Works with their own pages
- In Area 88, most of the mercenaries have no moral qualms about killing enemy pilots. However, when one of their own dies in battle, cue sorrow, outrage, and manly tears.
- Explored in Attack on Titan, with people calling out horrible actions from others but being fiercely protective of their own. After all, He Who Fights Monsters is a major theme of the series.
- When 9-year-old Eren murders two human traffickers to rescue Mikasa, the third man flies into a rage over the death of his partners. Of course, not long before that the three of them had murdered Mikasa's parents and intended to sell Mikasa herself into sex slavery.
- A young Sasha complains about refugees eating too much food, but is known for stealing from scarce food stores meant for an entire group.
- Tragically explored with Reiner, Bertolt, and Annie due to their role as enemy spies. Their mission has caused them to be responsible for the vast majority of tragedies in the series thus far, but at the same time they can be protective and supportive of their human comrades. All express remorse or uncertainty over their actions, but Eren states none of them are allowed to experience human emotions like guilt or regret because of their crimes. Later on, Armin uses a cruel bluff to provoke Bertolt, describing how Annie is being viciously tortured. In response, Bertolt calls him "devilspawn" and swears to kill him in revenge. Bertolt's actions as the Colossal Titan triggered the entire plot, causing thousands of deaths and untold suffering.
- This is what makes the female protagonists of Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts so hard to like. They regularly treat the boys among them with indifference at best and annoyance at worst but are quick to go down hard on them if they show any interest in other girls. They have no problems with throwing insults, threatening, or even outright harming the boys they supposedly like, but if even a fraction of the same thing happens to them it gets treated like a Moral Event Horizon. But perhaps the most infamous example has to be when Miharu throws a What the Hell, Hero? speech at Akihisa for not treating Minami like a girl. The fact that she treats both Minami and Akihisa far worse never comes to her mind, nor does it ever get brought up.
- At one point in Berserk, the Apostle Wyald tries to defend his actions to Zodd (who is currently moments away from murdering him) by claiming that the main directive of Apostles is to "do as you will"—that is, once they become Apostles, they can do whatever they want with their newfound power. Zodd then turns this logic on him by telling him that what he wants to do is execute Wyald for his stupidity. Wyald then starts begging from the logic that they're on the same side—never minding that the reason he was in this situation to begin with is that he was holding Griffith (someone planned to be a member of the God Hand) hostage. Unsurprisingly, Zodd finds this logic unconvincing.
- In Black Clover, the Big Bad of the first saga, Licht aka Patolli heavily dips into this due to his vengeance against Clover Kingdom for the genocide they supposedly committed unto the elves.
- Yami calls out how his mission to correct the Clover Kingdom's discrimination has him doing the same thing as the corrupt nobility responsible for said discrimination by harming others he sees as unworthy. When Yami asks if he's sane, Licht replies that he's perfectly sane and will answer sins with sin.
- He orders or allows his followers and reincarnated elves to engage in wholesale destruction, but if their victims fight back, or worse, win, he goes into an apocalyptic fit about how his people are being "bullied" and how he won't tolerate it anymore. Zagred even calls him out on it because despite wearing Licht's face, he betrayed his ideals.
- Death Note:
- In the Death Note anime, Light claims that L is evil because he used another human being as a scapegoat in Episode 2. This completely disregarding the fact that the man in question was a criminal scheduled for execution that day, the fact that Light himself killed him, and how many people Light had killed up to the point where he said that.
- Light Yagami in general is a spectacular example of this trope, as he endeavors to kill all the criminals and bad people on the planet but sees nothing wrong with killing thousands upon thousands of people, because he's a good guy. When Ryuk mentions at one point that Light will be the only evil person left on the planet should he succeed, Light has no clue what he means.
- The amount Light objects to the morality of an act, apart from the part in which he loses his memories of the Death Note and is not acting as Kira, tends to depend on how much it affects his plans. Even his disapproval of Mikami killing people he didn't think necessarily deserved to die yet is largely based on how it makes Kira look.
- Zon and his band of orcs from Delicious in Dungeon see no problem with attacking and pillaging other races, yet get mad when those same races fight back against the orcs for attacking them in the first place.
- The Devil is a Part-Timer!: Olba has the gall to call Emi out on working with Maou, questioning her sanity. This is despite the fact that not only is he in a Villain Team-Up with Lucifer, a Fallen Angel and Maou's would-be Starscream, but is actively using him to terrorize innocent people, whereas Emi was working with Maou to stop them from tormenting said innocent people. Even Lucifer himself calls Olba out on his hypocrisy.
- Happened in Fist of the North Star, most notably with Chief Fang/Kiba Daioh and the Fang Clan. Fang and his tribe would rape, murder, pillage, plunder, and destroy entire villages, but if even one of their own died, then the chief would cry Manly Tears and swear unending revenge. It's worse since he is not above sacrificing his own children to save himself.
- Azami Nakiri in Food Wars! claims that he wants "revenge" on the culinary world that ruined his idol Joichiro Saiba. To contextualize, Joichiro dropped out of Tootsuki Academy, since people constantly praised him for his talents but never seemed to consider how much effort he put into creating his dishes, which put a lot of pressure on him that eventually wore him down. When Azami reveals his plans to Joichiro's son Soma, he's acting a lot like the people who caused Joichiro to hit his burnout (namely, singing praises of Joichiro's talents while ignoring his hard work).
- Fullmetal Alchemist:
- Scar is angry at the genocide of his people, but he rarely cares about the people he has killed and the consequences of his murderous actions. It's subverted in regards to his accidental murder of Winry's parents, who saved his life, in that he feels guilt and remorse over it.
- The second Slicer plays this very straight when fighting against Ed, saying "how dare you injure my brother!", despite the fact that he was trying to violently and horribly kill Ed.
- Envy often complains about others not fighting fair when they get the advantage over him in battle. Coming from a guy who throws around Shapeshifter Guilt Trips and dog kickings almost constantly, it rings a little hollow.
- Pride angrily upbraids Greed for betraying his "family" but threatens to eat him and callously eats Gluttony— yeah, it had a pragmatic purpose, but Pride licked his lips before doing it and was clearly very pleased with himself.
- Possibly due to him still being a teenager, Ed never really seems to come to terms with the gravity of the Ishvalan Genocide; while he's certainly upset about the loss of life, he never seems to view it as anything more than an ordinary military exercise and he gives No Sympathy to Scar for wanting revenge for what happened to his people, while being shocked that Mustang and Hawkeye consider themselves war criminals for participating in the massacre of innocent civilians.
- The members of the corrupt Senior Staff stationed in Central Command, Generals Fox and Gardner, both accuse Olivier Armstrong of treason when she opposes their plans to sacrifice the population of Amestris just to become immortal, while stating their actions are for the good of the nation. Olivier rightfully calls them out on it.
- Full Metal Panic!: Leonard Testarossa despises Sosuke Sagara, calling him a horrible monster beyond redemption because he's killed people before, and even tries using this argument to drive a wedge between Sosuke and his Love Interest Kaname. The problem is, Leonard is the leader of Amalgam, a massive terrorist organization that's causes worldwide death and destruction in pursuit of their own selfish goals, while Sosuke's a soldier who fights to protect people with special abilities from being captured and exploited...by Amalgam. Essentially, Leonard believes that ordering minions to kill people isn't anywhere near the same as pulling the trigger himself, and he doesn't get why Kaname thinks he's out of his mind.
- Mayo Sasaki from Fushigi Yuugi Eikoden has a bad case of this. Why, she accuses Miaka of only caring about her happiness and not thinking about her duty as a priestess of Suzaku. Only, Mayo was at time trying to screw up the whole Universe of the Four Gods just because she wanted to steal Taka and his child away from Miaka. Hey, Mayo? Pot, kettle, black.
- Asagami Fujino of The Garden of Sinners accuses Shiki of being a clearly insane killer, and Shiki is quick to point out that Fujino herself has already brutally murdered almost half a dozen people by twisting their limbs off. Fujino (who is at this point utterly broken emotionally and in the middle of a profound psychotic break) refuses to accept that she's done anything immoral, citing that her stomach hurt. Add to that that Shiki didn't care that Fujino killed the men in the club who had been raping her every day for an entire year, because that was simply revenge and a sudden burst of killing impulse and the victims had it coming. It's when Fujino started actively tracking the guys who managed to escape and killing anyone who got in her way that Shiki thought she went too far. Of course, Shiki has a unique concept of what it means to murder to begin with.
- Genesis of Aquarion: near the end of the series, the humans succeed in capturing a Shadow Angel, whom they experiment on and kill. The other Shadow Angels are heartbroken and furious at the humans for doing this, but it's kind of hard for the viewer to sympathize with them when they've been capturing hundreds of millions of humans, children included, and using them as food for their "Tree of Life". Whatever their pain at losing one of their own, the humans have suffered millions of times over at the Shadow Angels' hands.
- Done for Creepy Child effect on Gunslinger Girl. Thanks to their brainwashing, the cyborg girls have no qualms about killing people and are indifferent to their own injuries, yet any attack on The Handler they're conditioned to protect is an outrageous affront worthy of immediate vengeance.
- In GUN×SWORD, the main antagonists, The Clawed Man and his minions wants to bring peace to their world via Assimilation Plot. In order to achieve that, they and their followers do horrible things that cost thousands of deaths, which includes the love ones of the heroes, which they justified as sacrifices needed to save the world (Plus the Clawed Man claims he can resurrect the dead once the plan is successful). Yet if the heroes kill one of them, even if it was the Clawed Man minions that attacked first, this is somehow unforgivable and a horrible crime. Best shown later in the anime when Michael Garret calls the protagonist Van a cold blooded killer for killing his allies, Carossa & Melissa, only for the other heroes to point out Van has protected and save lives while his so called friends murdered many innocents.
- In The Heroic Legend of Arslan, in response to hearing that Pars has slaves, the young Lusitanian soldier Etoile tells Arslan that their country and people are far better than Parsians because their god Yaldabord teaches that all men are equal. But if you follow another religion, then you must be marked off and killed. Arslan naturally lampshades how inconsistent he is. It should also be noted that for all of Lusitania's public condemnation of slavery, they can't be bothered to actually free any of the slaves in the Parsian territory they take.
- The Moral Myopia of the Phantom Troupe in Hunter × Hunter really pisses off Gon.Gon: I thought you were just cold-blooded killers. But I see that you can shed tears for your friend. SO WHY COULDN'T YOU SPARE SOME OF THAT EMPATHY FOR THE PEOPLE YOU KILLED?!
- However, Gon has been showing signs of his own moral myopia since the very beginning and is even commented on by other characters, not really caring when fellow participants die in the hunter exams or that his training partner in Greed Island is a Serial Killer since all the other participants were strangers and only he knew Binolt. This eventually comes to a head when he dedicates everything to killing Pitou to avenge Kite, even threatening to kill an innocent woman until they come with him. This ends tragically when he decides to "give up everything" for the power to brutally kill Pitou and needing to be saved from the brink of death in the next arc.
- Inuyasha:
- Koga serves as an excellent example. His Establishing Character Moment is slaughtering an entire village because his pet wolves were hungry, but enters an Unstoppable Rage when his pack is killed by Inuyasha's group, even though the group only killed the pack out of self-defense. Despite this, Koga is considered to be sympathetic (and that appears to be purely because Kagome is flattered by his crude flirtations with her).
- Kagome gets angry with Inuyasha any time he shows jealousy for other male characters flirting with her, but she herself tends to get insanely jealous any time Inuyasha pays attention to another woman (typically Kikyo), even though he usually isn't even flirting.
- Yura of the Hair. During her fight with Inuyasha and Kagome, she has the gall to call them out on stealing a Shikon Jewel shard from her... the very same shard that she stole from them in the first place.
- Inuyashiki brings us Hiro, a boy who wants to use his powers to protect his friends and family. It quickly becomes apparent that he'd rather protect them than anyone else, as he turns out to be an amoral sociopath with a Lack of Empathy.
- “I… Don’t Want to Work Anymore” I Quit Being An Adventurer. Even if You Treat Me Better Now, I Won’t Do It. I Will Never Work Again. has everyone who exploited, abused, or flat out stole from Aix think themselves to be good and honest people, but when Aix has enough of their crap and quits the adventurer guild, refusing to go back no matter how they beg, plead, or promise better terms, Aix is the "greedy and selfish lout" who needs to be taken down a peg or two.
- When Enya Geil from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure finds out that her son has been killed by the protagonists, she swears revenge and stops at nothing to try to kill them. Said son was a deranged psychopath who enjoyed raping and killing women.
- Ditto for Yoshihiro Kira later on. He tries to protect his son Yoshikage from having his "quiet life" disturbed (which happens to involve killing women, cutting off their hands, and keeping them.)
- Macross Delta:
- Enemy pilot Bogue Con-Vaart, who curses humans for all the senseless death they cause...while conveniently ignoring the fact that he himself is only a few steps short of being The Berserker on the battlefield. On top of that, he utterly despises Walküre and goes out of his way to try and kill them in every single battle possible, when Walküre is only trying to counter the Hate Plague that Bogue's people are inflicting on both soldiers and innocent civilians.
- The Windermerians in general: they hate the New UN for having annexed Windermere and for having used a Fold Weapon during the resultant war of independence. Fair enough, but the Windermerians, after securing their independence, retaliate by utilizing Mind Control on the populations of all surrounding planets when "liberating" them from the New UN (these other planets having shown minor concerns at worst with belonging to the New UN government), and declaring themselves the rulers of the galaxy by birthright. Which is... exactly what they were accusing the New UN of doing.
- Magic Knight Rayearth: The young summoner Ascot repeatedly sent his monster friends against the three heroines, with clear orders to kill the girls (and by doing so, he indirectly caused Presea's death in the anime). When the Magic Knights killed the monsters in an act of legitimate self-defense and to defend their friends, Ascot called that an atrocity and swore revenge... which he carried out by summoning more creatures, which also got killed. Happily ignoring the fact that it was he who sent them with intent to kill. In the end, Umi called him out on this, and managed to set him straight.
- Furthermore, when questioned by Umi, Ascot states that he works for Zagato because everyone else rejects him and his monsters and accuses them of causing trouble. When Umi asks if they do, Ascot replies that they only do so when he explicitly tells them to.
- In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, Nove swears revenge on Subaru for severely wounding Cinque during the Numbers Cyborgs' attack on the Ground Forces HQ while she held her off to allow Nove and the others to escape, despite the fact that Cinque, Nove and Wendi had attacked, wounded and abducted Subaru's older sister Ginga, triggering Subaru's Unstoppable Rage and resulting in Cinque's injuries.
- In Martian Successor Nadesico, the Jovians very much fit this. They have a "Heroes of Justice" attitude like someone who has watched too much Super Robot anime note , which means that they have very high standards and see the world in terms of Black-and-White Morality. Thus, while Jovians are often personally pleasant, they generally behave in a totally merciless way in attacking Earth (since they see humans as Always Chaotic Evil). There's a quote from one that really says it all- "If only the humans appreciated life as we do, I would not have to kill so many of them."
- Naruto:
- Uchiha Sasuke suffers from a particularly bad case of this. It's to the point where he believes that his brother Itachi isn't to blame for his agreeing to slaughter the Uchiha clan to protect Konoha from the Uchihas' attempting a coup and bloody civil war. He also believes that the Uchiha clan was in the right to attempt said coup, and that his friends and everyone else in Konoha is to blame for prospering from the slaughter by not being involved in a bloody coup that would've resulted in the loss of many innocent lives. Granted, by this point, he has been going off the deep end and makes a fair bit more sense (namely pointing out the system that perpepuates the violence in the first place), but only after when Naruto defeats him for the final time does Sasuke finally recover from this.
- During the Chunin Exams, Neji has the gall to accuse the adults of favoritism when they intervene during his match with Hinata, conveniently ignoring the fact that they only intervened because he was trying to outright murder Hinata even though she was already badly wounded and unable to defend herself from him anymore.
- The Cloud Village also commits this in the past. When Hiashi kills the ninja diplomat who tried to kidnap his daughter Hinata to steal the secret of the Byakugan, they are outraged and demand Hiashi's body (partly for the pretext of getting the Byakugan, which gets thwarted when Hiashi's twin brother Hizashi, a member of the Branch family whose Byakugan will seal itself after his death, offers himself in Hiashi's place, preventing them from complaining about it). It's possible that they did not know the truth, but this is egregious enough that Neji lampshades it when telling the story to Naruto, and Yamato later reminds the Raikage that the Leaf Village reluctantly accepted the Cloud Village's demand to avoid war when he proves dismissive of Naruto's request to save Sasuke.
- The Raikage is also very proud of the fact that Kumogakure is the only major village to not produce any members of Akatsuki, and also berates some of the other major villages for going so far as to hire Akatsuki for certain jobs. When the Tsuchikage points out that he hired Akatsuki to counter Kumo's continued military expansion during a time when every other village was in the process of disarmament, the Raikage responds with righteous indignation. It probably would have lead to a huge argument if Danzo (who is also an example of this) hadn't interrupted.
- And speaking of Danzo, his idea of the right thing to do puts him second only to Orochimaru for the grade of trauma produced. If that. Danzo has a standard policy of abusing and brainwashing small children into his minions, and he's strongly implied to have conspired with Orochimaru after the Sannin betrayed the village. He's also responsible for Kabuto's Start of Darkness; Not only did he blackmail Kabuto and his mother figure into spying for Root, he set them up to kill each other when he felt that they knew too much and had become a liability, and consequently, Kabuto betrays Konoha. Most importantly, he's the one who leaked the fact that Naruto had the Kyuubi sealed inside him and is responsible for the boy's unhappy childhood. He is clearly in the top five evil people stakes for the series, but he doesn't think he's a bad person.
- Negima! Magister Negi Magi has the entire mage society condemning mind control, such as love potions, yet it is common practice to erase memories and put up wards to mentally command Muggles away from places that would be inconvenient.
- Pokémon: The Series has Team Rocket, a gang of Card Carrying Villains who are more than happy to steal other people's Pokemon or valuables so they can give it to Giovanni and get a sweet reward out of it. Steal from them, even it's to take back what they stole, or take something of theirs on accident, and they act like they're the victims.
- Ranma ½ is full of this, with "heroic" and "villainous" characters alike capable of deploring the antics of others... while seeing no problem with doing the same thing themselves.
- Tatewaki Kuno may perhaps be the best example of this in the characters; his statements about what makes a person moral (and he, naturally, is the most moral and honorable person in town if you listen to him) and his actual actions are pretty much exact opposites.
- Azusa Shiratori is an extreme kleptomaniac who's obsessed with objects or animals she considers to be "cute" and will always try to run off with them, regardless of whether or not they belong to someone else. As far as she's concerned, anything she latches onto is rightfully hers, and anyone who tries to take their things back from her is a bully.
- Rosario + Vampire:
- During their fight, Kuyou goes on about how Humans Are Bastards because they're petty, betray, lie, cheat, steal, and hurt other living things without batting an eye. It doesn't really hold water since Kuyou is saying all of this after he just immolated Tsukune in cold blood right in front of his friends and while he's beating Inner Moka to a bloody pulp.
- Gyokuro has hated Moka since the day she was born because her existence was one of the main reasons Issa gave more attention to Akasha than her. When Moka disfigures her with a kick, she is infuriated not simply from the injury but that Moka would have the gall to attack her own stepmother, as if she'd actually been a good enough one to deserve any respect from Moka.
- Sailor Moon:
- Luna the Cat is willing to cheat on Artemis behind his back, but she will go on an Unstoppable Rage if he allegedly does so to her.
- Usagi Tsukino is possessive over Mamoru and gets defensive when he talks to other girls, but she herself is perfectly willing to hit on other boys behind his back during their relationship. This is often lampshaded by the other Guardians.
- Chibi-Usa has the knack of taking away Usagi's food for her own amusement, but she goes ballistic when Usagi unknowingly takes the pie she was baking for a classmate.
- The Buff Clan from Space Runaway Ideon are completely blind in this regard. You've agreed to an honorable duel with a Terran? It's okay to not play by the rules, because they sure won't! You invade their planet and they won't surrender? What a bunch of brutal savages! They get called out on their failures to live up to their "samurai" ideals several times.
- In s-CRY-ed, both lead characters border on this in terms of how badly they freak out when their friends are hurt or killed, despite the number of people on either side they have personally done serious harm to with out batting an eye.
- In Sgt. Frog, Natsumi Hinata, primary defender of Earth, will beat the tar out of Harmless Villain Keroro and his platoon any time they try to Take Over the World. But no matter how many times Apocalypse Maiden Angol Mois tries to destroy the planet, Natsumi has not been as nasty to her, even if she opposes it.
- One of the reasons Thorfinn became The Atoner in Vinland Saga during the "Farmland" saga was the realization that he was suffering from moral myopia during the prologue. Thorfinn was driven by the desire to avenge his murdered father, but he himself killed many men who were likely the fathers, brothers, and/or sons of other people as well. After being Made a Slave, Thorfinn had a long time to reflect on this and decided to give up fighting and killing forever.
- Weathering With You: The nightclub thug who tried to lure Hina into sex slavery and beat up Hodaka is later shown with what appears to be his wife and child looking at the sunshine after Hina's sacrifice. The fact that he can hurt people for his job and go home without any apparent sign of remorse just makes his earlier actions all the more despicable.
- Wolfsmund shows how the Austrian Hapsburg nobles view the Swiss commoners as a bunch of trouble makers and never considered them a justified group trying to protect their lands from foreign invaders.
- The main antagonist of the series, Baliff Wolfram, is a Manipulative Bastard and sadist who regular tortures or kill anyone whose part of the Swiss rebels and even send his troops to Rape, Pillage, and Burn villages suspected of helping the rebels. And when said rebels finally capture him and sentences him death for his crimes, Wolfram cries it unfair and has the gall to say the Swiss are going to hell for killing him.
- Wolfram's boss, Duke Leopold, while isn't as bad as Wolfram, still has shades of this trope. When a dying rebel calls out the Duke for invading his home, the Duke just dismisses what he said as useless peasant talk, since he views the invasion is justified since it's helping him and family to maintain his power within the Holy Roman Empire.
- YuYu Hakusho:
- In Chapter 44 of the manga, while Yusuke and Kuwabara are recovering from their wounds sustained in the Maze Castle arc, two demon half-breeds impersonate them and attack some rival Delinquents at the Kasanegafuchi school. After expressing outrage over Yusuke and Kuwabara's dirty tactics, despite having been dishonorable in the past and knowing that Yusuke and Kuwabara never acted this way before, (lampshaded with "Thug logic! Gotta love it!" in the margins), the Kasanegafuchi delinquents beat up Kuwabara's friends and use threats to force two students to tell Yusuke and Kuwabara to meet them to settle the score.
- Also, later on, Yaminade no Itsuki gets hit hard with this, being Sensui's boyfriend and Psycho Supporter. When Sensui dies, Itsuki tells off the heroes and accuses them of being Hypocrites for (dub quote) "training a boy to kill and then expecting him not to kill as a man". Despite his severe moral myopia in regards to Sensui's Misanthrope Supreme/Kill All Humans worldview due to Mad Love.
