Create Your Own Villain / Western Animation

Times where the hero creates their own villain in Western Animation.

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• Action League NOW!: The villain Hodge Podge was originally the League's accountant, until The Flesh ("He's super-strong, and super-naked") accidentally knocked him into a blender. Bill the Lab Guy attempted to reconstruct him, but ended up turning into a toy Body Horror monstrosity of mixed pieces.
• All Hail King Julien features the title character often doing this without him realizing it or considering it a big deal.
  • In one episode Julien pretends to be a commoner in an attempt to relate to his citizens, but gets too into it and incites a rebellion movement. Since he never fully admits to it, the most loyal followers of the rebellion remain in operation and attempt several assassinations.
  • Julien also attempts to domesticate a fossa and teach it to be friendly towards lemurs. While he is successful at first, the fossa eventually gets hungry and remembers that its a carnivore, and returns to its pack with heightened intelligence instead.
  • Julien falls in love with his bodyguard's twin sister, but leaves her at the altar creating a Woman Scorned as powerful as his own bodyguard.
• In The Amazing World of Gumball, Rob was a fairly normal classmate of Gumball and Darwin that swore revenge after the duo unwittingly abandoned him in the Void. Rob's attempt to escape by himself then left him horribly disfigured. Oddly enough, Gumball and Darwin are thrilled to have their own Arch-Enemy, and even help him set up a new villainous alter ego. However, it wasn't Gumball's fault for trapping Rob in the Void and he doesn't know about the place, and Rob simply chose to become a villain but blames Gumball for pushing him into the role.
• In Arcane, Vi winds up being the main deciding factor in Powder becoming Jinx. Her striking a guilt-ridden Powder after the death of their family and calling her a jinx then walking away from her in shame leads to Powder believing that Vi abandoned her and falling in with Silco's gang. And then Vi accidentally cements Powder's transformation into Jinx by triggering her traumatic memories when they reunite years later.
  Jinx: Wanna know a secret? Silco thinks he made Jinx. With all his rants and his hard-won lessons. "Excise your doubts, Jinx." "Be what they fear, Jinx." Like everything was the same as when Vander left him. But he didn't make Jinx. You did.
• Atomic Puppet:
  • Mookie is implied to have turned Captain Atomic into a sock puppet because of Captain Atomic's poor attitude towards his sidekick.
  • Joey's Sadist Teacher Ms. Erlenmeyer became evil after going mad as a result of AP believing she was a supervillain (long story). She later comes in contact with an alien entity from another dimension and is transformed by it into a powerful psychic named Queen Mindbender, turning her into one of Atomic Puppet's most dangerous foes.
• In The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Tony Stark "creates" the villainous Energy Being Wonder Man. When Simon Williams' company goes under because of Tony Stark, Simon is prompted by his brother (Grim Reaper, an agent of HYDRA) to volunteer for an experiment conducted by M.O.D.O.K. to gain the power he needs to take his revenge. Tony was actually trying to help him by buying up Simon's already-failing company and employing him, but he didn't get around to actually saying this to him.
• The Batman:
  • Mr. Freeze considers Batman responsible for making him what he is now. However, Victor Fries was already a criminal to begin with; had it not been for that cryo accident he would have been just some common crook.
  • As revealed in "Riddler's Revenge", while a lot of the Riddler's sthick was already in play during a Forgotten (by Batman) First Meeting with a pre-Riddler Edward Nygma, Batman did inspire Edward to don a costume and create some of his gadgets.
• Batman Beyond:
  • Terry did not create the Corrupt Corporate Executive Derek Powers, but he was responsible for his mutation into Blight. As Powers had Terry's father killed (and so many others that he can barely remember them), Terry feels no sympathy or regret for the man.
    Terry: You mean... I made him that?
    Bruce: You may have, in part.
    Terry: ...Good. [Bruce gives him a stern look] Hey, this guy had my father murdered and all he's done since is hide from the law. Well, no more hiding for Mr. Derek Powers. Now everyone can see what he is. Even in the dark.
  • A lesser example is with Shriek, who was pressured into using his sonic weapons to kill Bruce Wayne by Derek Powers. While at first he "only" intended to murder Bruce, and that only to secure more funding for his research, once Batman causes him to go deaf during their battle he went insane and became a full-fledge supervillain with the sole goal of getting revenge on Batman. Shriek did have initial problems, since he was trying to commit murder for monetary gain.
  • Powers actually did the inverse and recreated Batman since his attempts to cover up his abuses brought Terry and Bruce together.
• This trope occurs and is discussed in Batman: The Animated Series:
  • A villain creating their own villain:
    • Roland Daggett's attempts to control Matt Hagen with his highly addictive facelift-in-a-jar concoction eventually turned the man into Clayface.
    • It was Rupert Thorne's attempt to blackmail Harvey Dent that lead to Dent's transformation into Two-Face, the transformation itself lead to Two-Face's extra-legal war on Thorne's criminal organization. Candace, Thorne's right hand, is well aware of this.
      Mook: I thought we got rid of this guy.
      Candace: Are you kidding? We created him.
  • In "Trial", the Arkham Asylum inmates put Batman on trial, accusing him of creating them. And just to stack the deck against him even further, they also kidnap the District Attorney who initially made the claim that he creates these villains and force her to act as his defense. After hearing them all speak, the DA comes to the conclusion that even if Batman hadn't pushed them off the edge, they were all still deeply disturbed people and would have eventually turned to villainy on their own, just with less-silly costumes. In fact, they created him. The villains talk amongst themselves for a bit and then find Batman innocent... but because they are such bad guys, they try to kill him anyway.
  • In "Lock-Up", the eponymous villain was formerly a guard at Arkham Asylum who got his position due to endorsement and support from Wayne Enterprises. When he goes insane and begins kidnapping the people he blames for the cities problems (The police, bureaucrats and reporters that he says cause the criminals) Robin snarkily comments "Another fine villain made possible by a grant from the Wayne Foundation." The look Batman shoots him is not happy.
  • An inversion occurs in "Beware the Creeper": A villain (the Joker) creates his own hero (the Creeper). And he even does it referencing the way he claims Batman created him, throwing someone into a chemical vat:
    Joker: I'll be Batman, and you'll be me.
  • Deconstructed with the Clock King. Mayor Hill truly was trying to help Temple Fugate to relax by simply giving him some advice, and Temple doing so led to a comedy of errors that caused him to lose a costly court case. He blames Hill for this, completely rejecting the fact that he was the reason he was in court in the first place, that Hill had absolutely nothing to do with the unlikely incident that made him late, that Hill truly tried to help him with some advice, and that with the time and resources he wasted on his extravagant plan for revenge he could have easily recouped his losses and bounced back. As the episode stretches on, it becomes increasingly clear that Fugate isn't even mad at Hill for costing him the court case: he's made that Hill made him late.
    Batman: Give it up, Fugate. Hill committed no crime against you.
    Fugate: He did worse. He made me late!
  • In the episode "Over the Edge", the plot is set by Batgirl's fear that this trope will enact if she would be a casualty of the collateral damage from a super-battle: The Commissioner Gordon would become a Knight Templar Parent that will destroy the Bat-family, being created by the death of heroine Batgirl. He wants Batman to spend his days in Arkham, "surrounded by the monsters he's created."
• Ben 10:
  • Ben's Evil Counterpart Kevin 11 was just an emo New York City street kid with the superpower of absorbing and channeling energy, until Ben teamed up with him to go on a criminal joyride, allowing Kevin to absorb the Omnitrix's energy and gain all of Ben's superpowers. Already selfish and mean-spirited, access to all that power quickly turns Kevin into a full-blown Psycho for Hire who goes on a nation-wide crime spree and attempts to kill Ben on multiple occasions. He got better. Mostly.
  • Azmuth has an even bigger record than Ben at creating villains by accident. To date, he:
    • Created a highly powerful sword which was used by someone in an attempt to end a civil war between aliens known as Incurseans. This eventually resulted in their planet being blown up and the surviving Incurseans becoming an entire Empire of Space Pirates.
    • Gave said sword to human hero Sir George so he could defeat an Eldritch Abomination and save Earth. While George did succeed, he then founded an Knight Order to defend Earth, the Forever Knights, who after his departure ended up devolving over the centuries into a bunch of fanatical anti-alien Cape Busters.
    • Is implied to have been condescending and unpleasant toward his assistant Albedo, who eventually developed a massive superiority complex toward him, tried to create his own Omnitrix and ended up actually turned into a clone of Ben as a result. Azmuth's attempt to punish him by leaving him trapped in this form resulted in him turning to villainy in an effort to recover his original form, and eventually genuinely becoming psychotic after all he went through to reach this goal.
    • Accidentally created Malware, a mentally unstable Galvanic Mechamorph who could only sustain himself by devouring his own kind's life force. Azmuth promised to find a cure for him, but took his time to work on it, resulting in Malware eventually losing patience, trying to cure himself using an unfinished device and eventually becoming a rampaging sociopath who almost consumed Galvan Prime.
• Deconstructed in Big City Greens with Chip Whistler, whose hatred for the Greens stemmed from chipping his tooth after eating a fabricrated apple made by Cricket, though it was his own fault for not listening to Cricket when he tried to warn him and his subsequent villainous acts against the Greens were of no fault of their own.
• Big Hero 6: The Series: Alistair Krei is victim of this trope more than once. And it's not even on purpose!
  • First of all, ignoring the security breach during Operation Silent Sparrow causes the portal to malfunction and Abigail to get stuck inside the portal. Result: Callaghan, her angry vengeful father, thinks she died and becomes the villain Yokai to avenge her and destroy Krei.
  • Then, there's Mel Meyer, the creator of the Flexible Display technology. Krei uses his invention for purposes that Mel doesn't agree with, and gets kicked out and ignored as a result. Sure, he did steal Krei's identity and caused a lot of danger that night, but even Cass admits Mel had a reasonsable motive.
  • Finally, there's Ian, the Beleaguered Bureaucrat working for Krei, that Krei constantly belittles and purposefully calls him another name (Ethan) because "it sounds better". No wonder Ian became more confident committing crimes as Hardlight.
• ChalkZone:
  • Skrawl was the result of Rudy being asked to draw something for a birthday girl. Unfortunately for the drawing that was to become Skrawl (and Rudy), a bunch of other kids pushed Rudy out of the way and added their ideas to the drawing, making Skrawl the misshapen being he is today.
  • Craniac 4 is created by Rudy to stop to take care of Craniac 3 only to turn on him and unlike Skrawl, Craniac 4 is purely created by Rudy and on purpose.
• Danny Phantom:
  • Probably as a parody to the Fantastic Four example above, Vlad, Maddie and Jack are working on their first Ghost Portal. Jack pours diet soda into a crucial part, and it blows up in Vlad's face, giving him Ecto-Acne, and with it, his ghost powers. Then he goes all evil and revengey.
  • Technus, though in a more lampshading and humorous way. Danny unintentionally frees him from the Ghost Portal (or something) when he first meets him. Assuming him to be a villain, Danny tells him he will not take over the world. Technus, confused, then enlightened actually takes his advice, thus setting his path of villainy.
• Darkwing Duck accidentally causes Bud Flood to fall into a vat of contaminated water, turning him into the Liquidator. It sounds awfully familiar... Flood had contaminated the water himself, and Darkwing was in fact there to stop him from doing exactly that; so, really, The Liquidator created himself, Darkwing just helped.
• DuckTales (2017):
  • The episode "The Ballad of Duke Baloney" shows a flashback where Scrooge went on a business trip to South Africa and came across a young shoe-shiner named Duke Baloney, who was just like him in that he had dreams of becoming rich starting with this gig. Scrooge offered Duke a dime with the intention of inspiring him into going down the same path, but Duke was instead angered that he was paid below the minimum wage by the richest duck in the world and dedicated his life to ruining Scrooge, taking on a new persona known as Flintheart Glomgold.
  • Similarly, Scrooge inadvertently played a role in the creation of a serious new villain: Negaduck. When he hires film director Alistair Boorswan to make a grittier reboot of Darkwing Duck (which in this universe was a Show Within a Show), Jim Starling, Darkwing's original actor from said show, absolutely loses it upon learning he's not involved and tries to sabotage the production by any means necessary. He continues to drive further into madness, further determined to reclaim the spotlight, which cumulates in a battle between him and his replacement, Drake Mallard. When Starling apparently dies, Drake is convinced to become the real Darkwing in his honor, but the accident permanently warped Starling's sanity, leaving him to believe he was deliberately sabotaged by Mallard. Thus, he fully becomes Negaduck, leaving him primed to become a future adversary to the McDuck clan.
    Jim: It was all a setup. That hack put my fan in danger to steal the glory and humiliate me! They want "grim and gritty", huh? Happy to play the part...
  • Villain-to-Villain example between Magica De Spell and the Phantom Blot, as revealed in "The Phantom and the Sorceress." Long ago, De Spell ruled over a village with an iron fist, who offered great tributes her to spare them. She eventually destroys the village out of boredom, leaving a single survivor that vowed vengeance. The survivor hunted down Magica relentlessly and rose back up from each defeat, eventually obtaining a gauntlet that can absorb magic and becoming the Phantom Blot. Now an agent of F.O.W.L., Blot is a Knight Templar that not only wants to kill Magica but absorb and destroy all magic, even from bystanders like Gladstone Gander or young heroes like Lena.
  • "The First Adventure!" reveals this was the entire reason for the existence of F.O.W.L. When accountant Bradford Buzzard, a member of S.H.U.S.H., suggests to director Ludwig Von Drake that the organization should take over the world to reign in the costly chaos, Von Drake laughs it off and says that Buzzard needs to stop thinking like a supervillain, as the organization doesn't engage in such behavior. It instead inspires Buzzard to team up with notorious criminal Black Heron to create F.O.W.L. and fight against S.H.U.S.H. themselves (though he himself doesn't consider himself a villain, despite Heron's insistence).
  • "The Life and Crimes of Scrouge McDuck" has Scrooge's enemies exploit this trope, putting him through a mystic karmic court for having a part in their Start of Darkness and thus the chance to take his wealth. While Louie is able to find counterarguments for Glomgold and Ma Beagle, he fails to do the same for Magica de Spell, who recounts how how her fight against Scrooge led to her accidentally striking her brother Poe with a transformation spell that turned him into a raven, while Scrooge chose to ignore her plight. Scrooge ends up regretting this decision in the present, and starts to wonder if he's no better than they are. He tries to apologize to the villains to make things right, but the court takes this as a confession. However, Louie, thanks to Glomgold's boasting, is able to point out that each encounter with his enemies led Scrooge to become the adventurous billionaire philanthropist he is today, and if the villains are entitled to Scrooge's wealth for making them, well, villains, Scrooge is entitled to theirs for making him a hero. The court accepts this as valid and deems Scrooge innocent.
  • While never facing the villain in question, Isabella Finch, famed adventurer and founder of the Woodchuck Scouts ended up doing so out of well-meaning intentions. She brought her grandson along with her on her adventures, but while she enjoyed the thrill and mysteries, he became terrified of the various dangers. The fear embittered him enough to vow to bring order to the world by wiping out all adventures, becoming the antithesis of Isabella's beliefs. The grandson's name: Bradford, leader and founder of F.O.W.L..
• In the infamous episode "If It Smells Like An Ed" from Ed, Edd n Eddy, Eddy does this to Jimmy. After he gives Jimmy a wedgie, Jimmy seeks revenge on all three Eds as a result.
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • In "The Secret Origin of Denzel Crocker", it is revealed that Timmy himself is responsible for the cause of Mr. Crocker's obsession with fairies when he traveled back to the 70s to stop it from happening. Back then, Crocker, like Timmy, used to be a happy child who has bullied by his own evil babysitter, Vic (the male counterpart of Vicky), and had fairy godparents (who ironically happened to be Cosmo and Wanda, though neither of them seem to remember this). Timmy accidentally reveals the existence of Crocker's fairies at a town meeting whilst trying to stop Crocker from doing so (which was technically caused by Present Cosmo turning the mic back on). This results in Cosmo and Wanda being taken away and everyone having their memories erased including Crocker himself (and accidentally, Cosmo and Wanda), leading to Crocker's disfigured appearance and the townspeople mistakenly believing they are an angry mob hunting down Crocker. It gets even worse that Timmy accidentally left behind Mr. Crocker's own DNA Tracker which he was using to track him down in the past, thus returning it to the past Crocker.
  • Parodied when Timmy becomes The Masked Magician. The Crimson Chin warns Timmy about creating his own supervillain, and lo and behold... The Hanker-Chief!
  • Crimson Chin is speaking from experience: His archenemy, the Bronze Kneecap ("and his big BRONZE KNEECAP!!!"), turns evil when, in a parody of supervillain origins, the Chin accidentally breaks his leg during a jai alai tournament, causing him to get third place once again, and then doesn't apologize. And so Ron Hambone melted down and his third-place bronze trophies...
  • The Hanker-Chief, AKA Mr. Bickles, ends up on the receiving end when he kicks Britney Britney out of her Vegas gig, and she comes back as the Platinum Princess for revenge.
  • The third crossover with Jimmy Neutron had Timmy and Jimmy purposely making a new villain after they discovered how easily their combined skills trumped all their regular enemies. What makes this funny is that they made a villain, though he wasn't quite as evil as they had hoped, so they ditch him, which then causes the trope to be played oh so wonderfully straight. Confusing? It Makes Sense in Context.
  • And in another episode when Timmy wished for a world of superheroes, he accidentally created super-villains as well.
  • In one of the Oh Yeah! Cartoons shorts, Timmy spends the episode turning into a superhero. He then realizes that he has no villain to fight and has Cosmo and Wanda whip one up for him.
  • Let's not forget the reason why Vicky is Timmy's Babysitter from Hell; as revealed in Timmy's flashback in the Made-for-TV Movie Abra-Catastrophe!, Timmy thought his parents were going to abandon him by going off to parts unknown, so he called up Vicky and hired her to watch him while they were gone. Mom and Dad thought Vicky was nice and caring as according to her poster and told this to Timmy, but once they were hustled out the door, Vicky revealed she was a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing and made Timmy's life a total misery, which also resulted in the arrival of Cosmo and Wanda. In other words, Timmy's parents actually lied to him for the first time.
• Gargoyles:
  • There's an episode that toy with this, as a Recurring Extra who appeared in many prior episodes plots to get his revenge on the gargoyles and relates every previous encounter he had with them. Played for Laughs, as his revenge was a bazooka... that shoots pies. For the record, the gargoyles inadvertently cost him every job he ever had since 1997. And the pie was banana creme. The gargoyles, including Goliath, who took the pie, have no idea who he is. Or why he did it.
  • David Xanatos created Thailog, a clone of Goliath educated with Xanatos' own worldview. Naturally, Thailog turned on everybody.
  • The Hunters were created when Demona slashed the face of a farm boy. Said farm boy then dedicated his life to hunting down every last gargoyle in existence. And when he died, his moniker was adopted by another who created generations of families whose whole life is killing Demona and gargoyles.
  • Gargoyles likes doing this. During the time travel episode when Xanatos travels back in time with his new wife Fox as a honeymoon trip and his father to make a pact with The Illuminati to guarantee his fortune in the present and future. Goliath tags along to keep Xanatos honest, while at the same time using the opportunity to find a younger version of Demona and try to convince her not to give into hatred for humans. Instead, Goliath's speech did the opposite and made Demona more cautious of humans, especially after encountering her future self as well. When they returned to the present, Demona made it clear that she remembered his message and it changed nothing.
• Project Cadmus in Justice League is an unusual case, in that they both play this trope straight and have it applied to them.
  • They were created as a government response after the Justice League reveals it has a Kill Sat built into its orbital space-station and it turned out that, on a parallel world, the Justice League decided to overthrow the governments of the world to stop a nuclear war, which instantly gave fuel to Beware the Superman elements within the government.
  • Their efforts to create anti-meta projects have resulted in Doomsday, a Nigh-Invulnerable monster that wants to destroy everything; Galatea, a clone of Supergirl who went insane and turned against them after finding out she was a clone; and the Ultimen, genetically engineered super-humans who... went insane and turned against them after finding out that A: they were going to die due to a flaw in the bio-engineering process, and B: Cadmus was aware of this and simply planned on killing them and replacing them with a batch of fresh clones.
• Parodied with Señor Senior Sr. from Kim Possible: Ron "causes" him to become a supervillain... by remarking on how much his private island mansion home looks like a stereotypical supervillain lair. The retired old billionaire who had been looking for a new hobby to help pass the time is quite intrigued by the idea.
• Kappa Mikey: Downplayed with Lily. The only reason why she despises Mikey is because she used to be the star of LilyMu until Mikey arrived and stole her thunder; however, she's not at all villainous and isn't totally against him.
• The Legend of Korra: Avatar Korra is indirectly responsible for creating the villains of Season 3 and 4. By opening the spirit portals and causing Harmonic Convergence, she inadvertently gave Zaheer his airbending, which allowed him to escape from prison and free his friends. Zaheer later incited an anarchist revolution, which caused Kuvira to go on her campaign to build the Earth Empire.
  • Su imparted her ideals onto Kuvira, who took them to the worst possible extreme.
• Miraculous Ladybug:
  • Marinette has caused several people to be akumatized (though not as many as Chloe, she's surprisingly not that far behind the resident Alpha Bitch in this regard). Unlike most examples of this trope, they're always back to normal at the end of the episode.
  • Lila/Volpina is a straighter example — while she's a normal akuma victim the first time around, she keeps her grudge against Ladybug and jumps at the chance to be transformed a second time.
• My Adventures with Superman
  • A rather twisted example. The Kryptonian technology they weaponized to fight potential alien invaders gets stolen by Leslie Willis/Livewire and distributed around the city, resulting in several small-time criminals getting their hands on dangerous tech and becoming above-average threats that Superman is forced to confront. However, once they've all been locked up, rather that distribute the technology back to willing soldiers (discounting examples like Ivo and Livewire, whose technology appears to have been fused into them from their misuse of it) the General instead has them outfitted with Shock Collars and "forced" to fight Superman, his dialogue making it clear that it's to be their "atonement" for their crimes against society. This warps it around to almost being a case of Create Your Own Hero, except it's also made very clear that the "volunteers" are disposable in a battle against a super-powered individual like Superman, showcasing their brutal pragmatism.
  • Played straighter in "Zero Day, Part 2". Waller allows Leslie Willis to exploit her newly-developed meta human ability to manipulate electricity directly to cause a breakout and demonstrate The General is unfit to properly lead Task Force X, so she can take over and make the "proper" calls when she thinks he's going soft. This allows Leslie to empower Ivo into a destructive rampage that threatens the whole city whilst she escapes with the rest of the conscripted criminals, now better armed and experienced with their technologically advanced weaponry thanks to Task Force X. Furthermore, it was precisely because they upgraded Ivo's parasite suit to allow it to absorb energy by touch that he's able to directly drain the city's power grid and transform into a bio-mechanical Kaiju.

• The Penguins of Madagascar: Subverted with Officer X. He constantly blames the penguins for getting him fired from his job which is what has driven his antagonism towards them in his later apperances, however this is a case of Never My Fault from his part, as he wasn't fired for any encounter with them but rather because he went on a vandalism spree after another failed attempt which could be seen as the last straw for him as had already caused problems for Animal Control and later episodes reveals none of his bosses or co-workers liked him very much. Not to mention he was already fairly sadistic with the animals before getting fired.
• Pinky and the Brain gives us Julia, a Recurring Character from the Animaniacs (2020) revival who is another example of a Villain Protagonist creating their own villain. Julia starts as an ordinary mouse whom Brain makes as brilliant as himself so she can be his first lady in a Senatorial campaign, but the voters respond to her compassionate, idealistic nature by choosing her as the candidate instead! Not only that, Julia objects to Brain's tyrannical methods. This causes Brain to fit her with a Mind-Control Device to keep her in line, but it malfunctions; as a result, Julia goes crazy, undergoes a Face–Heel Turn, and becomes Brain's vengeful Arch-Enemy.
• The Powerpuff Girls: Mojo Jojo was originally created by Professor Utonium, and worked as his assistant. Mojo explains that the professor and the girls indirectly turned him into a villain by making him jealous; the girls hogged the spotlight and left Mojo in the shade, which eventually drove him out into the street. As an added twist, Mojo was himself responsible for Chemical X being added into the concoction that spawned the girls. Apparently, he was a very bad lab assistant from the start. According to one episode, Mojo's traveling back in time to try to eliminate Professor Utonium as a child and being thwarted by the girls is what inspired Professor Utonium to become a scientist in the first place. Bringing the whole thing full circle...
• Rick and Morty: On the last adventure with the anti-heroic Vindicators, Rick single-handedly killed off the team (half with deathtraps, and half by pushing the team to kill each other over their internal squabbling) and turned the sole survivor into a super-villain bent on getting revenge by accident. ^note It turns out, Rick holds his true engineering genius and sadism back, but goes Jigsaw when hammered beyond his normal burping self.
• Rocket Monkeys's Big Bad Lord Peel. He was once an ordinary banana-like alien who Gus and Wally mistook for an actual banana and tried to eat him. Years of harassment followed him and soon he turned evil, becoming Lord Peel and dedicating his life to destroying the two monkeys who ruined it.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power:
  • While Catra was certainly never a particularly good person, her transition from a generally unmotivated Horde cadet with no real goals beyond riding Adora's coattails to power to Hordak's second-in-command and Adora's Arch-Enemy comes about because of Adora's defection: her ambition is fired by receiving the promotion Adora had effectively turned down by leaving, her feelings of betrayal and Shadow Weaver's continued obsession with Adora led to her resentment taking control, and Adora frequently defeating her causes her to become obsessed with finally winning.
  • Downplayed with Entrapta, who joins the Horde when she thinks the princesses have abandoned her when in fact they thought she was dead...but she's never really a villain even then — just someone who doesn't really think through the consequences of her actions as long as they advance the cause of science.
• The Simpsons episode "The Italian Bob" featured the heroes not so much creating a villain as recreating one. While in Italy, the Simpsons run into an apparently reformed Sideshow Bob living happily and honestly as the mayor of a small town. Bob isn't exactly delighted to have the Simpsons around, but he treats them well enough... until Lisa gets drunk and 'outs' Bob as a former criminal. His new life destroyed, he promptly swears revenge.
• In Sonic Boom, Knuckles' stupidity and incompetence ends up causing Charlie a lot of grief, costing him his job, and causing his wife to leave him. Charlie vows revenge and acquires some powerful armor and weapons to attack Knuckles. Although he eventually loses, his wife returns to him because she liked him finally becoming a tough guy and then they both become straight up supervillains.
• Conversed in the South Park episode "Mexican Joker". Kyle tells the I.C.E. agents that holding Mexican children in detention camps could result in them holding a grudge against the American government once they grow up, using superhero movies where the hero is responsible for the villain's backstory as an analogy. The agents completely misunderstand what he's saying, and start thinking that one of the children in the camp is "Mexican Joker", going to great lengths to find and stop him before he can grow up.
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series:
  • Invoked by Quentin Beck, aka Mysterio, whose initial motive for turning to crime is revenge on Spider-Man for catching him after his special effects went haywire and shot down a filming copter. It rings hollow because he would have gone to jail anyway; Spider-Man just happened to be the first guy on the scene who managed to catch him.
    Mysterio: It's payback time!
    Spider-Man: Payback? For what? You did it all to yourself.
    Mysterio: That's what my psychiatrist said, but you know what? His sessions never made me feel this good!
  • In "The Sting of the Scorpion," Jonah has hired PI Mac Gargan to trail Peter to figure out how he gets all those great pictures of Spider-Man. After finding out, Spider-Man bursts into the Daily Bugle and purposefully plays tough to try to scare some sense into them — even webbing Gargan to the wall, humiliating him. Unfortunately, all he did was give Jonah motivation to bankroll a Neogenic experiment and a willing test subject — making Mac Gargan the Scorpion.
  • And like in the comics, Venom — with the symbiote being rejected (and nearly killed), while Eddie Brock had been fired from the Daily Bugle and repeatedly humiliated.
• Tangled: The Series:
  • The whole reason why teenage alchemist Varian turns against Rapunzel — and by extension, all of Corona — was because she couldn't come to help him during Zhan Tiri's blizzard in "Queen For a Day".
  • Most importantly, Rapunzel kept standing in the way of her handmaiden Cassandra, stealing all the attention from her in return; matter of fact, Cassandra was the biological daughter of Gothel who abandoned her in favor of Rapunzel. All this betrayal and jealousy broke Cassandra so hard she stole the power of the Moonstone and claimed Rapunzel's destiny as her own to get back at her for always coming before her.
• A recurring problem in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012):
  • Snake was splashed with mutagen sent flying out of the van they use as distraction whilst they break into the Kraangs' lair, transforming him into Snakeweed.
    Snakeweed: You did this to me! I'll crush you turtles!
    Donatello: Uh, would it help if we said it was an accident? (Snakeweed roars at them) I... I'll take that as a "no"!
  • The Kraangs weren't concerned with the Turtles until they almost destroyed one of their installations while trying to save April from them.
  • The Shredder would have probably stayed in Japan had the Turtles not left shuriken with Hamato Yoshi's mark on it behind them, leading Saki to believe his rival was training new ninja in New York.
  • Baxter Stockman was a fairly Harmless Villain before Mikey accidentally allowed him to acquire their T-Pod. They eventually took it from him, but he kept a grudge against them after this because of it.
  • Spider Bytez invokes this trope, though it's arguable in his case: the Turtles were trying to save him, and would have succeeded if he had not kept acting like a combination of Jerkass and Too Dumb to Live. His mutation was pretty much more his fault than theirs.
    • Bradford does the same when he breaks the mutagen bomb and douses himself AND Montes with the goo. The Turtles didn't do anything technically (he and Montes attacked first) and were trying to disarm the mutagen bomb.
    • Similarly, Pulveriser purposely exposed himself to mutagen to become a mutant. Unfortunately, his mutation made him feral and insane.
  • As revealed in "Turtle Temper," Splinter considers himself responsible for the Shredder's Start of Darkness, as he explains to Raph in an attempt to Tame His Anger. Splinter recounts an incident where Shredder openly and relentlessly insulted him in front of Tang Shen, eventually leading Splinter to snap and attack him. This caused their rivalry to intensify, eventually leading to Shen's death at Shredder's hands. Raph attempts to justify that he had no choice but to get angry since Shredder badmouthed him, but Splinter points out he could have chosen to just ignore him, but poorly chose to do the exact opposite.
• In Transformers: Animated, Cyrus "The Colossus" Rhodes hates the Autobots apparently because he lost his job to a machine, and Prometheus Black has a gripe against Sumdac because Sumdac Systems gets all the lucrative contracts instead of him. Interestingly, before Black became Meltdown, he was receiving funding from a member of Sumdac Systems' board of directors.
  • Blackarachnia in the same series might count definitely counts, as she allied herself with the Decepticons after Optimus and Sentinel abandoned her on Archa 7, a spider planet, believing she was dead.
    • Sentinel also came to hate Optimus after the very same incident, sparking an intensely antagonistic relationship between the two.
    • To be fair to Optimus, it was their idea to go to Archa 7 in the first place; in fact, the only reason he was there with them was to keep them out of trouble. Circumstances just weren't in their favor, and Optimus (willingly) took the blame for the incident since he was the commanding officer.
  • Wasp was falsely implicated as being a Decepticon spy and during his time in the stockade went nuts and wants a lot of revenge on Bumblebee, the one who accused Wasp and got him convicted. Though, Wasp wasn't a very nice bot to begin with.
• The VeggieTales episode "Larry-Boy and the Rumor Weed" actually begins with the title superhero accidentally creating the title weed by knocking a plant off a building and onto some power lines.
• Doc Venture in The Venture Bros. has a singular talent for this. Baron Ünderbheit became his enemy after an unspecified lab experiment blew off his jaw, The Monarch — probably justifiably — blames him for some college Noodle Incident that ruined his life, and Richard Impossible lost his mind after his wife tried to leave him for Rusty. All ultimately not Rusty's fault. The Monarch was responsible for blowing off Ünderbheit's jaw, and was himself already a lunatic in college for reasons we still don't know. Possibly for being raised by Monarch Butterflies for a period of time after surviving a plane crash which killed his parents as a child. Richard Impossible didn't snap until his wife left him for Rusty's brother. Doc Venture just happens to be a hate sink for supervillains.

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