Rousseau Was Right - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): White And Gray Morality; White And Grey Morality; Humans Are Good

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, French philosopher during the Enlightenment

Also known simply as "Humans Are Good", Rousseau Was Right is a strong pro-humanity motif that states that all humans are genuinely and intrinsically good and noble in their hearts; that all bad things are merely mistakes and misunderstandings of each other and that once these have been cleared, Utopia will certainly be achieved. The culmination of this motif is a Patrick Stewart Speech. Unlike the universal Humans Are Bastards theme, this one lives far down the ideal side of The Scale.

The most obvious identifier of this theme is the absence of genuine Villains in the show. The absolute worst character you find will be a Well Intentioned Extremist, rather than truly evil. But no villains means no conflict, and without conflict, the story can be pretty dull. This problem is solved by pitting humanity against a cosmic cataclysm or the Scary Dogmatic Aliens (unless they're human enough to all be Good Inside too) or evil robots, or simply by having characters with different understandings of a common ideal. In the latter case, the conflict will almost always be resolved peacefully in the end — expect a helping of We Could Have Avoided All This if things go sour anyway. Even with nearly genocidal Disaster Movies, the survivors will usually rebuild a better world using a Disaster Democracy.

Sometimes this trope appears in slightly altered form, suggesting that we could get along if only J. Random Factor wasn't preventing us. Regrettably, this often turns into a Take That against communism, Christianity, patriarchalism, or whatever the author thinks is to blame for us not living up to our presumed inherent goodness. At this point, we have moved from Rousseau Was Right to The Man Is Keeping Us Down. Incidentally, socialism and communism are based in Rousseau Was Right, as anyone who's read Rousseau and Marx will tell you. Ironic, isn't it?

Interestingly, Being Evil Sucks may not factor into this at all, or be intrinsically a part of it, depending on whether the villains/antagonists actually set out to do evil or not. Oh, and you can pretty much bet Being Good Sucks will be a completely verboten trope: in works where Rousseau Was Right, good is not just easy but rewarding.

As indicated above, the Trope Namer is Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a Swiss-French (born in Geneva, spent most of his life in France) Enlightenment philosopher who took the bold position that human beings, at their core, are fundamentally good. I say bold, because the dominant position among Enlightenment philosophers (most notably Thomas Hobbes and Voltaire) was that Humans Are Bastards, or at least shortsighted, and had to be tricked or forced into being good. He caught a lot of flack for this

. After Rousseau's death, his works were used to justify the Reign of Terror

, So Yeah.

Perfect Pacifist People is the trope for a society of Actual Pacifists with this view. On the downside, can result in Well Intentioned Extremists and Utopia Justifies The Means.

May be related to Humans Are Special, Children Are Innocent, Earn Your Happy Ending, and Honor Before Reason. Opposite of Humans Are Bastards, Hobbes Was Right, Always Chaotic Evil, and in a storyline sense, Black And Gray Morality (which is why White And Grey Morality redirects to this article). See also Black And White Morality and Grey And Gray Morality. Compare Humans Are Flawed. If there are apparently genuine villain characters, expect it to turn out not only that they all used to be sweet kids by nature, but also that the damage to their moral character is reversible or, in the worst-case scenario, could have been avoided if only people had listened to the Rousseauists. (This may not apply unless they're human though.)

Examples

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Anime and Manga

Stellvia Of The Universe is all about this. There isn't even a single negative character in the series — even the aliens are good.
- Or at least, they expressed regret after slaughtering a Keiti wing almost wholesale.
Shugo Chara is just a bit like this, although they do have the Easter leader and the X Eggs they have to stop.
Scrapped Princess sees nearly every human character behave with a degree of honor and decency. Its "villains" are not humans but the so-called "peacemakers", machines designed to keep humanity in the Middle Ages forever — and they started out trying to preserve humanity by keeping them caged.
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is about the war between Humans and Always Chaotic Evil Beastmen until the four generals and the first big bad are dealt with. After that, they merge into the new human-ruled utopia as decent citizens. Even the Biggest Bads turn out to be doing what they think tragic, but necessary.
- Rossiu, the Well Intentioned Extremist who gets redeemed through Get A Hold Of Yourself Man, was in fact named for Rousseau, because he really does mean well—and once he and Simon are on the same page no force in the universe can stop them. Demonstrably. There's even a "Rossiu Was Right" internet meme going around.
  - Double meaning there, it also means "back" to go with the naming theme in the show.
Trinity Blood eventually draws the conclusion that all humans, vampire or not, can coexist peacefully. And if it weren't for a certain nihilistic organization with a Sufficiently Advanced Alien Ultimate Evil on the top, they would. A proto-Rousseau Was Right statement, in a way.
- That is the anime, not the manga. The manga is going in an entirely different direction. The Shaharazard ar-Rahman story arc centered around an evil bishop D'Annunzio! Guderien (an agent of the Order) helped save Eshter too. Kinda turning this possibly into Hobbes Was Right territory!
Seirei No Moribito has a total of two human characters in it whose motivations and methods are presented as unsympathetic, and they're both one-shot. The main conflict is entirely caused by a misunderstanding by the traditionalistic/dogmatic anti villains, and the fact that their cause manages to come across as understandable when it involves child-killing speaks volumes for the tone of the series.
The second season of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha is like this. The only entity that can be considered villainous is a self-defense program of an ancient artifact, which was corrupted long ago under unrevealed circumstances, while the rest of the cast only attempt to do what they believe would be best for everyone and angst heavily about having to hurt others ("It was such a small wish..."). Basically, the Team Nanoha vs. Wolkenritter is a Lawful Good vs. Chaotic Good conflict. This is in sharp contrast to The Original Series and StrikerS with their Mad Scientists Precia Testarossa and Jail Scaglietti.
- This may be the reason why A's is generally rated higher than the other two on (English speaking) anime sites.
- Jail actually seems to be another example of this, oddly enough. It's implied in the manga that his desire to overturn the TSAB was actually artificially implanted in him before birth by the people responsible for his creation. If nothing else, he gets a few sympathy points for treating the Numbers like his own children rather than giving them the usual tykebomb treatment.
  - Err... You do remember his clone-based exit strategy, right?
  - There is that, but the implication that Jail spent his whole life under More Than Mind Control brings up the question of how much of that was his programming being too successful and how much was genuinely Jail's decision. It's worth noting that in SSX, Jail has an encounter with Cinque after most of the cyborgs have joined the TSAB and he bears her no ill will for turning her back on his ideals.
  - Even if Jail isn't pure evil, Due and Quattro have virtually no redeeming qualities.
- Also, as Alicia explains in Fate's Happy Place sequence in A's, Precia originally was a very kind and gentle person. But exactly because she was so gentle, her psyche couldn't handle Alicia's sudden death and she "broke". Yeah, you could argue that she is a Complete Monster, too, whipping Fate and all.
Princess Mononoke: Ashitaka was very much The Messiah, but both Lady Eboshi and San had valid reasons for their actions.
- The enemy samurais seemed to be bad, but then, you feel if they had been explained then they too would have fair motivations.
- In fact, nearly all of Hayao Miyazaki's movies are like this. You just can't hate the antagonists because they're sympathetic and/or have perfectly reasonable motivations.
- My Neighbor Totoro was intended as an embodiment of this trope. Other Studio Ghibli works tend to have at least a nod towards it.
Kidou Tenshi Angelic Layer and Chobits lack any real Evil characters. There are lots of less pleasant individuals, like the cheaters in the former and the outright perverts in the later, but the closest things to villains in the storylines are concerned about victory like the protagonist or are interested in protecting other persocoms from the damage Chi could potentially cause.
Vision Of Escaflowne has the good guys and the Well Intentioned Extremist antagonists. It does have Dilandau but he is the inverted personality of Celena Schezar, Allen's "Dead Little Sister". Which makes Celena, the opposite to Dilandau in every way, likely the nicest person in the entire world, while Dilandau cannot be counted since he is not a human being found normally in nature.
In almost any sports manga/anime, there are no villains. The closest to villains are people who toy with or break the rules to achieve victory, as well as people who treat their friends or companions like crap.
Astro Boy: While minor human crooks and such may be genuinely evil, the Big Bad Dr. Tenma and related characters are just Well Intentioned Extremists. If a robot is portrayed as a villain, it's always due to a misunderstanding. This is in contrast to the rest of Osamu Tezuka's work, where pretty much everyone but the main character is always a bastard. Especially Rock.
Speaking of Dr. Tenma, the Japanese doctor of the same name operates on the same principle at the beginning of Monster. The main conflict of the series is Tenma's idealism versus Johan's nihilism. In the end, Tenma's idealism wins out, as he saves Johan's life.
Yoshiyuki Tomino's Brain Powerd is a series in which no one is truly, completely evil. The Reclaimers are dangerous, but misguided, and people always have a reason why they act a certain way. Yes, even the show's resident Smug Snake Jonathan has some good in him that can be brought out. If Victory Gundam was the work of a depressed man, Brain Powerd is the work of a man who has overcome his depression.
The manga Rave Master largely supports this view. Many villains execute a Heel Face Turn sometime after their defeat, and even the ones who don't generally have a Freudian Excuse. Of course, there's little indication that the countless Mooks and Elite Mooks Haru and company mow down like weeds have any sort of redeeming qualities, but that's because they don't count.
- Mashina Hiro's next work, Fairy Tail, largely continues this trends (minus the mooks thing). Perhaps best demonstrated in the Cursed Island Arc, which ends with the main villain getting past the baggage he had from his former master and fellow students and reforming along with his entire team.
In ARIA, the planet Aqua (formerly known as Mars) is populated by nothing but well-meaning, friendly people—or at least Neo-Venezia is. Every time someone seems to act in less than 100% positive manner it generally is only a matter of slight misunderstandings, which mostly get resolved quickly.
Mahou Sensei Negima fits the trope. Many people like fighting, but the only really Evil person seems to be Chachazero, a powerless doll of Evangeline's. Even demons are quite decent people. Poor Communication Kills and Cycle Of Revenge provide a steady supply of conflict, through. A lot of antagonists could've pulled Negi to their side if they bothered to explain their goals.
- Although even Chachazero has been able to show restraint, at the end of the Kyoto arc she just scares Chigusa so badly that she faints, as opposed to using her freaking huge knife to actually do some damage. The only character so far who's outright evil with no Anti Villain tendencies or Freudian Excuse of some kind is Psycho Lesbian / Blood Knight Tsukuyomi, who has some serious issues regarding Setsuna.
There is a version of it in the Maple Story anime. Every non-human creature thinks Humans Are Bastards and the main character is proving them otherwise.
Real Drive is made of this.
Cardcaptor Sakura has no villains either; in the first arc, the Cards are portrayed more as mischievous beings than truly evil troublemakers and are all subject to Defeat Means Friendship, and in the second arc, the "villain" is quickly hinted (and revealed at the end) to be much more of a Trickster Mentor. All the intelligent characters are presented as decent people, which underscores the "Humans Are Good" part of the trope.
Most of Kimi Ni Todoke's supporting characters are popular girls and jock guys who befriend the shy, outcast protagonist without any ulterior motive (unless there's an out-of-left-field Xanatos Gambit coming)
In Death Note, Light appears to believe this. No, really. Really. While he knows most Humans Are Bastards, he thinks that if he can just eliminate all the bad people, everyone left will magically become good - and conveniently worship him, to boot. While the series is very dark, with many notable villains of whom Light is the worst, Word Of God says we're meant to decide for ourselves who, if any, has the moral high ground.
- On the other hand, you're meant to choose between a host of insane Well Intentioned Extremists or, potentially some good side-characters who manage to be Woobies at their best.
Despite one of its protagonists not being fully human, InuYasha has this. It wasn't so bad in the earlier series where you did get the hint of Humans Are Bastards vibe with the odd bandit here and there, and the discrimination they gave to any hanyou, but in the later episodes and chapters, that aspect of humanity was completely erased and taken over with this idea. Every MonsterOfTheWeek is a youkai, there's no chance it'll be a human, because they're the ones you need to protect. If by chance this monster is human, they've even given themselves up to youkai (Naraku and Tsubaki) to become one themselves, or they're undead so can't even be considered human (Shichinitai). Even reoccurring youkai that aren't particularly evil were all introduced into the series as being evil and willing to kill anyone for no good reason (even the main male protagonist was treated as such) while the reoccurring humans only ever fought with the half youkai Inu Yasha, for "noble" reasons upon their introduction. But it's okay, because youkai are the real bastards in this series. Only those touched by human "goodness" don't end up being corrupted by the rest of them. Heck, even Inu Yasha himself is subjected to this. Just look at his forms. Human Form = Good hearted, Moody but with a heart of gold. Hanyou Form = Still good and has a heart of gold but he's seen being less sympathetic. Youkai Form = Beserker crazy killing machine that's out to destroy everything with a pulse for pleasure. In short, it's only his human half that stops him from being a complete monster. Even the Shikon no Tama enforces this trope. Want to wish to become a full youkai? It'll corrupt the jewel. Want to wish to become a full human? It'll purify the jewel and cause it to cease existing. However, no one ever points out that both wishes are equally selfish and only for personal gain, but that's okay because just the fact that humans are good will still be enough to purify the jewel for a selfish wish. Moral of this story: "If it's not human, it's a complete monster unless they've been blessed with human goodness. If it's human, they're definitely good or misunderstood or possessed, so you have to give them a second chance!"

Film

The Dark Knight raises the question whether Humans Are Bastards or Rousseau Was Right. On one hand, we have the Joker who preaches the former, on the other, we have the Normal People who, in the climactic scene, adhere to the latter. This case has spawned lots of natter since, so let's just leave it at this.
Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (although Roy Neary's wife and kids might not agree about the film having no villains).
- Also, the ETs originally come across as if they're auditioning for The Exorcist, scaring Gillian half to death and then abducting her infant son, although he wanted to go, and they do return him later.
Forbidden Planet. Morbius is definitely well-intentioned and at least semi-extremist.
- This is really more of a "Hobbes Was Right," since it argues that even the best humans have within them a dangerous, raging id that must be kept in check by society.
With the exception of the organ traders, this is pretty much the main tragedy of Sympathy For Mr Vengeance. This fact makes the ensuing spiral of vengeance even more tragic.
The Venus Project, thoroughly discussed in the second Zeitgeist movie, is built around the assumption that greed, corruption, and ignorance are not intrinsic human qualities but were instead drilled into us by the harsh primeval environment and later, by our obsolete social institutions.
- Which is kind of ironic, considering the movies themselves allege almost everything that ever happened is part of an evil conspiracy.
Terminator 2. Seriously.
The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it, for the first time, with a sense of hope. Because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too
- It's a good thing no one made a third film that might have ruined the whole message. A very good thing.
Casablanca. Everyone is a bright-eyed idealist disguised as a cynic— Rick the Knight In Sour Armor, Louis the Magnificent Bastard, even the local crime lord. Either that or a Nazi.
Spencer Tracy as Father Flanagan in Boys Town: "There is no such thing as a bad boy."
This is the entire point of The Lives Of Others: The main character is a Stasi agent named Wiesler in early 1980s East Germany, spying on a playwright suspected of Western sympathies. Wiesler is portrayed as torn between his loyalty to his job and his fundamental human sympathy with the target of his spying, and when the playwright conspires to write an article for the West German Der Spiegel about the high rate of suicide in East Germany, Wiesler does all kinds of things to keep his bosses from knowing.

Literature

Antoine de Saint Exupery.
A lot of Orson Scott Card's writing, particularly in Ender's Saga, deals with the idea that no-one is really evil, and it's all a matter of perspective.
Pretty much all of Soviet Science Fiction is about this, in one fashion or another.
- Only in utopias. Soviet Sci-Fi is based on the principle that Government (Soviet Government, of course) is Good, consequentially, everything else (other governments and non-affiliated individuals) is evil - capitalism, Nazis, mad scientists, brigands and thieves, would-be world conquerors. The only superheroes were ancient Rus champions, rulers themselves or serving them directly. Redemption was possible almost exclusively in cases of extreme intercultural miscommunication, though the protagonists were often Genre Blind to this fact.
  - From what I've seen the Strugatsky Brothers definitely didn't believe in this one. Except in early works around Noon: 22nd Century.
  - The much-argued "Strugatsky vision of Communism" or lack thereof aside, the brothers are probably the first thing that comes to this troper's mind when this trope is mentioned. As for "pretty much all of Soviet Science Fiction", that's... questionable (especially: just when did the Soviet government show up in Soviet science fiction, at least in a positive role? The "orthodox" Soviet science fiction tended to picture a classless stateless governmentless world. "Ancient Rus champions" have been evoked at times, I suppose, but it wasn't very widespread (mostly restricted to time travel fiction, but even then, rebels, Russian or otherwise, were at least as popular for those purposes); on the other hand, Communist men of the future - especially scientists - were often shown as decidedly and ridiculously superheroic; everyone who opposed those ideals was villainised to some extent or another, though - that much is right); care to offer any specific examples? Coincidentally, I'm presently struggling to remember a story that extended this trope's most saccharine form to all possible sentient life, and heavy-handedly lambasted "bourgoise" science fiction, as represented by a corny sci-fi action flick that was torn apart by the ship's hyperbenevolent crew, for not adhering to this.
- Solaris contains an all-powerful controlling force that provides people with what it thinks they need, otherwise being distant, unaccountable and all-consuming. Sound familiar?
  - Why, it's almost as if you were describing something I deal with every day ...
  - Lem was a master at flinging the solid organic waste at low altitudes.
Ben Bova's Voyagers II: The Alien Within: After waking from cryogenic suspension and rescue from an alien ship, astronomer Keith Stoner goes to a war-torn part of Africa, gathers the local leaders and hammers out a peace that's seemed impossible so far.
James White's Sector General space hospital series, a deliberate attempt to write Science Fiction with both tension and a murder deficit. Any aliens who may be trying to kill you have just been misinformed.
This is a huge theme that resonates through Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture.
Most of Edgar Pangborn's antagonists are misguided rather than evil, but that doesn't prevent them occasionally causing horrific tragedies. Example: Tiger Boy, in which the semi-wild title character and a friend he meets are killed due to the belief that he is a demon.
In an odd hybrid, the Timeweb trilogy by Brian Herbert applies this to characters' thought processes (with exceptions for the occasional Biological Mashup or Eldritch Abomination), but has them act as if they were in a setting with Black And Grey Morality. This is justified: either they're culturally brainwashed into hating everyone who isn't of their own species, or they're facing off against those extremists and are forced to kill them.
Oddly enough, Kurt Vonnegut states in the introduction to Welcome to the Monkey House that this is one of the guiding principles of his work: there are no villains, just people with conflicting interests. Though this is less All Humans Are Good and more All Humans Are Human.
Isaac Asimov tended to be this way. He also had no real villains in his books. Asimov and Kurt Vonnegut were much alike.
- The psycho-historians behind the Xanatos Roulette that is Asimov's Foundation series believe every conflict in human history comes from people not understanding each other. This is no Gut Feeling: they have human reactions and brain chemistry down to an exact science.
It can be argued that Ralph from Lord Of The Flies was the one being tested on the island. In the end, despite the fact that most of the boys have become savages, Ralph retains his morality, though the book ends with him and all of the boys lamenting their loss of innocence.
- To be honest, the same could be said of Sam and Eric.
- The fact that they're eventually rescued by a navy vessel suggests that the outside world isn't much different than the island, governed by savages with only a few good people. All of whom seem to be persecuted, as Ralph is the last hold out and they burn down most of the island trying to kill him.
- Not forgetting that the only reason the characters are on the island at all is that they were fleeing from a nuclear war...
The Master And Margarita had this exchange:
Pontius Pilate: And now tell me: why do you always use the expression "good people"? What, do you call everyone that?
Yeshua ha-Notsri: Yes, everyone. There are no evil people in the world.
Pretty much every character in Brandon Sanderson's works is revealed to have "good" (or at least sympathetic) motivations for their actions, though he does include a handful of Complete Monsters for contrast. Perhaps the most spectacular example is the Lord Ruler of Mistborn, who in life is portrayed as pretty much pure evil but is gradually revealed after death to be a very human figure who basically had unlimited power dropped in his lap and did the best he could with it while it slowly drove him mad. One of the major themes running throughout all of Sanderson's novels is that "evil" is usually a lot more complicated than people realize.
Patricia A. McKillip's novels seem to feature this a lot, with The Tower at Stoney Wood as a particularly strong example.
The Star Wars Expanded Universe is at different places on the morality scale Depending On The Writer, but the majority of books written by Timothy Zahn don't have many evil people at all. He doesn't really set up along the good guys and the bad guys. The Empire is not all bad. The New Republic is not all good. Other people have their own allegiances. Plenty of antagonists on any side are doing what they think will be best in the long run. He does have some actually unambiguous villains, but most of them at least have solid reasoning behind what they're doing. No one ever wakes up and decides to be evil.
- So of course, it was Zahn who wrote the Hand Of Thrawn Duology, where at the end and after everything, Supreme Commander Pellaeon signed a peace treaty with President Gavrisom.
- Zahn's non-Star Wars fiction tends to have a lot of this as well; the Conqueror Trilogy in particular features a galactic war caused by essentially a misunderstanding. The humans' standard "greet the unknown aliens" transmission turns out to cover frequencies that cause certain aliens extreme pain, and thus the aliens (understandably) interpret the greeting as an unprovoked attack. There are at least four, possibly more, distinct factions involved, none of whom act unjustifiably throughout the course of the brief but intense war that follows.
- Also, there are plenty of characters who, despite a fall to Dark Side, eventually come to realize the error of their ways.
Terry Pratchett has said that he doesn't believe people who can actually tell the difference between right and wrong would ever choose wrong. As a result, many if not all of his villains, particularly in the Discworld, are in some way deeply disturbed, if not outright insane.
- Pratchett and Neil Gaiman made this observation in Good Omens
  "It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people."
Arguably, the Lord Of The Rings. It appears to be black and white morality at first, but several points in the story suggest otherwise. Tellingly, Gandalf's comment that no one is born evil, not even Sauron, and when they see the dead eastlander and wonder what caused them to do what they did. Moreover, in the appendices it clearly shows Sauron thought, at least at first, that he was in the right, which reeks of Rousseau Was Right.
In the novel Miracle Monday, Superman faces Saturn, an agent of Satan who is trying to break his morals by tricking him into killing an innocent girl. The hero responds by stating these beliefs - about the demon! Whether he was serious or was just Talking The Monster To Death (or both) isn't clear. (The demon was in fact, very much evil, but Supes still won the "game".)
The Coral Island. It's the book Lord Of The Flies was basically written in response to, where the three boys stranded on the island live in perfect harmony, defeat a shark, stop some pirates, convert natives to Christianity and everything works out well (in fact, two of the main characters are called Ralph and Jack, the same as two main characters in Lord of the Flies).

Live Action TV

Music

Video Games

Pokemon generally goes off the idea that people are basically good and even Evil masterminds can reform. (This is, after all, a world where parents apparently feel safe sending their 10-year-olds off into the wild blue yonder with only a single Pokemon to defend them.)
- Lampshaded with the Pokemon themselves; at least a few episodes each season, as well as the first Pokemon movie, are devoted to the theme of "there are no bad Pokemon, only mean/abusive/neglectful trainers." The implication is that bad people as well are just the result of a bad upbringing.
The first Mega Man Starforce game follows this trope to an extent. While there are some truly bad people (all but one of them are humans), including an unnamed person who took advantage of Brother Bonds just to steal somebody's invention, Chrys Golds, and Gemeni, the Big Bad isn't one of them. The motivation of his actions stem from everybody on his planet, including his family, wanting to kill him to over take his throne. As a result of this, he was (with some assistance from Gemeni) convinced that those from all other planets wanted to destroy him as well. Once Geo Steller became his friend, he decided to repair the planet that he destroyed.
- After thinking about it, this trooper is positive that Rey is more good than bad. Sure, he sent off radio waves that made "Brothers" fight each other, beat up people, and wanted to destroy the world but they all have explanations. Pat's parents abandoned him in a dumpster when he was little and that was how the split personality Rey was created. Devastated by how they could do that, Rey got "Brothers" to fight each other to have them avoid the suffering of being betrayed by somebody they trusted very much. That also explains him wanting to destroy the world, since that would make everybody in the world to not have to suffer betrayal from a loved one. Rey beats up people in self protection.
The Warcraft series (including World Of Warcraft) has the inherent decency of the mortal races as a theme since parts of the Horde pulled a Heel Face Turn between the events of Warcraft 2 and Warcraft 3. Demonic magic tends to be a fairly good way to corrupt people, however, if they don't give into their selfish desires on their own. Even all that being said, the plot is most definitely not a case of White And Grey Morality; things are complicated:
- In World Of Warcraft, the Player vs. Environment is generally Black And White Morality. The major villains all have a chain of evil (or possibly forced insanity) that can be traced back to either the Old Gods or the always-evil variety of demons, even if the aforementioned villains now do evil for their own reasons.
- The Horde vs. The Alliance is a case of Grey And Grey Morality, with both sides having sympathetic goals...though sometimes not so much. Both sides want to take down the villains, they just distrust each other too much to form an alliance.
- The history of the Dragons, Orcs, Trolls, and Eredar (one type of demon) all got Retconned at some point or another to blame much of their past evil on corruption by either the demonic Burning Legion or the mysterious Old Gods.
Tales Of Vesperia, though having its share of Complete Monsters, ultimately comes down on the side that most baddies are Anti Villains, and even the Big Bad performs a Heel Face Turn when he realizes he was wrong in his position that Humans Are Bastards.
- The Tales Series series in general fits this trope.
  - Rather, the Tales Series is fond of this trope, even though there are some clearly defined villains who are just bastards. Granted; a lot of them are actually subvillains (like Zagi and Dist) or just a Climax Boss (Like Alexei, Vaclav and all his minions sans Stingle). Despite that the main villain in Tales Of Eternia is clearly a Humans Are Bastards or "Everything is bad"-type villain, it's revealed That she was simply having a dark aurora that allowed Nereid to take control of her in her moment of despair of seeing her husband murdered in front of her, and just got Power Through Posession/
Chrono Trigger sets this up: The Evil Chancellors were monsters in disguise; Magus, who appears to be summoning a monster to destroy the world, is actually just summoning the monster in order to kill it; the Reptites, who aren't even human, aren't so much "evil" as they are competing to be nature's selection, same could be said for the Fiends; Schala swears that her mother isn't actually evil and is redeemable; and a giant space tick (not a flea) is set up to be the Big Bad less than an hour into the game. The only villain that seems completely bad is Dalton of all people.
- Don't forget Mother Brain. She kills pretty much inert humans so that they will stop polluting the earth. What is the point? The earth is already a wasteland, there's no reason to jump to genocide. Machines are so much more powerful that if they decided to not kill the humans, the humans couldn't really pose that much of a threat anyway.
  - If you actually read what she says, Mother Brain's written off Earth as a loss, and now is attempting to prevent Lavos spawn from seeding other planets.
- And then Chrono Cross comes along and completely inverts the message of the first game, never missing an opportunity to declare that yes, Humans Are Bastards.
  - It also asserts that basically every other species are bastards too, or at least Too Dumb To Live. Cross is more a Crapsack World, really.
The Mother/Earthbound series. In Earthbound Zero and Earthbound, the Big Bad, an Eldritch Abomination, is defeated by reminding him of the feeling of love; in Mother 3, the Big Bad never really repents but ends up happy with his fate, while The Dragon gives up thanks to the memory of his mother. The whole trilogy is about familial love.
- Also, most villains you beat up in Earth Bound (Frank, Everdred, Mr. Monotoly) turn good afterwards.
In Xenogears Anyone doing bad things is just proven to be manipulated by a sort of cross between a crazy computer system and Giant Space Flea From Nowhere. The guy seen as the Big Bad is actually just misguided rather than truly evil and the hero even forgives him at the end, though he refuses to forgive himself. Another recurring antagonist is a sympathetic character forgiven by the heroes and even comforted by them after his defeat. The two warring nations are shown to be full of mostly good people and make peace. Even the leader of the evil empire is actually on your side for the most part. The entire theme of the game in fact seems to be that the goodness of humanity can triumph even in a Crapsack World.
In Knights of the Old Republic, a LS character with a high persuade can pretty much prove this trope works 60% of the time, as you can convince plenty of the Dark Side protagonists you speak with to put down the shiny red saber. Some, like Kel Algwinn and Juhani don't take much work at all, while others like Yuthra Ban and Bastila are a bit more of a crapshoot. Used to bittersweet effect if you choose to tell Ajunta Pall, the ghost of an ancient Sith Lord, that he doesn't have to be in pain any longer.
The Touhou series is full of Designated Villains who are unilaterally revealed to be Good All Along by the time the game ends - in most cases, your character has a tea party with the Final Boss following their defeat. Bad Powers Bad People is completely averted. The only things in the series that could be considered evil at all are the Saigyou Ayakashi, more popularly known as the Cherry Tree of Doom, from Perfect Cherry Blossom, and the final boss of Subterranean Animism, who flat-out threatens to nuke all of Gensokyo. The ending reveals that she's become Reimu's pet.

Webcomics

Western Animation

Captain Planet And The Planeteers, with Gi as the self-appointed spokeswoman of the philosophy that Children Are Innocent, everyone is good at heart, and hate, prejudice and other things people learn as they grow up are responsible for evil. Usually.
- Except all the civilians seem to be doing it For The Evulz
  - Please ignore the rubble.
The first season of SuperFriends. There were no supervillains (with the possible exception of the Raven, who put Superman on trial), just Anti Villains who were all doing the utterly wrong thing for what they felt were the right reasons. In the end, they always Saw the Light, Repented for their Wickedness, and never even went to jail.
Wall-E, absolutely. The villain of the film was a robot that was doing exactly what it was programmed to do by programmers who themselves just had incomplete information, and all the humans soon fell head over heels in love with the world as soon as they were jerked out of their reverie and take responsibility to work to undo their ancestors' mistakes.
- The same is true of Finding Nemo—Dr. Sherman took Nemo because he mistakenly believed he would not be able to survive on his own with a deformed fin, and Darla is a "fish-killer" because she is a child who doesn't know any better. The other antagonists of the film are simply mindless predators. It's worth noting that both Finding Nemo and Wall-E were directed by Andrew Stanton.
Gargoyles, though it's never explicitly stated, brings the Rousseau principle home through making each of its recurring characters as complex and 3-dimensional as possible. Even the Spin Off comic, Bad Guys, calls its team of former ne'er-do-wells the "Redemption Squad."
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and its sequel SheRa Princess of Power (heck, most Filmation cartoons) had this as a recurring theme, with even the main villains showing they had a good side underneath all that evil.
Lilo and Stitch fits this, even if its Recycled The Series throws it out the window.
Phineas and Ferb - While Candace is often the antagonist, she's neither evil nor truly spiteful - only impulsive and a bit high-strung. Heck, even the evil genius has his decent moments!