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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.
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.
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 .
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.
Examples
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.
- 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.
- My Neighbor Totoro was intended as an embodiment of this trope. Other Studio Ghibli works tend to have at least a nod towards it.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 mischievious 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.
- Weirdly, Light Yagami appears to believe this, as part of his ostensible crusade against evil.
- In last episode of Code Geass Lelouch says, that no matter how long it will take, human's desire for happiness will triumph above everything else and create a Utopia.
- A common trope in the variousGundam series, going hand-in-hand with the anti-war message.
- 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).
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 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-handidly 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?
- Ben Bova's Voyagers II: The Alien Within: After waking from cryogenic suspension and rescue from an alien ship, astronomer Keith Stoner goes a wartorn 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 Sanderon's works are 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.
- 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.
Live Action TV
- The entire premise of Star Trek The Original Series was that humans would eventually grow into this state. The sequel series moved away from this; while The Next Generation mostly stuck with it, Deep Space 9 really started slipping away during the Dominion War, and Voyager and Enterprise mostly abandoned it. (Although, as a Prequel, it could be argued that Enterprise is simply set before it happens. Or that Berman and Braga just don't get Trek.)
- The steady inversion of Star Trek's meaning begins in the middle of Next Gen, reaching completion in Voyager. It parallels the fading of the WWII-survivor generation in the USA media.
- The Doctor believes this... most of the time. Occasionally, the humans around him prove him wrong. Doesn't seem to stop him giving the Patrick Stewart speeches, though.
- He didn't give one at the end of Midnight. No siree!.
- In The West Wing, most of the antagonistic politicians wanted what was best—they just had different opinions of what was "best" for America. At worst, they tended toward stupid corruption, greed, and tendency to stretch the truth. There were actual evil people like the Western Terrorists, but they stayed off-screen and seldom lasted long.
- In Kamen Rider Den-O, the Imagin form contracts with humans to grant their wishes and invariably do evil things. However, as it turns out, practically all of the humans contracted to the Imagin had good intentions, which were twisted in Literal Genie fashion. For example, one episode suggests that a young model is being attacked at the behest of her father, who threw her out a year ago. When the hero confronts the father, he learns that he merely wanted his daughter's career to succeed, and pushed her away so she wouldn't hold herself back by staying with him and helping at his shop; he even supported her from the shadows by sending anonymous bouquet to cheer her up, with the aid of her manager. Thanks to the heroes' actions, father and daughter reconcile.
Music
Radio
- The focus of the Adventures In Odyssey episode "Promises, Promises", although its conclusion is less optimistic:
Connie: If we could just get all the people together and get them talking to each other, we'd be able to solve all the differences we have. After all, everyone's basically good down deep inside, and if all of us good people could just get together and talk, we'd see how much we have in common, and we wouldn't want to fight all the time.
Whit: Connie, that was a noble and wonderful speech. Unfortunately, it was also one of the most ridiculous things I ever heard.
Real Life
- Quite so.
- Game theory demonstrates this mathematically with The Prisoners' Dilemma.
- Um, how? In a basic Prisoner's Dilemma, both sides are better off not cooperating. (Repeating the game infinitely changes things a bit, but still leads to 'an eye for an eye' being the best strategy — a far cry from Rousseau.)
- Depends on what you mean by "better off". Cooperation is riskier than being a bastard, but consistent cooperation yields better results than consistent bastardry.
- This is not completely correct. It is true that, under certain conditions, always trying to screw over other people in a repeated Prisoner's Dilemma game is not an effective move. However, that doesn't make pure cooperation a good strategy either. From experimental testing, the wisest move is 'tit-for-tat', or, in other words, "start out cooperating, cooperate with those who cooperate with you, but screw over those who try to screw you over." While this is not a Hobbes Was Right strategy, neither is it a purely altruistic, idealistic one. (In addition, note that, for even this to work, there have to be certain constraints — the game has to be repeated indefinitely, the outcomes of previous games have to be public, and the population interacting has to be small enough that these outcomes are common knowledge. If any of these conditions fail, complete bastardry is, in fact, the best strategy.)
- Actually, some computer scientists put this to the test. What they found was interesting. They ran an Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma tournament - 'tit-for-tat' was the winning strategy. It scored the most points in the tournament, and won, despite the fact that it could never score higher than its opponents. Even more interesting: when they tried the same thing with an elimination tournament, where the program that scored lowest was eliminated from competition, TFT still won. At the beginning of the competition, the pacifist programs were wiped out by the predatory ones. But then the predatory ones steadily got picked off by the tit-for-tat programs. The basic lesson is that being a bastard only works in the short term. Long term, bet on the good guys. So Rousseau was... mostly right.
- As a matter of fact, the Prisoner's Dilemma does suggest that human nature is far nobler than it is usually believed, since we often end up playing a fairer strategy than the "best" one. Even though in a one-round game defecting is a better choice than cooperating no matter what the other player does, experimental trials showed that about 40% of the people will cooperate anyway - not a bad result at all, all things considered. Rousseau was, at the very least, not entirely wrong.
- I have always believed that the Prisoner's Dilemma is inherently untrustworthy because the initial rules can be skewed in favour of a desired result.
- The result of the Dictator's Game experiment may support this (or the expectation of this). Two people participate in the game, one alone gets to decide how to divide the money. The second person have no say what so ever. Result shows the decider tends to share.
- Two millennia prior to Rousseau, Confucian philosopher Mencius came to the same conclusion about human nature.
- During the Cold War, the basic worry running around was that if anyone pushed the Big Red Button on either side it would set off a chain of events that would end in the Earth pretty much sterilized. Note that not only may we speak of this particular event in the past tense, but most of the cases where it almost happened were not because of anyone getting pissy and hitting the button, but because of random, stupid crap like this.
Video Games
- Pokemon generally goes off the idea that people are basically good and even Evil masterminds can reform.
- 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.
- The Warcraft series (including World Of Warcraft) has 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 postion that Humans Are Bastards.
- 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; 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- No mention of 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.
Webcomics
- Gunnerkrigg Court is known for lacking "proper" villains; Coyote is (arguably) more of a general Trickster, and Ysengrin is simply insane. And Reynardine is... who knows?
- Tom Siddell confirms this in an interview: "There are no outright evil characters, for example, just situations in which a character might act in a way perceived to be evil."
- Freefall forgoes villains in favor of lots of geek-tickling tech-talk.
- Except for Corrupt Corporate Executives.
- Even they tend to be simply narrow-minded and incompetent, rather than willfully malevolent. It's just that they're not smart enough to figure out that A Is have become sentient, and still think that they're just products. It doesn't help that some of the A Is agree.
- Ursula Vernon, creator of Digger, has complained that she can't seem to come up with a real villain, since all of them have reasons for what they are doing and believe that they're doing the right thing. Some of them admittedly think it's the right thing because they're doing it, yes, or that the ends will justify the means, but no one so far is truly evil.
- A Miracle of Science has no real villains. The Big Bad is a Well Intentioned Extremist who actively avoids civilian casualties and even the Venusian Mafia is mostly just selfish.
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.
- 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 Andthe Mastersofthe Universe and its sequel She Ra Princessof 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.
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