I always got this vibe from Tom Zarek that he really didn't give a shit about his positions, and cared more about them as a means to manipulate people.

Removed Don Jon. Just because Claudio is a Designated Hero doesn't mean that Don Jon is a designated villain. You can't have a designated villain without a designated hero but you can have a designated hero without having a designated villain

• The Kuhoin family of Kurenai keep the female member of the family isolated in an area of their family estate so that they can bear the children of their brothers and other male relatives. While this does of a certain element of Squick to it. It is justified by the fact the entire family suffers from a condition that means that this is the only way *any* of them can ever have children, so really, they are just doing what that have to do in order to survive and insure the next generation of their family.
  • But if you're trying to pin anything on Benika or Shinkurou, remember that they were hired. They grew fond of the job, but still, they were hired first.

Cutting this example. Sure, the Kuhouins may need incest to survive, but that doesn't explain why the have to lock their women up and hide their existence from the outside world.

• Final Fantasy XII: Vayne's big evil plan throughout the whole game? Stop evil gods from treating humans like puppets.
  • To be fair the heroes also want this; the problem is that Vayne also wants to conquer everything and install himself as the new, Nethicite-powered Dynast-King, which isn't really necessary. While the protagonists agree with freeing Ivalice from the Occuria, replacing one evil with another isn't quite desirable.
  • The whole point of Vayne and by extension, Venat was that he was a bloody hypocrite. Sure, the evil gods are treating humans like puppets...but the cold hard truth is that he just wants to be the puppeteer. So we go from overthrowing one set of tyrannical, enslaving beings to just one tyrannical, enslaving being. Um...yay?

Also cutting this for reasons stated right there.

Can we get a ruling on this section:

• In the second Iron Man film, Whiplash's father would appear to be this. His father worked with Mr. Stark senior on products, but ultimately only wanted them for financial gain instead of helping mankind. Rather than recognize an inventor might want to make money off his own creations, Stark fired him and used their mutual creations to become a billionaire, and Vanko died in poverty. It's kinda easy to see why Whiplash would want Tony Stark dead. The fact that Tony occasionally comes off as a Designated Hero doesn't help.
  • It's especially hypocritical, seeing as Howard Stark (and Tony Stark in his pre-90s days) is a symbol of the power and legitimacy of Capitalism, in contrast to the evils of Communism. The fact that Stark had Vanko deported to the USSR for being a capitalist is a Moral Event Horizon crossing that the movie doesn't pick up on.
  • Lesson learned : you can do pretty much anything if you tell the right phrase. In this case, the phrase was For Great Justice.

It keeps getting removed because of the claim that Anton Vanko was a Soviet spy. Can anyone but the anonymous poster and I confirm whether or not he was spying for the USSR? I've heard it stated that Vanko was framed as a spy by Howard Stark, but the charges weren't true. It appears that, in reality, he was a sincere defector that was deported out of personal spite. The rest of the film hinges on the fact that Stark senior seriously screwed over the Vankos. If Vanko really was a spy, the entire film falls apart thematically.

Why is this separated into "Examples" and "Sympathetic Examples"? Whether something is sympathetic or not is usually a YMMV thing, and even when it's not it has no bearing on the example. I see a lot of stuff in the examples section I find sympathetic. Could we just combine them?

"Remember that you can't have a Designated Villain without a Designated Hero, but the opposite isn't true."

If anything you'd think it's the other way around. You can have a perfectly legitimate hero on paper rallying against something that isn't really evil, but I can't think of a way someone can be the designated hero when faced with a genuine evil.

Removed:

• X-Men Evolution set up Avalanche as a villainous character on his first appearance, despite the fact he was quite obviously just a troubled teen with a few too many berserk buttons but a more or less genuine good heart. In the second season, he even had some straight-up admirable qualities (he did get some recognition with a relationship of sorts with Kitty Pryde).
  • The epilogue suggests he left the Brotherhood and joined SHIELD instead.
  • Also, most of the "Evil" the Brotherhood did, aside from their initial Kick The Dog moments, paled in comparison to their comic counterparts (who were legitimate villains). Aside from being Mystique's errand boys, the Brotherhood mostly seemed interested in Wacky Fratboy Hijinks.

The Brotherhood Were not this. Toad, Avalanche and whichever female is currently with them, were mildly sympathetic at times, and even there, Avalanche only became sympathetic after Character Derailment took away his Unsympathic characteristics, leaving behind his only, and even there only recently added, characteristic of having the hots for Kitty. Yeah, they had less villainous moments after the first season, but that's because season two was the only time they did act like Designated Villains (not even that, they weren't treated as villains, just another group) and Season three and four they were Out Of Focus as the Acolytes and later Apocalypse replaced them as the villains. Being a former archnemesis out of Focus and being a Designated Villain are completely different things. When they did do 'Wacky Fratboy Hijinks', such as trying to steal a device and essentially doom Kurt to life in another dimension, cause a riot and try to reveal mutants to the world, and then pretend to act heroic to get money. yeah, totally just Wacky Hijinks, I do it all the time. Remember, that these are the things they did when they weren't being instructed by Mystique or Magneto, when they were working for Mystique, that was most definatly not simple. When they compare them to their comic selves, people forget that in Comics, they can do things their Cartoon selves can't do. On a kids show, you're not allowed to commit acts of Terrorism, you can't do things that they did in the comics. Lastly, the note about the ending. While it shows them aparently joining SHIELD, Xavier doesn't sound as if its a good thing "And some people, never change", they don't look too heroic (Toad has a Slasher Smile, Blob, Pyro, Wanda and Avlanche looks just like himself only old, only Pietro looks even remotly heroic but we all know that isn't true). If I'm not mistaken, I remember reading something about the series director saying they join form Freedom Force, essentially working for the goverment to hunt down other mutants who aren't registered on the Mutant Registration Act in order to avoid jail term (Imagine Osborn's Thunderbolts only for mutants), which of course means they're not heroic. So to sum it up, Avalanche and the Brotherhood went through Villain Decay and Character Derailment before slipping Out Of Focus, they were NOT Designated Villains and after a while stopped being considered villains anyway.

Is Designated Antagonist really a good redirect? Villains and Antagonists are not the same character-type. Best examples are Hero Antagonists — they're designated to be antagonists, but clearly meant to be the good guys. If there's no good reason to keep this, I'll put it on the cutlist.

I deleted this from the main page due to Justifying Edits:

• Danzo, one of the most notable ones, was a Designated Villain because he actually wanted to uphold the law of Leaf Village by ordering a hit on known traitor and criminal Sasuke Uchiha, who just so happened to be the main character's best friend (from Naruto's perspective. Sasuke wanted nothing to do with him).
  • No, he was a villain (or at best, a Well Intentioned Extremist) because he trained little children to become his emotionless tools, sabotage the Leaf Village defense for his own gains, mind controlled the Fire Daimyo and believed that he can do any vile thing he want to gain power and influence due to the believe that he and only he can save the world. Even the kill order on Sasuke was less about the law and more with his desire to obtain his eyes.
  • False. He trained children to become emotionless tools, true, however that is expected of most ninja especially ANBU in the Narutoverse. We don't know if he used Kotoamatsukami on the Fire Daimyo (hell, the bureaucrat could have been convinced by anything). The kill order on Sasuke was because Sasuke is a Missing Ninja, and now had become an international criminal by attacking Kumo to get Killer Bee. Kakashi himself said that the stint Sasuke was without being labeled a Missing Ninja at least was due to Naruto's influence on Tsunade. And finally, he wanted to kill Sasuke to prevent Orochimaru from gaining a new, strong Uchiha body.
  • Danzo trained children to become emotionless tools by making them be friends with other children and then forcing them to kill each other. He was fully willing to massacre an entire clan (because obviously everybody of them was irredeemably evil), kill innocent children and didn't even try to negotiate with them. Also he assisted Orochimaru in his experiments and apparently didn't care about the snake's other innocent victims at all, killed the messenger frog from contacting Naruto (although he had a good reason to do so, did he really need to kill it?) and didn't help protecting the village from Pain. Finally he plucked the eyes out of the men and women he ordered to massacre and fought with the stolen eyes against the sole survivor of the clan who's gone completely insane because of him. Well Intentioned Extremist or not... there's a line and Danzo crossed it long ago.