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Sam: Max, where should I put this [bomb] so it doesn't hurt anyone we know or care about?
Max: Out the window, Sam! There's nobody but strangers out there.
(BOOM!)
Sam: I hope there was nobody on that bus.
Max: Nobody we know, at least.
Schlock: Are you sure you want me, Captain? The news said I'm a reckless, dangerously violent sociopath.
Tagon: You are. But you're my reckless, dangerously violent sociopath.
Schlock: I think I love you, sir.
A form of Anti Hero. The Heroic Sociopath is a gleefully wicked character who takes on the role of The Hero and works towards a positive goal while being as evil as possible along the way. He or she may be compelled to do good by blackmail, supernatural compulsion, money or simply because they recognise that co-operating with the other good characters in their story is ultimately to their own benefit.
Unlike the Anti Hero, a Heroic Sociopath isn't ineffectual or angsty - he loves what he does for a living. And unlike the Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist, he seldom if ever suffers any wacky hijinks. Instead, he causes wacky hijinks. Lots of it. And the audience loves him for it. In fact, the more horrible his actions, the more they will seem like mere wacky fun.
A Heroic Sociopath could (and would) execute people, swindle old ladies, detonate buildings and punt puppies into traffic, all in broad daylight with a hundred witnesses present, and still avoid arrest by talking the police out of it. The Karma Houdini is a natural part of their being — he's literally too badass to suffer any backlash for his horribleness, usually both inside the show and from the audience. Being cranked up to the top and played for laughs as he is, the Heroic Sociopath is so evil and invincible that the audience cheers for him, admiring his ability to get away with any horrible act he may engage in. At the same time, he serves as a wistful fantasy for the audience. Anyone who has wanted to give the boss what they deserve can wish they were like the Heroic Sociopath, or had a Heroic Sociopath ally to sic on said boss, while knowing that's not the case.
The Heroic Sociopath remains one of the "good" guys — something of a protagonist version of the Psycho For Hire. While a monster, he's our monster, and the bad guys better run when we unleash him. Sometimes the other heroes have protection from the Heroic Sociopath's hijinks — it might be a Restraining Bolt, or the fact that the heroes combined can stand up to him. Failing that, they may be in some way endearing to him. Or possibly the Heroic Sociopath just finds the heroes amusing enough to leave them (mostly) alone. Other times, they don't have that luxury and are stuck with an "ally" as disrupting to them as to their enemies. As various examples that the Psycho For Hire page shares with this one may testify, it is all too possible for a character to sit on the fence.
Compare/contrast with the The Ace (which is a hero taken to the same ludicrous degree), The Humphrey, The Nietzsche Wannabe, and The Psychopathic Manchild. The Heroic Sociopath is distinct from the Villain Protagonist: The Villain Protagonist is an evil character fighting for evil goals, while the Heroic Sociopath is an evil character fighting for good goals.
Not to be confused with Vigilante Man.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- All in the presence of the rest of the cast, all female, who proceed to get freaking pissed, but everybody's crazy in this manga.
- Claire Stanfield in Baccano!; assassin by trade and a gleefully homicidal solipsist who believes the entire world is a figment of his imagination. He's usually inclined to help and protect the people he likes and sees as innocent... on the other hand, he has no qualms about killing anyone who offends his warped sense of justice, usually in spectacularly gruesome fashions.
- Ladd Russo also may qualify, though to what extent he counts as "heroic" is even more questionable than it is with Claire.
- Hayato Jin from New Getter Robo, who harbors homicidal tendencies and tends to put on a profoundly creepy Slasher Smile. He gets better, though, as the challenges of being a member of the Getter Team even him out.
- Sagara Sōsuke from Full Metal Panic qualifies to a certain extent — especially in Fumoffu. He keeps detonating buildings, attacking people who he deems "suspicious" (read: everyone that is not Kaname), and waves guns around and at people — yet he's never caught by the police. However, this is taken to new heights with the Full Metal Panic: Overload! manga, where he embodies this trope. In one chapter, he's shown having no problems killing a little girl's father, because she told him she'd rather her father not exist (and seeing that he owed her, he decided to "help" her...).
- The scary Ryo Mashiba of Hajime No Ippo fits this trope wonderfully. While he isn't really evil, he's also named "The Executioner" for his penchant of completely ruining his opponents and a real misanthrope. He also does have a certain amount of bloodlust and would cheat if it really matters (Though, "slightly" cheating if the cheater is desperate is somewhat accepted by the characters, surprisingly). However, he does have a slightly softer side for his sister Kumi, who is the reason he boxes at all, even though he isn't overwhelmingly friendly to her. Ryuhei Sawamura could fit too, if you erase the "Heroic" and replace it with "Bastard". Quite frankly, in his fight with Sawamura his bad side
 ◊ explodes◊.
- Akagi. In fact, he has quite a lot of traits of actual antisocial personality disorder, such as: Failure to conform to social norms, deceitfulness, reckless disregard for safety of self and no fear nor really any emotions.
- Victory Leo in Transformers Victory spends several episodes as a psychotic killing machine who would gladly let a member of his nakama die by steam if it means he gets to kill more Decepticons. The fact that Leozack calls him on this says a lot.
- Possibly Yami from the early Yu-Gi-Oh! manga.
- Possibly? He set some dudes on fire!
- Adam Blade from NEEDLESS. A horrendously overpowered, rude and inconsiderate needless with a penchant for little girls and the intelligence of a brick, Blade is nonetheless one of the series' 'good guys'.
- Akane Mishima's Kampfer form. She's a protagonist, but a completely Gun Crazy maniac who wouldn't hesitate to kill her opponents.
- Ryougi Shiki, the main character of Kara No Kyoukai, whose "Kuu" side of her Kuudere personality would be her Blood Knight tendencies. Hell, even after first using her eyes and killing a lich by throwing it into a power generator, then slashing it to death with her fingers, her only question to Touko (in response to a job request) before passing out is "Can I kill people?".
- Sebastian from Kuroshitsuji. We see him doing daily chores and caring for his young master Ciel, even bathing and buttoning up the child's shirts for him. In the same instant he can turn and murder someone if commanded to do so by Ciel and he has absolutely no remorse for his actions. Then again, he is a demon so...
- Recently, Sasuke from Naruto has been showing a few symptoms of this, gradually shedding away his previous angst.
- November 11 of Darker Than Black clearly is a sociopath, and his violence tends to play out in a cool/amusing way. In his first appearance, he delivers a long Character Filibuster against smoking, and then after the thugs he was dealing with try to rob him and blow smoke in his face, he kills them all and is next seen lighting up a cigarette- which turns out not to be Hypocritical Humor. He does do a good deal of dog-petting, but he's noticeably a character that doesn't angst about being a superpowered sociopath and still remains fairly heroic.
Comics
- Dogbert, Dilbert. A great deal of what Scott Adams wishes he could say or do ends up in Dogbert's actions.
- Lobo of the DCU, as expected of an over-the-top parody of the Nineties Anti Hero, especially in series where he's teamed up with actual heroes, like 52 and L.E.G.I.O.N.
- Quite possibly the worst thing Lobo's ever done was abducting, raping and impregnating (then presumably abandoning) a teenage girl as shown in the "Lobo: Infanticide" mini. This is played for laughs.
- Or there's the reason why he is "Lobo, the last Czarnian". He killed his entire species by mass-producing and releasing a genetically engineered killer scorpion-hornet-thing with a venom that paralyzes the victim but keeps them fully aware as it kills them in a most excruciatingly painful way. And he did it because he wanted to be unique.
- The title character of Jhonen Vasquez's Johnny The Homicidal Maniac; at least when he's not being full of wangst.
Johnny: On a crowded street, I could drain a flower vendor of all his blood, and not get caught! People would scream and vomit, and yet, somehow, I would walk away unscathed. I could do that!... Oh, wait... I did do that!
- Nite-Wing (differs from Nitewing) from the comic series Nightwing personifies this trope.
- The slightly cracked, catchphrase spouting, ever-shameless Deadpool, who
practically completely defines this trope! He's also Axe Crazy, loves to make people go What The Hell, Hero?, is Dangerously Genre Savvy, and is the Trope Codifier of a few other tropes.
- Note, however, that it seems to depend on the writer. Sometimes he's this with a very large helping of Crazy Awesome, while at other times (particularly in the newer issues) he becomes a Noble Demon who would Never Hurt An Innocent(see the page quote!). As noble as someone who is insane can be anyway.
- Considering that he's an absolute fruitcake, there is absolutely nothing preventing both those interpretations from being true, depending not so much upon the writer as on the state of Deadpool's brain-pan.
- Marv from Sin City, while having heroic intentions and an unbelievably strong resolve towards doing what he feels is right is a borderline psychopath who does not hesitate to torture or kill anybody who crosses him or his sense of justice in the most graphic and creative way that he can think of and shows no remorse for his actions (in fact, he actually revels in his bloodshed).
- Another more stoic example of a Heroic Sociopath is deadly little Miho. She does not speak, and she wears no expression on her face when she goes into action other than a deadly calm. But she's one of the rare heroic examples of the Psycho For Hire because it's pretty obvious that she loves killing, and will often toy with her victims before finishing them off. True to the trope, the girls of Old Town mainly use her when they need killing done, but she does things to people that can make even the more hardened of their number go "Yeesh!"
- Depending on who's writing him at the time, Batman. Especially in the pages of the Alternate Universe All-Star Batman & Robin (which spawned the ever-popular "I'm the goddamn Batman!").
- One of the trope makers of this trope is Rorschach from Watchmen, who took the Anti Hero concept and ran it to the point of deconstruction and beyond. When measuring him against the general consensus of this trope, however, he is a non-example to all but the most rabid of Misaimed Fandom.
- To elaborate: he's a right-wing extremist vigilante with various severe mental issues. In his own eyes, he's a shining hero of justice who sees the world exactly for what it is. To everyone else, he's a smelly bum who kills smellier bums. To the fandom, he's a Cute But Troubled little mess of freckles and scowls who needs to get laid.
- Sam and Max: Freelance Police, in most of their media appearances, are a Heroic Sociopath duo. The dynamic being that Max is much more sociopathic than Sam, who is mostly of the "apathetic towards anyone I don't personally know" variety. Sam basically keeps Max from blowing up the world by being several times larger than him. Also, did we mention that Max is the President of the United States, following the decapitation of the robot that the previous president turned out to be?
- But remember, everything Max does, is just because Sam "Can't think of a reason not to."
- Atom Girl, formerly known as "Shrinking Violet" of the most recent retooling of the Legion of Superheroes. She likes to play count the bodies and in her introduction she gleefully grew out of a bad guy's body, causing him to burst.
- In the DC Elseworld Red Son, Lex Luthor shoots his colleagues simply for being familiar with his work, callously informs his wife that they shall only meet once a year until he kills Superman, electrocutes people who he beats at chess, shrinks the entire city of Stalingrad until it's small enough to fit in a bottle, and still comes out the hero by stopping Superman.
- The irony is that once he does defeat Superman, he goes on to cure all diseases, eliminate poverty and famine as well as engineer a lasting world peace. Cut Lex Luthor A Check indeed.
- Donald Duck in this strip, at least.
- More than a few of Garth Ennis' protagonists arguably belong here, especially most of The Boys.
- Pretty much every member of The Authority (possibly save Jenny Sparks) - especially Midnighter.
- Venom is portrayed as such in Spirits of Venom. Johnny Blaze can't get to Spider-Man but he thinks nothing will stop Venom from reaching Spider-Man if he's freed.
- Scud from Scud the Disposable Assassin enjoys screaming absurdities at his enemies and uses ridiculous tactics to dispatch foes in extremely violent ways. All of his assassination fees go towards maintaining the life-support for the psychopathic Jeff Monster, simply so he can stay alive.
- The Space Marine from the Doom comic. He may be batshit insane and enjoying his job way too much, but he is fighting demons from hell and is a terran space marine, which means he's on our side!
- Maxx from The Maxx. At one point he kills an enemy's hostage himself.
- Raphael from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
- Completely changed in the 1987 cartoon, where he was just highly sarcastic as opposed to highly temperamental.
- Thankfully, the 1990 movie, 2003 series and 2007 CGI movie all keep this aspect of his character.
- The scarab from Blue Beetle. Most Heroic Sociopaths are content to offer Murder As The Best Solution to any problem. The scarab? Mass execution and deicide. Good think Jaime keeps it on a very short leash.
Films — Animation
- From WALL-E — Yes, WALL-E —, we have the psychotic massage robot HAN-S.
Films — Live Action
- Herbert West from Re-Animator. He re-animates dead bodies that turn into Romero-like zombies. He kills his best friend's father-in-law. His creations kill his best friend's friend. Yet you still rot for him.
- Martin Q. Blank from Grosse Pointe Blank is an unusual example: recognizing his urge to kill, he takes himself far away from his sweetheart. When she next sees him ten years later, he rationalizes his trade as an assassin (though he refuses jobs against charity organizations he likes); but he's seeing a therapist.
- A good portion of protagonists from Quentin Tarantino films, such as Vincent Vega and Jules Winfield from Pulp Fiction and Beatrix Kiddo from Kill Bill Vol. 1/2 could qualify as this trope. And then there's Inglourious Basterds, which is based around the trope.
- Mickey and Mallory in Natural Born Killers are gleefully psychotic mass murderers that not only perform a Karma Houdini, but actually gain extensive popularity because of their crimes.
- Michel Poiccard, in Ŕ bout de souffle.
- Arguably, Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver could be seen as a combination of The Everyman and a Heroic Sociopath.
- Catherine Tramell from Basic Instinct 1/2 is the archetypical female example of this trope.
- Riddick from Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick.
- Frederick "Junior" Frenger in Miami Blues.
- Sweeney Todd from Sweeney Todd.
- And Mrs. Lovett too, while we're at it.
- Hayley Stark in Hard Candy.
- Tyler Durden in Fight Club seems to enjoy causing chaos as well as putting the Narrator in the middle of it all, and yet he is the most popular character Bad Ass ever to hit the screen.
- Tony Camonte from Scarface: The Shame of the Nation and Tony Montana from Scarface. Ironically, Montana's behaviour gets even worse after he's recovered from his cocaine addiction in Scarface: The World Is Yours: he's not willing to kill civilians, but he is more than willing to run over pedestrians with screams of "Oh look! Look at his fucking shoes! Oh, his fucking shoes came off!"
- Tommy DeVito from the film Goodfellas, along with being possibly the most iconic Pesci in fiction, is also a Heroic Sociopath, along with his associate and mentor, Jimmy Conway. The fact that these guys are, if anything, toned down versions of their real life counterparts makes it pretty damn scary.
- What possible reason do you have for thinking either of these career criminals are in any way "heroic"? The only thing I can think of is that they happen to be on the protagonists side, but that doesn't count since he's a Villain Protagonist if ever there was one (and Conway tries to kill him anyway).
- The title special forces in Tropa De Elite. When the cops use a pair of pistols, a skull and a knife as their official insignia, you know that they're not fooling around. Standard interrogation procedure starts with a beating, continues with asphyxiation and finishes with a bullet to the head.
- Godzilla, much of the time.
- Beetlejuice appears to be this for the undead characters of the film, though he is toned down in the cartoon.
- Chev Chelios from the Crank films, who may indeed suffer some hijinks but causes the majority of them — among other things, he steals a motorcycle from a cop then taunts him by doing donuts in the middle of an intersection, while wearing nothing but a hospital gown and his socks and shoes, after injecting himself with five times the recommended dose of Epinephrine (adrenaline).
- Billy the Kid in the film Young Guns. He relishes the violence spawned by the death of his mentor.
- The entire student body of St. Trinians.
- Staff Sgt. Sykes in Jarhead.
- Actually, every character in the movie turns into this, mostly out of boredom.
- James Bond is frequently accused of being this, including in the films (though not in so many words). How much he reflects this depends on the film.
Literature
- Karsa Orlong from Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen embodies this trope in the beginning of his career, where he goes on rampages through towns, slaying all the men and raping the women. Later he develops into a more heroic character.
- Only to revert in The Bonehunters where he openly talks of returning home to lead his people on a campaign to wipe humanity out and pretty much responds to everything and everyone with "Displease me and die".
- Patrick Bateman from American Psycho could be seen as an example in that for all of the truly horrific, evil, and sadistic things that he does in the book, he faces no consequences (physically anyway).
- In all fairness, that's more to do with the total moral vacuum that is the society he lives in. In any case, Bateman is so screwed up that we can't be sure that anything he supposedly did happened outside his head.
- Word Of God says he's not sure either.
- Yulia Latynina's sci-fi political thriller Insider gives us Kissur White Falcon, imperial favourite, former prime minister, supreme tactician and feudal overlord of the Aloms. He is also a reckless madman that spends most of the book either committing or threatening to commit acts of over the top violence. In the first chapter, for instance, he drives around recklessly at night, slams his car into the first other car he finds and mugs the recently arrived protagonist. Twice. Just for fun. He befriends the protagonist out of respect for him actually fighting back on the next day. It gets better and better through the novel. In the words of another character, "If [Kissur] sees a house that is on fire, he'll rush inside to save the baby; if he sees a house that isn't on fire, he'll set fire to it."
- One of the most sociopathic of all; the title character of Kit Marlowe's Tamburlaine The Great is a genocidal maniac who wavers between being Nightmare Fuel and a Magnificent Bastard.
- Rather like his Real Life inspiration, really...
- Kage from the Last Chancers series of Warhammer 40000 novels ended up in the Penal Legions for assaulting and killing a fellow trooper, and since then he's racked up quite a string of others while attempting to escape from various prison worlds. The only reason he can even remotely considered a hero is that the enemies he fights against are much worse and usually trying to wipe out humanity.
- By the way the only reason why he's still in the Chancers (you're pardon after you compete the mission) is because he wants to see Colonel Schaeffer die.
- Jeremy X, the head of Honorverse's Audubon Ballroom, an organisation aiming to eradicate all genetic slavery in the Galaxy. A joke-cracking, pistol-wielding psychopathic assassin clearly inspired by The Joker, he is, nevertheless, the good guy in the story, frequently allying with the protagonists, even with his organisation labeled as terrorist in most nations.
- Reynard The Fox from the medieval stories is a vicious trickster that will double-cross anyone, and has been shown to try to attack and kill several other characters without remorse. His list of crimes: tricking his uncle's wife to sleep with him, killed a hare and tricked a drunken ram-priest to claim he did it, sold out his few friends to keep from getting hanged, openly macked the king's wife, feigned being a pilgrim to take money, and made off with his uncle's cache of fish. This makes our dear Fox-friend... well, you know.
- In fact, Reynard is in the long line of Heroic Sociopaths in medieval stories. The Canterbury Tales for example, has one of these in the majority of their tales.
- Older than that. Loki in Norse mythology and Coyote/Trickster in Native American mythology, for two. Coyote racked up many of the same offenses as Reynard and then some.
- Peter Pan. He's only slightly less uncaring towards others as his nemesis Captain Hook and comes across better mostly because his sociopathy is a result of being a perpetual child, whereas Hook really has no excuse.
- Dolokhov in the last part of War And Peace; he is still an amoral bastard, but, ironically, his charisma and courage have made him something of a hero of the Russian resistance against Napoleon.
- Efnisien of the Mabinogion. Where to begin? When he is mistaken for a servant by the King of Ireland's squire he mutilated said kings horses. When Irish nobles intended to ambush peace talks by hiding in sacks he went to each one and asked the servants (who where in on it) "What is in this sack?" and, when receiving the answer "Flour" he found the head of the hidden noble and crushed it like an egg. He then threw his own young nephew into a fire so that he would die and prevent the peace treaty going through.
- Carnival of the Deepgate Codex series is about as Ax Crazy as Ax Crazy gets (and has a horrendous temper), but she's just so damn cute that her insanity winds up being part of her appeal.
- Caine of Garthan Hold skirts the line of this. Well, maybe dances on it. Okay, he does a full soft-shoe number up and down with Broadway routines and a full stage orchestra in the background.
- Meursault in The Stranger, if you go for the Alternate Character Interpretation.
- Kyp Durron in the Jedi Academy Trilogy. Though he isn't really played as a "hero", he's seen as one by certain factions of the New Republic.
- Likewise, one of the recent novels brings up the idea that the heroic Rebels are not to be messed with, seeing as that they've all killed hundreds if not thousands of people during their careers.
- Philip Lombard in Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None fits this trope like a glove, happy to admit he abandoned 21 natives to die while also teaming up with the guests to catch the murderer. In a partial subversion, he isn't that much of a sociopath when compared to the actual murderer, or Vera Claythorne in Yandere mode.
- Loren D. Estleman's series detective Peter Macklin solves crimes, but he's also an unapologetic Career Killer. Dexter Morgan is a killer who only kills bad people. Macklin kills bad people too, but they may be no worse than the ones paying his salary.
- Mike "Ghost" Harmon, from the Paladin of Shadows series. Katya's not exactly a sweetheart, either, though she's more the latter part of "Heroic Sociopath" than the former.
- Detective Kathy ("Stop Calling Me That") Mallory in Carol O'Connell's eponymous mystery series. Having a loving foster home with a policeman who was completely on to her taught her some manners, but she will point a loaded gun where suspects generally don't want it pointed, and there's a reason why every cop in her precinct will risk hell, high water, and Feds to keep her from ever having to take a psych evaluation. (They've decided it's better for everyone concerned if she's allowed to be on their side.) Unusually, though, she doesn't especially care for bloodshed, and will go out of her way not to kill people if there's an alternative, but if there isn't...
- Pick a James Ellroy protagonist, any James Ellroy protagonist...
Live Action TV
Music
- Would Murdoc Niccals of Gorillaz count? He's a Satanist, total Jerk Ass, greedy, money-loving, filthy (he's green) drunken bastard who started his band just so he could get rich and famous. He even got his vocalist, 2D, into the band by bullying him after he struck him with his car. Twice. He got his drummer, Russel, into the band by kidnapping him. He beats up 2D on a regular basis just because he feels like it, slept with 2D's girlfriend, among other nasty atrocities. The only reasons the other members of the band stay is because 2D is an idiot who somehow looks up to Murdoc and wants to make him happy, Russel has nowhere else to go really because of the ghosts and demons possessing him (plus he adores music, so why not stay?), and Noodle was mailed to them, so it's pretty much all she's got. Anybody else would drop Murdoc's sorry ass within five minutes of joining the band. But you'd be hard-pressed not to love ol' Mudsy.
- Insane Clown Posse. Just being Ax Crazy Monster Clowns would be enough, but their sixth album The Wraith reveals that they're actually messengers from God sent to cleanse the wicked from the Earth to make way for The Dark Carnival. Their ways of doing this are... creative, to say the least. Twiztid also qualify.
Video Games
Web Comics
- Belkar Bitterleaf from The Order of the Stick, pictured above, is a hot-headed, impulsive, and homicidal Chaotic Evil halfling ranger/barbarian. In spite of being somewhat a wacky hijinks victim, he is probably the most dead-on example of this trope of all, recent mark of justice story arc notwithstanding (and he eventually defeated it). So popular is the character that in Alignment discussions, some fans continue to argue in favour of him being Chaotic Neutral or otherwise not-Evil, despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary, up to and including Word Of God, and a strip that revealed his evilness can only be described in terms of kilonazis and, were it not for party leader Roy Greenhilt holding him back, Belkar would have wound up nearly twice as evil as "a hypothetical offspring of Cruella DeVille and Sauron."
- Richard from Looking for Group is an undead warlock spellcaster of immense power who likes to slaughter innocent peasants and "eat babies" as well as having Cloudcuckoolander tendencies. His catchphrase is a variation on a line spoken in this comic: "You all saw it! That orphanage attacked me!" with the burning building in the background. He is (as mentioned before) undead, meaning he can take normally fatal injuries (such as being impaled through the stomach or getting an axe in the forehead) and joke about it, and is capable of destroying pretty much anything with his ice and fire spells (at the cost of needing to rest after exerting himself). His "partner" is the somewhat naive elf Cale'Anon Vatay, who wishes to be good and noble even though present-time elves are feared as brutal and callous after having wiped out the last remaining nation of their noble kindred in the past. Richard's excuse for traveling with the other characters is that he simply "likes killing things" and gets bored easily. Richard treats Cale like an amusing pet, but he "respects his [Cale's] willingness to kill" whenever Cale is confronted with obvious Bad Guys.
- This really says all there is to say about Richard.
- It's been said that if they changed LFG's title to "Richard Fucks Shit Up," and was all about Richard and his nonsense, readership would double. I'd still read it.
- Hell, I'd start buying merchandise.
- It may explain both Richard's callousness and his popularity that of the group, he seems to be the only one who knows he's playing a game... and anyone who's ever played a video game knows that no sympathy needs to be wasted on NP Cs, and the only thing to do is to amuse yourself with them.
- Bun-Bun, the lop-eared switch-blade-wielding rabbit of Sluggy Freelance. His plans usually fall through, often due to Kiki's screwups, but he almost never suffers any consequences... usually because no-one's brave enough to try punishing him.
- Walky Verse Abductee Mike Warner, who especially enjoys Halloween: in different years, he's tried to sacrifice Joyce's dog in a Black Mass, dressed up as Saddam Hussein (and putting a fake beard on the same dog he tried kill, calling him 'Osama bin Doggie'), dressed again as the recently deceased head of the Government Conspiracy they worked for, and given out candy with razor blades in it. And that's what he does for fun; he's even worse the rest of the year. He crosses the line so many times that it has become blurred beyond all recognition.
- Fuzzy from Sam and Fuzzy. A borderline heroic sociopath who lapses between true sociopathy and The Imp depending on the seriousness of the story arc (the less important the strip is, the more he gets away with).
- Recently it's come to light that Fuzzy merely took someone's advice about acting in a certain way. Couple this with his apparent amnesia and there's no telling what behaviors of his are genuine, and what aren't, as even Sam himself has noted.
- The title character of Schlock Mercenary, as well as most of his commanding officers. And quite a few of his enlisted men too.
- Schlock has been known to refer to his "random act of violence fix for the day".
- Girl Genius': Bangladesh Dupree. Although technically more of a Psycho For Hire because she works for the antagonist Baron Wulfenbach, Dupree crosses the line over into this trope: The extremely over-the-top acts she inflicts upon the remaining cast with a cheer on her face while cracking jokes about it are played as much for laughs as for horror, and Wulfenbach is both a viewpoint character and an Anti Villain (and one may wonder how she plans to kill someone with a block of cheese...).
- Well, it probably depends on how "sharp" the cheese was...
- Limburger.
- Casu marzu. It is illegal in Sardinia.
- And in demand only in Sardinia.
- As a point of interest, the mythological queen Medb in the irish Ulster Cycle was killed by a flung piece of cheese.
- An even clearer example is Castle Heterodyne, a sadistic and sentient building loyal to the Heterodyne family. It gleefully inflicts gruesome acts of violence at anyone nearby at Agatha's command... And occasionally after interpreting an otherwise innocent comment from Agatha as a command... Or simply because Agatha isn't around to tell it not to. Because it thinks it's fun.
- Then there are the Jaegers. Their loyalty to House Heterodyne comes first, and (for most of them) their loyalty to the baron comes second, but their third biggest motivation is sheer bloodlust. They are self-proclaimed "killing machines" who regard the evil Heterodynes as "the fun ones". They always charge into battle with great enthusiasm and laugh at the grisly deaths of their enemies. Nevertheless, so long as Lady Heterodyne is on the side of light, so are they, and most effective at it.
- Black Hat Guy from xkcd. And he's proud of this.
- "Red" from No Rest for the Wicked. She carries around an ax, enjoys causing fear in the people around her, smells death, and her cloak is dyed in blood. Her partner is Princess November, a young naive girl who bruises easily. A very mild form, but still qualifies.
- Psycho Mantis from The Last Days of Foxhound is very much a Heroic Sociopath. The webcomic also gives an excellent insight into the differences between the Heroic Sociopath (Mantis) and the Magnificent Bastard (Ocelot) - anyone who tangles with the latter on an intellectual level is going down, but it is hard to engage in intellectual battle when your opponent just sets you on fire with his mind instead.
- Most of the characters from Charby the Vampirate fit this trope given how little they value human life (though the titular character eventually decides to stop killing people for the sake of his frienship with resident Badass Longcoat demon hunter Vic, the other characters continue to maim, kill, slaughter and eat whomever the want, whenever they feel like it).
- Mal of Head Trip. Her antics include: arson, assault with a deadly weapon, breaking and entering, holding Fox executives at knife point until they agree to give Joss Whedon full artistic control over all future projects, abducting and threatening with torture a writer for lost, giving Jack Thompson a Karmic Death and murdering Sailor Moon. She is likely not joking when she says that Ebert of Ebert and Roper has a restraining order on her. She even has her own demon assigned on a permanent basis to follow her around holding a handbasket.
- The Fear, The Pain, and The Fury from The Cobra Days. When they're not fighting agents of the Axis powers, they spend a lot of their time violently bickering with each other or picking on The Sorrow.
- Rocky from Lackadaisy Cats, while being a fairly well-meaning guy overall, has very little grasp of what's socially acceptable and scares most "normal" cats he talks to. When carrying out rumrunning duties, he is completely unaverse to revenge and forcibly putting other "establishments" out of business... and he does. Oh, and he's a pyromaniac. Yet, his childlike enthusiasm, general clumsiness and ineptitude, and lyrical ability make him pretty endearing to the reader.
- Calvin (a.k.a. "Freckle") is probably a Heroic Sociopath in training. A quiet, shy fella, he undergoes a complete and psychotic personality change any time he gets his paws on a gun. The end result can involve a lot of bodies (and horror on his part, once he comes back to himself). The story as it stands seems to suggest that he will put this particular "talent" to use, and then his "training" will probably be complete as far as this trope goes.
- Drew from Mac Hall, a foul-mouthed, utterly cynical Comp Sci major who loves tormenting freshmen and is grandmaster of humorous Disproportionate Retribution. Like so.
- The light warriors from 8-Bit Theater. Black Mage in particular exemplifies the archetype, in spite of being the comic's major Chew Toy on top of it.
- Aram from Men In Hats, the prototype of Black Hat Guy.
- Kenta Daisuke of No Need For Bushido does ultimately have a motive (guess what it is), but it hardly covers all of his gleeful, wanton violence. He leaps at the chance to fight, loves nothing more than to slaughter countless enemies with a grin on his blood-spattered face, obtains all his money by mugging passers-by, and feels no regret whatsoever for harming others. Nor does he seem to understand that his casual violence makes others regard him as somewhat...disagreeable.
- Chicanery has Ness, Pokey, Jeff and Mr. Saturn from Earthbound. The gang have saved the world on more than one occasion - but are just as likely to steal, cheat and murder indiscriminately to get what they want.
- Skoll of Cry Havoc qualifies. She is a good guy... but only because the people she mutilates and kills are slightly worse, or at least less skilled, than her.
Web Original
- Simon, the Bastard Operator from Hell, whose sole purpose is to act out all the malevolent revenge fantasies of the readership.
- The majority of the staff from the SCP Foundation would seem to be examples of this trope. For instance...
- Jobe Wilkins, Crown Prince of Karedonia, and brilliant bio-deviser, in the Whateley Universe. He invented a new vaccine for dysentery. How? By experimenting on prisoners. Live, human prisoners of his father's less-than-humane government. And he doesn't see anything wrong with that. "If the ends don't justify the means, you're working on the wrong problem."
- Many Let's Play sessions wind up turning video game protagonists into these, partly to keep it more as an OC. For instance, take Misty of Pokémon Emerald. In her spare time, she apparently enjoys beating things and watching her Pokémon eat smaller ones, and has killed (and eaten) several of her own Pokémon simply because they annoyed her.
- Pure Pwnage's FPS_Doug gives off this vibe sometimes, particularly in the "BOOM HEADSHOT!" segment from episode 5.
- George Washington, albeit heavy on the sociopath and light on the heroic part.
- A common attribute of Protectors Of The Plot Continuum, especially those in the Department of Floaters, the Department of Mary Sues, and the Department of Geological Aberrations. Given that the last two are Assassins and Pyros, and they are all volunteers, this should not be particularly surprising. A particularly noteworthy example would be Agent Drake, who despite his origins as a Ridiculously Cute Critter, is rumored to be a Kumiho (Korean shapeshifting and human-eating fox ghost), and has trained the local furry Enfant Terrible to go for ankles. Without really identifying whose ankles.
Western Animation
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