Tropes Media Browse Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder You Know That Show... Trope Launch Pad Wishlist Tools
Cut List New Edits Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us Advertise DMCA Notice Privacy Policy
Go Ad-Free Report Bug
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links
 

Follow TV Tropes

Please don't list this on a work's page as a trope.
Examples can go on the work's YMMV tab.

Following

Ron the Death Eater

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rondeatheater_2878.jpg
If it works for you, it works for me...note 

"Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is a well-loved movie based on the wonderful book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Parents love it, children love it, heck, we even love it. That does not mean it is perfect. Our goal is to expose the dark underbelly of the story. To reveal once and for all the truth about the only real villain in the movie (and no, it is not Slugworth). It is Grandpa Joe."
— The mission statement for the website, Say NO to Grandpa Joe: Exposing the truth

The fandom's tendency to shoehorn a good canon character into being a villain or make a villain significantly more evil than in canon is Ron the Death Eater, the inverse of Draco in Leather Pants. (The term usually used for this in fanfiction is "character bashing").

This demonization of a character can be seen as a kind of deliberate Flanderization — often, in creating Ron the Death Eater, the fandom spins his canonical non-evil actions into evil acts, uses canonical evil actions as a justification as to why they are irredeemably evil even if the canon says otherwise, and has every possible negative trait of the character exaggerated. A measure of ruthlessness becomes complete and utter sociopathy, a tendency towards holding grudges becomes an obsessive hatred of anything they dislike, slight denseness becomes raging stupidity, etc.

This is often the result of also having a Draco in Leather Pants, but it doesn't have to be — some characters inspire this sort of portrayal on their own, either through their canonical blunders, having some flaw that makes them Unintentionally Unsympathetic, or being an obstacle to the author's One True Pairing, especially if said character is a member of the Official Couple set. In any case, Ron the Death Eater is likely to be a Card-Carrying Villain who does things For the Evulz than to have any plausible reason for switching sides.

This trend may lead to the production of Fan Works that have other characters who are canonically friends of the victim act as though he or she has always been an object of justified loathing, rather than going the "shocked at betrayal" approach. Or, even if these characters end up siding with the Draco in Leather Pants, they are subject to some character defamation themselves by way of "I was stupid to love him and not you".

Unlike Draco in Leather Pants, this can also be intentionally done for comedy, usually of the black variety. In works relying on this much rarer reasoning, the character in question is turned into a Jerkass (or worse), but the other characters' relationships with them aren't changed much. That way the main characters are exposed to, and thus constantly made to suffer by, a villain, and good times are had by the audience.

Named for the tendency in Harry Potter fanfics where Draco Malfoy turns good and hooks up with Hermione (or Harry) to have Ron — in canon a decent, upstanding sort of fellow with a few faults but firmly on the side of good who happens to have a long-standing enmity with Draco — lose his mind (or have it lost for him) and often join Lord Voldemort just for a chance to kill the sainted Malfoy.

Compare Die for Our Ship or Derailing Love Interests (fans' or the creators' dissatisfaction with who the main character gets to be with romantically is the major cause of this trope), Designated Hero (the hero of a work coming off as not-so-heroic is the other major cause), The Scapegoat (when a character is blamed for an event they're not responsible for), Historical Villain Upgrade (when a work depicts a historical figure as worse than they were in real life), Dark Fic (a fan work that's deliberately Darker and Edgier than the original work and may involve characters being subjected to this trope), Rooting for the Empire (when the audience actually wants the bad guy(s) to win), Adaptational Jerkass (when an adaptation makes a character more of an asshole than they were in the original work), Adaptational Villainy (when an adaptation makes a character more evil than they were in the original work) and Face–Heel Turn (when the original source material itself turns a once good character evil). See also Accentuate the Negative, which this trope essentially does to fictional characters.

Contrast Draco in Leather Pants, where an evil or mean character is interpreted by fans as being a better person than they are in canon. Darker and often more serious counterpart to the Memetic Psychopath, who is always Played for Laughs.

And last but not least, head to Paint the Hero Black if you wish to join in the madness.

Subpages:

Examples (sorted by the original canons' media):

    open/close all folders 

    Comic Books 
  • Bad Touch, Bat Touch reinterprets Batman as a wealthy predator who has sexually abused not only his his adopted sons and biological son, but also several other preteen and teenage superheroes. He got away with it until Billy Batson told Nightwing about it, which led to everything coming out.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
    • Sally suffered this royally from the fandom for many issues after her Jerkass attitude and slap to Sonic. The reason? Sonic prioritized putting an end to Robotnik's reign of terror over settling down with Sally, and Sally saw this as "selfish".
    • Severe Misery (a college AU story) turns Sally Acorn, Bunnie Rabbot, Nicole Lynx, and Fiona Fox into cruel Alpha Bitches who run a shady sorority that engages in Draconian natured hazing rituals for the heck of it. During and after another ritual, a demonic black dog terrorizes the four girls causing them to get into a fatal car crash. It is revealed afterwards that the latest hazing victim was actually the author's Self-Insert character in disguise and had been the one who sent the demon dog after the four as revenge for the last hazing ritual in which she was the victim. The story ends with the college faculty never finding out who killed them, the self insert proceeds to violate their memorial, and gets away with it scotfree. As bad as the author tried to make the four characters, the self insert evidently ended up looking 10 times worse.
  • The Smurfs: In Empath: The Luckiest Smurf, Hefty the Lovable Jock from the comic and cartoon series has Took a Level in Jerkass and is portrayed as a bully and a Sore Loser who can't stand that Empath got Smurfette while he did not. He got over it at Empath's wedding when he made his peace with both Empath and Smurfette and became friends, and eventually found happiness with a Smurfette from another village.
  • Richie Rich: Played for Laughs in the case of Occupy Richie Rich, which depicts the Rich family as jerkasses who have utterly ruined the world's economy and regularly flaunt their wealth over the non-rich.
  • Spider-Man:
  • Parodied In-Universe in The Unwritten, about a son of a writer who got famous after creating a series of novels very similar to Harry Potter. The first two start with fragments of those books, and the third with a fragment of Frankenstein. The first page of the fourth issue shows Harry's counterpart slaughtering Ron and Hermione's counterparts in a really terrible way, only to have it turn out on the next page that it's a Dark Fic.
  • An academic essay by Lenise Prater argues that it was sexist for Xavier to have sealed away Jean's Superpowered Evil Side. The fact that Jean was using these powers to throw cars around and intimidate innocent people (even before the murdering started) is conveniently glossed over.

    Comic Strips 
  • Garfield:
    • The Tumblr account I Hate Jon Arbuckle depicts Jon as a creepy, bigoted, sexually deviant jerk who abuses his pets, harasses women, and once drank dog semen.
    • Garfield Gameboy'd is a series of cutscenes from a make-believe game depicting Garfield as a murderous Eldritch Abomination who stalks everyone and ultimately brings about the end of the world.
  • For Better or for Worse: The New Retcons could just as easily be called "Why Elly Patterson is the Devil: A Manifesto". Every possible plot element that can be used to show her in a bad light is turned towards that purpose. The story doesn't give her any slack at all, even condemning her for things other characters are allowed to get away with (her trying to trick a man into marriage via The Baby Trap? Unforgivable; Elizabeth getting pregnant via adultery and trying to pass it off as her husband's? The story's on her side). It stops just short of blaming her for her own murder, but only just. Her detailed backstory essentially sums up her life as both a complete waste and herself as a phony in everything she did.
    • Not that John gets it much better: he’s seen as a sexist dolt and an abuser.

    Films — Animation 
  • In the Alpha and Omega fic Armarok Spirit, Eve is turned into a controlling abuser who lets someone rape her daughter. In canon, she threatens to strangle Humphrey at the mere suggestion he might have done something inappropriate with Kate.
  • Buck Cluck from Chicken Little, notoriously so. The movie's writing makes him come off as neglectful and unsympathetic jerk who doesn't come to his son's aid when he needs it, and only doesn't act embarrassed about his son's very existence when Chicken does something heroic. However, the movie also makes it clear that he's never outwardly or intentionally abusive and that this is the best he can do given his circumstances, being a widower raising a paranoiac child by himself, and he does eventually see the error of his ways. An extreme Vocal Minority of people on the internet (especially critics), however, depicted him as an abusive sociopath with no redeeming qualities, sometimes labeling him one of the most evil Disney characters or even the most Abusive Parent in all of fiction, somehow beating out the likes of Judge Claude Frollo, Ragyo Kiryuin, Shou Tucker, Relius Clover, and Fire Lord Ozai for the title. The character's Disney Wiki page had an ongoing Edit War between ticked-off viewers categorizing him as the villain and adding "neglecting his son" to the list of things he likes and admins struggling to keep the page neutral.note 
  • Encanto: While Alma Madrigal isn't exactly the epitome of a good grandparent, she has a pretty damn tragic Freudian Excuse and is shown to genuinely love her family in spite of her perfectionist tendencies. And the film itself never downplays how harmful her tendencies are, with her being genuinely remorseful about it. You would not know this if your only experience with the movie was fanfiction, which tends to turn her into an outright Abusive Parent and grandparent.
  • Frozen (2013): Elsa and Anna's parents have it bad, despite dying within the first ten minutes of the film. Keeping Elsa and Anna separate was misguided but in canon they're not depicted as outright Abusive Parents. They're treated as Well Intentioned Extremists who are still Good Parents who love their daughters. The Ice Behind Bars presents Elsa's father as abusive towards Elsa even before the accident. He hates her for her powers and doubts that she is even his. After Elsa accidentally injures Anna, his treatment of her only gets worse. When Anna and her mother disappear, Elsa's father uses the chance to claim that Elsa was killed along with her sister. He locks her up and regularly tortures her until Anna rescues her years later.
  • Merida and Astrid: The Absesses Of The Heart and Hiccup: The Hasteful Hatred Of The Pericardium both depict Hiccup as a demented misogynistic pervert who tries to rape the protagonist/s of the story, and failing horribly. He's also a Mad Scientist for some reason, and a cry-baby who whines to "daddy" about the protagonist/s hurting him.
  • This fan theory for The Incredibles suggests that Edna Mode is a villain who worked for the Big Bad Syndrome.
  • In The Land Before Time, Mr. Threehorn the Triceratops didn't like other dinosaur species, but the sequels show him working together with other dinosaurs (even if he complains about it). Secret Love depicts Mr. Threehorn as an intolerant anti-interspecies jerk who's willing to exile children for this relationship and those who support this, cowed into submission only by Chomper's speech about him being intolerant.
  • The Lion King:
    • In Scar The Unsung Hero, Scar was abused by his brother, Mufasa, who told him that he was worthless, would gladly kill him, and gave him the scar, was bullied by most of the lionesses, Rafiki attempts to kill him to get revenge on Mufasa, and Zazu gladly took part in bullying Scar with Mufasa and didn't bother telling the lionesses how Mufasa had treated him.
    • The Lion King Adventures story Hakuna Matata demonises Timon and Pumbaa into evil wizards with the power to drain life from living beings for themselves. And they've been doing this for two hundred years. Simba and Nala manage to defeat them by tricking them into draining each other's life at the exact same time, causing both to die.
  • In the Non/Disney fanvid fandom, and to a lesser extent the fanfic fandom, this is commonplace with characters like Jasmine from Aladdin, Elsa from Frozen, and Esmeralda from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. However, this is more-so because their designs and scenes make it easy to manipulate them into villains (with Word of God being that Esmeralda's design is outright based on prior Disney villains) than an actual dislike for the characters. For example, Jim from Treasure Planet is the designated "bad boy" in the Disney crossover fandom. He's a common 'Veronica' to most other male leads' 'Betty'. This fan-vid portrays Jim as Cinderella's crappy boyfriend who flirts with other girls and doesn't take her seriously. She ultimately ends up leaving him for Eric.
  • Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964): It's a common cynical claim that Santa and the other reindeer didn't actually learn to accept Rudolph for who he was, they only learned to tolerate his difference because it could be useful. However, this is Common Knowledge, as while they were unquestionably and unjustifiably jerks to poor Rudolph, they realized how wrong they acted and apologized before realizing his nose can navigate the snowstorm. Donner is also often seen as an Abusive Parent because he was at first ashamed by his son's different trait and didn't protect him from bullying, but, again, he realized his wrongdoings and apologized for them before Rudolph's ability to navigate was realized.
  • Turning Red:
    • Some detractors see Mei as a Spoiled Brat who takes her mother for granted and throws tantrums all because she wouldn't allow her to listen to the music she likes. They tend to ignore that Mei has been nothing but kind and loyal to her mom her entire life, Ming does things that would be humiliating for any child to deal with (like accusing Devon of being a predator after seeing Mei's drawings and spying on Mei while she's at school), and Mei realizes that being her true, authentic self makes her significantly happier while her family wants her to hide it away. Even before then, she never got to be herself around Ming because she didn't want to disappoint her.
    • Conversely, there are also a number of viewers who view Ming as a borderline Abusive Parent whose lack of letting Mei have any free-will is the reason she became a brat in the first placenote  and was too Easily Forgiven in the end. This also ignores the fact that Ming's controlling behavior wasn't out of malice but rather because she genuinely thought she was doing the right thing for Mei. Furthermore, the film makes it clear that Ming's in the wrong because of her overprotectiveness and that she needed to learn that she can't keep smothering her daughter. The fact that even those who don't see her as abusive genuinely found it hard to sympathize with Ming even after her whole backstory is revealed doesn't help.
  • Up: Construction worker Steve. Many fans think he deserved to be hit in the head by Carl due to the mishap with his mailbox, and blame him for causing Carl having to go to court and subsequently losing his house. What is overlooked however is the fact that Carl assaulted Steve, with him getting a gash in the head. Also Steve likely had no way of knowing how important the mailbox was for Carl.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • The Amazing Spider-Man: The Amazing Spider-Man 2, a fan sequel to the film, turns Gwen Stacy into a bitter mess who blames Peter for her father's death which results in, after they got back together, her insulting and berating him until they break up — to make way for the author's version of Mary Jane.
  • The Better Watch Out fanfic Better Watch Out: Aftermath portrays Ashley, who in the original movie was at worst a slight jerk, as a serial child rapist. This is also used to make the Draco in Leather Pantsed Luke Lerner look better.
  • The Devil Wears Prada: Nate is far from the perfect boyfriend in the film, but even with that, the fanbase portrays him as far worse than he actually is. Most fans make him out to be an abusive jerk, when the most he does is get angry at Andy for putting her job first. They also like to ignore his more positive traits, like trying to comfort Andy when she is forced to take Emily's place in Paris. This also comes from a healthy dose of Die for Our Ship, as a lot of Miranda/Andy shippers like to play him as far more aggressive in trying to get her to quit, when in reality he is right about the job changing her, mainly because Miranda admits to trying to do just that.
  • The Marvel Cinematic Universe's very active shipping fandom has given us these:
    • Motivations, despite not even being a canon character in the MCU at that point, gives this involving Mockingbird. Depicted as Clint's ex-girlfriend who was reportedly very horrible to him, she gets seduced by Black Widow who tricks her into a filmed BDSM session where she's the submissive, after which she breaks up with her and uploads the video on the internet, which the Avengers, save for Clint, all find hilarious.
    • You Belong With Me, a High School AU themed after the Taylor Swift song, depicts her as an Alpha Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, who cheats on Clint behind his back, so as to give Natasha someone to be a love rival for, along with other horrible acts of cruelty.
    • In Train, Mockingbird, having broken up with him twice before, gets back together with Clint but tries to force him to break off his connection to Widow, resulting in them breaking up again, and later revealing her to be a villain.
    • The Value of Strength is a Dark Fic which reinterprets the character of Steve Rogers (whom you may know better as Captain America) as a total sociopath.
    • La Vie en Rose, similar to the above examples of Mockingbird, does this with Sharon Carter/Agent 13, depicted as an unhinged stalker and a transphobe.
    • Bloody Minded reimagines Steve Rogers as a sociopathic mutant whose power is to make others believe in anything he does, brainwashing them into always agreeing with whatever Steve wants, though he's not consciously aware of it.
      Charles Xavier: Rogers has no sense of 'other'. The entire world revolves around his beliefs. God is what he imagines. Right is what he believes. Evil is what he defines. A bully is someone who can resist Rogers.
    • Following Captain America: Civil War, fanfics cropped up by the hundreds that portray either Team Cap or Team Iron Man as either perfect saints who have never done anything wrong, or horrible excuses for human beings who were out to get the other team from the start. The "Not Team Cap Friendly", "Not Steve Friendly", and "Not [other person on Team Cap] Friendly" tags are somewhat popular when searching MCU fic on Archive of Our Own, while the equivalent pro-Team Cap/anti-Team Iron Man tags are almost nonexistent in favor of fics where Ultron doesn't happen or where the whole team bands against the Accords, suggesting that the readers and writers who aren't staunchly anti-Team Cap tend to prefer the whole team together rather than outright disliking Tony or anyone who sided with him.
      • Many of these fics shows Steve willing to disregard the will of 117 countries and thinks he knows best, while disregarding that he said that he didn’t believe that oversight was impossible but that they would need safeguards and was willing to negotiate to make sure that they can get amended. They also portray Steve as irresponsible and reckless during the first chase with the Winter Soldier and he shouldn’t have gotten involved, while ignoring that Bucky who was brainwashed into his crimes had a squad after him with orders to kill on sight and that they were sent after a dangerous cyborg assassin. He was trying to protect the soldiers from Bucky as well as vice versa, he even stated that even if Bucky had been behind the bombing and was too far gone then he was the best one to bring him down and not die trying.
      • Uncompromising Principles, along with many other post-Civil War fics, portrays Iron Man as a saint who can do no wrong, and Cap as a bully and a hypocrite who has no real reason.
      • Sieze Yesterday is a slightly atypical post-Civil War "Team Iron Man" fic- in the backstory, when the team was just beginning to hash out the Accords, Bucky was there, apparently deprogrammed and with his triggers removed, until Natasha argued with Steve a little too harshly, which tripped some protective instinct and resulted in Bucky killing her (!) and rightfully getting convicted of murder and going to prison for it. But Steve doesn't seem to harbor much grief over Nat's death, and seemingly disagrees with Bucky's prison sentence. There were some comments when this was first revealed expressing that this seems out-of-character for Steve, to which the author replied that Steve has his reasons, but those reasons beyond the implied "Bucky's not with me" were never explored.
      • To Trope or Not to Trope purposefully paints Tony Stark as barely shy of being an outright supervillain and pretty much always in the wrong unless he admits to his mistakes, particularly Ultron and his actions during the Civil War. this is used to counter Steve’s status as this in the fandom, while ignoring Tony’s own less than honest and moral actions.
    • There is also a Tumblr post making an argument Tony could have been a HYDRA member. One of the points raised is that Tony blames Steve and Bucky for his parents's deathes when he knew it was HYDRA who had brainwashed Bucky. Except in the movie it is made clear that Tony was attacking Bucky because he had just seen a video of Bucky brutally murdering his parents and wasn't thinking clearly and his fury with Steve was because Steve had openly admitted to knowing that HYDRA had done this and hadn't told Tony with it being clear that he knows and understands Steve had nothing to do with the murder.
  • Sky High (2005)
  • A number of backstory fics for Star Trek (2009) play out the existing villain version of this trope with Kodos from the original series. Canonically, Kodos was a particularly extreme Well-Intentioned Extremist who was trying, in his own twisted way, to save lives, and who carried incredible amounts of guilt over his actions for the rest of his life. In reboot fanfics he appears in, however, readers can expect to see him depicted as a Complete Monster who was eager for a chance to put his eugenic theories into practice (in some cases to the point of engineering the famine for this purpose), who cares only about the elimination of the unworthy and just uses the excuse of saving lives as a cover, and who actively participates in the rape and torture of children.
    • In You Don't Have To (Say Yes), Kodos rapes Kirk repeatedly, painting Kirk's submission as the price for Kodos looking the other way on the children Kirk is trying to protect, and then killing Kirk's brother when he finds out and tries to put a stop to it.
    • In Fruit of the Tree of Life, Kodos keeps an estate with a massive surplus of food, but keeps it all for his chosen few and lets everyone else go hungry, even letting excess fruit lie and rot in his orchard rather than share it. He also forbids the grounds workers to take any of that extra food, even though they're all starving. Then it's revealed that he caused the famine deliberately to kill off the people he deemed unworthy.
    • In The World Well Lost, it's Kodos himself who's killing witnesses (an act that in canon was done without his knowledge, and he was horrified when he learned of it). He also gleefully recounts how he left a woman to burn to death because she wasn't "valuable enough to be worth saving" — a far cry from the canonical Kodos who viewed his actions as a necessary evil and certainly never indicates he took any pleasure from it.
  • Star Trek Into Darkness
  • The Wizard of Oz:
  • The Agony Booth's review of It's a Wonderful Life frames Mary as the villain of the film, causing George's poverty, his father's death, and his perpetual isolation in Bedford Falls due to having wished once that they could be married and giving away their honeymoon money. Interpreting her spur-of-the-moment wish as such ignores that 1.) even if Mary's wish caused Mr. Bailey's death, she had no idea it would go that way, 2.) Mary giving away the honeymoon money was done with George's full and no-reluctance consent.
  • An appreciable chunk of critics, fans and casual viewers alike tend to paint Kevin McAllister of Home Alone as a budding sadist and psychopath on par with Jigsaw because of the creatively painful traps he lays out to thwart the Wet Bandits, who are just nonviolent cat burglars. This does, however, overlook how the two crooks are breaking into a house where they know an unattended child is staying, and they even go so far as to taunt Kevin about it when they arrive to burglarize his home ("We know that you're in there, and that you're all alone!"). By that point, the kid is well within his rights to assume they mean him harm and respond accordingly.
  • Star Wars:
    • The "Darth Jar Jar" meme is an odd example of using Ron the Death Eater in order to invoke Draco in Leather Pants at the same time as an attempt to see the character in question Rescued from the Scrappy Heap. In canon, Jar Jar Binks is a well-meaning but Lethal Klutz who is banished on pain of death for being obnoxious. Despite getting into trouble, his bumbling inadvertently causes every positive story turn in The Phantom Menace, proving that even the seemingly useless have value. Unfortunately, said obnoxiousness created a venomous Hatedom and he became a punchline in mainstream media. Then some people started to recognize some of his influences and backstory, but came to the opposite and erroneous conclusion that Jar Jar was an evil Sith Lord manipulating even Palpatine... and therefore somehow a more worthwhile character than his canon arguably inspirational self.
    • Played for Laughs by this meme, which portrays Yoda as a racist, sociopathic sexual deviant who is addicted to ketamine and kills people (his preferred method being running them over in a 2001 Honda Civic) for any number of reasons.

    Multi-Fandom 
  • The Massive Multiplayer Crossover Avengers and Oliver & Co.: Ragnarok Madness manages to single handedly demonise Tony Stark, Daisy Duck, Heimdall, Jarvis, Nick Fury, nearly all of the Gargoyles (sans Lexington) plus Elisa, Sunna, and even the freaking fossils at the Museum of Natural History.
  • Code Prime ramps up Suzaku's stupidity and denial to notably higher levels than in canon. In addition to his canon problems with accepting the problems of Britannia, he ends up blindly following Megatron for most of the story and denies the Autobots and Black Knights are good guys until it becomes screaming obvious who the bad guys are. This is a more transparent case than most since the author admits to a blatant hatred of Suzaku from his actions in R2 of Code Geass. That said, once Suzaku joins the good guys, the hatred more or less died off shortly into the R2 segement of the fic.
  • Fantasia Times:
    • The most notable instance of this is the "Royals" group of characters. While most of them in canon could be a little rude to their friends (those in the "Rebels" group of characters), most of the time it was just harmless snarking and/or them being Innocently Insensitive. Here, however, they're presented as being a stuck-up group who originally bullied their friends for daring to breach the status quo, only to ultimately see the error of their ways, perform a Heel–Face Turn, and get promoted to love interests (we say "presented as" because they come off more as designated villains who basically painted a target on their backs by daring to question the Original Character).
    • There are a few straighter examples within the fic: King Beast goes from a reasonable authority figure to someone who's willing to drown a child when she steps out of line, and Ren Kunanzuki goes from an Innocently Insensitive teenager to a baby-snatcher and wannabe murderess.
  • Shadows over Meridian takes Caleb's canon stubbornness and short temper and dials them up, turning him into a borderline Knight Templar with an Irrational Hatred of Jade/Kage so extreme that he refuses to believe the evidence she provides that Nerissa was impersonating the Mage and manipulating the rebellion (even as everyone else accepts it), convincing himself that her presence on Meridian is the cause of everything that's gone wrong since Phobos was overthrown and ignoring his role in driving her towards the Knights of Vengeance.
  • Superwomen of Eva: Emerald Fury: While Asuka didn't have the most pleasant demeanor in canon, she at least had her sympathetic moments and qualities, and a painful backstory that explains that her behavior is the result of the psychological and emotional baggage she bears. In this story, she is portrayed as considerably harsher and ill-natured unlike in canon. It also doesn't help that the author dislikes Asuka.
  • Super Sentai vs Nickelodeon has Katara, Mr. Krabs and Pearl as part of the villains.

    Music 

    Puppet Shows 
  • Many, many images, videos, and audio recordings depict Barney the Dinosaur as a child murderer courtesy of the show's Periphery Hatedom.
    • Perhaps the most notable example is the Day of the Barney Trilogy, wherein Barney is depicted as an Eldritch Abomination responsible for numerous atrocities throughout history and orders his juvenile followers to murder their parents en masse.
    • In addition, comedian Stephen Lynch recorded audio segments depicting Barney as a bus driver and a babysitter, which were often featured on Opie & Anthony when they were radio hosts in Boston. In the first track, Barney is a school bus driver who abuses children and encourages smoking. The second segment involves Barney babysitting two children. He invites over a prostitute and makes the children watch porn while doing so.
  • The Muppet Show: Various internet communities have done this to Kermit the Frog for whatever reason that’s always Played for Laughs:
    • In the Game Grumps playthrough of Pokémon Art Academy, Kermit, voiced by Barry, declares his love for killing and murder.
      Barry (as Kermit): I LOVE MURDER!! I LOVE KILLING, I LOVE MURDER!!
    • SMG4, covered below, also has done this to Kermit. In one video based on Assassin's Creed Origins Kermit wished to destroy Egypt and reshape it in his image.
    • He is regularly depicted in the Vinesauce community as Joel's abusive father.
    • Jacksfilms made a duo of animations involving Kermit singing and telling rather disturbing songs and stories to children.
      Kermit: When I'm through with you, they'll never find your body. And even if they did...all they'd find would be teeth!
  • Sesame Street:
    • Elmo, who suffers a similar Periphery Hatedom as Barney, gets this treatment as well. This is especially evident in the Aerosmith parody "Elmo's Got a Gun" by Tommy & Rumble, though it should be noted that it was miscredited to "Weird Al" Yankovic, who denied writing the song.
    • In addition, this website from 1997 depicts Bert as an evil man siding with Adolf Hitler and being present at events such as the Kennedy assassination.
    • The "Grover Goes to School" machinima series by Toadmushroom95 depicts Grover as a disobedient arsonist delinquent.
    • Not only that, "Bertstrips" depict almost every resident of the Street as some sort of sociopath or do-badder in situations that are usually based around racism, sex, murder, or hate crimes. Though this is Played for Laughs as these strips play the trope for Black Comedy.
  • Super Mario 64 and Garry's Mod machinimist SMG4 depicts Teletubbies as insane, xenophobic, crowbar-wielding, Ax-Crazy maniacs feared and despised by the main cast.

    Tabletop Games 
  • In Dragonlance canon, Kender are treated as one of the better of the "good" races, with many of both the novels and the game sourcebooks spending a great deal of effort talking up their pure hearts and innocence. Statements like "Kender are the eternal children of Krynn" and how Krynn would be a darker place without them are common. However, years of experience at the tabletop of kender characters "borrowing" the wizard's spellbook and the cleric's holy symbol, all justified by their actual canon lore and characterization, has led to them becoming, in fanon, a despicable blight of inconsiderate thieves who are either brain-damaged or playing dumb. On some boards, killing Kender is considered to be Poke the Poodle-level evil at worst, as opposed to canon, where it's treated with about the same weight as murdering children. This is primarily because a Kender's more distasteful traits in canon are because they truly don't know any better and aren't actively interfering with the reader, whereas the player sitting across from you with a smug grin on his face most certainly does know what he's doing and is usually screwing the game up for you in the process. This has to lead to many a table throwing a campaign Off the Rails to start a genocidal campaign against the Kender.
  • There's a theory among Dungeons & Dragons fans that Pelor, the Greyhawk sun god who more or less embodies Light Is Good, is actually evil - depending on your version, he's either actually a god of fire, deserts, and burning, or a cover identity of Zarus, an obscure god of human supremacy. The evidence for this consists of a few artifacts with destructive aspects designed for undead-hunting, a myth where he refused to assist one of his clerics in the Cycle of Revenge, and the fact that one of his clerics was once shown casting an Evil spell (which wasn't considered Evil when said cleric was casting it). Though this is often clearly a joke, just as many people have taken it seriously.
  • More than a few people in the fandom of Brazilian tabletop RPG Ordem Paranormal consider the Ordo Realitas, an order dedicated to protecting people from paranormal monsters and evil cultists, to be worse than Kian, because they aren't willing to go to the same extremes (such as worldwide genocide) as him to stop the paranormal for good. The fans' reasoning for this is that murdering billions at once would be better in the long run than losing a number of people to paranormal entities every year - keep in mind, these same fans are often the ones quick to criticize the members of Ordo Realitas who kill/imprison cultists who have been caught doing something seemingly evil; never mind the fact that in-universe characters who have had contact with both groups pretty much unanimously have a much better opinion of the Order than of Kian's cultists, or that the people in Ordo Realitas genuinely care about each other and about innocent people.

    Theatre 

    Toys 

    Video Games 
  • Borderlands 2 has an In-Universe example in Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon's Keep (a abridged retelling of the main story in the form of a Dungeons & Dragons-esque game). Tiny Tina makes you fight an Expy of Angel, who turns into a giant maniacal spider-woman. That's because she's pinning Roland's death on her, when in reality, Handsome Jack shot Roland from behind after Angel died in the battle, due to having her Eridium supply destroyed at her own request. Lilith and the others waste no time in calling her on this.
  • Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals is a Dark Parody of Cooking Mama by PETA that turns Mama into a messy animal-hater just because she isn't vegan. Halfway through, she turns good after becoming vegan and pledging not to cook non-vegan recipes anymore.
  • Dragon Age: The Crown of Thorns gives this good to Bhelen, complete with a ridiculously long rant.
  • Diablo: In the Diablo III shrine of the Video Game Shrines, the Big Good Anu from canon is actually the Big Bad. He's an all-around terrible person, which means when his "good half" birthed angels, most of the angels were weak and ineffective, explaining why in the games, the forces of Heaven never give the player any meaningful help. Also, his real name is Anus.
  • A small faction of Disco Elysium fandom, largely people who ship Titus/Glen, loathe Kim Kitsuragi because he is a cop, drawing attention to his willingness to let the Player Character abuse people and his willingness to pawn confiscated items to protect your character. Some fans even suggest that you can't be a fan of the character if you are against repressive state violence and racist abuse of power in real life.
  • Fire Emblem:
    • Sandpaper and Satin is a Sacred Stones fic that treats Lyon this way, making him out to be manipulative and passive-aggressive and even making Eirika resent him for trying to take her away from Seth.
    • The Big Decision, an Erk/Florina fic that paints Serra as a jealous bitch of the worst kind who would happily let Florina die just so she could have Erk all to herself.
    • Forever With You, an Ike/Soren Melodrama in which Micaiah goes from Well-Intentioned Extremist My Country, Right or Wrong to a jealous bitch who hates Soren to death for simply being the technical rightful heir to Daein and even goes so far as to have him killed.
    • Jealousy, a Chrom/Male Avatar fic that makes no bones about how the author feels about Sumia and her relationship with Chrom. Sumia goes from a sweet, clumsy, friendly girl who may have a crush on her prince to a whiny, petty little bitch who actively tries to break up Chrom and the Male Avatar's "true love". The Male Avatar doesn't come off too well either, turning him from a loyal friend into a just as petty jackass who tells Sumia "Well I had his child, so you can just back the fuck off."
    • Sumia gets it again in Saphire and Chrom - The Birth of Lucina, portrayed as a bitter, hateful bitch who wanted Chrom all for herself and only helps out an ailing female Avatar just so Chrom and the others won't yell at her. This also slides into Double Standard, as Gaius harbors feelings for the Avatar but falls more into the camp of I Want My Beloved to Be Happy.
    • His Eyes, a L'Arachel/Rennac fic that is no longer available, has L'Arachel married to Innes, who is portrayed as a controlling jerk who bruises her wrists to keep her from scratching during sex and is implied to be having an affair with Vanessa. (This also leads into Good Adultery, Bad Adultery, as L'Arachel has been carrying on an affair with Rennac for a long time but her cheating is justified because "they're in love").
    • Corrin in Peril warps the entirety of Nohr into a bunch of card-carrying villains who enjoy heaping abuse on poor, innocent Corrin during her time as their prisoner, and thus deserving of being invaded and killed by the always-noble Hoshidans. Laslow and Odin arguably get it the worst — they're turned into cruel, callous abusers who mistreat and rape Corrin and gloat about killing Queen Mikoto to Corrin's face.
    • YANDERE SUMIA, just like the title implies, turns Sumia into a Yandere who murders all the other women who could possibly be Chrom's "waifu"- Maribelle, Sully, Olivia, "Female Avatar" and even the Maiden. When Chrom refuses to marry Sumia because she is a "waifu killer," she murders him, too.
    • The Savior King, the Master Tactician and the Queen of Liberation: The author outright states she hates The Flame Emperor/Edelgard, and so in addition to ramping up the character's existing negative traits, new flaws are created wholecloth to further turn the audience against them. For example, Edelgard canonically never disregarded Dimitri as an out-and-out madman as done in this fic, nor did she consider him naive, guileless, or stupid. She's also portrayed as disparaing Claude for being mixed-race, a sentiment never once hinted at in canon.
  • Five Nights at Freddy's:
    • While he's already a bad guy (or at least as much as the animatronics in general are), Balloon Boy's dickery gets bolstered quite a bit, most infamously in Five Nights at Fuckboy's.
    • A number of people, such as MatPat of Game Theory, believe the murderer William Afton and the Phone Guy to be one and the same, citing how both were security guards and how one of the former's sprites has him holding an object interpreted to be an old-fashioned phone, among other things. This has largely died down following the release of the third game, as it shows Afton met his end after Freddy Fazbear's Pizza was closed and left to rot, whereas Phone Guy died months or even years when it was still in operation, thus disproving the theory, but a number of people believed in it regardless. The theory was debunked by Scott himself.
    • Luis Cabrera, a secondary character from the Five Nights at Freddy's AR: Special Delivery unintended emails, tends to receive a variant of this. He's a co-worker of "Ness" (aka Vanny/Vanessa) who repeatedly messages her about her bizarre online behavior and Sanity Slippage, with the implication that he's also romantically interested in her, judging by his frequently complimenting her and trying to ask her out for coffee. He later ends up manipulated by her, in large part because of his feelings. Many fans understandably see his actions as "creepy" because he oversteps boundaries and keeps sending messages even when Vanessa isn't going to respond. However, a few fans exaggerate his actions as being an Abhorrent Admirer who feels entitled to Vanessa's love and attention. Reading between the lines throughout his emails shows that, while his actions do have some stalkerish implications that would make someone feel uncomfortable, it's less out of maliciousness and/or entitlement and more out of being anxiety-prone and having poor social skills. Luis is legitimately trying to reach out to a co-worker undergoing Sanity Slippage he has feelings for, it's just not the best way of going about it. He also later admits he's "probably overstepping" in later emails. It's also easy to forget that Luis is checking her search history at least partly because of his job as someone on the IT team who gets notified of "red flag" search terms.
    • Being a protagonist both known for having an implied Dark and Troubled Past and prone to morally grey actions in an IP that where almost every situation is an Ambiguous Situation has made it almost inevitable that Gregory, the Kid Hero player character of Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach, is sometimes interpreted in a harsher or more cynical light by some members of the fandom. While some of these are legitimate Epileptic Trees about Gregory's characterization or role in the story, there are others who exaggerate his more questionable moments as pure villainy rather than, at worst, pragmatic ruthlessness to survive. For example, while Vanny getting 'disassembled' in one ending is obviously a horrible way to go out, Gregory not only does it in self-defense but is urged by Freddy to do so. Other than his Troubling Unchildlike Behavior, Gregory is portrayed in-story as a Mouthy Kid whose darker personality traits most likely come from seemingly living on the streets and having to 'grow up' faster as a result, with no major indication as to otherwise.
  • Genshin Impact: There is a tendency to present Raiden Shogun's actions as much more harmful than they actually were and calling her an outright criminal, who Inazuma had to be saved from by the Traveler.
    • The infamous Vision Hunt Decree is often seen as a crime she has never been held accountable for. Realistically speaking, however, it was simply a new law Raiden Shogun has passed and, being the ruler of Inazuma, she had full right of doing so. It can be seen as an equivalent of gun control laws which are completely common in Real Life (just like Sakoku Decree is just a regular border control). Nobody has ever died as a direct result of the Decree, even if they refused to hand over their Vision, nor was it a threat to Inazuma's sovereignty. The only people who have been killed were the ones who formed La Résistance and tried to use military force to overrule her, causing a civil war.
    • The game made it clear that majority of Inazumans didn't care much about the Vision Hunt which is not surprising, since most people don't have Visions. This law didn't affect them, so it's hard to expect some huge social backlash against Raiden's rule. Same goes for Ei locking herself up and supposedly leaving the country without care for 500 years, since the Shogun who was put in her place was a competent substitute leader (so much that citizens generally didn't notice a difference).
    • Contrary to frequent accusations, there is no known person who has been actually "murdered" by Raiden. She is often resented for killing Kazuha's friend and (to a lesser extent) La Signora, but both these cases were fair duels and "the loser dies" rule was clearly established and agreed upon. All participants were (or at least should be) ready to face the consequences of defeat and even Kazuha himself doesn't bear a grudge against Raiden Shogun or Sara (despite what his fan portrayals would suggest).
  • Kid Icarus Uprising 2: Hades Revenge gives this treatment to Dark Pit, or as he is called in the story, Pittoo. In the source material, he is neutral at worst, while the fanfic has him as part of the Big Bad Ensemble. His track record in the story includes attacking a university and submitting various tortures upon the children within, stealing a nuke, then building his own when it's stolen off him, sacrificing Pit to create a 'zomboy' army, stealing The 3 Scarred Treaures, unleashing The Smooze on the world, teaming up with Hitler, Stalin, Frollo, and David Cameron, tricking Cloud Angle into destroying the world, framing Pit for terrorism, brainwashing Mao Zedong into attacking Japan, and building a laser cannon to bring the world to his mercy.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • In Zelda's Honor, even though it is zigzagged and justified within the context of the story, it is still shocking to see Ruto, the Zoran princess turn evil for the majority of the fanfic; often times swapping sides based on either mood or circumstance.
      • Played straight with Kafei who is first introduced as chivalrous and good but turns full-on villain by the end of his story arc.
    • In "The Fate of House Tula", Ganondorf makes some comments expressing male chauvinist tendencies. Not only has he never even been hinted to have sexist views, it would make no sense for him to do so given his background and upbringing.
  • Mega Man:
  • Miitopia plays with this. In the game you can cast Miis as various characters in the story, including the main villain the Dark Lord. Sometimes this leads to this trope such as Dark Lord Morshu or Dark Lord SpongeBob.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog: The fanfic Bloody Domination took Anti-Hero Shadow the Hedgehog and turned him into an insane, remorseless paedophile by the second chapter, rapidly moving on to a complete psychopathic serial killer and rapist, driven insane because... well... why the hell not? The author was apparently bent on discovering just how gruesome a story she was capable of writing, and most reviewers seemed to find it successful (while others didn't seem to get that this was the point). Many demanded a sequel.
  • OMORI:
    • In many fanfics where The aftermath of Sunny's confession that he accidentally killed Mari is explored, you can bet that it will portray Hero as losing it the most due to how he and Mari were in a (presumably) committed relationship at the time of her death. This makes this somewhat justified, but not to the extent that Hero would kill Sunny over it, especially since he's the Martial Pacifist of the friend group.
    • For some reason, fans depict Basil as an Ax-Crazy Serial Killer who's willing to kill anyone to prevent Sunny's secret from getting out, when it's...Basil we're talking about.
    • Mari, in canon, is generally a Cool Big Sis who, at her absolute worst, has a perfectionist streak that makes her Innocently Insensitive and her death is clearly a tragic accident that everyone involved deeply regrets. A common Fandom-Specific Plot, however, portrays her as an abusive Big Sister Bully whose nicer traits are a facade, with such stories implying — if not outright stating — that she deserved to die.
  • Spyro the Dragon: Ember was included in The Legend of Spyro: A New Dawn mainly to defy this trope because the author was sick and tired of her getting this treatment by the fandom. Quite a few readers agreed and she ended up being the Ensemble Dark Horse.
  • Story of Seasons:
    • Sugarapplesweet likes depicting the sweet, chaste pastor Carter as villainously lustful towards Popuri in particular. The one-shot Condemned Passion turns Carter into a rapist and a murderer. He's lusted after the childishly innocent Popuri for a long time. One day he spiked her wine and tried to have his way with her, but Popuri resisted, which resulted in him hitting her and accidentally killing her. Satan's Ballroom outright turns Carter into a Pedophile Priest drooling over a child Popuri.
    • Best F(r)iends does this to all of Forget-me-not Valley and Mineral Town. All the villagers are too ignorant and/or homophobic to realize the protagonist and her female companion are a couple, not "best friends".
  • James Sunderland of Silent Hill 2 gets this a lot from certain fans. Canonically, he did perform a Mercy Kill on his wife that was in part motivated by the emotional abuse, neglect, and sexual frustration he suffered as a result of her terminal illness and mood swings, but to hear some fans go on about it, he's a murderer and monstrous sexual predator who views all women as nothing more than objects to sate his lust, as reflected by how the monsters he faces are all feminine and sexualized in appearance. What this overlooks is that James is haunted by these suggestive entities because he's consumed with guilt and self-loathing over letting his selfish feelings drive him to take Mary's life, which the malevolent forces behind Silent Hill are exploiting to torment him. Although, interestingly, the nature of the game means his true characterization is partially up to the individual player; if you obtain the "Maria" ending, then James does give in to his baser desires and effectively abandons his love for Mary by accepting Maria —what the town offers to James as an "idealized" version of his late wife— as a substitute.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • Mario gets this treatment in Super Tanooki Skin 2D for wearing fur... despite said fur not coming from an animal at all.
    • Mario is seen like this by a great part of the fanbase (particularly when those two Game Theory videos came out), mostly because of Luigi (Luigi doesn't get as much screen time as him, but many people make it look like Mario mistreats and abuses his brother, when even the most cynical observer can see it's standard sibling stuff), the endless enemies he stomps (other playable characters aren't blamed), and his relationships with Daisy and Pauline (both relationships are long since dead, Odyssey even confirming Mario and Pauline as Just Friends) besides Peach. Some of these fans use a mildly OOC moment of Mario stepping on Luigi's foot in a Mario Tennis game as an example of Mario abusing his brother, but the Mario & Luigi series where he is shown to love his brother and come to his rescue various times (to name an example) is usually ignored.
    • In Brutal Mario Mario is apparently trying to take back the Mushroom Kingdom he ran as a dictatorship beforehand.
    • Nintendo themselves poked fun at the concept during the Bowser Takeover event to promote Mario Party 10. One of the facts Bowser presents about himself is a description of how Super Mario Bros "tells the tale of a WONDERFUL HERO named Bowser who hangs out with a princess and is MERCILESSLY ATTACKED by a guy in a red hat."
    • The Axe does this to Luigi, albeit justified. After Bowser killed Mario, Luigi slowly grows more dangerous in his grief. It culminates when Bowser sends a letter to Luigi apologizing, and in return, Luigi stormed Bowser's castle, killed the Koopalings and fought Bowser, ending it by using the axe to brutally murder Bowser rather than simply dropping him into the lava.
    • The aforementioned SMG4 has made it his mission to utterly wreck the image of Mario, portraying him as an overweight, violent, Chaotic Neutral moron who will destroy entire cities just to have sexual intercourse with literal spaghetti and kills people without any remorse. The reason was stated in the 2015 QnA:
      i didn't really want a ""normal" or heroic main charachter cause that would be boring. so i thought i'd just focus on the laugh factor of my videos and uhhh...i did stupid jokes using mario. and thats why he's the weirdo you know today.
      • He also regularly does this with Toad. Toad is apathetic, likes using his giant Toad-Headed Gundam to kill people, he likes to get high on sugar, he played Darth Vader in a three-part Star Wars parody, and would be a complete Hate Sink if not for his equally psychotic girlfriend (Toadette) torturing him.
      • He did this once again with Francis from Super Paper Mario; he went from an extremely awkward and inept otaku who ended up being sympathetic because he just wanted to have friends to the head of the Mushroom Kingdom's version of The Mafia as well as an unrepentant mass kidnapper. And indirect child murderer.
    • Endlessly done to Luigi in Super Mario World ROM hacks. Some examples:
    • In the Super Mario World creepypasta I HATE YOU, the level that the storyteller discovers ends with Luigi, who is now a Green-Eyed Monster, facing off against Mario, apparently sick of always being in his brother's shadow and wanting him dead. He also seems to have been working with Bowser the entire time. What follows afterwards is a cutscene where the two fight, ending with Mario punching Luigi into a pit of lava in the arena.
    • Mario Is a Monster is a creepypasta parody of the concept, where the narrator describes Mario's actions in his 8-bit and 16-bit games in the most heinous-sounding way possible to make him out to be "the greatest villain in gaming history, simply by virtue of the fact we were all tricked into loving him." It gets to the point where the narrator discusses a game called "Mario Nights" (supposedly the last Mario game released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, but only he remembers it existing) and continues trying to paint Mario as evil in it — all while glossing over the more disturbing content of the game because it doesn't support his theory.
    • Flash-Gitz Animation's Racist Mario just has Mario bigoted against non-Nintendo characters and goes on a killing spree. He also puts glass in Yoshi's face and sends a Bullet Bill to kill Luigi.
    • Married to the Koopa King features a more bitter Mario than in canon. He is angry at Peach being unable to annul her marriage to Bowser simply because it means that he can't go on adventures, and be worshiped as a hero anymore, without Peach constantly being kidnapped.
    • Bowser and Bowser Jr., whilst normally antagonistic, may sometimes have their more sympathetic and affable elements downplayed or even eliminated. This is most obvious in Koopaling-centric fanfics such as More Than You Know where Bowser is upgraded to a full-blown Abusive Dad and rapist despite never being portrayed as such in official material. The Koopalings themselves also get this in certain fics such as Without Bowser where they're portrayed as Spoiled Brats while Junior is the only one to show remorse over his father's death.
    • A Mushroom Kingdom Wedding has Pauline — normally a benevolent character who has an Amicable Exes relationship with Mario — team up with Bowser so they can ruin Mario and Peach's wedding so she can have Mario for herself. May also count as Die for Our Ship.
    • The 3 Little Princesses:
      • In the first run of the comic, Peach was exaggerated into a ditzy, self-centered Manchild who at least could understand when she went too far and make amends. Over the course of the second run, she devolves into thinking she has Protagonist-Centered Morality and beats up Rosalina just to undo Daisy's wish and retain being the popular one. She gets better later on, but it's still something far out of canon Peach's regular thought process.
      • A version of Daisy from the past takes over as the Big Bad and tries to take over the Mushroom Kingdom. She had the right to be mad after her own neglect and abuse, but jumping into being a conqueror is pretty hard to swallow for Daisy.
  • Touhou Project:
    • The Chinese Touhou doujin Yuyuko's Yukkuri Farm goes to the extreme and has Yuyuko raising yukkuris in order to eat their babies. The author is extremely fond of depicting Yuyuko as a sadist and has a major dislike of her.
    • A Dark Fic author by the name of Stripe Pattern believes Byakuren, a kind, selfless Buddhist magician who believes in equality between humans and youkais, is a psychotic monster. In Stripe Pattern's doujin Love and Peace, Byakuren is shown helping youkais slaughter humans for food before she was sealed, saying that since humans and youkais are equal, youkais eating humans is exactly the same as humans eating rice and fruit. The author actually quotes Byakuren's background to support the "fact" that she's evil. The same author also depicts Sanae, a happy-go-lucky ditz with racist tendencies and an overt fondness for youkai exterminationnote , as a very serious, sadistic Blood Knight who hates her own goddesses (people she loves in canon) who goes insane frequently.
    • One author, Zounose, has Byakuren come up with a way to keep the youkai she takes care of from eating people: use the corpses of recently dead babies to fertilize the fruit trees she grows, so that the resulting fruit technically counts as human fleshnote . Just so we're clear that the author doesn't consider this to be a good thing, everything is done in sinister tones and Byakuren chews on the flesh of one of the fruits, saying it's the secret to her youthnote , which is, for obvious reasons, a major no-no in Japan. Or anywhere else. The same artist also considers Sakuya to be willing to murder her own mistress, someone she's undyingly loyal to in canon.
    • There's a mildly popular series among a certain subset of fans revolving around Koishi, who can manipulate the subconscious, being a cannibalistic, sadistic psychopath. Note that, in canon, Koishi is considered to be brain-dead, with absolutely no thoughts or personality of her own.note  And Koishi isn't the only one who gets it either. Sanae is a youkai hating fanatical serial killer, Byakuren is a Dark Messiah who rallies the youkai into committing genocide on the humans, Yuyuko is a cannibal who eats Youmu when she first appears, and so on. Although most of these are actually subversions, since they (including Koishi) were all Driven to Madness by the true antagonists so they could put Yukari in a position to be killed. The actual examples of this trope are the Watatsuki sisters (who go from just being xenophobic jerkasses in canon to the evil masterminds behind the slaughter of Gensokyo's inhabitants), Koakuma (who willingly sided with the Watatsukis and is a yandere who rapes Patchouli) and most of the Lunarians.
    • This is subverted in the doujin The Silence of the Rabbits, which depicts Eirin as a sadistic monster who does cruel experiments and is also a cannibal. The subversion is that this isn't the real Eirin, but a clone that Eirin created to manage the other clones that she created, but who went evil, incapacitated and imprisoned her. The clone wanted to come up with a poison that could kill a Hourai immortal, but despite her advances, she feared the original, and it turns out during the climactic battle between the Eirins that Eirin created her using the template for the Reisen clones rather than her own.
    • With some characters, it gets up to a Memetic Mutation, as shown on Memes.Touhou Project. The opposite is rarer, due to White-and-Grey Morality in canon.
  • Post-Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, a notable streak formed in the fandom depicting Penelope's actions in the previous game in as negative a light as possible, and as having been Evil All Along. At least, from those fans who didn't take "the Penelope twist" as reason to disown the game entirely.
  • Undertale:
    • Chara/The Fallen Child's portrayals in fanon may or may not be this. The game isn't shy about being ambiguous in their personality, and leaves hints for both Chara being rotten to the core or the game's narrator on all routes, who has a sense of humor and compassion.
    • Asgore sometimes suffers from this in some fanworks, being depicted as a Crazy Jealous Guy or a Stalker with a Crush towards Toriel and a far worse person than he is in general. While Asgore is not exactly morally pure (it's hard to excuse killing six children and trying to commit genocide), the game goes out of its way to depict him as a fundamentally Nice Guy who felt he had no choice. And while he does wish to get back with them, he respects their choice and is shown in the ending working for them, which implies the two of them were able to mend their relationship somewhat.
    • This of course works the other way around: Toriel is often made a bad person so Asgore can be seen as better than he actually is.
  • Final Fantasy X: In Crimson And Clover, Auron, the grumpy old samurai mentor, tries to rape someone.
  • Callisto Hime wrote some The Legend of Zelda and Fire Emblem that had this unfortunate effect with the characters in the latter franchise, mostly owing to her scarce knowledge of it at the time. The most notable example is Marth, who is portrayed in the story as being so desperate to save his nation from the incoming war, that he would break off his friendship with Link and take advantage of Zelda while she's emotionally vulnerable to sway her to his side, things that canon Marth, while suffering losses that take a heavy toll on him, would never resort to.

    Visual Novels 
  • Ace Attorney:
    • Klavier Gavin is one of the few rivals who isn't an Amoral Attorney, and is The Charmer. In these fics (hide your kids first), both by the same author, well... this comment left on one of the fics will explain:
      Okay, I know that Klavier can be mean(in a funny way) but THIS mean? That's sick. That's just sick! Maybe he likes Ema but not that much. Why would he rape her? I know its fanfiction but GAWD.
    • The fanfic Dirty Sympathy turns Butt-Monkey attorney who never seems to get respect from anyone Apollo Justice and Klavier into Amoral Attorneys who frame Kristoph Gavin and Daryan Crescend for the murders of Shadi Smith and Romein LeTouse just so they can get a Dirty Cop and another Amoral Attorney in jail/executed. However this is downplayed, as Klavier and Apollo are portrayed more sympathetically than Kristoph or Daryan.
    • Iris is sometimes changed from misguided but kind and well-intentioned person to Extreme Doormat who will do whatever her sister asks her to including murder. Case in point: This fic has her actively help murder Phoenix even though her canonical motivation for participating in Dahlia's necklace plot in the first place was to prevent her from doing just that.

    Web Animation 
  • Before The Circus confirmed that Stella from Helluva Boss did abuse Stolas and went out of her way to belittle and demean him every chance she got even before he cheated on her, she was often depicted as an abuser by Stolitz (Stolas/Blitzø) shippers instead because Stella happened to be married to Stolas. In a fit of rage, after learning that Stolas has cheated on her with a lowly imp, Stella hires Striker to assassinate Stolas. While Stella certainly was far from a saint, there was no indication at the time that Stella abused Stolas, much less was an abusive partner to him - or neglectful or abusive to their daughter, Octavia. Despite this, many "pre-Season 2" fanfictions, fan art pieces, and fan comics go out of their way to demonize Stella for "getting in the way of Stolas and Blitzø being together". One fanfiction even goes as far as to depict Stolas and Octavia teaming up to torture and murder Stella in a graphic way.
  • RWBY
    • In the fic Trials Of A Workaholic, Weiss is depicted as sexually abusive. This was apparently based off her Squeeing over Pyrrha's battle skills for all of two scenes. Why the author even thought that it was sexually motivated, we don't know.
    • In Pinned, Pyrrha—of all characters—is depicted as a rapist. This is the girl whose greatest canonical flaw is that she's so compassionate she can't speak up for herself.
    • Pyrrha is not the only example. Taiyang Xiao Long has been depicted a few times as being a poor parent to Yang or Ruby or, in the case of Fixing A Broken Mother, a terrible husband to Summer. Mind you, Taiyang's defining character trait is that of being the best father he can be to his children, exemplified by the fact that his Establishing Character Moment is of him sleeping in a chair at his comatose daughter's bedside, and had a Heroic BSoD upon Summer's death. Fans who prefer the theory that Qrow is Ruby's father often downplay Taiyang's relationship with Ruby, such as A Simple Request where Ruby wants her uncle to give her away on her wedding day because she's closer to him than she is with her father.
    • In The Plus One Of RWBY, Weiss is portrayed as greedy, short sighted and selfish, with all her canon acts being reinterpreted as one sided and all Rule of Funny thrown out. Her line "I'm not perfect, not yet" is considered a heinous act of arrogance, and causes the "hero" to go into a psychotic rage and considers killing her for it justified (he doesn't do it, but acts like not killing her is showing restraint and mercy)
    • The Betrayal Fic Queen of Grimm has Weiss and Pyrrha team up with CRDL to kill Ruby simply because they find her to be deadweight.
    • Learning To Bloom downplays Neptune's good elements and turns him into a womanizing Gold Digger towards Weiss, while Jaune is a suffocating boyfriend (bordering on Abhorrent Admirer) towards Pyrrha.
    • Second Summer has Taiyang manipulating Ruby into acting as a mini version of her mother Summer. This includes answering to Summer's name and having sex with him. Eventually Qrow finds out, kills Taiyang, and rescues his nieces.
    • The Volume 7 AU fic Ironside has this done to Team RWBY, Blake and Yang, specifically, as well as the Happy Huntresses. So far, their actions have proven to be harshly detrimental and the fic goes to show how said actions have repercussions which none suffered from in canon.
    • Coeur Al'Aran has a thing for this.
      • Many works where Team RWBY isn't part of the primary focus has them cast in a much more disparaging light, seeing them punished for civilian casualties that didn't exist in canon or giving them In-Universe Protagonist-Centered Morality. Null deliberately takes this to its logical extreme, with the team uncaring about said civilian casualties and coming off almost worse than the actual villains of the fic, but A Rabbit Among Wolves and Professor Arc hits them with Adaptational Dumbass and have them the subject of a "The Reason You Suck" Speech for their canon actions.
      • Ozpin is subjected to this more often than not. His personality is often heavily changed to make him less benevolent and well-intentioned, though how it's done depends on the genre. In more comedic works like the aforementioned Professor Arc, Ozpin is often made an Adaptational Jerkass and Adaptational Dumbass, being made out as the butt of numerous jokes while his canon plans are mocked relentlessly. In more drama-focused works, Ozpin is given Adaptational Villainy, being made very duplicitous and monstrous in his own right, with a willingness to sacrifice anything if it means stopping Salem.
    • The Brothers get this treatment by some fans as being the true Big Bad, not helped that they were already Jerkass Gods even before the birth of humanity as they used the world as their personal playground to make and break whatever they want. Even their decision to make humanity as a compromise between them is seen more like an experiment at their mercy as long as they played by their rules. Their lack of attachment to humanity and how they work ends up making Salem look nice despite her selfishness and twisting her subordinates’ wishes into her favor, and several Crossover fics having her get her wish to destroying them, along with dying herself.

    Webcomics 
  • The Petri Dish: While Thaddeus Euphemism isn't perfect, he ultimately means well. In The Peutrid Dish, however, he's outright evil. Justified as it's implied he lives in a parallel universe from the canon Thaddeus.
  • Rain (2010): While Gavin in the early chapters was certainly a bit of a rude, Jerkass who had trouble accepting that his childhood friend Rain is Transgender, he was still genuinely trying his best to understand Rain’s situation and is struggling with his own crush on her as well. Despite this, some readers just found him to be nothing but an irredeemable Jerk with a Heart of Jerk, to the point that they even expected him to be the comic’s Big Bad. After he Took a Level in Kindness, fans eventually warmed up to him.
  • Sleepless Domain: A major turn of events in the comic occurs when Cassidy accuses main character Undine of somehow being responsible for the fate of her former teammates — three of whom were killed in action, while the fourth gave up her powers to save Undine's life. An over-the-top Dark Parody fan comic takes Cassidy's tactless accusation and runs with it, as Cassidy awakens chained up in Undine's Torture Cellar where she extracts girls' powers before killing them.

Alternative Title(s): Paint The Hero Black, Fanfic Character Assassination

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder You Know That Show... Trope Launch Pad Wishlist Reviews Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top