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The Operative: I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin. Mal: So me and mine gotta lay down and die... so you can live in your better world? The Operative: I'm not going to live there. There's no place for me there... any more than there is for you. Malcolm... I'm a monster. What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it, but it must be done.
The Anti Villain version of the Well Intentioned Extremist. A villain may believe that the Ends, usually or especially involving a Utopia, justify the Means, but has in no way lost his conscience, or otherwise may have had a Heel Realisation during his deluded time. He knows full well that what he's doing is evil and that heroes may try to bring him to justice for his crimes. He may in fact be counting on it, feeling it to be a just punishment for what he feels he must do. He may bear the heroes no ill will, and may in extreme cases even commend them for trying to stop him.
He does what he has to do, because he knows that something far worse will happen if he doesn't. He knows he must pay the price for his deeds, but not before his goals are accomplished. What A Senseless Waste Of Human Life...
Examples
Anime and Manga
- The Weiss Kreuz series has four of these as its protagonists. They kill criminals who are above the law in order to help protect the innocence of normal people, while acknowledging that they themselves are also criminals and murderers, and expecting to be punished for it someday. Even their voice actors, one of whom is the creator of the series, do not expect their characters to meet good ends.
- Sailor Moon: Sailors Uranus and Neptune consider their actions necessary but not worthy of forgiveness. Subverted in that they are revealed to have pure hearts midway through.
- In Gundam Wing, Treize Kushrenada and Milliardo Peacecraft start a war to show humanity just how senseless war really is. Treize actually goes so far as to commit to memory the names of every single one of his deceased pawns, to show that he doesn't take their sacrifices lightly.
- Another example is the side of Gundam 00's Celestial Being represented by the Ptolemaios crew. They are fully aware of the hypocritic and outright contradictive nature of their mission statement to end war through war, with some even admitting that they make for excellent terrorists.
- Of course, it turns out that the Ptolemaois crew is played for exactly the same reason; they themselves are rendered a hypocritical foe by the very same organization they supposedly work for. It works out, somehow
- In the end of Code Geass, Lelouch becomes an evil dictator. His goal is doing this is to unite the world against him. In the end, he orchestrates his own assassination in order to die and take humanity's hatred with him. Jesus reference much?. Anyway, his plan works, and the world become peaceful and prosperous after his death.
- Itachi from Naruto may embody this trope. If Madara is telling the truth, he murdered his entire clan save his brother and lived out the rest of his life as a traitor hated by everyone in order to prevent a war. Planned to die by Sasuke's hand since the beginning.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann does this with every major villain.
- Dr. Kabapu from Excel Saga manga claims to be this, seeking to destroy all Overtechnology left behind by the Solarian civilization in order to avoid the End Of The World As We Know It repeating itself. However, it conveniently sets him against his age-old nemesis Lord Il Palazzo, so it's less than clear whether his words, or Il Palazzo's for that matter, can be trusted.
Comic Books
- Ozymandias in Watchmen constructs himself as Necessarily Evil in his final conversation with Dr. Manhattan, justifying murdering millions of people with his success in preventing further escalation of the Cold War and claiming 'he has made himself to feel every death'. He is never brought to justice for his acts and the comic does not judge either way, leaving the readers to make up their own minds on the subject. Although a throwaway comment that references the Black Freighter comic implies that, ultimately, he has availed nothing.
- The time frame on how quickly his plan fails remains a mystery though, as Dr. Manhattan's comment that "nothing ever ends" after the comic's climax also suggests that Ozymandias' plot will eventually be exposed but leaves the exact amount of time until that point unstated.
- Alter from Y The Last Man, after dealing with internal discord in Israel thanks to an abrupt end to their conflict with Palestine, concludes that America will suffer the same fate without an outside enemy to distract them — Naturally, that would be her. This is later revealed to be a cover for her real plan to be killed by Yorick.
- Chris Claremont insists in some of his more recent chances to write that everything Mystique did before Irene's death was to prevent prophecied worse evil from taking place if she didn't.
- In the DCU, Amanda Waller's original characterization. One storyline had the Suicide Squad being forced into disbanding. Amanda's response: hijack three of the prisoners who made up the Squad, offer them their freedom in exchange for their cooperation, brutally massacre the gang of thugs who had set in motion the disbanding...and then turn herself in to face trial. Going farther, she refused to use her knowledge of American espionage to get a better deal, reasoning that they'd dig her out if they ever needed her again. She ended up spending a year in prison.
- The ending of V For Vendettafeatures this trope, though it's the protagonist who realizes that he can't live in the utopia he's spent the entire book trying to birth.
Film
- 'The Operative' from Serenity, as the above quote demonstrates.
- John Doe in the movie Se7en thinks he is this type of character. His murder spree, based on the Seven Deadly Sins, was designed as a rebuke for humanity's banal acceptance of sin. Whether or not John Doe had originally planned for the spree to end with his own death is up for debate.
- The main theme of The Dark Knight was Batman - and his perception in the eyes of Gotham City - becoming this.
Literature
- By some readings, Paul Atreides and Leto Atreides II in the Dune series, who both see the future. Leto especially fits the trope: he merges with an alien species, becomes God of his own theocracy, crushes rebellions before they happen, and manipulates the genome for millennia in order to avert human extinction. Even his closest advisors repeatedly try to kill him and their eventual success is part of his plan. Sometimes, the Messiah has to be a Magnificent Bastard to save you despite yourself.
- Emperor Ezar, in Lois Mc Master Bujold’s book Shards of Honor, sets up a massive interplanetary war and gets several thousand people killed, all to assassinate his son, a deranged sadist, and discredit his cronies, a batch of expansionist warmongers, thus averting the ascension of a madman to the throne and subsequent civil war.
- The Wolves/Inhibitors of Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space trilogy wipe out intelligent life any time they discover it spreading beyond its original planet. (Even they, a kind of Mechanical Lifeforms, are only intermittently sentient when necessary to reach their goals.) It eventually turns out they are trying to keep intelligence from being wiped out forever when our galaxy collides with the Andromeda galaxy several billion years in the future.
- A small-scale version is the killer in The Victorian Hangman is the executioner for New York, unemployed after NY switched to the electric chair. He traveled west and continued his practice of eliminating criminals. After executing an adulterer, a thief, and a card cheat, he realized he was the only criminal left in the area.
- In the Warhammer 4,000 Gaunt's Ghost novel ''The Guns of Tanith' one of the Ghost's less savoury members kills an old man to keep word of their secret mission getting to the Blood Pact. Subverted by the thoughts of Hlaine Larkin in the same squad thinking 'There was quite enough unnecessary evil in the fething galaxy without deliberately adding to it'.
- The protagonist of Treason by Orson Scott Card. He wipes out an entire subspecies because its illusion powers are too dangerous to leave in existence, but he knows full well that those he's killing include innocents who don't abuse their powers. Towards the end, only his certainty that it was necessary is keeping him sane.
- Discworld's Vetinari. Maybe.
- This is an Alternate Character Interpretation of Judas Iscariot in The Gospel of Judas, a Gnostic text dating back to the fourth century. In it, Judas is depicted as following Jesus's instructions when he turned him over to Pontius Pilate, in order to set in motion the events that lead up to Jesus's resurrection.
Video Games
- Ammon Jerro in Neverwinter Nights 2. Not only does he deal with devils, and other deadly creatures of the lower planes in order to get what he needs done. True, he's trying to save all of the sword coast. But at the same time he kills his granddaughter, and several other people whom are really not all that bad. They just happen to get in his way.
- Bian Zoldark and Maier Branstein in Super Robot Wars Original Generation. When they realized that the government was preparing to surrender to the coming alien invaders, they launched an attempt to Take Over The World, in order to give mankind the means to fight back against the invaders, remove those who wanted to collaborate, and finally, ensure that the heroes were strong enough to spearhead the counterattack.
- Tragically, a lot of their minions had different plans. Most of which involve 'kill the heroes, take their place'. Which may have been Bian and Maier's back-up plan.
- Seraph Lamington in Disgaea allowed Vulcanus to run amok, and later justly but "excessively" punished Flonne for a relatively minor sin by turning her into a flower. He was however willing to, and counting on, being defeated by the protagonist. It is revealed in the good ending that he was plotting with the ghost of the Netherworld's ruler to use a Xanatos Gambit and force Laharl to grow up and become kinder. In the good ending, Laharl spares the Seraph's life, and he returns Flonne to life as a fallen angel (with cute bat wings and red trim).
- Irving Voleria in Wild ARMs 2 formed both the heroes and the villains as a two-tiered plan to gather information as well as global resources in order to stop a sentient dimension from swallowing their world. The villains could use whatever tactics they wanted; and the heroes would be able to get the combined support of the world's governments who wanted them to stop the villains.
- In Suikoden II, Jowy seems at first to be simply a Face Heel Turn, or maybe a Rival Turned Evil, when he betrays the city of Muse to the Highlands, assassinates the Mayor, and opens the gates to the invaders. It turns out, however, that he only did it because he knew that the only way to stop the monstrous Luca Blight, was from the inside - and so, he sold out Muse in order to gain Luca's trust, so that he could later betray him, bringing about his death at the hands of the hero. However, by the time Luca dies, Jowy has already married Luca's sister, and he thus becomes the ruler of Highland... and thus, he is responsible for the nation, and feels compelled to win the war. At the very end of the game, he is literally gambling on The Hero killing him, so that he can use his life-force to seal the Beast Rune that Luca unleashed earlier... whether it actually ends that way, however, depends on a few things...
- Claudia Wolfe from Silent Hill is this to a T. She acts cruel and evil to the protagonist and orders the murder of her father... but Heather eventually finds her diary, which is filled with entries about how much she's sorry for having to put Heather through all this to bring the birth of paradise for Heather and everyone... but Claudia herself. However, Heather stops the birth of paradise.
- Maybe. She may have just delayed it, depending on the interpretation of the bad ending. Or if that ending is canon.
- Claudia is also a major martyr: she's willing to sacrifice herself and go to Hell to allow other people to go to Paradise.
- One fan theory about Knights Of The Old Republic is that Revan waged war against the Republic in order to toughen them up and force them to become more militaristic to prepare them for the Yuuzhan Vong invasion thousands of years later.
- The second game of the series has the other theory that it was to prevent societal collapse, or that it was all part of a Xanatos Gambit to prepare for ANOTHER enemy. Which he left to find.
- If you're going to bring Star Wars' Expanded Universe into this, the original Heir to the Empire trilogy portrayed Grand Admiral Thrawn as a ruthless warlord but a competent, at times even caring commander. The later books set him up as someone attempting to prepare the galaxy for invasion, which came with the Yuuzhan Vong.
- Heck the newest ones set the Emperor himself up like this. Of course, he wants to stay in control...
- Trias the Betrayer from Planescape: Torment. A fallen angel, he betrayed his kin and made a compact with the lower planes: He would cause mass acts of betrayal that would send the border town of Curst into Carceri and shift the balance of the planes towards evil. In return, he would be given control of an army of demons, which he planned to use to attack the gates of heaven themselves. Trias expected both this army and himself to be defeated, but hoped that such an act would be enough to rouse the celestials of the upper planes to take a more hands-on approach in the war against evil instead of doing what he saw as being Achilles In His Tent while evil was allowed to run rampant.
- Sepheran from Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. Acts affable to the end, and even loyal to one of the heroes even while he is fighting the others. Can't be talked out of fighting the heroes, yet is happy upon defeat.
- Seymour Guado fancied himself this, committing his innumerable sins because he genuinely felt that the world would be better off in the peace of death.
- Everyone in Iji: The Tasen invade Earth because they're being hunted to extinction by the Komato and think that Earth would be a nice place to hide. The Komato general justifies his campaign by saying that the folks back home will settle for nothing less than total annihilation. Iji calls bullshit on both counts. And if you play in the standard action adventure style, they'll retort with Not So Different.
- Tales Of Legendia's Stingle BLEEDS this trope.
- Wallachia in Melty Blood. Turns out he was trying to prevent the end of the world, but every solution he came up with just made things worse. He became a Dead Apostle in order to get the power to hopefully avert it.
- Depending on interpretation, Yuan in Tales Of Symphonia may be this or a Well Intentioned Extremist. It doesn't really show him acting guilty for what he does, but then again, he doesn't show much emotion at all other than annoyance, and the storyline doesn't focus on him enough to give him a chance.
Web Comics
Web Original
Live Action TV
- UFO. Although the nature of the aliens is a mystery, their harvesting of human organs indicates they come from a dying race. Commander Straker suggests they view humanity not with malice but with callousness ("much as we view our food animals"). Straker later encounters a man with telepathic powers who is being controlled by the aliens. In the middle of their conversation he suddenly blurts out: "We mean no harm to the peoples of Earth. Why do you attack us? We're fighting for existence…you must understand!"
Western Animation
Music
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