Hero Antagonist: Difference between revisions

* Macduff, from [[Macbeth]]. Naturally, the title character is also the [[Villain Protagonist]].

* Thot Keer from [[Star Trek: Typhon Pact]], ''Zero Sum Game''. A Breen shipyard manager, his work crews are developing a prototype starship using stolen Federation technology, and the protagonist's mission is to destroy both prototype and shipyard. Keer is certainly not a villain, though; he is merely a patriot who takes pride in his work, and displays great bravery and (for want of a better term) humanity throughout the novel.

* Roy Merritt in ''[[Daemon]]''. {{spoiler|Though we eventually know better,}} Sobol is a dangerous maniac who employs a menagerie of vicious sociopaths.

* Porfiry Petrovich, the brilliant and implacable policeman investigating Raskolnikov, in ''[[Crime and Punishment]].''

 

 

* In the ''[[Angel]]'' episode "Sanctuary" [[Buffy]] becomes this. She wants to kill Faith, doesn't matter if Angel is in the way, she wants to kill him. The former lovers even come to blows because of it, and part on bad terms.

* Lee Jin Pyo in ''[[The City Hunter]]'': His entire black ops team was murdered by their own ''[[Government Conspiracy|government]],'' {{spoiler|who first denied their existence and then branded them as traitors. As he's a "[[Faking the Dead|dead man]]," he can't work/live in his native Korea. He just wants to expose their corruption and [[Grey and Gray Morality|get revenge on the ones]] who ordered his team's execution}}.

 

== Mythology ==

* Gordon Freeman and Cpl Adrian Shepherd are the protagonists of different ''[[Half Life]]'' games, working to opposing ends. Shep wants to catch Freeman, for starters, and Freeman has nuked a number of soldiers.

* White Knight Leo from ''[[Lunar 2 Eternal Blue Complete|Lunar 2]]''.

** Played straight in the original ''[[Disgaea]]'', as the [[Recurring Boss]] is a [[Stealth Mentor]] to the [[Villain Protagonist]], and the final battle is essentially the [[Big Good]] [[Guile Hero]] {{spoiler|performing a [[Secret Test of Character]]}} on said [[Villain Protagonist]]. The main antagonist (who, oddly enough, is the penultimate boss rather than the final boss) is [[Obviously Evil|definitely evil]], however.

* In one Rikti War Zone/Vanguard arc of ''[[City of Heroes]]'', rival organization Longbow becomes full-on Hero Antagonists. Not to mention sister game ''[[City of Villains]]'', where Longbow is just one such group.

* Othar Tryggvasen (Gentleman Adventurer!) of ''[[Girl Genius]]''. A very interesting example, in that his stated goal of {{spoiler|killing all the world's Sparks, ending finally with him committing suicide}}, appears to place him squarely in the realm of being a [[Villain with Good Publicity]]. It is only when one looks at how nearly every Spark he has ever encountered has acted, {{spoiler|killing dozens to thousands of innocent people, either deliberately or as an accidental consequence of their mad inventions, to the point of having already severely depopulated the entire continent of Europe}} (as documented in his twitter account on the Girl Genius website), that it becomes clear that he may be a legitimate hero whose actions are fully justified. Indeed, the heroine of the story, whom he previously tried to kill when she was completely innocent {{spoiler|has since killed hundreds of innocent people}} after {{spoiler|being possessed by the spirit of another spark}}, and in one possible future timeline, his failure to complete his self-appointed mission {{spoiler|results in the apparent eradication of human life in Western Europe, apparently within a few years of the main storyline}}.

** Note that Othar clearly could have killed DuMedd (himself a spark) had he wanted to, but never did anything (harmful) to him or even brought up his "kill-all-sparks" agenda upon learning he was not only a fan of Othar himself but also Agatha's cousin. His goals may not be so extreme as he claimed when he was in [[The Madness Place]].

** Klaus Wulfenbach is an even straighter example. He's almost the [[Only Sane Man]] in Europe, which means that he's got to play whack-a-mole with every crazed Spark or creation that gets loose. And given Agatha's [[Big Screwed-Up Family|family history]], he's got every reason to want to keep her locked down until she can be proven safe. Of course, as Agatha is the protagonist, she isn't about to tamely sit down and let him hold her.

*** It's even worse in that he is {{spoiler|half-rightly}} convinced that Agatha could be the Biggest Bad of all time -- the spark that destroyed most of Europe while he was removed from the picture decades ago and who may have the secrets of time travel on top of a host of other horrifying technologies. If he's right, he ''has'' to destroy her to save the world. Unfortunately, he doesn't have the full picture, and the pieces he knows look ''really'' bad for Agatha.

* The Robot Masters in the 6th Megaman storyline in ''[[Bob and George]]'' were [[Hero Antagonist|Hero Antagonists]] trying to stop a rampaging [[Brainwashed and Crazy]] [[Villain Protagonist]] Mega Man.

* The main characters in [[Niels]] are murdering, scheming, criminal mobsters. The antagonists are two good cops and a pervy secret agent trying to take them down.

* ''[[What's New with Phil and Dixie]]'' presents: [http://www.airshipentertainment.com/growfcomic.php?date=20090118 The happy crew of weatherbright]!

{{quote|Everybody has an "[[Evil Twin]]", right? Well, ''these'' guys see our Weatherlight crew as ''their'' [[Evil Twin|evil twins]] and act accordingly. They're not villains, per se, but everybody hates them.}}