact he was quite obviously just a troubled teen with a few too many Berserk Buttons but a more or less genuine good heart. In the second season, he even had some straight-up admirable qualities (he did get some recognition with a relationship of sorts with Kitty Pryde).
- Ed Edd N Eddy has the unique distinction of having Designated Villain Protagonists, in the form of the Eds. They always lose and end up treated like crap by the end of nearly every episode, and Eddy is the only one that ever deserves any of it, even if they didn't even do anything that bad. Add to this the fact that most of the rest of the cast gets away with being insufferable little assholes who are unconditionally mean to them with little or no provocation. Especially bad is the episode "The Good, The Bad, and the Ed", where Eddy faces Rolf in an endurance contest, and after trying his hardest and going through an insane amount of pain, he loses by the smallest margin possible. All this gets him is ridicule from his peers, nagging from Edd for being reckless, and an embarrassing consolation prize.
- 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.
- One begins to think that Eddy's the reincarnation of Charlie Brown. Actually, now that I think about it... *heads off to WMG*
- In The Movie when the other kids see how Eddy's brother treats him, and Eddy confesses that the way he acts was always in an attempt to get his brother's respect, they become much more sympathetic and even stop Johnny and Plank from attacking them over the recent Noodle Incident (which the other kids had been chasing the Eds for the whole movie over) before carrying them off triumphantly in recognition of the Eds manageing to knock out Eddy's brother. Even the Kankers show disgust over Eddy's brother's abuse, and drag him into his trailer with the obvious intent of some much deserved retribution.
- 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", Timmy in "Nega Timmy". A more traditional version of this trope occurs in "Dread & Breakfast", where Tootie is suddenly referred to as one of Timmy's enemies by Timmy, Cosmo, and Wanda, and now has no problems teaming up with Crocker and Dark Laser. This comes as a real WTF moment, because even fans who outright hate Tootie wouldn't classify her as a villain. It's in character of Cosmo to label her as such, and maybe Timmy, but with Wanda it came out of nowhere. Either the writer of that episode really hated Tootie, or this is setting up for something.
Video Games
- Final Fantasy XII: Vayne's big evil plan throughout the whole game? Stop evil gods from treating humans like puppets.
- To be fair the heroes also want this; the problem is that Vayne also wants to conquer everything and install himself as the new, Nethicite-powered Dynast-King, which isn't really necessary. While the protagonists agree with freeing Ivalice from the Occuria, replacing one evil with another isn't quite desirable.
- Mass Effect: From a certain point of view the geth come off this way. After more or less accidentally achieving self awareness they ask their creators "Who am I? Why am I here?" The creators immediately attempt to commit genocide against the entire, now millions strong, AI species. This is handwaved by saying there is just nothing the A Is could possibly want from Organics, so they must exist in a state of constant genocidal warfare. Given the way they were treated, though, it's not hard to understand why the geth like to put meatsacks on spikes...
- To be fair, that happened a long time ago, and Shepard can point out the geth were just defending themselves back then. Unprovoked attacks on species other than their creators is kind of hard to justify, though.
- The Geth had a loooong time after slaughtering their masters to near extinction in retaliation to be heinously bored and release some giant Cosmic Horrors, who they worship as their machine god. The Cosmic Horror happily told them to go kill everything fleshy on sight. The Geth were simply happy to serve their new (still robotic) overlord. The Geth aren't all that bad, just really really easy to manipulate into doing horrible horrible things.
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