Draco In Leather Pants / Live-Action Films

The following have their own pages:

• Marvel Cinematic Universe

Other Examples:

• Ace Ventura: Pet Detective villain Ray Finkle/Lois Einhorn tends to get empathy from people who see them as transgender, mostly stemming from the Reality Subtext of the injustices towards real-life trans people. This of course ignores that said character is not exactly a woman who was assigned the male gender at birth, but a murderous lunatic who took the identity of a missing hiker of the opposite gender as a front for a Disproportionate Retribution revenge scheme that involved animal abuse and murder.
• Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010) movie has Stayne, the Knave of Hearts. He's the right hand of the Red Queen and, besides condoning and facilitating her actions, he lies to Bayard about releasing his family, tries to get our heroine killed, and generally acts like a despicable creep. Suavest of the suave, right? Yet fandom is already repainting him as a dark, noble and romantically tragic figure.
• The Alien prequel movies Prometheus and Alien: Covenant has the android David 8 (played by Michael Fassbender). Although he is ultimately the Greater-Scope Villain of the series by virtue of creating the xenomorphs through extensive experiments while skipping over the Moral Event Horizon to do so thanks to a massive A God Am I complex, it hasn't stopped fans from shipping him with other characters.
• Strangely enough, Edward Norton became a "gay icon" after he took a role as a buff Nazi skinhead with a swastika tattoo in American History X.
• Colonel Miles Quaritch of Avatar derives a huge amount of popularity from this, perhaps from those who feel that the Na'vi didn't deserve the reverence they were given by many, despite the fact that the Na'vi are never shown doing anything wrong unless provoked by the humans' hostility. The fandom only focuses on Quaritch's fortitude and courage in battle, cool vehicles, and all-around feats of badassitude. Fans also overlook his overt acts of genocide against a peaceful, primitive alien tribe, including firebombing the tribe's giant tree home and killing possibly hundreds of innocent tribespeople, including helpless children. Proponents of the Quaritch-as-hero theory see him as a brave and loyal defender of humanity.
• Colonel Mathieu in The Battle of Algiers. He's frequently cited by viewers as the movie's most sympathetic character (thanks in large part to Jean Martin's charismatic performance), to the extent that many viewers consider him at worst an Anti-Hero. While shown as something of a Worthy Opponent who respects the Algerian rebels, Mathieu also employs torture and mass arrests of civilians, not as a last resort but as basic policy. Word of God from writer Franco Solinas indicates that Mathieu was intended to be Wicked Cultured rather than a sympathetic figure.
• Luke Lerner from Better Watch Out tends to get this treatment from fans quite a lot. One example is in the Sequel Fic Better Watch Out: Aftermath where Luke forgets his memory of the murders and portrays his actions as being just a prank.
• Dean in Blue Valentine gets a lot of this, but unusually it's more straight males who are more likely to over identify with him and characterize him as a good husband and father who is unfairly treated, instead of a pushy, needy, manipulative drunk who rarely takes Cindy's feelings into consideration.
• Depending on how you view him, John Bender from The Breakfast Club has a lot of fangirls in spite of being a Sociopathic Hero and arguably living up to his stereotype as a dangerous criminal.
• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Cesare. Not only is he a Brainwashed and Crazy Psycho Knife Nut Serial Killer, but ladies, he's, like, in a coma.
• Captain Jones in Changeling seems to have quite a few female fans, despite being a corrupt, slimy bastard. Of course, he is played by the handsome Jeffrey Donovan.
• Andrew from Chronicle has quite a bit of followers who feel sorry for him. He was merely a scrawny kid with a violent, alcoholic father, a crippled and dying mother, is bullied by everyone in school, and has a neglectful cousin, all of whom are no help to him whatsoever. However once he gets telekinesis, he goes out for vengeance, even against those who have never met him and vice versa.
• Alex from A Clockwork Orange. True, he's the main character, his society and the adults in his life don't give a crap about him, and Malcolm McDowell's performance is very compelling. He's still a sociopathic teenage psycho and fics where the author tries to redeem him with True Love miss the point. While the original book did have an epilogue chapter where he genuinely reforms after he becomes older and even thinks about eventually having a family, the film doesn't include this at all.
• Vincent from Collateral, if fanfic is believed. For more specific reasons, it's because he manages to be quite handsome and a dangerously badass assassin with great taste in music and suits.
• Nancy from The Craft gets this a lot, partly because of her tragic backstory (living in a trailer park with an alcoholic mother and stepfather who's implied to be abusive) and due to being played by Fairuza Balk in all her Gothic 90s beauty. She kills two people throughout the course of the film, one of whom being the stepfather and the other being a Jerkass who spread rumours about her and Sarah. What's often ignored is that before killing the latter, she used magic to look like Sarah to make him sleep with her when he'd rejected her advances, making her a date rapist too. She stops targeting Asshole Victims in the third act, with her plan being to torture Sarah into killing herself, and threatening to kill Bonnie and Rochelle when they have a problem with this. Despite this, she's often viewed far more sympathetically by the fandom, and even the sequel revealed the protagonist to be her daughter.
• Crazy Rich Asians: Eleanor Young is presented in universe as a snobbish and overprotective parent who spends most of the movie trying to get her son Nick to break up with his girlfriend Rachel and is regularly rude towards Rachel. However, due to her genuinely loving Nick, having an excuse of her own abusive mother in law, and being played by Michelle Yeoh, a large group of fangirls are quick to forgive her more abrasive behavior.
• Bullseye in Daredevil. Probably made even worse in that Colin Farrell actually wore leather pants for much of the movie.
• The Dark Knight Trilogy: The Joker and the Scarecrow/Jonathan Crane seem to get this a lot in fanfiction for the Nolanverse Batman films. Leave it to crazed fangirls to pick two of the most evil characters in a series that actually has several sympathetic (or in the case of the ordinary mobsters, at least normal) villains to crush on. This is made even more bizarre by their neglect of Ra's al Ghul and Two-Face, the latter of whom is actually a sympathetic villain. Of course, Two-Face gets half his face burnt off, so it's harder to focus on his good looks.
  • They're played by Heath Ledger and Cillian Murphy respectively.
  • Bane and Talia al Ghul from The Dark Knight Rises have also been given the DILP treatment. The fact that they both have a rather tragic backstory probably helps.
• DC Extended Universe:
  • Man of Steel gives us General Zod and Faora. The former gets this because of his sympathetic motivations to return Krypton to its former glory and entertaining performance, while the latter gets this because Cool.
  • Batman gets forgiven by a lot of fans despite being presented as far crueler than his usual portrayals. The entirety of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (practically the extended version) tries to portray him as having gone off the deep end and being in the wrong. He murders criminals and dedicates his life to killing an innocent man due to his own bigotry. However, a lot of fans like to portray him as right in his hatred of Superman, and some like to downplay it due to him befriending Clark in the end, ignoring the fact that Clark has done nothing to him.
  • Aquaman (2018): Orm is determined to destroy the surface world and is willing to kill his own brother to do it, but you wouldn't think so with all the fangirls who like to portray him as the good guy. In the actual film, he is willing to kill his own men to frame the surface for the attack, kill a king who wouldn't follow him in a war, and try to kill Mara despite promising her father he wouldn't. However, a lot of fangirls like to forget that due to him being played by the very charismatic (and good-looking) Patrick Wilson, his Freudian Excuse of missing his mother, and him being well-intentioned.
• Colonel Herzog from Dead Snow. Yes, there are people out there who are attracted to a rotting, animated corpse... who's also a Nazi. Just look him up on DeviantArt and you'll see his fair share of fan art.
• The Devil Wears Prada: Miranda Priestly is presented in a far better light by the fanbase than the film, mainly due to the commanding presence of Meryl Streep. Fans seem to ignore her abusive behavior towards her employees and instead portray her as a tough but fair boss. Fans also like to ignore the fact that she robbed her friend, Nigel, of his dream job to save her own. This also comes from the fact that a lot of fans like to ship her with the lead Andy, so these fans often say the fact that she gave Andy a recommendation at the end is her supporting Andy's career, but this ignores the fact that much of the film is Miranda trying to mold Andy into being ruthless like herself.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Greg, to some extent, but after the movie came out: Rodrick. Probably because of shots like this one.
• Pig, Cillian Murphy's character in Disco Pigs, is a nasty, controlling, antisocial jerk who terrifies his own mother, abuses his little brother, terrorizes random people, and who eventually murders a guy for dancing with his crush. He has hordes of fangirls who feel sorry for him (even though he brings every misfortune on his own head), say he's "sweet" and "sensitive", and think he is the best thing since sliced bread. Anyone sensing a pattern with Cillian Murphy-played villains here?
• Do Revenge: Eleanor is not only part of Drea's revenge plot, but also carrying out an elaborate revenge plot which involves not only sending two mostly innocent women to rehab but hitting Drea with her car. However, due to her Freudian Excuse, good looks, and Maya Hawke's compelling performance, a lot of fangirls on Tumblr and Twitter have little problem excusing her actions and saying she did nothing wrong. It helps that she aids Drea in getting her revenge.
• Elysium: It's rare for a nigh-inhumane bastard to receive this treatment. However, Sharlto Copley's superlative performance as the Ax-Crazy Kruger makes this villain the runaway favorite for most viewers.
• Fight Club: Some fans idolize Tyler Durden's anarchist philosophy and hyper-masculine ideals all while ignoring how he is generally exploiting his followers. He also, more as time goes on, runs his mouth on those who disobey him, don't consider what he is trying to say, or just to go drill-sergeant on his followers. Although Tyler rightfully points out how the capitalist society turns people into mindless slaves and has desires to set people free, he's still a manipulative hypocrite who uses Project Mayhem to turn frustrated men into mindless slaves who brutalize each other and commit acts of wanton domestic terrorism. Bringing people back to an apparent stone age without technology was part of that breaking point. For a person who preaches about liberation and restoring manhood, Tyler only causes further enslavement and emasculation.
• Just like the Nightmare series below, Friday the 13th has a pretty weird fan base that for some reason thinks Jason Voorhees is not only a *more reasonable* Sympathetic Murderer, but also, say, sexy enough for their OC to be attracted to. Jason is badly deformed with serious mental deficiencies. But those are things that make him pitiable, not attractive. Later on he becomes undead to an increasing degree. And he, a ruthless force out to punish, is not going to return your sexy feelings anyway. Even taking everything else into account, he's very clearly a psychopathic manchild who, in his understanding, exists to kill about anybody who trespasses on his territory because of his narrowed mindset and evidently bad experiences with people, once theorized to have been possessed by a demon, and he hates sex.
• Gunnery Sergeant Hartman of Full Metal Jacket was a substandard drill instructor who failed to notice the obviously deteriorating mental state of Private Pyle and ultimately his negligence caused both Private Pyle's death and his own. He still has legions of fans due to his hilarious one-liners.
• Get Out (2017):
  • Rose and Jeremy Armitage have a lot of fans who sympathize with them, feeling they they aren't fully responsible for their actions due to either their mother brainwashing them or simply having been indoctrinated by the cult since childhood. This ignores the fact that absolutely none of this is so much as implied in the film, an overwhelming amount of evidence that they thoroughly enjoy what they do, and the fact that stimuli that are known to provoke reactions in the brainwashing victims such as bright lights and the sound of a spoon against a teacup have no effect on them.
  • There are also fans who feel bad for Jim Hudson, the blind art dealer who wins the right to steal Chris's body, due to his disability and the fact that he's the only cultist not motivated by racism - as if that's the worst part of forcibly bodyjacking someone, and also ignores the fact that despite not being racist himself he aids and abets the rest of the cult for purely selfish motives.
• Storm Shadow from G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is very popular. Doesn't hurt that he's hot and can kick your ass from here to next Tuesday. Subverted in that he pulls a Heel–Face Turn in G.I. Joe: Retaliation.
• The Godzilla films:
  • The title character. In a number of installments and incarnations, he's a city destroying Kaiju beast, but the fans tend to think he's just a misunderstood good guy even while said incarnation acts as a hurricane or related force would. Most of the time he's an Anti-Hero or Anti-Villain, but this treatment still gets baffling. This is most Egregious in Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack!, where that version was flat-out stated to be pure evil. The fans still liked him. This is a bit of an averted case however, as GMK was the only movie he was stated to actually be evil and there are several movies, such as Godzilla Vs Mecha Godzilla where Godzilla is a benign soul who has left his turf on Monster Island to stop a monster's rampage. Even in movies he/one of him was an Anti-Hero or Anti-Villain, he usually was the lesser of two evils - the Heisei/84-95 version has both been seen leaving human beings in his view alone and reacting violently to any perceived threat, fighting the greater threat, and thus could be rooted for. By the time GMK rolled around, backing Godzilla in a fight between him and another kaiju is almost instinct.
  • Godzilla is a bit of an interesting case. From the beginning, the character was intended to be a metaphor for nuclear weapons and their destructive potential, but as he grew more popular he was increasingly cast as a protagonist. However, the nuclear weapons metaphor aspect remained intact, but for a different reason. Instead of the metaphor being that nukes are pure evil, the metaphor now is that they are dangerous, and you really don't want to have to use them. This, in other words, is where we get the Godzilla Threshold.
  • Additionally, the monster Titanosaurus from Terror of Mechagodzilla is seen as this - though it has been applied in a different way. Despite being a giant monster who has murdered several people, including (by the looks of it anyway) children at the command of his Mad Scientist Master and his Cyborg Daughter, it is stated multiple times in film and in publishings that this all out being Brainwashed and Crazy by his master(s) and that in reality, he's just a gentle and tragic monster.
  • The MUTOs of Godzilla (2014) often get this treatment. In the film, they're depicted as being completely callous and not ones to perceive to the damage they cause to humans, but fans tend to focus more on the fact they're only interested in defending themselves and living out their life cycle, whilst overlooking the catastrophic consequences their survival and reproduction would entail; depicting them as Tragic Monsters.
  • Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) has several cases:
    • A weird example; one of Ghidorah's heads gets this treatment. Many fans like to depict the left head, nicknamed "San" or more often "Kevin", as Adorkable and the most friendly and innocent of the three, even though in the film proper he exhibits no compunctions against killing humans with his Gravity Beam once the middle head has gotten him in line. Even the director has gotten in on this interpretation, joking that Kevin would likely not be such a bad guy if he could call more of the shots.
    • Rodan, to a lesser extent. A number of fans have sympathized with the Fire Demon, claiming that he's not a really bad guy, and was just minding his own business before stupid humans fire missiles at him and force him to fight Ghidorah, who in turn beat him and force him to fight Godzilla and Mothra. Never mind that he shows unprecedented aggression towards the humans, clearly enjoying himself as he picked them out one by one—unlike Godzilla, who is willing to ignore the humans' hostility against him as long as it doesn't interfere with his goals, and Mothra, who is able to drive off aggressors in a non-violent way.
    • Mark Russell to a slight degree. Fans and fanfics are likely to focus on his sympathetic qualities and trauma, but downplay or overlook the bits where he acts high-horsed and where he treats his ex-colleagues like shit most of the time for the first half of the film.
    • From his lovers, Admiral William Stenz gets this in regards to the Oxygen Destroyer's launch. Viewers who really like him are quick to argue that he was Just Following Orders and that he actually personally disagrees with the weapon's usage against the Titans, despite what Stenz's choice of words ("With any luck it'll kill these things and this nightmare will finally be over") and his vocal tone (he sounds purely annoyed when refuting Serizawa's protest) indicate.
• Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, a greedy, selfish, petty, vengeful, opportunistic bandit whose charges have been for things such as armed robbery, murder, rape, kidnapping, extortion and selling stolen goods, gets this treatment from audience members, critics and film scholars, not to mention his sizeable fangirl community. It's because for every one of his bad deeds, he wins his audience over again and again by doing something funny or cute, or reminding us of how lost and somewhat vulnerable he is. The fact that he's firmly established as a fully-fledged Jerkass Woobie has caused some people to overlook his more ruthless side.
• The mass-murdering Michael Myers from the Halloween series. Though he has come in contact with others and actually left them be from the beginning, his ruthlessness up to his endangerment of his own niece is clear across the franchise as with his apparent fascination with killing - never mind when the 2018 film and its sequels bring back a Myers that lacks about any idea of bypassing people. All of the fanfics have Michael abducting and falling for a girl, or a "childhood friend".
• Hard Candy has Hayley, played by a pre-Juno Elliot Page. She has hordes of fangirls cheering her on and calling her a righteous angel. They ignore the fact that she's clearly a mentally disturbed and sociopathic girl who ties up a man and tortures him for hours on end, eventually making him believe she's castrated him and forcing him to commit suicide. Because said man is a child molester, Hayley is held as a paragon of feminism and her fans ignore the obvious fact that she's using the child molester as an excuse to further her own twisted desires.
• Heathers:
  • JD gets a lot of this, mainly because despite his psychopathic and cynical tendencies, he's played by a 1980s Christian Slater. The ironic thing is that this is written into the movie - where Veronica is initially attracted to the boy who's seemingly Troubled, but Cute and then realises what a psycho he is.
  • Heather Chandler likewise for the fact that she's played by the gorgeous Kim Walker, and gets a scene in a sexy red dress, but also because she has less screen time than anyone else and fans like to interpret more to her. In her scenes, she's the Alpha Bitch who bullies and belittles even her friends, strongly implying that her bullying drove Heather Duke to being bulimic. Her one humanising moment is when she's coerced into performing oral sex on a college boy and looks shaken afterwards, so many fans like to imagine she only became a Heather out of pressure or actually had the Hidden Depths Veronica makes up for her in her fake suicide note.
• Prince Nuada from Hellboy II: The Golden Army suffers this in spades. He's a ruthless self-exiled prince intent on wiping out the entire human race, and fangirls have instead painted him as a major Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds - more so than the film, anyway - who eventually sees the error of his ways, goes completely out of character, and falls in love with the OC who are normally human, which he outright hates in the film.
• Kirill from The Bourne Supremacy gets a lot of this. He's a cold blooded, FSB-trained, killing machine for hire, but he's also played by New Zealand actor Karl Urban.
• As Clive Barker, creator of the Hellraiser series, put it:
  "You've got Pinhead, who hasn't done a single decent thing in eight movies, and still gets mail from women who want to have his children."
• Smaug from The Hobbit has a pretty sizable fan base, despite being closer to pure evil, and systematically attacking, burning, and potentially slaughtering entire populations for no particular reason save that he felt like it. Considering the portrayal of his character as still having some patience to speak, and the fact that he is voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch, this is understandable.
• Many people pushing for a boycott of the upcoming film I Am Not Ashamed, which revolves around a disproven urban legend about one of the Columbine victims being killed because she was Christian, have expressed the worry that the way the shooters are portrayed in the film (or even that they are portrayed at all) will encourage more of or normalize^note yes, they already have fangirls on Tumblr this trope with them.
• Irina Spalko from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a rare female example of the trope. So what if she's an evil Dirty Communist Dark Action Girl who wants to mindrape and enslave millions of innocent people? She's sexy, she has a cool accent, she can fence and beat her opponent whilst balancing on moving vehicles, and she's played by Cate Blanchett!
• Col. Landa from Inglourious Basterds has a strong following. Obviously intended to be a Magnificent Bastard, too many are admiring his politeness and cunning, ignoring the fact that he's a sadistic and sociopathic SS officer shown to also possibly have misogynistic tendencies and is extremely self-serving rather than simply doing what he does out of a manner of duty. The idea that Landa is a Magnificent Bastard actually has shades of this trope; he's more of a Smug Snake, because his "plan" has so many flaws in it, the most obvious one being the one that actually happens namely, trusting a group of sociopaths who call themselves the Basterds. That, and while his plan to sell out the German leadership did sort-of work, he failed to identify Shoshanna as the Jewish girl whose family he slaughtered, so even if he did turn the Basterds in they all still would have died, maybe himself included, and mostly due to his incompetence, not his scheming.
  • Everybody in Inglourious Basterds Fan Fic gets this treatment, but Donny (the Bear Jew), Landa, and Stiglitz get the worst of it by far. And there was that one fic that made Donny speak fluent Finnish to communicate with the Mary Sue.
• An In-Universe example occurs within I Shot Jesse James, with the titular outlaw being romanticized by The Wild West as a Robin hood figure that was cruelly murdered by the coward Robert Ford. This ignores the fact that Jesse had robbed and killed numerous people in his illegal pursuits, as well as that he never gave any of his money to the impoverished. The odd thing is that this attitude was actually real: Jesse James was considered a "noble outlaw" long after his death, with numerous novels and a popular ballad helping to paint this image of him.
• The James Bond film, Licence to Kill gives us Dario... a monstrous Psycho Knife Nut Giggling Villain with a Slasher Smile who is also implied to be a serial rapist....Played◊ by a very◊ young◊ (the youngest Bond villain to date at then-aged-21) and very gorgeous Benicio del Toro. The kid◊ oozes sex appeal.
• Red-Mist from Kick-Ass has a lot of fanart. Granted, most of it is from the movie rather than the comics.
• Hordes of David Bowie fans change the antagonist of Labyrinth, Jareth the Goblin King, from a baby-napping, tantrum-throwing, drugged-peach-wielding creeper interested in a teen girl into a misunderstood romantic whose one true love is Sarah.
• The eponymous killer robot from M 3 GAN has a lot of fans who try to justify all of her murders. While it's true that everyone she killed was at least some degree of jerk, that hardly justifies killing them, and she also tried to cripple Gemma and kill Cady at the end of the movie.
• Natural Born Killers is a parody of this trope. Not surprising that too many who saw the film ended up seeing the protagonists as true badasses.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy Krueger has a pretty strong female fanbase. Yes, that Freddy Krueger—the burned-up child killer who haunts his victims' nightmares For the Evulz.
• Even Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men, who's referred to by some as "Hannibal Lecter's evil twin," gets steamy fanfic.
• On Deadly Ground: While Liles probably deserves some sympathy for her Rasputinian Death, regardless of exactly how involved she is in Jennings' criminal activities, she's still an objectively unpleasant person, something her actress even admits. She has lines of dialogue like "It seems to me like the long-term benefits for the surviving spouses were unnecessarily generous" (referring to the widows of firefighters who died saving one of Jennings' oil rigs) and "Alaska is a Third World country. It's just one we happen to own." Despite this, some fans talk about her as if she's a blameless Punch-Clock Villain, which may have something to do with her being played by former Playboy model Shari Shattuck.
• Pan's Labyrinth: There are actually people out there who honestly give this treatment to Captain Vidal. Ironically, Vidal may be a deconstruction of this trope. He is a villain with a very human, sympathetic backstory... who still commits unrepentant acts of evil.
• The Parent Trap (1998): Meredith is sometimes painted as a Designated Villain who was only the film's antagonist because she was Nick's Disposable Fiancé, and conflicted with the twins' plan to reunite their parents. Except, she's very clearly a Gold Digger and Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who, when Annie calls her on it, threatens this eleven-year-old child she's supposed to become the stepmother of. She's also rude to everyone else, even treating Chessy like a servant who should be summoned with a bell, and the engagement only officially ends when she gives Nick an ultimatum in choosing her over his biological daughters. While she invites some sympathy for the prank the twins pull on her, she's only on the camping trip in the first place because she forced her way in out of suspicion that Nick would cheat on her if he went with Elizabeth.
• Tavington in The Patriot (2000) has no shortage of swoony fans. Must have something to do with being played by Jason Isaacs.
• In the 1970s Swan, the evil record producer from Phantom of the Paradise, gained a surprising amount of Canadian fangirls, so much so that when his actor Paul Williams played a show in Winnipeg he was chased down the street by a group of teenagers, who he later thanked for "making him feel like a Beatle."
• Pirates of the Caribbean:
  • While Captain Jack Sparrow has his noble moments, the movies make it clear that he has done many unsavory things in his life, as well as tending to throw other people over to save his own skin. His snarkiness, attractiveness, and the fact that he is played by Johnny Depp means that there are fan girls aplenty who insist that he's the sweetest guy ever, that Will, Elizabeth, and the British Royal Navy are a bunch of assholes for getting pissed at his double-crossing, and that he'd surely be a faithful lover to the various OCs in fanfictions. Keep in mind that even in On Stranger Tides, when Jack is given an official love interest, the movie still ends with him leaving her stranded an island, looking vaguely horrified when she tries to trick him into staying by lying that she's pregnant with his child.
  • Amazingly, Davy Jones can get this. Yes he has a tragic backstory, but it's also made clear that he has become heartless in every sense of the word. Yet there are fangirls who have him deciding that Tia Dalma/Calypso is a bitch that he doesn't care about and falling into the arms of the nearest OC. Maybe it's because he's played by Bill Nighy...
    • In Davy Jones's defense, the movie does make it pretty clear that Tia Dalma/Calypso wronged him in the past, promising to visit him and then never doing so, because she's as fickle as the sea, and abandoning men is in my nature. She doesn't come across as sympathetic at all and makes it clear that although it doesn't absolve him of future crimes, he was originally the wronged party.
• Tajōmaru in Rashomon; It's true that he's played by the sexy, charismatic Toshiro Mifune. And the establishing shot in his flashback, where he's show sleeping quietly under the shade of a huge tree, is bound to make a few women swoon. However, he's sweaty, gross, an unrepentant sexual predator, a pathological liar and a Small Name, Big Ego who's really not as fearless as he makes himself out to be. Some already acknowledge this but don't really care, because Mifune was a notorious Mr. Fanservice. It doesn't help either that the husband in some of the flashbacks come across as a bit of a jerk to his wife painting Tajōmaru somewhat nobly.
• Red Eye fanfic likes to apply this to Jackson Rippner, a murderous sociopath with no serious objection to killing children. He threatens to torture the heroine to death in front of her father. There is a certain amount of sexual tension between him and Rachel McAdams' character, but it's less Will They or Won't They? than fear that he's going to... do things to her. And yet there is Shipping in which he is presented as just misunderstood. It may have something to do with the seraphic countenance of Cillian Murphy.
• The Repo! The Genetic Opera fandom is terribly prone to this, but that may be because every single male character under the age of fifty is both played by someone incredibly sexy and seriously messed up in the head. Pavi, Luigi, and Graverobber seem to have the biggest followings, despite the fact that being involved with any of them would be seriously detrimental to their partner's health.
• From The Chronicles of Riddick we have Richard B. Riddick. Central character, yes. Hero, no. Even as he's deepened and made more sympathetic, humanised even, as it becomes clear he admires honesty, bravery and honor, he's bent on his own survival. And none of that takes away from the fact that he is a murderer with serious mental issues, and he's only given more.
  • Riddick only makes things worse. He gets an alien dog companion. Still just as terrible as ever, but now even in his own movie he appears to be a DILP.
• Samara Morgan from the American remake of The Ring. Some interpret her dialogue with the doctor as her being an innocent victim of cruel, misunderstanding parents and a Blessed with Suck type of power that she can't control that causes her to implant evil in people's minds without wanting to. Even if we were to assume that far-fetched interpretation is true, it still doesn't justify her killing innocent people who just happened to watch her tape.
  • Sadako Yamamura, her counterpart in the original Japanese films, is given this as well, but by Ringu 0, it's much more justifiable.
• Neville Sinclair in The Rocketeer. There are many who thought Jenny Blake should've ended up with him in the end, even though Jenny is obviously turned off by the truth that he's a creep and a Nazi spy. Then again, he's played by Timothy Dalton.
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Dr. Frank N Furter, oh, where do we start? Let's see... he brutally murders Eddie out of sheer jealousy, manipulates Brad and Janet into sleeping with him for no other reason than because he wants to, creates Rocky for the sole purpose of being a sex slave, and forces Brad, Janet, Rocky, and Columbia to do a floorshow/orgy with him after he has them turned to stone. Not to mention the fact that he's completely and utterly insane. And, yet, the fans practically throw themselves at his feet. Must have something to do with his charms and good looks.
  • Likewise, Riff Raff has quite the fanbase as well. Never mind the fact that he killed Columbia, Frank, and Rocky out of pure spite. Fans tend to make him far more sympathetic than he really is.
  • Tim Curry in general inspires this in fans — even when he played Darkness (read: Satan) in Legend (1985), in spite of Hollywood makeup and latex's every attempt to make him look bestial and demonic. The fact is that he is genuinely in love with Lily, though twisted, and it doesn't help that Tom Cruise is blander than bland as Jack.
• Deliberately played with in William Castle's Mr. Sardonicus. The title character is quite similar to a Phantom of the Opera before becoming Progressively Prettier (driven insane by a disfigurement, searching for love, etc.). Reportedly, two endings were filmed: a Good Ending where Sardonicus is cured and redeemed, and a Bad Ending where he dies. This being a William Castle movie, audiences were allowed to vote on whether they thought the character deserved mercy. Every time, they killed him, and it looks like the mercy ending is lost forever — if it ever existed, and it likely didn't. Sounds harsh? It turns out that a guy who looks like this◊ is easier to forgive than a guy who looks like this.
• Saw:
  • John Kramer, the original Jigsaw killer, has a vocal subset of fans who agree with his philosophy and see him as a righteous Vigilante Man and Anti-Villain, one who chiefly targets bad people with his Death Traps and always gives them the opportunity to escape with their lives, if not always in one piece. Tobin Bell's deep, intimidating voice probably helps. The sequels especially leaned into (and fueled) this interpretation by giving him a sympathetic motivation, cranking up the Asshole Victim tendencies of the people in his traps, and depicting his apprentices who he expected to take up his Villainous Legacy as Eviler than Thou, making him A Lighter Shade of Black in hindsight. This is in spite of the fact that he's still, at the end of the day, a Serial Killer whose actions are depicted as deeply hypocritical and fueled by his ego.
  • Amanda Young, the first of Jigsaw's apprentices, is even worse than John Kramer, deviating from his intended goal of teaching his victims a harsh moral lesson by designing her own death traps to be inescapable so as to straight-up kill those who she deems irredeemable. She's also played by the beautiful Shawnee Smith and often dressed in sexy punk/goth outfits. No wonder, then, a lot of guys (and some gals) love the hot punk chick who murders assholes.
  • Another of Jigsaw's apprentices, Detective Mark Hoffman, got another subset of the fandom to refer to themselves as 'Hoffbunnies' due to their all-consuming love for him. He may be a heartless, sadistic, and violent killer, but that doesn't stop his fanbase from waxing lyrical about how badass and sexy he is at every available opportunity. It's most likely that voice. Or those baby blue eyes. Or those lips. Casting Costas Mandylor as a Serial Killer is a great way to create Monster Fangirls.
• Tony Montana of Scarface (1983) is a violent and possessive criminal who gradually descends into becoming an Ax-Crazy drug lord who, by the end of the film, has alienated or outright murdered most his 'friends'. Instead of being seen as the cautionary tale he was intended to be, he was glorified as an "all gangster" role model by hip hop culture and real drug lords. Part of it stems from honorable traits of not harming children even when chips were down, him making some good points about his actions (his "Say goodnight to the bad guy" speech), and his Last Stand in the finale cementing him as a genuine badass.
• The School for Good and Evil (2022): Lady Lesso is not only in charge of the School for Evil and training teenagers to be villains, but she also regularly threatens her students and helps the Big Bad corrupt Sophie in order to allow evil to win. However, fans are quick to forget this or write it off, due to her Freudian Excuse and limit on how far she is willing to go, namely not actually killing the students. It also helps that she is played by the gorgeous Charlize Theron.
• Scream
  • Scream (1996): Even though Billy Loomis is a sociopath and remorseless killer, he's still played by a young and attractive Skeet Ulrich, which is enough to make some admirers swoon even when he's covered in (fake) blood and proclaim that they love "dangerous guys."
  • Scream (2022): One of the Ghostfaces, Amber, has a large group of fangirls who are easily ready to forgive her participation in a vicious murder spree, mainly due her Laughably Evil personality and being played by the gorgeous Mikey Madison. This is best seen in how a lot of fans try to either erase or at the very least downplay her part in torturing her best friend Tara, all in the name of shipping the two together.
  • Scream VI: Ethan has gotten some sympathy from people who genuinely liked the Adorkable personality he was first introduced as and thus, wish he was actually innocent. Some even going as far as to wish he was going to be the first Ghostface to pull a Heel–Face Turn. The fact that the reveal of him being one of the Ghostface comes off as an Ass Pull surely contributes to this sentiment. The good looks of his actor Jack Champion doesn't hurt either.
• Hannibal Lecter from The Silence of the Lambs is a refined, intelligent older man who has a charming way of speaking. He's also a psychopathic serial killer who brutally murders people (though it becomes more apparent, both in the literature and in the movies, that he is more apt to targeting those who act rudely) and has been involved in cannibalism.
• Lash, one of the school bullies who joins up with Royal Pain in Sky High (2005), has a surprising amount of steamy fanfics written about him (usually involving him and Layla Draco-and-Hermione-style, or an OC redeeming him during or after the movie's events).
• Drake Stone, an arrogant Morganian from The Sorcerer's Apprentice, is beginning to get this, despite the fact that he helped Horvath release Morgana. To be fair, he is a Minion with an F in Evil who seemed uncomfortable when the full consequences of his actions were brought up.
• Fegan Floop from Spy Kids, as portrayed by Alan Cumming, has a somewhat disturbing following amongst the Periphery Demographic. Granted, he's not exactly evil, and it's eventually revealed that his "diabolical scheme" extended simply to making his show better, but the lengths he goes to achieve that are... rather extreme, involving kidnapping and Body Horror aplenty.
• John Harrison/Khan Noonien Singh from Star Trek Into Darkness. While he does genuinely care about his crew and has a rather sympathetic backstory ( he's been frozen for 250 years, then turned into a killing machine by the Federation, then tried saving his crew only for Admiral Marcus to take them away from him once again), some fans often overlook his more evil and indiscriminately destructive actions and the fact that he was an Evil Overlord back in the day. The fact that he's played by Benedict Cumberbatch also has a lot to do with it.
• Of course, the original Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan had Ricardo Montalban, a Latin Lover who shows off his (real) physique and has a legitimate complaint against Kirk.
• Star Wars:
  • Darth Maul has kriffing fangirls.
  • Boba Fett never really did anything in the original trilogy to showcase any kind of softer side. He was a mercenary who worked for gangsters and one of the most oppressive empires in history. He had to be reminded not to disintegrate his targets, and sounded disappointed about such a restriction. Even as a child in the prequels, Boba was not averse to witnessing and partaking in violence against the Jedi. Boba having a more sympathetic characterization is quite possibly a result of the Expanded Universe where he often wavers somewhere between Anti-Hero and Anti-Villain. Even when he's presented as an out-and-out antagonist, those works tend to portray him as an almost elemental force rather than someone doing something villainous out of greed or immorality.
    • Likewise, Boba’s father, Jango Fett, while showcasing some tenderness towards Boba and being an unquestionable badass, was still an assassin who tried to kill Amidala because his employer was peeved she had the nerve not to let him try and conquer her planet with little justification, who tried to kill Obi-Wan Kenobi, and killed his subordinate assassin to keep her from spilling the beans. Additionally, Jango let himself serve as a template for an army of clones, basically his brothers (or, given his relationship with Boba, his children), to serve as cannon fodder for a war that his contact helped start in the first place.
  • General Grievous' leather pants come from two main factors: number one, his incredible feats from the Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoon earned him tons of fans. Number two, his Dark and Troubled Past, as revealed in the Expanded Universe, earned him some sympathy points.
  • As should have been expected of Han and Leia's fallen son, Kylo◊ Ren◊ garnered a devoted fanbase within days of the release of The Force Awakens. It certainly helps that he's a tall, conflicted, handsome young man who rarely conceals his emotions and has serious daddy issues. On the flip-side, he's a Dark Knight affiliated with the First Order who murders his own father in a failed attempt to abolish the pull to the light side of the Force within him. Both the film's novelization and commentary in the featurette The Making of The Force Awakens expand on his sympathetic qualities, revealing that Supreme Leader Snoke was watching him from the time he was a young boy.
    • Also; He's the Son of Han & Leia....two of the Galaxy's greatest heroes (next to Luke)!
    • As of The Last Jedi, Snoke is actually able to weaponise this trope by creating a Force-bond between Rey and Kylo so they can talk. Rey ends up convinced she can persuade him to turn good and lets herself get captured so she can save him...and it was all part of the plan, so Rey would end up in front of Snoke and have the map to Luke ripped out of her head.
  • Speaking of The Force Awakens, General◊ Armitage Hux◊ is another target of this trope. He's destroyed planets and caused billions of deaths, but he's also gained plenty of fan girls that are willing to ignore that because he looks good in uniform.
    • The officer, Lieutenant Dopheld Mitaka (the guy who informs Kylo Ren of Rey's escape and gets force-grabbed by the neck for his trouble) also has a decent-sized fanbase due to looking utterly adorable and appearing as The Woobie. He's often depicted as The Ingenue in fan works. All this despite the fact that he's a military man bit character who graduated at the top of his class and is the Weapons Officer who blasted Poe & Finn out of the sky with the Ventral Cannons.
    • A few have even created fanwork about Petty Officer Thannison, who got only one line and barely TWO SECONDS of screentime (before being blown across the room). He's less a character and more a cameo. However; He's Thomas Brodie Sangster and he's cute so that's that.
  • The Last Jedi has the mysterious computer-hacker (or 'slicer' in Star Wars lingo), DJ, played by Benicio del Toro. He's this odd, quirky Lovable Rogue with a weird stutter and speech patterns, a heaping helping of laid-back coolness, a Badass Longcoat and a disdain for authority and The Man and a generally slick and clever guy who's oddly endearing....even if he Betrayed Finn & Rose to the First Order for a big payoff and to save his own skin, decimating The Resistance in the process. Many see him as simply a guy who might have had some remorse and didn't have much of a choice (Why die for something you have no part in when you could be free, alive and have money?). A number of fans find him rather sexy in his own grungy bad-boy way.
  • The Empire in general gets a fair amount of this. It goes beyond Rooting for the Empire (which is when people root for the bad guys while still acknowledging they're the bad guys), since some political analysts have actually interpreted the Empire as the real heroes of the franchise.
  • Darth Vader is one of the biggest examples in popular culture. Despite the fact that he's the enforcer of an evil totalitarian regime, serves directly under a total villain (Palpatine), and has killed, terrorized, injured and manipulated many beings across the galaxy, he's widely viewed as a cool and admirable character, became the Series Mascot, and is heavily marketed to kids; many people ignore his atrocities merely to focus on his cool design, Force powers, and memorable voice and quotes. While Return of the Jedi and the prequel trilogy made him more sympathetic, the point remains that, if not for the fact that he was so damn successful, the main villain would be a very odd choice as the mascot for the family-friendly Star Wars franchise. In fact, Revenge of the Sith may have worsened this for Vader, because Hayden Christensen's Pretty Boy Hunk looks gained him many fangirls.
  • The Dark Side of the Force itself has one of the influential uses of this trope in media. A popular fanon idea was that the Dark Side was necessary half of the force to counteract the Light Side. Sort of like Yin and Yang. This idea (coupled with the expected Dark Is Not Evil)was given a significant amount of lip service the now non-canon Legends extended universe, but George Lucas himself has dismissed it. In his mind, the Dark Side inherently disturbs the Force and eliminating it means bringing balance to the Force. A number of other fandoms have been influenced by this Ying Yang model of the force however when they themselves dilp supernatural forces.
• A Streetcar Named Desire: Stanley Kowalski, played by Marlon Brando in tight t-shirts and tight jeans... of course, he abuses his wife Stella and does... ungodly things to his sister-in-law Blanche (she's no angel herself, but nobody deserves that). Yet the fans ignore it.
• The title character in the film version of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Granted, he does have a very sympathetic backstory. A judge lusted after Sweeney's wife Lucy. The judge fabricated a crime that resulted in Barker being exiled to Australia and then proceeded to drive Lucy to suicide, and then took in Lucy and Sweeney's daughter Johanna as his ward. However, the sympathy factor starts to wane when Todd loses sight of his original goal of avenging his wife and daughter. Instead, he slaughters tons of innocent people, including, by mistake, his own wife Lucy, who had become an insane beggar from the poison instead of dying. He is so deranged at this point that he cuts her down just because the judge is coming over and he might see this crazy lady running around the barber shop. He doesn't realize exactly what he's done until later. Still, fangirls swoon over how hot he is and ignore everything he does because his life is so sad.
  • Same with Mrs Lovett. Interpretations of her range from anti-villain to woobie, despite the fact that she knows what she's doing and that it's wrong, but doesn't care.
  • Shortly after the film came out, Alan Rickman's interpretation of Judge Turpin has his share of this as well with some fans saying that Lucy should've stayed with him despite what he did to her husband and later to her and Johanna. Fortunately, this has seemed to die down.
• Terminator franchise:
  • In the first movie The Terminator, the T-800 itself is a Draco in Leather Pants, with real leather pants. He was so popular with fans that the next T-800 was becoming a heroic character in the second movie.
  • Terminator 2: Judgment Day:
    • People who worship Sarah Connor as a paragon of feminist virtue tend to be the ones who ignore the fact she is a cruel, violent, emotionally unstable bad-mother who is actually deconstructing militant feminism rather than celebrating it. Point in fact, according to Audio-Commentary of the 3-DVD Definitive Edition Director's Cut, Linda Hamilton (the actress who portrayed her) and James Cameron (Hamilton's then husband and the creator of the Sarah Connor characters) repeatedly stressed on multiple occasions that she is a messed up horror-of-a-human being rather than someone who is meant to be admired.
    • Mostly people consider her a good feminist -character- though because she is complex, flawed and non-stereotypical (and cool) and goes through a compelling arc over the course of the two movies. Feminists instead argue "People should write more female characters like Sarah Connor because she's interesting and not just a cookie-cutter love interest." Good character =/= good person.
    • Surprisingly, the T-1000 gets this in fan fiction and on Youtube. You know, the murderous, borderline-sadistic killing machine who stabs people through the eye and occasionally kills them seemingly just for the hell of it due to how quickly he will eliminate a roadblock in his goal to terminate young John Connor. Rule 34 indeed.
• Harry Lime is this in The Third Man, both Out and In-Universe: In-Universe, his best friend, Holly Martin, reluctantly recognizes that Harry has been not only a Manipulative Bastard to him, but also denounces Anna to the soviets when she has outlived her usefulness, is a common crook who has crossed the Moral Event Horizon selling adulterated black-market pennicillin that has been responsible for the deaths or crippling of scores of sick children. He fights him reluctantly. Anna forgives him unconditionally. Out of universe, Mr. Lime is so charismatic that, besides the novel and the movie, he managed to have two prequels of his adventures, in a radio and Television adaptation.
• In the film version of Watchmen, the Comedian played by the talented Jeffrey Dean Morgan has gotten himself some disturbingly devoted fanbase who seem to forget stuff like trying to violate his teammate while laughing all the time, and gunning down a woman pregnant with his child in Vietnam. And many of them are women who think he's sexy (maybe it's the Porn Stache).
  • This has resulted from the story itself (both comic and movie) giving the Comedian this treatment. In the scene where he kills the aforementioned pregnant woman both he and the story place the blame on Doctor Manhattan for not intervening, the woman whom he tried to violate speaks of him fondly (and had at least one consensual encounter with him afterward), Nite Owl refers to him in reverent terms even in a flashback in which he's firing on unarmed protesters^note movie only; in the comic, he was using tear gas, and his killing by Ozymandias is treated as a combination Heroic Sacrifice and Redemption Equals Death. Of course, this being Watchmen it's entirely probable this was intentional as part of the deconstruction and was simply overwhelmed by Misaimed Fandom. Word of God for the movie said that it was indeed intentional, the goal being to create a character who is despicable but still in a way sympathetic.
  • Rorschach before the film: he had a Misaimed Fandom that viewed him as a total badass, but never found him sexy. Then the movie came, along with a legion of fangirls who want to "make him better".
  • That's understandable, though. Even those who think of Rorschach as he was originally intended to be have to admit that he's a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds par excellence, and as a character type they're always susceptible to the Draco in Leather Pants treatment. Though a lot of the fangirls who want to "make him better" take it way too far, given his childhood, it's no surprise.
  • Just like Rorschach, Ozymandias has a Misaimed Fandom with some fans salivating over his pretty boy looks, wealth, cunningness, and badassery. Granted, while he genuinely wants to stop World War III and expresses remorse for the people he killed, he still framed Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan for the deaths of innocent people that he murdered, and his plan for world peace involves killing millions. Not to mention the fact that his very name implies that his plan was All for Nothing and whatever peace his plan could create was bound to break down sooner or later.
• X-Men: First Class:
  • Angel Salvadore is actually an aversion of this trope. She has some of the attributes down, such as good looks, sympathetic motives and leathery attire (seriously, it's almost like the film-makers were trying to deliberately evoke this trope). But she's not very well liked by the fandom.
  • Played completely straight with Magneto himself. Certain fans just seem to find him more charismatic than Xavier.

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