History WellIntentionedExtremist / WesternAnimation

** The Earl of Lemongrab fits this trope. Although he's a mean, sour, bitter, nasty-tempered JerkassWoobie, his intentions are pretty good. All he wants to do during his reign of the Candy Kingdom is live in a place that's quite and clean, free of pranks, trouble-makers, and anybody who bothers him. But he tries to achieve this mild goal through the worst, most extreme methods -- screaming constantly and sending everybody in the Candy Kingdom to the dungeon for ONE MILLION YEARS!!!
** [[Characters/AdventureTimePrincessBubblegum Princess Bubblegum]] fits this trope in the episode "What Have I Done". She wishes to cure the Candy Kingdom of their freezer-burn flu, by making the Ice King howl in pain. When the Ice King refuses, she resorts to making Finn and Jake capture him so she can beat the howls out of him. She later learns that it is not in Finn or Jake's heroic nature to beat people for no reason, and apologizes for forcing them.
*** This becomes a core part of Bubblegum's character as the series goes on. On the one hand, the Candy People are [[HobbesWasRight incapable of taking care of themselves, relying entirely on her autocratic role just to survive]], [[VetinariJobSecurity as is displayed anytime she's not around to babysit them]]. On the other hand, she's willing to go to some pretty scary lengths, including [[FinalSolution multiple counts of genocide]], [[PlayingWithSyringes unethical experimentation]], [[TheNeedsOfTheMany arranging the imprisonment of an (entirely unwitting)]] ApocalypseMaiden [[TheNeedsOfTheMany to make sure she never destroys the world]], [[SurveillanceAsThePlotDemands spying on her subjects and neighbors]] and later risking genocide ''again'' to disable an (already weakened) kingdom's remaining FantasticNuke arsenal. Notably, sometimes [[TheExtremistWasRight she's right]], other times [[KnightTemplar she really isn't]]. After she ramps up this behavior throughout all of season 5 and the first half of season 6, the episode "The Cooler" eventually causes Bubblegum to realize that these habits are causing more harm than good. [[spoiler:During the first part of the season 6 finale "Hot Diggity Doom", the King of Ooo takes advantage of Bubblegum's bad reputation and her citizens stupidity in order to win an election deciding who should rule the Candy Kingdom and wins. Because of this, Bubblegum decides to go into exile and spends the beginning of season 7 as well as the "Stakes" miniseries going though her own form of redemption which eventually causes her former citizens to turn on the King of Ooo at the end of the miniseries and let's her easily take her kingdom back.]]

** The fanatic but charismatic Jet, a guerrilla freedom fighter from mid-Season 1, who reappeared near the end of Season 2 with the intention of redeeming himself [[spoiler:only to discover that RedemptionEqualsDeath]].
** [[GeneralRipper General Fong]]: He continuously pressures Aang to forgo the elements he has yet to learn and go into the Avatar state so they can take out the Fire Lord, not knowing the implications of doing so (as did the cast and audience at that point). He points out all the soldiers in the infirmary, and mentions the many that have died. He even starts attacking Aang with his soldiers, so they can release the state. [[spoiler: He also buries Katara alive. This works - causing Aang to nearly kill General Fong.]]
** Sozin started off as this, but as he became older, he became more obsessed with power. [[spoiler: It took until the end of his life for him to acknowledge this, and by then it was too late to change the course he had set, as his descendants dropped the "well-intentioned" part completely.]]
** Hama. She wants to help fight the war so she does. [[spoiler:By imprisoning innocent Fire Nation civilians.]]
** [[spoiler: [[Characters/AvatarTheLastAirbenderKatara Katara]] ALMOST became this, seeking revenge after a Fire Nation soldier who killed her mother. She was driven to such rage that she casually uses blood bending to find the man. Only at the very last second does she hold herself back from actually killing him.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/TheAvengersEarthsMightiestHeroes'' has Kang the Conqueror. The future where he comes from is being erased from existence, so he goes to the past to fix this. He decided that the best way to do this is to conquer the past to prepare the people of Earth for the coming AlienInvasion. And to add to that, he thinks that the future destruction is caused by [[spoiler:Captain America]]. His solution? [[spoiler:To kill Captain America in order to save his future. Too bad he went after the wrong one]].

** Mister Freeze is introduced as one of the "revenge at any cost" variety, out to avenge himself on the CorruptCorporateExecutive who pulled the plug on the research he hoped to use to save his wife's life and caused the resulting FreakLabAccident that made him what he is. Batman manages to stop him, and also finds evidence of the executive's own crimes to ensure he's brought to justice as well.
** SequelSeries ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'' had Mad Stan, a BombThrowingAnarchist who was essentially a [[LaughablyEvil louder, dumber]] [[Literature/IndustrialSocietyAndItsFuture Unabomber]]. He genuinely wanted to improve society and get rid of corrupt institutions, but his way of going about it was simply [[MadBomber blowing up everybody that annoys him]].
---> '''Mad Stan:''' No more graft! No more payoffs! NO MORE JURY DUTY! [''EvilLaugh'']

** Kr'ull the Eternal simply wants to have an empire that won't age and die while he has to watch it suffer. He plans to replace all the humans in the world with eternal bodybuilders just like him. [[spoiler: By the 25th century, he seems to have gotten over it.]]

-->'''Soldier:''' "Dante, do not commit this wicked sin!"\\
'''Dante:''' "How is it a sin, if I'm already absolved?"

* ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'': Surprisingly, [[Characters/DuckTales2017FOWL F.O.W.L.]] is this to an extent, specifically its leader, [[Characters/DuckTales2017BradfordBuzzard Bradford Buzzard]]. A former accountant at S.H.U.S.H., he believed that the constant chaos of the world required someone to take it over and reign it in, but his ideas were understandably laughed off by Ludwig Von Drake. This led him to team up with noted villain [[CardCarryingVillain Black Heron]] to form F.O.W.L. so they could create an organization capable of putting the planet under their control while still enriching themselves in the process. The subsequent events of the first two seasons also lead them to trying to destroy the [=McDuck=] family, convinced their globetrotting adventures were putting the planet into too much chaos to effectively keep control over it.
** It's [[AvertedTrope averted]], however, by the rest of F.O.W.L.'s staff, specifically Black Heron, John D. Rockerduck, Steelbeak, and a few others, all of whom would rather conquer the world in a grand fashion simply because they're the villains, whereas Bradford, who doesn't see himself as a villain, wants to do things the smart way without attracting too much attention.
* On ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}},'' [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds Demona]] has undergone so much pain over the centuries due to humans that she basically wants to wipe them out so that gargoyles can inherit the Earth.
** On the other hand, she cannot admit to herself that a large part of the pain she suffers from is her own fault, blaming upon the humans her own mistakes.

** [[spoiler: The Society of The Blind Eye, whose goal is to help people forget about their bad memories, and to keep them happy and ignorant of the supernatural happenings in Gravity Falls. Unfortunately the memory ray slowly destroys the mind of its target with repeated use, and it most likely caused the stupidity of the townsfolk.]]
** [[spoiler: [[Characters/GravityFallsTheAuthor The Author]], who turns out to be ''Stan's brother'' may have been one, hoping to create a device that benefited mankind, but caused a terrible accident, so bad that [=McGucket=], who was his assistant, created the memory gun just to forget about it]].
** [[spoiler:Stan himself spent thirty years trying to rebuild the portal and bring his brother back. But he committed a lot of crimes, from false identification to theft of toxic waste, to rebuild it. Not to mention lying to his family, and ignoring the warning that activating the device could have triggered TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt]].
* The Great Computer and his late creator, Doctor Shibas, from the French animated series ''WesternAnimation/IlEtaitUneFois l'Espace'' (''Once Upon a Time... Space''). Their objective is the welfare of all sentients and defense against any and all tyrants and dictators, but already when Shibas was still alive they were willing to use the overwhelming military power of the immense and well-equipped army of robots built on Yama to do so. They come close to [[TheExtremistWasRight be right]], what with the general Pest being a mad dictator that [[TheFederation Omega]] cannot deal with due his enormous military strength. Shibas never considering using military strength until the construction crew he had invited from the nearby DeathWorld of Apis to build a city for their people destroyed one of his labs and factories, [[InsaneTrollLogic because he wasn't out there to help them personally instead of sending capable construction robots to do the job]]. They miss being right, though, due the horrible living conditions they force the human inhabitants of Yama and Apis (descendants of the construction crew and the colonists of Apis) into... And, knowing this, the Great Computer is trying to learn how to be a good ruler.

* In the 1930s MGM cartoon "Jitterbug Follies", Count Screwloose tries to scam the public by selling tickets for a show that won't go on, but a group called "Citizens For Fair Play" tell him to put on a show or else. They happen to to act and dress like 30s-style thugs.
* ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'' has the Justice Lords, an AlternateUniverse counterpart of the League who crossed the MoralEventHorizon after [[spoiler:Lord!Superman killed Luthor]]. Their actions in League's mainstream universe added fuel to the paranoia of other {{Well Intentioned Extremist}}s, resulting in the foundation of Project Cadmus specifically to contain the Justice League, led by : [[spoiler:Amanda Waller, Emil Hamilton and Wade Eiling]].
** When it comes to Project Cadmus, they actually come off as a weird inversion of StrawmanHasAPoint: though they genuinely do have a point in that it's reasonable to fear the League going rogue, as several of the League's own members (most notable the {{Badass Normal}}s Franchise/{{Batman}} and ComicBook/GreenArrow) admit, the lengths they go to make them appear far more villainous than the League ever does, with a list of crimes that includes:

*** Cloning Comicbook/{{Supergirl}} and rearing her as a living weapon, including dispatching her to murder people on their say-so (Galataea).
*** Creating a mutated, deformed, clone of Superman and abusing him in order to render him a living anti-Superman weapon, then losing control of him (Doomsday).
*** Using a gang of super-criminals to break into the Watchtower's vault and make off with a mystical Weapon of Mass Destruction (The Annihilator).

*** Engineering an entire team of genetically engineered "clone" superhumans and then replacing them with fresh clones when they invariably break down and die (the Ultimen)
*** One member, Wade Eiling, [[spoiler: eventually goes so nuts he injects himself with SuperSerum and outright attacks the [=Justice League=] in an effort to "prove" they are a threat.]]
*** Amanda Waller, meanwhile, [[spoiler: eventually defects from Cadmus, but comes to admire Batman so much that she decides that his genes must continue, even if he himself seems determined to drive away every single potential love interest with his obsessive fixation on "the duty". She does this by genetically modifying an unknowing couple so the man's sperm is genetically Bruce Wayne's -- something that's subtly implied causes their eventual divorce -- and then trying to get an assassin to murder the parents of the resultant sons in the belief that the traumatic murder-by-criminals of both parents is an essential "ingredient" in the recipe for Batman. However, said assassin also happened to be Bruce's former love interest [[WesternAnimation/BatmanMaskOfThePhantasm Andrea Beaumont]], who is ultimately unable to go through with it because it would be going against everything Bruce ever stood for. Realizing she crossed a line, she abandoned the project, but as fate would have it, [[WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond Terry McGinnis]], the end result of her project, would go on to meet Bruce on his own, and lose his father to Derek Powers by chance, thus ensuring that the project was a success. Waller even admits to Terry that she knows she has a lot of sins to answer for with God when her time finally comes.]]

** The [[MugglePower Equalists]], who want [[{{Muggle}} non-benders]] to be treated fairly. It's just that their means to achieve this is by the removal of [[ElementalPowers bending]] from the world.

* Charlie Dog from ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes''. Poor guy, all he wants is to be loved but he goes at it so wrong...

* ''WesternAnimation/MiraculousLadybug'': As of Season 2, it's strongly hinted that [[Characters/MiraculousLadybugHawkMoth Hawk Moth]] might be this. He wants the "ultimate power" that comes with possessing both Ladybug and Cat Noir's {{Transformation Trinket}}s not to TakeOverTheWorld, but simply to bring his beloved wife BackFromTheDead, and it's not yet clear whether or not he actually knows that the only way to accomplish such a feat is via BalancingDeathsBooks. This does not, however, make him any more of a sympathetic character, given that TheReveal of his motives came as a package with the reveal of his true identity as [[spoiler:Adrien's father.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/MollyOfDenali'': Downplayed in "Gold Strikeout." Molly, Tooey, and Trini want to take a lot of gold from the land so they can provide for their families. Molly was hesitant at first, as she knows that Grandpa Nat told her not to take too much stuff from the land, but was pressured into it by Tooey. Eventually, their sluice box ended up blocking the salmon from the creek, interfering with Nina's salmon counting project.
* Kaia and the Terras in ''{{WesternAnimation/Motorcity}}'', they oppose Kane like Mike Chilton and the Burners, as Kane spilled toxic waste into their home, mutating their environment [[spoiler:and their bodies]], but their plans to oppose Kane involve harming innocent Detroit Deluxe citizens.
* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'': [[Characters/FriendshipIsMagicTwilightSparkle Twilight Sparkle]] of all characters borders on this, given her tendency to resort to BrainwashingForTheGreaterGood in "Lesson Zero" and "Keep Calm and Flutter On", and otherwise coming up with ''very'' consequential solutions to problems like wanting to ''freeze time'' in ''It's About Time''. In canon she's never gone so far as to cause irrevocable damage, but FanFiction ''loves'' to give her a push [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope off the slippery slope]] and turn her into a KnightTemplar or [[AdaptationalVillainy full-fledged villain]].
* Helena in ''WesternAnimation/NeoYokio'' [[spoiler:blew up the Bachelor Ranking Board in the center of Neo Yokio. She saw the board as part of Neo Yokio's culture of greed and subjugation of the working class.]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'', [[Characters/TheOwlHouseTheGoldenGuard Hunter the Golden Guard]] carries out Emperor Belos's orders (including kidnapping [[BondCreature Palismen]] for Belos to consume and killing an innocent sea creature that wasn't bothering anyone) both because he believes everything he's doing is for the greater good, and because Belos is his uncle who saved his life as a child, taking him in and giving him an artificial staff after the rest of their family was killed, when Hunter likely would have never been able to build a future for himself otherwise. [[spoiler:When Hunter discovers all of this is a lie -- Belos's true intentions are to commit genocide on the Demon Realm and Hunter himself is the latest in a long line of clones made to look like Belos's late brother -- he has a massive panic attack, goes on the run, and pulls a HeelFaceTurn in his very next appearance]].

* As seen in "[[WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb Phineas and Ferb's]] Quantum Boogaloo" , as a result of Candace busting Phineas and Ferb for their rollercoaster, MoralGuardians embark on a misguided crusade for the abolition of creativity in children, ultimately having children be stored in PeopleJars until adulthood. All for the sake of keeping children safe.
* WordOfGod claims that this is the way the Brain from ''WesternAnimation/PinkyAndTheBrain'' should be viewed. He wants to rule the world not for the sake of being a dictator, like his rival Snowball, but because he believes that he could do a much better job of it than the people currently in charge. (And Brain has, indeed, done everything in his power to prevent Snowball's evil schemes, knowing that a world under Snowball's rule would be the worst scenario.)
* ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'':
** In "A Very Special Blossom," Blossom commits the crime of stealing the expensive golf clubs because she wanted to make the Professor happy. While the goal for Blossom to please the Professor was sympathetic and understandable, Blossom still committed a crime. She also went as far as to lying about finding the clubs and attempting to frame Mojo. Unfortunately, Blossom still has to face up to the legal consequences of her actions despite the Mayor and the Professor begging the police to go easy on her.
** The Mayor becomes one in the episode "Hot Air Buffoon." He wanted to fight crime without relying on the girls all the time, so he rides an air balloon with a boxing glove and starts punching out criminals...then he starts punching out innocent citizens in the process. The girls have no choice but to stop him.

* Ramses the Pharaoh from ''WesternAnimation/ThePrinceOfEgypt''. Rather than making him a cardboard cut-out villain, the creators wrote him as a WellDoneSonGuy with a FreudianExcuse who has a very close relationship with Moses (they grew up together as brothers), who's just doing what he feels is right for the country and his dynasty. His father is the same, and even gives a little speech about how it is necessary to make sacrifices for the greater good (the "sacrifice" being the mass-murder of children). Of course, neither of them feel particularly guilty about ordering the massacre of slaves.
* Stimpy in ''WesternAnimation/TheRenAndStimpyShow'''s first cartoon acts like this -- he wants Ren to be happy after his last invention, the Stay-Put Socks, pisses off Ren. So he builds the Happy Helmet, which ''forces'' him to be happy!

** Subverted. [[Characters/RickAndMortyEvilMorty Evil Morty]] is ''right'' to hate the system that spawned him. He was basically born into slavery to serve the whims of a group of underdeveloped man-children who ''wall off a portion of reality'' that allowed them to be the smartest person in any universe they travel to. The entire multiverse he existed in was massively corrupt that had no intention of ever allowing him to develop past a particular point, and no real freedom. But in the end, his intentions are solely to benefit himself, torturing and murdering countless innocent versions of himself in the process who had nothing to do with his own suffering.

* Played surprisingly straight in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''.
-->'''Sideshow Bob:''' Because you need me, Springfield. Your guilty conscience may force you to vote Democratic, but deep down inside you secretly long for a cold-hearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalize criminals, and rule you like a king. That's why I did this: to protect you from yourselves.
** On the other hand, the first thing Bob did as Mayor of Springfield was to bulldoze the Simpsons' house.
** Similarly, the episode "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming". Certainly, Bob claimed that he was doing a good deed by ridding Springfield of TV, but all it really did was make him the top dog in the manger.
*** Also, when Bob sees Springfield give into his demands, he exclaims "I should have made more demands!"
** Bob's not the only one to utilize this trope: Jimbo Jones often steals dolls because he believes that they would harm girls. Even Bart Simpson has had shades of this. One particular example had Bart gaining increased intelligence from a drug, but then seemingly growing insane and beginning to believe that the MLB was spying on the town. He then went as far as hijacking a tank from a military base, driving it across Springfield, and stopping in front of Springfield Elementary, and then proceeding to fire into the sky (after several tense moments where Bart periodically stopped the cannon on various locations [specifically, Springfield Elementary, the First Church of Springfield, and the Frame Shop, respectively]), shooting down the satellite, all in order to prove that he was indeed telling the truth and was certainly not crazy (well, for the most part).
** Homer also had shades of this. One notable instance of this is when he decided to go all TheGrinch on people on Christmas and steal gifts, because he legitimately believed that doing so would result in people actually caring for each other rather than focusing on themselves. Unfortunately for him, it backfired, resulting in the town hating him afterwards.
** Marge exhibits at least one moment of this when she rallies to have all sweets banned from Springfield under "Marge's Law", leading to a bootlegging operation in which Homer himself is involved.
** Mayor Quimby, the town's resident CorruptPolitician, also showcased shades of this. In one episode, he declared a 75 cent tax on the highway, and after people started evading it, tried to force people to go through the checkpoint. Why? Because he needed the tax money so that he could de-python the town fountain (which, as the phrase implies, means that the town fountain somehow got pythons in it, causing a panic when it sprays snakes instead of water, causing the occupants to leave). Another instance was when he tried to prohibit alcohol on St. Patrick's Day to reduce the potential amount of riots that would occur from being drunk, but it backfired when Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants were unable to put aside their differences without alcohol, and resulted in them still getting into a riot anyway.
** Mr. Burns also sometimes has this as his motivation for some of his bad actions in some episodes: a particularly notable example was when he tried to ruin the Power Plant's union in "Last Exit to Springfield". The reason he felt that he should eliminate them was because he realized that it was becoming inherently corrupt, remembering what a worker his grandfather had dragged off had said, and wanted to destroy said corruption one way or another.
* Often featured on ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' in the form of a [[StrawCharacter Strawman Political]].
** In TheMovie, Sheila and the other [[MoralGuardians Mothers Against Canada]] hold this role.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' episode "Prehibernation Week", the titular protagonist offers to spend one last week of playtime with Sandy before she goes to sleep for the winter. Unfortunately, her idea of fun involves dangerous extreme sports which soon become too much for him. Sandy is too engrossed in her games to listen to [=SpongeBob=], so he runs away and hides under Patrick's rock. In his rush to get away from her, he snags his pants on a reef and leaves them behind. When Sandy finds the discarded clothes, she jumps to the conclusion that something terrible has happened to [=SpongeBob=] and, concerned for his safety, forces ''everyone'' to look for him. She has them search in sulphur fields, sea monsters, poison sea urchin coves and leech farms, with no regard whatsoever for their health and wellbeing. After everyone bails on her, she tries to find [=SpongeBob=] alone, demolishing the entire city while screaming for him.
* In the final episodes of Season 5 of ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'', [[spoiler: Barriss Offee]] becomes one by bombing the Jedi Temple, because she believed the Jedi Order was degenerating from peace-keepers into warmongers, and believed they should be punished for it. That doesn't justify a bombing that killed many innocent people, however. Nor does it justify framing Ahsoka to cover your tracks.
* ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'': [[spoiler: After Steven accidentally un-bubbles the gem in Lion's mane, we meet Bismuth, who was one of the original Crystal Gems. In the final act of that same episode, we discover that she was bubbled by Rose Quartz for developing a weapon that could easily shatter a Gem's gemstone instead of just destroying their physical form (as long as the gemstone is intact, [[FromASingleCell their species can regenerate the body in a matter of minutes)]]. Such a tactic, while it would have likely helped win the GreatOffscreenWar with fewer casualties on the Crystal Gem side, was deemed as [[IfYouKillHimYouWillBeJustLikeHim stooping to Homeworld's level]] by Rose. This sentiment is shared by Steven, which leads to Bismuth being bubbled once again and the weapon destroyed.]]
* Examples of this trope often turned up as villains/antagonists on ''WesternAnimation/SuperFriends''.
** Including one villain who thought that it was such a CRIME to spend money on space exploration instead of helping the poor...as opposed to shrinking a whole space center and kidnapping everyone inside?
* The original ''WesternAnimation/{{Superfriends}}'' was full of guys like this, who were trying to save humanity (or thought they were) or one group of people through their actions, without considering the consequences. One example was a scientist who thought shrinking people could solve world hunger. (Since shrunken human ate far less than normal-sized ones, it made sense, right?) Another example was a scientist who altered the Gulf Stream to the point where he could practically control the weather; his intent was to aid his poverty-stricken nation of Glacia with better farmland, even if it crippled the rest of the world, as he was sure nobody else cared about them. (In truth, nobody else had even ''heard'' of them, and simply asking for help could have avoided a lot of problems.) Another was an alien from Venus who was trying to make the environment of Earth more like his planet so his people could colonize it, because industrial pollution had made the temperature on Venus too cold for them to tolerate. (Again, simply asking for help never occurred to them.)
* Bull Gator from ''WesternAnimation/TazMania'' is this. He wants to make the zoo-going children happy...even if it means capturing and imprisoning a Tasmanian Devil, separating him from his friends and family.
* Agent Bishop from the second ''{{WesternAnimation/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles|2003}}'' animated series has one mission: to protect Earth from an alien invasion. In order to achieve this, he has used aliens as unwilling test subjects for genetics experiments, faked an alien invasion and kidnapped the President in a ploy to guarantee funding for his agency, the Earth Protection Force, attempted to produce a sleeper army of super-soldiers to covertly kill people suspected of being aliens, and, ironically, prolonged an alien invasion in order to fulfill the terms of an agreement with yet another group of aliens. Eventually, however, deciding that diplomacy is a more long-lasting and effective way of protecting Earth, he gives up Black Ops.
* In almost all incarnations of ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'', Megatron is forced to become one of these because Decepticons were second-class citizens due to an earlier war. That is, of course, his only redeeming quality and it isn't a very good one.
** Well, some of them are nice guys to those troops that don't betray them, and name Prime a "worthy opponent".
** And note that, despite being "the bad guys", not all Decepticons are inherently evil. Many of them are [[PunchClockVillain just soldiers doing their jobs]], and it's hardly their fault that the side they picked happened to have attracted the most psychos.

* Nerissa, the main villain from ''WesternAnimation/{{WITCH}}'', was part of the previous group of heroines charged with protecting the universe. She soon came to the conclusion that the only way to truly do this was to bring it under her rule, and personally ensure that there would be no war, suffering, or injustice. For the most part, she ensured that no innocent people were harmed in her crusade, aside from {{the hero}}es who opposed her.
** Not that she cares if innocent people get hurt, mind you. Considering how she [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness treated her own minions]] (that she created, one of which was a copy of her successor that she [[spoiler: killed after she refused to fight the original to the death]], basically her ''children'' [[spoiler: and created an actual son strictly to use in her plans]]. It's also implied that she was behind the first season's BigBad rise to power as a part of an EvilPlan to obtain enough power to begin her conquest which lead to civil war on Meridian for over a decade. Her ideal world [[spoiler: inside her prison at the end of Season 2]] is one where everyone loves and obeys her, possibly meaning her "perfect world" mission statement is a self-delusion to cope with her ItsAllAboutMe tendencies. Also, her StartOfDarkness was when she killed (accidentally, but still a serious loss of control) her friend after their boss gave her position to said friend. She was also petty enough to sic an animated garbage can on a vagrant just for looking at her wrong. This is ''not'' a person you want running your universe.

** ComicBook/{{Magneto}} of ''WesternAnimation/WolverineAndTheXMen2009'' sees himself as closer to this than KnightTemplar, but considering his plan... well, it's probably closer to the latter in the eyes of others.

* The National Security Agency of ''WesternAnimation/TheZetaProject'' veer in and out of this trope. They exist to take down high tech terrorists and threats to human life, basically serving as the FBI and CIA of their universe. However, they themselves have had a lot of morally gray moments. Allowing a mad bomber to kill people because he'd get a terrorist they were after in the process, for instance, along with a lot of human rights violations all over the place. You have no right to a trial, they do not need a search warrant, they can detain you against your will, you do not have the right to an attorney when interrogated, and they carry weapons that are a lot more vicious and brutal than bullets. The zigzagging trope part comes in when they're proven to be completely right half the time and, as a part of the DCAU, they've faced end of the world scenarios before.

* ''WesternAnimation/MiraculousLadybug'': As of Season 2, it's strongly hinted that [[Characters/MiraculousLadybugHawkMoth Hawk Moth]] might be this. He wants the "ultimate power" that comes with possessing both Ladybug and Chat Noir's {{Transformation Trinket}}s not to TakeOverTheWorld, but simply to bring his beloved wife BackFromTheDead, and it's not yet clear whether or not he actually knows that the only way to accomplish such a feat is via BalancingDeathsBooks. This does not, however, make him any more of a sympathetic character, given that TheReveal of his motives came as a package with the reveal of his true identity as [[spoiler:Adrien's father.]]

** [[spoiler: [[Characters/GravityFallsGrunkleStan Stan]] himself spent thirty years trying to rebuild the portal and bring his brother back. But he committed a lot of crimes, from false identification to theft of toxic waste, to rebuild it. Not to mention lying to his family, and ignoring the warning that activating the device could have triggered TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt]].