Hero with Bad Publicity: Difference between revisions

* The [[The DCU|Outsiders]]' raison d'être is to be the team of superheroes that can do the [[Dirty Business]] and ''know'' they're going to come out with stains upon their name. Considering that it was funded by [[Fighting Dirty|Batman]], it makes sense, but raises some [[Thou Shalt Not Kill|interesting questions]].

** When Batman took control of the team again, he fired several of the members, pointedly because they weren't suited to that sort of reputation:

* Like Iron Man, in the aftermath of ''Secret Invasion'', Spider Woman has attained a very horrible reputation. Even if she is the real Spider Woman, most of the New Avengers (and some normal people) [[Never Live It Down|still see her as the Skrull Queen, the orchestrator of the Invasion that captured and impersonated her for years.]]

* While this tends to come up at some point in most incarnations of ''[[Transformers]]'', it was a particularly strong theme in the original Marvel Comics run, where the humans frequently weren't even aware that there were two factions of Transformers, let alone that one of those factions might be better-intentioned than the other.

** Even more pronounced in the Season Eight comics, where the Slayers are, suffice it to say, ''controversially'' heroic, in large part due to there being [[Villain with Good Publicity|Vampires With Good Publicity]].

*** It's not even entirely unjustified; Buffy's brilliant idea for funding her worldwide Slayer operation was to rob a Swiss bank with the aid of magic and Slayer powers; her justification was that it was probably Nazi gold, anyway.

* Narutaki, a self-proclaimed "prophet", spreads rumors across realities about the eponymous ''[[Kamen Rider Decade]]'' being destined to destroy [[The Multiverse]]. {{spoiler|To be fair, Narutaki wasn't far from wrong.}}

* Starts to happen in [[Smallville]] Season 8 and in full force in Season 10.

** {{spoiler|Greg Weisman has alluded to that being only temporary. After saving the city a few times, the Clan becomes a branch of the NYPD and eventually, due to [[Heroic Sacrifice|Goliath's sacrifice]] sometime in the future, the United Nations declares the Gargoyle Species a protected race, acknowledges its sentience, and creates a Nation for the Gargoyles to founded.}}

* Ben in ''[[Ben 10: Ultimate Alien]]'' has this when his [[Secret Identity]] gets outed. A jerk reporter even breaks out the [[Spider-Man|"threat or menace"]] false dichotomy:

'''Julie''': 74% think you're a threat. }}

* Superman has become this in the series finale of ''[[Superman: The Animated Series]]''.