But Not Too Evil: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[Moral Guardians]] often get into a tizzy over any sort of naughty, nasty, or even questionable business portrayed in the media. After all, in their minds those kids will [[Don't Try This At Home|imitate anything they see on the screen]]. This tends to result in a [[Black and White Morality|world of clear-cut heroes and villains]] in media marketed as being "kid-friendly". ▼
[[File:But No Racism.jpg|thumb]]
But villains are supposed to be evil, right? They can get away with doing all sorts of [[Kick the Dog|nasty things]] the moral guardians wouldn't approve of because they inevitably get [[Karmic Death|what's coming to them]] [[Happily Ever After|in the end]]. But sometimes the guardians complain anyway, as if [[Viewers Are Morons|the viewers are too dumb]] to tell who's right and who's wrong. It's like they don't ''want'' the bad guys to be evil...▼
▲[[Moral Guardians]] often get into a tizzy over any sort of naughty, nasty, or even questionable business portrayed in the media. After all, in their minds those kids will [[Don't Try This At Home|imitate anything they see on the screen]]. This tends to result in a [[Black and White Morality|world of clear-cut heroes and villains]] in media marketed as being "kid-friendly".
▲But villains are supposed to be evil, right? They can get away with doing all sorts of [[Kick the Dog|nasty things]] the moral guardians wouldn't approve of because they inevitably get [[Karmic Death|what's coming to them]] [[Happily Ever After|in the end]]. But sometimes the guardians complain anyway, as if [[Viewers
The result of this sort of thinking (if the writers don't tell the [[Moral Guardians]] to shove off) is typically [[Villain Decay]] or a [[Harmless Villain]] or [[Friendly Enemy]] who [[Offstage Villainy|isn't actually shown doing bad things]]. Any attempt by the villains to do bad things will get foiled by the heroes [[Boring Invincible Hero|with a minimum of fuss]].
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To be fair, one of the oldest ways of [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]] is to create a [[Magnificent Bastard]] who outsmarts everyone, is [[Evil Is Cool|much cooler than the heroes]], and lives a life of (vividly described) debauchery, but gets killed in the last five minutes. Then the creators appease the Moral Guardians by saying, "Hey, he loses. That proves that all the debauchery and lying we showed isn't something you root for." (Goes at least as far back as ''Don Giovanni''.) After Moral Guardians realize they've been hoaxed this way, they become paranoid and assume that any villain who succeeds at all is a case of [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]].
Fringe Christian groups seem to be fond of this, which is ironic when you consider that [[
Villain who fall into this trope have a very high chance of being regarded as [[Draco in Leather Pants]] by fans.
See also [[Do Not Do This Cool Thing]]. When the [[Moral Guardians]] start to [[Straw Man Has a Point|have a point]] expect to hear [[
''A priori'' not related to [[Even Evil Has Standards]], which is when a villainous character can't be as villainous as another one, in-story.
{{examples
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* When [[
** Curiously enough, they actually left in a scene of his spirit [[Family
*** Because there was less risk of children imitating the act.
* The Italian dubbers of ''[[Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch]]'' apparently thought that, since Sara was [[
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* The [[Comics Code]] Authority wouldn't pass ''The Amazing [[Spider-Man (Comic Book)|Spider-Man]] #96-98'' because it contained drug use despite the fact that it was commissioned by the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare [[Very Special Episode|as a warning against it]]. [[Stan Lee]] published them [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|without CCA approval]], which led to the 1971 CCA revision and the eventual downfall of the CCA.
== Fan Works ==
* Xabiar, author of the ''[[X-COM (Video Game)|X-COM]]'' fanfic ''[https://archiveofourown.org/works/7400362 XCOM: The Hades Contingency]'', was banned from the Sufficient Velocity forums for Islamophobic content. Never mind that the Commander is explicitly shown from early on to be Not A Good Person, a war criminal who won a nastier-than-OTL War on Terror by [[He Who Fights Monsters|repaying atrocity with atrocity]] and was kept alive instead of getting executed only in case of [[Godzilla Threshold]] and is called out on his past crimes by almost everyone who learns the truth. No, apparently that wasn't clear enough for impressionable readers or something.
== Film ==
* ''[[Killer Klowns from Outer Space]]'' was originally simply going to be called ''Killer Klowns'' but was changed so movigoers wouldn't assume it was a [[Slasher Movie]].
== Radio ==
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== [[Literature]] ==
* [[
* This happened with the second book in ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'': It was banned in one school because the villain says "Damn!" and "Hell!", and the really absurd part is that Snicket uses this as an occasion for an parody of overly moralistic children's authors about how swearing is something only a villain would do.
** Daniel Handler eventually stated in an interview that he was deliberately trying to provoke this kind of thing, and was actually disappointed that he got so little attention compared to ''[[Harry Potter (
** There was also some amount of scandal involved with the book when several Christian groups found out Daniel Handler was an atheist, and [[Insane Troll Logic|claimed that the book series would turn children into atheists.]]
* Every villain in any of the ''[[
== [[Live
* Let's not even get into Lord Zedd, one of the truly genuinely creepy villains in ''[[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers]]'', who got turned into an [[Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain]] by the network after parents complained he was "too scary" for their kids.
** Made especially jarring considering that the rangers' response to any monsters' crime is to [[All Crimes Are Equal|blow them up (twice!)]]. Heck, most monsters don't even get to commit a crime before being [[Never Say "Die"|destroyed.]]
** Similarly, the number of "bad guy" figures released in the series' accompanying toy line has diminished over the years; in ''[[Power Rangers]]''' early days, a good handful of bad guy figures were released along with the Ranger figures, sold under their own name, but nowadays you'll be hard-pressed to find even ''one'' baddie among the sea of Ranger merchandise...and if you do, it's under the generic term of "Evil Space Alien". Who exactly the kids are supposed to play-fight with their Power Ranger action figures is a mystery.
*** Well, the ESA is USUALLY the cannon fodder for the series, so maybe Bandai of America expects kids to army build.
**** That would be a plausible explanation...if it wasn't for the fact that, past ''[[Power Rangers SPD]]'', the ''only'' "Evil Space Alien" we ever get in toy form is either the ''main bad guy'' or one of his lieutenants (before, we got at least 1 main bad guy/lieutenant and 1 Mook), making it fairly hard to accurately army build.
* An in-universe example (sort of): The [[Couch Gag]] of ''[[Que Vida Mas Triste]]'' is the actors (Not [[The Danza|the characters]]) discussing show-related stuff. One of them is about [[Anti
* Siegfried, the agent of KAOS who usually fought against Max Smart in ''[[
== [[Professional Wrestling]] ==
* Over the past several years, [[
== [[Theater]] ==
* [[William Shakespeare]] was a huge fan of the "he dies at the end so it's really a moral story" of [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]], since he knew his audiences wanted to see sex and violence portrayed glamorously (and they did). In ''[[King Lear]]'', he had Edmund, the gold standard of [[Magnificent Bastard
** Same goes for Iago in ''[[Othello]]''. He's a [[Magnificent Bastard]] that you can't help but to root for, especially since he gets most of the best lines in the entire play. Iago kills basically everyone who is a threat to his goal (which, after killing all those people, becomes kind of pointless) or has Roderigo or Cassio kill them. At the end of the play, when Iago gets arrested, he is likely killed ''off-stage''. While all the characters died within the play itself, he is the only major character who is not killed during the play.
** Richard III also has this. Richard actually says at the beginning of the play that he intends to try to be a villain and then gleefully kills his way to the English throne. Then, at the very end of the play, shortly before he is killed, he has a monologue where he mourns that no one will miss him when he dies.
== [[Video Games]] ==
* Given that, outside of amateur white supremacist video games, Nazis are [[Villain
* [[
* In [[
** Less to do with avoiding controversy, and more because making him a Nazi would have been "[[Word of God|too easy, and too boring.]]"
* Inverted in the case of the ''[[
== [[Web Original]] ==
* Parodied by ''[[Homestar Runner]]'' in one Strong Bad Email, where Strong Bad makes fun of an e-mailer known as "Nice Dad" who scolds him for "being mean" and tries to convince him to "point out why being mean isn't always the best choice".
** More parodied in the High School Drama Club Production in the email. The Production portrays Head Male Cheerleader (Coach Z) and Marzipan at a party making ([[Poke the Poodle|rather defanged]]) jibes at [[Bullying a Dragon|Strong Mad]] in the role of a stupid nerd. After the fun is made, the party's going great...until suddenly the gigantic muscular nerd comes back to bash everyone with a spiky club.
* The [[Child Care Action Project]] will count points against a movie using it's [[Fun
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* The outrage over the goosestepping hyenas in ''[[The Lion King]]''. Apparently, this happens to Disney a ''lot''.
* ''[[The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney film)|The Hunchback of Notre Dame]]''. Disney was forced to cut several minutes of footage (including most of the [[Crowning Music of Awesome|awesome]] [[Villain Song]]) in order to secure a General Release rating in Australia.
* All the way back before any actual ''[[Transformers]]'' fiction was created, Hasbro representatives initially complained that the name "Megatron" sounded too dangerous, until reminded that the character was ''intended'' to be the [[Big Bad]].
* In early ''[[
* According to Matt Groening, [[The Simpsons (animation)|Bart Simpson]] was created out of his frustration with this trope; as he put it, the traditional brat in television was usually just a decently mannered kid who spoke too loud, in contrast to Bart's genuinely disruptive and anti-authority behavior.
** Of course, back in the day Matt got what he wanted and more: when The Simpsons first began airing (and particularly during the first two seasons) Bart's behavior set off a firestorm of protests from angry parents' groups saying Bart was a terrible role model. Unlike many examples on this page, though, all this complaining was roundly ignored by the show's writers, who refused to change a thing. In fact, it inspired an episode where Marge stages a censorship campaign against Itchy and Scratchy. The campaign works, and I&S becomes incredibly bland and boring as a result.
** Ironically, either through shifting culture or [[Villain Decay]] (probably a little of both), Bart can now be reasonably accurately described as a "decently mannered kid who speaks too loud".
*** Even in his heyday, Bart could almost be a subversion. While he genuinely enjoyed causing mayhem, most of his antics were more meant to drive authority figures crazy rather than cause any genuine harm. There were lines that [[Even Evil Has Standards|even Bart wouldn't cross]], and when he realized he went too far, he'd actually feel bad about it and try to make up for it.
* In ''[[Gargoyles
* The original version of ''[[The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy]]'' - that was rejected by [[Hanna-Barbera]] - had the two kids making [[Deal with the Devil]], the Devil being the same [[Laughably Evil]] lovable doofus Grim would become in the final version. When the creator tried with [[Cartoon Network]], they suggested the switch as a less evil alternative, and it worked.
== Other ==
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Censorship Tropes]]
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