History Main / ThenLetMeBeEvil

Related to HeWhoFightsMonsters, ReformedButRejected, CycleOfRevenge and HulksCooldownHugCorollary.

** He does wrestle with his concious, but honestly if you found out [[spoiler: your whole RACE was created just to be murdered by the "good" guys without any provocation '''by the Gods themselves''']] would ''you'' be kind to them? He has a minor HeelRealization with a touch of MyGodWhatHaveIDone and decides all he wants to do is make [[spoiler: a normal civilization for his people]], and he decides at this point, screw it- if they (the "good" races) want to constantly raid, murder, and destroy his people than two can play that game. [[DangerouslyGenreSavvy And he's a '''very''' good player.

Once this trope has been declared, unlike a lot of ambiguously evil characters, they won't be redeemed in spite of their sympathetic traits -- this is largely because it took a lot of work to turn him evil in the first place. Interestingly, in spite of all this he doesn't looks for excuses to [[KickTheDog kick puppies]] -- he still has morals, he just exercises a more cynical variant of TheGoldenRule.

* DeepSpaceNine featured an episode in the second-to-last season where Gul Dukat tries to convince Sisco (and himself) that they really were friends all along and that he has always been misunderstood as merely an AntiHero, not a true villain. Eventually, with some subtle goading from Sisco to drop his facade, Dukat realizes he has always been a villain and decides to embrace his role by destroying Bajor and everything Sisco cares about.
** A variation also occurs in the episode where Sisco goes after the traitor Norrington. He realizes that Norrington sees himself as a hero fighting for a noble cause and decides that he has to embrace his role as the villain in Norrington's mind in order to beat him. He eventually engineers a situation that plays to Norrington's nobler instincts, forcing him to turn himself in to stop Sisco's villainy.
*** To be clear, his villainy consisted of poisoning a Maquis planet in such a way that humans couldn't live there (but Cardassians could), essentially just balancing out the nearby world Norrington had just poisoned to Cardassians but not humans, and then threatening to do so to every Maquis settlement he could find.

* The eponymous {{Megamind}} embraced this philosophy as a child after his every attempt to do something nice backfired or was immediately shown up by Metroman. Played for far more comedic effect than most examples, mostly due to his being an IneffectualSympatheticVillian and the fact that once he finally wins, he doesn't actually do anything all that evil, even putting BACK all the cool stuff he stole for his office in City Hall.

{{Villains}} as a rule, are cruel, vicious and evil people. Most of them can't be redeemed, and we tend to be better off [[WhyDontYaJustShootHim shooting him]] then trying to be nice to them and enforcing a HeelFaceTurn. At least, this is the attitude a GenreSavvy KnightTemplar takes.

This trope is what happens when the "forces of good" in a story treat an "evil" character badly enough, long enough, that the "evil" character just says "Screw it. You think I'm evil? ThenLetMeBeEvil." Prolonged exposure to the cynical side of the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism has conditioned this character to accept the fact that HumansAreBastards, and if he wants to get anywhere in the world, he has to be every bit as dirty and cruel as they are.

The trope can be made to be more or less convincing for the audience depending on what point the writer wants to make. You can have the statement come across like a cheap FreudianExcuse such that it feels just like the villain is not truly owning up to their own part in their villainy; you could have it come across as a genuine explanation but still not an excuse, then again it could be used as a genuine exposure of mistakes the hero has made or even an outright exposure and commentary of the other character's hypocrisy.

* It is not uncommon for [[GameMaster Storytellers]] to use this tactic in {{Hunter the Reckoning}}. Since almost all of the mook monsters you meet actually have a [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman measure of humanity]] and are enslaved to their natures or other, worse monsters, there is already a bit of a gray area to killing them in the first place. Since hunters constantly hound the monsters, cutting off their resources and food supplies, they can eventually get fed up or be driven to desperate acts of violence since their beastly side starts taking over. This could cause a normally nice vampire who only drinks just enough blood to survive, and only from animals, to become a raging beast draining the nearest humans dry. If the monster survives, you can bet he won't care much about keeping his humanity. Expect [[WhatTheHellHero angry party members]] who have more forgiving views of the monsters.

* The most commonly-accepted interpretation of Sorceress Ultimecia's motivations in ''FinalFantasyVIII'' is that she was [[BullyingADragon discriminated against and persecuted]] by a society conditioned to assume that any sorceress runs the risk of snapping and trying to take over the world, until - shockingly enough - she snapped and tried to [[DivideByZero compress time]].

* The most commonly-accepted interpretation of Sorceress Ultimecia's motivations in ''FinalFantasyVIII'' is that she was [[bullyingADragon discriminated against and persecuted]] by a society conditioned to assume that any sorceress runs the risk of snapping and trying to take over the world, until - shockingly enough - she snapped and tried to [[DivideByZero compress time]].

* In the ''Batman: The Animated Series'' episode, ''Harley's Holiday'', Former [[TheJoker Joker]] minion [[VillainousHarlequin Harley Quinn]] espouses this after violating her parole barely moments out of being released from the asylum ("I tried to be good. I really did. But if that's not good enough, fine!"). However, in a {{subversion}}, after having to be rescued by {{Batman}}, she seems to reconsider.

[[AC:Webcomics]]

Related to HeWhoFightsMonsters, ReformedButRejected and CycleOfRevenge.

->''If you tickle us, do we not laugh?''

->''And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?''
->-- '''Shylock''' from TheMerchantOfVenice

''Since I could not succeed,''\\
''Fiyero, saving you,''\\
''No good deed...will I do...again!''

-->''If you tickle us, do we not laugh?''
-->''If you poison us, do we not die?''
-->''And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?''
--->--Shylock from TheMerchantOfVenice

This trope is what happens when the "forces of good" in a story treat an "evil" character badly enough, longly enough, that the "evil" character just says "Screw it. You think I'm evil? ThenLetMeBeEvil". Prolonged exposure to the cynical side of the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism has conditioned him to accept the fact that HumansAreBastards, and if he wants to get anywhere in the world, he has to be every bit as dirty and cruel as they are.

Once this trope has been declared, unlike a lot of ambiguously evil characters, they won't be redeemed in spite of their sympathetic traits- this is largely because it took a lot of work to turn him evil in the first place. Interestingly, in spite of all this he doesn't looks for excuses to [[KickTheDog kick puppies]]- he still has morals, he just exercises a more cynical variant of TheGoldenRule.

* Adam Wilson from ''The Young and the Restless'' has ended up invoking this trope. It's hard to escape the fact that, before he came to Genoa City, Adam was relatively moral and well-adjusted. It was only after prolonged exposure to the chronic backstabbing and underhanded business dealings of the city that he started his horrific revenge plan- and even at the end of that he lapses into a MyGodWhatHaveIDone moment and tries to reform. Then even ''this'' is completely undercut when the Newmans and Abbotts confront him in the cabin and treat him like a CompleteMonster even though they don't have any idea what he did- not to mention how hollow their moral superiority sounds considering all the crimes they've committed in the past, which Adam and later DA Owen Pomerantz call them out on.

* Redcloak of ''OrderOfTheStick'' has this trait in his more sympathetic moments, most of which are in the prequel book ''Start of Darkness''. As a member of the AlwaysChaoticEvil goblin race, if a "good" character murders him, any other goblins, or even any baby goblins for any reason, this is not treated as an "evil" act, even though the whole reason goblins are evil in the first place is supposedly because they murder without provocation. His example is particularly notable as at one point he has a HeelRealization- about the way he mistreats others goblins. He never seriously considers the idea that he's giving humans any less than they deserve.

* The TropeNamer is Shylock from ''TheMerchantOfVenice'', whose bizarrely sympathetic portrayal has been a recurring fixture in literary studies. Having worked hard to become a reputable moneylender in spite of being discriminated against as a Jew, he suffers insults, mockery, and eventually his own daughter steals from him and runs away to become a "moral" Christian- all of this ''before'' he drags Antonio to court to demand a pound of flesh. And at the end of the play where, the minute Shylock is at a disadvantage our "heroes" rob him blind and threaten to render him destitute unless he converts to Christianity. Because Shylock's overall narrative role is as a normalized villain, coupled with the ValuesDissonance of the day, it's pretty much impossible to tell how much of this is deliberate versus us seeing the portrayal as FairForItsDay.
* Redcloak of ''OrderOfTheStick'' has this trait in his more sympathetic moments, most of which are in the prequel book ''Start of Darkness''. As a member of the AlwaysChaoticEvil goblin race, if a "good" character murders him, any other goblins, or even any baby goblins for any reason, this is not treated as an "evil" act, even though the whole reason goblins are evil in the first place is supposedly because they murder without provocation. His example is particularly notable as at one point he has a HeelRealization- about the way he mistreats others goblins. He never seriously considers the idea that he's giving humans any less than they deserve.
* Adam Wilson from ''The Young and the Restless'' has ended up invoking this trope. It's hard to escape the fact that, before he came to Genoa City, Adam was relatively moral and well-adjusted. It was only after prolonged exposure to the chronic backstabbing and underhanded business dealings of the city that he started his horrific revenge plan- and even at the end of that he lapses into a MyGodWhatHaveIDone moment and tries to reform. Then even ''this'' is completely undercut when the Newmans and Abbotts confront him in the cabin and treat him like a CompleteMonster even though they don't have any idea what he did- not to mention how hollow their moral superiority sounds considering all the crimes they've committed in the past, which Adam and later DA Owen Pomerantz call them out on.
* "Michael" from ''StargateAtlantis'' was a Wraith who the protagonists forcibly converted into an amnesiac human. His introductory episode has the characters mistreating him for no clear reason, before he realizes he's a TomatoInTheMirror and breaks out to return to his people... but they won't accept him either since he's still partly human. He desperately returns to the protagonists and offers valuable aid, just begging them that they don't brainwash him again. They brainwash him again. When he recovers again, he's fed up of saying WhatTheHellHero and he snaps completely and becomes an EvilutionaryBiologist.

* "Michael" from ''StargateAtlantis'' was a Wraith who the protagonists forcibly converted into an amnesiac human. His introductory episode has the characters mistreating him for no clear reason, before he realizes he's a TomatoInTheMirror and breaks out to return to his people... but they won't accept him either since he's still partly human. He desperately returns to the protagonists and offers valuable aid, just begging them that they don't brainwash him again. [[WhatTheHellHero They brainwash him again.]] When he recovers again he snaps completely and becomes an EvilutionaryBiologist.

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