Designated Villain: Difference between revisions
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== Western Animation ==
* [[American Dad!]]: He borders a Villain Protagonist at times, but a lot of other cases those he opposes are enabled to act even worse. "Bollocks To Stan", "Stan Time" and "The Kidney Stays In The Picture" are perhaps the most ludicrous cases where he is "the bad guy" to his family's immoral actions, despite his approach, while still flawed, being at least somewhat justified. "The People vs Martin Sugar" out and out Lampshades Roger as a Designated Hero to Stan.
** Perhaps the best example of this would have to be "Less Money, Mo Problems". In short, after Jeff uses up all of the things that Stan paid for, Stan, Jeff, and Haley get in an argument, wherein a bet is made that if Stan and Francine can live on minimum wage for a month, then Jeff and Haley will leave, however if they cannot, then Jeff and Haley get to stay with Stan and Fran indefinitely. The bet proper ends after two days, when they are flat broke, and Francine calls it quits and goes home. The episode drags on for another 15 minutes, with the typical blundering by Stan, until he is forced to break into his own house, looking like a bum, and is almost stabbed by Jeff, who, BTW, is eating a sandwich that Stan basically paid for. Even if you consider that Stan was a complete idiot in the latter half of the episode, he was 100% right at the beginning: his wife (who consents to being a non-working housewife) and Steve are entitled to use the stuff he works for, being a housewife and minor. Jeff and Haley are adults, and quite honestly, he's doing them a big solid by allowing them to stay there in the first place. That said, the idea that Stan could be wrong simply because he asks Jeff to not use inordinate amounts of supplies that Jeff is not working for, or paying for in any way...it could only happen in a Mac Farlane cartoon.
*** In addition no one mentioned the fact that Hayley and Jeff stole the families life saving and pissed it all away so he is basically working paycheck to paycheck now. Plus eating all of his food wasn’t the only thing Jeff was doing; he comes in 3 in the morning blasting the TV keeping Stan up, so not only is he struggling to pay the bills he’s dead tired. Most of Mac Farlane's points are made by over-exaggerating the stupidity of the opposing side and/or attributing things to them that they don't actually believe: that is to say, they're poorly made. It has already been firmly established that Stan knows very well how hard it is to survive on minimal wage. His father abandoned him and his mother as a child and his mother blatantly told him it was his fault and forced him to do all the things she should have done. Paying the bills, doing the taxes, fixing the house, etc. In A.T. the Abusive Terrestrial they even showed that when Hayley was a baby Stan and Francine collected cans for extra money. Stan knows how hard it is in fact it is his most defining characteristic. The stress of taking care of his mother caused him to grind his teeth and develop horrible acne, which in turn caused to be ridiculed at school. This is why he so obsess with appearance, popularity, perfection, and his aggressive personality. He’s such a devote republican because his dad told him some bulls**t lie about a spy. His mother was so narcissistically focused on herself that she never even bothered to teach him about sex. He learned about it from some random stranger which is why he is so repressed. Unlike Peter, Stan had a very good Freudian Excuse and to try and make a point the writers ruined it.
**** Finally, Hayley is the last person to be speaking on the hardship of minimum wage. Neither she nor Jeff have ever worked a day in their lives, Stan has always paid for every facet of her life. And once again she stole his life saving and spent it in a month.
* In ''[[Codename Kids Next Door (Animation)|Codename Kids Next Door]],'':
** Secret groups of children are locked in war with teenagers and adults. Yet aging inevitably happens, so to prevent former KND agents who have aged past 13 from knowing KND secrets, they are supposed to willingly subject themselves to [[Laser-Guided Amnesia]], thus becoming clueless and hopefully harmless. Anyone who does not to do this turns evil at that very second, a type of evil that includes insults and fighting dirty. There are undercover exceptions but this is usually the rule. In the KND 'verse, [[Growing Up Sucks|puberty makes you evil.]] This is explicitly the case. While not all adults are evil, ''all'' their enemies are adults, and kids are mostly good. (There are exceptions on both sides.) The kid's parents are good, but perhaps that's because none of them were agents (that we know), and thus not subject to [[The Dark Side]] tempting them.
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** Some villains don't even display malice toward the KND after their introductory episodes. The holding of events like villain barbecues and award ceremonies seems to indicate that fighting the KND is a hobby as well as a crusade.
** However, {{spoiler|Numbah 1's dad}} was once the greatest KND agent who had his memory erased and has shown no signs of being evil (though he does seem rather dippy). There's also the fact that Chad's parents only were villains on the show ''because'' Chad was a member of KND (they thought that he had "such a low number" and wanted to pick off the other agents so that he could be Numbah 1).
** Chad's turn to evil was also in part due to his own ego and selfishness. As the best KND agent and oldest (he's being decommissioned after all) he felt he put too much time and effort into his accomplishments to let the organization just kick him out to the point that he was betraying anyone he could. He eventually starts directing his anger away from the cruelty of he decommission rule toward the whole organization itself. That said, they do say that aging in their world is some sort of super universal disease that can make people crazy...
*** While a [[Jerkass]], it turns out he was a double agent secretly working against the teenagers and adults.
** Done intentionally in earlier episodes, where the KND were more self righteous rebels who played themselves as heroes against any sort of enforced rule or annoyance an authority figure put against them (eg. the adult swim in a public pool, a delivery of tuneless pianos, ice cream reserved for a private meeting). The majority of these cases played the KND more as Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonists and usually ended in comedic failure.
* ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants (Animation)|SpongeBob SquarePants]]'':
** Plankton in recent episodes, in which he's become much more of an [[Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain]], and Mr. Krabs is more of a [[Jerkass]] [[Designated Hero]]. The only reason he doesn't become a completely undeserving target of the show's increasing [[Comedic Sociopathy]] is the few stray episodes where he actually acts like a villain, and [[Complete Monster|the role he takes]] in [[Big Damn Movie|the movie]].
** Squidward comes across this way too. All he really wants is for SpongeBob and Patrick to allow him some peaceful and quiet time to himself. But apparently wanting some downtime and respite from his loud and obnoxious [[Designated Hero]] neighbor makes Squidward a [[Jerkass]]...somehow. Honestly, many viewers end up sympathizing with Squidward's desire to have some time to himself to relax, away from SpongeBob's loudness and intrusiveness.
** Mrs. Puff too. Before she attempted to murder Spongebob, all she wanted to do was to not have to deal with Spongebob's bad driving, and because of that, it makes her a jerk who deserves the abuse she gets, simply because she dislikes Spongebob, when really, fans sympathize with her because Spongebob is un-teachable and Mrs. Puff shouldn't have to put up with him.
* [[Alpha Bitch|Heather]] on ''[[Total Drama Island (Animation)|Total Drama Island]]'' is the legitimate villain of season 1, but after that, she becomes mostly ineffective because everybody knows how manipulative she is. As a result, she goes through seasons 2 and 3 being snarky and rude at times, but never doing anything wrong...and yet, the other characters still constantly act as if she is still evil. Probably the best/worst example is when [[Sassy Black Woman|Leshawna]] ''[[Disproportionate Retribution|knocked Heather's tooth out]]'' when Heather tried to explain that the new villain, [[Villain Sue|Alejandro]], was manipulating her; even when Leshawna finds out that this is true, she still openly brags about attacking Heather and never seems to consider that it was completely unjustified. Particularly [[Egregious]], because ''Courtney'' was the [[Designated Villain]] of season 2 and [[Easily Forgiven|nobody treats her badly about it at all]]. This might just be because the writers [[Canon Dis Continuity|want us to forget]] [[Seasonal Rot|season 2]] as much as possible...
* [[Doctor Doom]] in Season 5 of ''[[Spider-Man the Animated Series]]''. He's created a utopia in what is otherwise a wasteland and helped out one of the heroes by improving his powers. True, he has ultimate power over the place, but there are no signs that he has abused it. To be fair, he later obtains power he can't handle, but it's not like the heroes knew that would happen.
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* ''[[The Simpsons (Animation)|The Simpsons]]'': Mr. Burns shows some shades of this in "The Old Man and the Lisa". While attaching millions of six-pack holders together into a net which he used to catch tons of sea life, in order to make animal slurry is bad action, Mr. Burns wasn't evil in that episode as said by Lisa. Mr. Burns ''didn't know'' that he was doing something that is considered wrong and genuinly believed that was a step in recycling. He didn't even think it was an "ends justify the means" situation, but rather, he wholeheartedly thought that the means were an act of good. Even if it is an evil act, that didn't make Burns himself evil in that situation. It made him misguided at worst and he came as [[Anti-Villain]] [[Knight Templar]] kind of character, but instead we are supposed to think that he was a [[Complete Monster]] and we should have sided with Lisa, who told him that he was even more evil when he tried to be good. And Lisa later tored up the check Mr. Burns gave to her, which he gave to honor the agreement of giving Lisa ten percent of the winnings they made together, yet we should see as bribe. Mr. Burns in that episode was a ''saint'', unlike episodes like "Curse of Flying Hellfish" and the "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" two-parter, where he was really evil.
** Homer in "Homer's Enemy". [[Word of God]] said their goal was to show that a real person could not survive in the show, [[Broken Aesop|but they did it by making Homer]] [[Took a Level In Jerkass|look worse]] [[Flanderization|than he really was]] in order to make [[Only Sane Man|Frank Grimes]] look better.
* Happens all the time in Rugrats, often deliberately due to the skewed naive perspective of the babies:
** Didi hires a dog groomer for Spike and the babies just assume for no reason she is really a "dog broomer" who kidnaps dogs and cause all sorts of mayhem for her ("What else could a dog broomer be?"). True Spike didn't want to get groomed but that would make Didi the villain here, not the groomer.
** A teenager hired to work in the Java Lava is a bit moody and surly but the babies assume she is Angelica's doll grown huge and try to shrink her by pulling out her belly button ring. And they mess up the coffee shop and when the girl tells everyone that they did it they almost fire her for "blaming it on the pups," but she quits in agitation and disgust before they can.
** Angelica herself in the episode "Silent Angelica". Drew and Charlotte promise to buy her toys if she stays quiet and watches the babies. Angelica actually tries her best to stay quiet but the babies take advantage of this and run wild around the house. Angelica finally snaps after they've caused so much mayhem, but then Drew and Charlotte punish her for it when she had done nothing wrong at all.
** Some of the babies' theories on "villains" run so much on Insane Troll Logic that it's lucky some of them aren't even real. For example they hear the story of the Sand Man, and worry about the off chance that he may accidentally bury them with too much sand while putting them to sleep. They ultimately come to the conclusion they must kill the Sandman. Naturally there is no Sandman for them to murder, though they spend most of the episode mistakenly beating up Chuckie's dad in the process.
* Wacky Races has Dick Dastardly as the designated villain because of his cheating, but, in this race, cheating is often the only way for any of the racers to win. Sure, Dick's schemes involve taking out the other racers, but the rest of them do the same thing (though the majority of the other racers' attempts involve jumping a few places ahead or lifting another racer up and driving under them, while Dick Dastardly's plans are more deadly). Dastardly's one victory was reversed after finding out he extended his vehicle when crossing the finishing line. He is disqualified and booed vigorously, despite the fact other episodes featured another racer using the same tactic and winning legitimately.
* Ranger Smith to Yogi Bear, he was treated as an antagonist to Yogi even though Ranger Smith is trying to stop Yogi from stealing peoples lunch. In real life, wild animals getting hold of human food is a very serious thing- it can lead animals to associate humans with food, meaning that they have to be killed or relocated to areas where humans are not very plentiful, otherwise the animals might get aggressive and start attacking people.
** Reasoned in one episode, where Ranger Smith finally gets sick of Yogi's antics and delivers a "The Reason You Suck" Speech on all the felonies he's caused. Yogi defends himself by pointing out the forest belonged to the animals first, then humans such as himself took over and tried to enforce rules onto them. Yogi steals food, but Smith stole his entire habitat.
* Played for Laughs with The Beekeeper from Johnny Test. Unlike the other villains, who want to take over or destroy the world, The Beekeeper just wants to get kids to eat healthier. The characters even lampshade that this wouldn't be a bad thing if he wasn't so crazy about it.
Luckily, by "Johnny Holiday", The Beekeeper is no longer an antagonist, as both he and the Tests team up to create a holiday in which free candy (or rather, honey bars) are given out. Thus, after this episode, The Beekeeper hasn't been seen since.
** Played straight in, among other episodes, "Johnny Test in 3D" - the hotel manager is the bad guy simply for trying to enforce the no-pets policy.
Sunblock Mom is an antagonist in "Sunshine Malibu Johnny" for trying to get Johnny to put on sunscreen.
* Played for Laughs with Melvin in Duck Dodgers. The episode where he appeared suggested people should hate him for opening a rival restaurant next to I.M. Neighborly's and taking Neighborly's customers away by offering them free sodas. It also suggested that it was okay for Dodgers and Neighborly to sabotage Melvin's in a way that, in real life, would get them arrested for not only damaging private property but also endangering the lives of everyone inside. Dodgers treated it like a space battle.
{{reflist}}
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