History MotiveDecay / WesternAnimation

** In the ''Goliath Chronicles'', The Quarrymen, an anti-gargoyles movement, are genuinely worried about Gargoyles being a threat in the first episode but then they start framing Gargoyles for crimes later on out of FantasticRacism.

** Inverted with Doof. In the first episode, Dr. Doofenshmirtz was a GenericDoomsdayVillain who [[LampshadeHanging openly admitted that he himself wasn't sure what his own motives were]]. From the second episode onward, his {{Evil Plan}}s are mostly motivated either as revenge for his HilariouslyAbusiveChildhood, DisproportionateRetribution for some minor annoyance, or occasionally just a lust for power. It's also implied that a lot of it is [[PsychopathicManchild just acting out to get attention.]]
** Non-villainous example with Candace. Her initial desire to bust her brothers is because she wishes them to be normal and safe. Sometimes, however, her busting obsession comes to the level where Candace is just downright mean, trying to bust them even for crazy ideas that aren't at the level of danger, or going out of her way to yell at them before they've even done anything at all. Or, on at least one occasion, getting worked up because they ''weren't'' doing anything crazy, and insisting they did something so she could try to bust them for it.

* Plankton from ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants''. Most of his plots in seasons 1-5 revolve around him wanting to steal the Krabby Patty formula to make his awful restaurant, the Chum Bucket, successful, to upstage his longtime business rival Krabs. Even when it wasn't ''directly'' about the formula, it still involved his restaurant and rivalry with Krabs: "Walking Small" had him trying to build an expansion to the Chum Bucket, and "20,000 Patties Under the Sea" had him start his own traveling restaurant to compete with Krabs. Starting with season 11, but most pronounced in 13, he's become a GenericDoomsdayVillain who only exists to cause chaos and do stereotypical "evil" stuff like shoot people with laser guns and destroy buildings, with no mention of the formula or Krabs. "Captain Pipsqueak" even establishes his "motives" as wanting to steal the formula to ''cause mayhem and take over the world'', when that was never his goal.

* ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003'' has the Utrom Shredder, Ch'rell, go through this, albeit in a justified way. While he'd always been the Turtles' ArchEnemy who fought them many times throughout the first three seasons, his main goal had always been to leave Earth and get his revenge on the Utrom race as his ultimate endgame. At the end of the third season, Ch'rell gets frozen on an ice asteroid for a long time and by the time he appears again in ''WesternAnimation/TurtlesForever'', his Utrom revenge motive is thrown out the window and his focus is solely on killing the Turtles and all the other TMNT incarnations across the multi-verse. While the reasoning is not spelled out in full detail, it's obvious that his massive shift in his focus is due to peering into the multiverse and seeing that it was his destiny, along with all other Shredders, to be foiled by the Turtles repeatedly. And because it was the 2003 Turtles who had repeatedly defeated him, up to the point where he got imprisoned on an ice asteroid for years, it would make sense that he'd finally consider it [[ItsPersonal very personal with the Ninja Turtles]].

* The Decepticons in general, and Megatron in particular, in ''WesternAnimation/TransformersPrime''. After a rousing return and a multi-episode arc in the introductory "Darkness Rising" mini-series in which he works to implement his dastardly plan and agenda - [[TheGoodGuysAlwaysWin but of course ultimately failing]] - they pretty much don't have anything better to do than float around on their spaceship being generically evil and just chasing after the things and opportunities the Autobots are going after.

** Inverted with Charmcaster, whose motivations in the original show didn't seem to go further than getting more power and rivalry with Gwen. ''WesternAnimation/Ben10UltimateAlien'' fleshed out her motivations by giving her a WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds backstory and revealing she actually was looking for more power to overthrow the tyrant who took over her home dimension and resurrect her father. After she accomplished the former and the latter proved impossible, she stopped being a villain and started going toward TrueNeutral.

* ''WesternAnimation/AtomicBetty'': In her first appearance, Iciclia's main goal was to steal enough montegoberries to keep looking young and she was foiled. In her next appearances, she's only seen young-looking and there's no mention of her dependancy anymore.

** Baron Zemo initially strives to kill ComicBook/CaptainAmerica, then extract a SuperSerum. This would not only help Zemo create powerful subordinates, but also cure him of Virus X, which deformed Zemo after Cap stopped him from using it as a weapon against the Allies. Then the Enchantress (falsely) offers to help him TakeOverTheWorld, so he and she go round up a supervillain team, and Virus X never receives another mention.
** Kang the Conqueror comes to conquer 21st century Earth so he can prevent a disaster that will destroy the world, including the empire he rules during the 40th century. After the Avengers put him in jail, he remains imprisoned for 31 episodes[[note]]30 if you treat "The Kang Dynasty" and "New Avengers" as episodes #19 and #49, respectively, instead of #18 and #49[[/note]], until the Council of Kangs helps him get rid of the Avengers. Kang proceeds to send troops from the 40th century to help him take over 21st century Earth. FridgeLogic says that since Kang ''has'' troops in the 40th century, the Earth-shattering disaster must have been successfully prevented, and he doesn't have much of a reason to take over the world of the past anymore.
* Most villains in ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'', and to an extent [[Franchise/{{Batman}} the comics]], had genuine motives in their debut appearances, but the motivations for their later crimes was mostly "revenge on Batman"; to their defense, most of them were crazy.

** Even Ra's al Ghul, whom Batman credits as having been his most dangerous adversary, gets hit with this. He's first introduced as a DiabolicalMastermind whose goal is to wipe out 90% of the human race to save the planet, with Batman defeating him and saving the entire world in an epic 2-parter. ''Every single one'' of his subsequent appearances involve some scheme of his to extend his life due to his Lazarus Pit-derived immortality beginning to wear off after so many years, and he never overtly makes another attempt at his original goal of destroying human civilization. The closest he came to returning to his goal was the "Near Apocalypse of '09", which required the whole League to stop and ended with Batman kicking his butt so hard, it took until ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'' for him to recover, but even then, that happened off-screen.

* ''WesternAnimation/Ben10'' villain [[MadScientist Dr. Animo]] was first introduced as a scientist whose motivation was stealing a prize that he thought he deserved. This is completely dropped in all his next appearances, where he is portrayed as a classic super-villain trying to either mutate or conquer the world (sometimes both).

** [[EvilTwin Albedo]] was initially introduced with the simple goal to get Ben's Omnitrix so he could use it to free himself from his ShapeShifterModeLock and get his original form back, and, while he was rather psychotic in his methods, it was made clear he had no real evil intentions beyond it (in one episode, he manages to temporarily get his original form back, and was ready to just leave Earth without any further fight). In ''Omniverse'', he actually succeeds in his goal but is bitter toward Ben for all the things he went through in-between, and now focuses on revenge, which is still a logical approach. But then he goes full-blown CartoonishSupervillainy and tries to absorb [[BigGood Azmuth]]'s intelligence to become the smartest being in the galaxy, [[FridgeLogic even though a major part of his personality was about trying to prove he was smarter than Azmuth already]]. His two next appearances have him work for [[BigBad Vilgax]] ([[TooDumbToLive even though Vilgax betrayed him last time they teamed up and does it again a second time]]), with at least one case where he had nothing to gain from such an alliance and the other where he just wanted to overthrow Azmuth as First Thinker of Galvan Prime.

** It seems to be more an inherent character trait. When he gets what he wants he's actually a rather good and kind guy. It's just that when he doesn't [[EntitledToHaveYou he's quick to turn to bitterness and hatred to TAKE what he wants]]. The longer he stews the more unhinged he gets (to the point of making holographic and cloned copies of Maddie/Danny to try to have those when it's clear he can't get the originals). Going with the above, in the altered timeline, he's rather normal and pleasant having both a fortune and the love of his life. But the moment he suspects things aren't quite going just his way he's quick to snap at people. It's just that in the main timeline he never had Maddie so he's basically stuck in villain mode most of the time.
** Another addition to that is that Vlad gets so obsessed that he loses sight of the clear goal. At any point, Vlad could turn ghost and straight-up murder Jack, but he doesn't. He pines after Maddie even with Jack there. Some part of him believes that he is a monster and he is AffablyEvil most of the time. He isn't above begging and [[spoiler:poisoning Danny's friends to get his help when he's dying]], but he seems willing to be altruistic in certain situations. In ''The Ultimate Enemy'', Vlad loses his former best friend and his long-time love of his life and has their son, an orphaned Danny, show up at his door. Given that he wanted a child of his own and just got a HUGE slap in the face by fate by the deaths, it is arguable that his obsession and priority's imploded and died. The last nail in the coffin was having [[spoiler:Ghost Danny suck out his ghost form, combine with it, and straight-up murder Human Danny without a second thought]]. That would have destroyed his mind (Vlad never killed anyone himself and seeing someone die by his actions would leave him forever guilty). He hated his ghost, but he missed it when it was gone. So to sum this up, his ex-best-friend, the love of his life, and [[spoiler:their son/his adopted son]] are all killed and he lost his powers, his abilities to fight, and got to watch the whole world burn to ashes due to his mistakes. ''That...'' changes a man.
* ''WesternAnimation/DarkwingDuck'' averts this with most of its cartoonish super villains, but with Bushroot it follows this trope to the hilt even though it does justify it. Bushroot started his life of villainy to get revenge on the scientists who mocked him and destroyed his inventions and any chance with the woman he longed for. Some of his solo acts are committed in-line with his misunderstood lonely madman personality, such as trying to create sapient plants, but others are just plain supervillainy, like growing money to steal more money.The "growing money to steal more" plot of Bushroot's does still kind of fit with his misunderstood lonely madman motif, as he was using the money mostly to buy things for his plant friends. Whenever he's teamed up with the Fearsome Five, or just partnering with another villain, any good side goes away completely (which also does make sense if you think about it, as if he's now got a villain friend, he's not going to risk losing them by showing his softer side).

* ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'': The pixies, lead by HP, were a race that wanted to [[LawfulEvil impose order]] on Fairy World and the Earth. Then, suddenly, in "Fairly [=OddBaby=]" they teamed up with the anti-fairies, despite the fact that they're [[AlwaysChaoticEvil the complete opposite of order]] and randomly want to [[OmnicidalManiac blow up the Earth]].

* Macbeth from ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}'' was an odd case - he only attacked the Gargoyles in his first appearance in an attempt to draw out the villainess Demona. By the end of that episode, the heroes had explained that she hated them too, which gave him no real motive to oppose them... yet every subsequent appearance found some excuse to feature him as an antagonist. First, he went after a set of magical scrolls (that turned out to be diaries) that the Gargs had anticipated ''Xanatos'' would try to steal. Not once, but twice, he fought them under the Weird Sisters' mind-control -- with a third incident that turned out to be a decoy robot double built by Xanatos. In a World Tour appearance, they crossed paths without trading blows, parting on fairly amicable terms, but then he was opposing their friend King Arthur in an attempt to recover Excalibur. For two full seasons, he was a recurring villain, who never once had so much of an EnemyMine, despite having no specific reason to oppose the heroes.

** Also, when he went after the scrolls it was because he believed them to be magical. He was probably going to use said magic to kill Demona (or himself since that was what he really wanted). He was only fighting the Gargoyles because they were in the way. Once he learns that the scrolls were diaries, he promptly gave them to the Gargoyles and let them leave.

* In ''WesternAnimation/JonnyQuestTheRealAdventures'', Ezekiel Rage was a former spy turned terrorist who was obsessed with getting revenge on the US government for abandoning him when he needed them the most, resulting in the deaths of his wife and daughter. In later appearances, he became the leader of a doomsday cult who was obsessed with wiping out humanity, and stopped mentioning his wife and daughter.

** Almost every episode that involved any of Team Go, and especially when in their own city, tended to fall hard into superhero world cliches. Just as ''Kim Possible'' was a show lampooning the spy genre, they had their own fun with the superhero ones with Team Go. Example, Kim and Ron pick out Hego as the manager of the Bueno Nacho within minutes (his ClarkKenting was weak). Having taken Ron as his arch was simply "how it's done, who am I to argue" and between the choice of Kim Possible, the super-strong Hego, and the pathetic sidekick, who would you want to choose as your enemy?

* At first, it seems Wile E. Coyote of ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' wants to eat the Roadrunner. Typical predator/prey relationship. But, some of the things Wile E. plans (poisoning, exploding, etc.) would make the Roadrunner inedible had they worked. At some point, his motivation became making that one, single, bird, DEAD.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons,'' Sideshow Bob's deadly vendetta against Bart is initially spurred by Bart foiling his plan to take over Krusty's show and getting him sent to jail in his first appearance, and is theoretically refreshed every time he's jailed again. However, with Springfield Penitentiary increasingly becoming a CardboardPrison and Bob being cast as a FriendlyEnemy to the Simpsons as often as not, the reasoning behind his actions grows more tenuous as the show continues, eventually being treated more like a fixation of Bob's (one for which he's even received unsuccessful therapy) than the result of anything he truly suffered at Bart's hands: in Season 29's "Gone Boy" Bart flat-out asks him why he wants to kill a ten-year-old, [[ArmorPiercingQuestion a question he finds himself unable to answer]].

** Metallo's origin episode, in which he was transformed from John Corben into Metallo, showed him with vendettas against both Superman (who had sent him to prison in the three-part pilot) ''and'' Luthor (for [[BlessedWithSuck transferring his mind into the strong]] -- [[SenseLossSadness but numb]] -- [[{{Cyborg}} Metallo body]]). However, by his second appearance, the "vengeance against Luthor" angle has been dropped entirely and in his fourth appearance he even gets a girlfriend, despite the fact that his inability to feel anything at all when kissing a woman was one of the things that originally drove him nuts. His original motive does return in the video game ''Superman: Shadow of Apokolips'', which debuted in 2002. Recruited by a disguised Luthor and told to destroy Superman, Metallo defers and goes after Luthor himself.
** Volcana's origin episode established a backstory in which she was imprisoned by government agents to be indoctrinated and trained as a weapon. After escaping, she turned to crime to survive. Superman was sympathetic, and set her up on a remote island where she could remain comfortably imprisoned (and safe from the government agents) with Supes occasionally visiting and bringing supplies. When she reappeared in ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'', she acted like a generic supervillain, making trouble for fun and profit (even in the wake of Superman's supposed death).