Heroic Sociopath - Television Tropes & Idioms

The Heroic Sociopath in his natural environs.

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.
— Sam And Max Hit the Road

Normally even the most brooding and Badass Anti Hero can be counted on to Pet The Dog sooner or later, or to be revealed as a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold. The Heroic Sociopath is different. A heroic sociopath is an obviously villainous character given copious amounts of badass and let loose on the world, with the Rule Of Funny thrown into the mix. 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. 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 he goes after them. Sometimes the 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. 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 usually a Villain Protagonist, but not all Villain Protagonists are Heroic Sociopaths.

Not to be confused with Vigilante Man.

Examples:

Anime and Manga

Alucard from Hellsing. Seriously, the guy likes to let his enemies attack him... only to regenerate and tear them apart with his guns and bare hands, usually while laughing and taunting them. For good measure, he, at times, destroys some of his opponents' limbs before killing them.
- He also tends to devour a few of his opponents, adding them to the massive collection of familiars stored within his body.
- And in the OVA he slaughters dozens of innocent police officers whose only crime was to believe their superiors that he is an armed and dangerous terrorist - he happened to become one at the moment the police aimed their guns at him.
  - Police officers nothing. He also kills a crowd of random news reporters and onlookers in a storm of collateral damage later during the same episode.
- And he commits the closest thing to rape without genital activity to one of his female adversaries, while brutally slaughtering and then eating her.
- Man, if Alucard's enemies weren't Nazis, he'd probably be the the most evil character on the show ( and how he's still be the hero, I have no idea...)
Kuroudo Akabane from Getbackers seems to switch from Heroic Sociopath to Psycho For Hire constantly.
Revy of Black Lagoon, who is a great gal to drink with, but who enjoys getting into gunfights and killing people, and is often seen sporting a Slasher Smile. She sometimes has to be restrained from killing noncombatants among her enemies in the middle of one of her killing sprees (like in the Neo-Nazi arc of the first season) as the "Whitman Fever" tends to take hold of her.
- Other characters in Black Lagoon also qualify, such as the killer maid Roberta and the Russian mob queen Balalaika.
  - When all three of the women are in the same place at the same time, none of the men, including battle-hardened mercenaries, are willing to get too close.
  - Smart men.
Mugen from Samurai Champloo could be seen as an example in the same light as Revy in that he is a violent, nihilistic, over-the-top Bad Ass with a penchant for taking relish in murdering anybody who crosses him, be it friend or foe.
- He's definitely much saner than Revy though.
Kenpachi Zaraki from Bleach is a combination of this trope and a Blood Knight.
- Mayuri Kurotsuchi is one as well, though he's less of a "good guy" and more of a "guy who happens to be on our side". To his credit, he doesn't seem to entertain any ideas of defecting to Aizen.
Mayo Mitama from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, who, amongst other things, assaults people with bats, violates puppies for a hobby and detonates the main character's house - while he's inside it - and always gets away with it. She can be found standing over her victims in plain sight with condemning evidence in her hands - and everyone will assume she's innocent because anyone looking that Obviously Evil obviously cannot be. Her name, incidentally, means "exactly as she appears".
- This is played for laughs, of course.
Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan has the main character Dokuro-chan being an adorable angel with the power of resurrection, whose intent is to protect the male protagonist Sakura...when she's not manipulating, torturing, or killing him in a hilariously over the top manner.
Kogarashi from Kamen No Maid Guy is a seven-foot musclebound monster of a maid (and a male one, at that) with a permanent Slasher Smile, more wacky superpowers than you can shake a stick at (including 37 senses), an extremely perverted and sadistic streak and with absolutely no respect whatsoever for his erstwhile 'master' - the only way his master keeps him under control is by frequent beatings in the skull with a nail bat, which is only effective for a few minutes at a time.
Tsukihime: It could be argued that Tohno Shiki's amoral sociopathic killer split personality, Nanaya Shiki, is this... After all, he does eliminate the opposition with frightening efficiency, although he also takes pleasure in attacking (and in the women's cases, violating) anything non-human, whether it be innocent bystanders, allies, or his adopted sister, Akiha.
Xellos from Slayers may count. You don't get more murderous than wanting to end existence. The trick is, he's pretty relaxed most of the time. But when Slayers TRY came around, he actually offers Lina in an effort to get the seasons big bad to join the monster race. In the ensuing fight, Xellos tortures Valgaav with a horrible laugh on his face. Gaav eventually turns the tables and escapes. Lina finds out that he offered her, and responds by... bonking him on the head, saying that she knew something like this could happen. Xellos continues to be more or less on the side of the heroes.
- Not to mention that whoever he sides with during a season, be it heroes or villains, he'll stab them in the back at least once before everything is over. And no matter how well the good guys do, it's always Xellos who gains the most, in the end.
  - Lina is pretty out there too. She tends to either kill you and take your stuff or threaten to kill and take your stuff. Try to count how many bandits she smokes in the first ten mins of the first episode of the first season.
  - That may be more a case of Moral Dissonance and/or Designated Hero.
Youichi Hiruma of Eyeshield 21. He'll bluff, lie, fire weapons at whim, blackmail friend and foes, and yet no one is more reliable than him to be the captain and quarterback of Devilbats. His team has complete (and slightly fear-tinged) confidence in him.
Saeko Busujima from High School Of The Dead: under her calm Heir To The Dojo exterior is a sadist who only recently publicly acknowledged the delight she gets in being so much stronger and deadlier then most people. She was arrested as a young girl for being "overly enthusiastic" in her self-defense against a would-be molester and now barely hesitates to slaughter zombie children.
- The main character assures her that her skills are vital and welcomed... although this troper dosen't know why he had to grope her chest at the same time.
Barry the Chopper from the Fullmetal Alchemist manga. Not so much in the anime, where's just a Butt Monkey and a Psycho For Hire.
- Greed has some of this too. On one hand he proudly claims to want everything - money power, women - and doesn't mind being an amoral Jerk Ass, but on the other he isn't unnecessarily cruel, and treats his comrades, and even prisoners with respect.
Main Character Jokyuu of Aiki counts as one of these as well, being a violent, womanizing, alienating son of a shepherd, yet he's such a Badass that he indeed sets the comic tone for the series.
Jokyuu: Friends is what you call someone who likes to be someone else's minion isn't it? I don't need such things as friends! I mean, I don't have any friends to begin with. (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.)
Guts in Berserk Abridged, who is a gleefully psychotic bastard who qualifies for this trope in flying colors. Corkus, who is portrayed as a death obsessed maniac, also qualifies.
- "It's MURDERIN' TIME!"
  - And let's not forget Gut's aweseome musical moment: I love hurting people! I looveee beating people up!
Claire Stanfield in Baccano!; assassin by trade and a gleefully homicidal solipsist who believes the entire world is simply there to entertain him on top of it. Claire kills a large number of (admittedly villainous) people in thoroughly, over-the-top, gruesome manners and throws a (relatively) innocent woman off the top of a moving train mostly for fun, and gets away scot-free.
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 Sousuke 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".

Comic Books

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.
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.
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.
- notable antics including putting a bunch of bad guys in jail, slaughtering a bloody lot of more bad guys, some of them while in jail himself and tossing a harmless nut down an elevator shaft because the latter demended to be punished. Not to mention exposing the XanatosGambit set up by Ozymandias to bring about world peace.
  - Has no Off Button.
- The Comedian also qualifies, although he tends to border on PsychoForHire.
- Heck, most of the cast of Watchmen qualify.
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?
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 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 its 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!

Film

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.
Alonzo Harris in Training Day before he gets his comeuppance.
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 À bout de souffle.
Arguably, Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver could be seen as a combination of The Everyman and a Heroic Sociopath.
Dodger Allen in Cry Wolf.
Catherine Tramell from Basic Instinct 1/2 is the archetypical female example of this trope.
Riddick from Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick.
Tom Ripley from The Talented Mr. Ripley.
Frederick "Junior" Frenger in Miami Blues.
Sweeney Todd from Sweeney Todd.
Hayley Stark in Hard Candy.
Vincent from Collateral, of course.
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!"
A few of Daniel Day-Lewis' roles could very well count (or be considered Villain Protagonists). These include Bill "the butcher" Cutting in Gangs of New York and Daniel Plainsview in There Will Be Blood.
From WALL-E - Yes, WALL-E, we have the psychotic massage robot HAN-S.
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.
The titular 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.
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 (an artificial 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.

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 sadisticic 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.
Francis Begbie from the book Trainspotting is a character so unstable and violent that, by all logic, he should be dead or at least locked up in an insane asylum, yet he somehow gets away with the rampages that he causes.
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.
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 doublecross 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.
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.

Live Action TV

Dexter Morgan, a serial killer who preys on other killers, in the TV series Dexter (2006-2008+), which is an adaptation of the novel "Darkly Dreaming Dexter" by Jeff Lindsay. Two follow-up novels, "Dearly Devoted Dexter" and "Dexter in the Dark", were not used in the series. "Dexter in the Dark" was not used because it introduced supernatural aspects to the story and they wanted to steer clear of the Sci Fi Ghetto.
- And because there was no third book.
Jez in Peep Show has burned and eaten the dog of a woman he was trying to have sex with, poisoned his best friend because he was ruining a party, helped his other best friend relapse into crack addiction because he was getting in the way of pulling a woman and many more dubious things besides. In fact, he's more sociopath than hero...
Oz has quite a few characters that could qualify, with the outstanding examples being Depraved Bisexual Chris Keller and Magnificent Bastard Ryan O'Reily.
Jim Profit from the show Profit.
Francis Urquhart in House of Cards, To Play the King, and The Final Cut.
Detective Vic Mackey of The Shield. Kills a fellow cop in cold blood in the very first episode and pins it on a drug lord (also freshly killed by him).
The Janitor from Scrubs approaches this on occasion.
Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother is a milder version of this trope. He seduces women and plays pranks on his friends with Magnificent Bastard style deviousness. When any of the other main characters act even half as callously as Barney, they learn a lesson about it by the end of the episode. In contrast, the only lesson Barney ever learns is "I'm awesome!"
The Colbert Report once did a segment that more or less showed a repo man as one: he jokes that his job is more or less stealing the cars of people that are in debt, and is pretty damn happy about it.
Chappelle's Show features a skit involving him and Wayne Brady, who, contrary to his public image, is portrayed as a violent, homicidal, and seriously disturbed psychopath (spoofing the film Training Day) who murders a number of people during the skit and forces Chappelle to smoke PCP. At the end, the hilariously frightened Chappelle is shot in the leg by Brady for the in-show joke, "Wayne Brady makes Brian Gumble look like Malcolm X" and Brady drives off while laughing maniacally.
My Name is Earl character Joy, to some extent, though she does suffer negative repercussions for her sociopathic actions more than once.
- She becomes slightly less sociopathic as the show goes on. Slightly
Stuart Jones, one of the two leads in the UK version of Queer as Folk. He's much more of a bastard than a hero really, but every now and then he does something so outrageous and awesome you can't completely hate him.
Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, from his chipping in season 4, through to his soul quest in season 6.
Tony Soprano from The Sopranos is literally the Heroic Sociopath, in that he is diagnosed by multiple psychiatrists (including his own, Dr. Melfi) in-universe as a sociopath.
Arguably the entire SAMCRO biker club except Jax (either Anti Hero or Anti Villain depending on your milage) and Opie (The Woobie), especially Tig, whom even the other members consider disturbed in Sons of Anarchy

Video Games

Kratos from the God Of War games is very, very much a Heroic Sociopath. To quote Yahtzee again: "It's as if after the first time they animated a sequence where Kratos bites a minotaur's face off, they decided they couldn't possibly make him anything other than a brutal psychotic, so they just rolled with it."
Travis Touchdown, from No More Heroes, is the embodiment of the Heroic Sociopath. Then again, everyone in that game who isn't one of these is (A), a Magnificent Bastard or (B), an Axe Crazy Psycho For Hire (*cough*Bad Girl*cough*), so the main reason he hasn't got his comeuppance yet is probably because the cops are trying get everyone else. The fact that one of them is actually a member of the UAA probably doesn't hurt, either.
HK-47, the assassin droid from the Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic games, suggests to the main character that they kill just about everyone they encounter, often times while you are talking to them. He has no qualms about openly insulting the main character, and just about every line out of his mouth is a CrowningMomentOfAwesome.
- Jade Empire, also from Bioware, has this in the Black Whirlwind, a thuggish, drunken, axe-wielding Boisterous Bruiser.
- Although not quite as extreme as the previous two, Wrex from the Bioware game Mass Effect also qualifies, frequently suggesting you kill people because it would be the easiest and fastest way, or chiding you for taking the more difficult peaceful route... and, shortly after you recruit him, if he's in your squad, he'll gun down an unarmed man in cold blood after your group has gotten all the information you need from him. He manages to get off with, at most, a minor scolding. Are you noticing a pattern here?
  - You heard him! He couldn't leave a job unfinished!
  - Considering that its entirely possible to make the main character a raging psychotic sociopath....
- Definitively, if we add Korgan Bloodaxe from Baldur's Gate 2 - and possibly also Xzar from the original Baldur's Gate.
Gig from Soul Nomad And The World Eaters, a former master of death who is bound to the main character and forced to assist him in cleaning up some of his minions (giant, world-destroying golems) from a world he once all but destroyed; all the while verbally abusing just about everyone the character interacts with, attempting to commit Grand Theft Me on the main character, and showing you visions from his former life that show just what an atrocious being he used to be - something he's still immensely proud of.
- Unfortunately for Gig (and fortunately for everybody else), he's stuck as a near-powerless passenger in the lead's head in the main storyline. This only serves to play up his sociopathy.
Sev from Star Wars: Republic Commando fits this trope perfectly. The squad's slightly unhinged sniper makes a point of brutalizing enemies any chance he can get and is, ahem, ruthlessly efficient.
- Actually, the rest of the squad save for the resident straight man are subject to this. Fixer's the only commando who doesn't make cheery commentary as he kills his way to victory.
Agent 47 from the Hitman series, as long as you play the game right.
- And if you play it wrong he's an Axe Crazy Villain Protagonist. Although, Your Mileage May Vary on what is "right" and "wrong."
Zetta, self-proclaimed "badass freaking overlord" from Makai Kingdom - for all of five minutes before his own sheer badassness (not to mention his colossal stupidity) causes him to wreck his own life and renders him a Smug Snake - all of the attitude, none of the actual badass.
The Silencer, of the Crusader series of games, happily kills soldiers, techs, scientists, laborers, secretaries, men and women, robots and children (or would, if there were any children in game), and is not once reprimanded by his superiors in La Resistance. Maybe they don't want to upset him, considering he's mostly on a vengeance kick, supporting their cause only indirectly.
- In the Captain's defense, any heroic sociopathy on his part would be 100% the player's doing. Most of the civilians you do encounter in the game are either minding their own business, cringing in fear whenever a firefight breaks out, or even exposing themselves as Evil Minions and thus legitimate targets when they head for the nearest alarm switch. And in an early mission in Crusader: No Remorse, if you fail to accomplish the objective and head straight back to the Resistance Base anyways you will face a considerable chewing out from Colonel Ely- although this troper restarted the game to get the job done properly instead of sitting through to see if this resulted in a Game Over or not.
The main characters of any Grand Theft Auto game could be seen as an example.
- Nico from the fourth game seems to be an attempt to break away from this, making him more a Shell Shocked Senior.
- Probably the straightest example of a Heroic Sociopath in a Grand Theft Auto game is Catalina from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (in Grand Theft Auto III, she is simply a Femme Fetale). Catalina is an extremely violent and dangerous psychopath (basically, imagine an even more Axe Crazy version of Revy from Black Lagoon) who forces the main character to accompany her in heists and mass murder while tormenting him all the way, at one point putting him through an extreme off-screen BSDM session.
Ultima's "Avatar," began his existence as the epitome of goodness and virtue. Ultima 8, however, turned him into the most fucked up, heroic sociopath ever: he killed the Gods, caused an apocalypse, murdered numerous innocent men and left Pagan as it was being destroyed.
- In his defense, Pagan was pretty F'ed up to begin with, and the Titans weren't exactly all puppies and rainbows. Lithos wouldn't stop causing earthquakes until he was basically made the god of death, Pyros and Hydros had to be imprisoned before their reign of destruction stopped, and although Stratos put on a benevolent face the whole time, she still became supremely pissed at the Avatar when he tried to leave the world.
- Well, Ultima VII also let the Avatar become a Heroic Sociopath, because of all the Video Game Cruelty Potential in that game.
Warboss Gorgutz of the Dawn Of War games is a massive semi-mechanized Ork defined by his obsession of getting heads for his "Pointy Stikk" (since he'd look stupid with someone's foot on it) and fighting anything worth fighting while still having a brutal wit. This is probably why he is the main recurring character of the games, having Crowning Moments of Awesometacular within each Expansion Pack he appears in.
Caim from Drakengard. His personality is basically summed up in the phrase "mute, bloodthirsty nutcase".
Dan Smith from Killer 7 exemplifies this trope (of course, his mentor was Curtis Blackburn so this is to be expected).
Kain from the Legacy of Kain series is what happens when you mix this trope with a Magnificent Bastard. He takes a disturbing amount of glee from slicing up and feeding on prisoners chained to walls, for instance.
Princess Sapphire Rhodonite from Disgaea 3. There's some irony to be had in the fact that she's one of the few in characters the game that's not a demon.
Thanks to the Karma Meter, your character could be like this in the Fable games. An NPC example would be Reaver, the Hero of Skill from Fable II. He's a smug and egotistical pirate who is seen trying three times to immortalize his likeness in art, only to shoot the artist for some slight error in their work, and tricks you into sacrificing your youth (or that of an NPC, if you're playing an evil character) to the Shadow Court in order to prolong his life.
- Of those artists that are killed, the first two maybe, maybe deserved it for screwing up the work. The third? It's everyone's favorite photography dude, Barnum, who happily takes the picture and promises to deliver it in three months when it's "developified". Which, according to Reaver, is too long and a murderable offense.
In the Saints Row series, Johnny Gat. When gangsters call you a gun-toting maniac, you may have to calm down a little. The man's favorite pastime is violence. Preferably against police. His solution to -any- problem is walk in the front door and start killing people... and somehow, he comes off as a complete and total badass instead of a bloodthirsty psychotic.
- Johhny has, on more than one occasion, thrown away a carefully plotted (and safe) plan, and exchanged it for some sort of bullet storm. (Check the games Crowning Levels Of Awesome for specifics.)
- This troper hasn't played the first game, but in the sequel your character (who speaks now!) is just as much of a HS as Johnny is. Sometimes when standing prone, he or she even comments, among other things "Killing people is its own reward."
  - The female Spaniard claims "I have the4 biggest balls in Stillwater. Yeah you heard me right," making her a combination of Heroic Sociopath, Crazy Awesome and possibly Demented Crossdresser.
  - That's just plain sociopathic.
Malcolm the Jester from The Legend of Kyrandia definitely belongs in this trope. Ever since he was a baby, he was always deeper under the influence of his bad conscience Gunther, rather than his good conscience Stewart. After Gunther trapped Stewart under a rock, Malcolm's acts of violence and mischief escalated from starting fires, to turning everyone in Kyrandia to stone, until he got turned to stone himself. In the third game, Malcolm's Revenge, he breaks free from his statue prison and has to prove that he didn't really murder the King. Along the way, he'll pull pranks, destroy businesses, overthrow a few tribes, hypnotize squirrels, convince a band of pirates to take Kyrandia over, and escape from jail several times.
Sumio Mondo from Flower, Sun, and Rain is a private investigator and ladies man who was stuck with a mission while on vacation, and generally tries to complete the jobs given to him. Except he also masterminded a plan to manipulate his two childhood friends into killing themselves in order to destroy an entire town responsible for the murder of another childhood friend, and his own mutilation.
Like the Sumio Mondo example above, Tetsugorō Kusabi from The Silver Case is a family man, a trusted member of the Ward 24 police force, and Sumio Kodai's best friend. Until he gets too close to uncovering the truth behind the Silver Case and catches someone improperly using a killphrase on him. Then he slaughters his entire team (except for Sumio, who was in prison already for the aforementioned genocide), and bands together with rookie cop Akira to take down the leader of the city.
In Valkyria Chronicles, one of the recruitable characters, Jane Turner, has a single interest in life- killing as many Imperial soldiers as she can. This is made all too clear by her many in-game quotes, and, just if anyone didn't happen to get the picture, she has a Potential named 'Sadist', and what she says upon its activation does not help.
Considering how many times the players end up saving the world either indirectly or out of self-preservation in City Of Villains, one can argue that all of the player character villains end up being this from time to time.
- Especially when they team up with hero players during the Lady Grey Task Force or Imperious Task Force.
Ram, the Evil Twin of Total Overdose: A Gunslinger's Tale in Mexico, sprung out of jail by the Good Twin, a DEA agent, to take his place undercover after an 'accident'. Ram takes on Tommy's missions at his own pace, doing as much collateral and explosive damage as possible, to the extent that the mob he infiltrates call him 'El Gringo Loco'. And because of connections with the DEA and Mexican police, he can carjack, assault, shoot whoever, whenever without cops even looking his direction.
Jack in Mad World doesn't have any pretentions of morality... but on the other hand, he doesn't kill anyone who doesn't deserve it. Cept maybe the aliens.
- "I don't help people. I kill them."
- The whole game can be seen as an Always A Bigger Fish scenario. What does the government do about a "sport" run by homicidal psychopaths for homicidal psychopaths? Send in an even bigger homicidal psychopath. With a chainsaw attached to his arm.
Cole Mc Grath from inFAMOUS can be this, either while being outrightly evil, or by performing good actions and then gleefully slaughtering the citizenry inbetween, since killing innocents doesn't do nearly enough karma damage to make you any weaker if you regularly top it up with good karma missions.
Taken a bit literally in Prototype. It's mentioned in-game that Anti Hero protagonist Alex Mercer is a sociopath (The exact phrasing being something along the line of his having a "psychopathic disregard for others" with a "classic narcissistic personality."). Goes a long way towards justifying the particularly excessive Video Game Cruelty Potential.

Web Comics

Black Mage from 8-Bit Theater is based on the black mage class from the original Final Fantasy game (in appearance only). He is portrayed as socially awkward (smelling bad, attempting to woo his opposite White Mage with increasingly ridiculous pick-up lines or propositions of anal sex or necrophilia) and has a To-Do list that reads: "1) Kill everyone I know. 2) Kill everyone I don't know". He has the ability to use the powerful Hadoken spell once a day which, apart from being capable of leveling a whole city, drains love from the universe when it's used, and was obtained by sacrificing 13 orphans to whatever Dark Gods Black Mage could find. He once was actually King of Hell for 20 minutes after dying and subsequently besting the actual Lord of Hell in a fight, before his subjects revolted and threw him back to the mortal world (strangely enough, based on his unwillingness to disillusion Fighter, those twenty minutes were the nicest he's ever been). He's so evil, in fact, that the physical representation of his sins was forced to take his form, because there was nothing else that came close, and it was even initially lacking some of his recent activities. His "partner" is Fighter, a naive and not particularly bright but heavily armored young swordsman who remains oblivious to BM's attempts to kill him through a mix of toughness and sheer stupidity; in one case, the ensuing brain damage actually made Fighter into a temporary super-genius. Fortunately, BM also tends to be karma's Butt Monkey; author and artist Brian Clevinger has said "The universe hates Black Mage" and "Everything that happens, happens to hurt Black Mage".
- Thief and Sarda can be seen as more typical examples, as they're much more likely to get away with things and humor comes from the incredibly creative ways they screw people over.
Belkar Bitterleaf from 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 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 de Ville 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 travelling 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. Richard's backstory will be explored in a feature-film due out in late 2008.
- 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.
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 titular character of Schlock Mercenary, as well as most of his commanding officers. And quite a few of his enlisted men too.
You can't say "webcomics" and not include Bangladesh Dupree, per her behaviour here (and the followup here), her love of torture, her further love of torture, her love of killing her oft-curbed enthusiasm for burning towns.... Despite all this, she's still a technical White Hat and Baron Wulfenbach's emergency backup in case all goes pear-shaped. Later on, she's also the only one that Gilgamesh trusts to protect his recovering father from the horde of opportunistic assassins that had been trying to kill the Well Intentioned Extremist for the past several strips. (And this troper is still wondering 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.
- Dupree's intentions are somewhat unclear, Castle Heterodyne on the other hand is looking to be a good example: Yes! yes! yes!
  - Girl Genius: even the buildings can be psychopaths.
- 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 his female rival-turned-girlfriend, who has no nickname.
"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 threating 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 (aka "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.

Western Animation

Gaz from Invader Zim.
- If he wasn't so much of a Chew Toy, the title character would count as well.
Mandy, The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy. The show sometimes subverted it by having Mandy do everything right, but fail because of the idiots around her, or bad luck. For a little girl, though, her achievements are quite impressive.
- She did once erase every living thing from existence except herself but, probably because the crapsack world the show is set in is so surreal, it didn't last.
Cartman on South Park is sometimes portrayed this way, particularly in the episode "Scott Tenorman Must Die," where he got his own back on a school bully by arranging for the bully's parents to be murdered, then grinding up their corpses into chili, feeding the chili to the character, and bragging about it publicly with no negative repercussions.
- And then giddily licks the tears off of his face.
Captain Hero from Drawn Together is a superhero, but has almost no regard for human life whatsoever (although he may simply be too stupid to know what he's doing). An example of his sociopathy is throwing an entire planet (which happens to be his home planet) and everything living on it into a star to prove he's "heroic".
- Don't forget his clever use of human shields.
  - Captain Hero One! Billions of Innocent Zeblonians...um...dead. Oh. I uh...(Slinks away)
- Ling Ling, the Pikachu spoof from the same show is intitially portrayed as this as well; a murderous sociopath who wants to kill and destroy everyone he encounters in hilariously brutal manners, but later becomes a frequent Chew Toy/ Butt Monkey (given the nature of the show, this could apply to anybody, though).
In The Boondocks, Ed Wuncler III and Gin Rummy are two sociopathic veteran soldiers who constantly drink, curse, and rob stores yet get away with their idiotic plans due to Wuncler's extremely rich father having the police on his payroll.
- Riley is a sociopath-in-training. Naturally he gets away with anything his gurus do, but he could incite a riot and get a mere slap across the crown for cursing too much.
Brock Samson from The Venture Brothers is an amoral scientist's bodyguard who's main priority (at least in the beginning) is to brutally murder his enemies while having sex with as many women as possible. His college football career (and scholarship) ended when he accidentally killed another player, so he joined the army. He wound up as a government agent with his own license to kill, which he's been known to take advantage of if a bartender makes fun of his long hair. He's basically a Swedish James Bond with an Unstoppable Rage and a huge knife.
Korgoth from Korgoth Of Barbaria is basically a combination of Conan The Barbarian and Brock Samson . He is an apathetic and anti-social badass with an insatiable appetite for sex and violence in the most graphic degree. In just the first fight of the pilot episode, he tears off a man's arm and beats him to death with it, chops a man in half down the middle with an axe, and tears off another man's skin, douses him with alcohol, and lights him on fire. For laughs.
Each member of Dethklok in Metalocalypse is a Heroic Sociopath, brutally killing and maiming people even live on stage with no consequences whatsoever. In fact, it seems that because of this nature they are ridiculously powerful and wealthy; ranking as the 12th most powerful nation in the world, despite only being a band.
- It should be noted that very rarely is Dethklok the direct cause of the violence around them, and even when they are, it's not always intentional. Not that they necessarily care about a few thousand casualties, of course. Until it starts to affect their record sales.
Flippy from Happy Tree Friends, the cuddly teddy bear vietnam war veteran who is capable of going on atrocious (not to mention hilariously violent) rampages on the drop of a hat due to flashbacks.
Stewie Griffin from Family Guy starts out as a diabolical Heroic Sociopath before his arguable Character Derailment (he still has his moments, but it's more general Comedic Sociopathy).
- This troper has always seem him as getting WORSE as the series has gone on. He's killed at least three people (Two of them other infants) that this troper knows about, with zero remorse. It's just that, given the fact that everyone in Quahog is either an idiot or self centered jack ass, no one cares.
To a certain degree, Bender.
"I came here with a simple dream...a dream of killing all humans. And this is how it must end? Who's the real 7 billion ton robot monster here? Not I... Not I..."
Muzzle from Road Rovers has to be physically restrained for the majority of the series. However, when faced with a large amount of cannon fodder henchmen, the rest of the Rovers will declare, "Let's Muzzle 'em!" and release said psychopathic dog from his straitjacket. After thoroughly trouncing the villains, Muzzle becomes quite docile, usually due to the aftereffects of eating most of the villains (or at least their clothing).
Killface (real name Evelyn) from Frisky Dingo. His goal for much of the series is to use his Annihilatrix to propel Earth into the sun for no apparent reason, and he kills and mains people at the drop of the hat. In the pilot episode he kills a man and uses the corpse to stage an impromptu ventriloquist act (oblivious to how appalingly lame his jokes are). Watch some choice moments.
- And yet he's still more sympathetic than Xander Crews. Proving, forever, that it's better to be a sociopath than a douchebag.
The titicular character in Assy McGee may very well qualify, being a ultra-violent and remorseless parody of 70's/80's cops (though, he is clinically depressed) that makes Jack Bauer look tame by comparison.
Slappy of Animaniacs qualifies as one, because unlike a typical Screwy Squirrel she is fully aware that she's not that good, her enemies aren't that bad, and she pays them back way worse than they deserve.
Chris, the host from Total Drama Island, is a mild case of this trope. He's never gone on any killer rampages or anything, but the constantly dangerous (and sometimes life-threatening) challenges he sets the contestants on mostly for his own amusement, makes him one of these. On several occasions he makes references to how interns have been killed testing out the challenges, and it's hard to tell if he's joking or not...
- Chris is (as well as the show's writer, background designer, director, and executive producer) the show's assassin tasked with killing anybody who tries to escape/enter the island. Meaning, he may actually have gone on killer rampages.
- Chef Hatchet is similar as well.
  - Who could forget Izzy, who not only looks back at the time she BLEW UP A MOUNTIES' CAMP with cheer, but enjoys being hunted down by them?
Izzy: You'll never get me alive! AHAHAHAHAHA!!
The titicular character of the show Kevin Spencer is an example. He is a chain-smoking, alcoholic, sociopathic juvenille delinquent who responds to the moronic people around with violence, usually just for the thrill of it.
The Brak Show features Zorak Jones, an Eddie Haskell-esque character who is also a sadistic, sociopathic, morally bankrupt misanthrope. He is basically what you get when you mix Master Shake and Cartman. Luckily though, he often gets killed horrifically during each episode, which might make him somewhat of a subversion.
Xavier from the aburdist show Xavier: Renegade Angel borders on this at times.
Arguably, the eponymous protagonist of Ardy Lightfoot could count as this in the original Japanese version. Not only does he ignore the tied-up villagers in the forest stage without lifting a fuzzy finger to help them, but in the obligatory Womb Level he happens upon the digested remains of the previous stage's boss (a foxgirl ninja who is never even linked to the game's actual villains; her name doesn't even appear in the opening credits, arguably making the rest of them Karma Houdinis on a massive scale!) lying right next to the Mineral Macguffin she stole, and what does he do? He grabs the jewel, launches into his victory dance and the stage continues as if nothing else happened.

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."

Anti Hero

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