Motive Decay: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

A sort of [[Character Derailment]] where a character with an initially complex and even reasonable motive for his actions is [[Flanderization|Flanderized]] into a [[Flat Character]] who simply [[Status Quo Is God|does what is expected]], [[Characters As Device|regardless]] of their [[Theory of Narrative Causality|original motivation]].

 

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

* ''[[Magical Project S]]'' Pixy Misa starts every episode ruining the balance of good vs evil (that's her purpose) but ends acting for the ''Evulz'' and more often than not ends vacationing (justified in that she is not actually evil but she just represents the repressed aspects of Misao and doesn't really care for her goals) instead of torturing Sammy and even in one episode she ended having literal vacations instead of destroying Sammy.

** Meanwhile dark Bakura suffered this in-universe for a while, retroactively. He turns out to have had [[Doomed Hometown|fairly]] [[You Killed My Father|good]] reasons for messing with the royal family, at one point, which somehow became a plan to destroy either Egypt or the world, partly because the spirit of hatred born from the slaughterof his family (Japanese) or an ancient primal destructive dark thing (English) teamed up with him. He seems to have entered the series with amnesia, carrying him still farther from sanity. But he gets back to the revenge-and-end-of-world thing in the Millenium World arc.

* Divine of ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's]]'' starts out as some sort of [[Visionary Villain]], being the leader of a movement giving shelter to the repudiated Psychic Duelists, wanting to form an army with them to take revenge on all the people hating and shunning them, making the world a better place for Psychic Duelists. Though his plans got foiled by his sudden death. But [[Ass Pull|miraculously]] he returned and [[Character Derailment]] did take the best of him. While he was always close to the [[Moral Event Horizon]], but also had his goals and clearly shared more with Aki than just [[More Than Mind Control|mind control]], he suddenly forgot all about his earlier intentions, turned into a psychopathic dumbass, causing his own death with the most ridiculous [[Engineered Public Confession]] and got eaten by a giant frog just in time to exculpate Aki from all guilt and before he was about to [[Dead Ex Machina|kill the main character]].

*** Must have been a lot of pretense and especially braincells to drop if he was intelligent enough to hide all those evil motives and sociopathy during the first one and a half arc, but all of a sudden completely forgot better not to insult the owner of a Jibakushin, which was in the near vicinity to boot.

* Naraku in ''[[Inuyasha]]'' has changed motives so many times that eventually he was evil just for the sake of being evil. Initially, he was driven by his lust for Kikyo and hatred for Inuyasha, both stemming from his time as a human. Once he got over that, he wanted to use the Shikon-no-Tama to purge his human self and be a full-fledged youkai. And once he did that without the jewel, he was pretty much evil for the sake of evil. The jewel is supposed to grant wishes, and when Naraku finally gets the jewel, he decides not to wish on it, but just to use it to kill Inuyasha. Naraku himself says he's not sure what comes next when he's done that. Yes, that's right - he spends ''over 500 issues'' of the manga trying to get the jewel, and once he finally has it, he's not sure what to do with it.

* Magneto, of ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'' fame, has cycled over the years between a [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]] and a simple [[Evil Overlord]] [[Depending on the Writer|according to the preferences of his writers]].

** In an issue of ''[[Spider-Girl]]'', there's reports that Magneto's been spotted (despite disappearing some time ago), and everyone's on high alert, with the X-People, Avengers, and [[Fantastic Four]] on the lookout, cautioning anyone to call in back-up if they see him. When Spider-Girl and a young X-Person spot what looks like Magneto, they quickly come to the conclusion that it's just someone posing as the powerful mutant because, come on, would Magneto ''really'' be robbing a bank? <ref>They're right, of course, and go at him alone in order to spare him the utter beating that would result from every hero in the Tri-State Area dropping on his head.</ref>

** Don't forget his short foray into trying to cure AIDS!

*** In all fairness, in-universe it was believed that he was trying to create some form of biological weapon. Only the readers knew that he was searching for a cure purely to save {{spoiler|his first love.}}

* The ''[[Spider-Man]]'' villain Venom could be said to have lame motivations from the start, wanting revenge on Spider-Man for exposing the truth about Eddie Brock's shoddy reporting when he should have arguably done a better job himself. This trope is [[Inverted Trope|inverted]] in the various [[Adaptation Distillation|screen adaptations]] of the Spider-comics, as both the 1990s cartoon and ''[[The Spectacular Spider-Man]]'' cartoon, as well as the ''[[Spider-Man (film)|Spider-Man]] 3'' movie, all take their time to build up Peter Parker's animosity with Eddie Brock, giving him more and better reasons to hate Spider-Man than he ever had in the comics, and making their animosity more personal. In the original comics, Eddie Brock was unveiled without much buildup, but subsequent takes on the Venom character develop Eddie Brock on his own, before any contact with the symbiote.

** In the comics, it morphs into that Eddie decides that pre-symbiote, he was innocent and Peter screwed with all that by destroying his career. Eddie decides to go off and protect innocence in all its forms, which has the side effect of making the audience like him (he doesn't intentionally kill the good guys anymore).

*** The recent ''Venom: Dark Origin'' keeps the lame motives, but brilliantly analyzes Eddie's past and shows that he is deeply mentally disturbed. And the ironic thing is, in real life, sometimes minor slights really are enough to make somebody your enemy.

* Herr Starr from ''[[Preacher (Comic Book)]]'' is an example of this as intentional character development. At first he is a [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]], but after a series of unfortunate events that leave him mutilated, he becomes disaffected and gives up on his quest to better the world and merely seeks revenge. He openly states, after being told that he is a monster, that "Yes, I suppose I am. I became one a long time ago. At first in order to save the world. Now merely for the sake of vengeance."

* This has really become just a general result of supervillainy. Whatever reason the character was introduced, the self-perpetuating nature of the comics medium ultimately means that in order for the villain to put in a return appearance, they need a reason for him to be acting as a villain again. Once the original motive inevitably runs dry, many writers fall into the trap of "Supervillain A wants vengeance against Superhero B for defeating him the last 31 times he tried to complete his motivation!", which will be the character's new motivation for the rest of time.

** The most cut-and-dry example of this variation in action is the vicious cycle of Doctor Doom and Reed Richards of the ''[[Fantastic Four]]''. Doom originally had a [[Disproportionate Retribution|murderous grudge]] against Reed because he blamed him for a botched experiment that scarred Doom's face, injured his pride, and got him expelled. However, every time he's tried to kill Reed or [[Take Over the World]] in order to get the power necessary to kill him, Reed manages to beat him, hurting Doom's pride even more because it proves Reed is ''still'' smarter than Doom, which makes him hate Reed even more, which causes him to redouble his efforts to kill Reed, which cause him to get defeated by Reed again, which hurts his already-injured pride even more, which makes him hate Reed even more... ad infinitum.

* Marvel villain [[The Hood]] originally had some sympathetic motives for becoming a supervillain, such as supporting his family. He gradually began to love the power his new hood and boots granted him more than he loved them. When he lost the hood and boots that allowed him to channel the power of Dormammu, he leaped at Loki's offer to repower him with the Nornstones. When he lost those powers almost as soon as he got them, he didn't take it very well. Then he went after the Infinity Gems. He seems to be addicted to power for its own sake.

* The major point of contention with fans of the [[Archie Comics Sonic the Hedgehog]] series and Ian's interpretation of the Dark Legion; before he took over, they were written as [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|Well Intentioned Extremists]] focused only on undoing a [[Straw Political]]-based technology ban and be reintegrated into main Echidna society without having to sacrifice their [[Machine Worship]] lifestyle, and have at several points [[Enemy Mine|sided with the other Echidnas against shared threats]]. After Ian took over? They got [[Flanderization|Flanderized]] into generic [[Mecha-Mooks]] who [[You Will Be Assimilated|force-cybertize other people into their ranks]].

** In the third, Sandman steals money to buy medical treatment for his sick daughter. He seems to forget about her completely after Spidey foils his first attempt and teams up with Venom for revenge. Instead of, for example, going to another city and/or trying again.

* [[The Government]] in ''[[Starman (film)|Starman]]''. The alien's spacecraft was originally shot down under the assumption that it was a Soviet attack, but it's later definitively established that he's an extraterrestrial. NSA Chief George Fox (Richard Jaeckel) still wants to kill him because... well, who knows? Just to be evil, apparently.

** Alternately he was evil all along and freedom for the Remans was simply a ploy to get Picard to trust him.

* ''The Italian Job'' (2003) starts out with a group of thieves making a heist and getting away with $35 million in gold. Then, {{spoiler|they're double-crossed by Steve (Edward Norton). They find out where he is and where he's keeping the gold, then they set up an elaborate plan to get the gold back from him. However, as their plans progress, they ignore details that would help them get the gold back quicker. It seems that they're more interested in pulling an elaborate heist than they are with getting the gold back, even after Steve knows they're trying to get the gold back and they know he knows.}}

* Happens midway through ''[[X-Men (film)|X-Men Origins: Wolverine]]''. {{spoiler|Wolverine thinks Sabretooth killed his wife and, obviously, wants him dead. When it turns out she's still alive he still wants to kill him... for some reason.}}

** {{spoiler|He also murdered Wolverine's only friend, Wraith. And beat the hell out of Wolverine repeatedly, at one point breaking his claws. And he's stated in no uncertain terms that he intends to hunt Wolverine and deny him any happiness, ever. * And* revealing that the love of your life was a long con just might set a man off.}}

** By this point it should come as no surprise that this motive decay was a result of a change in directors.

* Clyde Shelton of ''[[Law Abiding Citizen]]'' had a good start: a complicated [[Evil Plan]] to get [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge|sweet revenge]] on the men who brutally murdered his family (one of whom was free after 5 years thanks to the prosecution's bungling). Then he [[Jumping Off the Slippery Slope|took his revenge further]]; wanting to kill every official involved in the original trial and eventually {{spoiler|all of City Hall, including the Mayor and representatives of other government agencies}} all in some half-baked bid to up-end the justice system.

* Inverted in the ''[[Halloween (film)|Halloween]]'' films. Michael's motives are actually fleshed out in Rob Zombie's reboot. However, it turns out the fans liked it more when Michael was a soulless, mysterious psychopath.

** This is probably because the "motive" explained in the remake pretty much boils down to a cliché [[Freudian Excuse]].

** In the second movie, it's suggested that the Cenobites are agents of Hell and punish people [[Ironic Hell|according to their vices.]] In the third and fourth movies, Pinhead is made more evil [[For the Evulz|just for the sake of it.]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBiRuzl7mPk The church scene] is a good example.

** The fifth, seventh and eighth movies are far more psychological in nature and have Pinhead as more of a judge of those whose hedonism and/or ego has made them irredeemable. The sixth and ninth movies largely go back to the original characterization.

* Victor Helios in [[Dean Koontz]]'s Frankenstein series first desires to eliminate humanity and replace it with a masterrace of his own creation, and eventually take over the world and the universe. In the sequel series, {{spoiler|his clone who has his memories and personality now just wants wipe out humanity and then kill himself when it is completed.}}

* [[Classical Mythology|Artemis]] in the book ''Acheron'', one of the most recent books in Sherrilyn Kenyon's ''[[The Dark Hunters|Dark Hunter]]'' series starts out as a friendly and curious goddess at the beginning of the book. At the end, you just want to smack her for her [[Jerkass God|unadulterated meanie]] abilities.

* Middle-Earth:

** Even more pronounced is what happened to Sauron's former boss, Morgoth (who is intended to be [[Satan]]). He started out wanting to create and be the God of his own universe. But as he realized that nobody but God could actually be omnipotent, he gradually descended into a pure [[Omnicidal Maniac]], with a corresponding loss of his power as the mightiest angel. At least Sauron kept the same basic ''goal'' (wanting to rule the world) in mind the whole time, even if he reason shifted from "I'm the only one who can run things right," to "UNLIMITED POWER!".

* Played straight as an arrow in the ongoing ''[[Star Wars]]'' [[Expanded Universe|EU]] ''Legacy of the Force'' book series. In the first book of the series, Jacen Solo has visions of galaxy-wide destruction, including his dueling and killing Luke, that can only be prevented by [[It's the Only Way|accepting the teachings of the Sith]]. Lumiya, a former Vader apprentice, softens the blow by teaching Jacen that through careful discipline and sacrifice, he can avoid falling into darkness like Vader and the Emperor. However, with each successive book, his altruistic motives are shown less and less, slowly replaced by ever-increasing anger, distrust, intolerance, and desire for power. All of the culminates when he {{spoiler|kills Mara Jade}}, who had caught onto his downfall, for a reason (or at least a rationalization) that makes almost zero sense ''and was later completely abandoned by the series''. In a more recent book, he Force-chokes a young lieutenant to death for a perceived error, despite the fact she followed all standard procedures and was commended earlier in the book for her attention to detail. At this point, almost all trace of his benevolent motives are gone and all that remains is the Dark Side.

* Emperor Jagang in the ''[[Sword of Truth]]'' books starts out as a man who believes in human superiority and unlimited potential, and believes that magic prevents the men from creating a technological society. Later, he is a religious fanatic/OmnicidalManiac who believes that all men are evil and unworthy of life, and it's his defeat which causes a sudden technological development. At the point of his change, the books take a strong right turn into Objectivist didacticism.

* Reversed in the ''[[Vorkosigan Saga]]'', where the Cetagandans were introduced as pretty generic bad guys, defined by militarism and expansionism, but were soon developed as an entire society with hints of a history, changing goals, and internal disagreements.

* Irina Derevko on ''[[Alias (TV series)|Alias]]'' was an unfortunate victim of this trope. In season two, when she was {{spoiler|revealed as The Man, responsible for all the torture Sydney went through}}, it was explained away as Irina playing a role for Khasinau, who thought he was the real leader. Her betrayal of Jack Bristow was also subsequently explained as her being an unwilling pawn of the KGB, forced to marry an American agent to find out about Project Christmas and then fake her own death. During Sydney's {{spoiler|missing two years}}, she and Jack team up to hunt for their daughter. When it becomes known that {{spoiler|Irina has been doubled, and Jack shot the double, not the real Irina}}, she becomes a valuable asset to the CIA, and rather than let them take her back into custody, Jack lets her go. She repays him by helping deliver Sydney's daughter, even though she really has been trying to kill them both as part of her "plan". After ''all'' these shades of gray, she's revealed in the series finale as your stereotypical [[Card-Carrying Villain]], {{spoiler|wanting to kill Sydney and everyone else in existence in order to bring about Rambaldi's "endgame". She is, of course, given a [[Karmic Death]], killed by Sydney as she tries to make her Great Escape before [[The End of the World as We Know It]].}}

* Warren Mears was subjected to this in between seasons five and six of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''. He built a subservient robot girlfriend because he was lonely, but found that he actually preferred a real-life girl who was his intellectual equal and "[[I Love You Because I Can't Control You|gave him a hard time]]". Xander even expressed sympathy for him (although he was undeniably a pervert). Yet by season six he's a full-out misogynist who Xander "could see as a [[Super Villain]] type."

** [[Evil Counterpart|Faith]] is another example. In the heat of fighting, she mistakes a passing human for a vampire, and stakes him. [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?]] is a big deal to Buffy & co, because they really freak out about this. When it transpires that he was connected with [[Big Bad|the Mayor]], she argues that killing him wasn't that bad because he was a bad guy anyway. Only the audience, not the other characters, are shown how upset she actually is by the incident. Then, within a short time, she's ''working'' for the Mayor, and the reason for her switching from his enemy to [[The Dragon|his Dragon]] is never really explained beyond 'she's evil now'.

*** Faith's slide from the heroes who excluded and distrusted her to the villains who appreciated her was clearly marked and a matter of [[Character Development]]. But after being very clearly conflicted, she switches to acting like she was completely evil all along, and the 'good guys' treat her as if that were true.

* Mandatory ''[[Doctor Who]]'' example: When they first appeared, the Cybermen, who at the time appeared roughly half-human, not mostly machine, had plausible motive for their villainy: they had become fixated with survival at all costs. By their fourth appearance the rails had begun to come off this idea and from then on, [[Depending on the Writer|they've have various different motivations ascribed to them]].

** There's also the Silurians, who in their first appearance were three-dimensional characters who had an equal claim as humans to live on Earth. Most of them wanted a peaceful solution to the issue, and it was just a few bad apples who led to it ending in tragedy. Their next appearance portrayed the entire race as genocidal maniacs. When a newly awakened subspecies of Silurians appeared in the new series some thirty years later, they shifted back to the original portrayal.

** Well, that and to get revenge on Scorpius who stole his ship, publicly shamed him, stole his life mission, and forced him into being a fugitive of the Peacekeepers.

** Also, Crais never tried to get rid of Crichton ({{spoiler|that was Talyn}}), specifically because Crais knew that he ever laid a finger on Crichton, Aeryn would never forgive him...and would probably kill him, too.

* KARR, from ''[[Knight Rider]]''. In "Trust Doesn't Rust", KARR's villainous acts are clearly the result of his childlike understanding of the world being misled by two petty thieves, combined with the [[Literal Genie]] aspect of his prime directive of self-preservation. When he reappears in "KITT vs KARR", he is simply evil, lusts for revenge against KITT, and even seems unconcerned about his own survival. Neither Michael nor KITT find this odd, and the characters even know ahead of time that KARR is insane and out for revenge.

** KARR always had an ego that KITT's existence threatened, and more importantly KITT had very clearly demonstrated himself to be a relentless and serious threat. Survival at all costs dictates a "either me or you" style vendetta to resolve the threat.

** Could have been a result of damage done to KARR's circuitry either by the fall, by the ocean, or by [[Bellisario's Maxim|"the mysterious benefactor who rebuilt him"]]. It was shown a few times in the show that KITT was capable of being reprogrammed by turning a dial and messing around with the circuitry under his dashboard. KARR probably also suffered from this design flaw, but would kill anyone who tried to do so. It was mentioned that at least one person had died because of KARR, and that could well be the reason they died: they were trying to reprogram him. It was also shown that water in the various systems could disable them, and salt water is even less friendly to electronics.

* A major plot point, and proof [[Tropes Are Tools]], is ''[[Breaking Bad]]''. By season three Walter's entire motive to be a drug dealer is gone. His family has abandoned him, the money is no use for them, let alone for him to spend, but he ''likes it'' and is trying to rationalize what he is and what he has done. Particularly notable is that when he finally gets to cook meth as a quiet day job with no thrills he requests Jessie back and spends an entire episode trying to kill a fly. Jessie, on the other hand knows he's just a bad man.

** He tells himself that he's still doing it to provide money and protection to his family (who are clearly at risk, since he's gotten in so deep). But it's made clear that these are justifications to do what he wants to do anyway.

*** As of the season 3 finale, this appears set to change, as he has observed the consequences of his actions.

* It's not so much that his motive got decayed, more like retconned, but in ''[[Criminal Minds]]'', the [[Serial Killer]] known as the Fox had something like this happen to him when he was brought back in the season five episode "Outfoxed". His crimes as revealed in his original appearance were breaking into the houses of families, then taking them all hostage and forcing them to treat him as the head of the household before eventually leading them down to the basement and killing them all, saving the father for last. In "Outfoxed" it was implied that he sexually abused the children he took hostage, and it was suggested that his crimes were essentially him lashing out at his abusive father and also at himself. In his first appearance, there had been no hint of a sexual component to his crimes and the reason given for his behaviour was that his wife and kids had left him and he was trying to recapture what it was like to have them, with him killing the families at the end because he knew the fantasy couldn't last.

* ''[[Sons of Anarchy]]'': Agent Stahl's obsession with bringing down SAMCRO, which went from normal case to full-blown obsession after she was brutally assaulted by a member in prison, who broke her nose in the process. By season two, she's forgotten all about bringing them to justice and just fucking with them for the sake of malice, right down to framing Gemma for a murder she did not commit.

* In the ''[[Little House on the Prairie (TV series)|Little House On the Prairie]]'' episode, "Family Quarrel", Nels and Harriette Oleson have separated and Nels is living in the hotel. Doc Baker and Mr. Hanson get the idea that Mr. Hanson should go ask Harriette out on a date. The reasoning is that Nels will get jealous and will want Harriette back. In the next scene, Hanson is wearing a suit and carrying some flowers as he and Doc Baker walk toward the mercantile store. Doc Baker tells Hanson that now is a good time because Nels is out of town and won't find out. This subverts the original purpose, which was to make Nels jealous.

** In the episode "Haunted House", Nellie and Willy dare Laura to go up to a haunted house. She runs away scared. Later, to redeem herself, she approaches the house again, but is discovered by the owner of the home. She ends up forming a friendship with the owner and never tries to prove her bravery again, even though it was an important plot point and her motivation for approaching the house in the first place.

* In the ''[[Highway to Heaven]]'' episode ''For the Love of Larry'', a man and his boy are missing. Johnathan and Mark find the dog that was with them when they went missing. The Sheriff runs into Mark and Johnathan and shows them a picture of the missing man and boy with the dog. They explain that they found the dog, which is now in their rented cabin. Instead of asking them to take him to where they ''found'' the dog (as a good place to start looking for the missing man and boy), the sheriff asks them to take him to where the dog is ''now'' and when they find out the dog is missing, they start looking for the dog. The motive decay here is that they stop looking for a man and boy and start searching for the dog while two people are still missing. What was finding the dog going to do?

* The original motivation of Fox Mulder in [[The X-Files]] was to find his abducted sister. This actually weaves in and out of the story for a good four years, but then it's dropped nearly entirely. When he ''does'' find her, it turns out she was killed, not abducted, and is a ghost child running around a feild. What should have been the ultimate climax of the story arc becomes a little sidenote a few years before the series actually ends.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

** The Chaos Gods, like the Dark Side, are quite fond of decaying the motives of the fools who sign up with them willingly.

 

*** The Betrayer title was given to him back during the war of the ancients, not after WC3. Due to him first betraying the good guys to join the legion, then double crossing them when he realized they were to evil, then (in his people's eyes) Betraying them again by recreating the very thing that had started the war to begin with simply to feed his own addiction. Illidan really does have a hard time staying on one side for any length of time.

** Kael'thas in ''[[Warcraft]] 3'' was a sympathetic character who allied with Illidan because he had no other choice and wanted to save his people. In World of Warcraft, he has become a power crazed evil overlord and demon worshipper who would gladly kill off his people to ensure the victory of the demons. One of whom is ''the very demon that arranged for his people's decimation in the first place''.

** For both Arthas and Illidan, as well as much of the plot of The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, the 'decay' stems from no one ever reporting back to the Alliance or the Horde about what happened in The Frozen Throne. Which makes sense, since no one connected to either faction was involved at all in the events at Northrend where all this happened. If Illidan had thought to inform others about what they were planning and why, it's quite likely that he would've been able to rally support from both the Alliance, The Night Elves, and the Forsaken and easily stop Arthas. For that matter, if he'd thought to explain what he was doing, or why he was doing it, it's likely that Malfurion wouldn't have banished him in the middle of Reign of Chaos.

** A decent point but in WC Reign of Chaos, it's pretty clear Furion wouldn't give Illidan the time of day, There was little left of the Alliance for Illidan to ally with, plus the whole it was being run by racist assholes. In WoW the two people that could talk sense into Illidan are disposed of. It still comes off as, "We need awesome bosses for the expansion packs... I know!"

* Happens often to the villains of ''[[Final Fantasy]]'':

** Zemus of ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]'' starts out a Lunarian Supremacist. By the time of the game proper, he's more into [[Kill All Humans]]. When his body is destroyed, his soul quickly becomes ''the personification of hatred''.

*** Not to mention Kefka's assessment of him.

{{quote|'''Kefka''': Uh, what is it that you want?}}

* Vlad in ''[[Danny Phantom]]'' starts out with a rather sympathetic backstory and an almost understandable motivation: Jack, through sheer idiocy, caused an accident that sent Vlad to the hospital for years, costing Vlad's chance at Maddie, who ended up marrying Jack. Later episodes started ignoring it; in an episode where Danny changes history to prevent Vlad's accident (giving him absolutely no motivation for turning evil), he ''still'' turns out evil for no apparent reason. One could argue it's really a matter of personality in that Vlad has an unhealthy means of obsession despite different time periods. It's implied Maddie still loves Jack (Past Maddie is giving loving eyes towards Jack) in the altered timeline while Vlad is hinted to be bitter even during his college years (he crosses his arms in frustration when Maddie doesn't pay attention to him). With Jack alive, it's motivation enough for Vlad to go completely apeshit to preserve his happy ending. Of course, in ''The Ultimate Enemy'', Vlad is shown as actually being a rather caring individual (willing to adopt Danny after he's orphaned, and willing to help rid him of his human sorrow for what appears to be purely altruistic reasons). So make of him what you will. His motives still decay over time, with less and less focus being on killing Jack and taking Maddie/Danny as his wife/son and more and more on just screwing with Danny and being his antagonist. At first he was an antagonistic in a half "I'll train you" kind of way and in the end he just went straight villain.

* The Floaty Heads in ''[[The Secret Show]]'' parody this. ''Every single time they show up'' they want something totally different. It's not commented on in the show, but it is on the show's website.

** Villains in Gargoyles tend to be more complex than your standard "tie the girl to the railroad track" fare. After the "City of Stone" arc, Macbeth's only appearances as a ''true'' villain were under mind control. He actually did have a valid reason to at least try to obtain Excalibur- he fit the prophecy as well as Arthur Pendragon did. And the episode during the world tour would count as a non-antagonistic appearance of the character.

* Most villains in ''[[Batman: The Animated Series|Batman the Animated Series]]'', and to an extent [[Batman|the comics]], had genuine motives in their debut appearances, but the motivations for their later crimes was mostly "revenge on Batman"; to their defense, most of them were crazy.

* ''[[Kim Possible]]'': "Mathter and Fervent" presented us with The Mathter; He began by terrorizing Go City with vaporizing weapons because he was refused funding for his "unethical mathematical experiments". But after Kim and Hego beat up his flabby henchmen, he decides to make Ron (who has done nothing whatsoever at this point) his personal archenemy for no apparent reason in less than two minutes after they first meet. That's got to be some sort of record. He even goes to the extreme of erasing Ron's existence from [[Everything Is Online|all the computer records]] and then tries to off Ron in person for good measure resulting in Ron being zapped with a ray that turns him into an "Anti-Matter Boy" who disintegrates anything he touches. Wow. Talk about [[Disproportionate Retribution]].

** Almost every episode that involved any of Team Go, and especially when in their own city, tended to fall hard into superhero world cliches. Just as Kim Possible was a show lampooning the spy genre, they had their own fun with the superhero ones with Team Go. Example, Kim and Ron pick out Hego as the manager of the Bueno Nacho within minutes (his [[Clark Kenting]] was weak). Having taken Ron as his arch was simply "how it's done, who am I to argue" and between the choice of Kim Possible, the super strong Hego, and the pathetic sidekick, who would you want to choice as your enemy?

* ''[[Darkwing Duck]]'' averts this with most of its cartoonish super villains, but with Bushroot it follows this trope to hilt. Bushroot started his life of villainy to get revenge on the scientists who mocked him and destroyed his inventions, and to be with the one he loved. Some of his solo acts continued with his misunderstood lonely madman, such as trying to create sapient plants, but others are just plain supervillainy, like growing money to steal more money. Whenever he's teamed up with the [[Five-Bad Band|Fiendish Five]], or just partnering with another villain, any good side goes away completely. Quackerjack, on a lower level, switches from trying to rebuild his toy empire/getting revenge on the toys/businesses who drove him out of business, to just wanting to commit random acts of crime. Then again, he's insane.

** The "growing money to steal more" plot of Bushroot's does still kind of fit with his misunderstood lonely madman motif, as he was using the money mostly to buy things for his plant friends.

* Gargamel, being a true capitalist, originally wanted to melt [[The Smurfs]] to make gold (probably to fix up his junky old hut). For some reason, in later seasons, he simply wanted to eat the [[What Do You Mean It's Not Political?|blue communists]] (kinda reminiscent of cannibalism). This was made fun of in [[Robot Chicken]] where he said he never was clear on his motive.

** One episode of the actual series infamously lampshaded it with Gargamel saying "I DON'T want to turn them into gold! I DON'T want to eat them! Now I just want them DEAD!"

** [[Chuck Jones]] would often quote George Santayana's definition of a fanatic - "someone who doubles his efforts while forgetting his aim" - in describing Wile E.

* On ''[[Pearlie]]'', the titular fairy's evil cousin Saphira would frequently come up with schemes to undermine Pearlie's credibility and get her kicked out of the park (so she could take over). While this popped up occasionally as the series progressed, in later episodes her schemes were usually either attempting to show up/embarrass Pearlie, or get revenge on one of Pearlie's friends (usually Opal) for various trivial reasons