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Black and Gray Morality: Difference between revisions
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* ''[[Thousand Shinji]]'' sees Shinji doing nasty things in defence of or as revenge for Wrongs done to his friends, but compared to what Gendo or the SEELE men have done he is much preferable. ''[[The Open Door]]'' mixes things up slightly more, as while New!Chaos are pretty damn dark grey by any objective standards, yet compared to canon!Chaos - or for that matter even the lightest grey of the canon!40k factions - they are practically saints. Of course, there are less grey factions around, and with the ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'' <s>[[Improbably-Female Cast|girls]]</s> people around there are also "white" factions.
* ''[[Exoria]]'' has the nation of Valent conducting a surprise invasion of both Hyrule and Gerudo. It is implied through the [[Fictional Document|Exoria Files]], however, that neither Hyrule nor Gerudo are exactly "white", though, and hints have been dropped insinauting that Valent may have a very good reason for launching a continent-wide invasion.
* The New Earth Government from ''[[
* [[Christian Humber Reloaded]] has this, although which side is black and which is gray depends on whether you're willing to accept the author's perspective that [[Heroic Sociopath|Vash]] is supposed to be a hero. One way of seeing it is that Vash is a highly ruthless yet effective [[Sliding Scale of Anti-Heroes|Type V]] [[Anti-Hero]] who fights against villains who are arguably more consistently malicious, despite killing many innocent people himself. [[Alternative Character Interpretation|Alternatively]], Vash is the [[Villain Protagonist]], and his [[Designated Villain|enemies]] are less of a threat than he is, if only because the story [[Offstage Villainy|doesn' touch on their evil deeds]].
* [[Embers]] has [[Lawful Neutral|Zuko]], who admits he's 'no good at being good,' even in the original series {{spoiler|and is willing to hang Aang out to dry, not to mention that he isn't going to even try to prevent a genocide of his own people because even he admits that they basically deserve it}}. Then there's [[The Hero|Aang]], who is well-intentioned but does a lot of stuff that should have killed him and his friends in the series: [[Hanlon's Razor]] is true because ignorance can do just as much damage, or more, as malice. The closest thing to an unambiguously good guy may be Kuei, who still {{spoiler|ordered the Dai Li to set fires in civilian homes, traps in streets and so on as part of the Ba Sing Se resistance}} because this is war and he's the Earth King. In contrast to them, there's [[Mind Rape|Azula]], who deserves her own content warning, but still has nothing on the [[Big Bad]] and his allies, whose plans constitute a {{spoiler|[[Zombie Apocalypse]]}} and horribly painful deaths in the works for anyone unlucky enough to survive the various genocidal wars they've stirred up over the millennia.
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** This also applies to Vlad's friends Aliera and Morrolan. Both are ruthless and quite selfish, but are nicer to humans/arguably less of a danger to Dragaera than their fellow nobles. Thus, in ''Dragon'', Vlad sarcastically notes the irony of calling Morrolan's army in which he is a member the "good guys", since all they are doing is trying to take some artifacts of doom/empathetic weapons so that a somewhat worse noble can't have them. Similarly, the plot of the upcoming novel, ''Iorich'' involves Vlad trying to defend Aliera after she is arrested on a charge of using illegal magic (the same type her father used and accidentally destroyed the old capitol and killed everyone there). This isn't because Aliera is innocent. Rather, it's because so many nobles break this law, that there must be a conspiracy at play for Aliera to be arrested for something she does in essentially plain sight.
* ''[[Conan the Barbarian]]'', especially Robert E. Howard's original stories. The hero is a mercenary/pirate/bandit/professional thief albeit one with a code of honor. Most everyone else is worse.
* [[J. K. Rowling]] was very fond indeed of doing this with her characters in the ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'' series. [[Word of God]] says that there were concerted efforts made to remind the readers that Harry is a flawed person (see his ''[[Harry Potter
{{quote|'''Sirius Black:''' The world is not divided into good people and Death Eaters.}}
* Martha Wells' ''Death of the Necromancer'' has [[Anti-Villain|Nicholas]] [[Aristocrats Are Evil|Valiarde,]] a coldblooded thief, murderer and all around [[Magnificent Bastard]]. Nic has spent years sabotaging his enemy on a [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]]; at the start of the narrative, Nic's nearing the completion of his [[Xanatos Gambit|ultimate scheme]] when he and his subordinates run afoul of an unknown person using [[Black Magic]]. Somehow, this leads to the group spending the rest of the book fighting an insane mass murderer. And the reason they do it is at least partly because it's ''bad for business.''
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** On a general scale, you can't find any faction that is good by our standards, but some sub-factions and characters, like several [[Space Marine]] chapters, a few Imperial Guard regiments, the occasional Craftworld Eldar protagonist, [[Ravenor]] and [[Ciaphas Cain]] '''(HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!)''' or the Tau count as good. Unfortunately, they are far outnumbered by less moral groups, [[Bad Boss|Bad Bosses]], [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|people who go]] [[Knight Templar|too far]] for their cause, and the Dark Eldar, Necrons, Tyranids and the forces of Chaos.
** It is saying something about the setting when the "good" faction, the Tau Empire have a "join us or die" plan of galactic conquest.
* ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]] Fantasy'' is almost as bad as [[Warhammer 40000]]. The main "good" races are arrogant elves, isolationist elves, power-hungry humans, grim feudalistic humans, [[Mayincatec]] lizards who practice human sacrifice, and [[Our Dwarves Are All the Same|dwarves that are all the same, only with fatalism and grudges against everyone under the sun]]. You get the occasional hero; you also get regular sociopaths. Fantasy does, however, have good people like [[Reasonable Authority Figure|Emperor Karl Franz]], [[The Wise Prince|Prince Tyrion]], [[The Atoner|Alith Anar]], and [[An Ice Person|Tsarina Katerin]], so it's not nearly as dark as 40k.
* Most of the gamelines in [[Old World of Darkness|both]] [[New World of Darkness|incarnations]] of the World of Darkness present a system where the playable factions are some shade of Grey and are opposed by a faction who is Black. The majority of [[Vampire: The Requiem|vampires]] vs [[Always Chaotic Evil|Belial's Brood]], the Pentacle Orders vs the [[Ancient Conspiracy|Seers of the Throne]], the [[Changeling: The Lost|regular Changelings]] vs [[The Quisling|Loyalists]] to the [[The Fair Folk|True Fae]], and [[Artificial Human|Prometheans]] vs [[Body Horror|Pandorans and (most) Centimani]]. The exception would be the werewolves, with the main factions being the Tribes of the Moon vs the [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|Pure]], who are both Gray. The Black faction in that gameline (the Bale Hounds, worshipers of [[Cosmic Horror|the Maeljin Incarna]]) mostly sit on the sidelines. They are also one of the only things the other two can agree on [[Enemy Mine|fighting against]].
** In ''[[Genius: The Transgression]]'', the Peerage deliberately chose to be Grey because if you have a Genius go off on his own he'll often become [[Complete Monster|Illum]][[The Unfettered|inated]], and if the choice is between accepting jerks or have them wander off and turn into Mengele, you'd better get used to putting up with jerks. The Storyteller is advised to keep the players wondering whether the [[Ancient Conspiracy]] Lemuria is really that bad compared to the barely human nutbars in high-up positions in the Peerage. (The "black" role here is played not so much by modern Lemuria, which is just going through the motions, but by [[Empty Shell|Clockstoppers]], the Illuminated, and the occasional Hollow Earth Nazi or Phantom Slaver Yeti.)
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* The Soviet Campaign of ''[[Call of Duty]]: World At War'' consists of hoards of pissed off Russians smashing their way through Nazi Germany, brutally killing anyone that stands in their way. Granted, the Germans did the same to them, but the Soviet's payback gets so bad that one of your squadmates will frequently protest the slaughter.
** The loading scene before the last level consists of Reznov reading a diary passage from said squadmate, after {{spoiler|his death by a German flamethrower.}} If you have your character fully participate in the slaughter of the Germans, he will denounce the character. If you restrain yourself, he will praise you. If you do a mixture of both, he will simply paint you as a moral question mark.
* ''[[Borderlands]]''. The four protagonists are all [[Only in It For the Money]] and more than a bit sociopathic (especially Mordecai and Brick). Their main allies are a greedy arms dealer who only helps them because they keep buying his <s>
* Very present in the German RPG-Maker Game [[Vampires Dawn]]. The fact that you're playing a vampire should already give you a hint. While it is perfectly possible to play a noble kind of vampire who doesn't feed on humans or does worse to them, the technical leader of our [[Power Trio]] is not [[The Hero]], but the [[Token Evil Teammate]], who revels in being a vampire. Therefore, you will still be doing some morally questionable things, like killing the nation's King or sucking up souls for extra strength. In the second game, our heroes are engaged in a three-way battle with the [[Complete Monster]] Elras Mages and the heroic, but flawed Warrior Clan, and slaughter both indiscriminately.
* The protagonists in the ''[[Assassin's Creed]]'' series are members of an ancient [[Murder, Inc.|Assassin Order]] that routinely works with [[Private Military Contractors|mercenaries]], [[Thieves' Guild|thieves]] and [[The Oldest Profession|courtesans]] to kill their targets. Said targets are usually members or associates of the [[Knight Templar|Templars]], a shadowy group that counts nearly every prominent historical figure (from [[The Bible|Cain]] to [[The Borgias|Pope Alexander VI]] to [[Adolf Hitler]] to ''[[Mahatma Gandhi]]'') as members that have been secretly guiding humanity since the dawn of civilisation, with the ultimate goal of controlling the entire human race via the removal of [[The Evils of Free Will|free will.]] With only a handful of [[John F. Kennedy|notable aversions]], they're all [[Complete Monster|Complete Monsters.]]
*** Then again, some of Abstergo files in Assassin's Creed Revelations seem to suggest the Templars took a bad turn [[Even Evil Has Standards|even for their regular standards]] during Renaissance, as the Borgias and their allies were more interested in personal ambition and profit than creating a better world, and most of them were part of [[Corrupt Church|corrupt cleric]] and [[Aristocrats Are Evil|greedy aristocrats]]. The Templars from the Crusades were all, except for [[Complete Monster|Majd Addin]], interested in actually stopping the crusades and bringing peace to the Holy Land. Most of their amoral actions are based on the idea that there is no God or Afterlife, {{spoiler|as the Pieces of Eden were instruments from an ancient civilization to create and manipulate mankind as a slave race}}, which they use as justification to [[Utopia Justifies the Means|create a better world, no matter how cruel they must be]]. Abstergo seems to follow this same line of thought, along with a hinted goal of {{spoiler|evolving humanity to a stage similar to Those Who Came Before.}} It's safer to say they think they're [[Necessarily Evil]] and have good intentions, with just some of their members actually being [[Complete Monster|Complete Monsters]], since they don't hold many hiring moral standards.
* ''[[Alpha Protocol]]''. You work for a shady, accountability-free government agency that 'recruit' you by kidnapping you {{spoiler|and are secretly collaborating with the [[Big Bad]] to escalate global politics for money}}. Your enemies include a [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]], a [[Captain Ersatz]] of Osama Bin Laden, a psychopathic torturing gangster, and an ex-rogue agent who takes hostages and blows up museums because it's his job to do so. It speaks volumes that the only person who doesn't openly mislead, lie to or manipulate you is the game's [[Heroic Sociopath]], who's only in it to hurt people you point him at.
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