Follow TV Tropes

Following

Hypocrite / Webcomics

Go To

  • Mary of Dubious Company in her In the Name of the Moon speech. She goes on about promoting peace, love, and friendship. Ignore the fact that she kidnapped an innocent priestess and, at the time of the speech, her boss is ritualistically sacrificing said priestess to satisfy their World-Conquering Evil Overlord's god complex. To fully cement the hypocrisy, she gives the speech to some vagabonds that saw said kidnapping and decided not to stand idly by.
  • El Goonish Shive: Sarah wanted to break up with Elliot, but got upset after realizing the desire to break up was mutual. Later, Elliot momentarily got angry upon learning of Sarah wanting to break up before realizing the hypocrisy.
  • In this strip of Foxes in Love, Blue is very insistent that Green takes his medicine, while Green protests and hides under the couch. Then Green points out that Blue hasn't eaten anything today, and Blue is shown hiding under the couch in a similar way, showing that while Blue is very insistent that Green takes proper care of himself, he fails to practice proper self-care himself.
  • Goblin Hollow: Gothchilde complains that people are hypocritical fakers — while claiming to be a 300-year-old vampire.
  • Goblins has several examples:
    • Dellyn believes that how badly a person's enemies want to kill them defines them as legendary, and he must be a legend because, in his own mind, all the goblins in the realm would like to kill him. However, he utterly refuses to accept the possibility that Thaco could be considered legendary, despite quietly admitting to himself that he "would sacrifice anything for a chance at [Thaco's] throat."
    • Psionic Minmax is trying to rewrite the laws of reality, because he has decided that the universe is too flawed to exist in its present state. Yet he accuses Forgath of possessing a sense of "omnipotent self-importance" when the latter complains about him murdering his friend Kin.
    • "Ruby" Kin from alternate reality #80 tries to convince our Kin that she cannot trust Minmax and should come with Kin#80 and her alternate reality Kin companions instead. Kin refuses, remaining adamant that she can trust Minmax, whereupon Ruby decides to take Kin's decisions into her own hands by stealing the Memento MacGuffin of Kin and Minmax's trust and dropping it down an oblivion hole, erasing it from existence.
  • Katamari positions Ace as the Dashing Prince's rival, who constantly accuses Prince of being an Attention Whore who makes everything all about him. In reality, that's a better description of Ace himself, to the point that his attempt at a "The Reason You Suck" Speech would have been better aimed at him rather than coming from him.
  • Solomon David in Kill Six Billion Demons considers himself morally superior to the other Demiurges — which, okay, among that lot it's kind of true — and everyone else, really. His virtue is demonstrated (he no doubt thinks) in a scene in "King of Swords" when he comes upon a harsh taskmaster pushing workers doing hard construction labour, moving giant boulders. Solomon intervenes and lets the workers take a break while he uses his Super-Strength to do their work for them. The only problem with this magnanimity? He's the one who's running the construction project and the whole empire that pushes its workers that hard in the first place, so he's causing it way more than he's alleviating it.
  • Played for Laughs in The Last Days Of Fox Hound when Ocelot nonchalantly says they should let Gurlukovich kill Sniper Wolf, as they need his resources a lot more than Wolf's sharpshooting. Liquid balks at the idea, explaining how they're not going to act like their enemies who treat their own as chesspieces and, while he accepts that some of them may die in battle it's another thing entirely to kill them off just because it would be useful. Raven likes what he's selling but points out the blatant Double Standard considering some of the things they actually are doing, and Liquid shoots it down without blinking:
    Raven: Aren't we going to brainwash a few dozen Genome soldiers into doing our bidding? Instead of, you know, recruiting like-minded people who're willing to die for the cause?
    Liquid: I never claimed not to be an elitist. Those wastes of humanity should be honored to be my meat shield.
  • Living with Insanity had an arc where Alice had to deal with customers who were rude, overly demanding and blamed her for things she couldn't control. When David takes her to a café after work, she does this.
  • In Ménage à 3, Dillon frequently complains about his past and current boyfriends cheating on him, and takes this as an excuse to criticize other characters for their own intentions to cheat. However, he also boasts about seducing twenty-seven straight men into nights of passion that made them "forget their girlfriends". Some readers took this as a gay man's figure of speech meaning "past girlfriends and heterosexuality in general" rather than implying actual infidelity, but Dillon certainly got into a Casting Couch relationship with one married man. Anyway, later, in Sticky Dilly Buns, Dillon apparently confirmed that it was literally true. Ruby, in the latter strip, may have the plot function of being the first character who is sufficiently immune to Dillon's cuteness to call him on this hypocrisy. She's already had to remind him of his uncontrolled flirtatiousness when starting a supposedly serious relationship.
  • In Mortifer, it's explained that demons get more powerful from certain emotions or lifestyles related to their power. While all of them become more powerful as they lose their grip on reality, Zebidiah, as a shapeshifting demon, becomes more powerful the more hypocritical he is. Which is why he works as a priest despite being a demon.
  • In The Order of the Stick:
    • The last words of a Black Dragon who was going to subject Vaarsuvius' family to a Fate Worse than Death is to call V the monster. V's response? "We are all in the Monster Manual somewhere, are we not? My entry lies between Elemental and Ethereal Filcher." In the mother Black Dragon's defense, V had just committed genocide against the dragon's entire extended family line, killing hundreds of innocent dragons, not to mention UNBORN dragons. And, it's later revealed that they killed numerous half-dragons and their mostly-human descendants as well.
    • Another example is Redcloak, whose entire character is based around hypocrisy. He says that paladins are unnatural abominations due to their magical lack of fear. He refers to himself as a "100% all-natural goblin" during the Breaking Speech. He conveniently leaves out the fact that he's wearing a magical artifact that has prolonged his natural lifespan by decades. In addition, in order to get revenge on the racist treatment goblins have suffered since creation, he makes plots and plans built around genocide, something that by definition is racist. Furthermore, for all his claims to want what's best for the goblins, he is perfectly willing to work with Xykon, who is perfectly willing to let minions die by the hundreds and thousands just for a cheap laugh, to say nothing that he's willing to pursue a Plan that is more than likely going to get every goblin wiped from existence if the Snarl gets free or the gods unmake the world. Right-Eye, Durkon, and Minrah all point this out, to no avail.
    • Discussed and defied when Loki, god of mischief and lies, intervenes to prevent Hel from cheating. Hel attempts to call him a hypocrite who flouts the rules and takes offense when others do so, but Loki retorts that he's not making a principled stand against cheating, he's just sabotaging a rival whose cheating works against his own interests.
      Loki: It's hard to be a hypocrite when your guiding philosophy is, "Do whatever's best for you."
  • In Sandra and Woo, the principal of Larisa's school gives her an earful about the dangers of drugs while smoking.
  • In Homestuck, Vriska accuses Dead Vriska of being a narcissistic and overly stubborn jerk who got killed because she refused to accept that she was outmatched. She conveniently ignores the fact that she herself acts that way and only avoided the same fate as Dead Vriska because of outside intervention. Best highlighted when she declares that she's matured as a person and is nicer, than immediately starts childishly insulting Dead Vriska like a schoolyard bully, to the point of calling her fat.
    • Vriska in general is a major example. For example, she holds long grudges and takes horribly Disproportionate Retribution on those who wrong her, but when other people do the same she gets mad and accuses them of acting immature. She viciously criticizes people and claims that she's merely being honest with them, but when other people criticize her she either ignores their accusations or takes offense.
  • Depression Comix portrays Society as this. In one strip, she offers a hand in helping to cope with mental illness, only to Freak Out and brand the subject she's talking to as a psychopath, telling them to stay as far away from her as possible.
  • Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: Two examples of people espousing ideals that it immediately turns out they don't really believe in in practice: In strip for 2011-05-20, a woman refuses the offer to "buy happiness" because money can't buy happiness. But when she's told of "Happy Bucks", which don't technically count as money (even though they essentially are), she's eager to buy them in order to buy happiness. In 2012-05-29, a man says he wouldn't choose to spend his life in happiness in a Lotus-Eater Machine because he prefers reality, but when he hears there's an actual chance to do so, he immediately wants in.
  • Stand Still, Stay Silent: Adventure II involves most of the Ensemble Cast going after Onni after realizing that he's traveling on his own in Plague Zombie territory. When they finally find him, Onni asks Reynir, the only member of the group to not be The Immune, why he came because the trip is much more dangerous for him. Reynir is quick to point out that Onni isn't immune to The Plague either. Onni replies that the fact he's a mage makes up for it. Reynir is a mage also, and Onni knows it.
  • Tower of God:
    • Bam says he would never betray anyone because Rachel taught him it's wrong with great emphasis. Season 1 ends with Rachel dramatically betraying Bam.
    • Princess Yuri Jahad in "1st Floor — Last Examination", even though she's the good guy in the situation. She accuses the royal assassin Ren of using the King Jahad's name for his own convenience, when in fact Ren is on a mission to further the king's interestsnote  — and tried to tell her so, so that she will let him go on — whereas Yuri is appealing to her own royal authority to stop him on a whim.
  • Unsounded: The Central Theme is about memories and their unreliablity, oft put "Live in your best world," so there are a lot of characters lying to themselves and each other.
    • Duane is probably the biggest hypocrite among the central cast. He believes he is an upstanding hero and warrior of God who protects the innocent and punishes the wicked, but his definitions of "innocent" and "wicked" are conveniently fluid. He is biased by extreme fanaticism and nationalism that leads him to do truly awful things to the very children he claims to protect. This is exemplified by the Whole Episode Flashback to his time in the army, where he gleefully fries a group of traitorous rebel Child Soldiers... while claiming to be A Father to His Men to his own squad of Child Soldiers.
      • Additionally, in the same chapter, he proudly claims to have "never lost a lad," defying the expectation that he views Child Soldiers as canon fodder. One of his lads does in fact die in a later fight, but the other children assuage his guilt by insisting Jon "wasn't a lad", since he was the ripe old age of 18. Duane accepts this excuse, but his brother Lemuel (himself a Child Soldier at the time) clearly recognizes and is disgusted by his self-serving hypocrisy.
      • In chapter 16, Duane finally reunites with his long-lost brother... only to reject the exact same rhetoric he's been spouting the entire story when he hears it coming from someone else's mouth. Lemuel gives him a scathing rebuke for this, sneering that he lacks the courage to do dirty work and would rather pretend to be a hero by leaving it to others.
        Lemuel: The old hollow virtue. The old toothless indignation. Maybe you are Duane. Grand man for speeches, but when the time came to live the word how he shrank from threats to his tender sensibilities... Well, there aren't enough pages in Ssael's writing, nor Gefender scripture, nor even the goddamned book of Duane Adelier to detail all that's been lost to the tender sensibilities of weak men.
    • After the deaths of Sara and Ilya prompts Character Development from Duane by finally breaking through some of his own hypocrisy, Lori immediately lampshades the Disposable Woman trope by snapping the girls were "meant for more than this". That's pretty rich, considering the fate she "meant for" them was to be Human Sacrifices (with Ilya in particular trying to escape precisely that fate). What's worse is that she genuinely believes this, as her religious belief is that Human Sacrifices are a divine honor that ensures one a reward in paradise; just like with Duane, religion is a helluva drug.
      • While Duane does not call Lori out on this specifically, he does call her out on saying this after torturing the stormfolk around the shrine, including ripping out the heart of a baby. This gets through to Lori, causing her to break down in tears and agree to regrow the waterbaby from its heart.
    • Rham plays at being the protector of Ethelmik, but he stays in his workshop and watches the khert complaining about monsters and brothels while doing nothing about it. He refuses to stop the monstrosity that is the first silver or save any of its many victims because it might be Black Tongue work.
    • Roger Foi-Hellick rejects Shaensigin's method of unmaking the Dammakhert and breaking the Aldish government's control when he learns he'd have to die for it saying he'll be no one's martyr, seconds after casually dismissing that he'd gotten his entire family killed with this little speach:
      To revolt is to presume to declare: "Enough!" They had lived enough; longer than you will even should you die feeble in your bed. But yes, I used my voice in the capital to poison Alderode against them, and my family against Alderode.

Top