Adaptational Sympathy in Live-Action TV.
- Batwoman (2019):
- Like her comics counterpart, Alice, alias Beth Kane, is a violent sadist with no qualms about killing innocent people. Where her counterpart on this show differs is due to the circumstances of her kidnapping; in the comics, a terrorist group kidnapped the Kanes to force her and her sister Kate to take over their organization. In the show, the Joker drove a school bus full of kidnapped children into their car, and thanks to a faulty door handle, Batman's attempt to save them while chasing his nemesis led to Beth and her mother seemingly falling to their death. Beth then spent the next several years being raised by the psycho Augustus Cartwright so his son Mouse could have a playmate, and everyone in Gotham except for Kate thought she had died. She escapes, ending up on the island of Coryana, home of Safiyah, and falls in love with her trainer and Safiyah's adoptive brother Ocean. Instead, their attempt to leave and start a new life results in Safiyah, a Woman Scorned, to wipe their memories of each other as well as Beth's empathy, causing her to become a heartless psychopath.
- Black Mask's comics counterpart is a Sadist, a Torture Technician, a horribly misogynistic person, and a genuine Bad Boss with a Hair-Trigger Temper. His counterpart on this show is most of that, but this time he's a Well-Intentioned Extremist who wants to rid Gotham of Batwoman and the Crows for the corruption he perceives both of them are responsible for creating. Much of it is motivated by his daughter being killed (or so he claims) by Batwoman following her being falsely arrested by the Crows.
- The late Killer Croc is treated as such by having him take the Was Once a Man route, given his famous mutation well into his adulthood and slowly driven into a mindless monster rather than being born with his condition. His unfortunate predecessor is given a similar treatment when getting scratched by Croc's tooth turns him into a bad guy.
- Poison Ivy undergoes her usual "college girl transformed into plant-human hybrid" origin, but it fleshes out her environmental crusade further by revealing that her family was always poor, and her brother died from poisoned water caused by the Gotham Industrial District because her family relied on herbal remedies in lieu of health insurance they couldn't afford.
- The Book of Boba Fett: The famous bounty hunter Boba Fett has a more sympathetic backstory compared to his Legends counterpart. After he got out of the Sarlacc pit, that Boba was nursed back to health by Dengar, continuing his career as a bounty hunter and later the leader of Mandalore, dealing with the occasional health crisis and pulling an Enemy Mine or two with Solo and his allies in the New Republic. For his canon counterpart, this series places a greater emphasis on the traumas he experienced not just in being hurt by the Sarlacc (which he escaped himself this time around), but also his initial enslavement by the Tuskens before being welcomed into their ranks until they're sadistically slaughtered by the Pykes, and a Culture Clash in trying to rule over Jabba's criminal empire with a more honorable tact compared to his predecessor. And as Bo-Katan found out the hard way when the legendary hunter returned on The Mandalorian, do NOT insult his father.
- The Boys (2019): The comics showed every supe as a murderous or perverted bastard whose heroism is just a front for corporate sponsors. In contrast, most of the supes in the show used to be heroic people only to be corrupted by celebrity culture and their greed-driven corporate backers.
- The Expanse: In the book, Captain Ashford was insane beyond insane, and a man hellbent about power above all else. The series rewrites him as a Reasonable Authority Figure who genuinely wants a better future for the OPA so they can be a power equally respected by—and at peace with—Earth and Mars. His actions in this series come not from a place of greed, but of genuine fear of the ring gates to the point he nearly dooms the entire human race when the events of the series cause all manner of hell for everyone there (though he fortunately comes to his senses).
- Gotham:
- The Penguin gets this treatment, as in Batman Returns, albeit in a different way. Having spent his life raising his elderly, kindhearted mother, he spends the entire series being pushed around, mistreated, having his heart broken, tortured, manipulated, losing both of his parents to self-serving criminals, and just generally having having his chain yanked when he gets a moment of happiness. Combine all of this, and his transition into Gotham's most notorious crime lord has a lot deeper meaning than just being a Card-Carrying Villain.
- The Riddler used to be a nerdy and otherwise socially awkward forensic analyst for the GCPD, having a hopeless crush on a secretary. He learns her boyfriend is an abuser, so he kills him. Things start going his way, then he accidentally confesses his misdeed and strangles her to death, and it all goes downhill from there. A fractured personality emerges, leading to The Riddler, and he still gets put through the Trauma Conga Line over losing a girl who happened to look exactly like his dead girlfriend because of a jealous Penguin, being frozen alive, having his mind screwed with by Hugo Strange, and his brief fling with Lee Tompkins ending in both of their deaths and forced resurrection.
- The Joker... possibly. As the series treated the Clown Prince of Crime as more of a legacy and less of a character, the two men presented in the possible identity — Jerome Valeska and his twin Jeremiah — as having been put through the wringer beforehand. With Jeremiah, he's always lived in fear that Jerome would kill him, and spent his entire life hiding out to stay alive. He does, and Jerome ends up dead, but he gets turned into the (possible) Joker as a "final gift". As for Jerome, it's indicated his parents were abusive, but it's left very ambiguous as to how bad his psychosis truly was, and whether or not the actions he's accused of were true.
- Krypton:
- 200 years prior to Krypton's destruction, the House of El had been destroyed by the House of Vex as punishment for defying their corrupt theocracy (as in claiming the existence of other worlds), becoming pariahs amongst the populous and making life difficult for Superman's grandfather, Seg-El, well before his son become the famous Ignored Expert who's warnings of Krypton's destruction fell on deaf ears.
- The House of Zod, progenitors to General Dru-Zod and his ilk, threw in a surprising take on this with the man himself, having traveled back in time to prevent Krypton's destruction out of a genuine love for his people—even if it's mixed in with Zod's usual desires of conquest and power.
- Even Doomsday is not immune to this—rather than being a creature of pure destruction made to be the ultimate killing machine and nothing more, the man who would become Doomsday used to be a man who willingly volunteered for various experiments conducted by the Houses of El and Zod to create a super-soldier capable of resisting any form of attack, only for all that Body Horror to twist him into an unrecognizable monster his own wife couldn't bear to witness.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Though the Orcs are just as morally abhorrent here as they in the books and movies, they also turned from the archetypal Always Chaotic Evil race to Not Always Evil. They were once Elves, now corrupted by Morgoth's evilness into Orcs, something that is never explicitly stated in movies or books (this is canon to the books, because the idea of Orcs being corrupted Elves comes from Tolkien, he just could never make up his mind about the origins of the Orcs). Adar, is the first Tolkien's Legendarium Orc on Tv shown being capable of true compassion and love.
- Once Upon a Time:
- The Evil Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was a heartless woman who sought to kill her step-daughter for being prettier than her. This Evil Queen is shown to have lived under a particularly heartless mother who wanted her to act out of ambition and power above all else, lost her true love because said mother coerced a young Snow White into giving up his identity (and then subsequently killed him), and is forced to kill her own father to send everyone to the real world due to him being the only thing she truly loves.
- Rumpelstiltskin, in his own fairy tale, was a little manipulative imp who could worm his way into people's lives and give them what they wanted in exchange for taking something from them, unless they figured out his name. With no motivation beyond that, the show went out of its way to put him through the Trauma Conga Line and set him on the path to villainy. In this series, he was a loving father and a devoted husband, who willingly injured himself prior to being shipped off to fight in the Ogre Wars so his son would still have a father to raise him. His wife calls him a coward, up and leaves him for Captain Hook, and he spends all of his days as a hobbling cripple whom the entire town hates for wimping out and not going off to fight. He then ends up becoming "The Dark One", the ultimate evil in the Enchanted Forest, and spends his days causing the events of the series so he can reunite with his lost son when his actions drive him away.
- In Peter Pan amd most adaptations, Captain Hook is just an evil pirate captain who never got much details about how he came to be. In the series, his background is more fleshed out, giving him an abusive father and having him lose his beloved brother when they both served the king in the marine, which made him lose faith into the king and made him decide to become a pirate. His hatred on Peter Pan is also much more understanable as the latter is hit with Adaptational Villainy in this version.
- The original Snow Queen, aka Elsa and Anna's Aunt gets this treatment. As mentioned in the Animated Films section, the original tale made her an Ambiguously Evil character, while others had her go down the villainous route. This Queen was a bad guy because, much like her niece, she was mistreated for her powers, and accidentally killing her sister led her to be sealed in a special jar for something she had no control over.
- Ursula in The Little Mermaid is a power-hungry sea witch who only seeks the Atlantican Throne from King Triton for no other reason than to have control over his domain and be free to do whatever she wanted. This version was a mermaid (and Poseidon's daughter) who borrowed some traits from Ariel in that she lived under a Fantasy-Forbidding Father who fell in love with a human and was willing to give up everything to be with him, including her singing voice. But, when said human ends up dead, she snaps and turns to villainy.
- Preacher (2016) does this with the television series' interpretation of Odin Quincannon. While the source material consistently showed Odin Quincannon to be a deranged racist to the very end, the television series scales back his unscrupulous traits to simply being a Corrupt Corporate Executive and Hollywood Atheist who's the way he is because of his family getting killed in a freak accident.
- There are quite a few of these in the Netflix version of The Sandman (2022):
- Played with in the case of Roderick Burgess. The comic version of Burgess seeks to capture Death out of nothing but a desire for immortality, money, and power, while this one is at least partially motivated by hoping that his dead son can be brought back to life. The Netflix version of Burgess also doesn't engage in at least some of the various other crimes of the comic version, who liberally used blackmail, murder, and magical assassinations to his advantage. However, the show also goes to lengths to add or explicitly show Kick the Dog moments of his that were either not present or only implied in the comics, especially with regards to showing his abuse of his second son, Alex. He's also quick to drop all of his more sympathetic motivations once he begins using Dream's tools for material gain.
- Alex Burgess is mostly just A Lighter Shade of Black compared to his father in the comics. While he stops the worst practices of his father's cult after taking over, he still demands the same things his father did from Dream. This version is shown from his early days as an abused child desperate for his father's approval, and repeatedly shows sympathy for Dream. After the death of his father, Alex doesn't demand immortality or power, only a promise that Dream not harm him or his lover Paul. Unfortunately, this version of Alex did kill Dream's raven Jessamy right in front of Dream under pressure from his father, so Dream is not inclined to forgive and forget.
- John Dee in the comics is the minor supervillain Doctor Destiny, who, while somewhat pitiable, was also an utterly mad megalomaniac who used the Ruby to initiate a worldwide wave of murder and madness for the fun of it. He also murdered Rosemary, a woman who had been helpful to him and he seemed to bond with, in cold blood and for absolutely no reason. The Netflix version is something closer to a Psychopathic Manchild who was severely impacted by his early life and upbringing, and has a Black-and-White Insanity outlook on the world. Also, instead of killing Rosemary, even though he has actual reason to be upset with her this time, he instead gives her his Amulet of Protection, acknowledging her as one of the few good people he's ever met.
- A Song of Ice and Fire:
- Game of Thrones: In the books, Cersei Lannister only cares about herself, lets her eldest son Joffrey do whatever he wants which extends to committing cruel acts, and is quite abusive to her youngest son Tommen for trying to stand up for himself. In the show, Cersei was given sympathetic qualities where she does care about her children and loves them very much. She's even aware of Joffrey's actions and doesn't approve of them but she still loves him in any way. After Joffrey died during his wedding, Cersei becomes worried about the safety of her younger children, Myrcella and Tommen. And when Myrcella was poisoned by Ellaria Sand, Cersei is completely devasted and wonders why her sweet and kind daughter has to die. The deaths of her two children slowly made her unstable and by the time Tommen kills himself after she blows up the Sept of Baelor, she doesn't mourn for him and becomes crueler once she's crowned queen of the Seven Kingdoms.
- House of the Dragon: In Fire & Blood, we never meet Rhea Royce. Here we do, and she seems great. She's cut from the same cloth as other fan-favorite tomboy ladies from the series like Arya or Lyanna. It always seemed like Daemon Targaryen was probably an Unreliable Expositor about her, but this confirms it. The creators note in the behind-the-scenes for the episode that they decided to show her as someone who wasn't as Daemon described, the dislike was just mutual between them.
- Superman & Lois:
- Morgan Edge was given this treatment. Though the original character underwent Adaptational Villainy following Crisis on Infinite Earths, and became a genuine Corrupt Corporate Executive in both the comics and his depiction in Supergirl (2015), the subsequent reset of the Arrowverse following its own Crisis on Infinite Earths (2019) saw him become this. He is Superman's brother Tal-Rho, son of Zeta-Rho and Lara Lor-Van, who was raised by an abusive father into believing that strength was the only way to live, and survived Krypton's destruction, only to be held hostage and experimented upon by the British government.
- John Henry Irons, alias Steel, is given an entirely different backstory in this series. While initially touted as a version of Lex Luthor from another Earth, Irons comes from a reality where Superman bought into his brother's logic that humans are weak and need to be conquered, taking over the planet with an army of Kryptonian soldiers in a matter of weeks. Irons was part of a resistance against him, but lost his wife—his Earth's Lois Lane—and was apparently separated from his daughter during the events of Crisis. When he arrives on Earth Prime, he tries killing Superman, believing him to be the same monster, until that Earth's Lois talks him out of it and helps him move past his pain.
- Bizarro is best known as a defective clone of Superman who runs on backwards logic, and can be friend or foe depending or not if someone with a bone to pick with the Man of Steel messes with his head. This Bizarro hails from a dimension that cult leader Ally Allston's alternate counterpart has taken over, making him more of a Tragic Monster as he seeks to stop Earth-Prime's Ally from merging with her other self and becoming a god.
- The Wheel of Time (2021):
- A conversation with Moraine hints that there's a Freudian Excuse towards her hatred of men, as she says that while she's free in the Tower, in other parts of the world "powerful men do what they want". Her book counterpart had no such implication, or any sort of tragic backstory besides growing up poor and being envious of nobles.
- She also gets even more sympathetic in Season 2 by the reveal she has an elderly son whom she cares for while facing the fact he'll die soon. The book character wasn't a mother and showed no tenderness toward any man. It serves to soften and humanize her on the show.
- It's revealed she was forced to marry as a girl even before reaching menarche, so it's no wonder she hates men after that (aside from her son). In the books Liandrin had no such sympathetic backstory.
- In the live-action drama based on Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches, Asuka is introduced as a villain just as in the manga, but she is painted in a more sympathetic light, given a Freudian Excuse (Yamazaki was the only one who seemed to respect her as a human being and not just see her as a girl), and she defects at the end. In the manga, she's the only villain in the first witch war (the arc that the live-action drama and anime are both based on) who really is a clear-cut villain — not cartoonily evil, since she is in many ways also a regular high school student, but unlike Yamazaki and Rika, she doesn't have any reasons or excuses for the things she does.
