Sympathetic Murderer/Playing With

Basic Trope: The killer in a mystery is portrayed sympathetically.

Straight: The killer was trying to save the orphanage he got into trouble.
Exaggerated: The killer is a shining example of goodness who was just trying to save the orphanage he got into trouble, and the victim was an asshole who routinely murdered orphans in his spare time.
Downplayed: The killer, while a fairly horrible person, only graduated to murder in order to protect other people from a particularly nasty blackmailer.
Justified: The killer is sympathetic merely because the other characters are even worse.
- Alternatively, the killer is sympathetic because the victim only narrowly missed pulling a complete and total Karma Houdini, and one of the major themes is how the detective handles Black and White Morality being averted.
Inverted: The killer is a gigantic jerkwad.
Subverted: The killer, for all his Freudian Excuse and the fact that the victim was an asshole, just killed the victim for the money.
Double Subverted: The killer, for all his Freudian Excuse and the fact that the victim was an asshole, just killed the victim for the money...that he needed to afford an operation for his sick little sister.
Parodied: The killer interchanges between committing comically greusome murders and snuggling with newborn puppies. The narration frequently mocks the viewer during the latter moments for feeling sympathy towards him.
Deconstructed: A detective observes that anyone is sympathetic if looked at from the right angle, but this may also mean that anyone who's sympathetic is a potential murderer from another angle.
Reconstructed: This doesn't stop the murderer from having sympathetic motives, however.
Zig Zagged: The killer is a cold-hearted bastard who slaughters orphans to pay for his sick little sister's operations so she can help him with bank robberies, but they're really donating the money they steal to charities.
- The killer, for all his Freudian Excuse and the fact that the victim was an asshole, just killed the victim for the money...that he needed to afford an operation for his sick little sister. However, he didn't actually care for his sister, but she owed him one and this was to repay her, but he willingly killed the man because he had assaulted his sister and made her need the operation in the first place, but that was because the killer paid him to, but that was because he was blackmailed into doing it. The blackmailer was a man who witnessed the brutal attack on his brother at the hands of the killer and was blackmailing him to pay for his brother's medical bills, however, the killer found out that the brother was a wife beater and attacked him, but really it was the man's wife who was beating him and the killer knew, but thought he deserved to be attacked for not being man enough, but this is because when he was younger, his father was very abusive and blaimed him for why he beat him for the same reason, but his father was actually mentally ill and he had been taking advantage of this to get away with flunking english, but he flunked it because he had Dyslexia, which he developed out of guilt because he killed an orphan, but it was out of self defense, but that was because...
Averted: The killer is cold-hearted and/or sadistic, and nearly impossible for the audience to sympathize with.
Enforced: It was decided that a murderer without convincing motives and a hero determined to bring him down would be too "one-dimensional".
Lampshaded: "Oh look, the murderer has parental issues and a tragic backstory. You almost start to feel sorry for the guy."
Invoked: "Come on! This guy is sympathetic! Leave him alone!"
Defied: Despite everything revealed that would normally gain him sympathy, the show and its characters decide that the killer is still a killer and refuse to feel sorry for him.
Discussed: "You ever see one of those movies that makes you sympathize with the killer? This was almost, but not quite, one of those cases for me."
Conversed: "And it makes you wonder - so he has decent reasons. Does that really mean we should let this murderer go? I mean, he's a murderer...but he's so damn sympathetic..."

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