....*sigh* Anyone have a picture of one of the Black Templars From Warhammer 40000? Somehow, I think anything from the Imperium could work here.

• Sailors Uranus and Neptune in Sailor Moon were willing to let the owners of the Pure Heart Talismans die if it was needed to stop the Silence from happening. Granted, they weren't happy about that either (especially when they thought Usagi had one of them), but they were pretty resigned and determined to do it. That was the source of lots of misunderstandings and bad blood with the other Senshi, who thought of them as villains. And they almost get a sort-of Karmic Death when it's shown they had two of the Talismans in their Pure Hearts. Uranus even wondered out loud if that's what they deserved.
  • Later in S, they team up with Sailor Pluto to keep stopping the impending Apocalypse. And one of the "power trio"'s goals was to kill an innocent 12-year-old girl who just so happened to be the incarnation of the Senshi of Destruction, Sailor Saturn.

Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune are closer to Necessarily Evil than Knight Templars. They are totally conscious her ruthless acts are evil.

Trope name - um, why is this trope named after one of two biggest medieval religious organizations (along with Cistercian order) that did not fall under it? All others being tied to one or both of them?

Don't the Hospitalers/Teutonic Knights fall under that quite nicely? It's a funny case of "He stole a bike, or they stole a bike from him... well he was involved in a bike theft!" right now...

Okay just to mention that a bad guy believing what they are doing is right thing does not make them an Anti Villain

I Removed the image of Miyo, Because Miyo is Lawful Good and is contradictory to put it into a villain trope.

Cut this from the Agora example:

and the later joining the christians in taking down Alexandria's library

Because, while the Jews in Agora may have made some dumb moves, they weren't party to the destruction of the Serapium, and they weren't templars.

"X and the Maverick Hunters start to fall into this in Mega Man X 4 and X5. Fast-forward 100 years to Mega Man Zero and Copy-X is protecting humans by mass extermination of innocent Reploids. "

You missed the fact, that it all happened after a Sky Lagoon fall, caused by Hunter's own Magma Dragoon which was a traitor. Finding Repliforce's Colonel in remnants of a Lagoon led Hunters to believe that it was Repliforce who crashed the Lagoon and labelled them as Mavericks. It turned out that everyone just got manipulated the Sigma, Repliforce was just a scapegoat and Hunters weren't blindly killing Reploids to save people.

For the real life examples, the "tone argument" I'm familiar with has at least as much to do with "Good is Not Nice" and, on the other side, "Stepford Smiler," as with the Knight Templar concept (though one side is fond of attacking the other by trying to conflate their "Good Is Not Nice" stance with attitudes more consistent with "Knight Templar"). I'm hesitant to add that as an edit, though, especially after seeing some of the threads debating changes to page titles (on that note, I'm kind of new here, and, if the constraints and concerns in those threads are even semi-typical, this is an interesting idea you people have of "a buttload more informal." O.O But I digress.)

Thoughts?

Removed Master Eraqus of Kingdom Hearts from the list. He's not a villain and he understands the consequences of his actions, so he's more of a I Did What I Had To Do character. Also, he was trying to avert a potential genocide.

• Naruto's Uchiha Itachi is a strange case. Sure, the manga seems to act like he's a hero, but he still killed every single one of the Uchihas, even the ones who had absolutely nothing to do with planning out the revolution, and at least in the short term caused more deaths than the rebellion might have. This can likely be chalked up to a combination of Danzo advocating a scorched earth policy and Madara wanting to kill them off for various reasons. The fact that both made a habit of collecting Sharingan like other people collect stamps didn't help.
• Steve Ditko's titular Mr A is meant to be the personification of Incorruptible Pure Pureness, but it doesn't work. In fact, it veers into a direction the writer could not possibly have intended.
• Prayer Warriors: The Evil Gods (which has now been deleted) involves Percy Jackson and his friends converting to Christianity and going on a rampage, killing anyone that doesn`t agree with them, including the Greek gods. It's as bad as it sounds. Worse, it was written by a Knight Templar, so the protagonists are supposed to be considered the good guys.

Richard Rahl, the hero, is told evil people never think they are evil, but think they are doing good. So it comes as a bit of a surprise when Richard becomes one of these, at one point telling his soldiers that they are allowed to kill and maim civilians. Why? Because the Emperor is evil, so logically, every single citizen of the Empire is evil as well. It gets worse — the NARRATOR fully agrees with Richard on everything.

• Interestingly, both Indigo and Crimson, the two contacts you use to stop Malta, could be considered 'good' versions of this. They will do anything to stop Malta, and players see them entrap bad guys, trick civilians into dangerous traps, lie to compatriots to test their network for leaks, protect bad guys when their loss would empower Malta, provide false evidence to a villain group to cause someone's execution, and 'protect' good guys without warning them that they are at risk.

Knight Templar is a trope about a villain convinced of their own rightiouness. The removed characters are canonically good guys, by admission of the own examples.

When you think about it, most villains are Kight Templars - they either genuinely believe they're doing the right thing, or think evil is justified in their particular circumstance. Exceptions would be totally Ax Crazy villains like Fenrir Greyback who are just in it For The Evulz.