History MotiveDecay / WesternAnimation

* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender''
** The Dai Li in were founded centuries ago by that time's Avatar to preserve the cultural heritage of the city of Ba Sing Se. However, by the time of the show, they've become a SecretPolice led by an EvilChancellor -- brainwashing dissidents, holding all the true power in the city, and hiding from the king the fact that, you know, they've been at war with the Fire Nation for a century. [[spoiler:Of course, they end up joining said enemy.]]

** Batman actually brings this up himself with the Mad Hatter, who in his first appearance was a [[LoveMakesYouEvil love-lorn geek who used his mind-controlling inventions to try and force a woman to love him]]. In the episode "The Worry Men" he is simply using his inventions for personal financial gain. Batman tells him that he has become nothing more than a petty thief.

** Firefly at first was just interested in forcing his old girlfriend to be with him. In his second appearance, which is little more than a cameo, he's committing arson to get insurance money. When Batman remarks on the sheer pettiness of this, Firefly bitterly grumbles out, "Chemicals are expensive."

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons,'' Sideshow Bob's deadly vendetta against Bart is initially spurred by Bart foiling his plan to take over Krusty's show and getting him sent to jail in his first appearance, and is theoretically refreshed every time he's jailed again. With Springfield Penitentiary increasingly becoming a CardboardPrison and Bob being cast as a FriendlyEnemy to the Simpsons as often as not, the reasoning behind his actions grows more tenuous as the show continues, being treated more like a fixation of Bob's (one for which he's even received unsuccessful therapy) than the result of anything he truly suffered at Bart's hands: in Season 29's "Gone Boy" Bart flat-out asks him why he wants to kill a ten-year-old, [[ArmorPiercingQuestion a question he finds himself unable to answer]].

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons,'' Sideshow Bob's deadly vendetta against Bart is initially spurred by Bart foiling his plan to take over Krusty's show and getting him sent to jail in his first appearance, and is theoretically refreshed every time he's jailed again. With Springfield Penitentiary increasingly becoming a CardboardPrison and Bob being cast as a FriendlyEnemy to the Simpsons as often as not, the reasoning behind his actions grows more tenuous as the show continues, being treated more like a fixation of Bob's than the result of anything he truly suffered at Bart's hands: in Season 29's "Gone Boy" Bart flat-out asks him why he wants to kill a ten-year-old, [[ArmorPiercingQuestion a question he finds himself unable to answer]].

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons,'' Sideshow Bob's deadly vendetta against Bart is initially spurred by Bart getting him sent to jail in his first appearance, and is theoretically refreshed every time he's jailed again. With Springfield Penitentiary increasingly becoming a CardboardPrison and Bob being cast as a FriendlyEnemy to the Simpsons as often as not, the reasoning behind his actions grows more tenuous as the show continues, being treated more like a fixation of Bob's than the result of anything he truly suffered at Bart's hands: in Season 29's "Gone Boy" Bart flat-out asks him why he wants to kill a ten-year-old, [[ArmorPiercingQuestion a question he finds himself unable to answer]].

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons,'' Sideshow Bob's deadly vendetta against Bart is initially spurred by Bart getting him sent to jail in his first appearance, and is theoretically refreshed every time he's jailed again. With Springfield Penitentiary increasingly becoming a CardboardPrison and Bob being cast as a FriendlyEnemy to the Simpsons as often as not, the reasoning behind his actions is increasingly tenuous, being treated more like a fixation of Bob's than the result of anything he truly suffered at Bart's hands: in "Gone Boy" Bart flat-out asks him why he wants to kill a ten-year-old, [[ArmorPiercingQuestion a question he finds himself unable to answer]].

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons,'' Sideshow Bob's deadly vendetta against Bart is initially spurred by Bart getting him sent to jail in his first appearance, and is theoretically refreshed every time he's jailed again. With Springfield Penitentiary increasingly becoming a CardboardPrison and Bob being cast as a FriendlyEnemy to the Simpsons as often as not, the reasoning behind his actions is increasingly tenuous, seeming more like a fixation of Bob's than something truly caused by anything he suffered at Bart's hands: in "Gone Boy" Bart flat-out asks him why he wants to kill a ten-year-old, [[ArmorPiercingQuestion a question he can't answer]].

* Plankton from ''WesternAnimation/SpongebobSquarepants'' started out wanting to steal the recipe to the Krabby Patty, but over time, his motivation has changed to where he is willing to do anything as long as it's evil.

** The Fire Nation also suffers from motive decay over the course of the [[HopelessWar 100 year war]] - when the war began, [[WellIntentionedExtremist Fire Lord Sozin's]] goal was to [[WhiteMansBurden "share the Fire Nation's greatness with the rest of the world"]]. By the time the show starts, that's devolved into DespotismJustifiesTheMeans. Both the Dai Li and the Fire Nation's cases can be justified with the fact that the Motive Decay occurred over several generations. Fire Lord Sozin ''started'' the 100 Year War but was long dead by the time it ended; Fire Lord Ozai and all other members of the Fire Nation's population (both civilian and military) were born when the war was already in full swing and grew up hearing propaganda justifying it.

* ''WesternAnimation/DarkwingDuck'' averts this with most of its cartoonish super villains, but with Bushroot it follows this trope to the hilt. Bushroot started his life of villainy to get revenge on the scientists who mocked him and destroyed his inventions and any chance with the woman he longed for. Some of his solo acts are committed in-line with his misunderstood lonely madman personality, such as trying to create sapient plants, but others are just plain supervillainy, like growing money to steal more money. Whenever he's teamed up with the Fiendish Five, or just partnering with another villain, any good side goes away completely (which does make sense if you think about it, as if he's now got a villain friend, he's not going to risk losing them by showing his softer side). Quackerjack, on a lower level, switches from trying to rebuild his toy empire/getting revenge on the toys/businesses who drove him out of business, to just wanting to commit random acts of crime. Then again, he's insane.
** The "growing money to steal more" plot of Bushroot's does still kind of fit with his misunderstood lonely madman motif, as he was using the money mostly to buy things for his plant friends.

** Inverted with Doof. In the first episode, Dr. Doofenshmirtz was a GenericDoomsdayVillain who [[LampshadeHanging openly admitted that he himself wasn't sure what his own motives were]]. From the second episode, his {{Evil Plan}}s are mostly motivated by revenge for his HilariouslyAbusiveChildhood, or occasionally by a lust for power. It's also implied that a lot of it is [[PsychopathicManchild just acting out to get attention.]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManTheAnimatedSeries'', J. Jonah Jameson has a perfectly understandable and sympathetic reason for distrusting Spider-Man: his wife was killed by a masked assassin working for a mobster Jameson was about to expose, prompting him to start a crusade against people who wear masks and act above the law. However, in Mysterio's introductory episode, Mysterio, who has done next to nothing to earn anyone's trust and wears a mask himself, publicly announces that he's going to bring down Spider-Man... and is promptly lauded as a hero by Jameson. He's the one responsible for creating The Scorpion, although he does regret it later.

** He does explain it quite clearly. He's obsessed with having complete control over his students with his psychic powers. Even though some like Bumblebee could resist him, they could still be overpowered if he directed his attention to them. Cyborg was the only person he'd ever met that was completely immune to his control so as his arc went on he became more and more obsessed finding out what made Cyborg immune and making more cyborgs was just semi coincidental with the fact you can program totally obedient robots and he already had Cyborg's blueprints so why not? The obsession with control is also intended to make him look pathetic as he keeps losing his calm demeanor when he raves about Cyborg's resistance.

** Villains in Gargoyles tend to be more complex than your standard "tie the girl to the railroad track" fare. After the "City of Stone" arc, Macbeth's only appearances as a ''true'' villain were under mind control. He actually did have a valid reason to at least try to obtain Excalibur- he fit the prophecy as well as Arthur Pendragon did. And the episode during the world tour would count as a non-antagonistic appearance of the character.

** Almost every episode that involved any of Team Go, and especially when in their own city, tended to fall hard into superhero world cliches. Just as Kim Possible was a show lampooning the spy genre, they had their own fun with the superhero ones with Team Go. Example, Kim and Ron pick out Hego as the manager of the Bueno Nacho within minutes (his ClarkKenting was weak). Having taken Ron as his arch was simply "how it's done, who am I to argue" and between the choice of Kim Possible, the super-strong Hego, and the pathetic sidekick, who would you want to choose as your enemy?

* ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddparents'': The pixies, lead by HP, were a race that wanted to [[LawfulEvil impose order]] on Fairy World and the Earth. Then, suddenly, in "Fairly Oddbaby" they teamed up with the anti-fairies, despite the fact that they're [[AlwaysChaoticEvil the complete opposite of order]] and randomly want to [[OmnicidalManiac blow up the Earth]].

* Macbeth from ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}'' was an odd case - he only attacked the Gargoyles in his first appearance in an attempt to draw out the villainess Demona. By the end of that episode, the heroes had explained that she hated them too, which gave him no real motive to oppose them... yet every subsequent appearance found some excuse to feature him as an antagonist. First he went after a set of magical scrolls (that turned out to be diaries) that the Gargs had anticipated ''Xanatos'' would try to steal. Not once, but twice, he fought them under the Weird Sisters' mind-control -- with a third incident that turned out to be a decoy robot double built by Xanatos. In a World Tour appearance, they crossed paths without trading blows, parting on fairly amiable terms, but then he was opposing their friend King Arthur in an attempt to recover Excalibur. For two full seasons, he was a recurring villain, who never once had so much of an EnemyMine, despite having no specific reason to oppose the heroes.
** [[TheUnmasquedWorld After their cover was blown world-wide,]] he did get a cameo as a TV correspondent promoting friendly human-gargoyle relations -- kind of funny since the experiences he'd had that were shown to the audience were almost overwhelmingly negative! But he doesn't hold Demona against the gargs as a whole. In the [[ExpandedUniverse comic continuation]] he's becoming more of an ally.

** Also, when he went after the scrolls it was because he believed them to be magical. He was probably going to use said magic to kill Demona (or himself since that was what he really wanted). He was only fighting the Gargoyles because they were in the way. Once he learns that that scrolls were diaries, he promptly gave them to the Gargoyles and let them leave.

** Almost every episode that involved any of Team Go, and especially when in their own city, tended to fall hard into superhero world cliches. Just as Kim Possible was a show lampooning the spy genre, they had their own fun with the superhero ones with Team Go. Example, Kim and Ron pick out Hego as the manager of the Bueno Nacho within minutes (his ClarkKenting was weak). Having taken Ron as his arch was simply "how it's done, who am I to argue" and between the choice of Kim Possible, the super strong Hego, and the pathetic sidekick, who would you want to choose as your enemy?

* Comes into play with Gorath and the Glorft's motives in ''WesternAnimation/MegasXLR''. The whole point with Gorath coming back into the past in the first place was so that he could retrieve Megas and go back to the future and finalize the conquest of humanity that had been mostly-achieved when he left, but he jumps very cleanly into motive decay in the season 1 finale, where he resolves to destroy the Earth in the past.

** Metallo's origin episode, in which he was transformed from John Corben into Metallo, showed him with vendettas against both Superman (who had sent him to prison in the three-part pilot) ''and'' Luthor (for [[BlessedWithSuck transferring his mind into the strong]] -- [[SenseLossSadness but numb]] -- [[{{Cyborg}} Metallo body]]). However, by his second appearance the "vengeance against Luthor" angle has been dropped entirely and in his fourth appearance he even gets a girlfriend, despite the fact that his inability to feel anything at all when kissing a woman was one of the things that originally drove him nuts. His original motive does return in the video game ''Superman: Shadow of Apokolips'', which debuted in 2002. Recruited by a disguised Luthor and told to destroy Superman, Metallo defers and goes after Luthor himself.

** He does explain it quite clearly. He's obsessed with having complete control over his students with his psychic powers. Even though some like Bumblebee could resist him, they could still be over powered if he directed his attention to them. Cyborg was the only person he'd ever met that was completely immune to his control so as his arc went on he became more and more obsessed finding out what made Cyborg immune and making more cyborgs was just semi coincidental with the fact you can program totally obedient robots and he already had Cyborg's blueprints so why not? The obsession with control is also intended to make him look pathetic as he keeps losing his calm demeanor when he raves about Cyborg's resistance.

** The worst example is probably Clayface, who started out with the goal of getting revenge on Roland Daggett for causing his transformation, and in his second appearance was motivated by trying to get back to normal, both of which are sympathetic motivations that make perfect sense. In ''[[WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries The New Batman Adventures]]'', however, he had also become a petty thief. He returned in WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague however and only joined Grodd's group because Grodd promised him a cure.
** Averted with the Clock King: In ''The Clock King'', his motivation was simple: to make Mayor Hill look inefficient, and then kill him. In ''Time out of Joint'', he still wants to do that (and destroy the new Judicial building). In the WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague episode ''Task Force X'', he works as a BoxedCrook, presumably to get on parole. And in a case of AllThereInTheManual, ''ComicBook/TheBatmanAdventures'' shows him [[spoiler: successfully rigging the mayoral election so that Hill would lose]]. Batman is no more than a nuisance to him.

** Based on the episode Trial, an argument could be made that the Motive Decay was intentional, and was being used to support a major theme of the show: despite all attempts at a FreudianExcuse, these villains were simply terrible people who, under one gimmick or another, would be causing misery and suffering to others no matter what.

** Averted by the [[ScaryScarecrows Scarecrow]], who was always trying to carry out some twisted science experiment with the people of Gotham as his guinea pigs. When he did commit robbery and fraud, it was typically to obtain money to buy more chemicals.

* Vlad in ''WesternAnimation/DannyPhantom'' starts out with a rather sympathetic backstory and an almost understandable motivation: Jack, through sheer idiocy, caused an accident that sent Vlad to the hospital for years, costing Vlad's chance at Maddie, who ended up marrying Jack. Later episodes started ignoring it; in an episode where Danny changes history to prevent Vlad's accident (giving him absolutely no motivation for turning evil), he ''still'' turns out evil for no apparent reason. One could argue it's really a matter of personality in that Vlad has an unhealthy means of obsession despite different time periods. It's implied Maddie still loves Jack (Past Maddie is giving loving eyes towards Jack) in the altered timeline while Vlad is hinted to be bitter even during his college years (he crosses his arms in frustration when Maddie doesn't pay attention to him). With Jack alive, it's motivation enough for Vlad to go completely apeshit to preserve his happy ending. In ''The Ultimate Enemy'', Vlad is shown as actually being a rather caring individual (willing to adopt Danny after he's orphaned, and willing to help rid him of his human sorrow for what appears to be purely altruistic reasons). So make of him what you will. His motives still decay over time, with less and less focus being on killing Jack and taking Maddie/Danny as his wife/son and more and more on just screwing with Danny and being his antagonist. At first he was an antagonistic in a half "I'll train you" kind of way and in the end he just went straight villain.
** It seems to be more an inherent character trait. When he gets what he wants he's actualy a rather good and kind guy. It's just that when he doesn't [[EntitledToHaveYou he's quick to turn to bitterness and hatred to TAKE what he wants]]. The longer he stews the more unhinged he gets (to the point of making holographic and cloned copies of Maddie/Danny to try to have those when it's clear he can't get the originals). Going with the above, in the altered timeline he's rather normal and pleasant having both a fortune and the love of his life. But the moment he suspects things aren't quite going just his way he's quick to snap at people. It's just that in the main timeline he never had Maddie so he's basically stuck in villain mode most of the time.
** Another addition to that is that Vlad gets so obsessed that he loses sight of the clear goal. At any point, Vlad could turn ghost and straight up murder Jack, but he doesn't. He pines after Maddie even with Jack there. Some part of him believes that he is a monster and he is AffablyEvil most of the time. He isn't above begging and [[spoiler: poisoning Danny's friends to get his help when he's dying]], but he seems willing to be altruistic in certain situations. In ''The Ultimate Enemy'', Vlad loses his former best friend and his long-time love of his life and has their son, an orphaned Danny, show up at his door. Given that he wanted a child of his own and just got a HUGE slap in the face by fate by the deaths, it is arguable that his obsession and priority's imploded and died. The last nail in the coffin was having [[spoiler: Ghost Danny suck out his ghost form, combine with it, and straight up murder Human Danny without a second thought.]] That would have destroyed his mind (Vlad never killed anyone himself and seeing someone die by his actions would leave him forever guilty). He hated his ghost, but he missed it when it was gone. So to sum this up, his ex-best-friend, the love of his life, and [[spoiler: their son/his adopted son]] are all killed and he lost his powers, his abilities to fight, and got to watch the whole world burn to ashes due to his mistakes. ''That...'' changes a man.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Ben 10}}'' villain [[MadScientist Dr Animo]] was first introduced as a scientist whose motivation was stealing a prize that he thought he deserved. This is completely dropped in all his next appearances, where he is portrayed as a classic super-villain trying to either mutate or conquer the world (sometimes both).
** Well, he wanted to get the trophy and ''sic a bunch of dinosaurs on Washington DC.''

*** Some argue she still suffered it in two ways: first that if those were her motives all along, they seriously decayed when she started [[DesignatedGirlFight fixating more on getting revenge on Gwen]] prior to those motives being revealed, and secondly that resurrecting her father wasn't really foreshadowed at all back when freeing her home dimension was established as her motivation, so it being a driving force for her [[{{Retcon}} came out of left field.]]
** [[MonsterClown Zombozo]] was originally portrayed as a EmotionEater who fed on people's happiness. This is entirely dropped when he returns in ''[[WesternAnimation/Ben10UltimateAlien Ultimate Alien]]'', and replaced by him trying to take RevengeByProxy on Ben, which to some extent made sense (after all, Ben did ruin his business in his first appearance). Comes ''[[WesternAnimation/Ben10Omniverse Omniverse]]'', he is introduced as robbing a brain bank for no apparent reason. A later episode ''kinda'' rerails him by having him trying to restore his power by eating emotions again, only with fear instead of joy.
** [[EvilTwin Albedo]] was initially introduced with the simple goal to get Ben's Omnitrix so he could use it to free himself from his ShapeShifterModeLock and get his original form back, and, while he was rather psychotic in his methods, it was made clear he had no real evil intentions beyond it (in one episode, he manages to temporarly get his original form back, and was ready to just leave Earth without any further fight). In ''Omniverse'', he actually succeeds in his goal, but is bitter toward Ben for all the things he went through in-between, and now focuses on revenge, which is still a logical approach. But then he goes full-blown CartoonishSupervillainy and tries to absorb [[BigGood Azmuth]]'s intelligence to become the smartest being in the galaxy, [[FridgeLogic even though a major part of his personnality was about trying to prove he was smarter than Azmuth already]]. His two next appearances have him work for [[BigBad Vilgax]] ([[TooDumbToLive Even though Vilgax betrayed him last time they teamed up and does it again a second time]]), with at least one case where he had nothing to gain from such an alliance and the other where he just wanted to overthrow Azmuth as First Thinker of Galvan Prime.

** The Fire Nation also suffers from motive decay over the course of the [[HopelessWar 100 year war]] - when the war began, [[WellIntentionedExtremist Fire Lord Sozin's]] goal was to [[WhiteMansBurden "share the Fire Nation's greatness with the rest of the world"]]. By the time the show starts, that's devolved into DespotismJustifiesTheMeans. Both the Dai Li and the Fire Nation's cases can be justified with the fact that the MotiveDecay occurred over several generations. Fire Lord Sozin ''started'' the 100 Year War but was long dead by the time it ended; Fire Lord Ozai and all other members of the Fire Nation's population (both civilian and military) were born when the war was already in full swing and grew up hearing propaganda justifying it.

** Based on the episode Trial, an argument could be made that the MotiveDecay was intentional, and was being used to support a major theme of the show: despite all attempts at a FreudianExcuse, these villains were simply terrible people who, under one gimmick or another, would be causing misery and suffering to others no matter what.

-->You're probably looking forward to one of my erudite speeches about me, [[{{Egopolis}} Megaframe]], the new viral dawn, et cetera et cetera. But I'm afraid I'm going to have to disappoint you. [[MotiveDecay There is no grand scheme here.]] This is about revenge.

* Gargamel originally wanted to use ''Franchise/TheSmurfs'' to make gold (he's a capitalist after all) or capture them to finally get some respect in his life, as the Smurfs are thought by many to be mythical. For some reason, in later seasons, he simply wanted to capture/eat/destroy the [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotPolitical blue communists]] for no real reason other than they kept besting his last plan to get them. This was made fun of in ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'' where he said he never was clear on his motive, and one episode of the actual series infamously lampshaded it with Gargamel saying "I don't want to eat them, I don't want to turn them into gold, all I want now is to DESTROY THEM!" [[Film/TheSmurfs The live-action films]] gave him a more legitimate motivation: his magic is fueled by blue essence, which he needs to extract from the Smurfs so he can become powerful enough to take over the world.

** The Vulture's initial motivation is to coerce Norman Osborn, with violence and lethally if necessary, to admit he stole his flight technology and apologize for it. After his first episode, he never once so much as mentions Norman Osborn and instead becomes Doctor Octopus's [[TheDragon right-hand man]] who seems more interested in taking down Spider Man than anything else.
** Contrasting him is Sandman who, like the Shocker and Beetle examples in comics, [[DefiedTrope makes sure not to fall into this]]. All he wants is to steal stuff and get rich, make his "big score," and makes this clear when offered the chance to get revenge against Spidey. In his final appearance, he gets pissed enough during combat to cause a lot more collateral damage than he intended, and when he realizes it, he helps Spider-Man rescue the civilians, saying he'd only been in the supervillain game for the bucks and never meant anything like that to happen.

* Gargamel originally wanted to use ''Franchise/TheSmurfs'' to make gold (he's a capitalist after all) or capture them to finally get some respect in his life, as the Smurfs are thought by many to be mythical. For some reason, in later seasons, he simply wanted to capture/eat/destroy the [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotPolitical blue communists]] for no real reason other than they kept besting his last plan to get them. This was made fun of in WesternAnimation/RobotChicken where he said he never was clear on his motive.
** One episode of the actual series infamously lampshaded it with Gargamel saying "I don't want to eat them, I don't want to turn them into gold, all I want now is to DESTROY THEM!"

** Creator/ChuckJones would often quote George Santayana's definition of a fanatic - "someone who doubles his efforts while forgetting his aim" - in describing Wile E. and intentionally made most of the humor come from the fact that even though ''gravity'' is clearly against him at times, he never gets the message and gives up/chases some other animal.