History Main / HistoricalVillainDowngrade

* The SS camp commander Amon Göth in ''Film/SchindlersList'' is an AxCrazy, [[PsychopathicManchild overgrown child]] who uses the Holocaust to indulge in murder and seemingly does everything in his power to cement himself as an [[CompleteMonster irredeemably evil piece of work]]. The real life Göth was ''even worse.'' Spielberg had to tone down the man's senseless cruelty because his crimes were so horrible and numerous (which included a frequently-used TortureCellar built under his house, feeding prisoners ''alive'' to his starved dogs, shooting playing children with his sniper rifle, personally killing five hundred people, and more) that it was thought [[RealityIsUnrealistic an audience simply wouldn't have believed it on screen]]. Some had trouble even grasping that a lunatic such as the one shown in the movie could keep his job. (And indeed, he ''didn't'' keep his job; Göth was dismissed in 1944 for, among other reasons, his mistreatment of prisoners. Yes, even the ''Nazis'' thought he was going too far.)

** Chuckie O'Brien is often suspected of having been the man who drove Hoffa to his death. While that is depicted in this film, he is wholly unaware and Sheerhan emphasizes he was the victim of an overzealous Justice Department desperate to convict the accomplices of Hoffa's murder.

Basically, this trope occurs whenever a historical villain's evil actions are either glossed over or reduced in severity, in order to make them palatable, [[ButNotTooEvil even as a villain]], to mainstream television audiences. Sometimes it's because RealityIsUnrealistic -- there are a few cases of real people displaying such extreme levels of evil that if you put it in a movie script, the audience would just roll their eyes at your "obvious" exaggeration.

* ''Film/GoodFellas'' is told through the eyes of UnreliableNarrator Henry Hill, who implies that for all the bad things he does in the movie (theft, assault, drug dealing, drug ''taking'', etc.) he had never personally murdered, with the closest he gets being to lock the door while Jimmy and Tommy beat AssholeVictim Billy Bats to death and helping them cover it up (though this would still make him culpable legally). In RealLife he is known to have murdered at least two people. Jimmy and Tommy, though, while each portrayed accurately as extremely ruthless and violent gangsters who murder countless people throughout, were actually even ''worse'' in RealLife: Jimmy Burke (Conway in the film), in particular, would sometimes [[WouldHurtAChild lock children in refrigerators]], murdered or had murdered ''even more'' people, and really ''did'' screw nearly everyone out of the Lufthansa heist. The killing spree was partly prompted by the others asking for their fair cut; Tommy [=DeSimone=] (Tommy [=DeVito=]) killed random strangers for target practice and was killed by the mob not just for the murder of Billy Bats, but because Paulie found out he had tried to rape Hill's wife Karen while Henry was in prison (Henry didn't find this out until the trial shown at the end of the movie). Paul Vario (Paulie Cicero) was also much more violent in reality: what disdain he had for it was pure PragmaticVillainy as violence drew attention and was bad for business. He was also having an affair with Karen, hence selling out Tommy for the Billy Bats murder.

* ''Film/Downfall2004'': Hermann Fegelein is a self-serving opportunist, but he's still portrayed with some sympathy as a man who doesn't want to die for a megalomaniacal dictator's delusions and tries to get other people to come to their senses and flee Berlin before it's too late. The real Fegelein certainly didn't become Heinrich Himmler's adjutant by being a nice person with concern for others. In reality, in his role as the commander of the SS Cavalry Brigade, he committed severe war crimes, such as killing at least 17,000 Soviet Jews in the Pripyat swamps of Ukraine in 1941. He was also corrupt even by the standards of the SS, and one of the main sources for his personal wealth had been the plunder of valuables his unit encountered on the Eastern Front ''by truckload''. To top it all off, Albert Speer described him as the most [[{{jerkass}} personally]] [[TheFriendNobodyLikes loathsome]] member of Hitler's inner circle. While his infamous reputation is alluded to in the generals' disdain for him, none of his actual misdeeds are ever brought up.

* ''Film/StraightOuttaCompton'' actually tones down infamous Creator/DeathRowRecords executive Suge Knight's AxCrazy behavior, with multiple real-life antics of his left out of the movie. Such was his behavior that he actually ran over and killed a man and injured another after getting into an argument with them on the set of the film itself. He was sentenced to 28 years in prison in 2018.

* The book ''Resurrection Man'' glosses over some of [[UsefulNotes/TheTroubles Lenny Murphy's]] worse actions with its fictionalised version of him, such as his murder of an intellectually disabled young man or some of his more brutal actions [[ColdBloodedTorture torturing his victims to death]]. Of course, since the book is still about a man who brutally murders Catholics for no reason other than their religion, this doesn't really do much to make the protagonist more likeable.

* ''Film/StraightOuttaCompton'' actually tones down infamous Creator/DeathRowRecords executive Suge Knight's AxCrazy behavior, with multiple real-life antics of his left out of the movie.

* ''Series/TheBorgias'':
** Juan Borgia is depicted as a stupid lech whose actions can be explained away by insecurities. And he really does love his family. The real Juan was sometimes referred to as a sort of idiotic sociopath: he was once chided for killing cats.
** His older brother Cesare is TheDutifulSon who also loves his family and would do anything for them. The general consensus is that the real Cesare Borgia was all but a sociopath: the only person he loved in the world was his sister, Lucrezia (the show does get that right, but he seems to have never felt the loyalty to his parents that the series implies). While he falls madly in love over the course of the show, he all but stated in reality that the only woman who had any worth in his eyes was Lucrezia. Though the first season is set up as his StartOfDarkness, he was already dark by the time these events occurred, so dark that he would stand on a balcony, shooting at prisoners for target practice (with little sis by his side, of course). The writers may have downgraded him for now due to the fact that few would believe that someone could be that bad that early in his life. Also remember that all these accounts of the Borgias were by their enemies, who of course can [[SarcasmMode always be relied upon]] to give unbiased descriptions.
*** However, by the end of the second season, both of these become more historically accurate. Overall, this is a shtick of the show, making characters less-evil than their counterparts TEMPORARILY so they can have some CharacterDevelopment to go around.

* ''{{Series/Feud}}'' heavily tones down Creator/JoanCrawford's behaviour on the set of ''Film/WhatEverHappenedToBabyJane'' and ''Film/HushHushSweetCharlotte''. She's still presented as an unbearable diva, but Bette Davis is given more antagonistic moments to make Joan look more sympathetic. The series leaves out that on the latter film, she turned up to one week's location filming in Baton Rouge with twenty suitcases and forced the wardrobe mistress to iron all her dresses in 100-degree weather, that she refused to work longer hours and eventually stopped speaking to Robert Aldrich altogether (forcing him to communicate through her makeup artist). It also implies that her adopted daughter Christina's book ''{{Literature/MommieDearest}}'' was complete fabrication, when many of Christina's stories were verified by people who had known her (Joan concedes when talking to her daughter Cathy that she was "[[{{Understatement}} perhaps too strict]]" with her children). Her moment of accepting an Oscar on Anne Bancroft's behalf just to one-up Bette is given a sympathetic light, implying that the former only went along with it out of pity.

* Creator/AlanAlda's ''Film/SweetLiberty'' had the author of a book about the Revolutionary War upset that they were making the sadistic Green Dragoon Banastre Tarleton a romantic lead. Ironically, ''Film/ThePatriot'' did the reverse - see HistoricalVillainUpgrade.