The following have their own pages:

• The DCU
• Marvel Universe

• 100 Bullets: While The Trust are an ancient conspiracy controlling America behind the scenes many of them just seem to be along from the ride (due to the hereditary nature of the organization) and are being manipulated by Augustus and ruthlessly hunted down and killed by the Minutemen. It's implied that a few of the oldest members and the fathers/grandfathers of the rest had Kennedy killed but the worst thing some of the present generation do is simply try to get rid of their hired assassins in an effort to become less violent and law-breaking.
• Julius Caesar is portrayed this way in the Asterix series. He's a conquering dictator who has crushed dozens of countries under his sandal and brought the known world to heel, but he is also a Reasonable Authority Figure who listens to his advisors, gives his underlings a chance to prove themselves before throwing them to the lions, cares for his son Caesarion, and always honors his deals; whenever he is defeated by the protagonists, he accepts such losses with dignity and grace, often granting them compensation for their troubles in exchange for being left in peace.
• The Junkman in Astro City. He was a brilliant inventor who was removed from his job only because of the company's mandatory retirement policy; they wanted him to relax and enjoy his twilight years, but he simply wanted to keep working. The only reason he turns to crime is to show society that discarded things can still have value, and builds his arsenal out of junk just to prove his point. It's not hard to imagine that he could be a happy law-abiding citizen if someone would just give him another job.
• Mikey Rhodes, the Villain Protagonist in Birthright. He serves as vessel to a demonic entity bent on merging Earth with the dimension where it came from. However, his backstory is very sympathetic: he was originally the Chosen One destined to destroy Lore (said demonic entity), and was taken to his home dimension by resistance fighters to fulfill his destiny. Having a responsibility that he never asked for being forced on him, as well as witnessing many horrors from the war and being separated from his family pushed him to become a Fallen Hero and make a deal with Lore to return home. He doesn't want to destroy his world, but he is forced to obey his master since Lore is inside his body and directing him to find and kill the five magi that keep the two worlds apart.
• Laszlo Herzl in the Blacksad album Red Soul is shown first as someone full of spite towards Blacksad's one-time mentor Otto Lieber, and later is responsible for the death of another scientist. However, there's more to it than that: Lieber is a former Nazi scientist, and Herzl is a Holocaust survivor who's furious that a Nazi is getting away unscathed thanks to being recruited for Operation Paperclip - especially since he's also aware Lieber is selling secrets to the Russians. Blacksad ultimately admits that Herzl has the moral high ground and confronts Lieber instead.
• Two Edge in ElfQuest. He's a Manipulative Bastard who plays a generations long Xanatos Gambit to set two races at war but he has a Freudian Excuse He was tortured into insanity by his mother after watching her kill his father and has a soft spot for children (boy children anyway and no, not in that way.) Ultimately he does a Heel–Face Turn to become an Anti-Hero
• Last On His Feet, a biography of the boxer Jack Johnson (the first black boxer to become heavyweight champion), depicts his opponent Jim Jeffries as this. While Jeffries is Johnson's opponent and is recruited by a group of vicious racists to win the title back from Johnson and to the white race, Jeffries is consistently shown to be uncomfortable among the hardcore racists cheering for him, (including saying at one point that while he doesn't especially want to be around black people and has no special love for them, he doesn't hate them the way that people like Corbett do), his only true motivation for fighting Johnson was the ridiculously large pay day he was promised, Jeffries tried to dissuade the public from attempts to intimidate Johnson before the fight, and is nothing but gracious in defeat afterwards. He's an antagonist mostly because he's fighting against the main/viewpoint character, and because by taking the fight he is agreeing to represent a group of vicious racists who are absolutely desperate to uphold white supremacy at any cost.
• While Mr. Gone cheerfully murders people and inflicts incredible anguish on The Maxx and his friends, his stated intention is to instigate Julie's emotional catharsis and to set things right with his daughter, Sara.
• Sin City: Nearly every villain in the franchise is motivated by nothing but For the Evulz or pure Greed. Most of them are utterly devoid of likable qualities. Even comical villains like Klump, Schlubb, and Gordo are involved in some pretty nasty stuff like aiding a pedophile and human trafficking. This makes the only four antagonists who actually do have some better traits stand out quite a bit (particularly the former two).
  • Liebowitz. He's as corrupt of a cop as any other and beats up Hartigan for not signing a false confession. Despite this, he is a devoted family man and eventually turns on the Colonel, going so far as to kill him. In the second film, Liebowitz goes out of his way to warn Johnny to leave the city after he beats Roark in a poker game.
  • Becky betrays her friends in Old Town to the mob, but seems remorseful, is clearly miserable being a sex worker, claims that Manute threatened to kill her mother, and gets caught in a somewhat harsh Contempt Crossfire from Gail and Manute.
  • Don Giacco Magliozzi is a downplayed example. He's a fairly unpleasant mob boss, but he deeply loved his niece Andrea and values avenging her death over continuing a profitable partnership with her Hate Sink killer's employer. If he hadn't entrusted the hit to his Trigger-Happy nephews, who accidentally kill an Old Town prostitute, then he'd barely count as a villain at all.
  • Dirty Cop Bob covers up the crimes of pedophile and Serial Killer Roark Jr. and shoots his own partner. However, he claims that he's only doing so out of fear that the Roarks will kill him, and tries to convince Hartigan to lay down his gun for several seconds before shooting him again. In A Dame to Kill For, he's quick to believe that Dwight was set up and shows concern for his new partner.
• Bohr, the troll captain in Sojourn. He is the leader of the pursuing trolls, yet he is not fond of unnecessary violence, is loyal and determined, and loves his family.
• In the Sonic X comic book, Dr. Eggman is presented as a genuinely good person who, aside from really wanting to rule the world, has a strong sense of morals and is willing to do the right thing most of the time.
• Star Wars: Luke Skywalker's childhood friend Janek Sunber, aka Tank, joined the Empire and became a junior officer among its ground forces. He served with distinction and never placed himself above his soldiers, feeling responsible for their lives, and shared in menial labor that his fellow officers felt was beneath their rank. Through his natural talent as a leader and strategist, a scant handful of men survived what otherwise would have been a complete annihilation at the hands of enemy forces. Yet in the end, he was still an Imperial and conducted missions against Rebel forces, even infiltrating the Rebellion in an attempt to capture Luke and bring him to Darth Vader.
• Transformers:
  • Circuit Breaker in the Marvel Transformers Generation 1 comic. She hates all robots equally, regardless of faction, but given her origin, that's understandable. Megatron also tends to feign cooperation with the Autobots purely to make people think the Autobots are also evil, furthering Circuit Breaker's hatred. Also, she is shown to genuinely want to protect other humans, repeatedly risking her own life and being severely damaged to save an innocent bystander.
  • Thundercracker in Transformers Ongoing is tired of the war and doesn't want to fight but still considers himself a Decepticon, he does occasionally help the Autobots in several occasions.

• The Exploding Girl: Yellow wishes to protect small animals from cruel abusers and people wanting to profit off that abuse, going so far as to spend almost all her free time at a rescue shelter for animals, and using her small apartment as a sanctuary for strays. She also gleefully murders those same people in cold blood, and tries to kill Ping after he refuses to join her, and now risks revealing her secret identity. Similarly, Yellow relishes in brutalizing her victims long after the Violencia have been driven out, and only the threat of getting caught by police can stop her.
• Fighting! Pretty Foxgirl!: Despite devouring souls due to their curse, the Four Princes are nice people and a few are not wanting to continue with this fate.

• The Breaker:
  • Hyuk So Chun and Kangsung, among others. One of the things that sets this series apart is how most enemies are not presented as evil, even if they may seem to be at first. Instead, they're just people, who sometimes have to do unpleasant things in the course of their work, and if they act like jerks it's more bravado than actual hatefulness.
  • Deconstructed in New Waves with a wider variety of villains, which include Card Carrying Villains and a couple Obviously Evil characters.
• Cavalier of the Abyss: Caladbolg, for all he is set up as the big bad, has had scenes where he is shown as less villainous than Nex. The fact he has asked at one point for a stop to their conflicts and compromise seriously helps his case, even when he has ultimately selfish ends.
• PHD: Phantasy Degree:
  • Gelpa the ninja. Despite being a member of the Madosa Guild, he had helped saved Notra's and Noel's lives on Chang-Chun's request.
  • Chang-Chun the leader of the Madosa Guild is a kind-hearted old man who tries to save Chun-Lang and the others from Madosa's attack when he isn't wearing his power rings.
• Priest: Kinda strange that Nera would be on Temozarela's side, eh? It's shown in the story that Temozarela took her in as one of his disciples due to his desire to see where her faith in God and humanity would lead.

• In the MonsterVerse, the Titan Tiamat, who cameos in one movie and has expanded roles in both comics and a video game, fits this mold. She's almost always utilized as an antagonist, and unlike Godzilla she by all accounts always goes for the kill when looking to take new territory from another monster like Abzu or the Rival Great Ape; but compared to numerous other Destroyer Titans like Scylla and Ghidorah, Tiamat in every one of her appearances across multiple mediums has had pretty justifiable reasonings for lashing out and generally knows when to stop, and she generally seems happy to keep to herself when left alone. Tiamat fights Godzilla in Godzilla: Dominion because the latter is actively trying to take her new territory for himself, which was previously usurped from Godzilla by the Rival before Tiamat herself took it following the usurper's death — likewise, in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Godzilla is the one who attacks Tiamat again in her new territory where she's been keeping to herself to take her stockpile of solar radiation for himself, making Tiamat's response look like self-defence. In Kong: Survivor Instinct, Tiamat violently attacks David Martin and Kong at the coast, but the only reason she's there at all is because her offspring Lahamu is being held captive in the bay by Alan Jonah's Hyenas, and she doesn't hesitate to depart without further trouble once she has her child back.

• All the way back in 1971, The Who made "Behind Blue Eyes", an ode to the hidden sorrows of the bad guys. Quite popular, it's been covered many times by many other bands such as Limp Bizkit.
• Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar is a Trope Codifier.
• Many so-called Gangster Rappers claim this, by explaining that their violence, criminal, and sexist lyrics reflect the reality of the urban street life - which they came from - not to glorify it. They claim the music was done as a cry for help, not to celebrate it. This may have been the cause originally, but certainly not now.

• The "Class Dismissed" campaign of Rude Tales of Magic has hyper-competent witch hunter Virginia chasing the party. Virginia is polite, genuinely kind, motivated by preventing demonic influence from affecting the world, and limits collateral damage to third parties. She is still ruthless to achieving her goals, killing and inflicting torturous fates when necessary.

• Mick Foley skirted the line of Anti-Villain as Cactus Jack during his "anti-hardcore" gimmick in ECW. Though he was clearly an antagonist to ECW's heroes, his motivations were that he wished to "save" Tommy Dreamer from rabid fans who demanded he risk his body night after night solely to entertain them. Jack mentioned that nobody cared how much he had personally risked his body for wrestling, including a ripped-off ear, and that fans were never going to say "enough" — thus, he had given up on trying to pacify them. Hence, Foley would try to convince Dreamer to go to WCW where it was supposedly safer and more lucrative. Nevertheless, he managed to keep heat as a heel by A.) dropping his movelist down to a headlock, thus pissing off all the hardcore-hungry fans and B.) constantly praising the mortal enemy of ECW, WCW's Eric Bischoff.
• CM Punk, as a Heel, portrays a man legitimately concerned about the well-being of mankind. The idea is that he is trying to save us all from our addictions that we are supposedly a slave to. Of course, he can let his forceful nature get the best of him and try to beat sense into people who don't listen to him. This was shown best in his feud with Jeff Hardy, saying Jeff should stop acting so recklessly and quit making excuses for his behavior. In fact, it worked so well that some people felt Punk was the real face in all of this.
• In the AWA, Nick Bockwinkel was so eloquent and well spoken that even though he referred to fans as "cretinous humanoids", fans could always plainly see his side of the story. How could defending the title in Japan on short notice against Jumbo Tsuruta under a different rule-set be considered fair? Why would Rick Martel get a title-shot before his rematch? He seldom took things personally with his opponents and always conducted himself with an air of dignity and nobility. He would also periodically feud with more vicious heels like Sheik Adnan Al-Kaissie.

• In The Gamer's Alliance, Kagetsu I deeply cares for his subordinates and loves his wife Marya above anything else. He knows that his plan of destroying the world, killing countless innocents and depowering the gods is an unfortunate but necessary step to create an everlasting utopia but he hesitates when he has to choose whether to sacrifice Marya to make his dream come true. Glaurung shares a vision of a world without borders where no more warfare is necessary, but in order to do so her armies have to crush any opposition.
• Some Imperials from The Gungan Council, like Akio Kahoshi and Delek Wrentar, usually want to bring peace to a war ridden galaxy and care for their close friends. Yet, their methods to bringing peace usually involve hostile conquests of systems and purging the Jedi.
• JoJo's OC Tournament:
  • Shining Sandstorm: Blue Stripe causes mass destruction and possible casualties in an attempt at killing members of both Cleaners and Blues Brothers, and he later bombs the former's headquarters in an attempt at escaping custody, but his life has been nothing but tragedy after tragedy caused by a bloodline curse caused by a far removed ancestor and a luck-manipulating Stand he has zero control over (and may even be self-aware). His dedication towards Sandstorm and his villainous actions are driven by mere gratitude for being acknowledged and a remote possibility of bringing the rest of his family back from the dead more than any true evil. When he ends up dying, the other members of Sandstorm even insult him amongst themselves, underlining how pitiable he ultimately was.
  • The Grand Tour:
    • Stand-welding horse Tiny Dancer kills an innocent girl in cold blood just so she wouldn't interfere with a battle and has a clearly warped sense of right and wrong, but he's also very noble and respectful. What lead him to join the villainous Hall of Heads in the first place was because they recognized his strength, something his abusive owners never did before he slaughtered them, and because he was promised a way of creating a new world free of the oppression he had experienced by them. Even in the Epilogue, where he has gathered a large group of Stand-welding Intelligent Animals and prepares them to fight against humanity, his wish remains to create a world where they'll never have to suffer again or be considered inferior to any other species, ultimately putting animalkind as a whole first.
    • The Hall of Heads' leader, Might Be GIANTS, has zero qualms with brutally murdering people through his Stand's ability, and the means he employs to reach his goal are as morally black as they come... yet, at the same time, he's otherwise affable, openly respectful to anybody who proves their strength of character, and loyal to the underlings who truly believe in his cause. He's shown openly regretting not being able to convince other Stand users to join his quest multiple times, even when there'd be no one else to witness so, and after finishing off Dr. Yucovsky and Gina Halfway, he acknowledges how they sacrificed themselves for their friends and regrets things had to come to this, his last words before Bad Name headshots him from behind being about how he'll honor them. Whilst he still has little issue with murdering people in the Epilogue, being freed from his bloodline's course has made him abandon his previous goals and villainy, and instead dedicate his time to hunting down other evildoers.
  • Urban Uprising: Tom Alcove may work for a corrupt MegaCorp and make sure its plans go off without a hitch, but he's also a loving family man who regrets having had his marriage collapse due to putting his job before anything else and dedicates as much time as he can now to those he loves, first and foremost his sole child. Even when fighting the Stand users participating in the Urban Uprising ARG, he holds no grudge towards them and ultimately spares their lives, believing he's merely doing his job. It's later revealed that, alongside his regret at putting Lyte before his family, Alcove had several doubts about Selleck's plans and continued to work for him out of a sense of duty, and he promptly explodes at fellow executive Pete Bennett when he makes a particularly mysogynistic joke. Kaito Yugihama and Noriko Yabuuchi do not just spare him, but also make it so he'll receive clemency as long as he collaborates to bring Selleck and the entire company down, something he ultimately accepts.
  • Fortune's Reach: Emily Stanton is a notorious criminal, leader of the Bakker Syndicate through which she rules Los Fortuna's Slums and one of the first suspects behind the sudden death of Andrè Tifani. And yet, her actions are largely born out of hurt: when she was a child, an earthquake decimated her neighborhood and Los Fortuna's politicians largely ignored the catastrophe, leading it to gradually morph into the Slums and become overrun by criminal elements. She joined the LFPD to try and clean her home up... only for corruption within the ranks to end up with her, an honest cop, kicked out for being a nuisance. After all that, she naturally reached her breaking point and became a criminal herself, crushing every other ganglord and forming the Bakker Syndicate to do what no one else would've done for the Slums. Not only does her defeat at the hands of Aaron Kirk and Funk Odyssey lead to her arrest, but everything she's done falls apart immediately. When she's released, she even ultimately decides to side with a group of surviving Stand users to resolve the crisis involving the Hand of Fate.
• In Survival of the Fittest, the closest things to villains per se are those who choose to play the game. While sometimes these people are downright evil or simply terrifyingly insane, there are killers who actually aren't very bad people, often given a sympathetic reason for playing the game such as trying to protect a loved one or because they've given up all hope of escape and see it as the only way to survive (and as far as they know, it is). Examples of this include Bobby Jacks, Bryan Calvert, to an extent, and, arguably, Jacob Starr.

• 1776's John Dickinson seems like a haughty, self-interested sonuvabitch who wants to tank independence because it would hurt America's landed gentry. It turns out that he really does love America, but he still holds England in high regard and thinks a war would ruin the colonies. When independence is passed, he resigns from Congress to join the army.
• King Creon in Sophocles's Antigone is so sympathetically portrayed that only the title tells us that the play's protagonist is his rebellious niece, Antigone.
  • Both Antigone and Creon are tragic heroes. The tragedy comes from the fact that both Creon and Antigone are right! Antigone is upholding one set of laws — divine laws about family and the proper treatment of the dead — and Creon is upholding a different set of equally valid ones — about the supremacy of the state.
• The constable from Fiddler on the Roof attacks and later evicts the Jews of Anatevka. But while he does harbor some prejudice of the Jews, he doesn't desire to harm them, has a lot of respect for Teyve. He acts on orders from his anti-semetic superiors, and he knows if he didn't do it, they would get someone else. His face after launching the pogrom and watching the Jews leave Anatevka is full of sadness.
• Miles Gloriosus from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is a boastful captain of the Roman army and a major antagonist of the play, but he only bothered the protagonists because they're trying to take Philia, a bride he legally bought, from him.
• Shelly "The Machine" Levene from Glengarry Glen Ross. While he did rob the office of the most lucrative leads, and is a self-admitted bit of a slimy salesman, he only stole the leads because he was down on his luck and had a sick daughter to try and support. His final plea to Williamson even brings her up.
• Boris Godunov, from Alexander Pushkin's play and Mussorgsky's opera. He murdered Dmitry Ivanovich, and attained the throne of Russia. However, he sincerely wishes to be a good ruler and is hounded by guilt. His aria, which he sings to his son before his death, is particularly heart-wrenching.
• Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar. He genuinely believes he is doing what is best for his people, is tortured by his decision throughout, and is eventually driven to suicide by guilt. And this is after Jesus ordered Judas to betray him.
• In L'elisir d'amore, Sgt. Belcore views love the same way he does a military campaign, but really his only crime is being the romantic rival of the protagonist, Nemorito.
• Shylock from William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice is generally portrayed this way in modern productions, thanks to Values Dissonance. Debate has raged in modern times over how sympathetic Shakespeare actually intended Shylock to be. Although it's doubtful that Shakespeare had any qualms about writing a villainous Jewish character, Shylock has a clear motivation for his actions and articulately defends his point of view. Many Shakespeare villains, including the disinherited bastard Edmund in King Lear, have very legitimate grievances. You don't become the most influential author in the English language by writing flat characters.
• The title character in Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes — an outcast fisherman who handles his apprentices, who are mere children, roughly and, through his callousness, probably causes their deaths. But knowing that he is merely someone trying to survive, perhaps even prosper, in a hostile environment, that the town had organized a Torches and Pitchforks hunt against him, and that the children's deaths actually affect him greatly (he goes mad and commits suicide in the end), one cannot help but feel sad about him.
• Verdi's Rigoletto. Rigoletto is mean-spirited and murderous, but he does everything for the sake of his daughter. Also, he arouses our underdog sympathies.
• In Ruddigore, Sir Despard Murgatroyd is a Dastardly Whiplash who makes protagonist Robin Oakapple undergo a Face–Heel Turn. However, Sir Despard is a Punch-Clock Villain who publicly laments doing evil, and outing Robin as Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd allows his subsequent rehabilitation. As Sir Ruthven, Robin proves to be an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain until he, too, finds a way to escape the family curse.
• Fagin from Oliver Twist in the musical qualifies.
  • This is largely down to revisionism: Charles Dickens clearly saw Fagin as a monster who corrupted vulnerable children, arranged for the arrest and execution of his accomplices to avoid sharing his loot, and orchestrated the murder of Nancy after her Heel–Face Turn. Most adaptations, worried that this comes across as anti-semitic (possibly unintentionally, since reprints in Dickens' lifetime removed most of the references to Fagin being a Jew), portray him as someone forced into crime by being made a second-class citizen, or even a loveable rogue, and remove his more "evil" acts.
  • Further deconstructed in Will Eisner's Fagin the Jew.
• The Pillowman has Ariel, the bad cop that ruthlessly tortures and nearly kills both Michael and Katurian. By the end, it's revealed that the entire reason he's getting worked up is that he was abused as a child, and is returning all the pain that Katurian caused unto him. It culminates with the reveal that Ariel murdered his father over the abuse, just like Katurian to both of his parents, and Ariel begins to feel sympathy for the prisoner.
• Brutus from Julius Caesar is an honorable and idealistic man who betrays Caesar because he genuinely believes it's the right thing to do. After he dies, his enemies mourn him for having been a genuinely good man and the only conspirator to have been motivated by sincere altruism, and give Brutus a respectful burial.

• In almost all Transformers: Generation 1-based continuities, Thundercracker is usually the most sympathetic of the Seekers. In the original cartoon, he was still villainous, but wasn't as stupid and cruel as Skywarp or as narcissistic and grasping as Starscream. In the The Transformers: All Hail Megatron comic event, he shows disgust at the experiments that created the Swarm, and saves New York City from being nuked by another Decepticon because the way of the Decepticons is not slaughter, but battle. In War For Cybertron, whereas Skywarp's in-game dialogue is fuelthirsty and Starscream's is all vainglory, he expresses curiosity and wonders at the unusual environs of Cybertron's underworld (apt, as his class for the mission is Scientist). In almost all "character profile" productions, he's usually described as being a reluctant follower who's still around mainly because he believes in the original ideals or because he's already gone so far.
• BIONICLE:
  • Krika, a Noble Demon who's only on the side of evil because he feels resigned to it, and even then, he's a staunch critic of Teridax, openly questioning the validity of his enormous evil plan. He even gives Toa Gali a chance to leave instead of fighting.
  • Vezon, overlapping with Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain. He's basically an Evil Overlord persona without any of the things that allow either the "evil" or the "overlord" part to work, being too insane to handle any of his powers or tactical genius effectively, and at one point he gets roped into working for the Order of Mata Nui to combat the Brotherhood of Makuta, taking advantage of how for better and for worse, he's fearless (and, if required, expendable). It's lampshaded when he disguises himself for a moment as a "Toa (Hero) of Anarchy".
  • Retroactively, the Bahrag are revealed as this; where originally their Bohrok Swarm seemed to be a purely-destructive force, it's revealed late in the series that they were simply awoken too soon. While they're too ruthless to have been Hero Antagonists, it's clear the two of them only ever wanted to clean off Mata Nui's face so he could wake up properly, and they're percectly harmless as long as no-one is living on it at the time.

• The Amazing Digital Circus:
  • Caine one to the point of practically not being one as he is sincerely trying to do what is best for the players and keep them entertained while they are trapped in this digital purgatory. The problem arises, however, in how his sheer naivety and programming makes him as terrifying as someone actively malicious and evil because the catastrophic damage he does to their sanity as each of his attempts fail and pile up until they suffer an Abstraction and how indifferent he is to that growing, inevitable problem he presents because he physically is incapable of changing lest it lead to a cataclysmic breakdown that will destroy the whole Circus due to his Fisher King status, as Zooble nearly caused making Caine feel even an ounce of guilt.
    • It is currently unclear if Caine is even capable of allowing players to exit the digital circus, nor is it clear if Caine had any role in trapping them inside in the first place. While he's baffled at the idea of anyone wanting to leave, he did at least (albeit unsuccessfully) attempt to create an exit on the basis that players seem to want one.
    • While the "adventures" he comes up with can be traumatizing due to his obliviousness, it allows them to do something to entertain them. Caine might just be there to alleviate their boredom, but he's simply bad at it. Unlike the AM computer from I Have No Mouth..., he'll even semi-randomly let players "sit out" adventures if they ask (although he eventually gets frustrated from Zooble doing this too many times, so he forces them into things).
    • "Beach Episode" definitely shows a more sinister side to him when he manipulated the players into thinking they have a chance to escape the circus only to pull a Cruel Twist Ending on them. It’s also heavily implied he caused the first abstraction of a character named Scratch and he even coldly kills Abel too. However, he still isn’t intentionally malicious but rather just wants to find validation from the humans.
  • Jax is a heavily downplayed version of the Woobie variant of this trope. Make no mistake, Jax is a clear and cut Jerkass who goes out of his way to make the lives of his fellow circus members miserable, is an outright abusive bully towards most of the cast (Gangle and Ragatha being his most prominent victims) and is generally just an awful person to be around for a multitude of reasons. Behind all of his cruelty however, is a shallow, broken, mess of a man who mistreats others out of fear of growing close to them, only to wind up losing them in the end anyway. It's made clear in Episode 6 that Jax doesn't truly take joy out of what he's doing, but feels obligated to do so as a way to protect himself. Even outside of this, Jax is not above the occasional Pet the Dog as well as having genuine standards. The show itself even Lampshades this fact by having Jax be outright offended by the notion that he's a "villain", showing that even if he doesn't want people to like him, he doesn't like the idea of being seen as evil either.
• An Adventure of Sheep and Chicken has the hiker, who’s only trying to eat Chicken because he’s starving. He later makes a Heel–Face Turn and helps save Chicken’s friend, Sheep.
• Helluva Boss: Blitzo's technically a Villain Protagonist, and being an assassin doesn't exactly portray him in a positive light. But rather than being outright evil, Blitzo is an unhappy, insecure guy who just wants to be loved, fears getting close to others for it, and often makes bad choices.
• Red vs. Blue: Revelation has Agent Washington, who is only after the Blood Gulch crew to take Epsilon back to the Chairman so he doesn't have to rot away in prison. Adding to this, the only reason he has to get Epsilon in the first place is because Caboose didn't turn Epsilon in like Wash told him to.
• RWBY has Hazel Rainart. His murderous hatred of Ozpin aside, he is the least antagonistic of Salem's enforcers. He abhors unnecessary violence, as seen with his anger at Adam's murder of Sienna Khan, and his reluctance to fight Ren and Nora. He doesn't take pleasure in attacking Oscar and Nora, instead seeing them as unfortunate causalities as a result of Ozpin. He's willing to take the blame for the failure at Haven rather than blame Cinder or let Salem go for Emerald and Mercury, and begins to keep an eye out for them after returning from the mission. Outside of his anger towards Ozpin, Hazel's a fairly decent guy.
• Terri Starstrike has the Jotuzon Empire: A race of 60-foot-tall alien giants who are known to be honest, beautiful, and too intelligent to hold petty grudges. Despite being a very peaceful and moral race, they ban all contact with the Earthlings out of the fear that the humans are violent and unreasonable, which ends up making the human-fanatic Terrina feel very insecure about her mixed-species identity and her curiosity towards humans. The societal pressures of the Jotuzon Empire end up being treated as an unseen force that holds Terrina back from being her true self, but it's the compassion and trust of her Earthling friends that allow her to be more comfortable with herself in Westshore.
• DemonKing from TOME really just needs the money to go back to school, okay? An even better example from TOME, though, lies in Kizuna, who turns out to be this by the end of Episode 15. She just doesn't want anyone to be hurt anymore... and it leads her to try and almost kill SOFDTI.

• Acktreal Domma from Alien Abduction Role Play. She is a genuinely kind, loving soul who cares for her crewmates and human test subjects, yet both are put in serious danger because of her increasingly deteriorating mental state, possibly due to something in the hormones or genetics of the humans she comes into contact with.
• Brennus: The Dark, the original super-villain, qualifies due to being a) a Noble Demon whose organization helps keep the hero-villain conflict from escalating to truly uncontrollable levels, b) being in Enemy Mine situations with the heroes more often than he is in conflict with them, and c) a genuinely loving father and Benevolent Boss. At times he comes off more like a full on Anti-Hero, but remember that he still willingly employs cannibals and Serial Rapists, and he's the one who gives them their marching orders, and he has no small amount of blood on his own hands.
• Most of oWn in Cult of Personality are no less moral than other characters in RED and BLU, mostly because the mercenaries who joined own have their personalities largely intact despite their changed loyalties.
• Vincent Liedecker of The Descendants (Landon Porter), philanthropist, life saver, and sponsor the hero team's school — the only one around that doesn't seem to be about brainwashing or supersoldier projects. He sends his thugs to protect the establishments he takes protection money from, even from threats that he didn't create or provide the weapons for. Er...so he is into protection rackets and the underground economy, and producing Magitek and cloning horrible monsters that Should Not Be, and then selling them to the highest bidder...
• Despite going criminally insane and burning down a toy factory in a rampaging fit of revenge, Doctor Steel is really a kind-hearted soul who only wants to make the world a better place (for himself...).
• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: Dr. Horrible. He claims to be a Well-Intentioned Extremist but is really an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain who's in the whole evil business because of constant humiliations from Jerk Jock superheroes like Captain Hammer and unrequited affection for a girl he met at the laundromat. The story follows his transition from Anti-Villain to full-blown Supervillain. In "Fury of Solace", originally created for the ELE application contest ^note he didn't make it onto the DVD despite a fantastic song, probably because he really isn't evil, his Villain Song details how he had to kill a young girl's parents (and, implied by extension, become her nemesis) so she'll become a superhero and save the world. One of the prequel comics show that Penny actually likes him too.
• Fallout Is Dragons has Death, leader of one quarter of the Four Horses Raider Gang. His status as villain is mostly given by his position; in person he's actually quite reasonable, acts as an unofficial mentor to one of the player characters, and is willing to stop the raids on towns if it will help his gang.
• Dudley Griffin in KateModern was fighting the Order long before the heroes, and tries desperately to warn Kate away from danger. Nevertheless, with his willingness to attack other good characters and his bad temper, he functions as an antagonist.
• Tenshirock from Noob is a villain mostly due to most character being gamers while his objective is getting people to stop playing MMORPG. He's otherwise partners in crime with the Manipulative Bastard among the protagonists and Friendly Enemies with the rest to the point of You Will Be Spared.
• In commentaries, Doug said he wrote The Nostalgia Critic and company in Kickassia and Suburban Knights this way; selfish and doing bad things, but sympathetic and at least in the end knowing what's right. By To Boldly Flee, Critic's broken enough to just want to be the hero, and succeeds, while everyone else is nicer too.
• Only Villains Do That:
  • The previous Hero and Dark Lord fit this to the bill. Hara was a Nominal Hero who used his idol status to rape women and destroy critical infrastructure, and is the primary reason Dount is a hellhole. By contrast, Yomiko was a Dark Messiah who conquered territories in order to pass judgement on corrupt nobles and promoted equality and fairness for everyone else, to the point that even some within the empires she fought against secretly hail her as a Saint. Nonetheless, Hara fought for the side that nominally believes in morality and justice, while Yomiko fought for the side that believes Might Makes Right.
  • Seiji's villainous plan is to conquer, torture, and slaughter... the rich sociopaths in charge of dystopias. By recruiting lower class citizens and tribes who happen to be considered inferior or inherently evil.
• In A Practical Guide to Evil, this is Catherine's explicit aim, and part of Black Knight's plan seems to be to create such a role for Evil Names. Likewise, Thief also fills this role, joining Catherine because she'd be better joining her.
• Springhole
  • Deconstructed in No, Thanos Was Not Justified. Syera argues that regardless of his intentions, what Thanos did during Avengers: Infinity War was pointlessly cruel and wouldn't even be effective in the long run. In addition, there were alternatives that wouldn't have traumatized half the universe.
  • Reconstructed in How To Write Sympathetic Antagonists Without Endorsing Or Excusing Their Actions, & Without Making Your Protagonists Seem Heartless. Syera advises making the heroes acknoweledge how awful the villain's tragic backstory or that they do have good intentions while also pointing out neither gives them free reign to hurt others.

• There are plenty in the Whateley Universe. Dr. Diabolik is responsible for the deaths of thousands, all in his campaign to improve the human race. Brigand is a wanted supervillain who is actually trying to track down the monsters who corrupted his father. Jobe Wilkins is a Heroic Comedic Sociopath who thinks nothing of testing serums on unwilling criminals if it provides a new cure for dysentery.
  • Even some of the more antagonistic characters have shades of Anti-Villain. The MCO, for example, is filled with a number of people who genuinely do believe that they're protecting humanity, even if it has its share of genuinely mutophobic... let's say 'jerkfaces'. The Syndicate, probably the closest thing to a 'League of Supervillains' that the Whateley Universe has, encourages members to abide by 'The Code of the Honorable Outlaw', and is actively involved in trying to prevent worse things from happening... like Dr. Palm's, or the Bastard's, goals succeeding.
• Worm:
  • The main characters are a group of supervillains called the Undersiders, whom on some level have at least a little anti-villain flavoring (with the possible exception of Regent). Taylor becomes a supervillain because she couldn't betray her friends in addition to Jerkass superheroes, and constantly tries to minimize the harm her actions do and keep innocents from getting hurt. Tattletale becomes Taylor's friend to stop her from committing suicide by villain or whatever fresh horror just arrived in Brockton Bay. Brian became a Punch-Clock Villain to take care of his little sister Aisha. Bitch is a antisocial thug who due to a harsh, abusive upbringing doesn't trust any other humans anymore, but genuinely loves dogs and provides funds for the shelter she starts running for them. They also serve as A Lighter Shade of Black, being a thieves' gang who find themselves pitted against threats like white supremacists, criminal masterminds trying to take control of the city, and wandering bands of hero killers, and do a better job of fighting them than the heroes.
  • Arguably, the leaders of Cauldron. They're utterly ruthless, but everything they do is directed toward the goal of saving as much of the human race as possible from Scion's inevitable Face–Heel Turn into a nigh-omnipotent Omnicidal Maniac. Also, they know for certain that their means are necessary to achieve that end because of Contessa's power, which is basically Combat Clairvoyance turned up to the level of a Story-Breaker Power — it doesn't just let her see a path to victory in a single fight, she can project the path to victory in a decades-long global conflict affecting hundreds of parallel Earths.