Alternative Character Interpretation/New Media

Webcomics

 * A number of anti-fans of Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire have constructed an elaborate Fanon about how the eponymous Seer is a nigh-omnipotent Evil Overlord secretly ruling over a cowed populace, and how villains such as his Aloof Big Brother Jacob and/or Evil Counterpart Celesto are actually members or leaders of La Résistance.
 * Also, the chaos eyeball that Dominic recently scryed on isn't an evil demon beast intent on destroying everything, he's a cute little monster who just wants hugs.
 * THE ACI for Dominic Deegan is whether or not he's as pious as the writer makes him out to be or the ultimate manipulative Jerkass. It's the idea the entire Hatedom is built upon. Of course, Luna shares the spotlight. Is she a victim slowly overcoming years of emotional torture at the hands of a scheming mother and evil sisters or an incurable psychopath who'll murder anyone who makes her feel bad about herself?
 * Then there's the tone of the comic overall. Is it a chronicle of events that can be taken at face value and seen as a legitimate work of fantasy or does it shift between a gritty tone and a more cartoon-y feel for the sake of entertainment? Which side you prefer tends to automatically place you on one side the comic's very large love-hate war.
 * Something from the snarkdom: The Orcs: Noble Savages unjustly and excessively persecuted by the Callanians, or a bunch of vicious barbarians that are not undeserving of the derision and hatred they receive as large portions of their species really do engage in casual brutality and worse. Or a race as diverse as any other, with both its heros and monsters, just like the Callanians.
 * Was Milov's praising of Nimmel a blatant shill, or a sign that Nimmel has successfully pulled the wool over Milov.
 * The Order of the Stick:
 * Vaarsuvius: Insufferable Genius who occasionally commits morally questionable acts, but still, ultimately, means well, Jerk With a Heart of Gold who couldn't care less about saving the world, but is nonetheless extremely loyal to his/her friends, or full-blown Heroic Sociopath who takes sadistic pleasure at tormenting Belkar (not that he doesn't deserve it) and only cares about increasing his/her own arcane power, no matter what the cost? Good? Neutral? Evil, or merely traumatized and in need of therapy? Male? Female? Genderless? A mixed-sex team of ninjas who randomly switch places whenever no one is looking?
 * Miko: self-righteous Knight Templar with a chosen-of-god complex, almost incapable of seeing anything but her own ego and her own view of the world? Or an isolated young woman who used ego-boosting statements her lord once told her to help get her through those years of lonely, loyal service, which resulted in an attitude creating a vicious cycle of arrogance and isolation. Her execution of Lord Shojo: brutal act done in a completely unjustified bout of self-righteous fury? Or someone finally snapping from the feelings of betrayal that her lord would trust foreigners (which include an unrepentant murderer) over his own loyal order, the stress of seeing an army powerful enough to crush her homeland on their doorstop, and her years of isolation and religious zealotry (plus maybe severe head trauma resulting from the MitD slamming her through a wall, landing headfirst onto a solid surface, right before having a horse land on her head). Miko: picture perfect example on how not to play a paladin, or someone in desperate need of a therapist? Whatever is your answer, SHUT UP ABOUT IT ALREADY!
 * Lord Shojo himself. Fans are divided as to whether he was an amoral Jerkass who misused his office as commander of the Sapphire Guard for his own personal gain, perverting the very rules he was sworn to uphold in the process, or a Guile Hero who did everything in his power to fulfill his duty to safe-guard the Gates, even if it meant abandoning the outdated and overly restricted system of rules which the Guard's founder had set in place.
 * Technically, he did not try everything in his power. Rich points out in his commentary that Shojo did not even try to convince the paladins that there was a need to abandon the oaths, and that his complete disregard for the oaths and his paladins was asking for trouble (though he did not deserve the summary execution), and Celia's summary at the trial was a pointed summary about how changing the rules when they needed to be changed can still be in the spirit of Lawful.
 * by some, who understood all too well that being lawful comes second to the amount of people that live to see another day, every day... and didn't try to convince other he was right, but instead tried to avoid conflict with his own people as much as he could]]... what?
 * Since the other members of the Order of the Scribble were convinced that Soon would break his word and send someone or go himself,
 * Is the Big Bad Xykon a Too Dumb to Live Evil Overlord who's only redeeming feature is being fairly Genre Savvy, or an intelligent Card-Carrying Villain who is REALLY bored?
 * Celia: Too Dumb to Live, or a Genius Ditz that's out of her element?
 * Redcloak: Xykon's servant doing all the boring work or a supreme manipulator using Xykon as a weapon? For that matter, given the history of his grievances, truly evil or merely desperate?
 * As for the first question.
 * Tsukiko has her own interpretation of Redckloak, considering him spineless coward who does Xykon's dirty job, because he is afraid of him. She also has Draco in Leather Pants threatment for Xykon and undeads in general.
 * Emily from Misfile is either a heterosexual girl attracted to Ash but unable to go further in their relationship because Ash is currently a girl or a lesbian/bisexual in denial who simply doesn't want to accept that she's attracted to another girl. Which interpretation of her character you believe depends upon which side of the shipping war you fall on.
 * Rumisiel is either a textbook alcoholic stoner who needs to be pummelled at every opportunity for being such a massive Jerkass loser, or he is a pretty decent guy who has some major self-esteem issues which caused him to take refuge in aforementioned substances and is actually of at least above average intelligence.
 * There are some that take that former even farther: plenty have noted that he could easily be an Unreliable Narrator about the story behind the misfile, especially in regards to his supervisors. If you take this to a radical extent, it could very easily be that he was flat-out lying when he said the people in charge of the Celestial Bureaucracy would make the changes permanent to cover their own asses; Rather it's really he who is lying to cover his own ass by making the two people that remember the change afraid to let anyone know about it before he can fix it/cover it up himself.
 * This is probably way off the wall, but God: an omnipotent slacker who passed off his job to the Celestial Bureaucracy, or an active deity going out of his way to set up circumstances to improve the lives of a bunch of humans and help a pair of angels atone for mistakes while fixing up an imperfect filing system prone to a misfile.
 * Something similar is (arguably deliberately) played with in Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki, where the lead is also a man magically transformed into a buxom Magical Girl. She dates boys and has a female best friend who may be in love with her. Is the friend in love with the boy inside the girl? The girl the boy has become? Bi-curious? Just a really good friend? Who knows?
 * Reynardine from Gunnerkrigg Court. Has he undergone a Heel Face Turn? Does he have feelings (paternal? romantic?) for Antimony? Or is he ultimately looking out for his own skin, with his improved behavior stemming from recognition that Annie is the alpha wolf? There's no clear answer.
 * But oh so many hints...
 * Some have theorized that Fighter of 8-Bit Theatre is aware of his surroundings and the overall amorality of his comrades, he's just manipulating them for his own righteous uses (and possibly to kill them later).
 * This has been suggested by Fighter himself, of all people.
 * While everyone agrees that Black Mage is a horrifically sadistic mass-murdering "Heroic" Sociopath, there's disagreement as to whether he's the universe's Chew Toy because he's that evil or he became that evil because he was the universe's Chew Toy initially; the old chicken-or-egg dilemma.
 * And now we have an answer.
 * And remember that Yeah, pretty damn chicken-or-egg.
 * On the other hand, he does mention that when he's done burning the world, he laments about how there will be no more world to burn, makes it seem that he probably did start the attack.
 * Is Sarda a Jerkass, a Trickster Mentor or a Complete Monster?
 * "Or"?
 * Is Garland a hack barely capable of pathetic excuses for evil] or is he a man who has feigned ignorance and more or less outwitted Drizz'l and now convinced Sarda's he's not worth killing?
 * The Adventures of Dr. McNinja's eponymous Dr. McNinja: A man struggling with the dissonance between his chosen profession as a physician and his ninja heritage (who wants to be Batman), or a psychopath who hides his true nature behind the veneer of another (who wants to be Batman), or simply an Irish doctor who is also a ninja (who wants to be Batman)? You decide.
 * Megatokyo's Miho is, depending on who you talk to: an emotionally damaged goth girl, a brilliant computer hacker, a Dark Magical Girl, an undead fiend, an artificial inteligence let loose on the net and given corporeal form, or any combination there of. Views on her morality range from being a saintly Broken Bird to being a Poisonous Friend so evil Old Nick himself looks like a pretty swell guy in comparison. It doesn't help matters that writer/artist Fred Gallagher is a notorious sadist who enjoys toying with his fans. Also, she may or may not be bisexual. Bonus Material says she isn't, but it's uncertain how Canon it is.
 * Word of God has responded to the sexuality issue in the forums:
 * Your interpretation of Miho is also likely to influence your interpretation of Piro. Followers of the sympathetic interpretations tend to view Piro somewhat of a Jerkass because of his uncaring attitude towards . However, if you think of Miho as a vindictive psycho ex from hell who is actively trying to sabotage Piro's relationship with Kimiko, then his lack of pathos would seem somewhat justified.
 * Or you can realize that nobody is likely to know that and in fact to him it may be just some other weird game he's being put through by Miho. Wouldn't put it past her, really, but that's what this trope is about.
 * Largo. Heroic cyberpunkish hacker genius who is the only one who truly understands the threat, or an insensitive incompetent idiot who succeeds mostly by dumb luck and causes computers around him to spontaneously combust just by looking at them?
 * One could argue that this is all intentional as, as the series progressed, Piro and Largo have started to almost seem to inhabit different universes. The entire series might just be an exercise in this trope, with the various characters actually changing depending on whose story they happen to find themselves in. Each character is either an inhabitant of a rather varied world, their personal stories each just highlighting a particular facet of that world or part of a not all that varied world, with just the telling of it varying to their POV. Or the author is making it up as he goes.
 * Now you're catching on. The greatest irony of, say, the Largo example above is that both views are equally valid and no doubt intentionally so, yet many fans cling to one view and deny the other. This probably also applies to many other examples on this page.
 * The interpretation that Largo, at least since the original writer left, has been a non-heroic hacker genius who doesn't like having responsibility, so he acts incompetent enough that Piro has to take care of him, insensitive enough that he doesn't have to care for anyone, and he is like he is around Erika because she, aside from Miho who's already been discredited in Piro's eyes, is the only one who sees through his act. (and he's been trying to make things as difficult as possible for Piro as revenge for putting him on a plane to Japan while passed-out drunk.)
 * Is Piro himself the only sane, rational man who is able to see the faults of his own slightly misguided fantasies of a romantic relationship, the only one in the comic brave enough to realize and confront them, and the only one who truly cares about Kimiko? Or is he a whining, passive/aggressive insert character who lets his neuroticisms get the better of him and all the people in the strip who care about him only to have the blame passed to other people, especially the girls, whilst he gets out scot free?
 * For that matter, is Kimiko a saintly Broken Bird who has been more than understanding towards Piro and his various neuroses and whose self-esteem and relationship issues are due to having been burnt in love, or just a wangsty minor celebrity who builds up unrealistic fantasies concerning the people around her, lashes out at the people involved when her fantasies prove to be just that, punishes herself by sabotaging her relationships with the people who actually do care about her, and then has the nerve to complain that people only love her for her fiction persona, and not for who she really is?
 * Moreover, is the Piro/Kimiko relationship a hasty, ill-advised hook-up that is ultimately doom to failure, or a heroic love between two deeply flawed individuals who have managed to find strength in each other to become better people?
 * Also, who is the more admirable character, Piro or Largo? Piro, despite acting in a more socially acceptable way, is solely focused on his own little world, barely noticing anything else, such as that Erika was once one of his favourite idols or that Tokyo really is infested with zombies and monsters and such, or that the robot girl staying with him that he ignores has some humanity within her. Largo, a complete nut case, has shown to be quite justified in his paranoid delusions, preparing for zombie attacks, which eventually happen, and also stopping hackers from discovering Erika, which they do and causes problems. Also, he does help others, giving Yuki his phone while she was tracking Miho and helping Erika set up her own computer system so she could protect herself form her fans in a completely platonic way after she told him she didn't want a relationship or anything like that.
 * Happens a bit in Sluggy Freelance. This thread shows just how ridiculously deep Sluggy fans can try to probe into the characters' psyches. Can sometimes creep into the strip itself during guest artist filler arcs, like this one.
 * Chess Piece is based on this trope. Many characters have wildly different personalities due to wildly different lives. Effectively, Vlad Masters and Danny Phantom switch personalities and become father and son most notably. It makes sense, since it is massively AU and cross over between almost any Nicktoon imaginable.
 * Girl Genius:
 * Baron Klaus Wulfenbach: tyrannical trigger-happy Knight Templar or long-suffering responsible ruler who does what's necessary to protect Europe? Claims on both sides are scattered throughout this wiki.
 * And Othar Tryggvassen: hero, nutcase, both or neither?
 * GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER!
 * Tarvek Sturmvoraus--Well-Intentioned Extremist who underwent a Heel Face Turn and is bound for an OT 3 with our heroes, or sufferer of Chronic Backstabbing Disorder and/or Heel Face Revolving Door who's only on Agatha's side for now, until it comes time to side with Lucrezia/The Other again? Or potentially even Magnificent Bastard masterminding the entire Storm King/Heterodyne Princess plot while playing Xanatos Speed Chess? Go back and reread, there are arguments for all.
 * Planescape Survival Guide is built on this trope. You won't find Swiftbow's interpretations of Aoskar the Portal God or The Lady of Pain in many Planescape sourcebooks. Apropriately, it's one of the things most likely to turn Planescape fans off to the comic, but makes no apologies for it at least.
 * Kore from Goblins: while him being a merciless Knight Templar isn't disputed, his status as a paladin is. We don't see him lose his powers for slaughtering innocent beings, and the one time we see him use a paladin power is to heal someone so he can torture him longer. For no reason other than convenience: his screams would draw his allies so Kore wouldn't have to hunt them down one by one. Kore: paladin whose fanaticism has managed to warp the rules? Or deluded but incredibly Badass fallen paladin/blackguard that no one dares to contradict? Manipulated by a powerful, decidedly NOT holy being who grants him paladin-like powers for its own reasons?
 * , so he's either paladin on some technicality or really good at faking it.
 * The eponymous wombat heroine from Digger. Is she really having these adventures or is she, as she herself initially feared, merely trapped in a hallucination caused by cave gas and lack of food and sleep as she dies slowly, all alone and trapped deep, deep under ground?
 * Jhalm, captain of the Veiled - Well-Intentioned Extremist gone off the deep end, or a jerk with heart of gold who is doing the best he can with the facts he has been given?
 * The author of The KA Mics saw the S.M.O.G. board of directors as business people who sometimes have to deal with dangerous people & are forced to sometimes take cowboy justice. The readers saw them as "a bunch of violent, power-mad gits". Of them all Sunshine Marigold got the worst of it being seen as a cold-blooded murderer who eats her victims leading the author to do this cartoon.
 * Dresden Codak: Is Kimiko Ross just a somewhat neurotic girl whose obsession with technology is ultimately harmless, or a budding Omnicidal Maniac Evilutionary Biologist midway through her Start of Darkness? Does she actively want to wipe out the human race for the lulz, or is she merely uncaring towards the fate of a world that she feels has mistreated her? Or, does she simply object to saving mankind at the price of genociding what she believes to be another sentient race?
 * Is she perhaps a transhumanist messiah who longs to bring about a golden age that would overshadow any paradise imagined by mankind and considers the risk of human extinction well worth it?
 * This is actually a major plot point in Homestuck with the relationships between the main characters and their parents/guardians.
 * John sees his father as an embarrassing Bumbling Dad with an obsession with clowns, when he really
 * But then, John's dad is also . Clearly a man of many layers.
 * Rose interprets every action her mom takes as a calculated move in an escalating war of passive-aggressive, spiteful smothering.  And then, there's more to  than meets the eye...
 * Dave looks up to his Bro as the epitome of coolness, and explains away Bro's seemingly-perverse hobbies and obsession with puppets as a high-tier act of Irony that is so multi-layered that he can't even begin to understand it. Many of the readers instead see his hobbies as a downright creepy-as-fuck fetish with no trace of irony whatsoever.
 * Then again, it's possible that Bro really is being ironic and doing all the puppet-fetish stuff with the deliberate intention of weirding out Dave.
 * You can go even further when you realize Bro must have been incredibly young when he found Dave, and may in fact just not know how to raise a kid. Now, whether that means he's outright abusive, well-meaning but not cut out to be a parental figure, or a guy who is genuinely trying his best and doing a pretty good job considering the circumstances...well, that depends entirely on who you're talking to.
 * Jade thinks of her dog Bec as a GOOD DOG BEST FRIEND with her best interests at heart, even if he does have alarming nuclear space superpowers, but it turns out that.
 * In the fandom itself, everyone has their own opinion on Vriska. Does she genuinely feel remorse for harming her friends? Is she really as in control of the situation as she claims, or is she just a little girl on an ego trip? Does she have any reason to do the things she does other than For the Evulz? It's possible to place her anywhere on a continuum from Jerkass Woobie to Complete Monster. Any way you slice it, though, she's kind of a massive bitch.
 * Warbot in Accounting: Clearly, warbots are something that people in this universe are passingly familiar with. Why, then, do they insist on interacting with an object that is known to be incredibly heavy, clumsy, mute, dangerous, etc. as though he's no different from a normal human? The answer: they're anti-warbot protestors who are continuing a mission of sabotage against the warbots, deliberately torturing the A.I. and stringing it along and making it feel like every bad thing that happens to it are its fault when really they're just trying to goad it into losing its temper, with catastrophic results!
 * There is also the theory that warbots can speak perfectly fine, X-17 just suffers from crippling social anxiety and clams up in public. It explains why people speak to him and act confused when he doesn't respond.
 * Jossed. According to the FAQ, "Warbots talk the way guns do."
 * Warbots are sentient beings. Warbots were banned because they killed too many people. But instead of being allowed to live, they were killed and are now suffering enternally in Hell. It explains everything, really!
 * Similar to Planescape Survival Guide is Darths and Droids. Qui-Gon Jinn is a Cloudcuckoolander! R 2 D 2 is a Jerkass Munchkin! Darth Maul is a Private Detective! Chancellor Valorum is !
 * Page picture for the ACI hub: Awkward Zombie on Marth. It's not entirely Katie's fault. When she says she "kind of completely made it up" she forgets that she based his characterization on what little characterization there was in the Super Smash Bros games -- which was more like an egocentric prick than a teamwork-loving hippy.
 * The original Nuzlocke Comic as well as the many offshoot comics done by others often have these for most if not all the characters that appear in the main Pokemon canon but have a little or no characterization. The rival, (Blue/Green/Gary from R/B/G/Y and the remakes especially), the Gym Leaders and the Elite Four are the most common. Pot head Ericka from the original comic really takes the cake.
 * The added grimness of a person's Pokemon possibly being killed also adds a frequent point of variation in showing how gym leaders and other trainers respond to death on the battlefield. Any given gym leader could be portrayed as a professional who has accepted death as a natural consequence of battle, a friendly foe who's honestly shocked at seeing their opponent's Pokemon die, or an utter Jerkass who gloats and rubs the loss in their face.
 * Blade Bunny is a master of Obfuscating Stupidity. This may in part be due to her having more than enough real stupidity to make the act credible, it is certainly hard to tell the difference at times.
 * Blade Bunny is a master of Obfuscating Stupidity. This may in part be due to her having more than enough real stupidity to make the act credible, it is certainly hard to tell the difference at times.

Web Original
"Slowbeef: In this monochrome world I will search the depths of the earth and the limitless skies for you. Alternate Title: I Didn't Get You A Valentine's Day Present."
 * Being a Shared Universe comprised of several handlers with unique personalities and outlooks, Survival of the Fittest has this in spades, often with even the people on the same side of a debate having different views. For example, there's debate as to whether Danya is a Magnificent Bastard or just plain bastard, and a lot of arguments centred around Adam Dodd are about whether or not he counts as a Marty Stu. The idea that Anti-Hero Hawley Faust's only role is as a is also popular and controversial.
 * Is Penny from Dr. Horribles Sing Along Blog a.) an idealistic Shallow Love Interest b.) a Stepford Smiler who helps the homeless to hide her own dissatisfaction c.) someone who got tired of wallowing in self-pity and decided to help others worse off than herself or d.) a deep-cover agent trying to get close enough to the nigh-invincible Captain Hammer to kill him, meaning Billy accidentally saved his enemy in an attempt to kill him? Well, it really depends on how much free time you have.
 * Also, Dr. Horrible: a persona created by Billy which he inhabits with increasing conviction, or full-blown Split Personality fighting for dominance of the psyche?
 * And for that matter, is Captain Hammer really a malicious, spiteful guy who wants to hurt everyone, or just an idiot whose morals have been warped by having ridonkulous superpowers?
 * Did he steal Penny from Billy out of malice or jealousy - wanting his nemesis's attention (and other things) for himself? Guess there's always the possibility that he actually liked her, but...
 * It's more than a possibility, since Penny and Captain Hammer had Love At First Sight and spent all weekend together before Hammer knew Billy had a crush on her. And he's actually considering sleeping with her  - something he's never done with a girl before!
 * Maybe he was hopeful about sleeping with her twice, something he was excited about because most women realize how much of a jerkwad/dork he is quickly enough to keep them from going back for seconds. This is supported by his apparent pride in the concept of even having slept with her in the "Everyone's A Hero In Their Own Way" song.
 * In what universe can you say he "stole" Penny from Billy anyway?
 * Is Billy a sympathetic Villain Protagonist on his Start of Darkness, or an Unreliable Narrator?
 * After, does Billy embrace his dark side completely and  , or briefly consider it and instead go back to just being a normal guy out of regret, making the ending montage a fantasy like the Brand New Day montage?
 * Was Penny secretly manipulating all the events in order to turn Billy evil?
 * Tales of MU encourages this, including having a Spin-Off that gives a completely different view of some characters and events. Every major character and most minor ones seems to spark competing theories. Is Mackenzie Blaise a Mary Sue, an unrepentant sociopath, of just a normal girl who happens to be Cursed With Awesome? Was her grandmother's treatment of her horrible child abuse or going above and beyond the call of duty to raise a dangerous child? Is everything Amaranth's fault after all?
 * The short story Chaos Theory is built on this trope as every almost every character named in the course of the story can be seen as the worst/ultimate villain. Oddly while the site it is hosted in is clearly not safe for work the story contains essentially no explicit material.
 * Occurs quite a bit in the Whateley Universe. Tansy has a thread on the forum devoted to her that is filled with this, Jobe tended to be argued a bit before he got his own story (And possibly after), and quite a few of Team Kimba has people in canon trying to look at their actions. Also, Razorback and Mega-Death had these a bit. One was a murderer and the other is a psychopath...but both are actually really nice guys with mental illnesses. (Razorback has Hulk-style raging, Mega-Death has Diedrick's, which turns him into a rampaging super-villain. But he's actually pretty nice when not dricking out!)
 * Normally averted/subverted by Word of God, however. (And focus stories.)
 * The question on whether the characters are Mary Sues, on the other hand...
 * The whole point of A Very Potter Musical. And it works through Character Development or the new characterizations being a hundred times funnier then canon. In fact Hermione is about the only person close to canon. Just some examples:
 * Harry and Ron are now huge jerks and Harry has a huge ego. But they learn.
 * Voldemort and Quirrel are only Affably Evil plus have major Ho Yay.
 * Draco is a petite Ted Baxter Cloudcuckoolander whom no one can stand who is obsessed with a space school called Pigfarts..
 * Dumbledore is openly gay Trickster Mentor who mocks his students.
 * Umbridge is steroid-pumped Ax Crazy bitch with a Freudian Excuse and is in love with Dumbledore.
 * Cho Chang is Southern Belle white girl who is a Fille Fatale.
 * Lucius is an over the top dancer who couldn't care less about Draco.
 * In the same vein, Potter Puppet Pals portrays Harry as a self-praising jerk, Ron as a Straw Loser Butt Monkey, Hermione as a Flat Character, Snape as the most emo character alive, and Dumbledore is just... Dumbledore.
 * Christian Humber Reloaded with its massive size and ridiculousness, opens itself to some fun interpretations. Is it a stream of consciousness interpretation of the writer's dysfunctional life? A story of a clumsy Physical God unable to control his impulses and anger? A self-imposed challenge to write the most ridiculous story ever?
 * Lear Dunham of Broken Saints:  Or who completely lost his marbles after his wife's death and started deluding himself into thinking he ease the pain by becoming a religious zealot and taking over the world? Or a little of both?
 * Retsupurae's takes on MuscleBomber2021 (who is desperately trying to impress a girl named Amy with his Super Bummerman Bomberman 2 LP) and Billy MC (whose parents force him to play Mario games and give him McDonald's food as christmas presents).
 * Also, Darknessthecurse and Rijno as gay lovers.
 * Slowbeef's interpretation of the ending of Colour My World.


 * The Angry Video Game Nerd: drunk asshole or depressed Chew Toy?
 * A common element of abridged and other parody series. For example, in Sailor Moon Abridged, Mars has gone from a temple miko to a hilariously stereotyped pyromaniac satanist.
 * Unlike most Machinima which create their own original characters, the characters of Melees End are just Alternate Character Interpretations of the game's characters.
 * This flash animation shows how a cow might view the farmer coming out to milk her...
 * The last post of Seeking Truth offers one of these for its protagonist, Zeke. Until then, he was something of a Memetic Badass due to defying Sanity Slippage as best he could, actually scrabbling for a way to take the fight to the Slender Man, and leaving a Do Not Go Gentle speech before doing so. Then, in Status Report,
 * Similar to the above, the ending of Dreams in Darkness leaves us wondering if is a Complete Monster or just
 * Everyone's favorite Humanoid Abomination it/himself is subject to a lot of this too, with portrayals varying considerably between works within the Villain Based Franchise that is the mythos. Is he a horrifying Complete Monster, tormenting his victims for fun? A being that feeds on fear? A lost and confused creature that's just trying to communicate somehow, but has no idea what he's doing to the people he encounters? Something so alien that conventional ideas of "morality," or even "intelligence" and "volition," no longer apply?
 * Smallvillains likes to provide these for its characters, derived by deliberately watching Smallville episodes without research or context. Thus far Clark is a Pinball Protagonist, Lana is flat-out crazy, Lois is actually the Silver Age Jimmy Olsen, and the Kents are assholes who drove Lex Luthor to villainy.
 * Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Did Mike simply outgrow the crush and isn't interested? Or is it embarrassment after all he said leading to him trying even harder to forget it?
 * The Silver Order from Tasakeru. Are they really Good-alighned Paladins devoted to the Life Goddess, or fuzzy Nazis?
 * Today I Die: The young man who appears at the end of the game. Does he provide the Power of Love, or is he the reason for the main character's problems? It's subverted in that the player essentially chooses his role in her life.
 * Asteroid Runner hosts a couple of these, mostly because every member of the eponymous ship's crew seems to be trying to hide things.
 * Noa: cultural fish-out-of-water who makes due with what she has, or egotistical alien who forces her culture on everyone by refusing to dress and act like the rest of the crew.
 * Theory has some weight, given seemingly 90% of the times Noa gets in trouble, it's cultural dissonance issues.
 * Gerard: keeping secrets from Izzy really for her sake, or just selfishly witholding information, afraid of losing his best friend and love interest?
 * Locke: Is his obsession with being called a 'marksman' really all about being outclassed by the Sniper in Green or is he traumatized by the cold killing of his squad and wants to call himself anything but a sniper to avoid connecting himself with the murders he's committed.
 * It doesn't help that he calls himself a marksman. A marksman could be a shooter of targets just as much as a shooter of people. Sniper directly implies shooting people.
 * Amnesty of the Global Guardians PBEM Universe. On the one hand, she's an amazingly powerful superhuman who uses her abilities to aid people who are starving, who are sick, who are war ravaged, and who are drought-stricken around the world. On the other hand, she's listed as a terrorist by the governments of thirteen different countries for some of the things she's done to aid these unfortunates (slaughtering the army of one particular South American dictator because they were "pacifying" a rebellious peasant village is the best example).