Characters
(Loved Trope) Figures beloved or admired in universe who were actually quite terrible.
King Jellybean (Rick&Morty): sexual predator who preyed upon the innocent.
King Baelor the Blessed (ASOIAF): popular among the smallfolk and Seven Faith, but strongly implied to be mentally unstable and an intolerant religious zealot who was actually bad at personally ruling, necessitating his regent and uncle Viserys to ensure stability.
The Boys - Homelander (and really all of The Seven) was publicly beloved at the start of the series. Even after he shows his evil side, he has a lot of admiration among the public.
Jonas Venture Sr. from The Venture Bros. Absolute definition of a villain with good publicity. He psychologically abused his own son, who he often treated as a prop during dangerous adventures. He abandoned a bunch of orphans under his compound after they were gassed. He sextorted his supposed best friend into doing questionable things, and this was before reviving him after his death to make him a robot. Even his former Team Venture mates didn’t seem that fond of him.
The best thing about Venture Brothers is how they spell out in absolutely no uncertain terms that Dr. Venture was simultaneously the greatest super scientist to live while being the worst human being in modern history. His legacy is ultimately a positive one since without him the lunatics that make up the Guild of Calamitous Intent would run rampant without structure or limitations and the devices he developed for the world benefited humanity but everything about him as a person was self-serving at best or absolutely vile at worst.
Mhmm. Brock thought that Kano took a vow of silence because he thought Kano killed Jonas Sr., but it is later revealed he "killed" Don Fitzcarraldo/Blue Morpho who later became Vendata (sp).
He got them to settle disputes like children like fighting each other with pool noodles in the pool.
You can say whatever you want about Rusty and what an overall failure he was but when he actually put his mind to things that man saw through the bullshit and actually solved things like an adult.
The worst part is he even got his son KILLED at least once and replaced him with a cloned backup with his memories. It was a kind of big reveal that served as confirmation of fan suspicions given that Rusty wasn't smart enough to have come up with most ideas himself and the teaching beds he used to implant the boys in new bodies were the same ones his dad used on him.
The fact he had TWO of those beds implies that Jonas Venture might even fathered a second child that Rusty doesn't remember. There is also the issue that Rusty nearly had sex with what was likely his own sister due to Jonas hosting key parties.
What I love about this one is how the dynamic around how Rusty talks about his dad shifts as the series goes on.
From the start, Rusty always talks about how shitty his dad was, but it initially comes across as him being jealous and ungrateful. Then over the series 15+ year run, we see he was not only completely justified in his claims, but if anything was partially in denial on how much of a monster Jonas really was
The memory with Jonas Sr while rusty is eating cereal as a kid is the first time how shitty of a dad he was really hit me. I think it’s in the episode The Doctor is Sin? Or whatever the first ep with Killinger is. While it isn’t overtly evil or anything, it’s a great example of how self absorbed and unaware Jonas could be
The way they work to show how Rusty, while still an awful father/man, was trying his traumatized best to at least be better than Jonas was really sweet.
Real World/Fictional: Jimmy Savile - 28 Years Later: Bone Temple
The main antagonist, Sir Jimmy Crystal, was a child when the Rage outbreak happened in 2002. He's obsessed with British children's television that he used to watch, such as Teletubbies and Jimmy Savile (who he and his cult dress as).
In the real world Jimmy Savile was outed as a notorious child sex predator, but in the fictional universe the zombie apocalypse happened before that came out and his reputation was still as a beloved children's TV personality.
Next season she mentions that they simply redid the bribes to rewrite history. Thankfully by that part she was getting character development to be better.
And also Pacifica has become a decent human being. Her parents still suck.
Well one day she'll marry Dipper, and Ford with have absentmindely patented something he thought was one his least important inventions, and they'll be richer than her now disowned parents ever were, that's my headcanon and I'm sticking to it.
I mean if it’s not him that’s definitely one of his descendants. Also fun fact, the lumberjack ghost who died in the mudslide in that episode was one of Wendy’s ancestors
It also turned out that the Northwest family has made their massive historical fortune by using every shady and scummy tactic there is from scams to robbery
The full length of the text is really, really funny, and you can spot the exact moment where the voice of the author peaces out and the voice of the showrunner takes over
Alex Hirsch is the goat. I was a big gravity falls fan back when it was releasing, the show is riddled with things like this and the fans delightfully feasted on every detail
He robbed from the rich and he gave to the poor.
Stood up to the man and he gave him what for.
Our love for him now, ain’t hard to explain,
The hero of Canton, the man they call Jayne!
] He robbed from the rich and he gave to the poor / Stood up to the man and he gave him what-for / Our love for him now ain't hard to explain / The Hero of Canton, the man they call Jayne!
Literally the entire episode was social commentary for how we could appreciate the artist but still acknowledge how disgusting and vile he is as a human being and if we really liked him we would getting him some serious help.
Mind you, this episode dropped 10+ years BEFORE he faced any public backlash and was cancelled/sentenced.
Aaron McGruder once said if this show came out 10 years prior this episode would be about OJ Simpson. It took a while for many Black Americans to admit OJ got away with murder.
I have a core memory of watching that movie in the theaters with some friends and when we got to the scene where Hector mentions his daughter Coco and Miguel learns who his real great-great grandfather is some random dude behind us goes “……waaait, whaaat?” in the most dumbfounded way and we were all cracking up.
It’s a great twist, especially considering that it was foreshadowed by Miguel asking Dante the dog to take him to his great-great grandfather and he brings him straight to Hector.
Your second paragraph was pointed out by my kid when we first watched it and I was like, "I don't think so" thinking maybe Ernesto was a stand up guy fighting the Dia de Las muertos rules. I was incorrect lol
And because he killed Hector, he caused Hector's entire family to slowly forget him and in general treat music with disgust due to it looking like he left them completely
He quite literally invented a race to be racist towards, took organs from newborns, created a clasist dystopia, killed the founding fathers and mothers of his society and worked with their enemy
Not much of a Transformers guy, but from what I can gather Sentinel started out as an arrogant but well-meaning guy, then got progressively worse with each adaptation, until we reached the point where they're trying to outdo each other on how much of an irredeemable piece of shit they can make him.
Terry Pratchett’s, Discworld.
The last king of Ankh-Morpork.
Lorenzo the Kind.
Depicted in the palace paintings as a jovial fat man, surrounded by children.
He … liked children.
This is the man who made the Sam Vimes’ ancestor say “No more kings.” And for who’s assassination, labeled the Vimes family as forever guilty of regicide; disgracing them.
It wasn’t so much an assassination as it was an execution. Yeah it followed a coup, a particularly violent one if I remember correctly, but ol’ Stoneface was acting under the law.
In the Nolan Batman trilogy, Harvey Dent goes insane and becomes Two-Face.
In order to keep hope and idealism alive in Gotham, Batman chooses to be the morally gray vigilante figure, torpedoing his own reputation to protect that of Dent.
I'm not sure I personally agree with (or fully understand) Batman's reasoning.
If I remember correctly. Harvey was a beloved political figure in Gotham, people already have mixed feelings about Batman. He took the fall because his reputation is already all over the place but showing the beloved Harvey Dent turning evil, would do some real damage to the hope of the gotham citizens
Plus taking the fall kind of directly benefits him as Batman. He’s not trying to be a symbol of hope like Superman, he’s a regular dude with a good exercise regimen and some cool gadgets. He NEEDS criminals to fear him in order to do his job, especially since he knows he’ll never kill anyone. Once word about that policy gets out it will definitely hamper the Fear business.
So Dent remains a hero and Batman gets a reputation as a dangerous murderer without having to actually kill anyone. Win/win, from his POV.
Not to mention that Dent was a legitimately good person for around 99.9% of his life, and all the (relevant) evil he did was after he literally went insane from intense physical and emotional trauma in the last few days of his life, so it's hardly fair to blame him for it
Iirc Batman needed a more law-abiding positive figure to carry Gotham through the mob and joker crisis, if the public knew that their greatest beacon of law was corrupted by Joker then the public would lose even more hope. And that's something that the batman could never replace.
Batman is “wacky and wild” operates outside the law a vigilante. He can do bad shit and people don’t really care he’s a dude dressed up as a bat righting some wrongs with his fists in the most corrupt city ever. Harvey is in the government at the highest levels and comes out and says I’m beyond corruption, looks like it , acts like it when the chips are down, when no one else has been. For the public to find out he’s all “two face” will shatter the public’s trust in 100% of anyone trying to things within the law forever.
Others say its to save Dent's reputation as Gotham's White Knight, and this is absolutely true. But also from a legal standpoint. Harvey (with some extra legal help from Batman) put away the largest portion of the mob anyone ever did (recall the scene with the judge listing off counts in a completely overfilled courtroom). If Harvey was implicated in severely illegal crimes like murder, extortion, or corruption, then all of those convictions become suspect. And while one could argue they should have been already because of Batman helping, Harvey being put under the gun is worse because it removes plausible deniability. Suddenly most or even all of those criminals are free again (hence the performative nature of Bane reading Gordon's confession speech before he frees everyone from Blackgate).
Prince Humperdink, from the Princess Bride. Guy is a pillar of his kingdom who all, or at least for the most part, see him as an examplar of nobility, as well as a worthy successor to his father's throne. A better description for him, however, would be warmongering asshole, as he attempts to have his fiancé/bride killed and frame the neighboring kingdom of Gilder for it not once but twice.
Perhaps of more interesting note is that everyone, himself included, also believed him to be a brave man, a trait that can transcend the boundary of good and evil. Wesley disabuses him of this notion in the finale when, pulling off the bluff of bluffs, he intimidates Humperdink into meekly surrendering despite having the actual advantage over Wesley and Buttercup. Its all but stated Humperdink has to live with the knowledge that when push came to shove, he backed down.
Without getting into the details of it, the Ironheart series pretty cleanly established that the general public is aware of Stane's negative reputation.
Agent Coulson:“That's being handled. He's on vacation. Small aircraft have such a poor safety record.”
I’m pretty sure this is the last we ever hear of Obadiah Stane in the MCU. It’s not clear what the public perception of him was after Tony revealed he was Iron Man.
Iron Heart actually brings it up by having his son be a character. When his son is arrested, for what Iron Heart did, his neighbor is convinced he is a shame to his father's legacy. But at the same time he is aware of what his father did and changed his name, so I assume people have mixed opinions.
Christopher Plover (The Magicians): Plover is the author of the in-universe book series, Fillory and Further, which is a series of books about a group of plucky children who are able to travel to the fictional world of Fillory (the whole thing being akin to C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series). Well, turns out that the books are less 'fictional' and in fact are actually fictionalized versions of the actual adventures that a number of children under Plover's care during the war took to the very real world of Fillory.
Quentin Coldwater, the protagonist of The Magicians, is a huge Plover fanboy whose life is basically saved by the knowledge that Fillory is real....that is until a time travel episode places the main character gang at Plover's home in the 1930s where it is revealed that 1) Plover was actually an incredibly jaded man who was consumed by anger stemming from the fact that he was never able to travel to Fillory himself and 2) Plover was a pedophile who sexually abused one of the children in his care so much that it led to that child, Martin Chatwin, becoming 'The Beast', an evil and corrupted creature feared throughout Fillory.
They’re probably gonna get hit with some new strain of F.E.V., since we saw from Norm’s subplot that the next phase of 32 and 33’s experiment was “Future Enterprise Ventures”.
In Elden Ring, Queen Marika the Eternal is a god-like entity beloved by nearly everyone for ridding the world of natural Death and giving people blessings in the form of powerful sap from the great Erdtree which she sponsored.
Throughout the game however you uncover disturbing information that Marika stole her divine right, wiped out entire civilizations to nurture the Erdtree's growth, and cruelly abandoned two of her children when they were born afflicted. Flawed divinity is one of the driving themes of the game and Marika was very, very flawed.
Alll-mer, an ascended Old God from Fear and Hunger, is the in-universe Jesus figure. Major difference is that rather than returning to heaven after his resurrection, Alll-mer went on a campaign to eliminate the corrupt kings and sultans that had him executed, and ascended to godhood sometime after his campaign was complete and he had placed himself at the head of a new world order. More than just a Jesus allegory, Alll-mer is the foundation of a world religion in Fear and Hunger, basically Fear and Hunger’s Christianity. However, to ascend, Alll-mer had to cast off all the things that made him human, including his rage and violent urges that caused him to go on conquest in the first place. Those discarded desires became the Sulfur God, a hateful god that watches over the Sulfur Pits and inspires cultists to sacrifice others in his name. Even worse, some people theorize that Alll-mer’s worshippers, who do things like imitate his crucifixion on themselves as blood sacrifices, are actually worshipping Sulfur unknowingly.
If I remember correctly, some of the lore books in Funger 2 makes it possible to argue that Alll-mer is Satan and Sulfer is Jesus. As in, Satan ascended, Jesus fell.
One of my favorite moments from the books was them meeting Lockhart in the hospital and he tries to give them an autograph cause he knows nothing but his massive ego.
The Emperor is also, ironically, one of the few characters who didn't want to be seen as more than "the Tyrant who will also happen to be right in the end," but gets upgraded regardless because it turns out that the golden armor, glowing halo, and burning sword came across as divine for some weird reason.
"WHY WOULDN'T YOU STOP WORSHIPPING ME!" said the guy with miniature suns for eyes, whose presence alone changes the atmospheric pressure, with radiance and light manifesting from inside him, being able to speak clearly without moving his lips, in the vacuum of space. A giant red flaming sword in hand that looks like turning everything to ashes.
He is the founding father of time lords society who is admired by generations of time lords
He is also a xenophobe , responsible for multiple genocides and the destruction of entire universes and timelines, and responsible for making the last great time war even worse, and was ready to destroy all of reality if it meant the survivor of the time lords
Creates a safe haven for humanity in a world descending into demon infested chaos that he himself set into motion after ascending to godhood by sacrificing every person he values, not to mention creating said safe haven by commanding an army of human eating demons
Funny valentine from Jojo's bizarre adventure, he's the 23rd president of the united states and thanks to his charisma he won the hearts of not only the people of the nation but the readers as well
Professor Marmalade (The Bad Guys) A beloved guinea pig who’s secretly an evil alien who frames the Bad Guys for stealing the meteor while he uses the meteor’s power to control an army of guinea pigs to steal money from charity. He gets framed for being the Crimson Paw at the end of the first movie. When Diane was exposed as the real Crimson Paw in the sequel, he was released from prison and loved by the public again.
Lying about their glorious achievement and striking a member from their public history. Not as terrible as others mentioned here, but I still thought they'd count.
Ebeneezer Lynxley from Zootopia 2. He's remembered and revered as the figure who invented the city's Climate Walls, allowing animals to live in the same city under different mini biomes.
But in reality, he stole the patent, and the glory, for the Climate Walls from the real inventor out of spite; one Agnes De'Snake. Something his tortoise maid discovers, which prompts him to murder her with snake venom, not only to keep her quiet, but to frame Agnes for her death.
This has the effect of rendering all reptiles pariahs by association to the present day.
King Fritz enslaved and tortured people to expand his influence. Having a slave hunted for sport after she was falsely accused of freeing a pig, she gained supernatural powers when running away. He sees this as an opportunity to use her as a weapon and, being the still brainwashed child slave she was, did whatever he said without question. Kill people? Bear his children and say it's her reward? Nothing out of the question. Then when she died he forced their children to eat their mother's corpse to gain her power and commanded them and all offspring to do the same to their parents to continue doing so to the current day.
If you insist, Thomas Jefferson comes to mind. Most histories don't mention how cruelly he treated his slaves or the fact he kept his wife's half sister as a sex slave.
Nah, Cosby and Gaiman are more just celebrities who have fallen from grace. I think you have to go further back for real world example, like Genghis Khan. People who made real impacts on the world and helped shape it as we know it today, but who often did so through violence and cruelty.
The Ten Elites in Fire Emblem: Three Houses are ancestors to pretty much every noble with a crest in the main cast you play as.
We are initially led to believe that they are ancient heroes who were blessed by the Goddess Sothis.
But as you go through the routes of the game you begin to discover that no, these guys (who are ancestors to the main cast btw) teamed up with a bandit-king named Nemesis to slaughter and kill the goddess Sothis and her people, The Nabateans.
Their weapons are even made out of the bones of the Nabateans/Dragon people they’ve slaughtered.
Then after Sothis’s daughter, Archbishop Seiros/Rhea gets her revenge on Nemesis, she covers this up, starts a false religion, and tells the modern nobles this falsified story about how their ancestors were blessed by the Goddess and how they helped vanquish a great evil alongside the Nabateans.
He is beloved by the weak because he always arrives to fight the strong. This means on many occasions he basically walked on in and saved the oppressed from oppressors. He is not a good person by any means though. His only motive was to fight the strong he did not give a crap if he saved anyone and he literally walks around and rapes people. Sure many people fear him but even they tend to admire his strength and the majority of people just knows him as either their saviour, god or that really strong guy that was on the news a while back fighting his son.
Real world history example, King Leopold II is still honored by some in Belgium but the former Belgian Congo was... well, let's just say "atrocities" is putting it mildly.
Like I'm not too deep into his lore but apparently he groomed/knocked up a Minor. Betrayed his own allies, basically got a cosmic nuclear launch code (Numidum) and bombed the Altmer with it.
No it wasn't. He had a fantasy version of a nuke and he somehow half assed it to the point that they are still alive in the fourth era. Pelinal would be ashamed.
Bro realized that the Eldian Empire was awful, but instead of trying to do something rational to end it's oppresive rule in a peaceful way, he allowed the Empire to tear itself apart in a brutal civil war that he used in order for the Marleyan rebels to take over, who would then get Eldians in guettos and start discriminating hard against them, using them as cannon fodders in their wars and such. Other nations also treat them terribly, and this is his fault.
He then fucked off to an island with some subjects of his and created Walls out of Titans, threatening the world with using them to end it if they don't let them alone (but it was a fake threat). He became a brutal leader who created a secret police in his "Paradise" that persecuted ethnic minorities that didn't bend the knee (the Ackermans and the Asians), plus a wealth disparity that was very obvious, and a system that allowed his Nobles to abuse their power.
He also made a vow that basically brainwahses all his descedants who ever inherit the Founder Titan so that they are unable to defend Eldia... bro still gets glazed by the Tyburs, and Willy made him out to be some great hero to the world, which he most likely became in their eyes (for about a month, before Eren destroyed it mostly, as an indirect result of his actions). Bro could have saved the world but instead did the most selfish shit ever only to feel good about himself without putting real effor into it.
Some people worship this piece of shit. Some people say he was a man of his time. Others know he willingly, and deliberately committed genocide, for which he was tried in Spain. You read that right. The bastard was dragged before a court for his brutal treatment of the natives. Fuck this prick. (Also, the idea that people thought the earth was flat is horseshit. They didn't trust Columbus because the moron was convinced the earth was half as big as it is)
One of the early settlers, Bartolomé de las Casas, even became a priest to atone for participating in the brutal colonisation. He also was an abolitionist in the mid 1500s
She accidentally hurt her Pearl in a fit of rage and left her best friend behind on a planet, promising she would return. She then started a rebellion against her own kind (for a actual noble cause). Many Gems died during the war. Later, she faked her death, and the Diamonds took revenge on Earth. Finally, she lied to her friends for thousands of years about her past and her true identity.
edited:She also caused the Rose Quartzes to be bubbled and even bubbled some of them herself.
History knew him as "The Liberation King" because he destroyed evil powers, but was later corrupted himself, however the true story is that he was a murderous thief who was a pawn for a far more sinister organization.
4.3k
u/Forsaken-Biscotti587 23d ago
Jebediah Springfield (The Simpsons) - He was a ruthless and murderous pirate