Adaptational Villainy / The DCU

The DCU

Adaptational Villainy in this series.

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Comic Books

Comic Books

• Amalgam Universe:
  • Cable and Manhunter are both heroes in their respective universes but become the villainous mercenary Wired.
  • Deathlok (a cyborg who, in every iteration, wishes to break free of his killing machine programming) and Jason Todd (the then-thought-dead Robin, whose Red Hood Anti-Villain days wouldn't be for another nine years) are merged into a ruthless cyborg HYDRA agent.
  • Mr. Freeze lacks the redeeming qualities he has in the comics, due to being merged with Nazi scientist Wolfgang von Strucker.
• Batman: Damned shows a nasty depiction of Bruce Wayne's family. Thomas Wayne is a shameless philanderer who picks up women in young Bruce's presence and threatens to divorce Martha when she confronts him on it. Martha, in response, hires a hitman to have Thomas assassinated so she can get the Wayne fortune before the divorce is finalized - the implication being that the hitman was Joe Chill. No wonder Batman is even more messed up here than his mainstream depiction.
• Batman: Thrillkiller:
  • Two-Face in the mainstream continuity was ultimately a tragic figure who was constantly trying and failing to reform. His counterpart Duell is a Dirty Cop racketeer who ends up becoming Bianca Steeplechase's first right-hand man and has zero redeeming qualities.
  • Killer Croc may be a violent criminal, but he's never been the bodyguard to a Nazi.
  • At the time of the comic's release, Harley Quinn was still a villain and Joker's gleeful sidekick in the mainstream continuity, but her tragic elements are omitted in this canon.
• Played With in Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam: when Freddy first shows up, he blames Captain Marvel for his disability and originally gains superpowers as Black Adam's sidekick. Of course, within a few issues he realizes that was a bad idea and defects for the Marvel Family.
• Catwoman: Guardian of Gotham: In a world where Catwoman and Batman have switched places, with the former becoming a vigilante superhero after her wealthy parents were killed, you'd think Batman would just be some handsome Gentleman Thief who often flirts with the female protagonist... he's more of a deranged Serial Killer who murders the Joker in his first scene before offing the rest of Catwoman's Rogues Gallery to prevent them from stealing his spotlight. He's also revealed to be the one to have killed Selina Kyle's parents For the Evulz. The whole Dating Catwoman angle is invoked when Bruce seduces and marries Selina, then murders her best friend before trying to kill her as well.
• The Flash:
  • One of the changes made Post-Crisis was changing Rudy and Mary West, Wally West's biological parents, from good parents into Abusive Parents, both emotionally and, in Rudy's case, physically.
  • In The Flash (Rebirth), Professor Zoom is delighted to learn that one of the differences between the history of this Flash and the one he's familiar with is that Barry's future children, Don and Dawn, become villains because he was never there for them. In the previous continuity, they were the heroic Tornado Twins. Barry later manages to make this right.
  • In Jay Garrick: The Flash, the mysterious Dr Elemental is eventually revealed as Professor Hughes, the scientist from Jay's origin. The fourth issue gives a Once More, with Clarity version of the original Flash Comics story, in which Hughes triggers the alleged Freak Lab Accident deliberately from the next room, and later shoots the doctor who discovers Jay's abilities to prevent the results of his experiment coming out before he's ready. Since then, he's killed many people in trying to recreate the effect, and eventually taken funding from the Nazis, but still convinced himself it's all for the greater good in the long run.
• Batman and Red Hood are usually heroes. In Gotham City Garage, Bruce Wayne is Lex Luthor's chief enforcer and Jason Todd leads a road gang.
• Green Arrow (Rebirth) reintroduces Green Arrow's mother, Moira Queen, and applies elements of her portrayal as a reluctant criminal in Arrow to the character without any of the depth or reluctance she had in the show, most notably attempting to start a war in the Middle East for the sake of reaping its profits. Likewise, Green Arrow's Friend on the Force Eddie Fyers takes after the same show's portrayal of the character as a Psycho for Hire, albeit working for Moira instead of Amanda Waller.
• A staple of DC Comics' Hanna-Barbera Beyond line, since the franchise is basically grimmer takes on old Hanna-Barbera properties. To wit:
  • Scooby Apocalypse: Just like in the movies, the traditionally heroic Scrappy is a little bully.
  • Wacky Raceland: A good chunk of the cast is portrayed this way compared to Wacky Races. For instance, Red Max in the original series was a bumbling, yet gentlemanly German pilot. In Raceland, well...he's a Nazi.
• Just Imagine... Stan Lee Creating the DC Universe: This continuity's take on the Doom Patrol are a villain team rather than a hero team, though the namesakes of the individual members (Deathstroke, Blockbuster and Parasite) were already villains.
• Legion Of Superheroes:
  • In the 2004 reboot, White Witch, Polar Boy and Chlorophyll Kid (as Plant Lad) are all members of the Wanderers, which is an antihero version of the Legion of Super-Villains. In the original continuity, White Witch is a Legionnaire, and Polar Boy and Chlorophyll Kid are founders of the Legion of Substitute Heroes.
  • The Dominator War: In the original continuity, the Dominators were originally a warlike alien race, but they could be reasoned with (sometimes holding peace talks with the United Planets government). In this story arc belonging to the 2004 reboot, they are "an entire race of irredeemable monsters" who need to be dealt with permanently.
• The basic theme of Michael Cray is Cray hunting down the Wild Storm universe counterparts of the Justice League, who are all complete monsters. Oliver Queen became obsessed with survival on the island and now hunts people to see if they deserve to live; Barry Allen is a paranoid lunatic with a Split Personality who uses his Super-Speed to murder anyone working to develop Artificial Intelligence; Arthur Curry is a mutant fish monster and lawyer-friendly equivalent of Dagon; John Constantine is a sociopathic dark wizard and even more of a prick than his mainstream equivalent; and Diana Prince is a Corrupt Corporate Executive and religious zealot planning to unleash the Old Gods on the world who gets her powers from LexCorp experimental super-steroids.
• The Multiversity:
  • In Thunderworld #1, Magnificus Sivana is on his father's side with Junior and Georgia, while traditionally he's a good guy and friend of the Marvel Family.
  • In Pax Americana #1, Sarge Steel, a hero in both The DCU and the Charlton Comics universe, is the bloodthirsty second in command of the evil Vice President.
• The New 52 (as with the Wonder Woman examples below, many of these were reversed by DC Rebirth):
  • Mr. Freeze, who has been revised to be less of an Anti-Villain. He's still out to cure his frozen wife Nora - but this is a lie. Nora was preserved long before Freeze was even born, he's just deluded himself into believing they're married as part of his obsession with cold. Of course, the antivillain version of Freeze in the first place was based off of his alternate portrayal in Batman: The Animated Series. The original Freeze, from the Silver Age, lacked any such humanizing qualities, being an unrepentant villain who uses a cold theme.
  • In Aquaman, Vulko has undergone a Face–Heel Turn, due to bitter exile.
  • The Creeper, formerly a Good Counterpart to The Joker as well as an alter ego of Jack Ryder, was brought back in Katana as an oni who seems to want to haunt Ryder.
  • In the original Batman comics, Francine Langstrom was the long-suffering wife of Kirk Langstrom/Man-Bat, whose occasional bouts of being She-Bat were either against her will or out of a desire to keep her family together, and she generally had more control than Kirk did. The New 52 version is an industrial spy who only married Kirk to steal the Man-Bat formula, and who based her own version of the serum on a vampire bat, making her much more vicious than Kirk is..
  • In the New 52 Teen Titans, Raven is a willing servant of her father, the demon Trigon, and is using the Titans as part of a thus-far undisclosed plan; Superboy is a living weapon who doesn't really "get" morality (and was later replaced by a full-blown murderous psychopath); Cassie/Wonder Girl is a thrill-seeking cat burglar; and Bart/Kid Flash is a former terrorist leader (albeit against a really horrible-seeming regime). Tim/Red Robin is a bit of a jerk as well.
  • In the original New Gods, the good gods of New Genesis were the creative free-will of chaos, and the evil gods of Apokolips were the stifling controlling forces of order. In the New 52 version (as seen in Infinity Man and the Forever People and Green Lantern: Godhead) they both represent order and control, with Highfather as a Well-Intentioned Extremist, who may be just as much a threat to humanity as Darkseid.
  • Before Flashpoint, Terry Sloane was Mister Terrific, a superhero from the Justice Society of America who believed in "Fair Play" - the Earth 2 version (named Mister 08), on the other hand, reads more like Lex Luthor; a smug, manipulative know-it-all who attempted to destroy his planet in a misguided attempt to save it.
• Supergirl: Supergirl's father Zor-El was a decent, nice person and a good father in the original pre-Crisis continuity. Post-Crisis he was briefly portrayed as a paranoid lunatic defined by his jealousy of Jor-El, who turned Kara into a weapon, but that got retconned as a hallucination. In the New 52 universe and Supergirl (Rebirth) he took part in the creation of world-killing biological weapons and became the villainous Cyborg Superman.
• Pre-Crisis Superman comics would see Morgan Edge as a ruthless businessman, but was overall a Benevolent Boss to his employees, though a clone impersonating him did have ties to Intergang and Darkseid. Post-Crisis, Edge was a Corrupt Corporate Executive with genuine ties to Intergang.
• In Superman Family Adventures, Lor-Zod was raised by his villainous parents and works with them. In pre-Flashpoint mainstream comics he gets adopted by Superman and Lois Lane, renamed "Chris Kent" and becomes a superhero himself. Superman (Rebirth) makes the SFA version canon so Jonathan Samuel Kent could have an Evil Counterpart.
• Batman (Tom King):
  • While the aforementioned New 52 Mr. Freeze is retconned back into a Tragic Villain again, DC unfortunately decided to give this treatment to his poor wife Nora instead! As when Nora is cured of her terminally illness by becoming a blue-skinned cold mutant like Victor, Nora becomes Drunk with Power and during her crime spree with her husband displays brutality to innocents that disturbs even Victor. When he tries to halt her cruelty, Nora abandons him stating she loves being in control for once and later even attempts to kill her husband. While it was an effort to subvert the usual Stuffed In A Fridge (literally) treatment of Nora, it ultimately does the same thing the New 52 did to Mr. Freeze i.e remove all the uniquely sympathetic traits from her character, resulting in Nora being a Gender Flip version of the generically evil Silver Age Mr. Freeze.
  • The Tom King run does this to Thomas Wayne, of all people, as his Flashpoint version whom became Batman himself comes back as a Evil Counterpart desperately trying to stop his son's "suicide mission" even if that means working alongside supervillains and beating the shit out of Bruce, his grandson Damian and the rest of the Bat-Family to do so. This villainy would later be retconned in Infinite Frontier when he joins Justice Incarnate, and it's revealed that Negative Speed Force manipulation by Eobard Thawne was used to make him evil.
• Teen Titans: Wonder Dog in Superfriends is a cute, Scooby-Doo-like mascot. Wonder Dog in the DC comics is a hellhound belonging to Ares' son who disguised himself as a normal dog, killed Marvin, and paralyzed Wendy, carrying out his master's desires to target Wonder Girl. He ended up getting killed by the Teen Titans in the end.
  • In his cameo in the Justice League episode "Ultimatum" he's portrayed similarly as a beast.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Played within the case of the Greek gods and goddesses in the comic. A number of them started out as Lighter and Softer than they were in Greek Mythology. However, Ares, the God of War, is portrayed as so dangerous and Too Powerful to Live that Wonder Woman has to actually kill him in at least two adaptations. Ares in the Greek myths, although The Berserker and ironically a bit of a Dirty Coward, looked after his kids and was worshipped like the other gods. However, the more recent Wonder Woman stories have taken to portraying the pantheon as somewhere closer to what they were like in mythology.
  • Since its change from Paradise Island to Themyscira the Amazon homeland has always had its share of misandrists and Straw Feminists, but their attitude gradually descended over the years from an isolationist community serving as a refuge for women, to having a few bad apples, to having a legit excuse for hating and fearing men (being the spirits of women who were murdered by abusive spouses), to the New 52, where they have truly become evil, raping and murdering men in order to reproduce and engaging in child slave trading. Most fans were furious. The New 52 explanation has been retconned away with DC Rebirth by revealing that everything Diana knew of them was actually a lie.
  • Heracles in the modern adaptation is portrayed as a villain who raped Hippolyta (instead of just seducing her). He becomes The Atoner, however.
  • Ironically, in the New 52 Wonder Woman series, Ares (only referred to as "War") is one of the few Olympians who isn't somewhat villainous. The most villainous of the Olympians is Apollo, one of the most noble Olympian gods in the original mythology.
  • Cottus, one of the Hekatonkheires, is a major enemy of Wonder Woman and a frighteningly powerful Person of Mass Destruction. In mythology, he and his brothers allied with the Olympians against the Titans and he was their jailer in Tartarus.
  • The New 52 version of Donna Troy was never Wonder Girl and was created as a murderous misandrist to lead the Amazons in slaughtering their male offspring. This change was undone in Wonder Woman (Rebirth) and Titans (Rebirth) where its revealed her mind was tampered with and her past as Wonder Girl did really occur.
  • In Wonder Woman (1987) Dr. Leslie Anderson spoke out against her friend Veronica Cale's questionable opinions, and once she realized her friend was a villain left to tell Wonder Woman what she'd learned and ally with her. In Wonder Woman (Rebirth) Cale is given much more sympathetic motivations so Dr. Anderson never leaves her side and dies fighting Wondy.
  • In The Legend of Wonder Woman Antiope is Spared by the Adaptation at the cost of becoming a villain instead of being the Amazon to lead those who could not accept the god's biased judgement of their actions in killing the men who drugged, raped and enslaved them and instead chose to remain mortal and abandon the gods like main DC counterpart.
  • In Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons the male Olympians get hit with this hard, being shown as either apathetic to or justifying the treatment of women in Ancient Greece. Though to be fair, as shown above, previous iterations of Wonder Woman had already recurringly established Ares and Zeus as misogynistic villains.
• Ra's al Ghul was a lot of things — cult-leader, killer, egomaniac — but his aspirations boiled down to a desire bring about a just world for humanity. In Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham he's an Evil Sorcerer who's desire is to please his god, this thing capable of driving all of humanity to madness and destroying the world.
• Zigzagged in the Batman: The Animated Series comic, Batman: The Adventures Continue with Hamilton Hill. The animated version of Mayor Pain Hill was well-meaning, unlike his corrupt comic counterpart. In The Adventures Continue, he has a Face–Heel Turn, faking his death and taking over the Court of Owls.

Films

Films

• Batman: Gotham by Gaslight replaces Jacob Pecker with Jim Gordon as Jack the Ripper. Barbara Eileen-Gordon is also his Psycho Supporter. In addition to the added misogyny, Harvey Dent is perfectly willing to help frame Bruce Wayne over his relationship with Selina Kyle (whom Harvey wanted an affair with) and takes on an antagonistic role without becoming Two-Face.
• The titular Batwoman in Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman is much more of an anti-heroine than the original Kathy Kane (and it predated the Kate Kane Batwoman), so they DC insisted that the filmmakers not actually use Kathy Kane. This didn't stop them from homaging her via the character Kathy Duquesne or making her a suspect... or even making this Kathy one of the Batwomen.
• DC Animated Movie Universe:
  • Aquaman and Wonder Woman in Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, even more so than their comic book counterparts. While in the original storyline the war began due to the trickery of their deceptive subordinates, in this film the bloodshed started when Mera confronted the Amazon for having an affair with Arthur. This leads to Diana murdering the Atlantean queen, claiming her crown as a trophy and mailing her decapitated head to her husband. By the time the film takes place, Aquaman has devolved into a surface-hating supremacist who floods half of Europe, while Wonder Woman became a misandrist dictator responsible for decimating the entire male population of the UK. When two of the most beloved heroes of all time are converted into two genocidal maniacs, you know this trope has been dialed up.
  • Deathstroke in Son of Batman sees his vengeful side cranked up to the extent that his Noble Demon qualities from the comics are absent, willing to usurp Ra's al Ghul because he was passed over as a successor in favor of Batman, holding a massive grudge against Damian Wayne for stabbing him in the eye (in the original comics, his wife Adeline shot him in the eye out of anger for allowing their son Joey's throat to be slit), and capturing and threatening Kirk Langstrom's family to force him to comply. His return in Teen Titans: The Judas Contract continues this change, as in the original comic storyline, he was noble enough to bring the Titans in alive when HIVE was also okay with them being brought in dead, and he took the contract to avenge his older son Grant, who died while trying to pursue the Titans. In the animated film, his continued revenge towards Damian for defeating him previously is the reason he accepts the offer by Brother Blood (who is HIVE's leader in the film, but not the comics) to capture the Titans and is perfectly content with Blood killing all of them as part of his desire to make himself a god if it means Damian is dead. He is also more explicitly shown as a manipulator of Terra, and turns her over to Blood when Nightwing escapes him, leading to her suicide, when in the original comic, he claimed to fear Terra (although it was later retconned in that he drugged her), and he only attacked her and inadvertently caused her suicide while possessed by Joey (now Jericho).
  • In Justice League: Throne of Atlantis, the Ocean Master is far eviler than he is in the comics, where he was an Anti-Villain. He is shown working with Black Manta and staging a false flag attack on Atlantis, which in the comic book storyline the movie is based on were done by Vulko. He also knowingly wages an offensive war on the surface, when in the comic he believed he was acting in self-defense due to the aforementioned false flag attack. He also murders his mother, while in the comics she faked her death.
• In the Green Lantern comics, Boodikka is a loyal member of the Green Lantern Corps, but in Green Lantern: First Flight, she sides with Sinestro in his coup against the Guardians of the Universe.
• Justice League: Gods and Monsters^note Designed as an alternate universe to begin with, so these are far from the only changes to mainstream versions. Batman usually isn't a vampiric Kirk Langstrom, for example.:
  • In the movie proper, Doc Magnus and the Metal Men are the main villains.
  • Also from the movie proper, Highfather is willing to double-cross Darkseid.
  • The tie-in miniseries, Justice League: Gods and Monsters Chronicles sees Harley Quinn undergo this. Sometimes, Harley is portrayed as an Anti-Villain with some sympathetic qualities. This version, however, is an Ax-Crazy psychopath who Would Hurt a Child—and as the Joker isn't seen, this version is doing this of her own free will.
• In Superman vs. the Elite, Atomic Skull is an unrepentant mass murderer who would deliberately target civilians to pick a fight with Superman, which leads to his death at the hands of the Elite. However in the comics he wasn't nearly as bad and actually had a Heel–Face Turn.
• The Dark Knight Trilogy:
  • Batman Begins: Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson) proves himself a ruthless villain. In the comics, he's not really much more than a cynical French detective (whereas the movie leaves his nationality ambiguous). While the comic book Ducard is certainly an unsavory figure (in addition to being a Misanthrope Supreme, he's a sociopath who has no problem with shooting enemies In the Back), he's far from being a supervillain and will even help Batman and Robin if he believes it is in his interest to do so. The film turns this character into a mass-murdering lunatic...although the plot eventually renders this forgivable by revealing that "Henri Ducard" is nothing more than an alias for Ra's al Ghul, another comic book character who is portrayed more or less accurately, and possibly with more sanity than he deserves, since the relatively-realistic setting cuts out Lazarus Pits.
  • The Dark Knight Rises:
    • In the comics, Ra's al Ghul's daughter Talia al Ghul is a gray-shaded character constantly going between Anti-Hero and Anti-Villain, and has sincere feelings for Batman. In the film, Talia is a flat-out villain with none of the moral conflicts she has in the comics, instead being just as much of a Knight Templar as her father. And her feelings for Batman are revealed to have been all an act: she never loved him, she loved Bane.
    • Bane himself, possibly, depending on whether you think the version that occasionally verges on Noble Demon but doesn't care about anyone but himself is more or less evil than the nihilistic destroyer with the bomb who serves the League of Shadows
• DC Extended Universe:
  • In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Batman outright intended to kill Superman before he could even become a threat. In one of the movie's major influences, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Batman merely intends to beat Superman up and other stories have Batman come up with non-lethal countermeasures in dealing with a rogue Superman. The combination of Superman mentioning the name "Martha", the subsequent PTSD episode where he recalls the death of his parents, and Lois explaining who Martha Kent is and what's going on is what snapped him out of his murderous rage.
  • Suicide Squad (2016):
    • Rick Flag undergo this as in the comic, he is one of the more moral officials and members of the Squad in the DC Universe. In the film, he is willing to look the other way when he sees Waller gunning down her staff. The Suicide Squad amends this as Rick is horrified upon discovering America’s part in Project Starfish and immediately turns against Waller, refusing to be a blind puppet for the government.
    • Amanda Waller herself, in the comics she's a flawed and militant figure but she still does genuinely care about saving innocent lives and forming shady organisations like the Suicide Squad can be seen as an extreme case of Good is Not Nice on her part. In the film any affable traits Waller has are removed, her General Ripper traits are dialled up and she's willingly to personally gun down all her employees in cold blood so they don’t see classified information. Waller only gets worse in The Suicide Squad as she’s willingly to make sure Bloodsport’s teenager daughter will go to prison and die, just so he’ll be more willingly to go on the mission. She’s also okay with letting thousands of innocent lives in Corto Maltese be killed by Starro and she attempts to activate the squad’s explosives chips when they decide to disobey orders and save the day, only to be knocked unconscious by her staff who are sick of her awfulness.
  • In Birds of Prey (2020) Dinah Laurel Lance willingly works for Ax-Crazy sadist Black Mask at his club, something she would never do in the comics. She does a Heel–Face Turn to the side of good though.
  • Zack Snyder's Justice League: The Mother Boxes were simply a Plot Device in the 2017 theatrical cut. In this version of the film, they are revealed to be malevolent Artifacts of Doom, as seen when they try to tempt Cyborg into joining Darkseid.
  • The Suicide Squad:
    • One of the new members of the team is T.D.K., who turns out to be a loose adaptation of Arm-Fall-Off-Boy from the Legion of Super-Heroes. Though he appears to be Affably Evil at worst, as, despite being a convicted criminal, he is shown to be pretty friendly and polite.
    • Peacemaker is still a vigilante like his comic counterpart, but this version of the character turns out to be The Mole for Amanda Waller, and kills Rick Flag while acting on orders from Waller to destroy all evidence of America's involvement in Project Starfish. His loyalty to Amanda Waller and his willingness to support her extremes would eventually appear in mainline comics as well when she becomes one of the overarching threats of Dawn of DC.
• The Batman: Another aspect from Batman Earth One is how, unlike how most incarnations of The Riddler show off the Insufferable Genius and Complexity Addiction aspects of the character, this one is basically a Mad Bomber version of the Zodiac killer, between brutal murders, sending taunting cyphers to Batman, and much destruction through explosives.
• Superman: Brainiac Attacks: Mercy Graves is a lot less morally ambiguous. She is fully supportive of Lex's secret pact with Brainiac.

Live-Action TV

Live-Action TV

The following have their own pages:

• Arrowverse

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• Gotham:
  • In the comics, Sarah Essen was a clean cop, but here, she's a reluctant Dirty Cop.
  • Penguin is more willing to commit bloodshed than other incarnations.
  • The character of Gerald Crane is a murderous Serial Killer, while in the comics he was a civilian whose worst crime was abandoning his pregnant girlfriend Karen and their unborn son, Jonathan. This is largely because the show borrows more heavily from his characterization in the New 52, in which he is a Mad Scientist who, unlike his TV counterpart, experiments on his son for no reason whatsoever beyond For Science!.
  • Although she isn't a full blown villain, Barbara Kean isn't quite as nice as she is in the comics. She willingly cheats on Gordon with Montoya (and eventually, the Ogre), and tries to convince Selina that she could use her beauty as a weapon. But perhaps the most striking instance occurs in "Under the Knife", where she begins to establish a firm relationship with the Ogre. When he introduces her to his secret torture room, she isn't the least bit disturbed. In fact, she smiles at him. She's embraced this trope by the season one finale, having killed her own parents and trying to kill Leslie Thompkins. Some aspects of this are due to being made a Decomposite Character, taking on traits from modern versions of Harley Quinn
• Lois & Clark: Mr. Mxyzptlk received this treatment. He was a superpowered imp from the 5th dimension like in the comics, but rather than the relatively harmless trickster as he usually is, here he's a Faux Affably Evil villain who traps the world in a time loop where each time around humanity grows more depressed and pessimistic to make them all cross the Despair Event Horizon and destroy themselves.
• Smallville:
  • Believe it or not, Jor-El is the main villain of Season 3. Even after the season, he still does pretty nasty stuff like freezing Chloe almost to death and intending to trap Clark in a crystal until everyone he cares for has died. The finale does reveal this was all to test Clark's will in order to make him the hero he's meant to be... though he did some pretty dark stuff in pursuit of that, and it's all fairly unneeded given how well Clark fared without Jor-El's intervention.
  • This version of Bizarro is less of a confused Harmless Villain and more of a dangerously intelligent one.
  • Mr. Mxyzptlk isn't a funny omnipotent imp, but more of a smug psychopath who likes to use his Mind Control to induce Squick and tries to stab Chloe for a deal with Lex Luthor.
  • Lana Lang is also turned into a much shadier character, although that may well have been unintentional; the show's creators seemed to think she was all but a Purity Sue to the very end.
  • The comic book incarnation of Zor-El sent his daughter, Kara, to Earth as a protector for her cousin, though at one point he was wrongly believed to have been a villain who sent his daughter as an assassin. The series made him an outright villain who sent his daughter to Earth as part of a plot to have himself resurrected as a conqueror.
  • In the comics, Lex Luthor's father has been everything from a nice guy with a terrible son to a petty criminal, to an alcoholic Domestic Abuser. He has never, however, been a Corrupt Corporate Executive on the scale of his Smallville incarnation, Lionel, who serves as a proto-Lex and supervillain in his own right.
• Titans (2018)
  • Raven's mother Angela turns out to have beeen Evil All Along, with the penultimate episode of the first season revealing that she was secretly working to bring Trigon to Earth the entire time. This is in sharp contrast to the comics, where she opposed Trigon and actively sought to prevent his return.
  • Jason Todd becomes the Red Hood in Season 3 but takes it far further than his comic counterpart. While the comic version of Red Hood initially opposed Batman, he was usually an Anti-Villain (verging on outright Anti-Hero status) at worst, and had a clear set of lines he wouldn't cross. This version of Red Hood kills civilians, kidnaps children, and even murders his former teammate Hawk.

Video Games

Video Games

• Batman: Arkham Series:
  • In the comics, most of Anarky's actions were targeted at specific individuals, and although some of his actions put his targets in critical condition, he wasn't a killer and he would avoid collateral damage. In Batman: Arkham Origins, Anarky plans to blow up buildings connected to what he believes are the root problems of society, and he's unconcerned with who might get hurt in the process. He's also portrayed as somewhat less rational than his comic book counterpart. You probably wouldn't hear the comic Anarky ranting against soft drinks, for example.
  • Batman: Arkham Knight does this to Jason Todd. As the titular Arkham Knight, he's party to a chemical attack on a major metropolitan city, something that, even at his worst, his comic counterpart hasn't done. That said, he's also a case of Adaptational Heroism as his issues with the Batfamily are limited to just Bruce, and he still turns good at the end.
  • In Batman: The Animated Series, Ferris Boyle, the guy who turned Victor Fries into Mr. Freeze, was already a greedy, murderous jerk who didn't care if he ended a life just to save money, and him turning Victor into Freeze was a reaction to Victor pulling a gun on him. In the "Cold, Cold, Heart" DLC, he asked Victor to build cold-based weapons in exchange for helping his wife, only to renege on the deal. Later, he was willing to kill Batman and Freeze so he could leave no witnesses, and was preparing to kill Nora in front of Freeze out of spite.
• Batman: The Telltale Series:
  • Most incarnations of Thomas Wayne were good people in a corrupt city, but here, while Bruce remembered Thomas fondly, Thomas himself was more ruthless, being in league with Carmine Falcone and Hamilton Hill, and even driving Esther Cobblepot into insanity and locking her up in Arkham just so he could get a hold of land the Cobblepots own to build a tower. However, he still loved his family enough to try to defend them from Joe Chill and Alfred believes that Thomas would be proud of Bruce not following in his footsteps and actually trying to help Gotham as Batman.
  • The Children of Arkham leader is Vicki Vale.
  • The Riddler is much more Ax-Crazy and bloodthirsty than his comic book counterpart, who is usually portrayed as one of Batman's least violent enemies. He's also an Adaptational Badass, and can actually put up a good fight against Batman despite this version of him being 60 years old. This is later revealed to be due to taking part in a secret government project where he was exposed to an experimental virus that acted as a Psycho Serum, increasing his mental and physical attributes at the cost of sanity.
  • Harley Quinn, as shown in Batman: The Animated Series and the comics is just another victim of the Joker, having been warped into Cute and Psycho villain by his corrupting charisma before DC retooled her into a Anti-Hero due her immense popularity. Here Harley isn’t nearly as sympathetic as she’s already a Ax-Crazy supervillain before meeting Joker, whom in a case of Swapped Roles is given Adaptational Heroism being the who is used and manipulated by Harley. Telltale Harley is also much more sociopathic and cruel to others, displaying little of her compassionate traits from the comics.
• Injustice: Gods Among Us and Injustice 2:
  • Supplementy materials show the alternate universe Wonder Woman was already veering into She Who Fights Monsters territory even before assisting the alternate Superman in taking over the world. In the game proper, she's a Blood Knight, something which horrifies the mainstream Wonder Woman.
    • The comics shed some light on Wonder Woman's jerkassery, pointing out she only became more vicious as a result of being mentally abused... by Steve Trevor of all people, who is a war hero and honorary citizen of Themyscira in most adaptations, but a manipulative Nazi bastard in the Injustice continuity.
  • The alternate Sinestro is also a good deal eviler than his mainstream counterpart, and with Wondy functions as a devilish voice in Superman's ear to push him further past the Moral Event Horizon. Perhaps most strikingly, his viewing of the Earth Lanterns as Worthy Opponents is completely omitted from this version; he gruesomely kills both Kyle and John personally, then manipulates Hal into murdering Guy.
  • Catwoman is grouped with the villains in the first game and is seen in the story mode fighting against the Justice League. In the comics, Selena had been an antihero for over 20 years by that point and would sooner work with the Justice League when their interests align and knows how to avoid them when they don't. This is touched upon in the story mode, but the game still considers her a villain.
  • While The Joker is known to be an Ax-Crazy Monster Clown, his Injustice version is responsible for Superman's Start of Darkness by nuking Metropolis and having him kill his wife Lois Lane. And the rationale for this? All For the Evulz, as he was tired of constantly losing to Batman, so he decided to go after an easier target and see if they would break. And most villains such as Brainiac, Darkseid, Gorilla Grodd and Reverse-Flash agree that the psychotic jester went way too far this time.
  • In most continuities, while Poison Ivy is a misanthropic villain, she has a soft spot for Harley Quinn, and is sometimes even romantically linked to her. In Injustice 2, she acts openly hostile to Harley in some of their battle intros (for example, when Harley tearfully tells her that she's breaking her heart, she responds that she'll break more than that), and during the Story Mode, she uses her pheromones to send Harley into shock, which almost kills her.
• Harvey Dent is an unusual case in the DS version of LEGO Batman: The Video Game. While he became the villain Two-Face in all continuities, he was originally an honest district attorney. While playable as both, he is marked as a villain as Two-Face and pre-scarring Harvey.

Western Animation

Western Animation

The following have their own pages:

• Young Justice (2010)

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• The Batman:
  • In the comics, Kirk Langstrom created the serum that turned him into Man-Bat to cure his own deafness, but on The Batman, he transforms himself into the Man-Bat out of a desire to be feared. That said, by his appearance in the fifth season, he's done a Heel–Face Turn, saying that he's done with being Man-Bat and even offers to assist in stopping the Terrible Trio, who have stolen his research.
  • Chief Angel Rojas is a Hispanic fusion of Harvey Bullock and Gillian Loeb—and leaning personality wise towards Loeb as even as a Dirty Cop, Bullock had lows he wouldn't sink to, like using fellow cops as a hostage or be a (complete) jackass to other officers, whereas Rojas has done these things.
• Batman: The Brave and the Bold depicts the Silver Age Batwoman as a washed-up former superhero who captures Batman, performs a "Freaky Friday" Flip on him with the help of Felix Faust, and then tries to murder the Riddler as payback for unmasking her and ruining her career. The depiction was so at odds with her comic counterpart that the creators were forced to refer to the character as "Bat-Lady" and change her name from Kathy Kane to Katrina Moldoff.
• Beware the Batman:
  • One example is the Big Bad Anarky. In the comics, Anarky was depicted as twelve year old Lonnie Machin, a political anti-government activist and altruist who saw humanity as naturally good, but with consumerism and big government getting in the way. He wasn't a villain more than he was an anti-hero who even Batman acknowledged was well intentioned but misguided. Beware's Anarky is a self-diagnosed sociopath and aimless terrorist whose only difference between him and The Joker is name and chess theme.
    • There was briefly a second person to hold the Anarky mantle, namely Ulysses Armstrong, also known as The General. Armstrong, unlike Manchin, subscribes to the Anarchy Is Chaos school of thought and lacks Manchin’s good intentions. However, even if the Anarky of the show is Armstrong and not Manchin, the trope is still in effect because Armstrong has a brother and sister that he loves dearly, while the Anarky of Beware the Batman couldn’t give a damn about anyone.
  • Sapphire Stagg, the good-natured love interest of Metamorpho in the comics, who is here depicted as very much similar in nature to her corrupt father, Simon Stagg, though her feelings for Metamorpho remain intact.
  • Harvey Dent, who is usually a man of justice and a big supporter of Batman (at least before his transformation into Two-Face), is now an opportunistic, corrupt politician who targets Batman and Katana as part of Gotham's problem, who eventually teams up with Anarky to kill him and hires Deathstroke to take down Batman.
  • Sort of with Ra's Al Ghul. His actual motivations are unclear, but he doesn't seem to have the Well-Intentioned Extremist goals of his comic counterpart. On the other hand, he seems hellbent on focusing on Gotham only, so the rest of the world doesn't have to deal with genocidal plots.
  • And then there's Humpty Dumpty. His comic counterpart was a Harmless Villain at best and a Tragic Villain at worst. While he starts off as tragic as his comic counterpart, he's become a sadistic psychopath driven by revenge who loves to put those he feels have wronged him in elaborate deathtraps. Essentially just add Jigsaw and the Riddler and you've got him.
• While the Red Lantern leader Atrocitus was in no way a nice guy in the Green Lantern original comics, he was more of an Anti-Hero whose hate was focused on the Green Lantern Corps and who was reluctant to endanger innocents. His animated counterpart in Green Lantern: The Animated Series, while retaining his Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds backstory, is completely crazy and genocidal, willing to destroy whole planets to reach his goals and cause wars or personal tragedies to get new recruits.

• DC Animated Universe
  • Batman: The Animated Series sees this with Klarion the Witch Boy, whose portrayal in the comics generally ranges from an annoying troublemaker (Jack Kirby's version) to a well-meaning anti-hero (Grant Morrison's version), is clearly evil when he appears in Batman: The Animated Series, stealing control of Etrigan from Jason Blood, tearing Gotham apart simply for fun, and using potential lethal spells on Batman when the hero tries to stop him. He finally removes any doubt what a despicable brat he is by telling Etrigan to kill Blood (who is aging at an accelerated rate and nearly helpless due to the Demon being separated from him).
  • Justice League and Justice League Unlimited:
    • While she didn't know all the details and did a Heel–Face Turn to help her teammates when she realized what would happen to Earth, Hawkgirl was still The Mole, spying on the League for Thanagar and helping them occupy Earth in the season two finale.
    • This trope is the reason why Aresia, Tsukuri, Hro Talak, Galatea, and the Ultimen are Expies as DC wouldn't allow either woman who's been codenamed Fury to attempt to commit Gendercide (Aresia), Katana to be party to said Gendercide (Tsukuri)^note Years later, Katana appears as a member of Task Force X in Batman: The Adventures Continue, Hawkman to be willing to blow up the Earth to help Thanagar win a war (Hro Talak)^note The real Hawkman eventually shows up later on as a separate character who is heroic, Power Girl to be a hitwoman for Amanda Waller (Galatea)^note While not an actual appearance, Batman and Harley Quinn sees a waitress at the restaurant Harley works at dressed as Karen, implying that like Hawkman, an actual version of Pee Gee exists in the DCAU, or the Canon Foreigners and Canon Immigrants of the Super Friends (namely Samurai, Black Vulcan, and the Wonder Twins) to attempt to kill members of the League (the Ultimen, barring Apache Chief expy Long Shadow, who still retained his sanity and tried to stop it, though later clone copies were just as bad as the other members).
    • Rampage, a combined Expy of both Hulk and She-Hulk, is a heroine from Superman's supporting cast in the comics. Here, she's a villain who's part of the Legion of Doom.
  • Static Shock:
    • Aquamaria is a villain while she was of the more heroic members of Blood Syndicate in the original Milestone Comics continuity.
    • Edwin Alva's son ends up becoming the supervillain Omnifarious due to lashing out over his father never giving him much respect, when Hardware (1993) had Alva, Jr. depicted as well-adjusted and not taking it personally when his deceased father named Curtis Metcalf as his successor instead of him or his sister Sabrina (Sabrina did take being snubbed of her inheritance personally, but was Adapted Out in the Static Shock cartoon with Edwin Alva, Jr. borrowing her resentment towards not being respected by their father).
• In DC Super Hero Girls 2019, Dex-Starr of the Red Lanterns plays up Cats Are Mean and is just evil for the sake of being evil as opposed to his Dark and Troubled Past in the comics. While in the comics he was an Anti-Hero who preferred to Pay Evil unto Evil, this version of him Hates Everyone Equally and sought to burn the world just because he could.
• Justice League Action: Toyman is usually a villain, but what's surprising is which one is the villain; it's Hiro Okumara, aka the HEROIC Toyman, who now instead of a hero is a villain like Winslow Schott.
• Timber Wolf's father Dr. Mar Londo gets this treatment in the Legion Of Super Heroes animated series. While still responsible for his son's powers in the original comics (at least in Pre-Zero Hour continuity), he was in no way even suggested to be as abusive and manipulative as his animated counterpart.
• My Adventures with Superman:
  • Livewire gets hit with this trope to an extent. While she's still a villain in the comics and the the cartoon that she originates from (though her comic incarnation would end up making a Heel–Face Turn), prior to gaining her powers, she was just a jerkass Shock Jock rather than straight up evil. In this show, meanwhile, she's a criminal mercenary from the start. That said, this version of Leslie is also far more honorable and professional than her other counterparts.
  • Mr. Mxyzptlk traditionally plays the role of an irritant trickster whose main goal is based around committing big, elaborate pranks that run the risk of high collateral damage. His appearance in this show instead has him play the role of a destructive God of Chaos who's actively antagonistic to the heroes, mocking Clark by saying he'll never be normal and sowing seeds of doubt in Clark and Lois' relationship by revealing the existence of evil alternate Supermen to the latter.
• For most of the Super Friends series, Bizarro is depicted as a clear villain who has murderous designs on the super heroes. However, the final season depicts him faithfully from the comics as a well-meaning bumbler.
  • In an episode, Toyman creates a device that traps Wonder Woman inside the story of Alice in Wonderland, a version where the place becomes the type where Everything Is Trying to Kill You, including the Cheshire Cat and Caterpillar, who were friendly creatures (more or less) in the actual book.
• Teen Titans (2003)
  • In the comics, Mad Mod, while initially a villain, eventually pulled a Heel–Face Turn and became a sincere supporter and ally of the new Teen Titans - he was the one who designed their costumes. In the show, he remains an irredeemable villain throughout.
  • In the comics, while some writers portray Deathstroke as a Noble Demon, more often he's portrayed as a ruthless killer who really is as evil as he seems, but he does consistently have a few redeeming qualities (his friendship with Bill Wintergreen, his love for his children even when he's not a very good father to them, and occasionally shows disgust for people worse than him. Ain't none of that in this show; Slade doesn't have a single redeeming quality in the show and is even willing to help Trigon create Hell on Earth as long as he benefits, and only turns against Trigon when the demon refuses to honor their agreement.
• Teen Titans Go! sees this zig-zagged and parodied with Terra. The original Teen Titans 2003 made her an example of Adaptational Heroism. In her debut episode, "Terra-ized", she has actions similar to her comic book counterpart; and openly tries to seduce Beast Boy in order to get sensitive information on the Titans. It's zig-zagged in that while she acts as a straight antagonist in most of her episodes, she's still not as vile as her original comic counterpart and is portrayed as more of an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain with her subsequent appearances showing a kinder side to her.
  • Played straight with Rose Wilson/Ravager. In the comics, Rose's psychopathic behavior was the result of Slade pumping her with mind-altering drugs and would pull a Heel–Face Turn and join the Titans once she was freed from his grasp. Here, Rose is a villain by choice, completely independent of Slade, and one of the few genuinely ruthless villains in the show; being a sociopath willing to kill For the Evulz.
  • Generally Played for Laughs with the Titans themselves. On top of being major jerks mostly uninterested in heroism, there are a couple of episodes where they willingly become villains.