Usually, in modern stories, a character who's a sexist, racist, or something else of that kind is the bad guy. This is mostly due to the present-day realization that prejudice is bad.
Sometimes, either due to a Writer on Board, Values Dissonance, Deliberate Values Dissonance, or something else, a character can get away with opinions that are...controversial. If the excuse is well-done, it can work. If not, it seems like a Karma Houdini. Unless, of course, they are punished for it, or forced to undergo a Face–Heel Turn.
It has become increasingly common for heroes of this type to not only have their political incorrectness lampshaded by the author and by other characters but to be aware of it themselves. This type of "hero" knows his attitudes are wrong but is too proud to give them up, usually due to Honor Before Reason. Or perhaps they are unashamed of their opinions, but compared to the villain they're still the clear hero. He might develop into a Noble Bigot or Troubled Sympathetic Bigot.
In Shock Rock and more shock-driven Hip-Hop genres like Gangsta Rap and Horrorcore, political incorrectness is often done to make an artistic point. Sometimes it can be the catharsis of the performer getting to represent negative stereotypes about their gender, race, sexuality, etc.; sometimes it's to create an atmosphere where the listener can be thrilled by having their feelings hurt in a safe context; sometimes it's to make a point about freedom of speech and the dangerous effect of Moral Guardians, and sometimes it's just to make the listener's parents feel uncomfortable.
Also see Good Flaws, Bad Flaws for a more thorough analysis of "discrimination as a flaw". Compare Outdated Hero vs. Improved Society.
Examples:
- In Black Clover several of the magic knights are from noble families. They are on the good side, but they are classist, elitist, and racist.
- Raye Penber in Death Note expects his fiancée to abide by Japanese customs and quit her detective career once she becomes his wife. Given that he's an American, it's kind of hard to write this off as simple Values Dissonance.
- Toru Kazuma/Georgie Prescott of Crayon Shin-chan, at least in the Funimation dub. He's more of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, being polite and well-mannered but prone to easy anger when things go awry for him. That being said, he also holds extreme conservative if not outright fascist viewpoints, such as the opposition of welfare and less than favorable opinions about Mexico.
- Vegeta of Dragon Ball Z fame (although calling him a “hero” only really applies later on) is very offensive concerning other species. In particular, he calls Piccolo a Namekian “green man” as well as “Namek” (which is the same as calling a Chinese person a “Chinaman” in real life). Vegeta also comes up with some insulting slurs for Androids too with “tin toys” being the tamest. He’s only one of the protagonists to be like that though, with the series being more known for its Politically Incorrect Villains such as Frieza.
- An infamous outtake from the Funimation dub has Goku calling Gohan a "faggot" six times.
- In Fullmetal Alchemist, Edward Elric calls Ling's closed eyes "freaky," and has a well-intentioned comment about how people should "ignore race." However, Ling's eyes aren't narrow because he's from China's Fantasy Counterpart Culture; he has an ability that lets him function without needing to see, so he keeps his eyes closed most of the time. Also, Ed constantly misgenders Envy, but to be fair, so does everyone else, and Envy doesn't seem to care.
- The heroes in the ADV dub of Ghost Stories are all snot-nosed little shits who make a fair share of racist and homophobic comments throughout the series, especially Momoko. They are also the only ones capable of protecting their school, town, and all of reality from invading ghosts and demons.
- Gundam
- Wufei from Mobile Suit Gundam Wing in an early episode explains away an opponent's weakness because "she's a woman". He then goes on to spare her life because "I don't kill weaklings or women" (thus equating women with weaklings). Eight episodes later another character (yes, a woman) helps pull his head out of his ass, and his Character Development gets him out of that mindset by the end of the series - but these epiphanies tend to get ignored by viewers. As for skilled female pilots, Noin can stand alongside the show's mains and do so while piloting an inferior mecha.
- Io Fleming from Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt openly mocks the Living Dead Division for their prosthetics, and was in sheer disbelief when one of them beat him in a Mobile Suit fight. He also gives Daryl the insulting nickname "Peglegs" and continues calling him that even after they formally introduce themselves to each other.
- Athena in Hayate the Combat Butler, taught Hayate that a guy had to be able to support a girl financially before he could consider romance. When this is told to the reader, it's blatantly made clear by the other characters that it's wrong. And that's before the realization that most of the girls (including Athena herself) could sit on their hands for a day and make more money than a normal guy could in a lifetime, coupled with Hayate's eternal poverty makes it impossible for him to see that he has at least a dozen young women all but throwing themselves at him.
- The Nations of Hetalia: Axis Powers constantly make extremely offensive jokes and slurs against each other. The entire thing is generally Played for Laughs, owing to the fact that most of said Nations who do that sort of thing are just as hotheaded or stupid as the one they're insulting (also, the series runs on Refuge in Audacity).
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Joseph Joestar is portrayed as having a strong dislike for the Japanese, though whether it was meant to be due to him being a WWII veteran, having his daughter Holly marry a Japanese man and live far away from him, or merely a façade he puts up to cover up the fact he had an affair with a Japanese woman is not really made very clear.
- Rudol von Stroheim, a Nazi officer, is introduced murdering innocent civilians as sacrifices to the Pillar Men and torturing captive women for his own pleasure. Then he becomes an unlikely ally against the Pillar Men once the important fighting gets going, and all his previous crimes are conveniently forgotten.
- Jolyne, the protagonist of Stone Ocean, insulted her friend F.F. by saying she "throws like a queer". This line was cut out of the anime adaptation.
- Ranma ½:
- Ranma exhibits a surprisingly homophobic attitude in the storyline dealing with Tsubasa.
- Akane also had a sexist attitude towards boys (though not men) in the first season.
- In Robotech, Rick Hunter and Angelo Dante to some extent. Both initially have problems with having female superior officers. But they get better about that in time.
- In a case of Values Dissonance, Mario in the Super Mario Land arc of Super Mario tells Peach that she can't come along to rescue Daisy because she's a girl.
- Allen from The Vision of Escaflowne can be subtly chauvinistic at times, coming across as fairly patronizing and condescending toward certain female characters. Likely a case of Deliberate Values Dissonance considering that he hails from a patriarchal society whose gender roles are more strictly proscribed than our own. (King Aston, the head of state, is worse about this, and decidedly less heroic.)
- A few Underground Comics from the 1960s had satirically ultra-conservative "heroes" like this, such as Wonder Wart-Hog and Captain Guts, that portrayed groups like minorities and communists as villains. (In the instance of Captain Guts, his alter-ego is even a fearful white nebbish who becomes ready to start his battles by chugging a can of beer.) The protagonists would certainly not be considered heroes in a traditional sense, but are depicted that way in the comics.
- Ultimate Marvel
- The Ultimates version of Captain America has many outdated views since he is a Fish out of Temporal Water, but he gets over it for the most part. Though some of them are pretty hardline even by 1940s standards.
- Ultimate X-Men (2001):
- During Robert Kirkman's run, Nightcrawler was very homophobic to Colossus. This went away after he left as Kurt apologized for his behavior and even helped Colossus save Northstar after he's kidnapped.
- Brian K. Vaughan's last arc saw Polaris call Magneto's codename "retarded". This led to one of Magneto's instances of being a Politically Incorrect Villain in response (calling her a "harlot").
- Marv from Sin City once told his lesbian parole officer that it was a shame she was gay since she had such a great body. She slugged him for it.
- In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Captain Nemo actually hates the English, despite working for them. Being an Indian prince (Alan Moore actually went back and researched and discovered Jules Verne had never intended Nemo to be whitenote ), he's understandably bitter about The British Empire dominating his Homeland, but goes fully into a homicidal rage when there's a crowd of English Mooks to mow down. Most of the casual racism and sexism is pretty much Played for Laughs or Deliberate Values Dissonance, Griffin and Hyde notwithstanding.
- Lance Blastoff from Frank Miller's Tales to Offend. It's probably intended as parody but, with Miller, it's sometimes hard to tell.
- In Robin Wood's Or-Grund (an Argentinian Sword and Sorcery comic) the protagonist is a Barbarian Hero who is undoubtedly on the side of good, however he can be quite sexist (at one point he praises a woman's intelligence saying that "she speaks just like a man") and in a story when he meets a black person for the first time he reacts in shock, as if he had seen an infernal demon (this is not racism, it is simply surprise because he was born in a nordic region where everyone was white and I've never met a person who looked like that before)
- Runaways:
- In a story arc where the group finds themselves in the 1800s, a number of the "talented" street urchins they stay with refer to the Asian-American Nico as "the oriental" (she corrects one person with "I'm Japanese, by way of Glendale"). When Klara sees Karolina being intimate with Xavin (who is in his/her usual body of a black human woman), she freaks out at how "wrong" it is and refers to Xavin as a "negress". She seems to get past it when they bring her to present times.
- Xavin herself might also count - in their early years with the team, she was an unashamed Skrull chauvinist who used to treat Victor as a servant and once called Klara a "stray".
- Wonder Woman: Several Amazons who voted against Themyscira opening its borders due to their mistrust of men Post Crisis could be counted as allies of the super-hero community despite never getting over their aversion to the opposite sex, however they have an odd Freudian Excuse. The Amazons are actually the reincarnations of women who were murdered by men which explains their misandristic views. note (Of course, the Amazons who are blatantly evil would qualify for the opposite Trope).
- Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes says a lot of things that could be considered extremely sexist, often while addressing his neighbour Suzie. Arguably justified by the fact that he's a six-year-old kid who probably just doesn't know better.
- In The Umbrella Academy: Dallas there’s a hilarious moment when Klaus in the heaven discovers to his horror that God (who’s a Cowboy) is this.
Klaus: Great. So I’m dead?God: Sure as a injun’s red but ya can’t stay here — cuz I don’t like you much.Klaus: Waitaminute... Aren’t you supposed to love all of us?God: HELL NO! [spits tobacco] Where’d ya get that idea? I made ya so’s I kin pick and choose... and you don’t rub me right son.
- Transformers: More than Meets the Eye:
- Whirl is a subversion. He makes some rather bigoted and offensive comments about monoformers and cold constructed bots but he doesn't really care about such things; it's just another way that he tries to antagonize and provoke others. This is also why no one reacts to his comments as they know by now that Whirl is trying to pick a fight.
- Megatron spends a while here during his redemption arc. While he has no problem with the constructed cold - indeed, he insists that he won't stand for that kind of prejudice, given the Decepticons' roots - he's notably prejudiced against organics. This earns him a lecture from Skids. After the Necrobot's psychic guilt attack hits him with the screams of everyone killed through his actions, he lets go of his bigotry, ultimately saving billions of organics in the Functionist universe.
- Most of the heroes of Watchmen have prejudices. Rorschach notes that his meeting with Veidt “left a bad taste in [his] mouth” noting one of his reasons was that Veidt was “possibly homosexual”. The Comedian is extremely sexist and attempts to have unconsensual sex with Silk Spectre I, before being stopped by Hooded Justice, who is a Nazi. Dr. Manhattan doesn’t discriminate due to being a godly being but is still a misanthrope who is “tired of [the human race]”, although he gets better. See the pattern? Albeit, it’s set in pre-Cold War America, so it’s somewhat justified. Ironically the one superhero who is explicitly politically correct: Veidt aka Ozymandias is the biggest monster in the comic.
- Mark Millar's first arc on The Authority had Midnighter admit out loud that he was a racist after getting tired of dealing with some refugees the team had taken on. That said, it does come across as a man who just realized something bad about himself and is shocked by it.
- Rarely an issue of Rat-Man passes without some delicate issue being mocked, often by the heroes, both due to Values Dissonance (it's an Italian comic, and political correctness is usually despised as hypocrisy in Italy) and the author having an outrageous sense of humor even for Italians.
Rat-Man: “With all this politically correct words we do not understand what the activity-between-two-people-for-the-purposes-of-pleasure-and/or-reproductionnote we want to say any more”
- Hilariously parodied/subverted in Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men run:
The Thing: Didn't they come up with a cure for your kind?
Wolverine: You got a problem with mutants?
The Thing: I meant Canadians. - Both the Alan Scott Green Lantern and Black Lightning have admitted they had issues accepting that their respective children, Obsidian and Thunder, are gay. Though after Alan's return in Doomsday Clock, it's been suggested that like in the New 52 series Earth 2, Alan is himself gay, albeit in an armored closest until DC Infinite Frontier has a Late Coming Out for him.
- Every other response to someone U.S. Agent makes has a high chance of calling attention to and dismissing any part of their identity that isn't cisgender, heterosexual, white, Christian, American, man, or human.
- Brat Pack:
- Judge Jury is a racist and xenophobic Knight Templar who patrols Slumburg on a flaming cross while wearing a pointed hood.
- Both the original Brat Pack and their successors mock Chippy for his association with the Midnight Mink by hurling homophobic slurs at him.
- Spider-Man: Believe it or not, Gwen Stacy once threw her support behind Sam Bullitt, a man running for DA — who also had a history of supporting white supremacy, just simply because he was against Spidey. This was in addition to the fact that her father, the reason she supported him (she blamed Spidey for George's death), was against the man.
- Speaking of Spider-Man, Spider-Man Noir (as mainly seen in his crossover appearances) like Ultimate Captain America has a lot of outdated and offensive views and vernacular about other races that were typical for the 1930s. Though it’s important to note, unlike Ultimate Cap Noir Spidey is not a Jerkass, he simply doesn’t understand how bigoted he sounds to modern-day heroes.
Pavitr Prabhakar: You broke into my home?Noir Spider-Man: I told you, I’ve been following you for months now. Also you’re a Swami, right? Why are you living above a Chinamen restaurant?Pavitr Prabhakar: I.. uh...Spider-Gwen: Hey, who are you? Other than a killer, a thief, and a big racist?Noir Spider-Man: I’m an Investigative Reporter. - During the first time Popeye went out west in Thimble Theater, he saw a Native American and assumed that the native was going to "scallop" him. When Popeye launched a pre-emptive assault, the highly outraged and embarrassed Olive Oyl had to stop him, lecturing him that the locals were people and not to be so stupid.
- The Boys: One of the main protagonists is Butcher, a violent Anti-Hero and Noble Bigot who isn't above casually tossing out homophobic slurs, which is demonstrated when he informs Hughie of the secrets of several superheroes whose comics are on display and calls several of them a "poof" or a "dyke". Hughie complains about this behavior to Mother's Milk, who claims that Butcher isn't a homophobe and simply has little concern over what words he uses. He doesn't actually hate anyone on the basis of who they are other than superheroes – after all, he's happy to work with the Japanese Female and African-American Mother's Milk. He actually despises Rayner because he sees her as racist towards Middle Easterners. However in the final arc of the series, he snaps and tries to enact a Final Solution against the supers.
- Static: Virgil doesn't take it well when Rick comes out as gay, but he gets over it after Freida calls him out on his behavior and his reflection on Freida's words causes him to have a Heel Realization.
- Doom Patrol: Robotman in Rachel Pollack's run was initially dismissive of Kate Godwin being a trans woman, but did apologize and make amends after Kate called him out on his attitude. A similar case occurred in Unstoppable Doom Patrol, which addressed Robotman's insistence on referring to Rebis, the merger of Larry Trainor, Eleanor Poole, and the Negative Spirit, as "Larry" back in Grant Morrison's run. In the miniseries' present time, Cliff starts doing it again with Starbro (a metahuman consisting of a Starro probe merging with its human host), the now-restored Larry Trainor calls him out on it and reveals in a Cerebus Retcon that, even years after being separated from Rebis and going back to his original name, he resented being deadnamed. Like when Kate confronted him over his transphobic attitude, Cliff apologizes upon realizing he was being incredibly offensive.
- Camera Shy (Worm) has the hero Exorcist, who is part of the Christian hero group Haven. His power is the ability to create talismans which block out anything Exorcist sees as an adverse mental effect. This includes most mind-affecting powers, but it also includes things like homosexuality or transgender identity.
- Equestrylvania: Charlotte grew up in the 1930s and thus sees nothing wrong with using terms like "negro" and "colored people" when comparing Zebra culture in Equestria with African culture on Earth. Soma has to remind himself that to her it seems perfectly normal and acceptable.
- A Shadow of the Titans plays this for laughs as a Running Gag with Beast Boy — after the first encounter with Jade, he refers to her as a midget, with the other Titans reminding him that that is no longer a politically correct term. Later, he unintentionally performs mild racial profiling by comparing Jade with Mumbo because they both have blue skin.
- Cielo, one of the protagonists of the RWBY fic, A More Flawed Gem, has a bit of this going on. He doesn't have an issue using racial slurs geared towards the Faunus or referencing outdated Mistrali aesops regarding them. That said, his casual racism extends toward humans from different kingdoms (and even his own).
- The notorious Harry Potter fic "Hogwarts School or Prayer and Miracles" does this to the whole main cast. The author is (or pretends to be) of the opinion that women are created to be subservient to men. Hermione is accordingly changed into a brainless girl in a frilly pink dress who cries almost all the time so that manly Harry can comfort her.
- Rise of the Last Villain: All Might insists that Izuku can't be a hero without a quirk (ironic, considering his past status). It's implied that a majority of UA's teachers feel the same.
- Kim Possible is the "innocently ignorant" variant in The Touch of Green Fire. When Shego comes out to her, one of the first things that comes out of her mouth is "Aren't you just misinformed?". Kim herself is a lesbian, but she didn't realize it at the time.
- Commander Shepherd in The Engineer
is both paranoid and extremely xenophobic. While he can play nice if he needs to, any other time he only refers to the alien members of his crew by their race or "aliens" if addressing more than one of them. So far as he's concerned, anyone who isn't human isn't a person, and he has no problem making that clear to everyone. Though in combat or otherwise on missions, Shepherd is a bit better, coming across as merely curt and demanding rather than blatantly racist.
- More of a Designated Hero case, but in this Pokémon fic
, Ash and the other main characters are perfectly okay with letting Erika get ousted as a Gym Leader. Not because of her unprofessional attitude by banning Ash from the Gym because she doesn't like her perfume, but because she's a lesbian, and for some reason, the Pokémon League forbids anybody who isn't straight from being a trainer, let alone a Gym Leader, and the Officer Jenny and Nurse Joy inspector enforce said rule. Given that the author claimed in his notes that he's not anti-LGBT, this is most likely a case of Take That, Scrappy! that just went too far beyond its intended target.
- Played for Laughs in Supernatural: The Animation Abridged where both Sam and Dean are sexist and homophobic.
Sam: What the fuck is wrong with you!
Woman: I don't know any better.
Dean: It's true, she is a woman. - Shadi from Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series, who is basically an Expy of Borat.
- The abridged version of Yami Yugi is also this, to go with his overall untouched-by-5000-years-of-social-change personality in the Abridged Series.
Yami Yugi: Of course I hate women! I mean, they hate me. That Marik chick is always talking about how much she hates me. - Most of the Mane Six in Friendship is Witchcraft are some degree of this. Fantastic Racism and even real-world racism (Pinkie is Romani and gets flak for it) is common. The Excuse Plot to the adaptation of EQUESTRIA GIRLS starts when Celestia wants the newly coronated Twilight out of the way after she starts a political crisis. Twilight (who has heavy shades of being a Villain Protagonist) acted incredibly speciest towards centaur ambassadors by putting on a very offensive five-hour puppet show and stealing their crown. All Celestia had asked her in the first place was to greet them.
- Both All Might and Endeavor in Deku? I think he's some pro...:
- Despite how he used to be Quirkless himself before his mentor granted him One For All, All Might looks down upon them, seeing them as completely helpless. When Izuku challenges this, he blithely ignores his various strengths and keeps pressuring him to give up, because it's 'not his place' to become a hero.
- Endeavor firmly believes that the weak are meant to suffer and serve the strong, and similarly looks down upon Izuku for trying to make more of himself.
- All Might from Null and Void (NevaraRaven), for all of his good intentions, is shown to have some quirkist tendencies. On top of his attempt at dissuading Izuku from pursuing a career in heroism, he is the first to object to including him in the "Heroes Vs. Villains" Exam. It's also implied that he was why Shinso did not make it into the Hero Course until his second year in spite of winning the Sports Festival, believing that his quirk is ill-suited for hero work.
- Carol Dallon aka the hero Brandish in the Worm Massive Multiplayer Crossover Worm: Artifice is a homophobe who at one point called Herberta a dyke to her face. Best summed up by the author from the ao3 comment section:
NathanAllenBaker: Carol doesn't necessarily see gay people as less-than, but more of as inherently flawed in some way. She sees Herberta as promiscuous, owing to the fact that Herberta was engaging in a fair bit of casual sex around when they met, for reasons that will be revealed later. She sees Amy as a deviant because she had a crush on Vicky. She basically finds character flaws in gay people she meets and acts like it's that flaw is what she's judging them. She does slip into overt homophobia, but rarely enough that she can pretend she isn't homophobic.
- Voltes V Versus Voltron The Godaikin Wars:
- Hunk is part of a Super Robot that defends the universe, but screams that Richard and his friends at the Daimovic Base are "gooks" and suggests that they'd rather commit seppuku since "that's a gook's code of honor".
- Keith and Jeff also use the aforementioned g-word very liberally.
- A Is A:
- Nick "Havoc" Parker is a loud and brash Heteronormative Crusader, and makes no secret about his opinions on the LGBT+ individuals also in the MVTF.
- Practically all of the First Multiversal Reconnaissance Team are racist toward anyone who is Russian or Chinese, since these are the two main bodies that control the Pan-Asian Coalition they're fighting against. This wasn't an issue, or even known, until Dr. Mei-Ling Zhou began joining her fellow Overwatch agents on missions.
- In The Princess and the Frog, Naveen looks down on Tiana for being a waitress (he initially thought she was a princess and believes that she tricked him). He also flirts with a number of women when he's fixing to get married, and a deleted line has him saying "I don't take advantage of women. I give them pleasure." He gets over it as the movie progresses, and Tiana teaches him to be less of a hedonist.
- The Mole in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut is a character who helps the boys rescue Terrance and Phillip, but can barely go 30 seconds without saying something extremely blasphemous.
- Zootopia plays with this in that Judy genuinely sees herself as a progressive, not-speciesist person, which just causes her to never really examine her own biases until Nick forces her to. Even after chastising her father for being openly distrusting of foxes, she assumes Nick is up to no good because he's a fox and calls him "articulate" as a genuine compliment, not realizing that it's rather backhanded. She also finds it offensive when people call her cute because it's infantilizing, but later doesn't believe that Mr. Otterton could go savage because he's a "sweet little otter".
- A lot of monster movies have the girl falling in love with the biggest chauvinist in the cast. King Kong (1933) probably started it, but it's alive and well twenty years later in Them! and the MST3K-ified The Deadly Mantis.
- The Fighting Seabees: Lt. Cmdr. Yarrow is a Reasonable Authority Figure and Nice Guy extraordinaire, but it's implied that the atrocities committed by the Japanese military have caused him to hate their entire race.
Yarrow: We're not fighting men anymore, we're fighting animals.
- Jack Crow from John Carpenter's Vampires is a sexist and frequently uses homophobic slurs. Despite this and being a Jerkass in general, he still fights valiantly to stop the vampires from achieving their plan - albeit only so he'll keep getting paid.
- James Bond, especially when played by Sean Connery. Seriously, he treats women as nothing more than sex objects. In Goldfinger alone he actually seduces two of them (first that one girl on the balcony who is helping someone cheat at gin rummy and then later on Pussy Galore) and everyone is okay with it, not to mention that whenever his girlfriends get killed horribly, he barely spends more than a few minutes grieving before he is in the arms of another in the very next scene, apparently having completely forgotten about the other girl he just confessed his love for. In any realistic setting, he probably would have been court-martialed... several times, and he would be fired from the British secret service if it weren't for the fact that they apparently don't have any other agents remotely competent enough to do the job.
- Subverted as, in the books they're adapted from, the sexual encounters are one-night stands (to Bond at least).
- Cpt. Stanley in The Proposition really does mean well, but he's certainly a man of his time in terms of his views on gender politics.
- Ron Burgundy in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. He is offended by a woman holding the same news position as him, so much so that it ends up ruining his relationship with Veronica. In the sequel, although he's not outwardly racist, he can't get over the fact that his new boss is black and offends her family with incessant stereotypes.
- In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, bigotry against toons seems sadly common, and even Eddie Valiant, the protagonist, shows signs of it initially (although he has a Freudian Excuse, seeing as his brother was murdered by a toon). There are still a few toons whom he regards as friends at the beginning of the film, however, like Betty Boop. Eddie got better afterwards.
- The truncated ending to Twilight Zone: The Movie film segment "Time Out" seems to suggest this, as Mr. Conner ends up shipped off to his death in a concentration camp as punishment for simply being a bigot, with the Unfortunate Implications that bigotry not only should not be forgiven but it cannot be forgiven. Of course, this message was not intended: Mr. Conner was going to be redeemed in the original ending after risking himself to save two young Vietnamese children, but a tragic freak accident on set forced the director to go with the much darker ending shown in the film.
- In Gran Torino, the main character Walt Kowalski is a racist white veteran of The Korean War who has several disputes with his Hmong neighbors. Though he eventually warms up to them and they to him, he makes several politically incorrect jokes at the expense of Asians.
- He's also shown to good-naturedly swap ethnic barbs with his white friends ("What's happening, ya greasy dago?" "Not much, ya dumb Polack."), suggesting his slurs aren't necessarily mean-spirited. Racial sensitivity is just something he never learned.
- Chinatown is set in the 1930s and Jake has a, um...period-authentic attitude toward minorities. He also likes telling dirty jokes, usually unaware of women Right Behind Him.
- Even the non-corrupt officers in L.A. Confidential are slightly racist towards African Americans.
- He wasn't the protagonist, but the co-pilot in Snakes on a Plane was constantly on the edge of a sexual harassment lawsuit with the way he talked. After the pilot died, he locked himself in a cockpit full of snakes and kept the plane up until he died, making suggestive jokes to the flight attendants up to the end. To their credit, he was fairly good friends with the flight attendants, and it was mostly just friendly banter.
- The titular character of Dirty Harry definitely qualifies:
Gonzales: There is one question, Inspector Callahan: Why do they call you "Dirty Harry"?
De Georgio: Ah that's one thing about our Harry, doesn't play any favorites! Harry hates everybody: Limeys, Micks, Hebes, Fat Dagos, Niggers, Honkies, Chinks, you name it.
Gonzales: How does he feel about Mexicans?
De Georgio: Ask him.
Harry Callahan: Especially Spics. - Borat: Since Sacha Baron Cohen is involved, it's not surprising the protagonist is an over-the-top racist, misogynist, and anti-Semite.
- The eponymous character of Ted.
- Many of Shane Black's characters are this.
- In the original Lethal Weapon there are two lines of dialogue that imply that the character Martin Riggs (played by Mel Gibson) is somewhat homophobic. Well, it was the '80s...
- The Last Boy Scout (Also written by Black) uses the same line "What are you, a fag?", this time by the protagonist Joe Hallenbeck.
- Kiss Kiss Bang Bang has a much milder example. Harry sometimes reacts with disgust when his partner Gay Perry makes a reference to homosexuality, but he doesn't treat him any differently.
- In Con Air, the prison guard in charge of transporting the prisoners calls Pinball "the skinniest Negro I have ever seen."
- The protagonist of Thunderheart is an FBI agent who's a quarter Native American, but identifies as white and has almost completely turned his back on the heritage of his half-Sioux father. When he's assigned to a Sioux reservation to investigate a murder, he's not at all happy about it. Throughout most of the film, he feels almost no sympathy toward any of the Native American characters (except for a schoolteacher with whom he falls in love) and even mocks Sioux religious beliefs. He does eventually come to embrace his heritage, though.
- In Black Panther (2018), as a result of the nation's staunch isolationism and advanced technology T'Challa, Shuri, and the other Wakandans are initially dismissive of other races and cultures, especially white people with Shuri derogatorily referring to Everett as "colonizer". However, after seeing how their actions created Killmonger, T'Challa learns that they shouldn't continue hiding from the world.
- Star Wars:
- At the start of The Phantom Menace, Padmé is one by default. As most sources say, she along with most of the Naboo regard the Gungans as a barbaric and uncivilized species, and have treated them as inferior for most of their history. As a result, Boss Nass is reluctant to ally himself with the Naboo during the Trade Federation's invasion. Padmé sees the error of this way of thinking, and when an alliance becomes crucial, she doesn't bother trying to make excuses for it; she simply kneels and pleads with him for his help. Fortunately, it works.
- In Attack of the Clones Obi-Wan actually says "If droids could think, then none of us would be here". This is despite droids like R2-D2 and C-3PO showing undeniable proof that they have minds of their own. He seems to have come to regard Threepio with more respect by the time of Revenge of the Sith however.
- In defense of Kenobi, as he never left the Naboo starship on Tatooine, he hadn't met C-3PO yet. And as Threepio and his counterpart Artoo have often been said to be far more emotive, intuitive, and independent than most other droids, Obi-Wan's stance is at least somewhat understandable. And by A New Hope he greets Artoo warmly, reassuring him that his master Luke will be alright. But this is almost two decades later: in Revenge of the Sith Kenobi's still making somewhat mean-spirited "loose-wire" jokes at Artoo's expense.
- In the same film, Anakin Skywalker casually professes his support for authoritarian dictatorship as a political system. Which for some reason doesn't alert his very pro-democracy future wife at all. Made worse by the fact that the views he espouses are the same as Plato's which are actually taught in some university classes as good ideas.
Anakin: I don't think the system works.
Padme: How would you have it work?
Anakin: We need a system where the politicians sit down and discuss the problems, agree what's in the best interests of all the people, and then do it.
Padme: That is exactly what we do. The trouble is that people don't always agree. In fact, they hardly ever do.
Anakin: Then they should be made to.
Padme: By whom? Who's going to make them? You?
Anakin: No, not me. Someone wise.
Padme: Sounds an awful lot like a dictatorship to me.
Anakin: Well, if it works...- Of course, that was foreshadowing of his supporting Palpatine setting up a dictatorship.
- The Steel Helmet by Samuel Fuller was made during The Korean War and was controversial and daring for its time for portraying the American side in that war as a bunch of racists and hypocrites whose soldiers were held together by Teeth-Clenched Teamwork, who would commit war crimes and that the most competent and dependable soldiers were the Japanese-American and African-American who were totally cynical about how little their wartime service and bravery would provide them in civilian life.
- Lily, Vera's partner, in Vera Drake. While she greatly helps Vera out and indeed is the source of most of Vera's business (back-alley abortions) through word of mouth, she has a dim view of their black patient, whom she calls a "darkie", and of immigrants in general.
- Danny Archer of Blood Diamond is a subtler version that also has shades of Tragic Bigot. While not overtly racist, he does seem to be rather resentful toward black people. A white Zimbabwean (or, as he calls it, Rhodesia), his parents were horrifically murdered by Shona rebels during the movement for Zimbabwean independence, and after fleeing to South Africa and joining the army, he fought in Angola for several years, against exclusively black enemies.
- Inspector Clouseau from The Pink Panther (2006) being an out-of-touch and downright idiotic French police officer has extremely insensitive views and stereotypes of other cultures. In the sequel, his well-meant remark to fellow detective Kenji who enquires about lunch: “I'm sure you'll be wanting sushi, my little yellow friend” naturally earns him a Smash Cut to Sensitivity Training. Ironic given the previous film revealed Clouseau is actually fluent in Chinese.
- Blain, Jesse Ventura's character in Predator, makes a homophobic remark when no one would take some of his chewing tobacco.
- Camp X-Ray: Cole initially displays some bigotry towards the detainees, making the stereotypical assumption that they only read the Koran. After bonding with a prisoner, she gets nicer.
- Austin Powers is something of a Noble Bigot, having slept through several decades of societal changes. He has a dim view and/or fear of Russians and carnies. His father Nigel Powers is much worse, with his tirades about the Dutch embarrassing even Austin himself.
- Arthur from Kingsman: The Secret Service is a classist jackass, but is head of the Kingsman Agency, which basically exists to save lives and help out the world. Then he joins Valentine, making him a Politically Incorrect Villain.
- When Snake Plissken in Escape from L.A. finds out that the transgender Hershe Las Palmas was originally an old associate of his, "Carjack" Malone, he persists in calling Hershe "Carjack" despite her objections.
- The soldiers in Full Metal Jacket are all openly racist.
- In X-Men, Wolverine calls Xavier "Wheels" in mockery of the mutants' use of codenames.
- Trading Places has Louis Winthorpe III played by Dan Aykroyd, who mistook two-bit con man Billy Ray Valentine, played by Eddie Murphy, as a thief after Valentine tried to apologize for accidentally bumping into him. Later, when Valentine tries to warn Winthorpe about the Duke brothers' $1 bet that would've destroyed their lives, following Winthorpe's failed suicide attempt, Winthorpe briefly lapses back into his old persona, believing his whole ordeal was a nightmare caused by that "awful Negro", and when he comes to his senses tries to strangle Valentine.
- The Brazilian movie O Auto da Compadecida has the main protagonist Jack the Cricket make a racist remark towards Jesus Christ, who is black in this movie, saying that he expected him to be "much less burned" and his "not being the best of colors". Jesus being Jesus takes it in stride, but he calls him on his racism.
- Daryl Ward in Bright is a fantastic variant, since he is a human cop that is heavily prejudiced against non-humans in general. He loathes orcs (despite him being partnered with one who is always nice to him), is disdainful towards elves, and thinks fairies are subhuman (though to be fair, they don't appear to be sentient). However, he knows his bigotry is wrong and tries to teach his daughter to not share his viewpoints.
- Sean Connery gets another go in The Untouchables (1987), casually throwing around words like "dago".
- Fear City: Lt. Wheeler is constantly making derogatory remarks towards Italians, but there's no denying he genuinely wants to protect the girls who are being targeted by the mystery killer. Admittedly, a lot of the ones he deals with are implied to have mob connections, but Matty is at least running a legitimate business and Wheeler still treats him like the scum of the earth.
- Freebie from Freebie and the Bean is a racist who spends much of the movie hurling racial slurs at Bean.
- Kia, one of the heroines of Freddy vs. Jason, responds to Freddy Krueger's bigoted remark about her being black by calling him a homophobic slur.
- Shocking Dark: Koster exhibits signs of prejudice towards Italians, particularly Franzini, who in turn shows distaste for her for being black.
- Tevya: Tevye chuckles good-humoredly when his granddaughter wants to sing the Psalms with Tevye and her brother. Then he says "But the Psalms aren't for women", and only the grandson sings along with Tevye.
- Oldboy (2003): Joo-hwan has a low view of women. He is best friends with Dae-su, a serial philanderer despite being married, and he calls Soo-ah, a dead girl, a "whore", despite earlier salivating at the thought of sleeping with her.
- In Rocky III, Paulie makes a lot of bluntly racist commentary on the folks in Apollo's old gym.
- Occurs in this joke about a quick-thinking black man:
An airplane was overweight—they had thrown off everything they could but it finally came down to throwing out passengers. A racist flight attendant gets on the intercom and says "All right—in order to offend no one, we will be throwing passengers off the plane alphabetically. African Americans?" (no one answers) "Black people?" (again, no answers) "Um... colored people?" As this goes on, a black child looks up at his father and asks "Aren't we all those things?" His father says "Remember, son, we're niggers. Jews and Mexicans come first."
- Some of the humor in this joke comes from the fact that it is the black man using the racist word instead of the racist — but if you want to tell this joke without using the word, you could say their family came from Zimbabwe.
- 'Fat Ollie' Weeks from the 87th Precinct novels by Ed McBain. Very much a Noble Bigot with a Badge, Ollie's multiple prejudices don't get in the way of him being a very effective cop; possibly because he seems bigoted against all groups equally.
- In Acid Row, even the more sympathetic and heroic characters tend to casually throw around slurs like "retard", "spastic", "faggot" and so on. This sort of language is generally part of the everyday vernacular in Acid Row, so it's not always a sign of bigotry on the character's part (the teens in particular tend to use the words the same way they would profanity).
- The Andalites, the "good guy" aliens from Animorphs, in addition to being generally arrogant and seeing themselves as better than other species, feel female Andalites shouldn't become warriors, instead preferring they be scientists and artists in a society that subverts Klingon Scientists Get No Respect and one book shows that female military cadets are a recent innovation. Disabled Andalites are excluded from normal society, but apparently it's felt that this is for their own benefit (a belief that Ax eventually realizes is misguided).
- In The Antagonists
, Flexis, the leader of the superhero group The Quartet, repeatedly calls the main character Minnie (who is in a wheelchair) a retard and mocks her for her disability. He also expresses homophobic and racist views at various points.
- Kyle Kingsley of Beastly makes a number of comments about objectifying women, and explicitly states at one point that he knows what to do to manipulate his girlfriend into being happy enough to have sex with him. This is contrasted to how he eventually views Lindy, valuing her intelligence and personality and wanting a meaningful relationship with her, all of which show his growth as a person.
- In Caliphate, John Hamilton hates Muslims and believes any sort of aggression against them is justified on the basis of what they have done to his country and other cultures. At the end of the book, he does agree to rescue a female Muslim and her children from an abusive husband because she was his (Christian) love interest's best friend.
- Challengers of the Unknown: The local president is an honest, reform-minded man, but he snidely says that women have no place in anything related to politics and he thanks the Challengers for not insisting that June be present when they talk important business.
- Remo and Chiun of The Destroyer regularly throw out sexist and racist comments and are called on it by other characters. Then again, the way their world is, they're not always wrong.
- Discworld's Sergeant Colon gets the "product of his time" excuse; he's somewhere in late middle age when he's introduced in Guards! Guards!, and upgrades to "elderly" sometime before Thud!. He's known to think of dwarfs and trolls as "gritsuckers" and "rocks" (speciesist slurs, both), and is a little too eager to buy into anti-Klatchian propaganda in Jingo. Vimes, by comparison, comes off as a bit speciesist on the surface (especially concerning vampires), but A) nonhumans under his command put up with it because they know he's got their back when they're in trouble and B) he doesn't much care for humans, either. It can be summed up as "Sam Vimes only likes other coppers, his wife, their child, and their butler" (and it doesn't hurt that Willikins the butler is a member of the "Specials"—The Ankh-Morpork City Militia). Nobby Nobbs also generally has - supposedly (it's been known to veer into Pretend Prejudice to wind up Colon) - poor opinions about other species, which is ironic since he himself has to wear a certificate that proves he’s a human being.
- David Lurie, the white protagonist of the South African novel Disgrace, is openly sexist, and retains a condescending attitude towards blacks. He's perfectly fine with his daughter's homosexuality, however.
- An example of a person seen as politically incorrect in the past: Virgil is constantly praised in The Divine Comedy and he is the one who leads Dante on the path to Heaven, but he also is a pagan who literally comes from Hell, and who never accepted Christ as all decent people were expected to in medieval Italian society. It can be easy to forget Virgil's paganism, but Dante notices it and is embarrassed when the mentor he loves talks about how he helped a pagan necromancer bring some souls back from the circle of Judas.
- Shep the German shepherd from Dogs of the Drowned City is a Heroic Dog... except that he and his best friend Zeus hate small dogs ("yappers"). But Shep gets over this attitude later on in the first book, placing all dogs' safety before any certain dog.
- Harry Dresden of The Dresden Files. One of the most common criticisms of the early books is his obvious sexism, mostly of the Male Gaze and Wouldn't Hit a Girl varieties. Of course, this is lampshaded repeatedly, and it gets a little better as time goes on. He and basically everyone who knows him is fully aware of this Fatal Flaw, and it gets him in trouble more than a few times throughout the series.
- Almost everything Flashman says and does, although he doesn't really qualify as a hero. But he is the protagonist and he is at least not a psychopath.
- The titular protagonist of the book version of Forrest Gump has pretty offensive vernacular, referring to black men as "Negros" among other terms multiple times throughout the novel. Naturally, the film version excises this from Forrest's character completely, with him showing compassion to African Americans that is ahead of his time (including handing Vivian Malone Jones' book to her when she drops it while walking into the University of Alabama). The film in general trims off all the unsavoury traits from Forrest to make him more Inspirationally Disadvantaged.
- The Great Gilly Hopkins: Eleven-year-old protagonist Gilly, owing to a rough upbringing, calls her fat foster mother a "hippo", is aghast when asked to accompany the neighboring Blind Black Guy, and calls her own teacher a slur as a ploy to leave. She eventually learns to question her own racism, ableism, and fatphobia throughout the book.
- The protagonist of I Am J is a Puerto Rican-Jewish teenager who is also transgender. He has some demeaning views towards gay people, in part because of his own hatred of being called a Butch Lesbian. J has to learn to overcome these issues when he transfers to a school aimed at queer teens.
- Kvothe from The Kingkiller Chronicle subconsciously objectifies women. This becomes obvious when he likens women in general to musical instruments to be played by him, acknowledges that women would consider that rude and sexist, and accuses them in advance of not understanding his love of music - in his subconscious worldview, women actually are objects and thus can only rightfully feel insulted by comparisons to worthless objects, not by comparisons to valuable and beloved objects. This illustrates the fact that it is impossible to completely separate oneself from one's culture. Kvothe's male enemies are usually much more explicitly sexist, and he disapproves of their behaviour, which makes him somewhat likeable in comparison.
- Due to being set in the 1940s and 1950s and the series thoroughly averting Politically Correct History, most characters in The L.A. Quartet express many bigoted sentiments and throw around racial slurs. This includes the protagonists and the more heroic characters, who all express very racist, homophobic, and anti-semitic views.
- The Lady Grace Mysteries: Downplayed with Grace. She states that she hates the "Papist Guises", referring to the Catholic House of Guise ("papist" is a derogatory term for Catholic); however, this wasn't an uncommon view to have at the time in England unless you supported a Catholic restoration. Furthermore, it's established that Grace doesn't hate them because of their religious views, but because both her parents were killed either directly or indirectly because of them (she notably doesn't have any issues with her best friend Masou being a Muslim).
- In The Mouse Watch, Bernie Skampersky is a Tragic Bigot/Troubled Sympathetic Bigot who starts with a negative attitude toward rats because one of them killed her brother. When the titular Heroes "R" Us organization teams her up with another rookie, a rat named Jarvis Slinktail, she alternates between accusing him of being The Mole and starting to like him in spite of herself. Bernie finally gets over her prejudice when she learns that Jarvis has been a good guy all along and Digit, a mouse, is the real double agent.
- In Okuyyuki, Audrey jokes about cutting the unit's "queer-as-a-five-gram-wadokaichin first sergeant" to pieces. Reilly doesn't appear very upset with her for this, his answer being along the lines of, "Don't tempt me."
- The Once and Future King is quick to call out Sir Bors the younger as a misogynist...but he's also one of the three knights that achieved the Holy Grail. Not to mention how he's loyal to Lancelot and agreed to be the Queen's champion when Lancelot wasn't around...even though it's been made very clear he does not care for her.
- McMurphy, the hero of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, is both racist and sexist (although some of this can be attributed to Values Dissonance). He repeatedly calls the black orderlies "coons," and at one point he claims that women who aren't sex objects are oppressive to men. In fact, when he first arrives at the mental hospital, before he comes to see just how much of a sociopath Nurse Ratched is, his initial objection to her power is that it's "unnatural" for men to be so completely under the authority of a woman.
- The Hunters of Artemis from Percy Jackson and the Olympians all hate men and boys but are willing to help them for the greater good.
- Although it's a stretch to say any of Philip K. Dick's protagonists are "heroes" in the traditional sense, quite a few are decidedly not politically correct. It can range from as minor as a man thinking uncharitable thoughts about womankind after being spurned to as major as Rick Deckard from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, who spends the entire book going on rambling Nazi rants about the Untermenschen androids trying to destroy human civilization. Of course, Dick wasn't really interested in writing about paragons of human virtue; his own views were usually somewhat removed from the characters he wrote about.
- In The Running Man, the main character is this. He uses the words "Negro" and "nigger", both of which mark him as out of place in 2025, an anachronism. Of course, you're still supposed to sympathize with him because he's trying to get onto one of the Network's sadistic game shows in order to make money so that his sick infant daughter can get decent medical care. He eventually gets better after meeting a few black people who consistently help him despite the price on his head.
- Black Tip from Run Wild has some sexist attitudes. He especially doesn't like being talked down upon by females.
- Sisterhood Series: Oh, man. Books like Weekend Warriors and Vendetta show that a number of the Vigilantes are very anti-Asian. Kathryn went into a rant at Yoko Akio about how she's using the fact that she's Asian and different as an excuse to be wishy-washy. Yoko is not wishy-washy. One of their targets is a man named John Chai, who they keep calling "Chinese boy". They don't call him anything worse than that, but the fact that the book he's in blatantly uses Yellow Peril to justify putting him in the role of the villain implies that the Vigilantes are very anti-Asian, despite the fact that one of their members is Asian herself! Later on, the Vigilantes pretty much indicate that they are Straw Feminists and misandrist, which male readers will not appreciate!
- Space Captain Smith:
- The eponymous Captain Smith is essentially a Victorian adventure fiction hero transplanted into a sci-fi setting. As such, he is undeniably a bigot and casually sexist, but in an old-fashioned, non-malicious, "Jolly good sort, for a foreigner"/"This is no place for a lady" kind of way. He is portrayed as a genuinely good, brave, and heroic person who treats everyone around him decently regardless of race, sex, or species, but also as slightly dim and with some ingrained opinions that his friends quietly roll their eyes at. It helps that Smith's mildly condescending attitudes are contrasted with the truly vicious racism and misogyny expressed by the villains, which he finds either repugnant or so illogical that he can't understand them. For instance, he genuinely doesn't get why anyone would object to interracial marriage.
- The British Space Empire as a whole could be considered this. They're openly imperialist, enthusiastic practitioners of Gunboat Diplomacy, and have a very "civilising the natives" attitude to dealing with aliens. However, they usually mean well and are trying to help, providing education and infrastructure to all conquered worlds, and installing democracy (on their terms). Again, this is contrasted with the bad guys, who typically enslave or just massacre subject races.
- Stinger: Cody is one of the main heroes, and his gang members ultimately turn out to be more than the Delinquents they start out as, but many of them think or utter the slur "wetback" toward their Mexican enemies. Cody admits to himself in the first chapter that whether he believes the racist views his father impressed on him for his whole life depends on his mood, but that the only Hispanic person in Inferno who he considers a "good Mexican" is Mr. Mendoza, his Benevolent Boss at the gas station. He does get better as the novel progresses.
- In Treasure Island, supporting hero Squire Trelawney makes an offhand comment that the reason Long John Silver wants to take a sea voyage is that his wife is black. This is one of many instances in the early chapters setting up the squire as something of a shortsighted fool.
- John Rumford, protagonist of Victoria: A Novel of 4th Generation War, fits this to a T. Then, the entire book is a Take That! to all forms of liberalism and multiculturalism. He firmly believes a woman's place is in the kitchen, Puerto Ricans are in no way American, and Blacks riot every summer because they want free fried chicken and watermelon.
- Villains' Code:
- Whitest Knight wears a suit of Powered Armor shaped like a Klansman's outfit. When not fighting crime, he passes out racist pamphlets to people. The Alliance of Heroic Champions is embarrassed and disgusted to have him as a member, but they don't have grounds to kick him out (they tried, but he sued them and won), as he pays the dues and follows the rules. During the climactic battle, he's pounced on by a dozen criminal metas and is only saved thanks to Lodestar, who immediately knocks him out with a poke to the temple.
Lodestar: Whoops, guess I didn't notice you were on our side. That sort of thing happens when you insist on dressing like a racist di-, um, jerk.
- There also used to be a '50s Super Team called the League of Metas. When Beverly's grandfather (black) found a magical artifact that granted him powers, he went to the League to request membership in order to fight crime. The League (all white) told him they didn't have a place for him but that they were working on a "Colored Division". He told them where to stick it. They said fine, but they'd be keeping the artifact for someone more "worthy". According to Beverly, her grandfather was never the same after that.
- Whitest Knight wears a suit of Powered Armor shaped like a Klansman's outfit. When not fighting crime, he passes out racist pamphlets to people. The Alliance of Heroic Champions is embarrassed and disgusted to have him as a member, but they don't have grounds to kick him out (they tried, but he sued them and won), as he pays the dues and follows the rules. During the climactic battle, he's pounced on by a dozen criminal metas and is only saved thanks to Lodestar, who immediately knocks him out with a poke to the temple.
- Eddie Valiant from Who Censored Roger Rabbit? (the book that inspired the similarly-named film) starts out as a shameless fantastic racist, thinking of the Toons as second-class citizens incapable of behaving with dignity or even of feeling the same emotions as humans. Throughout the course of his adventures, however, he learns to chill out and treat everyone's needs equally, eventually understanding that though they're fundamentally different in many ways, Toons are people too. He never stops being a bitter Deadpan Snarker, though.
- Dennis Duffy on 30 Rock. He's a sexist, homophobic, racist lout who calls Liz "Dummy" and embarrasses her in public. Oh, and did we mention he happens to be an Internet predator? (He was apparently later exonerated.) Well, Liz sporadically dates him and some fans seem to like shipping them together. Witness a break-up speech he delivered:
"Dear Liz Lemon, Though other women have bigger boobs than you, no woman has as big a heart and when I saw you getting ready to go out and get nailed by a bunch of guys last night, I knew for sure it was over between us and, for the first time since the '86 World Series, I cried. I cried like a big dumb homo. And if it were up to me, we'd be together forever, but there's this new thing called 'Women's Liberation' which gives you women the right to choose and you have chosen to abort me and that I must live with."
- And Jack Donaghy on the same show. Only Alec Baldwin could get away with the line "I like a woman with ambition; it's like seeing a dog wearing clothes".
- Liz herself has some racist tendencies but continues to be loved.
- Perhaps the Ur example for television (at least in the US) is Archie Bunker from All in the Family. Racist, sexist, the whole nine yards. The only reason the show got away with it was that Archie was portrayed as an idiot for having these views.
- The Big Bang Theory:
- Mrs. Cooper, Sheldon's mother, seems to be a genuinely nice person whose innocent bigotry appears to be from Values Dissonance. She calls Catholics "Rosary Rattlers" and constantly asks Raj if something she cooks might be "one of the animals you people think is magic." When Leonard tries to correct her, she asks, "How do you people talk to one another?"
- Her son Sheldon Cooper also has shades of this, making several disparaging comments about Raj/Priya, and their country and religion. He also frequently makes comments of a sexist nature, which he appears to have gotten from his father- which actually results in a trip to human resources after he shows his assistant photos of diseased genitalia in an attempt to "lead her away from a life of promiscuity". Judging from LeVar Burton's reaction, Sheldon shows him a video where he portrays George Washington Carver in Black Face.
- Big Sky: Danielle, one of the protagonists, calls trans woman Jerrie "a guy" and pointedly asks if she has a penis (when Grace apologizes on her behalf, Danielle's baffled as to what the issue is, though Jerrie's unruffled in any case). Later however Danielle apologizes when speaking with Jerrie, realizing what she did. Jerrie is cool about it and forgives her.
- The Brittas Empire: Gordon Brittas may be meant to be well-intentioned, but he has been shown to hold controversial views at times - in "Assassin", he seems to be somewhat freaked out on the idea that Tim might be gay (which is true, not that Tim will say this to Brittas), he sometimes calls Carole ugly because of her weight, and once balked at the idea of the centre being filled to the brim with Black people. Intended to highlight the fact that he's a bit too obnoxious, this was a trait particularly true of him in Series 1 and it was toned down once he Took a Level in Kindness in Series 2. Doesn't stop Tim and Gavin from hiding their sexualities from him though.
- Obligatory Buffy the Vampire Slayer example where even among the likes of Spike, Warren, or Angelus, none could hold a candle to Cordelia, who began the series as a Politically Incorrect Villain Alpha Bitch on anyone not up to her impossible standards. When moving to LA in Angel she gained the heroic part but still would not let up the slurs and barbs for most of the spin-off’s earlier series. By Angel Season 3 however, Cordy practically becomes a saint.
- The Closer establishes that Lieutenant Provenza is this with just one word: "Again?" note Having said that, to Provenza, a murder victim is a murder victim, regardless of his feelings on the matter.
- Also, at the crime scene of a murdered gay man, Provenza quips that everyone should double up on their rubber gloves, as it's a "homo-cide".
- Logically for someone who was a villain in the original film, Johnny Lawrence of Cobra Kai can be summed up as what you'd get if Archie Bunker could whoop ass. He can be casually (but mildly) racist and sexist at times and has no problem singling out his students for their physical shortcomings, but part of that is due to his Drill Sergeant Nasty training style, and the more he steps out of his comfort zone the better he gradually becomes as a person. The first thing he says to future student Miguel is to make a crack about immigrants, for example, but the next thing he does for the kid is defend him from a gang of bullies. By the end of the first season, he's practically become Miguel's Parental Substitute.
- Subverted with Daniel LaRusso, particularly with his Miyagi-Do ad where some people accuse him of whitewashing Japanese culture, even calling him "Daniel LaRacist." These complainers do not know (and likely would not care) that Daniel draws upon Japanese culture because he deeply respects, reveres, and treasures it, as his appreciation for it was passed down to him by his beloved father figure Mr. Miyagi.
- Derry Girls: Erin thinks of herself as worldly and progressive, and wants to be politically correct. She makes an effort to say the right things about Protestants, doesn't call Travellers "gypsies", corrects people when they call Katya "Russian" (she's Ukrainian), and is eager to publish a news story about a lesbian. But much of this is only surface-level; she will quickly jump to xenophobic stereotypes about both Ukrainians and Travellers, has a poor initial reaction to Clare coming out to her, and gets into a fight with the Protestants at Friends Across The Barricade. As such, she gets calls out for her hypocritical attitudes.
- Doctor Who:
- Several male companions in the classic series were, despite being wholly loveable, repeatedly portrayed as sexist as a motif — Ben, Jamie, and Harry. Jamie has the excuse that he's from the 16th Century — for the most part, he treats women equally except when he remembers he's supposed to be chivalrous and accidentally causes offence, even with Victorian or 1914 women. Ben and Harry were both contemporary but came from sexist backgrounds on drastically opposite ends of the class spectrum (working-class military and upper-class public school, respectively), and both were sexist to help them better serve as foils for independent 'modern woman' companions (Polly and Sarah Jane).
- Lampshaded in "The Shakespeare Code", when Shakespeare becomes smitten with Martha. She is initially offended by him calling her an Ethiopian and such things until she realizes that he's trying to compliment her. The Doctor comments on all of this with "It's political correctness gone mad!"
- A rare female example: In "The Family of Blood", love interest Joan Redfern explains at length why Martha cannot possibly be a doctor. In her defence, Joan Redfern lives in 1913, when women practicing medicine as doctors in British society was a rarity and genuinely was thought to be impossible by many people, let alone black women doctors...
- The Doctor himself especially the Ninth Doctor has referred to humans as “stupid apes”, given he saves them all the time, he doesn’t really mean that and is only expressing his frustration at his human companions or the human race in general for messing up once again. Earlier Doctors especially the First Doctor have some outdated views and behaviour that were common in the '60s and '70s; in “Twice Upon a Time”, the Twelfth Doctor is aghast at how misogynistic his first incarnation is.
- Ari Gold, agent of Vincent Chase in Entourage repeatedly calls his openly gay assistant Lloyd various gay slurs, sometimes for laughs, sometimes because he is extremely angry. He also sexually harasses women in and outside the workplace on a regular basis.
- Homicide: Life on the Street:
- Tim Bayliss is frequently called out for automatically assuming that poor, black suspects have to be guilty with little evidence, and at one point accuses Frank Pembleton and Al Giardello of having a "brother-on-brother thing". He's also a mild Heteronormative Crusader, though he's shown to struggle with his prejudices and is eventually revealed to be bisexual himself.
- Beau Felton is mildly racist, and he's somewhat misogynistic though this doesn't prevent him from being a loyal friend to his partner Kay Howard.
- Stuart Gharty is very racist, and a Dirty Coward to boot.
- The titular character of House says some pretty sexist things, but then he is pretty much an equal-opportunity insult-slinger. (Not that such a thing always stops complaints.)
Cuddy: [evaluating House] Your attitude towards supervisory personnel is disrespectful, and a disturbingly large proportion of your comments are racist or sexist.
House: That top makes you look like an Afghani prostitute... [Beat] ...would be an example of that. - Barney on How I Met Your Mother, as per his role as The Casanova, tends to treat women like objects, but has enough style and goes far enough over the top that people still love him.
- He also has enough genuinely decent moments to keep him firmly in the Jerk with a Heart of Gold territory.
Barney: At one point, I'm pretty sure I sold a woman. I didn't speak the language, but I shook a guy's hand, he gave me the keys to a Mercedes, and I left her there.
- He also has enough genuinely decent moments to keep him firmly in the Jerk with a Heart of Gold territory.
- Inhumans features Attilan's royal family, all of whom (with the exception of Maximus) are complicit in enforcing a Fantastic Caste System which essentially consigns those without powers, or with unimpressive powers, to a life of slavery.
- Mike Logan of Law & Order. a Jerkass borderline Cowboy Cop who openly disrespected his new female lieutenant, Anita Van Burennote . His time in Staten Island must have beaten some maturity into him because by the time he joins the Criminal Intent cast, he's merely a Snark Knight.
- DCI Gene Hunt from Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes (2008) is a particularly good example. (Heavily lampshade-hung in the Season 1 finale of A2A, when Alex tells Gene there's a sizeable percentage of otherwise intelligent twenty-first-century women who'd be perfectly happy to sleep with him.)
Gene Hunt: Now. Yesterday's shooting. The dealers are all so scared we're more likely to get Helen Keller to talk. The Paki in a coma's about as lively as Liberace's dick when he's looking at a naked woman, all in all, this investigation's going at the speed of a spastic in a magnet factory.
[Sam Tyler, shocked, drops the radio he is holding]
Gene Hunt: What?
Sam Tyler: Think you might have missed out the Jews.- The fact that Gene knows who Helen Keller is shows that he's quite well educated though.
- Married... with Children gave us Al Bundy and played it for laughs. Al was by no means a racist (he even had at least one close friend who was African-American), but he did have contempt for some white ethnicities (hating the French, for instance). He was always quick to ogle beautiful women (which makes him no different from most men throughout history and is one of the less objectionable things he does), mock his obnoxious customers for their weight, pick fights with the feminist-minded Marcy, and generally say whatever was on his mind no matter who would be offended. Al even founded NO MA'AM (National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood). In one episode, he returns from a quest with a series of commandments - "Rules for hard-working people, who don't give a rat's ass about political correctness!" (To tell the truth, Marcy really wasn't much better than Al. In fact, the show seems to have almost no characters with outstanding redeeming features at all, which is kind of the point.)
- Vince from Mongrels stretches the term "hero" to its barest definition, being a murdering, raping lunatic, but he's generally on the side of the protagonists. Among his many charming traits, he's extremely racist and homophobic, as well as having a special hatred for chickens to the point of singing an upbeat Cockney pub song about his bigoted loathing for them.
- NCIS:
- Gibbs. Ari killed one of his female agents precisely because Gibbs would be more upset about it than if he'd lost a male subordinate. He shows little respect for his female boss (unlike her male predecessor), and it's suggested that he has trouble taking orders from a woman.
- Mike Franks, Gibbs' mentor, fits this trope even better. His sexist views are FAR more blatant. When he found out Jenny Shepard was the director of NCIS, he laughed at her since she was a woman.
- Arguably, Dr. Christian Troy from Nip/Tuck: pathologically oversexed, determinedly shallow, given to anything from sexual harassment up to psychological warfare as seduction tactics (see, for example, the scene in the pilot where he strips his latest conquest naked, stands her in front of a full-length mirror, and uses a red lipstick to indicate flaws he finds surgically improvable), and an overwhelming fan favorite. Possibly because of the hotness, possibly because of the tragic backstory, possibly because he's the only major character who isn't an insufferable hypocrite.
- NTSF:SD:SUV::: In one episode the team is assisted by Agent Booth Whitman, a hard-ass veteran Cowboy Cop with very old-fashioned attitudes. He arrested the 'bad guy', a New-Age Retro Hippie from the 1960s, for trying to give black people the vote. He also tried to stop women from enlisting in the NTSF. Trent Hauser—a not very dissimilar Cowboy Cop—just plain idolizes him, while Piper at first objects to his presence before she starts to like the attention he gives her. Deconstructed when he finds himself so at odds with the way the world has changed that he briefly sinks into depression before it's reconstructed when Piper convinces him that they desperately need men like him in a confused world.
- In Only Fools and Horses, Lovable Rogue Derek Trotter is occasionally quite homophobic. Unfortunately this aspect of his character was a product of its time, but the show often addressed this by gradually playing his homophobia at his expense and having his more idealistic younger brother call him out on it - such as a time Del believes he might have caught AIDS from an effeminate hairdresser.
- Hamid Khan from Oz has a strong moral compass and is unquestionably a good guy, but he's so intensely prejudiced against anyone who's not a black heterosexual Muslim that it's hard to see.
- Red Dwarf:
- Arnold Rimmer, although calling him a hero is usually stretching it, is notably pretty offensive to non-human characters calling Cat a “Moggy” and Kryten the Mechanoid "bog bot", "metal bastard", "metal trash" and "rubber headed eunich" which becomes ironic when he gets turned into a Mechanoid in Series XI and likes it. Although some nationalities from Earth quite don’t quite escape Rimmer’s jerkery either.
Rimmer: Maybe we can reason with it. Open communication channels Lister and broadcast on all known frequencies, and in all known languages, including Welsh.- Cat a feline humanoid in typical Cats Are Mean behaviour has called Lister and Rimmer “monkeys” on multiple occasions in the earlier series. After growing to like them, Cat invents other non-racial insults for them.
- Grandpa on The Real Mc Coys spends the first few minutes of the pilot episode saying racist things to a Mexican farmhand and shows little esteem for women. His attitude does lighten up somewhat, though.
- Buz Murdock of Route 66 is a Licensed Sexist, and made at least two cringe-inducing speeches about a woman's place as helper and subordinate to her man during the show's run. He's the lead character and portrayed sympathetically: the women agree more often than not, and see the "error" of their ways! His view of relations between the sexes is, arguably, a bit of Author Appeal.
- Scrubs:
- The Todd constantly sexually harasses the female staff at Sacred Heart and says many sexist and derogatory things....yet remains one of the most popular side characters, second only to the Almighty Janitor. The Todd is loved not in spite of his sexism as per this trope, but due to it being taken to absurd and frightening levels. Plus later he starts going after men too. Why? Because he is THE TODD.
- Dr. Cox also qualifies due to his frequently berating his subordinates and giving them insulting nicknames, also Turk is visibly uncomfortable around gay people and can barely talk to them.
- Captain Leroy, an American loyalist serving in the British Army in Sharpe, is one of the nicest and most reasonable officers Sharpe and his men encounter, doesn't care that Sharpe isn't a "gentleman" and is opposed to the barbaric punishment of flogging. He is also hugely proud of the fact that his family became wealthy through slavery and doesn't object to flogging soldiers because it's inhumane, but because the soldiers are white.
- Stargate SG-1: Jaffa society is historically quite sexist and while the Jaffa allied with the SGC are generally better at this, there are still some examples. When Bra'tac first meets SG1, he dismisses Carter due to her sex - though it's ambiguous whether or not he was just doing that to get a rise out of them and see what they were made of. Even Teal'c, who has fought side-by-side with Carter for several years, is surprised when they find the all-female Hak'tyl and their leader Ishta is able to best him in a fight - though, to be fair, this might be to do with the fact that as a rule, female Jaffa aren't trained to fight, and as an even greater rule, it's a rare event when anyone bests Teal'c.
- Chief O'Brien on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine was a (somewhat) Licensed Fantastic Racist against the alien Cardassians. In one of the few Next Generation episodes that gave him a prominent role, he explained his excuse for this — during a war with the Cardassians he had to kill another person for the first time (in self-defence) and hated himself for doing so. Of course, he still got a lot of flak for his racism, especially in a much later episode of Deep Space Nine when he showed a lot of dislike for a young and innocent Cardassian child (though he got better over time). Nonetheless, he was generally a very likeable and sympathetic character.
- Kira follows a similar, more dramatic character arc. While everybody—including herself—has no problems calling her a terrorist, her absolute hatred of all military Cardassians was pretty justified since she spent her entire life fighting against their horrifically brutal occupation of her planet. Over the course of the series, she came to accept that not all Cardassians are evil and even began to sympathize with them when their planet is occupied.
- To make this understandable, it should be noted that the Cardassians as a species are not very far from Always Chaotic Evil. Their regime is horrible, and most Cardassian characters are representatives of that regime in one way or another (though we do meet some genuinely noble ones...and Garak).
- Commander Worf is openly racist toward Romulans, to the point that simply admitting that Romulans fought honorably in their failed Gunship Rescue is treated as legitimate character growth in Star Trek: Nemesis. Justified Trope in his case as he was essentially orphaned by a Romulan sneak attack as a child.
- Worf once refused to donate blood to a critically wounded Romulan, resulting in his death. Though the moral failing on his part is softened by the fact that the Romulan stated to Worf's face that he'd sooner die than get a transfusion from a Klingon anyway, which meant that ethically Dr Crusher couldn't have done the operation even if Worf had agreed to. He's also portrayed as quick to resort to violence and slightly sexist in a "Women are delicate and need protection" sort of way. A quickness to resort to violence is, admittedly, a recognized trait of Klingons as a species, but the mild sexism is a little hard to place, given Klingon culture expects women to be rather aggressive themselves (courtship traditionally, as Worf comments, consists of the male reciting poetry and ducking whatever heavy objects the female feels like throwing at him, while females are aggressive enough during sex that bruises, gashes, and even broken bones are to be expected — it's considered a sign of good luck if a newlywed wife breaks her husband's collar bone on their wedding night). Then again, he laughed at the idea of dating human women since they would be "too fragile" so maybe his sexism just extends to human women.
- In Star Trek: The Original Series, Spock frequently expressed his displeasure when Kirk told him something along the line that he was "becoming more human every day". Spock frequently referred to "annoying human emotions". In TOS, he clearly preferred not to be reminded that he was half-human.
- Dr. McCoy was something of a Noble Bigot who kept needling Spock over the Vulcan dedication to logic, while Kirk harbored a lot of anti-Klingon racism.
- In his first appearance in The Original Series, Kor was a Politically Incorrect Villain, an imperialist occupier of a seemingly less developed planet with a clear sense of cultural superiority to the natives. In Deep Space Nine he returned as a Boisterous Bruiser Old Master and friend of Dax, now on the side of the protagonists, but he was later revealed to be an open classist, believing the Emperor should reign supreme, and that those of common birth (including Martok) were unsuitable for officers ranks.
- Janeway states in the Star Trek: Voyager/Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country crossover episode "Flashback" that Kirk, Sulu, and the rest of the TOS gang would fit the bill by 24th Century standards.
"Space must have seemed a whole lot bigger back then. It's not surprising they had to bend the rules a little. They were a little slower to invoke the Prime Directive, and a little quicker to pull their phasers. Of course, the whole bunch of them would be booted out of Starfleet today. But I have to admit, I would have loved to ride shotgun at least once with a group of officers like that." - Summer Heights High: Ja'mie King frequently shows prejudice against Asians, lesbians, fat girls, and anyone who doesn't have rich parents. The only group of people she shows any kindness to are Africans and it's implied that's only for novelty purposes.
- A recurring character in Series 3 of That Mitchell and Webb Look is Captain Todger, a superhero with an outdated, Bernard Manning sense of humour, whose emblem is a crude drawing of a penis. The same sketches also invert this with his arch-nemesis General Drayfox, an evil supervillain who is scrupulously politically correct.
Mayor: He'll never kneel, because he is our greatest hero, and has saved humanity countless times!
General Drayfox: THEN WHERE IS HE?!
Mayor:...Well, at the moment, he's in prison for statutory rape.
General Drayfox: What? RAPE?
Mayor: Statutory rape! It was an accident, she was wearing makeup!
Drayfox: Uh - I really don't think that's any excuse!
- Captain Jorez, your companion for most of Twilight Histories episode “Aztec Steel” displays all of the beliefs and prejudices one might expect of a 16th-century Spanish nobleman.
- Charlie Haas was portrayed as being somewhat homophobic on WWE Smackdown. Somewhat because Gorgeous George Rico Constantino was openly harassing him, and then Haas and Rico were made into a tag team, despite the fact Haas was obviously uncomfortable with it and it was portrayed as a good thing when Haas became a little enthusiastic about teaming with Rico.
- On Caged Heat Radio's Reality Check, Jorge Alonso presented Bruce Santee as his good friend, only for it to soon be revealed Santee didn't know Jorge from George
.
- Big Wayne from The Lazlow Show is generally the comedic center of the show, but he is horrifically pick-one-ist, and an entire section of the show involves him discussing his terrible exploits with women.
- Dino Attack RPG:
- Trigger, who admittedly drew some inspiration from Jack Crow. Of memorable note was his openly criticizing Hotwire and Rex for continuing to fight despite losing their leg and being unable to walk, respectively (although he did at least try to justify this by pointing out the impracticality of putting a wheelchair-bound agent in a combat role on a tropical island- usually a very wheelchair-unfriendly environment).
- Soldier acted as a more comedic version- he's extremely sexist but has a tendency to make insulting remarks about women in front of Maria, a very active feminist.
- Additionally, Agent Andrew "Pyro" Jackson was eventually revealed to be extremely homophobic, to the point where he disowned his own daughter.
- Darwin's Soldiers:
- Gustave Chiumbo is openly speciesist against mammals.
- Specialist Crota has his moments too.
- Just about everyone in Warhammer 40,000 is horribly prejudiced against everyone else, hero or otherwise. Of course, being the Crapsack World that the 41st millennium is, bigotry is basically required not only to survive but to avoid a horrible Fate Worse than Death that will last for all eternity.
- The Imperium of Man's official state policy espouses Absolute Xenophobia, and the only reason they haven't completely genocided every alien race in the galaxy is that humanity is already struggling enough just to survive. Mutants have it only slightly better since the Imperium needs psykers in order to continue functioning, but those who haven't been sanctioned as Imperial servants are fair game. Justified since a rogue psyker is vulnerable to daemonic possession and can lead to tens of billions of people getting their souls swallowed.
- The Eldar view themselves as the superior species and look down on everybody else. In fact, they will gleefully cause the deaths of billions of another species just to save a handful of their own, though that's justified in that Eldar are a Dying Race and the only ones whose souls will become the playthings of a Chaos God of hedonism after death.
- The Tau Empire are slightly better about this, but only just. While their doctrine encourages peaceful co-existence between different species, in practice their society is rigidly segregated (necessarily so, as the Tau race has used selective breeding for millennia to maintain a Fantastic Caste System), even their most trusted and long-serving client race, the Kroot, are alternately romanticized as Noble Savages and disdained as a barbaric Cannibal Tribe (which is pretty understandable, considering their society revolves around finding new and interesting enemies to eat) and worst of all races that resist being subsumed into the Empire face draconian population control and re-education methods at best and outright genocide at worst if they lose. 40k being what it is, they're still the friendliest faction in the setting by a country mile, though.
- In the Ravenloft campaign setting, Dr. Rudolph Van Richten, the realm's foremost monster-hunting expert, hated the Vistani for most of his career, but it was hard to blame him; the reason he became a vampire hunter initially was that a Vistani tribe kidnapped his son and sold him to a vampire. Years later, he found out that his hatred - and the revenge he had inflicted on that tribe in his anger - had terrible repercussions; a curse inflicted upon him by the sole survivor had made him a Doom Magnet, the reason all his allies in his years fighting the dark creatures of the Land of Mists had suffered terrible deaths in the process. He eventually made amends with that survivor (who himself was cursed) and lifted the curses on both of them, as detailed in his final work, Van Richten's Guide to the Vistani.note
- Racial Holy War: Players are supposed to be violent white supremacists. It's the hero part that is... questionable.
- Fiddler on the Roof is set before women's lib caught on in the Ukrainian hinterland. Tevye is, undeniably, a big ol' chauvinist, but he's the nicest incarnation of it that you'll find and is even willing to bend the rules and let his first two daughters pick their husbands. Then Played for Drama when he can't bring himself to accept the idea of his third daughter marrying a gentile. He can only respond to it by shutting her out of his life, even though he knows all it will do is hurt himself, his daughter, and his family.
- The former basketball players and especially the coach in That Championship Season, though flawed heroes at best, frequently use racial slurs when referring to Afro-Caribbean people, Latin Americans, and Jews.
- King Lear has a very hateful and demeaning view of women. Of course, "political correctness" wasn't a thing in Lear's or Shakespeare's day, though other characters do still espouse somewhat more enlightened views.
Lear: The fitchew, nor the soiled horse, goes to 't with a more riotous appetite. Down from the waist they are centaurs, though women all above. But to the girdle do the gods inherit; beneath is all the fiends'.
- Renegade Shepard can be quite racist. Some of the squad members edge into Noble Bigot territory: Ashley believes humans should be able to stand on their own and is hesitant about placing too much trust in allies from other species (but also makes a few jokes about being unable to tell the aliens from the animals while on the Citadel), while Garrus can be pretty insensitive in his conversations with Wrex and Tali (he wises up).
- In Mass Effect 2, one of the artifacts at the original Normandy crash site is the personal journal of the deceased X.O. Presley. Over the three pages that survive, his attitude shifts from one of blatant xenophobia to grudging acceptance to complete trust in his alien fellow crew members as well as shame over his old attitude displayed on the first page.
- Ashley however shifts into an Averted Trope as you can question her over her attitude where she quickly clarifies she has no issues with aliens personally. She is also hostile to an anti-alien human protest on the Citadel if you bring her and she argues angrily with the spokesperson and says he's just racist and trying to hide it behind weak political views. Ashely's attitude is more along the lines of 'I don't think we should let other species poke around unsupervised on our most advanced spacecraft' and while she does think humanity should be able to stand on its own, she also thinks when push comes to shove the Citadel races will save their own asses over humanity- and in Mass Effect 3 her thoughts are completely validated as all the Citadel species refuse to aid Earth when it's under attack by the Reapers, claiming that while humanity is being exterminated it gives them breathing room to prepare.
- Duke Nukem is the embodiment of this trope Played for Laughs. He's a hyper-masculine tough guy who hates aliens, loves beer and strippers, and doesn't give a rat's ass about political correctness.
- Wakka from Final Fantasy X spends the first half of the game being quite racist towards the machina using Al Bhed people due to his religious beliefs that forbid the using of machina. This ends up biting him slightly in the butt when Rikku, an Al Bhed girl, joins the party; once he discovers her identity as one of them he's at first outraged to have been "traveling with a heathen" but over the rest of the game's course, he learns to let go of his prejudice especially once he realizes that his religion was a fraud and learns that Yuna is actually half-Al Bhed.
- Jill from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance starts out as one, but she develops out of it over the course of the game.
- Jonatham Ingram in Policenauts comes across as one of these in the fan translation, due to casually using the word "faggot" and calling biovestites 'so-called "women"'. The heroes are all rather bigoted toward the Frozeners (genetically altered humans with paper-white skin and unblinking eyes), and it is not really challenged.
- Pillars of Eternity is a world full of racism, classism, ethnic cleansing, and religious intolerance. And yet hands down the most racist person in the game isn't a villain, but party member Durance. He pretty much Hates Everyone Equally, but is especially bigoted towards Orlans and Eothasians.
- His misogyny is pretty extreme too. He refers to the goddess of whom he is a cleric with epithets like "fiery whore".
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has the main protagonist's older brother Sweet. Even though he is a gangster, he is actually one of the most morally upstanding ones in the game and one of the good guys. He is also racist towards Mexicans and disapproves of his sister (an African-American woman) dating one. His sister actually calls him racist when he refers to her boyfriend as a "Lopez" or "Hernandez".
- Kenny in The Walking Dead (Telltale) wonders if Lee, an African American, is able to pick a lock since he's "urban". Naturally, Lee gives him a "what the hell is wrong with you?" stare, to which Kenny can only sheepishly respond with "Look, I'm from Florida! Crazy shit comes out of my mouth all the time!" By season 2 after a Time Skip, Kenny's encounter with a gang of Russians ends up in a shootout and the lone surviving Russian is taken as a hostage by Kenny. Kenny will openly insult the Russian hostage with "Commie" and "Euro trash".
- The latest 3 South Park video game installments portray Eric Cartman as this kind of character due to his Adaptational Heroism, with moments such as engaging in battle with Professor Chaos' Mexican Immigrant Minions.
Cartman/The Coon: (after being attacked by a Mexican Chaos Minion) Their Chaos Powers are preventing me from understanding their speech!
- Cyberpunk 2077: How much of a hero Johnny Silverhand is is debatable, but he clearly possesses some misogynistic tendencies, especially towards sex workers, who he often berates, and is against V's and Judy's coup that would better the conditions in one of the brothels in Night City. He also frequently cheated on his girlfriends. While he has no problems with working with female mercs and mostly treats female and male V the same, he gets noticably more possessive/jealous of female V around Judy and River, the two love interests she can date. He encourages male V to get together with Panam and doesn't comment if he gets with Kerry.
- Kaito Momota in Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony is a friendly Large Ham who is the closest thing to The Leader the group has and acts as a Big Brother Mentor to the Player Character Shuichi (and an expy of Kamina from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann to the point that they share an English voice actor), but due to being Raised by Grandparents he has some antiquated views. He frequently chided the male students for acting "like women" (ie. crying, having depression), has some pretty sexist views of women being "weaker than men" among other things, and even asks Korekiyo if he is an okama, a homophobic slur, when he briefly uses feminine speech patterns. In the English release, however, while still holding outdated views Kaito's homophobia and misogyny are severely toned down in comparison.
- Almost all of the male characters in Xenogears come off as some variant of this in regard to sexism/misogyny, and the game's retelling of the Gnostic mythos itself is to blame somewhat as it centers around (in its canonical depiction, outside of Fix Fic opening it to all genders outside of the 1990s understanding) to the "two angels" being male and female. Some specific examples include:
- In Perfect Works, it is specifically stated that Fei's attraction to Elly caused their bond to happen in a form of A Wizard Did It, completely disregarding Elly's own emotions and feelings.
- At repeated points in the game, Fei completely disregards Elly's emotions and her understanding of the world - even when he's absolutely correct in yelling at her or fighting with her or holding her back because she's highly sheltered and a military agent from a regime of Space Nazis, it still carries a taste of misogyny.
- Bart is incredibly abusive toward Margie and turns his anger toward her and her perceived uselessness out of resentment toward taking on abuse to protect her and out of disgust with his obligation to marry her (even if said disgust is valid because she is his cousin). What's worse is that supplemental works portray this toxic relationship as just ordinary relationship squabbling and their going on to be a happy couple.
- Citan is, while not actively abusive toward Yui, also more aloof and distant from her than he is around anyone male - even if they have a very equal and loving relationship, what we see more of in canon is his interactions with men, specifically Fei and Sigurd.
- Unrelated to the misogyny, there's the fact that several heroic characters are former Space Nazis, with all that entails. Of them, Sigurd, Elly, and Billy are probably the most sympathetic: Sigurd was captured, enslaved, then pressed into service as a condition of living, while Elly was born in Solaris and had no knowledge of the outside world until she crashed in Lahan, and Billy never had a life outside the Ethos until he was confronted with their true goals). [[spoiler: Jessie is a bit more complicated, and Citan/Hyuga is probably the most complicated and problematic. That said, this is handled far better than the misogyny by the game, which takes a fairly anti-fascist stance in completely characterizing Solaris as the villains.
- Weiss from RWBY is prejudiced against Faunus, though she makes a conscious effort to shed that uglier part of her personality for the sake of her teammate Blake starting at the end of the first volume.
- Angel Dust from Hazbin Hotel is a gay spider demon and famous drag queen porn star turned prostitute/mob boss. He's incredibly violent, casually slaughtering his enemies with machine guns, baseball bats, and grenades. He'll sleep with just about anyone as long as there's money involved, which he uses to fuel his drug and alcohol addictions. He's sarcastic, sassy, and crass, and will take every opportunity to mock or taunt friends and foes alike. When he's picked up by Charlie and Vaggie after the turf war scene and the latter complains about how he's hurting the hotel's image:
Vaggie: Can you please just try to take this seriously?!
Angel Dust: [Sighing] Fine, I'll try. Just don't get your taco in a twist, baby.
Vaggie: Was that you trying to be sexist or racist?
Angel Dust: Whatever pisses you off more.
- Some protagonists of Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic are clearly evil, but still portrayed as heroic.
- Lampshaded in the webcomic The Beevnicks
, where paterfamilias Tom Beevnick, a constant horndog, literally won a lawsuit to allow him masturbation breaks at work (presumably to reduce his constant sexual harassment of his female coworkers).
- In When She Was Bad, one of the reasons Villain Protagonist Gail Swanson thinks The Chosen One Amber Price isn't as heroic as everyone proclaims her to be is because Amber is homophobic and bullied Gail in high school for being gay.
- Action Girl Grim-Eyes in Digger is from a Lady Land society where men are the traditionally 'weak' sex and treats males of any species like her own. This leads to a lot of Played for Laughs condescension towards Herne because she thinks it is adorable how he "tries to act tough".
- The protagonist of Welcome to Room #305 starts out incredibly homophobic. With help from his gay roommate, he learns to be more tolerant but is still homophobic.
- The male heroes of The Order of the Stick ogle Haley when she has a wardrobe malfunction. Roy also behaves sexist towards Miko but eventually gets better.
- New Vindicators has Bulwark, who is only politically incorrect in the way that he makes fun of everyone, but isn't actually biased against any group. Miss Mist plays it straighter by having a problem with homosexuals-which causes drama as her eldest son is gay.
- A lot of the comedy in Abuela comes from Abuela's outdated nature. She's not a Racist Grandma but does display other behaviors, like casual fat-shaming and threatening to spank her grandkids.
- Act Promptly: Stitch is displayed to hate Texas to the point of trying to leave mid-speech. Eventually, he convinces Lilo to let him speak the truth... to which he admits that he also hates the French, saying that they need to die.
- The CollegeHumor video "Zordon is a Racist
" spoofs the unintentionally politically incorrect connotations of the Black Ranger and the Yellow Ranger in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers respectively being African-American and Asian by establishing that Zordon is an unashamed bigot who is clearly assigning the Ranger colors to his recruits based on what minority they belong to (e.g., he was going to make a Native American recruit the Red Ranger, he appointed the only other female recruit as the Pink Ranger just because she's a girl, he's accused of planning to make the Jewish recruit the Green Ranger because the green color represents money, and he intended to make the white male recruit the White Ranger and the leader). After booting out the Jewish recruit out of belief that he'll eventually become evil and betray the team as well as another black recruit Victor due to having no use for more than one Black Ranger, the remaining recruits call Zordon out on his bigotry and walk away in disgust. Made even worse in The Stinger as Victor whom Zordon booted out, gets teleported to a rural village in Africa.
Victor: (to the sky) I’M FROM CONNECTICUT! - Captain Hammer is a Politically Incorrect Superhero in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, which is fitting since he's actually the antagonist of the story.
- Epic Rap Battles of History:
- Clint Eastwood uses a lot of anti-Asian jokes in his rap battle against Bruce Lee, such as saying he can squint better than Bruce and that he should be working in a sweatshop.
- Albert Einstein repeatedly mocks Stephen Hawking over his disability.
- In Hellsing Ultimate Abridged Rip Van Wrinkle (who’s ironically a literal Nazi herself) accuses Alucard of being this. He agrees to some extent but still shuts her down, in a truly glorious manner.
Rip Van Winkle: I don’t have to take zis from you, you racist, cisgender, patriarch-propagating, misogynistic pig!Alucard: The funny thing is, in any other circumstance, you might have had a point there. Except my boss is a woman, I was a chick in the '40s, I hate everyone equally, and there's no one alive who could comprehend my sexual preference. So in other words, Ms. Van Winkle, chuh-chuh-chuh-CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE! [big pimp slap]
- Italian Spiderman. For all his "Respecte la donna!", he's the biggest sexist of all time. And it's hilarious.
- Noob has Omega Zell, its personal Straw Misogynist, which puts him at odds with Gaea, one of his female guildmates (the two others are respectively too laid back to react and too close to his idea of female gamer to actually challenge his statements). His situation with Gaea is however best summed up in a Season 4 line in the webseries: "So you want me to respect a woman with no morals who spends her time scamming other people?" (and there is no exaggeration in this statement). He's also the Butt-Monkey and his dream guild's recruiter happens to be female.
- Subverted with Devil Boner in The Nostalgia Critic, as he starts out acting like political correctness is a bad thing, but ends up ripping into misogynists in Mad Max: Fury Road because they're just. so. annoying.
- The faceless travel vlogger Vagrant Holiday barely hides his contempt for left-wing politics throughout his videos (though he thinks neo-Nazis are dumb, too). Also likes making AIDS jokes and poking fun at Japanese people for being short.
- Become Jehovah's Friend: Sophia. She tells her mom that a girl in her class Has Two Mommies, and her mother responds by saying it's sinful and explaining what Jehovah would recommend. The episode ends with Sophia deciding to preach Jehovah's teachings to her, hoping that she'll be convinced that her mommies have to "leave behind their baggage".
- Arcane: Jayce as a minor noble from the topside of Piltover inevitably carries the baggage that comes with it. Despite wanting his technology to help the Undercity, after becoming a councilor Jinx's attacks and the Shimmer smuggled from Zaun significantly sours his view of the Zaunites, and he blockades the border between the cities, much to Viktor's chagrin as he's from the Undercity himself. When he meets up with Viktor, he is upset he didn't tell him that his acquaintance (Singed) is from the Undercity and makes an insensitive remark that they're dangerous people.
Viktor: I'm from the Undercity.
- Elena of Avalor: Esteban gives off this vibe in "Finders Leapers," openly telling Naomi to her face that he views himself as better and more qualified than her, despite Naomi being on the grand council because he's a royal and she's just a commoner with no honors or degrees. It's to this end that Esteban is ignorant of his own ignorance.
- Futurama:
- Subverted with Zapp Brannigan, who is perceived in-world as a Magnificent Bastard, but to the main characters and the audience is just a Too Dumb to Live Jerkass in velour. In one episode, it is revealed that women are no longer allowed to serve in the military, not because of some societal prejudice, but to prevent his constant sexual harassment.
"Alas, after a series of deadly blunders caused by distracting low-cut fatigues and lots of harmless pinching, the army decided women weren't fit for service. Not when I'm in charge."
- The Professor has a hint of this. When Fry thought he was a robot:
Leela: "I'm going to remind him he's human the way only a woman can."
Farnsworth: "You're going to do his laundry?" - When stuck at Roswell in 1947, Leela and the Professor dressed in hilariously stereotyped clothes go to an appliance store to acquire a microwave oven, not realizing they haven't been invented yet. While the salesman ignoring Leela and focusing his pitch to her "husband" could be somewhat handwaved as the sexism prevalent in that era, the Professor gleefully partaking in the jokes certainly wasn't excusable, as Leela reminds him by setting his tie on fire with an oven.
- Subverted with Zapp Brannigan, who is perceived in-world as a Magnificent Bastard, but to the main characters and the audience is just a Too Dumb to Live Jerkass in velour. In one episode, it is revealed that women are no longer allowed to serve in the military, not because of some societal prejudice, but to prevent his constant sexual harassment.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender:
- Pakku held sexist values for most of his life. When he was a teenager, his bigotry caused his fiancée Kanna note to leave him. After recognizing this as an old man, he realized that his ideas were wrong and starts to see women as equals. (For example, he trains Katara in combat waterbending, even though traditionally, female waterbenders are only allowed to use their powers for healing.) He even meets up with Kanna again, and after she realizes that he's changed, Kanna marries him, making him the step-grandfather of Sokka and Katara.
- Sokka is a bit sexist for the first few episodes, believing that women should Stay in the Kitchen and out of the fighting. Which is somewhat justified as his father, the chieftain, left him behind with the women and children when all the other men went to war. To comfort him, he told him that it wasn't because he was too young but because someone would have to stay and protect the village and he should be honored to be entrusted with this important duty. After getting to know a group of female warriors who have actual training and experience as soldiers and are much more skilled than him, he starts to adjust his views, though it still takes some time to completely get over his prejudices.
- Stan Smith from American Dad!, assuming he can be called a hero (he has better morals than Peter Griffin but worse ones than Homer Simpson) can be a bigot or insensitive asshat in many ways. His hatred of gays came to a head in the notorious episode where he kidnaps the children of two gay couples. (Word of God claims the episode was to teach him a lesson, but it was handled questionably.)
- Teen Titans (2003), the Titans team up with an alien superhero named Val-Yor. At first, he's a nice guy to the Titans, but later he shows deliberate prejudice against Starfire, as he has some hatred towards Tamaraneans, and berates her for almost every move she makes. He also calls her "troq" which means "nothing". (In fact, calling Val-Yor a "hero" at all might be a stretch, only qualifying because he fights creatures that are worse; he says something at the end that he claims is an apology, but only by the loosest possible definition.)
- Family Guy: Peter Griffin originally started out as ignorant towards non-whites, women, and other cultures before upgrading into a politically incorrect Villain Protagonist.
- In Xiaolin Showdown, Omi is a minor example at first, doubting that Kimiko is capable of handling herself because of her sex. He changes in a big way after she wins a Showdown against Jack (and loses a bet with Raimundo as a result of it.)
- King of the Hill:
- More a "Politically Incorrect War Hero," but Cotton Hill is a racist, sexist military veteran with a grudge against Japan due to the loss of his shins while facing them in the Pacific Theater during World War II. He gets somewhat better over the course of the show, which also reveals that he was in love with the Japanese nurse who cared for him after the war.
- For the first few seasons, Hank Hill was very sexist towards women who were anything but housewives. The moment his wife Peggy considers departing from her teaching career in order to catch up on her housewife activity, Hank immediately jumps on board with the idea so he can have her the way he wants her. However, the main story of the show is basically about Hank outgrowing this trope.
- This was the entire point of The Simpsons episode "Homer's Phobia". Homer Simpson was incredibly homophobic, which was shown after he met John, but did mellow a bit after John saved his life. John summed it up rather well at the end:
John: Well, Homer, I won your respect, and all I had to do was save your life. Now, if every gay man could just do the same, you'd be set.
- In the much later episode "There's Something About Marrying", he was, unlike Reverend Lovejoy, willing to perform gay weddings, although he primarily did it for money and was originally against it (as he carried a sign that said "death before gay wedding"). Also, while estranged from Marge, he was comfortable living with a homosexual couple in Springfield's Gay Village, although it was the only decent living space he could find.
- Homer also has a "forgive my intolerance" banner that he finds a good investment.
- Homer straddles the line between this and Innocent Bigot. He often comes across as culturally insensitive but he's very rarely malicious, and he will apologise if he realises that he's offended someone. The few times he has been genuinely hateful, such as towards a Muslim family or undocumented immigrants, he is usually whipped up by his equally ignorant friends, or occasionally manipulated by the media or politicians.
- Ned Flanders surprisingly enough qualifies as this in one episode. Despite being a very friendly and loving individual, the devout Christian begins to harass Apu for being Hindu, making very offensive remarks.
- The Streak, an expy of Jay Garrick in Justice League makes a vaguely racist "compliment" towards John Stewart. He thought it was genuine praise and John realizes this, but his begrudging "Thanks" makes it pretty clear he wasn't exactly appreciative of it either. The Justice Guild, stand-ins for the Justice Society of America (circa the 1950s), also displays a Stay in the Kitchen attitude towards Black Canary stand-in, Black Siren.
- Archer:
- Sterling Archer has made a lot of racist and/or sexist comments over the course of the series, most notably in "Skytanic" where he automatically assumes that a man in a turban with a beard must be the bomber and calls him "Beardsly McTurbanhead". When Malory informs him that the man is a Sikh, Archer tells her "Oh, so just because he's not Muslim he gets a free pass? That's called profiling, mother!"
- Malory herself hates the Irish and isn't afraid to show it, and has also made a lot of offensive comments about black people, homosexuals, and the Japanese.
- Double subverted in "The Figgis Agency". Everyone gets uncomfortable when Cheryl says it's safe to assume Alan Shapiro "doesn't eat shellfish" (because he's allergic).
Archer: Just because he's a big Hollywood lawyer does not make him Jewish!
Cheryl: Ewww, he's Jewish? - F is for Family: Frank Murphy is an open misogynist who intentionally sabotages his wife's attempt to hold a part-time job and scoffs at the idea of his daughter becoming an astronaut. Then again, given how the series is set in the '70s, Frank's bigotry is likely intentional.
- The titular character of Xavier: Renegade Angel often makes bigoted or politically incorrect statements while calling out other people for perceived bigotry or political incorrectness. For example, in "Weapons Grade Life", he not only assumes that a Child Prodigy is mentally handicapped just because he's in a wheelchair but also assumes two of his friends are bullies picking on him when he sees them together because he refuses to believe that anyone could possibly be friends with someone with a disability.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- The otherwise generous and golden-hearted Rarity is brought to tears when called a mule, claiming "mules are ugly" and has no problem calling Iron Will a monster simply because he's a minotaur. While it's possible she was evoking Pity the Kidnapper and meant Iron Will the person was a monster, she was also shown to be openly repulsed by Spike the dragon in the alternate timeline where Nightmare Moon had taken over.
- Subverted in "Bridle Gossip" with the "witch" Zecora. The ponies aren't terrified or fearful of her because she's a zebra, as they've never even heard of zebras and think she's a pony with painted-on stripes (save for Rarity, who faints at the thought of an equine with a naturally striped coat). They're terrified of her because she lives in the Everfree Forest, acts creepy and threatening, and because they believe she's a witch. There's even one heck of a Genius Bonus with Zecora's hoof-dragging: to ponies, it's a sign of aggression and one of the reasons she's intimidating, but it's something zebras do to find water in dried-up riverbeds.
- The Powerpuff Girls (1998) episode "Members Only" made Major Glory and the other superheroes from Dexter's Laboratory sexist and ageist by making fun of the Powerpuff Girls and denying them membership in their team just because they're girls and children.
- The Penguins of Madagascar: The Penguins look down on humans but they will deliberately avoid harming them in the course of their schemes. Skipper noticeably has a 1950s-era male chauvinist attitude.
- Samurai Jack has The Scotsman, who has referred to the titular samurai as 'soy-faced' when they first met.
- The Codename: Kids Next Door episode "Operation: C.A.K.E.D.-F.I.V.E." has Numbuh 19th Century, who, as his codename suggested, was a Kids Next Door operative from the 19th century. As one might expect, his views on girls are outdated and he takes great exception to the news that girls are allowed to become Kids Next Door operatives, though his objection is mainly due to well-intentioned but condescending concern for girls' well-being.
- While calling him a hero is stretching it, given a he's a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk, Police Chief Angel Rojas in The Batman is very much ableist, calling the criminally insane "freaks" and institutes a zero-tolerance policy for them at the end of season one.
- Oscar Proud from The Proud Family. Aside from mild sexism, he's initially afraid of the Zamin family, who are Pakistani, and views them as abnormal weirdos. In The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, he shows disgust towards gay couple Barry and Randall Leibowitz-Jenkins in the episode "Father Figures", but he learns his lesson at the end of the episode and seems to be working on it. Strangely enough, he never displays this prejudice towards Michael, though he might've just made an exception towards him because Michael's orientation means that he'll never make a move on Penny.