Pet The Dog - Television Tropes & Idioms

Hiruma from Eyeshield 21 is the bossy, trigger-happy, insult-spouting Magnificent Bastard quaterback/captain of the Devil Bats, but he gets a Pet The Dog moment or two. In episode 14, Hiruma is impressed enough by the determination of Yukimitsu during the "Tower of Hell" try-outs that he lets him on the team, even though the huge bag of ice Yukimitsu had been carrying to the top of the tower had melted.
- In an omake, Hiruma gets a literal "pet the dog" opportunity...which he ignores completely. Although when it turns out the dog was really vicious, it's the beginning of a beautifully warped Boy and His Dog relationship.
- He and the Ha-Ha Brothers (the juvenile delinquents who used to harass Sena) get one later in the manga when they attempt to protect Mamori and Suzuna from the freakishly big and strong Gaoh (who wasn't specifically intending to hurt them, but was pretty much single-mindedly stomping up into the stands to confront a heckler).
Galvatron, of all people, gets one in "transformers: Headmasters" part of the Takara anime series. He's moved to genuine sorrow and anger when Soundwave is killed, suggesting there's something halfway decent beneath the arrogant psychopath he normally appears as.
On One Piece, when we first meet Captain Smoker, we're led to assume he's a ruthless commander (though not to the extent of the tyrannical Captain Morgan). However, to show he's not such a bad guy, we get a scene with a little girl accidentally spilling her ice cream cone on Smoker, and Smoker offering to buy her another. Smoker winds up as more of a respectful antagonist of the Straw Hats than the Knight Templar or corrupt government agent archetype that most One Piece Naval captains fit.
- That scene was played brilliantly. The girl's father freaks out because a superhuman monster has just been offended by his daughter, and Smoker leans down...and almost worriedly says, "Oh gosh. My pants ate your ice cream. They're so mean—here's some money to buy some more, okay?" And he hands her the series' equivalent of fifty dollars, or some other ridiculous amount. It's so adorable.
- Zoro's own moment way back at the beginning is played in a very similar way. Up until then, he was hyped as a heartless monster, but when he eats a poorly-cooked and filthy rice ball a sweet little girl he saved earlier made for him, and asks Luffy to tell her it was good, you know he's a massive softy at heart.
  - Zoro often has his moments with Chopper too. You didn't see how upset he got when Chopper was attacked by Ohm. And in some ways, he has a lot of Pet The Dog moments with Luffy too.
Subverted in Azumanga Daioh with the Dirty Old Man Mr. Kimura. The characters spot him picking up trash and feeding stray animals, and suspect he may not be so bad after all... then they overhear an inappropriate comment of his and decide nope, he's still a pervert.
From Full Metal Alchemist: Riza Hawkeye's softer side is best shown whenever she's around her beloved pet puppy, Black Hayate. Although her dog training methods are a bit harsh...
- Roy Mustang also has a moment in the same episode. "Dog, huh? ...I LOVE dogs!" Mind you, this is something of a subversion, as he explains that he likes dogs because you can "treat them like a jerk and they'll still love you", all of which adds up to making Mustang one of the most awesome anime characters ever.
  - Manga Bradley counts. Even though he was raised to be Fuhrer since birth and turned into a monster under control of the Big Bad. He still had the freewill to choose his own wife.
Alluded to in the Digimon Adventure 02 series, when the homicidal BlackWarGreymon takes a fondness for a flower and a child Agumon. This is slightly an exception, as he is not evil, so much as angsty, and is destroying things to find a purpose for his synthetic life.
- And pos sib ly I ori.
Psychopath Desty Nova from Battle Angel Alita gets this sort of moment only in unreality, when he's in Alita's mind trying to remake her memories and trap her in virtual reality. Part of the illusion puts him in the role of her father figure. They share a truly empathic moment where Nova no longer seems insane, and he wishes that the moment could last forever... then he tries to defend Alita from the approaching "monster" even though (in the virtual-reality reality) it appears to be working toward a Heroic Sacrifice.
Bumbling Jerk of a Dad Genma is shown tucking in a sleeping his son Ranma like a small child in one story.
Doctor Clive in Haré+Guu is kind to Marie even wearing the ridiculous outfits she gives him.
A scene in Hellsing Volume Five shows a Nazi vampire lamenting his inability to go to the park and feed pigeons on Sunday off-days.
Subverted in Monster. Sure, it looks like Johan has a soft spot for children, volunteering at an orphanage between murdering in cool blood and preparing himself to become the next Adolf Hitler, but that's only until you hear the disturbing ideas he's planting in their impressionable little minds...
- Subverted again at around the same time: Johan reuniting Schuwald with his long lost son was be heartwarming as hell...until it became immediately apparent that he did it to stall the investigation into the death of Schuwald's original suspected "long lost son" (who he killed). And when the private investigator tries to pursue the case anyways, he Mind Rapes the guy and pushes him to his death. Yeah, Johan's kind of a dick.
- He also has a touching moment just before this where he sheds Tender Tears over Karl's Orphans Ordeal, which will really do your head in by Fridge Horror once you get a few issues further into the story. The possibility the tears might still be real only adds Mind Screw to the already fairly MindScrewy characterization.
- "Here. You can buy your pills with this."
- And he loves his Half Identical Twin and wants to reunite with her. So much that he kills the only parents she's ever known in one of multiple attempts to kidnap her.
Somewhat subverted in Gash Bell; in one episode, Kiyomaro and Gash see a giant-sized young man carting along a boy holding a spell book. The giant is shown helping kids in trouble, fixing a broken-winged bird, and helping little old ladies; they assume the giant is a kind "mamodo" (demon), but then are confused when they see him and the boy conjuring up a plan to destroy an elementary school. As it turns out, the boy was the mamodo, and he was downright rotten.
- Played straight during the Faudo Arc during Rodeux's final moments when it was revealed that he had been trying to get his human partner to overcome her depression over an eye injury. Up to that point he had been shown to be a plain Jerk Ass.
Kyon in "The Disappearance Of Haruhi Suzumiya". With which moment should we start? Generally said, his treatment of Yuki Nagato, going so far as to threaten to use Haruhi to reconstruct the universe because of her. Given to that he previously was presented as an apathetic cynic, this is a good way to go.
Spiral's Eyes, Kousuke and Rio are originally portrayed as sociopaths, perfectly comfortable with killing anyone that gets in their way... and rather violently, especially in the manga. Eyes recalls killing several animals, culminating in a husky he strangled with a wire. There is a slight twist when Eyes is completely unaffected by the death of the cat he and Kousuke had just fed, but the camaraderie they show towards each other in later episodes, and their mutual concern for Rio while she's in the hospital somewhat negate it. Once Ryoko, Kanone and the Hunters are thrown into the mix, it becomes apparent that the Blade Children aren't inherently evil; they're just trying to survive. Twisted, but not evil.
In Deadman Wonderland apparently Ax Crazy Senji (aka Crow) cheers for Ganta at the latter's second match and even gives Ganta's move's a name despite having had an eye surgically removed because he lost to Ganta at his first match. Meanwhile, mole You's brutal behavior is because 1) he's in prison and 2) he needs to save as much money as he can to buy his little sister's freedom. Ironically she probably doesn't deserve it. Genkaku, shown in a flashback to his past, was revealed to have a humanizing moment while taking care of a small, wounded kitty. Unfortunately for everyone, it dies.
In Dragonball, Piccolo was — literally — pure evil. Then he gets stuck raising his arch enemy's adorable little son, who doesn't understand why people don't think he's just awesome. Piccolo develops a soft spot for Gohan, performs a Heroic Sacrifice on his behalf, and, despite some early denial, is an official good guy from there on out. Some fans even believe Piccolo to be a better parent than Goku or ChiChi, Gohan's biological parents. Piccolo also got the chance to pet many other dogs after that, most notably Dende and the planet Namek, which he actually started caring about. The original Piccolo wouldn't have given them a second thought.
- Vegeta gets several, becoming more and more obvious, but the first that was definitely intended as such is when he get together with Bulma, has a son Trunks, reacts to protect his son's life, then is later motivated by the lives of his girlfriend/wife and son, and even his wife's honor throughout the Buu Saga.
- Same thing happens to Majin Buu later in the series, except here with an actual dog.
  - Even earlier than that, his healing the blind kid. It showed that Goku knew where he was coming from.
Fakir from Princess Tutu has what you could call a "Pet the Duck" moment—when the typically cold and angry boy finds Ahiru (in her duck form) in his locker, he sneaks her under his coat, takes her outside, and then proceeds to feed her bread. He smiles at her and then pets her head before walking away.
- This happens a couple other times, until he's crying next to a lake and she swims up to him, where he actually HUGS A DUCK.
Paul von Oberstein in Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu (Legend of Galactic Heroes) is, if not evil, a pretty (and unashamedly) unlikable guy, to the point of allowing an entire planet of people to die because it would be good propaganda (in the anime anyway). However, in the second season we learn that he has taken in and dotes upon an elderly dalmatian he found in the street. Though we only see it once on screen it's mentioned a few more times, most notably his last words are to request someone take care of the dog. Of course, in his case, it doesn't indicate his underlying heart of gold. He's just a jerk who really likes his dog.
In The Prince Of Tennis, Ryoma Echizen and Kaoru Kaidoh are aloof, asocial, and kind of jerks sometimes. But the episode "Karupin's Adventure" showed that they both adore petting the cat, since Ryoma freaks out when he realizes his beloved Himalayan cat Karupin has been out of home and almost cries when his sempai return it to him, and a scene prior to the return has Kaidoh playing with the kitten and later blushing when one of his sempais notices he's in a good mood despite not dropping his antisocial facade.
Azumanga Daioh has Sakaki, a large, athletic, intimidating girl who wants nothing more than to pet cats. Who always viciously attack her, with one exception. Which makes a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming.
Believe or not, a demon in Berserk gets one of these. The Count, the first major demon we see, has a young daughter named Theresa, the one thing he still cares about. When he's dying from Guts's attack, the Godhand give him a chance to be regenerated... if he sacrifices her. Anyone who makes a deal with the Godhand is destined to go to Hell when they're destroyed. The Count's choice: he dies, rather than give his daughter to the Godhand.
- Father Mozgus is a Complete Monster, obsessed with torture and execution of "heretics". His assembled inquisitorial squad is composed of freaks... freaks that he personally rescued and gave a chance at something better. The man's priorities are backward, but he does have a charitable side.
For a large part of Petite Princess Yucie, Beth doesn't seem to be an overly sympathetic character—until you find out how she lets her fairy assistant spend the night◊.
Partially subverted in Tekkaman Blade II, where the new Tekkamen are shocked to see the alien Tekkamen they've been fighting mourn the death of one of them during a battle. They're actually reluctant to finish the battle once they realize the enemy is human (so to speak), until Aki transforms into a Tekkaman herself and proceeds to brutally slaughter the aliens herself.
Ai Haibara of Detective Conan, formerly a member of The Syndicate, is given this, with literal dogs and some cats.
Jinnai to Ifurita in the last episode of El Hazard: The Wanderers: "You did a good job." Too bad she wasn't awake to hear it.
In Mahou Sensei Negima, Chachamaru literally Pet The Cat(s) when she - after performing many acts of kindness in town from catching errant balloons stuck in trees to helping old ladies cross the overpass - rescued a stray kitten in a box going down a river, which followed her afterwards implying she knew the animal. From this the heroes tailed her to discover that she feeds and takes care of a number of stray cats in her spare time. This made for quite a very happy scene, so naturally, the pair of heroes said (with Tender Tears) "Aww! She's not so bad!". The more Cynical Chamo (who has a Heart Of Gold as well) reminded them she's a robot.
- Known Jerk Ass Tosaka turned his character around a bit when he protected Ako from giving up her slave rights to safety, called off his blackmail of Negi, saying he was just bored, and later told Negi in all details that his Missing Mom, Princess Arika, was a really sweet person whom he looked up to. He denies being a good character in almost every appearance thereafter.
- During his fight with Rakan, Fate pets the dog. In a flashback anyway. Turns out his minions' loyalty stems from the care he gave them as orphans from the great war, and they are just the ones who chose to stay with him—he sent the other 57 off to school. Even Rakan notes that it's surprisingly nice of Fate. Granted, Fate's boss is the one who caused the war in the first place, but taking care of the war orphans is far from the more normal Big Bad tactics of killing everyone. Combined with his sudden growth spurt and visible emotions, Fate seems quite different.
  Anon #1: Fate Tertium Averruncus promotes destruction of entire civilizations, squishing innocent passerby with giant monoliths, and completing primary education. What a nice chap.
  Anon #2: Well it's only fair that they have a future before he destroys it.
Inu Yasha's older brother Sesshomaru is displayed as an evil demon who only wants power and to be the best...then they give him a cute lil HUMAN girl that follow him around, after he clearly stated how he hates humans...
- Kagura's actions towards Kohaku, especially since she ended up dying for him.
Subverted by Precia Testarossa in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. After many episodes of Fate insisting that her mother, Precia, had a good side deep within her, we finally get to see Fate's precious memory of a kind Precia playing with a younger her. Then we get to the end of the episode, where Precia reveals in a thoroughly nasty way that even when this moment ''truly happened... Fate is a clone, that the precious memory wasn't hers but of her original, Precia's daughter Alicia, oh, and that she had always hated Fate for not being a perfect Replacement Goldfish of poor Alicia and would prefer it if she died, effectively turning her Pet The Dog moment into a Moral Event Horizon.
- Of course, other villains in the series get straigher Pet The Dog moments. Even Mad Scientist Jail Scaglietti got one in StrikerS Sound Stage X when all he requested in exchange for important information on the current incident's Big Bad and Mysterious Waif was enough wine for one so he can properly honour the death anniversary of one of the Numbers. Just shows how much of a monster and absolutely over-the-top case of Love Makes You Evil Precia is.
In Fushigi Yuugi, Nakago gets one of these in a flashback revealing he rescued Soi from being gang-raped.
- Suboshi also gets a major Pet The Dog moment when he gives his twin older brother Amiboshi a potion that will make him lose all memory, including memory of Suboshi himself, so that Amiboshi can live a happy, innocent life. Given that Amiboshi is Suboshi's last living family member, and that Suboshi had been absolutely devastated when he earlier thought Amiboshi to be dead (enough to slaughter the whole family of the guy he thought of as the murderer), it's actually one of the most legitimately moving sacrifices in the series.
- Soi's moments of vulnerability with Nakago, of all people, serve this function.
In the Osamu Tezuka manga/tokusatsu Ambassador Magma, Goa likes children despite being the Big Bad of the series.
Xanxus in Katekyo Hitman Reborn gets one with a touching families stick together speech in the Future Arc... Right before blasting an enemy apart.
Touka in Saki initially appears to be an arrogant Libby. The series then proceeds to throw so many Pet The Dog moments at her, that by the end, she probably qualifies for sainthood.
Vanilla from Kaiba is a corrupt and callous ship's sheriff who takes bribes as a matter of course and is perfectly willing to summarily execute stowaways. (In Kaiba, people's memories can be stored on chips and transferred to other bodies, so this is not quite as bad as it seems, but Vanilla still shows no remorse for the execution even after the stowaway was found not to have transferred her memories to a chip.) His lecherous infatuation with Chroniko (Kaiba in a young girl's body) is also really creepy. Eventually, though, it is revealed that Vanilla became a sheriff in order to raise enough money to buy a body for his mother, and that deep down he genuinely cares about Chroniko, to the point that when they are being shot at by police, he transfers Kaiba's rather than his own memories to another body, sacrificing himself in the process.
All Diclonii and Slipets in Elfen Lied are dog petters by default. Diclonii will kill anyone, men, women, children, their own parents. However, not one instance is ever noted of one harming an animal, with the anime showing a dog even biting a diclonius, and the diclonius just petting it to make it feel better.
In Darker Than Black, Dolls are a frequent outlet for characters to do their dog-petting. Dolls are people who have been left shells of their former selves, and it's indicated that ~~Complete Monsters~~ enterprising people are fond of selling them as sex slaves. Both the protagonists and their more sympathetic antagonists treat the Dolls they work with with kindness, and some of those characters evidence a willingness to kill anyone who harms those Dolls.
Light Yagami gets a couple of these in Death Note, both with family members. He offers to run an errand on his sister's behalf, with no apparent ulterior motive - of course, this gets him into position to commit one of his most heinous acts of the first arc, when he tricks and murders Naomi Misora. Much later, in the manga, he talks his father out of quitting his police job; the motive is purely that Soichiro has risen to the top of his profession and Light can't let him give it all up. Again, this is despite the fact that Light's own actions are responsible for the Kira case, which is destroying Soichiro, and that in a few chapters' time Light will rationalise, accept and plan for Soichiro's murder, although he never has to carry it out. While over in animeland that doesn't happen, Light is so far gone by the same point in the anime that when he can't go through with the murder of his sister, it manages to come off as a Pet The Dog!

Kingdok from Bone prepares and brings food to the two stupid rat creatures for inadvertantly doing him a favor. Unlike most examples, Kingdok actually retains most of his scariness and menace as he's doing this.
Lobo of The DCU parodies this: he is a relentless killing machine who often kills his bounties instead of capturing them, yet at the same time has a soft spot for "space dolphins". But he did once spare Aquaman's life because he felt he couldn't hurt somebody who loved dolphins as much as he did.
Vril Dox has a couple of these in L.E.G.I.O.N. Right before he is raped and killed, he confesses to his unconscience teammates that he really does care about them, but he doesn't really know how to express that. When Lyrissa Mallor dies, he mourns for her, believing that without her, L.E.G.I.O.N. would not have gotten as far as it did. When Vril Dox finally gets to see his son, after Stealth believed that he would become just as controlling as he was of the rest of the group, Vril remembers his father being a controlling jerk, and himself being controlling to the Durlan. So he lets the mother have the child. awww.
Catwoman obviously can't pet a dog without ruining the motif, but she's been subjected to a number of Pet The Cat moments, a prime example being the ending of this web-toon. She's not the least bit disappointed that she wound up saving kitties instead of stealing gemstones.
Edward Blake in Watchmen has a couple of moments like this. The first is when he is talking to a teenaged Laurie and tilts her chin up to look at her eyes, which he says are like her mother's. It turns out that she's his daughter, and he looks a little sad when Sally Jupiter drags her daughter away from him. The second instance of this for him is when he cries after finding out about Adrian Veidt's plan to achieve world peace by killing millions worldwide. He even cries when talking about this to an old archenemy, who he says is "the closest thing I have to a friend."
- Considering that Blake has several instances where he could be said to cross the Moral Event Horizon, these moments are probably sorely needed for his character.
Hellboy is a huge demon with enough strength to tear a car in half. He is the Badass to end all badasses. As such, his action figure comes with the following props: A six-pack of beer, a revolver, and a... kitty?! Yes, the son of Satan is a cat-lover.
- Also in the film Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Prince Nuada had a literal pet the dog moment. Justified by the fact that his big problem is with humans overrunning the planet and pushing out other species, so it's natural that he's a lot nicer to dogs than humans.
Artist Katie Cook [1] draws figures like Darth Vader and General Grievous playing with kittens in her Star Wars Clone Wars comics.
In Negation, the Saurian party member subverts her pet the Kaliman retriever moment when she names him "tasty treat" in her people's language.
In one Far Side comic, a band of unruly vikings, after successfully sacking a castle and stealing its women, are eagerly awaited at their ship by the crew's dog. As Gary Larson says on this in The Prehistory of The Far Side:
"...I was trying to suggest that it doesn't really matter what you do for a living or how big a jerk you are, your dog still likes to see you come home."
In Punisher War Journal, the Rhino has a few. First, he writes an apology letter to the widow of a cop he had accidentally killed and sends her money with each score he pulls off. Second, in the last issue he convinces the Punisher to leave the Stilt-Man gang alone (on Christmas no less) because he could tell they were just stupid, not evil.
Dr. Octopus from Spider Man has gotten a few pet the dog moments over the decades, including trying to save Aunt May from Hammerhead and trying to develop a cure for AI Ds in order to save his ex girl friend.

Sure, Indiana Jones was not the nicest or even an ethical person in Raiders Of The Lost Ark, but if you still think he is a selfish and heartless mercenary after he stopped a boy from being whipped to death in The Temple Of Doom knowing FULL WELL that he will be captured and tortured as a result, you really have not being paying attention to the film.
- Ilsa, Indy's Bond Girl and the perfect embodiment of an Aryan antagonist in The Last Crusade, reveals herself to be a villain when she tricks Indy into giving up an important Plot Coupon. She's a Nazi. But she's also a dedicated scholar and archaeologist who earns our sympathy when she weeps at the sight of her countrymen burning books. Doesn't save her from a Karmic Death; mostly because of her being Too Dumb To Live.
- There's another, off-screen example- Indiana is not Dr. Jones's name. It's Henry Walton Jr. Indiana was the name of his pet dog as a little boy. Which is more touching- the fact that Indie decided to keep the name as his own decades later, claiming "I've got a lot of fond memories of that dog" or the fact that the dog died while protecting a young Henry Jr. from a snake? Suddenly Indie's hatred of snakes doesn't sound so silly, does it?
Face/Off, Troy tying his dead brother's shoes; and to a lesser extent, beating the shit out of the boyfriend.
Clint Eastwood's character in The Good The Bad And The Ugly, despite being 'the Good' did lots of morally ambiguous or out-right wrong things. However, we are shown a seconds-long scene of him petting a tiny kitten, and before the climax he is shown comforting a dying soldier, so he may be merely a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold.
- Another one is a scene after the two stay at the monastery. Tuco leaves after an intense argument over their chosen lives with his brother who became a monk. Tuco is visibly saddened, though upon seeing Blondie he praises his brother greatly and tells him what a great dinner he had. Blondie, being the smarter of the two, is not fooled but he plays the game saying something along the lines that there's nothing like a good smoke after a good meal and offering Tuco one of his trademark cigars. This, mind you, to a man who wanted to walk him to death through the desert.
  - Of course, Eastwood attempted to do the same thing to him earlier in the movie for no reason. So its not like he didn't deserve it.
In the movie The Watcher, Keanu Reeves' character pets a dog. The subversion comes from the fact that the dog belonged to the women he strangled with piano wire seconds ago.
In the very first scene of Beetlejuice, Adam is established as a decent person in an unusual way. A large spider is crawling around his model construction of the local town, so what does Adam do? He gently picks up the spider, remarks on its unusual size, and releases it outside.
The rescued rabbit featured in the 1982 movie Local Hero seemed to exist purely for this purpose.
Captain Von Trapp has many of these moments in The Sound Of Music, but most notable is his sudden affection to his children when he returns home, finds his children singing, and suddenly sings with them, and then to them. The Von Trapp children react with shock and/or crying, and at the end of the song, they all embrace him. (Also a Pet the Dog moment for the actor, Christopher Plummer, who didn't like working with children, and distanced himself from them. Allegedly, the children's reactions were genuine when filming this scene, since it gave them the feeling that he actually liked them.)
At the end of Dogville, after Grace has her mob associates kill every man, woman and child in town, she specifically tells them not to kill a dog.
Made of Honor does this quite literally, several times over, to show that the protagonist isn't a total @$$hole. He even kisses the dog.
The TV movie A Is for Acid featured mass murderer John Haigh adopting a dog, taking good care of it, and breaking down in tears when it finally died. Of course, the reason the dog needed adopting in the first place was that he killed its owners and dumped them in a vat of acid to cover it up, but there you go.
The main villain in Vantage Point amasses a rather large list of crimes over the course of the few hours in which the movie takes place, including killing many civilians, is unable to run over a little girl, ultimately proving to be his undoing- his van crashes and he is caught. After an entire movie's worth of callousness, my brother and I were complaining that he should have simply hit the gas.
In Duel, the villainous truck driver rescues a broken down school bus between attempts to kill the man who dared to pass him on the road. It seems there's some very laser guided road rage at work.
As Good As It Gets features, in quick succession, a character getting both Kick The Dog and Pet The Dog moments that involve a literal dog. (The Kick The Dog scene is more for laughs, though.)
Literal example: Frost/Nixon has the defeated and broken ex-President pet a dachshund after admitting his guilt in the Watergate scandal. Of course, Nixon was the avowed master of dog-petting. (See Real-Life examples, below.)
The Nome King in Return to Oz actually comforts a crying Dorothy, and offers her a way to rescue the Scarecrow- which quickly transforms into a deathtrap as he transforms from an Elemental Embodiment to a particularly vile near-human. Wether or not the King's sympathy was ever genuine is up for debate.
- Further, after all the other member's of Dorothy's group have entered the Death Trap and she's awaiting her turn, the Nome King even offers to send her back to Kansas, albiet without changing her friends back. Of course, this all might have more to do with the King being Affably Evil rather then genuine kindness on his part. Again, a matter of debate.
Nicky in Casino is a terrifying, vice-toting individual, but after a night of crime and general violence, he always comes back home to make his son breakfast.
Preston in Equilibrium has an extended Pet the Dog moment when he saves an adorable puppy from execution by Sweeper squads. Arguably this is an aversion, since by that point he was already becoming a good guy, but given the fact that a week prior he would have had no problem shooting the dog himself (thanks to a mind-altering government-issue drug that suppresses human emotions), we're just gonna go ahead and say it's played straight, possibly to save the character from being hated by the audience for the rest of the film (and to save the audience from having to hear one more second of the poor, off-screen pooches whimpering as they were shot).
- More subtle but still telling, Preston noticeably flinches at each yelp while the pooches were being shot, until the puppy running up to him breaks his determination not to ruin his cover.
- Seemingly in order to take it one step further, after Preston convinces the Sweepers to allow him to keep the dog for a short while to "test it for disease", while attempting to covertly release the dog back into the area outside the city, he is caught by Sweeper squads sent by his suspicious partner. After failing to present identification (it was in the coat that he left in the trunk of his car with the dog to comfort it), and a near-miss search that actually has one of the men pop the trunk before the commander stops him, everything seems like it will be okay, the squad leader relaxes and apologizes for not recognizing him... until the puppy barks. The squad leader rushes over to the trunk and throws it open, and finds the puppy there staring up at him. All guns turn on Preston, and they order him to get on the ground, and then... a radically awesome scene commences in which Preston, rather than allowing the men to kill the dog and prove to them that he was still feeling no emotion, proceeds to disarm and kill a dozen of his fellow human beings, all for the life of a puppy dog. But then, how could any Bad Ass, no matter how awesome and hardcore he may be, say no to those adorable puppy dog eyes?
Nastily subverted in Schindlers List. Amon Goeth seems intrigued by the concept of showing occasional mercy, and waves off a concentration camp inmate with "I pardon you." He then repeats the phrase to a mirror...which is followed by him sniping the "pardoned" man from his balcony.
- Lets just say that if it looks like Goeth is going to pet the dog, he will subvert it very cruelly and very nastily.
  - Still some of his scenes play it straight, like showing genuine gratitude to his maid Helen Hirch (one scene again subverts it when he almost kissed her but then started beating her instead) and not allowing her to wear the Star of David, and also there is the scene in which he comes to the defense of Oscar Schindler because he kissed a Jewish woman.
In the Lethal Weapon series, Riggs starts out as a borderline Ax Crazy killing machine. Then, after slaughtering his way through the first two films, he refuses point blank to kill a guard dog. Instead he makes friends with it (by sharing his dog biscuits), then steals it. He was already on his way to being a nicer guy, but this was pretty much the proof that he was now just a slightly wacky cop (with a two-digit body count).
Near the end of The Departed, Colin Sullivan attempts to pet a neighbor's dog in the hallway of his apartment building, but the dog shies away.
October Sky has a classic example: Homer Hickham's father stops yelling at his son briefly to go rescue his son's friend, who is being beaten by his drunken stepfather. After threatening him and sending him on his way, Hickham comes right back and continues to yell at Homer, proving that he is a good man.
In The Fly 2 (the sequel to the Cronenberg movie starring Jeff Goldblum), the mutated insectoid protagonist happens to pet a golden retriever in the lab shortly before going on a revenge spree against the apparent bad guys of the film, making us (ostensibly) root for the monster in the film, for once.
West Side Story has a subtle example. During the Jets' opening dance-march through their territory, while making it very clear how they consider themselves the de facto owners of this chunk of the city, they pointedly walk around a little girl's chalk circle rather than interrupt her.
The 2004 German film Der Untergang/Downfall features the last days of Adolf Hitler's bunker. While not denying his fundamental insanity and monstrosity, it not only features him literally petting his dog but also showing other moments of (relative) humanity. This might count as a subversion, as they go more towards why people followed him despite the fact that he actually WAS a monster.
In the film The Usual Suspects, Michael Mc Manus literally pats an, understandably, concerned-looking canine as he makes his way through the drug runners' boat, cheerfully murdering the Hungarian smugglers in cold blood.
In Apocalypse Now, the rogue officer explains to the person sent to deal with him that, despite hacking the arms off innocent children, the Viet Cong were decent family men at home and therefore not evil.
The Big Bad of Man on Fire is a kidnapper who is shown covering and caressing his own children while negotiating the ransom of his victims.
In Snow White: A Tale of Terror, the wicked stepmother goes right ahead and murders her brother, leaves her stepdaughter lost in the woods while trying to magically kill her, poisons the entire castle and enslaves them magically, seduces her stepdaughter's fiance, and rapes and nearly murders her husband. During the big fight between her and the stepdaughter, she completely ignores her opponent when she hears her baby son crying, running to tend to him despite the fact that the stepdaughter is armed and more than ready to press any advantages.
The Beast Of Yucca Flats. After the Beast's rampage, when he dies, his final act is to Pet The Bunny.
Parodied and Subverted in the Live Action Adaptation of Dudley Do Right. Snidely Whiplash (Alfred Molina) is basking in his victory and declares drinks (at the bar he now owns) are on the house, before remarking to his henchman:
On second thought, drinks are only half off. [pause] On second thought, double the price of everything.

Western Fantasy Fiction has Drasek Riven from the Erevis Cale trilogy and The Twilight War. The second chosen of Mask, God of Thieves, Riven is a dark hearted angry man. The main character of these books, Erevis the first chosen of Mask, even remarks upon Riven's status as the better killer. Riven is a literal case of Petting the Dog, as the first sign of a good sign to him is when leaving a stakeout because he 'has other business to attend to'. Following Riven through the city we discover that he has two mongrel alley dogs he regularly feeds with scraps bought from a butcher. Before leaving the city, Riven even goes to the effort of paying (quite handsomely) a man to feed the dogs for the next year. Riven's case could have been done poorly, yet he never loses his status as a badass or suffers from Badass Decay; all of which is a testament to the author.
Lord Vetinari of Discworld fame has several pet the dog moments—most related to his ancient terrier Wuffles.
- Granny Weatherwax, meanwhile, acquires a kitten in Wintersmith, which she promptly names You (as in: "Stop that, You!"). She makes a show of not caring for it... but then cares for it when no one's looking. By the end of the book You is found curled up on top of Granny Weatherwax's head, under her hat (Granny gives the lame excuse that it keeps her head warm).
  - Greebo is one to Nanny Ogg. Despite the fact that Greebo is part homocidal, part sadistic and all wild fire explosions, he is still a cat. That does not stop Nanny Ogg from loving it. Subverted in that Nanny Ogg has a penchant for being nice but breaking out the badass when it is appropriate.
  - Even DEATH has a fondness for cats.
In From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne, the antagonist, Captain Nicholl, eventually challenges one of the protagonists, Mr. Barbicane, to a duel in the wilds of Florida. When two other protagonists try to stop the duel, how do they find Captain Nicholl? He has put his weapon aside, to save a small bird who has got stuck in a tarantula's net.
Raistlin of the Dragonlance saga, a treacherous, twisted Villain Protagonist (albeit an ensemble one) driven by bitterness and insatiable ambition, has a kindly streak when it comes to the downtrodden and pitiful... as he knows firsthand what it feels like to be helpless and hated. This leads to many Pet The Dog moments, especially with Bupu the Gully Dwarf, who inadvertently becomes a kind of Morality Pet.
Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke includes a sort of intentional and public Pet The Dog, when the Overlords issue a decree that all nations of the world must have strict laws to prevent animal cruelty. It's unclear whether the Overlords really are that nice and well-intentioned, or if they just want everyone to think they are.
In the War Craft novel Lord of the Clans, Grom Hellscream chastizes his fellow orcs for kidnapping a child, since that was not how warriors acted.
In Joe Abercrombie The First Law Blood Knight Ferro is almost on the point of killing The Igor Severard because he was trailing her and asks him for any reason why she shouldn't. After reflection Severard says that he's worth killing, but the birds he usually feeds don't deserve to lose that source of food. Ferro doesn't kill him - which is arguably one of her own rare Pet The Dog moments.
Mandalorian Walon Vau, a Drill Sergeant Nasty type, dotes upon his pet strill Lord Mirdalan. He takes Mird with him everywhere, wipes up any food it spills on itself, is prepared to sleep outside with the strill when it isn't permitted indoors. The man is tough as nails, but he takes Mird into battles in the same way, and with the same care, as fathers in his culture take their sons.
The RiffTrax for Spider-Man 3 commented — "See, this just goes to show that Spidey cannot, and will not, kill this guy. I mean, imagine how different Star Wars would have been if the first scene had shown Darth Vader stroking a puppy."
One could argue that the entire Gaunt's Ghosts and Ciaphas Cain (HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!) book series of Warhammer 40000 are extended Pet The Dog moments for the entire Imperium of Man, showing unmodified, poorly equipped, (relatively) poorly trained human beings fighting wholeheartedly for the Imperium and the Emperor, and that many of them are genuinely good people with noble motivations, forced to fight horrors beyond comprehension by sane minds.
- In fact most games, books, whatever that are about one planet or army will be this. The Imperium as a whole is Lawful Evil.
In the X Wing Series, Imperials who aren't totally evil inevitably Heel Face Turn into Rebels. As Imperials they avoid the casual cruelty of their peers. In the books, one Imperial Star Destroyer captain has a scene where he fusses over his outfits, trying to pick the one that will please his lover the most. Another goes over how he was assigned to wipe out a village which had produced an assassin, and while he did destroy it, he went down and told everyone first, and gave them time to evacuate. In the comics, Sixtus Quin admires how the Rebels fight before being betrayed and pulling a Help Face Turn. And Baron Soontir Fel, of course, has stunning integrity and loves his wife.
Jefferson Pinkard from Harry Turtledove's Timeline 191 series starts out as a very likable character but slowly does a Face Heel Turn until he's become the alternate universe's equivalent of Adolph Eichmann, ruthlessly sending the black population of the CSA to their deaths in concentration camps. However, to the end of the series he genuinely loves his wife and stepson and often worries about what will happen to them when the war turns bad for his side.
Henry, from The Secret History, did organize the murder of one friend, attempt to kill another, and represent himself as a Magnificent Bastard in general. But he did save Richard from dying of exposure in the Vermont winter.
Captain Nemo has several of these moments, the greatest one being when Arronnax finds him sobbing over a picture of his family.

ER's Frank the Receptionist, who was generally a cynical overweight jerk but once had a heart attack; at the end of the episode, we discovered that he had a handicapped daughter who loved him very much.
- Even further, it was revealed that Frank, usually so abrasive to everyone he works with, can't stop talking about how great they are and how much he admires them when he's at home, thus retconning in that he'd been petting the dog to some extent all along.
- Dr. Romano was a real jerk in his first seasons, and kept many of those qualities throughout his stay on the show. However he had a number of "pet the dog" moments, such as when he told Benton's son Reese "look after your daddy" in sign language, or when he refused to give up on Lucy after she was stabbed. His love for Corday also provided him with several such moments. The most literal "pet the dog" moment however came when he called Corday into surgery and she was shocked to see who their patient was...
Corday: Robert, this is a dog.
Romano: Correction Lizzie. This is my dog.
Deadwood's Al Swearengen is the camp's kingpin, a brutal pimp, highwayman, and murderer. He starts the series by stepping on a woman's throat and plotting a child's murder, but Pets the Dog a number of times throughout the show's run to almost become a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold. Beneath his unrelentingly caustic demeanor, he has a soft-spot for fellow orphans, and employs a handicapped cleaning woman as a way of looking after her. At the end of the first season he treats the delibitated preacher with kindness, and ultimately mercy-kills him. He also risks life and limb a few times protecting campfolk from Big Bad George Hearst.
Everybody Loves Raymond petted the dog with an episode named "Pet the Bunny". Ray, when writing a premature eulogy for his father, recalled how he saw his moment of vulnerability... petting a bunny.
- That wasn't the only time Frank petted the dog. When he found out his misogynistic buddies at the Elks Lodge were talking about Debra, he told them all off, albeit reluctantly.
- Not to mention the episode, name unknown, where Frank actually holds Marie in bed to comfort her after a particularly abrasive conflict.
Though the trope of Badass Decay originally bore the name of Spike from Bt VS, the character, despite also being something of a Magnificent Bastard, in fact exhibited signs of this from the start. More to the point, he was portrayed as being genuinely in love with his partner Drusilla (feelings that it would be difficult to interpret as genuinely mutual), and able to feel hurt and betrayed. In the end a combination of the two even led him to upset the Big Bad's apocalyptic plans. In the same season he had been introduced, no less. Furthermore, in connection to this it was soon routinely suggested that he held some kind of (twisted) affection for the main character(s), and possibly even the world at large. Though many more events (and many, many, more tropes) would be applied to him over the course of the show, the seed of his Badass Decay was visible almost from day one.
- The definite Pet The Dog moment came in season 5 when Spike, knowing full well that Dawn was the interdimensional key Glory was looking for, is captured by Glory and viciously tortured for the information and did not tell her. This was the turning point in his Badass Decay where even Buffy considered him a reliable ally.
- There was also his honest platonic affection for and respect of Joyce, Buffy's mother, whom he got on rather well with after their first meeting (when she hit him with an axe and told him to get the hell away from Buffy).
  - The best example of that affection is the episode where Spike, drunk and upset because Dru left him, proceeds to kidnap and threaten his way through the entire population of Sunnydale, except Joyce. From Joyce, he wants hot chocolate with marshmallows in.
  - Or when he leaves flowers after Joyce's death, without a tag so Buffy didn't know it was him. Prior to this Spike had been trying as hard as possible to get Buffy to like him, but this action proved that he genuinely liked Joyce.
- The Mayor's treatment of Faith is a definite Pet The Dog. He was still an evil monster, but he did genuinely seem to care about her and was a hell of a lot better support for her than the Scooby Gang was.
  - For that matter, one could consider him to be her Morality Pet, at least until she becomes good again.
  - Angel's treatment of Faith in his respective show was perhaps evenmoreso Pet The Dog.
If you think you've gone too far with Pet The Dog, you can always remind the audience of why the character needed Pet The Dog in the first place. They did it with Arnold Rimmer from Red Dwarf. He started out as a petty control freak with neuroses up to his eyeballs; in fact, for many of the early episodes, he fulfilled the role of the antagonist. But now and again the writers slipped in a moment of humanity, such as when he learned of his father's death, or a moment where he wasn't quite so self-centered as usual. Then they showed us what he could be like as a hero (the dimension-hopping Ace Rimmer: What a guy!), and let him show the occasional backbone ("Better dead than smeg"). By the time he left the cast, he was almost, shall we say, a decent human being. So of course Lister missed him, which was revealed through a... um... dream. And Kryten figured out the best way to cure Lister, as shown in this clip (or look up "The Rimmer Song").
- The novelization of the series made this even more explicit when Rimmer creates a double of himself from an old computer backup, and it's eventually revealed (even to Rimmer himself) that he has changed, and the "new/old" Rimmer is a far bigger jerk.
Subverted by Barney in How I Met Your Mother. Barney, who normally plays the role of the petty, womanizing, suit-clad jerk, was revealed to have formerly been a meek, loving hippie-type in an embarrassing old video. When asked to explain by his friends, he demanded that each of them tell an embarrassing story about themselves in return. After they did, he revealed that he had once deeply loved a hippie girl named Shannon. She eventually left him for a suit-wearing womanizer, prompting his stark personality change. Barney also told of how he recently visited Shannon, finding out that she was single again, with a job as a teacher and a beautiful kid. He mused on how that could have been his life in apparent sadness, while his friends comforted him. However, he then revealed that he greatly preferred his current life, and that in addition to tricking everyone else into telling embarrassing stories about himself, he had had sex with Shannon upon their reunion (even producing a cell phone recording of the incident when his friends didn't believe him).
- Barney does not always subvert this trope - his willingness to travel to San Francisco to persuade Lily to come back to Marshall is a clear Pet the Dog moment.
  - As is the way he cheers up Robin in the third season episode when her old boyfriend comes to town and manages to pretty much destroy her self-esteem, despite her being much more successful than him. Sure, he got laid in the end, but just this once it didn't seem intentional.
  - Your Mileage May Vary. Everything else Barney has ever done that ended up with him having sex with a woman, no matter how innocuous, has turned out to be planned out for that purpose.
- In the episode "Single Stamina", after stubbornly refusing to support his brother's upcoming gay marriage (because he opposes all marriage in general), Barney suddenly softens and has a change of heart at the news that the couple's going to adopt a baby boy. Later, alone at the reception, he talks to his new infant nephew saying how he'll be there for him.
In the episode "Chuck vs. The Wookiee" of the comedic spy drama Chuck, Sara, a near-total cipher, is seen feeding a pet fish, a nice hint of humanity. Then she's attacked by a masked assailant. During the struggle, a gun and the goldfish fishbowl are knocked to the floor. The assailant seems to reach for the gun...and instead rescues the goldfish, making this an instance of two characters petting the same dog.
- There have also been a few scenes which have shown that Casey hasn't repressed all his compassion, perhaps most notably when he offered to help Sarah's Lovable Rogue father get his sentence reduced.
The second season of The Office (American version) gave regional manager Michael Scott, initially modeled after his English counterpart as an unsympathetic egomaniac, a few very poignant Pet The Dog moments early in its run, when the character tears up at "Office Olympics" day, and is shown to genuinely care for children in the Halloween episode. Later seasons write Carell's character to be much more likable.
- Dwight Schrute (assistant TO the regional manager) is portrayed as a very unlikable (outside of humor value) character. Pet The Dog is subverted (TWICE) and played straight when he sits with a tearful Pam. He first takes off his jacket, making it seem like he's going to give it to her, but then just says "It's hot in here." He offers her a handkerchief and says he'll stay with her in a genuinely kind moment, putting his arm around her shoulder. Then he says, "You must be PMSing pretty bad." It's here
Subverted by Sylar from Heroes: While Sylar is at the Bennet house, the dog Mr. Muggles seems contented to be picked up and petted by Sylar. But that scene doesn't make Sylar one iota less creepy.
- In the future, Mr. Muggles is Sylar's dog—and the former Bennett house is Sylar's house.
- Mr. Muggles is pretty much Nightmare Fuel in his own right...
- Also, played with when Ted goes to pet the same dog. Ted, mind you, is radioactive by nature, which leads to this exchange:
  Matt: Don't nuke the dog!
  Ted: I'm not gonna nuke the dog!
Simon Cowell had a completely literal Pet the Dog moment on Season 7 of American Idol... a contestant entered with a six-week-old Pomeranian puppy named Panda, who she handed over to the judges. Simon very quickly nabbed the little creature, and his next words were, "I'm going to steal your dog." He kept stroking that little puppy through the entire audition, and it took some coaxing to get Panda out of his arms again.
Basically every episode of Life With Derek is set up so the title character can do this at the end.
Lieut. LaGuerta on Dexter is initially introduced as the Pointy Haired Boss, who netted the position through a combo of politics and luck and has a severe hate-on for Deb and an... interest in Dexter. Then, in an episode halfway through the season, a young Cuban boy is found at the site of one of Dexter's latest victims, and LaGuerta goes all maternal, looking after the kid and even thinking of adopting him if the boy's uncle isn't found. This has not stopped LaGuerta from being any more devious than before (hell, in Season 2, she sabotages her replacement by pursuing a clandestine affair with her fiance).
- From the very first episode.
  Dexter: But if I could have feelings at all, I'd have them for Deb.
  - She, Rita and the kids quickly became Dexter's Morality Pets.
Throughout the pilot for Firefly, Mal is constantly and repeatedly shown to be a mean, cranky, selfish bastard....until his touching scene in the infirmary with Kaylee that shows that he's not the "mean old man" he tries to be. By the end of the pilot, in spite of all the trouble it may cause him, he chooses to shelter Simon and River. As the series progresses, it becomes more and more apparent that Mal's Jerk Ass-ness is just a cover.
- Jayne also gets his own Pet The Dog moments, such as when he watches Kaylee's operation in the pilot like a big, nervous Mama Bear, or when he is quite visibly shaken at the death of the mudder who gave his life to protect him in "Jaynestown," or when he frees River and Simon in the hospital in "Ariel" after escaping himself.
- The Operative, of all people, gets a Pet The Dog instance, while he is killing a man. As the man is dying, the Operative comforts him with the knowledge that he did fine works, and made the world a better place, and is quite visibly affected as he watches the man die.
Mob boss Tony Soprano on The Sopranos is an inveterate dog-petter; his love of animals is frequently played up as one of his few signs of true humanity, as well as his protectiveness towards not just his children but, as long as they're young enough, others'. In one episode he loses it and kills one of his best-earning lieutenants for apparently killing a racehorse by arson (who did so for purely financial reasons) — the same racehorse Tony sat up with all night when it was sick.
- Of course, it's never outright revealed if said lieutenant actually was responsible for the horse's death. Tony's love of and affection towards animals is one of his most redeeming qualities, so it's entirely possible it was just the horse incident that set him off, but it could also be that it was the last straw, Tony being sick of dealing with the bastard, and he used it as an excuse. But in any case, the guy'd had it coming since he'd murdered the stripper.
  - Though ironically, after spending pretty much the entirety of his time on the series the series being an irredeemable jackass, Ralph was finally showing signs of heading towards redemption after his son was seriously injured, which occurred in the exact same episode in which he died.
- It also serves as a way to reveal more information about the character. Sociopaths tend to have more affection for animals than people. In fact, the series makes the same comment toward the end, when Melfi's shrink shares new studies with her which basically state that although affection toward animals and small children may seem like it humanizes sociopaths like Tony, therapy actually does very little other than train them to better imitate normal people and thus become more deadly.
Drug kingpin Avon Barksdale in The Wire, when asked for a donation of ten thousand dollars by one of his former soldiers who was looking to start a boxing gym as a means of youth outreach, proceeds to erupt into incredulous laughter at the proposal. Once the laughter subsides, he donates fifteen thousand instead.
- Additionally, drug dealer and convicted killer Wee-Bey Brice owns multiple tanks full of pet exotic fish, and talks about them with the same fondness that any other dedicated pet owner would. Even after he's incarcerated he continually makes sure that his wife and son are taking care of them properly. More importantly he lets Bunny Colvin adopt his son to give him the chance that he never had, recognising that his soldier's life and gangster mentality has got him nowhere.
Inverted in Farscape. Aeryn's mother's first appearance turned out to be, in light of her later actions, a pet the dog moment, which she very sorely needed.
- Scorpius had a particularly interesting pet the dog moment in his third episode, when he takes in an orphaned girl: he embraces her, gives her a room aboard his command carrier, and even states to his officers "we must know when to be strong and when to show compassion." However, it's subverted in that the "orphan" is a hungry carnivore in disguise, and it's implied that Scorpius has taken her in for no other reason than to use her as a minion.
  - However, Scorpius is shown to be a subversion of the Bad Boss, rewarding and encouraging his loyal minions rather than kicking them out the airlock when the time comes. Of course, it's likely because he's more practical than cruel, but still...
  - More moments courtesy of Scorpius: when Sikozu was facing an execution, he helpfully supplied her with a password that allowed her to bluff her way out. Particularly interesting, considering that the two of them had never met before- and that he'd been "executed" less than a minute ago.
  - Commending Braca for obeying orders and taking part in mission that would have killed Scorpius had it failed.
- During the two-part episode "Self-Inflicted Wounds," Pathfinder Neeyala has two Pet The Dog moments: firstly, she briefly comforts one of her crew-members before sending her on a suicide mission; the second is revealed to have spanned both episodes, in that her plan to sabotage Moya was intended to force Crichton and the others to escape aboard her own vessel and avoid a wormhole-y death when the Pathfinder ship left Moya. Ironically, this leads to her downfall when Moya's crew decide not to give up so easily.
- Rygel gets a couple of Pet The Dog moments as well, namely in the season 2 finale when Aeryn dies he gives her his medallion, saying she is far more deserving of it, or after Zhaan dies, and he goes to steal her stuff, then admits he doesn't want it.
Sawyer on Lost has had several Pet The Dog moments, including some literal dog-petting when Vincent was the only one who'd have anything to do with him after his con involving the guns. Other moments include offering to babysit/read to Aaron for Claire and offering his fish biscuits to Kate when they were imprisoned by The Others.
- Also, Ben Linus is genuinely fond of his adoptive daughter Alex.
  - but not quite fond enough to come out of that house to save her
House is built upon the title character being one of the prime examples of a Jerk Ass, but a given rule for any protagonist Dr Jerk characters is that they will be a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold. House may be mean, cruel and sometimes outright immoral, but he is still a doctor and his job is to save people's lives. One episode in particular had him treating a patient whose heart gave out and she needed an emergency transplant. House had deduced privately that she was bulimic, and had been using ipicac, a drug that caused heart damage. Both of these critera would certainly void her chances of receiving a heart. House risked his medical license by lying to the transplant board that she had no psychological problems. Afterwards, she asked him why he risked so much for her. He replied "You're my patient. Don't screw it up."
- House also found a sick rat in 'Hunting', treated it, named it Steve McQueen and kept it as his pet. In a later episode he asks his team to bring him a rat. Cameron replies that he already has one, and he indignantly informs her that [he is] 'not gonna kill Steve!' Later on however, in 'Euphoria' a rather odd "pet the dog" moment, he subjects Steve to a poisonous environment in order to find out what disease is killing Foreman. (Both Steve and Foreman survive)
- In season 5's 'Simple Explanation' (and presumably in following episodes) House is genuinely grieved by Kutner's suicide.
- "Merry Christmas, Cuddy."
- In Wilson's Heart, there were two massive moments that silenced anyone who thought he didn't deserve Wilson's friendship; where he agrees to pretty much fry his brain (the only thing that he thinks makes him worthwhile, remember?) so that he can try to save Amber and the bus-limbo scene, where he admits that he would rather be dead than be in pain all the time, miserable and to have Wilson hate him, thereby proving that he really does care for Wilson and value their friendship.
- Three Words, One Episode: The Socratic Method. In fact, he petted the dog so much in this one that Hugh Laurie was worried that they were making House too nice.
- House isn't exactly the biggest fan of human contact, so it's kind of a big deal to see him hug someone (in "Sports Medicine," "Honeymoon," and a couple times during the Stacy arc of season 2). It's interesting that House has actually been hugged about twice as many times, (such as by Chase in 'Half-Wit', Cameron in 'Words and Deeds' and the little girl dying of cancer, Andie, in 'Autopsy').
- Plus there was also the part of 'Words and Deeds' when he apologised to Wilson for the whole Tritter fiasco.
- In the season 3 episode 'One Day, One Room' he takes a rape victim's case because she wanted to talk to him, despite the case being 'boring' as their was no mystery/puzzle involved.
- In 'Here Kitty' when Debbie jumped onto his laptop, presumably screwing up whatever he'd been working on, he petted her instead of the more expected action of shoving her away. On the other hand, he also carried her around in a bag for most of the episode...
- There was also the moment in 'Fetal Position' when he realised the baby was more than just a fetus when the baby reached out of the womb and grabbed his finger.
- A literal realisation of the trope was in episodes at the end of Season 3 with Wilson's dog, Hector.
In Scrubs Dr. Kelso has a real fondness for his dog, Baxter. This is because, as he says, Baxter is "the only creature in my life that never disappointed me". Kelso is also shown to genuinely love his son even though his son can't hold down a job or a boyfriend. And he ends up liking the young son of a man needing surgery, as well. Yeah, Kelso gets a lot of these moments.
- The Janitor has had a few as well, particularly when he once spent an entire day keeping a patient company.
  - He has also been implied to own a pet rabbit, whom he made shoes for.
M*A*S*H 's Major Winchester gets one when he tries to give a group of Korean orphans a bunch of candy for Christmas in "Death Takes a Holiday". He deliberately works to ensure no one knows about it.
- Of course, unlike Major Burns, Major Winchester was envisioned as a Worthy Opponent from the start, so he has lots of Pet The Dog moments.
  - Including talking a concert pianist whose hand was crippled out of depression and defending a stuttering patient Although the latter was inspired by his sister having the same handicap
In the Doctor Who episode "Boom Town", Blon Slitheen has a nice chat with a young woman about family instead of eating her. It is subverted however, when the Doctor doesn't fall for it.
BLON: I spared her life.
DOCTOR: You let one of them go, but that's nothing new. Every now and then, a little victim's spared... because she smiled, cos he's got freckles, cos they begged. And that's how you live with yourself, that's how you slaughter millions, because once in a while, on a whim, if the wind's in the right direction, you happen to be kind.
Subverted in an episode of Cracker where a serial killer reveals to Fitz that he was going to drown a litter of kittens but decided not to because 'they hadn't done him any harm'. Fitz points out that none of the killer's victims had done him any harm either and that rather than making him sympathetic, the villain was just showing a kind of 'sick sentimentality'.
Happened a lot in Becker
All In The Family used this frequently.
Al Bundy has done this once or twice.
In Mystery Science Theater 3000, Dr. Forrester invents Nummymuffin Cocobutter, the most sickeningly cute pet imaginable which he will use to distract the rest of the world and take it over. He eventually gets sucked into his own evil plan and ends up just fussing over Nummymuffin along with Frank.
Dan Fielding, the lecherous, hyperambitious DA of Night Court has several:
- Talks Harry out of quitting,
- Talks a delusional Roz down from a roof,
- Gives up his chance to join a prestigious club in order to protect Christine from a sexual predator
- Pleads (admittedly half-heartedly) with God to spare a girl undergoing a dangerous operation.
Alex of Wizards Of Waverly Place has several, especially with Justin but also with Harper when she helped her at Gigi's "loser party".
An episode of Burn Notice features the team conning a soft-hearted gangster with a fondness for greyhound racing. One indicator that he's not quite the villain he thinks he is comes from his story about the biggest bet he ever lost: A dog that crashed and broke its leg before the race even started. His response was to buy the dog and turn it into a pet.
In season 2 of Veronica Mars, when the Sherriff is called on Duncan and Veronica breaking into the household of some abusive parents, it is expected the Sheriff - usually an incompetent Jerkass - will arrest them and not believe the parents are abusing their daughter. Instead he pretends to arrest Duncan and Veronica, goes back to the household and investigates the parents. He also indicates his own father was abusive.
- Season One's "Hot Dogs" serves as something of a Pet The Dog moment for that Complete Monster extraordinaire, Aaron Echolls. Okay, not many Pet The Dog moments involve beating a man to a bloody pulp, but still, this guy loves his daughter.
Sue Sylvester from Glee is a complete and total Jerk Ass with few redeeming qualities if any, so when in one episode she lets a mentally challenged girl onto her prized cheerleading squad the 'Cheerios' the viewers along with everyone in the show conclude she's about to do something despicable that goes far beyond the Moral Event Horizon, reinforced by the fact she's pushing the girl just as harsh as she treats her other cheerleaders. At the end of the episode Sue ends up paying out of her own pockets for the School's handicap ramps, which baffles Will and the Principle as they try and figure out her motive. It's revealed she has a sister with Down's Syndrome living in a home, who Sue visits and reads to. She gave the girl a spot on the cheerleading squad because she just wants to be treated like everyone else.
Lord Yu, one of the Scary Dogmatic Aliens of Stargate SG-1, got a few Pet The Dog moments. Generally, he was the least evil of the System Lords. In one episode, he spared and released Teal'c, who was caught while trying to kill him, and even offered a warning about an untrustworthy apparent ally. Yu also briefly allied himself with Stargate Command while attempting to stop Anubis. In return, he was viewed at least a little more sympathetically than the other System Lords by the protagonists, even getting a little "you go, Yu!" from O'Neill when he was one of the last System Lords to resist Anubis. However, Yu was still a Goa'uld, an evil alien who pretended to be a god, demanding worship from innumerable human slaves, while condemning his human host to the horror of millenia of imprisonment within his own body. He very clearly remained a terrible and dangerous villain, and nearly personally killed Daniel Jackson in one episode.

The *chan boards, of all places, has this in the concept of the Ms Paint relationship thread. See here for examples. (Note that most of them are the NSFW usual fare — whether this a good thing or not is left to the reader's discretion.)
- Furthermore, the channel on 4chan known as /r9k/, a board originally developed with a filter that blocks unoriginal text or images, has (d)evolved to embody the Ms Paint relationship thread, becoming the unofficial place to ask questions, share or complain about relationships. Many believe that it needs to be cauterized.

"The Policeman's Song" in Gilbert And Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance laments that even thieves and murderers love the simple, pure English countryside. ("When the coster's finished jumping on his mother / He loves to lie a-basking in the sun...")

In Metal Gear Solid, a female villain quite literally pets a dog to prove her not-all-bad-ness. One of the characters remarks that her love of dogs must mean she's good inside, prompting the main character to rant about how her love of dogs proves nothing. While it might seem like a subversion at the time, as we proceed it turns out that the villain is not a creepy stalkerish murderer, but a lonely dog lover who only wants to be loved. Then Snake kills her.
- Snake's love of animals probably counts too, because it's the first suggestion we get that he's anything other than an action hero with no inner life.
  - If anything Snake's dismissal of Otacon's defense of Wolf on this basis is deeply ironic and not a little tragic - he loves dogs too, but he believes himself to be an intrinsically worthless human being outside of the battlefield. Snake's self-loathing becomes more apparent by MGS 4, until Big Boss reappears, more-or-less apologizes to Snake for how fucked up his life was, and then tells Snake to live out the short remainder of his life in peace and happiness.
- Also deliberately mentioned by Otacon:
"She likes dogs. She must be a good person."
In World Of Warcraft, Kel'Thuzad is an undead lich who serves as The Dragon to Arthas Menethil, the Lich King. However players can confront a kitten named Mr. Bigglesworth in his lair. If killed his reaction seems to be sadness and vengeful hatred towards those heartless lootseekers that just killed his kitty.
- King Varian Wrynn, who is considered a racist jackass by some, gets one when he allows an enemy general to pass through Alliance lines unmolested so that he could retrieve the body of his slain son.
Shadow Hearts: Covenant has a Giant Mook named Lenny, who is a recurring foe on the first disc. On the second disc, however, one Sidequest reveals that he spends considerable amounts of time petting the dog. Among other things: he saved an old woman from muggers, he sent one mook with an ailing mother to report to their boss and thus saved him from certain death on the next mission, and he made a poor thief self-sufficient by teaching him math (which helped him get a job).
- And in the sequel, when Johnny gave him a glass of water a few years before the game, he vowed to serve him for life, serving as a Battle Butler and being the muscle behind his top-tier Tool attack.
God Of War: Chains of Olympus seems to have a number of cinematics showing tender moments between Kratos and his family, before you-know-what happens. Of course, the ultimate peak of this, Kratos reuniting with his daughter after renouncing his violent past and powers, is followed by a heartbreaking Shoot The Dog moment, where he has to shove his daughter away (in one of the series' trademark button mashing minigames no less) in order to save the world. It goes a long way to establish just why Kratos is so goddamn angry in the later games.
In the Demon Path of Soul Nomad And The World Eaters, the Big Bad and his party arrive at a city full of rich merchants hoping for some good murder and plunder, when one of the lackeys, a sort of anti-Robin Hood who pretty much despises everybody including herself, comes across a young mentally disturbed girl who mistakes her for her mother. Noticing her companions hoping to get a free pet, she volunteers to take the girl for herself and take care of her when her boss's Mind Control fails to work on the girl. When asked why when they know she hates the rich and the poor and pretty much everyone, she clarifies that she feels sorry for those who can't help themselves. Later, when the girl is killed by accident, she falls into a permanent state of depression and becomes a mindless killer second only to the Big Bad.
- The reasons for this are revealed in the main campaign (which is an alternate timeline), where it's revealed to the party that they're sisters. Things don't go much better for them in that timeline either, although at least the survivor escapes with her sanity intact and with the knowledge that her sister truly cared for her.
- The trope is also brutally subverted later on, when the Villain Protagonist saves a hostage's life. Weeks later, when she asks him/her why he did that that if he's so evil, he/she murders her best friend right in front of her and says, "I wanted you to be be here to see this." That's right, not only does he/she kill her best friend just to see the look on her face, but he/she planned it out weeks in advance.
You can trigger a Pet The Dog moment as a command in No More Heroes. When Travis is in his hotel room, one of the options in the living room is "Jeane". This is referring to a small, gray and white cat that Travis takes care of...you know, when he's not slicing people in half with a beam sword he won "at a 'net auction."
Subverted frequently by Sam And Max, who are technically the heroes. In Sam & Max Hit the Road, for example, they must retrieve their orders from a bonded courier, a "cute little hypercephalic kitten" who's swallowed them for safekeeping. Max alludes to the possibility of making mittens or a tennis racket out of him, taking him home and putting tape on his feet, and, when an irritated Sam expresses a desire to turn him inside out, Max cries, "Oooh! That gives me an idea!", grabs the cat, and forces a hand down his gullet to rummage for the orders.
In Osu Tatakae Ouendan 2, just before the sad song of the game, the "blue team" Ouendan character is given a Pet The Cat moment. Unless you're playing as the leader, then it's a Pet The Bear moment, or as the girls, who get a Pet The Bunny moment. Presumably this is to show the "red team" Ouendan that the "blue team" isn't evil.
The Legend Of Zelda: In the '80s cartoon series, Zelda is portrayed as something of a Tsundere who frequently harshes on the mostly-well-meaning, occasionally-hapless Link. He takes it in stride generally, but almost every episode contains a Pet The Dog moment, either because she's gone too far or she forgets to be a bitch and remembers she actually has feelings for the guy.
- In virtually every adaptation, Ganondorf is shown to be a cruel, ruthless man who will stop at nothing to take over Hyrule. He shapes up to be no different in Wind Waker, when he sends a giant bird to kidnap various girls from around the area and holds them prisoner. At the end of the game however, just before the final battle, he suddenly gives a very heartfelt speech about how he grew up in the desert where he was forced to watch as his people died constantly and how he coveted Hyrule because the people there had happier lives. He then turns, knocks out Link, and steals the Triforce of Courage, all while reassuring Link that he will let him live.
Happens a few times in Street Fighter
- Sagat allowed both his former student Adon, who coveted his title, and Joke Character Dan, whose father he killed in a fight, defeat him to gain either the title or closure they sought. The second instance was the first step in his Heel Face Turn, as he saw how much obsession with revenge ruined Dan's life (at the very least, it caused Gouken to turn him away partway through training, resulting in his Joke Character style), and he realized his obsession with Ryu was doing the same to him.
- Balrog, of all people, gets one of these in Street Fighter IV. Basically, Bison's plans have, apparently, gone to Hell, and he's stomping around the ruined base looking for some treasure to loot before the whole place blows up. He runs into a scared little girl instead, and opts to carry her out. Of course... he only decided to save her after he discovered she had some sort of special powers, so his motives might not be as altruistic as they seem...
In ToS:DotNW, Alice gets one in a sidequest, wherein an old lady from Sylvarant is thrown away by a priest from the Church of Martel when she requests that he save his son. After Alice and Decus show up and beat up the priest, Alice tells the woman to go to Flanoir, where her son will be given free treatment. This may be because Alice's parents were slaughtered by animals on a forced pilgrimage. This is also the reason why she believes Might Makes Right.
In Mother 3, Fassad is pretty much shown as being down right evil: torturing monkeys, and corrupting innocent civilizations, but after he is defeated, the player meets his pet mouse who is eagerly awaiting his beloved master's return.
Minor example: In Persona 4, there's a snippet of dialogue from a Yasogami student that hints that Sadist Teacher Kinshiro Morooka can have some pleasant moments, as the student said that she got some candy from him.
- "Want some candy, little girl?" Sounds like a great guy.
Save the truly villainous ones, the normally antagonistic rival prosecutors in the first three Ace Attorney games each have their own Pet The Dog moment to prove they're not as mean as their courtroom abuse of Phoenix would have you think. In Bridge to the Turnabout, the smug Godot shows a soft spot for children when he comforts a distraught Pearl by giving her his last cup of coffee, and even sweetens it for her. Word Of God reports that Miles Edgeworth has a literal dog, named Pess, whose well-being is said to affect Edgeworth's mood.
A subtle variation of this may have shown up in Pokemon's fourth generation games; Cyrus, the nihilistic Big Bad who proudly admits he only uses Pokemon for their power, has a Crobat, a Pokemon that can only evolve from a Golbat through happiness (which increases as the bond a Pokemon has with its Trainer grows stronger). Crobat has actually been used similarly by the series, although in the earlier case it was to show that the rival had started valuing his Pokemon, rather than a Pet The Dog moment.
- A far less subtle case is where Cyrus, after the hero battles through his mooks and defeats him in battle, exclaims how he admires the hero's courage, gives him a Master Ball as a reward, and tells him where to go to save the Spirit Pokemon. Game Freak's intention with Cyrus is that he wasn't meant to be truly evil, just a logic extremist with a greedy edge.
Skies of Arcadia: Mercenary helmsman Lawrence borders on being a Jerk Ass most of the time, but when he's not on duty he chooses to hang out with Pow, so he can't be all bad. Also, when the Crescent Island base is destroyed, he is seen clumsily trying to corral the escaped chickens.
At the end of First Encounter Assault Recon, Harlan Wade is so deeply affected by guilt over what he did to Alma that he decides to let her out and allow her to kill him.
- In Project Origin, one of the intelligence files reveals that the music box that appears early on in the game in Genevive Aristide's apartment (and is the source of the recurring theme music throughout the game) originally belonged to Alma, and that Aristide had it brought to her home, so she could listen to it and remind herself of how guilty she is herself.
  - Given Aristide's greedy, self-justifying behavior and comments in both Project Origin and the supplemental promotional materials, the idea of Aristide feeling any guilt over Armacham's treatment of Alma seems highly unlikely. Maybe Aristide just likes the music box's tune.
- Alma herself has a few Pet The Dog moments toward both the Point Man and Becket, like when she kills a group of Replicas that have the Point Man pinned down in Extraction Point, or when she kills an Abomination that is directing Replica soldiers against Becket, or kills ATC troops in Becket's path in Wade Elementary.
Mana Khemia Alchemists Of Al Revis features Roxis (The Rival, Jerk With A Heart Of Gold and once a part of the Quirky Mini Boss Squad) who gets a few of these moments throughout the game, mostly after being recruited into the game's nakama. The first example was almost literal: adopting a stray kitten whose mother just died.
Fable II, you can play as evil as you want, but your faithful dog still loves you.
In Dynasty Warriors: Empires the ending consists of a 'clip show' with various officers of your faction in 'Romance Of The Three Kingdoms outakes.' One clip shows one of your officers leaping in front of a runaway carriage to save a small lapdog, then with their most heroic and staunch Chinese Warlord face, they nod approvingly over the tail-wagging little thing. Especially funny when a real jerkass officer like Lu Bu does it. Downright hysterical if that officer happens to be the Emperor of China at the moment.
An Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies cutscene shows the enemy ace Yellow 13 holding and petting a small dog. He also saves the narrator and the barkeeper's daughter from getting caught by military policemen after the latter is seen planting explosives.
Subverted in Hitman: Blood Money, where throughout the game, you see the cold blooded killer keeps a pet canary. However, the moment the bird starts chirping at an inopportune time: *crunch*.
- Also subverted in Contracts, where 47 has the option of petting the dog in order to advance his agenda: for example, he can offer to take the place of a tired bartender- so he can poison a customer's drinks.
Lord Wily of the Mega Man Battle Network series has paid for the medical treatment of Joe Mach's daughter, and he also temporarily abandoned his quest for revenge on society to take care of Baryl for a friend. He also gets a Crowning Moment Of Awesome when he walks into an exploding volcano to rescue his own son Regal and give him a second chance to be an upright human being courtesy of Laser Guided Amnesia mixed with a rather amazing Reset Button
Koei loves giving Oda Nobunaga pet the dog moments:
- A cinematic in Samurai Warriors: Empires has Nobunaga trying to cheer up Nene when she's upset by her husband's philandering. (This one happens to be Truth In Television, quoted straight from a letter Nobunaga wrote to Nene.)
- In the Sengoku ending of Warriors Orochi, Xiao Qiao gets upset when the three main characters (Nobunaga, Uesugi Kenshin, and Takeda Shingen) start trading not-so-veiled threats at each other, so Nobunaga chuckles and pats her on the head. (Its All There In The Manual - Xiao Qiao reminds him of his sister Oichi.)
- In Samurai Warriors 2, this gets raised to Ho Yay levels when he sheds a tear at Mitsuhide's death in his ending.
In BlazBlue, everyone mocks at Bang Shishigami. Pretty much the only one who actually praised him genuinely is Hakumen. That's right, the Hero Antagonist who exemplifies Good Is Not Nice.
- In Continuum Shift... Jin Kisaragi is a complete asshole who throws death threats to anyone who gets in his way. He didn't throw death threats when facing Tsubaki Yayoi, his childhood friend who has nothing to do with his brother or sister, and only acts like an 'aloof man', and if he beats her, he apologizes and promises to pick her up when it's all over. What an asshole.
The protagonist of the remake of The Bards Tale is an Anti Hero Jerk Ass more interested in, as the game states, "coin and cleavage" than saving the world. He is a compulsive liar and cheat, swindling his way through life and seducing his way through women. However, not only does he pick up a dog companion early in the game, but he sheds a genuine tear and vows revenge when the dog is killed by a monstrous minion of the apparent Big Bad.

Order of the Stick:
- Haley's motive for collecting money.
  - And we can't forget that she favoured helping the dirt farmers even though there would be absolutely no reward.
- Belkar Bitterleaf, a Chaotic Evil halfling who on one occasion used a kobold's head for a salsa bowl, has recently adopted the late Lord Shojo's cat, Mr. Scruffy. While he justifies it by using the cat for a weapon at one point, he seems to genuinely care for it. Then again, he also liked Lord Shojo for being a Magnificent Bastard, to the point of going berserk when Miko killed him ("YOU KILLED THE WACKY OLD DUDE WITH THE CAT?!?").
- Miko seems to have a genuine affection for her paladin steed, leading to a few Pet the Dog scenes, especially her final moments.
- Tsukiko seems to be getting one of these in her deluded, but still caring, attitude towards the undead.
Richard of Looking For Group has a rather shocking Pet The Dog moment when he saves a child from an explosive blast. The reason? The child wasn't afraid to die.
- A more straight example is how Richard seems to like the rabbit the rest of the group jokingly gave him as a mount when he was shrunk. Well, at least, it's one of the few woodland creatures he's run across that he didn't immediately immolate.
  - Oh, it's far more than that
In 8-bit Theater, Black Mage's love for White Mage is literally the only thing at this point from stopping him from being a Complete Monster.
- Fixed That For You.
In xkcd, Black Hat Guy gets such a moment which includes baking a cake. Aw...
The Ork from Da Real Wurld [[Warhammer40000 40k]] seems to like the grots that infest the character's house. The Dark Eldar chick constantly demands he do something about them, and he seems genuinely saddened when she shoots one off his head. For an ork, he's suprisingly well-balanced.

In Survival Of The Fittest, Dorian, one of the terrorists behind the Act, has been shown to send most of the money he earns from working in the organisation behind SOTF to his mother. It helps that he's well... pathetic too.
"You hear that, world? I love my pink, freakish, orb-shaped son!"
In There Will Be Brawl, Wario, the series' resident sneaky and manipulative bastard, is revealed to also be taking care of his mentally-handicapped brother, Waluigi.

In the The Spectacular Spider Man episode First Steps two kids poke fun at a little girl's sand castle. Sandman uses his power to turn the area around them into a huge Disney-esc castle, chasing the boys away. The little girl thanks Mr Sandman. He smiles and tells her to go homes as its getting cold.
Bender on Futurama petted the dog a few times, but the show spoofed this on at least one occasion:
Bender: "But inside, you've got the heart of a robot."
Fry: "Aww...thanks, Bender."
Bender: "Just like inside me, I've got the heart of a human!" [takes a human heart from his chest compartment] "...what?"
- Bender's biggest pet the dog moment was most likely in Jurassic Bark, where he spends the whole episode acting like a insensitive, possessive, abusive, jealous jackass because Fry, his best friend, is spending so much time trying to figure out how to clone his old dog Seymour, his best friend before Bender. Eventually, Bender gets so fed up he takes Seymour's fossil and throws it into a lava vent. However, when this causes Fry to collapse in grief, he realizes (and even admits), that Fry loved his dog much the same way Bender loves Fry. He then dives into the boiling lava to retrieve Seymour despite Fry's protests, melting his eyes in the process.
  - Virtually any time Bender realizes he seriously hurt Fry's feelings leads to him showing unusual kindness.
Subverted by Duckman. The grouchy and sarcastic main character frequently shows signs of tenderness when he has his late wife on his mind — but he's usually thinking back on their sex life.
Rampage from Transformers: Beast Wars is generally depicted as nothing short of a monster, a sadist, and a walking nightmare... except in the episode "Transmutate", in which he finds a kindred spirit in the episode's freakish, disfigured, and pitiful title character. He even goes so far as to be moved to sorrow by its death. This is both an example and a rather dark subversion: showing this sliver of tenderness causes further signs of his depravity to stand out all the more.
The trope can apply to pure villains as well. In Justice League Unlimited, Galatea, the murderously psycho clone of Supergirl, shares a moment of genuine warmth with her "father," Professor Emil Hamilton, just before she cheerfully goes on a mission of mass murder.
Deconstructed on Avatar The Last Airbender. Prince Zuko is given several moments that establish him as less of a villain than most of the Fire Nation: sparing his arch rival Commander Zhao — and later trying to save his life, choosing to save his uncle over chasing the Avatar, refusing to rob a pregnant woman when he's starving, etc. All this, however, does not lead to a Heel Face Turn, but only doubles the shock when it doesn't happen. - Though it doesn't make any surprise when it eventually does happen.
The Monarch in The Venture Brothers, tears up moments before he was to be declared man and wife with Dr. Girlfriend. The Phantom Limb interupts the wedding with copters which prompts the Monarch to scream "OHHHH, DICK MOVE!"
- The Monarch pet the dog so hard in season two, that fans were actually upset to be reminded in the following season that he is, in fact, a professional villain, and therefore not very nice.
Stewie Griffin, in the early seasons of Family Guy, was a diabolical and downright sociopathic baby who, after petting the dog a few times, had his character changed completely by the fourth and fifth season. But who are we kidding? It's all just for laughs.
- Another Family Guy episode offers a subversion when greedy tobacco company executives discuss making a line of toys to get kids interested in smoking cigarettes, complete with an Evil Laugh. Until the head pulls up a puppy and starts to pet it and talk to it in baby voice. He then hands the dog to another executive, pulls out a rifle and says Pull...
Invader Zim has a few Pet The Dog moments with his minion-disguised-as-a-dog.
Gir: -tearing up after Zim yells at him-
Zim: Guh... I can see you understand your mistake, Gir, and me being angry will get us nowhere.
- Of course, the above example is a bit of a stretch, since GIR wasn't crying because he realized he'd done wrong, but rather because he missed the cupcake he had just eaten. But still, Zim thought he was being nice.
In The Boondocks, Uncle Ruckus, a black man coincidentally racist against other black men and a white supremacist, is shown petting the dog many times (excluding all of the times has talked to Granddad), namely in the episodes "The Trial Of R. Kelly" (the park scene), "Granddad's Fight" (Ruckus is willingly Granddad's co-sensei, and even comments after the fight with Stinkmeaner: "I told you a nigga that black couldn't fight."), "Return Of The King" (where Ruckus comes to dinner with Granddad even after throwing random objects at Martin Luther King), "The Itis" (where Ruckus comments: "If there's one thing a colored man is good at, it's cooking up a pig."), "Stinkmeaner Strikes Back" (Ruckus helps Huey, Riley, and Granddad exorcise Tom), "Home Alone" (Ruckus agrees to babysit Riley and Huey), and "The Story Of Catcher Freeman". (Ruckus comments: "Catcher Freeman was the greatest nigga that ever lived!")
- And none of those cover the most notable and most genuine act of dog petting Ruckus ever did, in the Christmas episode; after filling in as a mall Santa and leaving Jasmine completely disillusioned when it comes to Santa's existence, Ruckus later approached her and explained that of course he wasn't really Santa, but he was, in fact, a Secret Service agent assigned to fill in for Santa, as Santa needed to be protected from the threats against him (namely Riley Freeman and his paintball gun). Ruckus then assured Jasmine that the real Santa would be back next year, much to her delight. It's a surprisingly genuine and heartfelt moment which, since it's The Boondocks, is immediately subverted by Huey's narration where he impassively observes that Christmas miracles "only come from the lies adults tell children."
Played with by the Joker on Batman The Animated Series and his relationship with Harly Quinn. Almost any time he shows real affection towards her, you can tell that he is just using her as another part of his mind games. She would catch on that he doesn't really love her, and all it took was a token gesture of affection and she would melt in his arms again.
- Eventually expanded upon in the comics, where the Joker actually does have feelings for Harley, but his insane mind alternates rapidly between being attached to her (leading to Pet The Dog moments), not really caring about her (leading to Kick The Dog Moments), or having feelings for her but hating the fact that he does (leading to some really bad moments), which all in all adds up to one screwed up relationship.
  - Joker gets a good, if twisted, one in "Emperor Joker," as he's preparing to use Mxyzptlk's powers to destroy the universe, Harley tries to talk him out of it, so he explains his surprisingly sympathetic motives (he believes any universe where a person like him could exist is fundamentally screwed up and needs to die), and then turns her into a constellation so she go peacefully and light the sky at the end of the world. Of course, he then proceeds to brutally murder everyone else (by which we mean everyone else) - They get better - but the whole thing is surprisingly sentimental given that it's the freakin' Joker.
"Say goodnight, Harley. I always wanted to see my dame in lights. Heh. Even in a moment of abject saccharine, I still got it."
In two Ben 10 Alien Force episodes in a row, a featured villain (Charmcaster and Vilgax) save the life of a child (Charmcaster levitates a boy away from being hit by a truck, and Vilgax defends one of his species' children from Ghostfreak's minions.) The two still engage in evil-doing afterwards, though.
In Transformers Animated there are very few moments where Sentinel Prime acts less of a Jerkass, notably in "Return of the Headmaster" where he shakes Optimus' hand after helping him regain his stolen body, and "Predacons Rising" where he took some responsibility for what happened to Elita-1 (It was his idea to go to the planet where that event happened in the first place). But his biggest Pet The Dog moment to date was at the end of "Decepticon Air" where he offered Optimus a spot in the Elite Guard, showing that the two Primes have buried the hatchet.
In one episode of South Park where cats are banned from the town (Kids are getting high off thier urine), Cartman has to hide his cat in the attic. Then he ends up hiding one cat he finds in his backyard. Though each time he says no more, he finds himself harboring every cat in the town, in a blatant holocaust reference. Of course when it's all over and Kyle asks Cartman if he sees in similarities between this and some other part of history, Cartman is clueless.
In The Simpsons, Mr. Burns has one when he decides to take care of The Simpsons' puppies. Admittedly, he was first planning to make them into a coat, but he did decide to spare them later on.
Cotton from King Of The Hill hates most things and most people for no reason. But most scenes featuring him and Bobby have him showing his own brand of love.
On The Fairly Oddparents, Denzel Crocker, Evil Teacher and Big Bad before the Sorting Algorithm Of Evil set in, has willingly given up a baby he was raising as his heir when he believes someone else can raise it better.
Used with little subtlety in How The Grinch Stole Christmas, when Cindy Lou Who wakes up and sees him looting the family's presents. He could have just tied her up and gagged her, but instead he tells her a comforting fib, gets her a glass of water, and sends her back to bed, foreshadowing his Heel Face Turn.

Subverted in Parasyte. when Shinichi's girlfriend starts worrying that he's slowly becoming a sociopath (a side effect of the parasite Migi partially breaking off into his bloodstream), she is adamantly relieved when she finds him comforting a dying puppy. Looks like her fears are unconfirmed after all...At least until he casually tosses its corpse into a trashcan.
- Doubly subverted, though, when after his girlfriend leaves, Shinichi realizes how cold and inhuman he was becoming, and then pulls the dead dog out of the trashcan and finds a tree to bury it under instead.
The British Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks published in the 1980s and 1990s contain an interesting example in Lord Azzur, the tyrannical ruler of Port Blacksand, the otherwise hopelessly corrupt and vile City of Thieves. While Azzur was a notorious pirate and murderer before he seized control of Blacksand, he indulges some rather odd acts of charity, including providing a luxurious home for a woman abducted by the evil Snake Men of the Desert of Skulls and left with the head of a giant snake, and celebrating the New Year by executing several of Port Blacksand's wealthiest citizens and donating their riches to the poor.
Seen in both Garfield and Get Fuzzy, where the cats in those comics are horrible to their owners and the dogs they live with, but lavish affection on their stuffed bears, Pookie and Smacky, respectively.
Ads: Credit card companies love this trope, and know how to use it very effectively.
- Capitol One:Warkittens
- Mastercard: Badger and the Biker.
- Citibank: Puppies.
- Visa: Purse dog.

Listen to Richard Nixon's Checkers speech. Please, do it for me. As my best friend once said, "I'm surprised they didn't rub Nixon's face with a steak and bring out the dog for it to lick his face."
In a Real Life example, Hitler was very fond of his German shepherd, Blondi. But he kind of messed that up when he poisoned her in a fit of paranoia at the end of the war.
- In Petshop Of Horrors Tokyo, (male) Blondi is given to Eva Braun by D's grandfather and pretty much causes World War II. Then again, he turned out to be a Qilin instead of a dog.
  - Hate it when that happens. So embarrassing.
- Another Hitler example: In the beginning of Downfall, Hitler needs a new secretary. When Traudl Junge applies for the job, she's very nervous for being together with the Führer and makes (very) many mistakes while typing. How does Hitler react? Hit her? Scream at her? Bite the carpet? No, he just says that she'll have to try again.
- Also, he would become friends with the performers at his private circus showings and worry about them if they were hurt.
- And there's a picture◊ of him, feeding an adorable little doe out of his hand.
- The fact that Nazis were capable of selective compassion was mentioned by Aharon Appelfeld as one of their more horrifying attributes in Beyond Despair, "They knew man as a beast of prey, not metaphorically, but as a physical reality with his full stature and clothing, his way of standing and sitting, his way of caressing his own child and of beating a Jewish child."
Something Awful may proudly be (or at least used to be) some of the greatest jerks on the internet, but often remark that new members can get lost in Pet Island.
4chan saves a cat.
- Their love for cats seems to have developed into a general consensus◊.
- And stands up to the Church Of Tropology, although that may be Even Evil Has Standards.
Bikers help fight animal cruelty.
- Those guys have their own TV show on National Geographic, does it count as Crowning Moment of Heartwarming when it's every episode? Seriously, watching a big bad biker cuddle a kitten is almost a guaranteed "aw" moment.
Josef Fritzl (yes, the guy from Austria who imprisoned his own daughter for years in a cellar and had seven kids with her) once saved a kid from drowning. Which probably helped to fool the people in his city thinking of him as an upright citizen.
Some robbers who entered a house nursed a baby who was the child of their hostages.
Five Inspiring Acts of Kindness By Terrifying Crime Syndicates. Subverted in that despite the disaster relief and building schools, they're still terrifying crime syndicates.
Despite the Historical Hero Upgrade touted by anti-communists regarding the Romanov family, they were still rather callous or even brutal toward the large peasant population that made up the majority of the Russian Empire. However, it cannot be denied that the czar and his family really were very loving and close with each other.
- Then came Stalin
Yuri Andropov, head of the KGB and The Dragon to Leonid Brezhnev, initiated a major anti-dissident campaign that effectively ended the Khrushchev Thaw and put thousands of people into prison or exile. He is also believed to have been the mastermind behind the Soviet invasions to crush the anti-Soviet movements in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. However, after succeeding Brezhnev he surprised everyone by replying to the letter of a 10-year old American girl named Samantha Smith, who asked him whether or not he was going to start a war with the US. His reply and the invitation to visit the best summer camp in the USSR as his personal guest certainly qualifies as his personal Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming.

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