Even on The Simpsons, evil has standards.
The Simpsons
- "Steal This Episode", from Season 25: The inmates on the prison bus find out why Homer was being jailed: movie piracy. Several of the inmates are outraged, claiming his crime to be worse than bank robbery or drug trafficking, and beat him down (much like inmates supposedly do in real life to child sex offenders).
- Parodied in "Who Shot Mr. Burns", though not so much evil as a doormat to an evil character, (though some may argue that is an implicit evil) Smithers refuses to help Mr. Burns in his plan to block sunlight from reaching Springfield. He later states that Burns had "crossed the line between everyday corporate villainy and cartoon supervillainy."
- Burns: Imagine it, Smithers. Electric lights and heaters running all day long.
Smithers: But sir! Every plant and tree will die! Owls will deafen us with incessant hooting! The town's sundial will be useless! I don't want any part of this project, it's unconscionably fiendish.
Burns: I will not tolerate this insubordination! There has been a shocking decline in the quantity and quality of your toadying, Waylon, and you will fall into line, NOW!
Smithers: No Monty, I won't. Not until you step back from the brink of insanity.
Burns: I will do no such thing. You're fired.
- Smithers does something similar earlier in "Sideshow Bob Roberts": He deliberately goes behind Mr. Burns' back to help Bart and Lisa get Sideshow Bob ousted from the Mayor's office in a similar fashion to Deep Throat during the Watergate Scandal. His reasons imply that he simply could not support Sideshow Bob's political leaning due to it conflicting with the gay lifestyle (considering what he himself is implied to be, it really isn't that surprising).
- Oddly, even Mr. Burns got one in "Homer vs. Dignity". After paying Homer to throw pudding at Lenny (even though he's a war hero), Homer throws one at Carl, causing Burns to exclaim in horror: "What are you doing, man?! That's Carl!"
- It could be a case of Early-Installment Weirdness, but in "The Telltale Head", Burns actually cries at the sight of the headless statue of Jebediah Springfield and joins the angry mob in retaliation (possibly since despite everything else, he does consider himself a patriot). Jimbo, Dolph, and Kearney are likewise appalled and say they'd like to find who did it and break every bone in their body; while they did give Bart the idea to do it, it was "just cloud talk" and they'd never do something like that to the statue of a man who killed a bear while unarmed (ironically, they do just that in the HD intro, so it's either also Early-Installment Weirdness or hypocrisy).
- Burns also seems to despise the Amoral Attorneys he employs as a legal team, as evidenced by how he yells at them in "Brother Can You Spare Two Dimes":
- Burns: Now before we begin, let me make one thing clear for you. I want your legal advice. I even pay for it. But to me you're all vipers! You live on personal injuries, you live on divorces, you live on pain and misery! I— (calms down) Oh, but I'm rambling. Would anyone like some coffee?
Blue Haired Lawyer: Yes, I would like some coffee.
Burns: Want it black, don't you? Black like your heart? It's so hard for me to listen to you, I hate you all so much! (pauses again) I'm sorry, it's my problem, I'll deal with it.
- In "Midnight Rx", Burns kills the plant employees' medical plan (forcing Homer to sneak in medicine from Canada) and drops the bomb on them in the most grandiose way possible just for kicks, but he urges Smithers to turn the getaway vehicle around and make haste to go back to where the employees are in order to warn one of them that the man she's dating is already married and using her to two-time his wife.
- Also, in "Homer Simpson in: Kidney Trouble", Homer tells a ship of lost souls how he abandoned his father to die after refusing to give him a kidney, which makes everyone angry and disgusted at him, including a Frenchman who stole his accordion (actually a concertina) from a blind monkey.
- In Homer Buys a Gun, Louie the mobster is among the NRA members who gets angry at Homer for his complete lack of gun safety.
- Despite his history of armed robbery and burglary, Snake drew the line at a telemarketing scam in "A Hunka Hunka Burns In Love" ("I don't like bothering people at home!"). In "The Regina Monologues", he apologizes for wasting the Simpsons' time when he realizes the 1,000 dollar bill they'd found wasn't his (because it doesn't have bank teller blood on it, implying he shot the teller during a robbery.)
- Nelson constantly shows shades of this, in "Lisa On Ice", beating up Bart for wasting Mrs. Krabappel's time in class. He also avoids punching kids in the face on school picture day, and comforts Milhouse after his parents divorce om "A Milhouse Divided", because that's a problem he can relate to (though later episodes seem to disagree on the marital status of Nelson's parents). He also punches Bart for "besmirching an innocent girl's name" in "Bart's Girlfriend" (the girl in question, Jessica Lovejoy, wasn't innocent, but he didn't know that).
- In "Homie The Clown" Don Vittorio, Fat Tony's boss, refuses to kill Krusty because, "To murder a funny man of such genius would be a crime." Also, when Krusty pays the debt he owed him with a 50 dollar bill, he gives him two dollars back as his change.
- Bart has been on both sides of this trope. In "Principal Charming" note , Bart uses a powdered herbicide from chemistry class to spell his name on the school's field, which enrages his equally delinquent best friends, who think he has gone too far. On the other hand, in "Bart's Girlfriend", Bart himself is increasingly unnerved when he sees how bad Jessica Lovejoy is, stating that she's turning him into a criminal when all he wants to be is a "petty thug". And in Season 3's "Separate Vocations", where Bart becomes a hall monitor, he finds out that his sister Lisa stole the teacher's editions of the booksnote . He snaps Lisa out of her bad behavior by telling her that she'll be expelled for what she's done.
- In the crossover with Family Guy, Bart himself was horrified by Stewie's insanity and violence, which included prank-calling Moe and telling him that his (Moe's) sister is being raped before hanging up. Bart's own prank calls have always been to swindle Moe into saying funny names aloud.
- Bart, via a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo in the South Park episode "Cartoon Wars", was disturbed by Eric Cartman, and turned against him at Kyle's urging.
- In "The Ned-liest Catch", despite having their fair share of troubles with delinquents, especially Bart, the school system, including Skinner and Chalmers, were appalled at Edna for slapping him. Skinner explains that he'll put up with her mild alcoholism, leaving melted cheese in the microwave, even selling A's for cigarettes, but he's disgusted by the use of corporal punishment. In a similar vein, he suspends Otto from his job after he spanks Bart. Homer (unsurprisingly) was the only one to support Edna's choice, considering the fact he chokes Bart as his form of punishment. Ironically, in "Two Bad Neighbors", Homer gets upset when George Bush, Sr. does the same thing, even after learning that Bart destroyed his memoirs since he feels his rights were violated.
- A rather weird example occurs in an episode where the Hell's Satans are angry at Homer for using their name, and force him to eat his biker jacket; however, they get very upset when he does so and chews with his mouth open.
- There is one crime Fat Tony (or at least Fat Tony the Second) refuses to commit. Pickpocketing. His reason for this is because his father needed a heart transplant, but the donor heart was pickpocketed away, leaving him to die the way he believes no made man should die; of natural causes.
- In addition, Fat Tony and his cronies would never harm Sarah and Ralph Wiggum, out of gratitude for Chief Wiggum's incompetence working wonders for the mafia.
- In "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming", Bob has no problem with blowing up Springfield with a nuclear bomb. In order to get said bomb, he tricks his way into the store by impersonating Colonel Les Hapablap, including saying that he'll tear somebody up like a Kleenex at a snot party - which he finds so repulsive that he temporarily drops his facade.
- In "See Homer Run," Kearney remarks that they're really good at dishing out peer pressure, leading Dolph to tell Milhouse that cool kids ride their bikes with their eyes closed. Milhouse immediately caves in and ends up riding his bike into a moving train. All three bullies are visibly disturbed by the result, and Dolph bails.
