History Main / DesignatedVillain

** The New Testament doesn't get away scot free either. Pontius Pilate's job was to maintain peace in a fractious and distant corner of the Roman Empire, and the locals were doing everything they could to drag him in to their local squabbles. To Pilate, the Pharisees and other sects being angry at Jesus was them being bratty about someone who had dared to challenge them. On the flipside, much of the rhetoric and villainization of the Pharisees and Jewish leadership was written to attack them as a competing religion to Christianity in the first few centuries CE.
%%* Literature/TheEpicOfGilgamesh: Poor Humbaba...

* Similar to the ''Chick Tracts'' example above, ''Unkept Promise'' is a pro-temperance propaganda comic that frames alcohol and the liquor industry as sending Mr. Miller's life [[AddledAddict spiraling]] through a sip of booze, yet the fact that it only took one sip for Mr. Miller to get hooked implies ([[UnintentionallyUnsympathetic without the comic's intention]]) that he had [[CantHoldHisLiquor very little tolerance or self-control]] to begin with; with the rituals and stresses of his life, he would have inevitably gotten addicted to something ''other'' than alcohol (e.g. [[MustHaveNicotine tobacco]], [[MustHaveCaffeine coffee]], [[BigEater food]], [[TheGamblingAddict gambling]], etc.).

** Many of the antagonistic factions in the early books of Literature/TheBible come off this way to modern readers, as they tend to be either not really guilty of anything except being enemies of the Israelites (the Midianites, the Hittites), ''or'' are legitimately nasty but don't really do anything [[ValuesDissonance particularly out of the ordinary for a Bronze Age society]], [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality including the Israelites]] (the Canaanites, the Amalekites) - and yet we're still supposed to cheer when the Israelites, and sometimes even God Himself, subject them to RapePillageAndBurn. In later books [[TookALevelInKindness the Israelites mellow out considerably]], and villains that truly go beyond the pale such as [[TheEmpire the Babylonians]] and [[FinalSolution Haman]] are introduced.

* Similar to the ''Chick Tracts'' example above, ''Unkept Promise'' is a pro-temperance propaganda comic that frames alcohol and the liquor industry as sending Mr. Miller's life [[AddledAddict spiraling]] through a sip of booze, yet the fact that it only took one sip for Mr. Miller to get hooked means that he had [[CantHoldHisLiquor very little tolerance or self-control]] to begin with; with the rituals and stresses of his life, he would have inevitably gotten addicted to something ''other'' than alcohol (e.g. [[MustHaveNicotine tobacco]], [[MustHaveCaffeine coffee]], [[BigEater food]], [[TheGamblingAddict gambling]], etc.).

* Similar to the ''Chick Tracts'' example above, ''Unkept Promise'' is a pro-temperance propaganda comic that frames alcohol and the liquor industry as sending Mr. Miller's life [[AddledAddict spiraling]] through a sip of booze, yet the fact that it only took one sip for Mr. Miller to get hooked means that he had [[CantHoldHisLiquor very little tolerance or self-control]] to begin with; with the rituals and stresses of his life, he would have inevitably gotten addicted something ''other'' than alcohol (e.g. [[MustHaveNicotine tobacco]], [[MustHaveCaffeine coffee]], [[BigEater food]], etc.).

* ''ComicBook/{{Crecy}}'': The narrator presents the French knights as bloodthirsty monsters, despite the fact that the English soldiers, what with their aforementioned chevauchée tactics, come off as so much worse than the French knights, who are at least ''trying'' to defend their homeland and countrymen.

* Vlad von Carstein in ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' borders on being this, [[AlternativeCharacterInterpretation depending how you look at him]] and what lore was being consistent across the setting. While his successors were definitely evil and Vlad was not outright a morally righteous person given some of the things he has done in the lore, his most consistently "evil" thing referenced is the time he tried to take over TheEmpire. Not only do other Elector Counts try to do this, but many points of lore indicate that if his enemies surrendered to him, Vlad would let them live. By all accounts, Vlad actually seemed to care for uniting the Empire, and was not against teaming up with the forces of good to save the day. Despite all that, he's generally treated by the setting as a bad guy, likely because he's a vampire, a necromancer, and because the Empire are the default "good guy" faction of the setting, which tends to mean anyone fighting them is a villain regardless of their motives.

** Some fans took issue with the fact that Glitz and Glam from "Mammon's Magnificent Musical Midseason Special" are portrayed as antagonistic characters who deserve to be beaten by Fizzarolli and then crushed by a pillar at the end of the episode, when the worst thing they do is act like {{Alpha Bitch}}es to him and Blitzo and are most likely as/will be as big of victims of Mammon's exploitation as he is.

** His first heel turn (at least since his tenure in the UWF territory) took place in late 1999 when he turned on Wrestling/HulkHogan by attacking Hogan with a baseball bat. Problem is that this was Hulk Hogan, the man who'd spent the last few years trying to kill WCW. In fact, the only real difference between face Sting and heel Sting was that he attacked wrestlers fans were supposed to like (such as past their prime veterans like Hogan and Ric Flair, who WCW fans were tired of seeing at that point) instead of wrestlers fans were supposed to hate and most fans refused to boo Sting for it. It was only a couple of months before Sting was a face again.

* In the various ''Website/GoAnimate'' "Grounded" videos, the person getting grounded becomes this when their punishment comes off [[DisproportionateRetribution as more excessive than needed]]. Probably the most egregious usage of this trope comes from the full-length movie "Caillou Gets Grounded: A Tale of Two Dimensions", WesternAnimation/{{Caillou}} is first seen trying to evade being run over by his dad Boris, who is indignant that Caillou isn't standing there and being allowed to be run over, which horrifies Caillou. He's blamed for attacking Boris when his alternate dimension counterpart attacks him, despite the fact they looked nothing alike. After failed attempts to capture the evil Caillou, his family blames ''him'' for his counterpart existing, which leads to him pulling a FaceHeelTurn and joining the evil Caillou as "Daillou". When his family finds out about this, of course, it's ''his'' fault and not theirs. And, at the end, Caillou survives and is grounded anyway.

** Numerusclausus in ''Recap/AsterixAndThePicts''. The poor guy was just a civilian Roman trying to make a census of the village and the Gauls kept beating him up. They were no signs that the census would have been used for military purposes. That being said, [[SubvertedTrope they finally]] [[PetTheDog give him lenience]] at the end of the book, by suggesting the one surefire method to have a headcount: [[OnceAnEpisode the traditional banquet]].

* The Mayan mythology in the ''Literature/PopolVuh'' features a bird demon called Seven Macaw and his non-bird children Zipacna the mountain-raiser and Earthquake. The story insists that they had to die because of their [[{{Pride}} hubris]] in abrogating the forces of nature to themselves, only Seven Macaw (who wants to be worshipped as the sun and moon) seems to be doing so maliciously. The rest of the family, including Macaw's powerless wife (who also gets killed), just seem to have fun. Zipacna in particular acts quite humble and goes out of his way to be helpful, and the only thing he asks in return is a fish or crab to eat - but a group of gods takes advantage of that to try to kill him, and he only kills them in revenge and probably preemptive self-defense for the next time. It's this which causes a CycleOfRevenge.

* Thanks to the crossover comic storyline ''ComicBook/AvengersVsXMen'', [[Characters/MarvelComicsCyclops Cyclops]] is positioned as one of the most hated "villains" in-universe. The problem with this, other than the very idea of Cyclops going from X-Men's JerkWithAHeartOfGold leader to a villain, is that he [[spoiler: killed Xavier]] while being controlled by the Dark Phoenix. No one in-universe brings up the fact that he was under the powers of a force strong enough to defeat Galactus in favor of just being a dick to him. This includes Characters/{{Wolverine|JamesLoganHowlett}}, a guy who killed another member of the X-Men (Northstar) while brainwashed. Before anyone asks, yes, Wolverine is being a Hypocrite to Cyclops in front of Northstar (DeathIsCheap).
** Cyclops reenters this post-''ComicBook/SecretWars2015'' where we find out that, despite uniting the mutant populace and bringing a level of peace through his (rather unorthodox) actions, the time skip has somehow made him a monster on the level of UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler (and yes, he was actually called that). For over a year, readers wanted to know just what exactly he did (especially since an early story seemed to paint the mutant Sunfire as just as bad), only for ''ComicBook/DeathOfX'' to reveal that [[spoiler:Cyclops [[DeadAllAlong wasn't even alive when he acted!]] It was Characters/{{Emma Frost|WhiteQueen}}, who somehow convinced the world that he led a group of mutants to alter the Terrigen Mists so that they would be safe for all. And he was disintegrated by [[Characters/TheInhumans Black Bolt]] for his actions]]! Much of this owed to the fact that Marvel, being overzealous in protecting from leaks, hadn't told the writers what Cyclops did aside from it apparently being really, really bad. Writers naturally assumed it had to be something seriously awful, hence the comparisons to Hitler, when the actual bad thing turned out to be kind of neutral.

* The RomanticFalseLead in Music/TaylorSwift's "You Belong With Me" is apparently supposed to be a bad person for being more popular and more feminine than the narrator and dating her best guy-friend who she has a crush on. It's implied to be a not-entirely-stable relationship, but that doesn't necessarily make her an AlphaBitch like the song implies.

** Many of the antagonistic factions in the early books of Literature/TheBible come off this way to modern readers, as they tend to be either not really guilty of anything except being enemies of the Israelites (the Midianites, the Hittites), ''or'' are legitimately nasty but don't really do anything [[ValuesDissonance particularly out of the ordinary for a Bronze Age society]], [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality including the Israelites]] (the Amalekites) - and yet we're still supposed to cheer when the Israelites, and sometimes even God Himself, subject them to RapePillageAndBurn. In later books [[TookALevelInKindness the Israelites mellow out considerably]], and villains that truly go beyond the pale such as [[TheEmpire the Babylonians]] and [[FinalSolution Haman]] are introduced.

** Some fans took issue with the fact that Glitz and Glam from Mammon's Magnificent Musical Midseason Special are portrayed as antagonistic characters who deserve to be beaten by Fizzarolli and then crushed by a pillar at the end of the episode, when the worst thing they do is act like {{Alpha Bitch}}es to him and Blitzo and are most likely as/will be as big of victims of Mammon's exploitation as he is.

** Many of the antagonistic factions in the early books of Literature/TheBible come off this way to modern readers, as they tend to be either not really guilty of anything except being enemies of the Israelites (the Midianites, the Hittites), ''or'' are legitimately nasty but don't really do anything [[ValuesDissonance particularly out of the ordinary for a Bronze Age society]], [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality including the Israelites]] (the Egyptians, the Amalekites) - and yet we're still supposed to cheer when the Israelites, and sometimes even God Himself, subject them to RapePillageAndBurn. In later books [[TookALevelInKindness the Israelites mellow out considerably]], and villains that truly go beyond the pale such as [[TheEmpire the Babylonians]] and [[FinalSolution Haman]] are introduced.