Draco In Leather Pants / Other Media

noreallife

Fan Works

• Parodied in the Warrior Cats fic His Eyes of Amber.
  "I don't care if Tigerclaw was evil; he was still an amazing cat."
• Played straight in the What If? fic Into the Forest and Into the Wild. After Tigerstar murders Redtail out of nothing more than lust for power, he somehow feels so immediately, totally regretful over it that he freely admits his crime, "his eyes filled with guilt and self-loathing". (As opposed to, you know, canon, where Tigerstar gloats over the murder, threatens Ravenpaw to keep his crimes a secret, and kills many other innocent cats in pursuit of power.) For some reason, the character he confesses to isn't at all bothered by Tigerstar killing someone ^note someone who the narrative claims was "like a father to her", no less and promises him her eternal friendship.
• Inkopolis Chaos: Cyalux Clover often gets justified a little too much by fans. While it is definitely understandable why he hates octolings, and that he is one of the most likeable vilains in the trilogy and is a saint compared to the main villains of the other 2 installments of the trilogy, it is usually forgotten that his brother was far from a saint too and one of the more evil villains in the trilogy whose death was also far from undeserved. Not only that, but considering he led a racist organization should point out that he’s not in the right here. He also isn't 100% a victim, as he betrays his two childhood friends in cold-blood and intended to exile the entire octoling race underground all due to his undying hatred for octolings. All of this should really say that he’s gone too far. He may be sympathetic and funny, but he is definitely evil.
• Springtrap and Deliah: Springtrap's Adaptational Nice Guy - status was bound to make him this. Plenty of readers are quick to say he should be forgiven completely for all his past crimes and be allowed to hold onto his relationship with Deliah. But nice guy or not, Springtrap is still an unstable serial killer. Even he knows he can't always control himself and that he has anger issues.

Music

• "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" is about a psycho med student who murders people with a silver hammer. The final verse has fangirls storming the courtroom as he's tried for homicide, demanding that Maxwell be freed. The final refrain has Maxwell murdering them, too.
• There is a very strange case of this with Uncle Ernie from Tommy. Every adaptation does nothing to hide the fact that he's a greedy, alcoholic child molester (admittedly less so in the movie adaptation) who molested the titular character (a deaf, dumb and blind boy), and gets little to no comeuppance for his actions. However, because most of the people who play Uncle Ernie tend to make him a Large Ham (and the movie's version is played by Keith Moon, the band's drummer), the fans seem to adore him and sometimes even defend him because he's "cute".
  • Cousin Kevin, Tommy's other abusive relative who talks about putting him through all kinds of physical torture, doesn't have nearly as large of a fanbase as Ernie, but he's just about as bad. It doesn't help that plenty of actors who have played Kevin are also at least slightly attractive.
• Rolling Stone got accused of doing this to the Boston Marathon bomber when they put his picture on the cover.
• Lampooned in Eminem's "The Real Slim Shady"
  "Feminist women love Eminem
  (Chicka chicka chicka Slim Shady)
  'I'm sick of him, look it him, walkin around, grabbin his you know what, flippin' to you know who'
  'Yeah, but he's so cute though.'"
  • This trope is also a theme of Eminem's song "Stan", which deals with a Loony Fan who thinks that Eminem's Jerkass Slim Shady persona is the real thing rather than an over-the-top joke, and latches onto and romanticizes the things Slim does and says because he thinks they have a bond. Stan ends up dying because he tries to imitate a song Eminem wrote about a man drowning his girlfriend (and the fact that Stan wanted to name his future daughter after the song is a pretty good indicator that he took the wrong message from it).
• CG5: The music video for "Let Me Through" shows various versions of Foxy ruthlessly killing/dismembering the other animatronics and making some very clear death threats to the security guard while trying to get into the guard's room. Yet many people in the comments sympathize with Foxy, seeing him as just lonely and wanting to hug him. To be fair, Foxy also gets the DILP treatment a lot in his home series, so the response to CG5's Foxy is almost certainly carried over from existing interpretations of him.
• Voltaire: "The King of Villains / When I Said I Was Evil" is implied to be an In-Universe example of this. The singer character speaks disdainfully towards the listener character, implying that they tried to get close to him because they liked him for being "evil" while grievously underestimating how dangerous he actually was. The song comes across as a major Take That! to the concept of Draco in Leather Pants by stating that villains are not to be trivialized or taken lightly.
  When someone says they're evil
  It's best to believe
  Like the skull on that poison vial you see
  
  A symbol so primeval
  It's not there to deceive
  It's there to let you know it's deadly
  Just like me

Myths and Religion

• Christianity and The Bible.
  • In several apocryphal Christian letters and writings such as the Acta Pilati, Pontius Pilate is upgraded from merely a conflicted executioner of Jesus to a remorseful post-Resurrection convert, and even martyr. To this day, he is a saint in the Coptic and Ethiopian calendars.
  • There's an entire trope for Satan being depicted as the good guy.
• Classical Mythology:
  • The Greeks had a strange relationship with Cronus (aka Kronos), differing between seeing him as a cruel villain (like Homer did) to an amoral figure with changing loyalties (like Hesiod did). However, the Romans took an entirely positive view of Cronus - or Saturn, as they called him in their language. To them Saturn ruled over humanity in a Golden Age, and when overthrown by Zeus/Jupiter he fled to Italy to continue his reign.

Tabletop Games

• Super Munchkin invokes this trope with an enemy named "Misunderstood Man." He's depicted as a bespectacled supervillain in slacker clothes surrounded by fawning heroines, and female characters cannot fight him.
• Invoked humorously in Nobilis 3rd edition. Lord Entropy is a cruel tyrant who has outlawed love for Nobles. Even so, some observers were surprised that no one seems to have fallen in love with him, despite him being a "deeply troubled, handsome, dangerous celebrity." Experiments seem to prove that it's impossible to love him, and it's likely that he's either responsible for the phenomena or glad that it exists.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Servants of Khorne tend to get this treatment. In fanon, they're Noble Demon Proud Warrior Race Guys who spare non-combatants and Worthy Opponents, a belief which stems from previous depictions of Khorne followers from older versions of the game, and the fact they oppose the decadent followers of Slaanesh, who torture their victims to death. But in reality, or at least the newest versions of the game, Khorne worshippers are all murderously psychotic berserkers who slaughter civilians, combatants and even their fellows indiscriminately. Kharn the Betrayer, the most kill-happy of them all, gets entire fanfics centered around this interpretation. Don't worry though, he's actually a really fun guy. We promise.
  • This also happens to Nurgle and his followers. In the lore, the Plague God wishes to turn the galaxy into a garden of virulent diseases, locked into an endless, repeating cycle of death and regrowth. All the while, his decomposing followers trudge along, nearly all of them overcome by a depressive nihilism. To the fandom, Nurgle is a jolly, almost fatherly god who sees his followers and underlings as his children, and who in turn see him as their "grandfather".
  • A really understated example is Imperial Commissars. Due to the popularity of characters like Ibram Gaunt and Ciaphas Cain, the average Commissar is often thought of in the fandom as A Father to His Men, maybe a Jerk with a Heart of Gold at the absolute worst. What people forget is that Gaunt and Cain are the exception, not the rule. The average Commissar will execute Guardsmen over trivial offences and gladly send them to die horribly in pointless assaults and Last Stands, a practice which disgusts the alien Tau.
  • The Necrons of all factions have been hit by this. While their original incarnation was just a mindless horde of robots doing the bidding of the C'Tan, their post 5th Edition version gave them actual characters and stories. The combination of their status as Tragic Villains, their sheer badass power and their occasionally comic moments (especially with Trazyn) have made a large part of the fandom consider them to be the closest thing to a "good guys" faction. This is ignoring the fact that most necrons are still just mindless killing machine, and that a lot of them see all other races as being inferior to them, and wish to either subjugate or exterminate them.
  • This could apply to a lot of the "good guy" factions in Warhammer 40000, to be honest. And Games Workshop don't take kindly to that. The Imperium looking too justified in their extremism? Next edition, add more deluded Knight Templars screaming "HERESY!". The Eldar looking too sympathetic? Play up their The Fair Folk tendencies by showing them orchestrating events which lead to the deaths of billions of human civilians to save the lives of a handful of Eldar. The Tau looking too hopeful and progressive? Add recently confirmed rumours of mind-control, sterilization and generally treating their auxiliary races like second-class citizens. The Orks looking too much like Plucky Comic Relief? Make a game where Orks are seen laughing gleefully as they massacre women and children. Warhammer 40000 is straight up Evil Versus Evil, maybe Black-and-Gray Morality at the best of times, so the moment any faction begins being viewed as "good guys" or at the very least "alright", lore will update showing that faction committing horrible atrocities to remind everyone that no-one should be cheered on in this series.

Other

• L'ange du mal by Joseph Geefs. The statue of Lucifer was removed from the cathedral that commissioned it because of its "unhealthy beauty" and the concern that it was distracting to young female attendees. The Church commissioned Geefs' older brother for a replacement. The resulting Le génie du mal is generally regarded as even sexier and Satanists are known to visit the church where it resides to meditate on the sculpture.

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