Unintentionally Sympathetic / Video Games

• Miles Edgeworth in the first Ace Attorney game, a prosecutor who only cares about winning because his father was killed and he was raised and mentored by an even worse prosecutor, while seeing the man he thought had killed his father get off because of an unethical defense attorney. Shu Takumi commented that Edgeworth was supposed to be seen as tragic, yet unlikeable in that game. Possibly as a result, he got Character Development in subsequent games and became a more intentionally likeable character, got two games of his own, and is now a fan favorite who's willing to take huge risks for the sake of true justice.
• Quite infamously, Daisy Fitzroy, the face of the anarchist Vox Populi in BioShock Infinite. While the story certainly tries to make her out as just as bad as Comstock and the other Founders, a lot of players find this an incredibly difficult-to-swallow false equivalence considering that a) her own sympathetic backstory and the plight of the lower classes in Columbia's deeply racist and reactionary society are both firmly established while the Founders have next to no redeeming qualities, b) her crossing of the Moral Event Horizon (wanting to shoot an industrialist's prepubescent son in the head) is given a ham-fisted execution with all the subtlety of a speeding big rig, and c) her end-goal (killing the Founders) isn't really much different from what the player/Booker ends up shooting for anyway. The Burial at Sea DLC goes a way towards rectifying it by revealing that Daisy was all along an agent of the Luteces and, at their behest, deliberately engineered her own death at Elizabeth's hands to harden the sheltered girl's personality and prepare her for the violence and difficult choices that awaited her.
• Batman: Arkham Asylum has "Spirit of Arkham" logs about the founder of the title Bedlam House. After Amadeus Arkham's wife and daughter were murdered by an Ax-Crazy criminal, Amadeus — remembering his mother's own mental illness — chose to forgive and treat him instead of seeking vengeance... and was "rewarded" with said criminal feigning rehabilitation, killing Amadeus's secretary as well, and constantly taunting Amadeus about said murders. After all that, you really can't blame Amadeus for finally just frying the guy to death in an electroshock-therapy "accident."
• Dead or Alive 6: NiCO is supposed to be seen as a villain whose research on resurrection technology is emblematic of her refusal to deal with pain and loss, and the audience is supposed to agree with Helena slapping her and calling her out. Many audiences saw Helena's words as empty platitudes and saw NiCO as a traumatized young woman who never really learned to deal with grief, and whose good intentions are ignored by the writing in order to make her seem more villainous than she actually is.
• The nameless protagonist from Doki Doki Literature Club! fits this wholesale. While the player character isn't a paragon of support and has a lot of snark for Sayori in particular, he does come to care for the girls in a very heartfelt manner. He's intended to be an unlikable stock VN protagonist, but this actually gives him more depth than most in the genre. He's not just out for sex and at least in the sections that are playable, does not take advantage of the girls at all. He's a genuinely Nice Guy, but isn't always the best at showing it. And even though he's Innocently Insensitive, even when Sayori reveals her depression, he still tries incredibly hard to help and wants more than anything to make her feel better. And when she commits suicide, he's so burdened with guilt he blames himself for it. At the end of the day, he seems no worse than the average teenager put in a situation he isn't equipped to handle, which honestly makes for a more interesting character.
• Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest: Some fans pity Krow. After already dying once, he later comes Back from the Dead as Kreepy Krow for Revenge... only to get beaten Deader than Dead on top of it. And his ghost Mooks (implied to be his children) sometimes give him Even Evil Has Loved Ones points with said fans, too.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: The Silver Hand, the organization of werewolf hunters (and only source of silver swords in the game) that are the main enemies of the mercenary guild the Companions. The Companions' leadership is composed of werewolves, which naturally makes them a target of the Silver Hand. The Companions themselves paint this as Fantastic Racism, but the vast majority of werewolves in Skyrim (read: those that are not Companions or former Companions) are mindless, savage beasts that prey on people, making the Silver Hand's mission less "fanatic hatred" and more "pretty damn justified." They don't seem to know that the Companions are able to retain their sapient mind while transformed and are not the source of feral werewolves, but at no point in the Companions' questline are you able to say "Y'know, they kinda have a point about ferals being a problem." Admittedly, when they attack the Companions' base and kill Kodlak, they do cross a line with their actions.
• Fallout:
  • Fallout 3: The Enclave is a faction of Eagleland imperialists rather than the genocidal deep state as shown in Fallout 2. While the robot president John Henry Eden wants to redo the same genocidal plan the Enclave had in Fallout 2 by poisoning the water purifier, Colonel Autumn instead wants to seize the water purifier, have Enclave scientists get it in order, and purify the water to win the loyalty of wastelanders. The Enclave in-game seems more loyal to Autumn than Eden, and his goal is fundamentally the same as the Brotherhood's. When considering how the region is rife with mutants, slavers, raiders, and the like, the prospect of the wasteland being in the hands of the reformed Enclave is tame.
  • Fallout: New Vegas: The game tries to make the NCR look flawed with the Bitter Springs incident, but this falls flat. The Great Khans repeatedly attacked NCR civilians (children included) for no discernible reason, so the NCR staged a raid on their camp at Bitter Springs in response. Due to faulty intel, fleeing Khan children and elderly end up being shot by the NCR on accident, and the narrative makes it out to be a Moral Event Horizon for the NCR even though the Khans started it and intentionally hurt children.
• Final Fantasy III has Xande, who was a student of the archsage Noah along with Doga and Unei. Noah granted each of his powerful, immortal students a gift. Doga was granted dominion over magic, making his powers even more potent. Unei was basically granted complete control over the world of dreams. Xande was given... mortality. Sure, trying to freeze the whole world into temporal stasis is overreacting to the sudden threat of mortality, but many gamers tend to think that Noah screwed Xande over royally, even if Doga and Unei think Xande got the best gift. One has to wonder if Xande didn't ask them to trade.
• Final Fantasy XIV:
  • Zenos, the main antagonist for the Stormblood expansion, was intentionally designed to be unlikable as much as possible; he casually kills his own troops when they fail him, gets off on using his power to bully his higher ranking soldiers to bow to his will, and when it comes to attacking the protagonists, he seems incredibly disinterested in them. Zenos begins taking interest in the player character when he realizes just how strong they were and encourages them to get even stronger. After defeating Zenos in his Shinryu primal form, he expresses joy that he was able to finally feel truly alive having battled the player character and sees them as his first friend (and enemy) that is strong and possibly bloodthirsty like he was. That exact moment caused a lot of players to see Zenos as a tragic character that had no one to support him while he had undergone experiments on his own body (which explains why he was so godly powerful in previous encounters).
    • And in the post-launch MSQ of Stormblood, it's revealed Zenos survived, albeit by using his Resonant power to hop to another body since an Ascian is currently possessing his. While he explicitly states he does not wish to seek redemption, the final quest of patch 4.56 ends with him hoping the Warrior of Light grows on to become stronger so they can face each other in battle again, leaving some people to believe he'll develop a Friendly Rivalry with the player character.
  • Played with in regards to The Garlean Empire. Since 1.0, they have been the main antagonistic force. They try to take over the world with their superior technology, attempting to prevent internal conflict not through diplomacy but by simply taking over everything and enslaving those who do surrender. Seeing how the empire occupied Gyr Abania and Doma, as well as their various plans for Eorzea (Varis even spells out a desire for what amounts to genocide during talks of diplomacy) definitely does not place them in anything except an antagnoistic role. However, learning that they became this way due to fleeing persecution due to their inability to use magicks and only being able to find solace in a frozen wasteland with very little resources can suddenly make one understand why some players were Rooting for the Empire prior to the revelations of Shadowbringers and Endwalker.
• Final Fantasy XIII:
  • A rare heroic example is Snow. While the game slightly deconstructs his ideals and reveal him as all talk, no action, he's at least willing to try. Snow seems to be the only one willing to DO something about the situation as opposed to murdering everybody in sight or despair at his losses. It's telling that for two-thirds of the game that he's the only one not willing to give up hope (the concept, not the 14 year old); and that he garnered quite a bit of sympathy despite the annoying moments; even if he's really just grasping for straws.
  • The Final Boss Orphan is portrayed by Lightning as a monster, who gave up on life before he was even born and sat waiting for someone to come and kill him, despite knowing that his death would cause something very similar to The End of the World as We Know It. Despite this, the Fal'Cie manages to garner some sympathy for his plight. To summarise, at creation Orphan was sealed away from the rest of the world in an alternate dimension and trapped in a state of unbirth. Orphan languished in there for five hundred years, self-aware but unable to act, move or die, all the while being used as a living battery keeping a floating city aloft - and bear in mind, nobody except the Big Bad knew about Orphan until the closing chapters of the game. The kid has had a pretty rough time and can be described as a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds. Bearing all this in mind, Lightning's biting speech about hope and giving up on it falls a little flat.
• Friday Night Funkin': Ron from Bob's Onslaught Game Mod was introduced as a quickly killed Asshole Victim, and deliberately designed as sociophobic and schizophrenic just so nobody would mourn his death. In practice though it went completely sideways, as these traits combined with the Stylistic Suck tone of the mod made him gain popularity as a comically inappropriate memetic character instead, and he got an entire fanmade mod all for himself, parodying Bob mods with his general silliness.
  Ron: real men hate wemen (in a cool way)

  — Friday Night Funkin' meme
• Gears of War 3 barely averts this. While the Locusts were portrayed as genocidal monsters in the first two games, the third finds them teetering on the edge of extinction like humanity, struggling against an insane mob of their own mutated kin and a glitchy human superweapon that will render their entire species extinct. On top of this, there are strong implications that Adam Fenix initially cooperated with the Locusts against the Lambent years before the start of hostilities between the two species and is now (albeit reluctantly) firing said superweapon because it will save his own species while it destroys theirs. Sympathy is averted only because of brutal, unrelenting hostility and disregard for human life shown by the Locusts, both their loyal remnants and savage encampments, but especially by Queen Myrrah herself.
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Big Smoke and Ryder are shown to be traitors towards the second act of the game's storyline. However, while Big Smoke is portrayed more as a sympathetic villain who had no other choice, Ryder on the other hand is portrayed as the traitor who shows absolutely no remorse of his actions in the slightest and is portrayed a lot less sympathetically to make killing him much more satisfying, even having Cesar tell CJ that Ryder tried to bang Kendl to make him seem much worse to make CJ feel much better for killing his former friend. However, it falls much shorter than attended since Ryder is pretty much ignored during the topic of Smoke's betrayal and is barely even mentioned after his betrayal, and we are never even given a clear reason for his betrayal since his death scene was abrupt and unceremonious. Also, even though he was also one of CJ's childhood friends, he is completely ignored after his demise, as no one mentions him, as if he never even existed in the game, while Smoke was the one who got all the attention, especially throughout the Fountain of Memes. So Ryder, in spite of his actions, still ends up being the character that gets unintended sympathy as well.
• Kingdom Hearts II: The Nobodies. They are played as disposable monsters without hearts, incapable of any emotion. Still, despite their blatantly evil acts, some fans empathize with the Nobodies' desire to obtain hearts. It doesn't help that they act out what they remember of their emotions, making it easy to forget that they're technically uncaring. It also doesn't help that Roxas is a Nobody, and definitely seems to still have feelings, though he's said to be a special case because he was created with Ven's heart.
  • Interestingly, there are two scenes where the Nobodies straight out acknowledge that they are emotionless. Twice, one of them gets a big speech on how they're in the right, one talking about the pain of not having a heart... then Sora points out that they can't have pain, as they don't have a heart. The response? To completely shift out, and basically tell Sora, "Okay, ya got me." This behavior mimics that of real-life sociopaths.
  • This has been addressed by the creators; the Nobodies got a game revolving around them (Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days), and Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] also revealed that the stronger Nobodies tend to gain new hearts over time, so Xemnas lied to them to make them think that what they were feeling was a lie. Several former Nobodies have come back to life, and it's strongly implied that Roxas and Namine will as well, so all but four of them are unaccounted for.
  • Eraqus in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. He's supposed to come across as a King Triton-like Knight Templar for Light and against Darkness, respectively. However, given the series' rather-infamous Broken Aesop about Balance Between Good and Evil, he can come across as Properly Paranoid instead (and it doesn't help that his harshest critic In-Universe — Xehanort — is a blatant Unreliable Narrator). Likewise, his Jumping Off the Slippery Slope moment — trying to Shoot the Dog on Ven and Terra, his own pupils, to stop Xehanort's apocalyptic plans for them — arguably comes across as just a general Idiot Ball and/or Jerkass Ball instead of anything actually supporting Black-and-White Insanity, and he still shows remorse after it's all said and done. It doesn't help that Ven and Terra later end up with Fates Worse Than Death, thus making Eraqus' aforementioned moment seem like a double-Mercy Kill by comparison.
• In The Last of Us, Joel during the ending. The game and its sequel go far to portray Joel's decision to murderously prevent the Fireflies fatal brain surgery of Ellie (the only known person immune to the Cordyceps Brain Infection) to create a vaccine as a selfish choice that may have well doomed humanity and The Last of Us Part II even has Ellie claim that she was supposed to die in that operating room. Yet the Grey-and-Gray Morality of it all, fell flat for many players as the Fireflies come off as too antagonistic and incompetent to be sympathetic and the fact they didn’t even get Ellie's permission, just knocked her out and got out the scalpels as more than enough incentive for Joel to pump them full of lead. Worse still there's notes you can find in Firefly's lab that detail how they've actually fatally experimented on other infected subjects to zero success and were planning to kill Joel (the one who delivered Ellie to them) anyway, again making Joel's actions look even more justified. Additionally science is on Joel's side as well since vaccines in Real Life don't work how the Fireflies claim and Ellie would absolutely have to be alive for any vaccine to be produced from her body, all in all making Joel's killer Papa Wolf rampage rescue look like a sane and rational choice.
• In The Last of Us Part II, Ellie. The narrative seems to consider her quest for revenge to be as bad as, if not worse than, Abby's, but many players side with Ellie and find her to be more understandable. This is a consequence of Abby, her crew, and the Wolves' mooks coming across as highly Unintentionally Unsympathetic when they're not outright Asshole Victims. The other primary reasons, which are not because of Fourth Wall Myopia, are that Ellie was actually forced to witness Joel's death at Abby's hands, and none of the Wolves ever help her, unlike what Joel did with Abby, something that Ellie lampshades to Jessie. Worse, said allies attempted to kill Ellie right afterwards. Hard not to feel driven to all out vengeance, with damn near utter psychopaths on the opposing team, which in Ellie's POV might speak to the kind of person Ally might be to keep company with them. A lot of people will also point to Abby and Ellie's respective scenes involving the murder of pregnant women. Ellie kills Mel, and when she sees Mel's baby bump, nearly has a panic attack and clearly wouldn't have done it if she had known Mel was pregnant. Abby by contrast gleefully winds up to slit Dina's throat upon learning that Dina's pregnant, and only stops because Lev is horrified that she would do that. That it is Dina who leaves Ellie, somewhat understandably, for being consumed with revenge, and not Lev leaving Abby for this heinous near-act of bloodlust, comes across as a Karmic Mis Fire..
• The Mageseeker: While most appreciate the fact that Sylas was toned down from his previous Anti-Villain status, some people feel like he went too far in the opposite direction. To the point that he feels too nice. For a guy that was labeled by the developers as an Anti-Hero, he never gets to do anything bad to anyone that didn't actually deserved it. The game also seems to ignore any of the previous innocent victims of his early attacks, to the point that not even Lux calls him out on that. And his shift of priorities from revenge to rescue of imprisoned mages happens so early in the game, that it barely feels like his actions has changed that much throughout it at all, even if his mindset has.
• Mileena from Mortal Kombat, being a Unpopular Popular Character is a big case of this across the franchise. Being the Evil Twin of Princess Kitana created using her blood and Tarkatan giving her Scary Teeth, Kitana and 80% of the cast (even the usually compassionate heroes) consider Mileena a hideous evil freak, and we are supposed to agree with them. While she is a Psychopathic Womanchild, Mileena does make it genuinely clear all she wants is to be loved and adored like Kitana is (and in her MK9 ending, actually does pull a Heel–Face Turn when Kitana accepts her) making her immensely sympathetic to a lot of the fanbase. This is only heightened in MKX when she becomes Outworld Empress and hated by the public for her troubled rule, and is betrayed by all her allies before being painfully killed. She's also antagonized for being against Earthrealm, even though from her perspective, they killed her father Shao Kahn, one of the few people to show her real affection. Nether Realm Studios eventually cottoned on to players feeling sorry for her, and not only brought Mileena back in MK11, but also gave her a surprisingly heartwarming ending. After slaying Kitana and becoming Kahn Of Time, she not only spares Shao Kahn and Sindel so that they could witness her successes and be proud of her, but makes amends with Raiden, Jade and Liu Kang. Eventually, Mileena settles down with Tanya and has a baby daughter who looks at her with adoration instead of fear, meaning she got pretty much everything she really wanted.
  Mileena: Unlike my sister, my daughter regards me with awe and wonder. To her, I am no abomination... I am perfection.
• The culprit of Nancy Drew Sea of Darkness, Soren. He was bullied by the people in a small Icelandic town and was never truly accepted as one of them because he was not actually born in the town... he was born not one or two miles outside the town and that alone made the town treat him as an outsider. He did all sorts of things to help the town out, and wanted the treasure so he could get out of the town. Given the way the townsfolk have treated him, it really really is understandable why he would want to go Screw This, I'm Outta Here. However, the game does allow Nancy to actually sympathise with him and help him get a lesser sentence for what he did, which is a good example of some Surprisingly Realistic Outcome being used with this trope.
• Persona 5:
  • Ryuji comes across this way when Morgana leaves the team in September. What drove Morgana to do this was Ryuji insulting him, which results in everyone placing Ryuji at fault. While it could be argued Ryuji went too far with the insults, Morgana always insults him for every mistake he makes, no matter how minor it is, and never gives any of the other members as much flak as he gives Ryuji, so Ryuji can come across as getting annoyed with Morgana's attitude, and Morgana looks like a Hypocrite who can't take what he dishes out when Ryuji decides to fight back. When the group tries to confront Morgana about it and get him to rejoin the team, Ryuji is the only one forced to apologize for his insults, and when all is said and done Morgana continues to berate Ryuji without anyone calling him out on it. It reaches its apex when Ryuji seemingly sacrifices himself to let the other thieves escape after destroying the Cruise Ship Palace; when he shows up alive and well, he tries to poke fun at the situation, only to get beaten up by the female thieves and is left to rot by the rest.
  • The Mementos targets are all treated like utter scum by the Phantom Thieves even though the crimes of a handful of targets are hardly crimes at all. Most notably is Yoshikuni Nejima, whose misdeed was that he was cheating at video games. And while Nejima was being a complete jerk about it, he's in league with the likes of serial abusers, perpetrators of child neglect, and former hitmen. Their Shadows do imply that they at least committed them for their own amusement, but cheating in a video game is small potatoes compared to a lot of other targets.
• Pokémon Red and Blue has your rival Blue, who is supposed to come off as a cocky jerk who gets a well deserved Break the Haughty moment when he loses his Champion title soon after getting it. However, what happens afterwards is that his grandfather Professor Oak comes solely to berate him for supposedly not caring about his Pokemon, which comes off as an Informed Flaw that you never see in-game (and his anime counterpart Gary Oak is, for all his faults, a caring trainer that gives all his Pokemon a chance). Even if that was true, telling his own grandson you're disappointed in him rather than being proud of him for getting that far is an awful thing for a grandfather to say, and it doesn't help that throughout the rest of the game, he's more encouraging towards your player character while being neglectful of him.
• Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: Violet's Pokedex entry for Toxel describes it as a "Selfish, attention-seeking Pokemon". The problem with this is that Toxel is also a BABY Pokemon.
• In Quake, the Rottweiler enemies look & sound mostly like ordinary dogs, including some very pathetic whines they make when shot or killed. Although their blood-soaked faces and paws certainly confirm that they're killers, and they may be intended to be mind-controlled like the Grunts, many a dog-lover might still feel sad when shooting them.
• Shin Megami Tensei centers around Law vs. Chaos with both sides supposed to be reprehensible enough that the Golden Endings requite rejecting both extremes. But Law tends to be Holier Than Thou, hypocritical Knight Templar asshats that Chaos is rebelling against, while Chaos tend toward Affably Evil and respecting you even if you oppose them. Chaos seems so much less worse than Law, or at least stick it to them, that many fans are as happy to play Neutral or Chaos paths.
• Penny from Stardew Valley has a two-heart event where she helps George get his mail. In it, George is meant to be seen as unnecessarily harsh and rude for snapping at her afterwards. However, given that she pushed his wheelchair out of the way to reach the mailbox (and that he wasn't expecting that, as shown by his surprised reaction as it happens), many physically disabled players found themselves sympathizing more with him instead of her; touching someone's wheelchair or other mobility aid without permission is considered a major faux pas in those circles, particularly because it can and has gotten people injured in real life. While there is an option to tell Penny she should have asked him before helping him, this option gives negative friendship points, while taking Penny's side is considered the positive outcome.
• The Vaadwaur in Star Trek Online: Delta Rising. Yes, they're basically Space Nazis and their leader Gaul has no qualms about gunning down civilians in cold blood. But neither did the Romulans, Klingons, or Cardassians, and the Federation had a detente with them for decades. The Vaadwaur are also an endangered species who used Human Popsicles to escape extermination by an alliance fighting back against their imperialism. The real problem, though, is that their enemies the Kobali come off as the Designated Hero. While they're the Alpha Quadrant nations' ally against the Vaadwaur, the Kobali come off as Holier Than Thou with a Culture Justifies Anything attitude, and for all practical purposes contribute little of worth to The Alliance (their population is going to be fairly low for various reasons and their only modern warship was built with Alpha Quadrant technology). Plus, their method of reproduction, basically necromancy, has drawn many rape comparisons, especially given that they're holding several thousand Vaadwaur cryo tubes and using the failed ones for more stock, along with making use of Vaadwaur battlefield casualties. Gaul jumps off the slippery slope in "All that Glitters", but the storyline reveals that the Vaadwaur high command are all infested with Puppeteer Parasites except for Gaul, suggesting they wouldn't have willingly gone along with his plans.
• Tales Series:
  • Can happen towards Luke in Tales of the Abyss. Luke comes off at first as a Spoiled Brat Jerkass who never thinks things through, treats everyone horribly or like servants and all around getting a nice big dose of extra arrogance when he's made the Ambassador on a mission to Akzeriuth. But as more is revealed about him, his behavior makes him a lot more sympathetic. Luke is spoiled because he's the third-in-line for the throne of Kimlasca and lives in an amazing mansion, being served on hand and foot and his lack of knowledge from the world comes about because he has never left the mansion in 7 years due to a previous kidnapping incident when he was 10 years old that had rendered him so traumatized that he had to re-learn everything. The fact that his lack of knowledge on the basics of the world is Played for Laughs at first until he reveals just how difficult even learning his parents' faces was just pushes him further into being sympathetic to the player. He becomes more sympathetic when the events at Akzeriuth happen and the whole party is blaming him for everything and being jerks to him. Luke, following his mentor Van's orders, unwittingly caused the city to fall into the Quliphoth and kill everyone aside from the party who was in the city. The part that makes the party so unsympathetic is that they knew things about Van and Luke that, had he known beforehand, might have stopped him from blindly following Van's words and yet not one of them even bothered to try to mention this to him, instead putting all the blame on him. And then things get worse when Luke finds out he's actually a replica of the real Luke and his whole life is a lie, which he finds out shortly after his mentor Van basically dropped him like a hot potato. This makes his earlier actions a lot more justifiable since he's technically only 7 years old. The writers wanted the player to heavily dislike Luke before and after the events of Akzeriuth, but it's difficult to not be on his side, given the circumstances and events.
  • Leon Magnus in Tales of Destiny was supposed to be a Jerkass with a deserved death. However, much of his jerkass behavior involved picking on The Scrappy of the game, he had a pretty depressing backstory that made him come off as more of a Jerkass Woobie with a Freudian Excuse, and was quite attractive, which made him into a Draco in Leather Pants. Namco took notice and not only gave him a larger role in the sequel, but rewrote him into less of a jerk. Surprisingly, it worked wonders, as Leon became legitimately sympathetic and a much more likable character because of that without losing his cold attitude. Though he's still not spared from his canon death.
  • Tales of Vesperia has this in regards to Yuri. Throughout the game, we're supposed to look down on his vigilantism and side with Flynn, a man who wants to (reasonably) try the villains in the courts of law rather than kill them as well as to prevent Yuri from Jumping Off the Slippery Slope. However, Yuri's not out to kill anybody who crosses him or violate a simple law; Yuri only kills two people, both horrendous monsters who are explicitly feeding innocent civilians to monsters, and when they tried to convict one of them by the books, he got to walk away scot-free. While the game does want us to understand vigilantism is bad (and many players did want to side with Flynn), the examples the player was forced to deal with showed the game's law system as so hilariously corrupt and inept that many ended up siding with Yuri.
• Tekken:
  • Anna Williams is presented as a lame Butt-Monkey in the main canon or as a straight-up villainess in every adaptation compared to her twin sister Nina, and clearly the one we're cued to root against in the ongoing feud between the two women. This is in spite of how, while both are professional assassins and therefore rather unsavory characters to begin with, Anna has repeatedly demonstrated herself to be a relatively but still significantly better person than Nina, trying several times to bury the hatchet and form a healthy relationship with her remaining family, only to receive more physical abuse from Nina for her trouble every time (their respective endings in Tag Tournament perfectly encapsulate this dynamic, with each having one sister extend a forgiving hand to her opposite, but both of them end with Nina trapping Anna in a painful armlock). Even when Anna does get a rare small victory over her sister, her actions rarely go beyond simply embarrassing or upstaging Nina, whereas the latter has outright murdered her in at least one non-canon ending. Anna becomes even easier to sympathize with as of the seventh installment, when Nina poses as her and assassinates the groom at Anna's wedding (she didn't know her target was Anna's fiance, but knowing Nina's cold-blooded nature and her capacity for cruelty, it's highly doubtful this knowledge would've stayed her hand).
  • Kazuya Mishima actually comes off as this in the grand schemes of things. The games do their best to paint him as little more than a Ax-Crazy Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy Corrupt Corporate Executive Big Bad who is Beyond Redemption and is the devil himself^note It used to be a Demonic Possession, but eventually, he learned to embrace the devil side that he's currently in control of his demonic powers that he's equated as the devil himself. Yet compared to his father Heihachi and by Tekken 6 even his son Jin, Kazuya has actually done comparatively less evil and has much better Freudian Excuses for his actions than them. Tekken 7 even treats his Start of Darkness as inevitable since his mother Kazumi was an evil Devil who tried to kill Heihachi, supposedly making Heihachi’s action of throwing Kazuya off a cliff as a boy justified — which is completely backwards logic as Heihachi didn’t even bother explaining the situation to his grieving son (who just had his mother killed by his father) and explicitly only triggered the Devil Gene in the first place because Heihachi threw him to his death making Kazuya’s own patricide understandable given Heihachi’s actions. And even at his lowest, Kazuya still holds respect for Kazumi and his grandfather Jinpachi, something that Heihachi does not do (while his falling out with Kazumi can be considered tragic, Heihachi absolutely has no good excuse about his antagonism against the more peaceful Jinpachi). Tekken 8 does its best to paint Kazuya in the vilest light possible as the mass murdering Evil Overlord who wants to Take Over the World while Jin is The Atoner and hero again but a lot of fans still felt sympathy for Kazuya especially considering the game ironically reveals more of his Hidden Depths such as genuinely loving Jun his baby mama and respecting his son Jin as a Worthy Opponent while Heihachi — whom other characters like Victor and flashbacks essentially treat as a hero who died trying to save world from Kazuya — displayed nowhere near as much respect for family when he was alive.
• In the neutral run of Undertale, the human child can come off as this. The first monster they encountered was Flowey. He gave the impression the underground is a dangerous “kill or be killed” place with monsters popping out of nowhere to attack the child and the talk of collecting human souls doing nothing to disprove the monstrous flower's words. They do not harm monsters on the map, showing they do have a distinction of combatants and non-combatants. Also, while they can resurrect from death, this would not undo any mental trauma that would happen from the event, especially considering the child's (vague) young age. While they do leave the Underground a worse place and become a bit more sociopathic at the end of their journey, the violent actions the child takes to escape the underground can come off as not as unjustified as the game tries to paint.
• Until Dawn:
  • The game left people feeling sympathetic towards The Psycho. Despite The Psycho having spent his on-screen time knocking out Ashley and Sam, subjecting Chris to two sadistic choices, and generally terrorized the characters at the lodge, it was Josh performing a very elaborate prank against the people, whose pranks resulted in his two sisters disappearing a year ago. The Psycho's Freudian Excuse and a late cutscene giving insight into his unwell mind left players feeling bad for him, since regardless of how horrendous his actions were, it was never his goal to actually cause physical harm to anyone. The fact that The Psycho ends up being an unsaveable character, with Josh either getting killed by a Wendigo or being dragged off and becoming a Wendigo himself, left people feeling sympathetic and wishing he was actually saveable.
  • Mike and Jess came across as this for a good deal of players. They instigate the prank on Hannah in the prologue and depicted for a lot of the game as unflattering Jerk Jock and Alpha Bitch sterotypes on the surface. Even their actors Matt Dalton and Meaghan Martin stated respectively in interviews that their characters are pretty awful people. Except in the game itself, we do see that Mike and Jess actually have numerous likeable qualities (Mike in particular going above and beyond to protect his friends) and regardless of the player's choices both feel terrible about what they did to Hannah, giving Mike and Jessica both more depth than the game claims they possess. A lot more people are sympathetic to them than they are towards Emily, whom isn't apologetic for her douchey qualities (literally only showing regret in the ending if Matt is killed or she's the Sole Survivor) or Ashely who can be quite the Bitch in Sheep's Clothing and two-faced.
• Valkyria Chronicles: Faldio. Faldio was wrong to shoot Alicia and the game makes us very, very aware that we are not supposed to like him. Unfortunately, they didn't do a very good job of setting that up: it was bad, but there was no other way to save Gallia and it worked. This might have gone over better if his reasoning were faulty, but his logic was pretty sound, and preserving the game's moral stance and the titular premise could not have accommodated his simply asking, whether she agreed or not.
  • The same goes for Gallia's military. General Damon is probably the least sympathetic character in the game, if only because the people who are bigger assholes than he is don't spend as much time on-screen as he does. He's also the only representative the Gallian main army has because the rest are all Cannon Fodder. The story wants us to believe that every non-militia soldier is an aristocratic Jerkass because of Damon's example, and because only a jerkass would choose to join the army full time (rather than serving under conscription like the militia). That's why no one gives even a fraction of a damn when they're murdered en masse. Nevermind that much is made of Welkin's potential as an officer because he's the son of a great hero who willingly chose to join the military full time.
    • Valkyria Chronicles 4 has an Author's Saving Throw explaining this. Gallia had already let the Burning of Hafen (a blatant act of war by the Empire) slide, much to the populous' disgust. By the time of VC1, anyone who wanted to be a soldier for patriotic reasons had emigrated to fight under Federation flags.^note Enough that foreign nations can field all-Gallian specialist corps; VC4 revolves around at least two pure Gallian ranger troops, and it's outright stated there are plenty more Gallians in general infantry positions. The end result is Gallia's regular military really is comprised of aristocrats who care more about rank than duty by the time they're invaded.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Characters like Daelin Proudmoore, Sky Admiral Rogers, Jaina during Mists of Pandaria, proponents of the "exterminate all Horde" Alliance, are supposed to be seen as Tragic Villain, who could not let go of their hatred to see the bigger picture, and whose past trauma made them see all Horde as evil. While they're intended to elect some sympathy, they're still supposed to be seen as villains or at the very least as being in the wrong. But the fact that the Horde became worse over time (just look at how often they show up in World of Warcraft's Unintentionally Unsympathetic list) makes them come across as even more sympathetic than originally intended, making them appear Properly Paranoid who were right all along rather than overreacting. Though this DOES leave out the fact that Daelin's attempt to commit genocide is what ultimately helped convince many orcs that violence was the only answer.
  • On the other side of things, Mists of Pandaria attempts to have a You Bastard! moment in the Legendary questline for both the Horde player and the tauren race by having the Alliance Dwarf, High Marshall Twinbraid directly calls out the Horde player for their warlike ways, killing his son and destroying his home. The problem with this is Twinbraid was previously written as a General Ripper and Evil Colonialist with his son being a Sociopathic Soldier and his "Home" being a heavily armed fortress built on lands stolen from the natives, natives that both Twinbraid and his son murdered out of their sheer Fantastic Racism. As a result, the Horde player killing Twinbraid in the questline comes across as agents of karma delivering a purely deserved Karmic Death to a self pitying war criminal rather than the What the Hell, Hero?/Player Punch, the writer of the quest had intended it to be.
  • In the canon story told in the book, Tides of War, the leader of the Tauren and one of the leaders of the Horde, Baine Bloodhoof, complains about his tauren subjects fighting Alliance and mentions that he exiled all the tauren at Camp Vendetta point. The issue with this is the story within the game, depicted all the tauren at Vendetta point as honorable warriors that made a point to only attack Alliance military forces that were still attacking the Horde in their own lands and had saved the tauren capital from Alliance invasion. The people at Vendetta point were composed of individuals that had lost family members to Alliance attacks and nearly all Alliance soldiers that they killed, were further shown as some of the most despicable scumbags on Azeroth. Baine was even initially planned to side with the tauren of Vendetta point in a Deleted Scene from the game. As a result, the tauren of Vendetta point being exiled in Tides of War come across as war-heroes unjustly punished for self defense rather than the overzealous warmongers that the novel painted them as.

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