History Main / BlackAndGrayMorality

** Mr. House is an InsufferableGenius who has great plans for an independent New Vegas state, but one that is tightly controlled by him alone. Other than protecting caravan routes, he doesn't care in the slightest about the rest of the Wasteland.

** The Quincy Clan had a legit beef with [[TheHeartless Hollows]]: as humans with spiritual powers, they had lost many loved ones to Hollow attacks. They also had a legit beef with the Shinigami, who are tasked with protecting humans from Hollow attacks but rarely arrived in time to do so. However, their penchant for RevengeBeforeReason disrupted the chain of reincarnation between the various planes of existence, due to their abilities leading to the complete decimation of the Hollows' souls. This lead to 1,000 years of intermittent war with the Shinigami, and the near destruction of the Clan. Another knock against the Quincies would be their apparent desire for "blood purity": they look down on interbreeding with ordinary humans, to the point where they'd rather arrange a match between first cousins than marry outsiders. While the Ishida and [[spoiler:Kurosaki]] families at least mean well and are usually sympathetic, the majority of named Quincies are affiliated with the [[ANaziByAnyOtherName Wandenreich]], a xenophobic, imperialist organization with allusions to NaziGermany and ImperialJapan. Highlighting the moral ambiguity of the setting is the Quincies' preference for white clothing: in the Japanese symbolism of Soul Society, white is the color of death and evil...but Quincy imagery alludes to the Christian ChurchMilitant, where white symbolizes goodness and purity.

* JRRTolkien's ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'' could be an UrExample of this. On the other side are Elves and Men, the assumed good guys, who are flawed, cocky, haughty, corrupt, petty, jealous and well capable of killing their own kin; on the other side is [[BigBad Morgoth]], who is a pure evil. (And [[EldritchAbomination Ungoliant]])

*** She did shoot Mr. Burns and a number of mobsters though.

* Though there ''are'' heroes in ''TabletopGame/{{Eberron}}'', they are few and far between. In the core Eberron setting book, there's only 1 high-level Good NPC, and she is a young girl who only has such power while in the same city as the Silver Flame (a metaphysical source of elemental good) itself. And that person is responsible for trying to make sure her church full of Knight Templars doesn't cause too much death and destruction.

* ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim''. Despite being very bad at it, Zim is still evil, but Dib has proven to be needlessly cruel to Zim and seems to looking down on most other humans.

* ''{{Kickassia}}'' has a president just minding his business being overthrown by a crazy idiot who becomes a dictator - and [[WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic the latter]], [[VillainProtagonist who is the protagonist]], ends up fighting his comrades, who aren't much honorable themselves and try to take over when they think the Critic's died from their beating.

* VideoGame/SlyCooper leans in this direction, he robs the wicked and gives to himself as part of a family tradition that goes back thousands of years. Most of what's been stolen hasn't even spent but rather dumped in a vault because when it comes down to it the Cooper Clan steals things purely to stroke their own egos.

* ''Series/BreakingBad'' is every bit as straight-laced and upstanding as you'd expect from a show about meth dealers:
** Walt [[TookALevelInBadass goes from mild-mannered chemistry teacher to meth dealer in the first few episodes]], and loses his objections to murder almost as quickly.[[YourDaysAreNumbered His stage III-A lung cancer]] makes him sympathetic at first, but that disappears as he slowly becomes a sociopath. It's hinted in Season 5 that he was extremely cruel and proud ''before'' the series started, and that the meth industry is his outlet for that side of his personality.
** Jesse is a wannabe punk and small-time meth cook who introduces Walt to the business and (initially) loves the increased fame and profit that comes from working with him. He also has a soft spot for kids and becomes horrified by Walt's behavior in later seasons, [[spoiler:leading to his quitting after Todd murders a child]].
** Walt's wife Skyler does everything in her power to keep her kids safe, both from Walt and the rest of the drug industry, but she covers Walt's involvement in the drug trade and ends up laundering his meth profits.
** Hank Schrader, a DEA agent & Walt's brother-in-law, is no hero either, given his KnightTemplar and GoodIsNotNice qualities. His wife Marie is a caring woman, but horrifically naive and prone to moments of extreme jerkiness.
** Saul, Lydia and Ted are all sleazy, money-grubbing, white-collar criminals.
** Mike views killing and drug-dealing as just another chore in his line of work, he does them without hesitation and doesn't even consider the morality. His only redeeming quality is that he's doing all of this to provide for his granddaughter.
** The drug cartels who sell Walt's product provide enough contrast to prevent the show from being EvilVersusEvil or GreyAndGrayMorality. Gus Fring is probably the nicest of them, and even he's a cold-blooded killer.

* ''Equation Of The Immortal'' has a [[InstantAwesomeJustAddNinja kunoichi]] fighting against a [[DrugsAreBad drug-using]] cult with a literal DealWithTheDevil. The fact that she's a ninja is ''not'' the bad thing (she only uses said lethal ninja skills on [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman demons,]]) its her actual [[OutWithABang power]] and willingness/need to use it on any random guy that comes her way that puts her in the gray area.

* JRRTolkien's ''TheSilmarillion'' could be an UrExample of this. On the other side are Elves and Men, the assumed good guys, who are flawed, cocky, haughty, corrupt, petty, jealous and well capable of killing their own kin; on the other side is [[BigBad Morgoth]], who is a pure evil. (And [[EldritchAbomination Ungoliant]])

* R. Scott Bakker's [[SecondApocalypse Prince of Nothing]] trilogy exemplifies this trope. The most important character in the series, Anasurimbor Kellhus (there are several protagonists, but Kellhus is really the central character of the trilogy), is a ruthless, brilliant manipulator, part of an order of ascetics who have spent nearly two thousand years in isolation breeding and training for intellect, rationality, and the ability to "read" other people by their actions, mannerisms, and faces, thus "possessing" them and turning them to their will. Over the course of the trilogy, [[spoiler: he comes to be seen as a Prophet, and eventually dominates the entire Three Seas area that composes the main setting for the books (he also comes to believe that he really ''is'' a Prophet).]] That sounds pretty horrible, until you remember that the primary antagonists, the Consult, [[spoiler: are a cabal of human and non-human sorcerers and generals (including the Inchoroi, an alien race that fell into Earwa thousands of years before the books' story and who are defined by cruelty and an utter obsession with slaking their lust) seeking to resurrect a being that causes ''all'' children of races with souls - namely, humans - to be stillborn, so that they can drive the number of ensoulled beings in the world down below a certain number in order to prevent the certainty of their facing damnation and hell-fire upon their deaths.]] So Yeah.

* The ''Executioner'' novels, which inspired ThePunisher, has Mack Bolan, the eponymous "hero" of these books.

* Joe Abercrombie's ''TheFirstLaw'' series is based on this principle, pushed to the point where you wonder at the end whether the protagonists were really the least evil, or if, perhaps, they weren't actually even worse than their antagonist.

* ''ASongOfIceAndFire''. Being a deconstruction of typical HighFantasy, there are no snow white heroes (with life expectancies longer than mayflies), only bad people fighting flawed people. Would be GreyAndGrayMorality, except the existence of some truly evil people like Gregor Clegane and Ramsay Bolton, and worse,the Others, creatures from beyond the Wall which are impervious to most weapons and breed zombies, are in the process of returning after centuries.

* Played with and subverted in Creator/GlenCook's ''TheChroniclesOfTheBlackCompany''. The soldiers work for an obvious BigBad, and the rebels on the side of good turn out to be nasty little bastards. But every time it looks like the story's going down a familiar route, it ends up going somewhere ''even more interesting''. In the end, the first book (''The Black Company'') ends up looking like a neutrally-portrayed reality while standard fantasy epics look like the propaganda put out after light's victory, and it gets more interesting from there.

* Both the novel and film ''DoubleIndemnity''

** The original ''{{Dune}}'' itself is very black-and-gray too. The vast majority of the protagonists, including Paul, are not nice people and in many cases not good people either. And then there's [[AGodAmI Leto II]] in the sequels...
* In ''{{Dragaera}}'', Vladimir Taltos is a low-level mafia boss, with all the unpleasantness that implies. However, he tries to be benevolent to his underlings and the inhabitants of the area he runs, and his antagonists are usually those causing or planning something that will cause widespread suffering. After leaving the Jhereg, while he tries to help the downtrodden, he does so through [[AntiHero rather brutal methods]].

** And that's ignoring the Ministy of Magic -- firmly on the gray side -- which is generally darker than Harry and his friends, but still firmly better than the black of Voldemort.

* Martha Wells' ''Death of the Necromancer'' has [[AntiVillain Nicholas]] [[AristocratsAreEvil Valiarde,]] a coldblooded thief, murderer and all around MagnificentBastard. Nic has spent years sabotaging his enemy on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge; at the start of the narrative, Nic's nearing the completion of his [[EvilPlan ultimate scheme]] when he and his subordinates run afoul of an unknown person using BlackMagic. Somehow, this leads to the group spending the rest of the book fighting an insane mass murderer. And the reason they do it is at least partly because it's ''bad for business.''
* In Frederick Forsyth's ''TheDayOfTheJackal'', the OAS are far right terrorists. The eponymous VillainProtagonist is a consummate ProfessionalKiller. However, the French Action Service are SecretPolice-like, using ElectricTorture on an OAS captive.
* The various races in LordOfTheRings could be this. Tolkien makes it pretty clear that any of the "good" races, even elves, are capable of evil. Goblin and orcs? AlwaysChaoticEvil.

* Common in the works of ChinaMieville. Literature/{{Kraken}}, for instance, has a Lovecraftian doomsday cult as one of the ''nicer'' factions.

* The Tribulation Force versus the Global Community (and also God versus Satan) in the ''LeftBehind'' books. Thing is, it's hard to determine which side is black and which side is grey.

* ''Sisterhood'' series by FernMichaels: As the series goes on, the morality of the stories turns into this. The good guys are called the Vigilantes because they break the law in capturing a bad guy and inflicting a cruel and unusual punishment on hir. The good guys don't kill anybody, but since their punishments tend to be of the FateWorseThanDeath variety, that fact may not be very comforting. Also, the good guys have acted like big-time {{Jerkass}}es a number of times. That's okay, because the bad guys have virtually no redeeming qualities to speak of!
* ''PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians'': Help the [[JerkassGods Gods]] who are often jerkasses and sometimes cause problems, or serve a [[BigBad Titan]] who devoured his own kids and uses humanity as a source of cheap amusement or as a snack.
* ''ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents,'' especially from book eight onwards.

* In WilliamGibson's ''{{Neuromancer}}'', the main characters consist of a [[TheCracker drug-addicted computer hacker]] that steals to make a living, and a [[StreetSamurai female assassin with razor-blades in her fingernails]] that kills without much remorse. But this is compared to the antagonists, among them [[CompleteMonster a sociopath that enjoys watching women being tortured as part of a weirdly sadistic betrayal fetish]].

* The heroes of Literature/TheLeonardRegime have to resort to less-than-desirable means to fix everything. This most often includes killing anyone who gets in their way.

** Many of the Shinigami are [[GoodIsNotNice not the sorta people you'd normally wanna deal with]]. Their ruler, the Spirit King, is a reclusive enigma, preferring to remain sequestered in his personal realm than deal with politics. Their PraetorianGuard, Squad Zero, doesn't intervene in events in Soul Society until things get truly apocalyptic; all they want is to keep the Spirit King safe. Their judicial branch, Central 46, is filled with arrogant, paranoid hypocrites who authorized the extermination of four captains and four lieutenants, purely because of [[TheHeartless what they were turned into]], even when it wasn't their fault. Their military, the Gotei 13, is stacked with psychotic {{Mad Scientist}}s who practice human vivisection; battle-loving {{Blood Knight}}s who follow HonorBeforeReason; LawfulNeutral {{Knight Templar}}s who would KickTheDog if they thought the dog had broken the rules; calculating, secretive {{Guile Hero}}es who coldly manipulate their allies if it's advantageous to their goals; and otherwise good people who nonetheless practice in [[CombatPragmatist dirty, underhanded tactics]] [[IDidWhatIHadToDo if it means winning]]. To be fair, after the GovernmentConspiracy is revealed and the only thing that saves Soul Society from itself and from Aizen is the intervention of Ichigo and his friends, CharacterDevelopment kicks in for many individual Shinigami, namely in Byakuya being more willing to bend the rules, Renji going from a cocky thug into a loyal friend, Soifon loosening up on her harsher methods, Kyouraku and Ukitake becoming more willing to call Central 46 out for their transgressions, and Yamamoto restoring Ichigo's powers in direct violation of tradition. It's stated that Soul Society has changed more in the 2 years since Ichigo first became involved with it than in the century that preceded him. The members of the Zero Squad also come across better once they're properly introduced as characters and can be compared to the truly horrific Vandenreich.

** The Quincy Clan had a legit beef with [[TheHeartless Hollows]]: as humans with spiritual powers, they had lost many loved ones to Hollow attacks. They also had a legit beef with the Shinigami, who are tasked with protecting humans from Hollow attacks but rarely arrived in time to do so. However, their penchant for RevengeBeforeReason disrupted the chain of reincarnation between the various planes of existence, due to their abilities leading to the complete decimation of the Hollows' souls. This lead to 1,000 years of intermittent war with the Shinigami, and the near destruction of the Clan. Another knock against the Quincies would be their apparent desire for "blood purity": they look down on interbreeding with ordinary humans, to the point where they'd rather arrange a match between first cousins than marry outsiders. While the Ishida and [[spoiler:Kurosaki]] families at least mean well and are usually sympathetic, the majority of named Quincies are affiliated with the [[ANaziByAnyOtherName Vandenreich]], a xenophobic, imperialist organization with allusions to NaziGermany and ImperialJapan. Highlighting the moral ambiguity of the setting is the Quincies' preference for white clothing: in the Japanese symbolism of Soul Society, white is the color of death and evil...but Quincy imagery alludes to the Christian ChurchMilitant, where white symbolizes goodness and purity.

** It is saying something about the setting when you consider the "good" factions of the game: [[CantArgueWithElves arrogant space elves]] who [[FantasticRacism view humans as little better than filthy, stupid animals]], regularly engineer ork attacks on human worlds, and would happily [[FinalSolution murder every human in the galaxy, if given the option]]; the [[TheEmpire Imperium of Man]] which is an AntiHero ''[[HumansAreTheRealMonsters at best]]'', but would easily fall into villainy in most settings, where their policy against all aliens is [[AbsoluteXenophobe shoot first, talk later]], and they destroy entire planets of people if it is suspected to have a substantial corruption of Chaos, not to mention that their oppression is nothing short of fascism; and the communist [[ScaryDogmaticAliens Tau Empire]], whose leaders are powerful psychics that control their followers through mind control and their MO is "join us and serve the Greater Good, or we'll kill your entire race". That said, at least Tau bother with allies, the Eldar leave you alone unless you come up in one of their schemes, and the Imperium is fairly tolerable of you as long as you're human and believe in the God Emperor. Which is more than we can say for Chaos, Orks, Necrons, Tyranids, and Dark Eldar.

* ''TheEliteSquad'' has BOPE, a special forces team which employs cruelty in both [[TrainingFromHell training]] and [[JackBauerInterrogationTechnique the police work]], against drug dealers that even [[KillItWithFire burn people alive]]. The villains of the sequel also count: corrupt cops, aiding and aided by corrupt politicians.

*** Smarmy self-important worthless parasites (Kent, Chief Wiggum, Lionel Hutz, Reverend Lovejoy)

* The ''VideoGame/GodOfWar'' series, although really it's more of a Black and Even More Black Morality. The Greeks had a [[{{Badass}} somewhat different definition]] of "hero" than we do.

* ''LegacyOfKain'' is the KING of this trope. Your hero is either a SociopathicHero or an UnwittingPawn with a habit of [[NiceJobBreakingItHero screwing everything up]]. Your villain tends to be a corrupt EldritchAbomination that would fit in well with H.P. Lovecraft's horrors and all of his minions. Even the Sarafan Brotherhood, a bunch of priests, were noted by Kain as being ignoble in the opening of Soul Reaver 2. The closest thing you get to something RELATIVELY good is [[LastOfHisKind Janos Audron]].

* In ''[[BaldursGate Baldur's Gate 2]]'', only two options are open to the player concerning allies who can help locate your kidnapped childhood friend: One option is to side with a guild of thieves. The other is to side with a guild of vampires. Vampire thieves. And just in case you were wondering: No, these are ''not'' thieves with a heart of gold. Inside their guild-hall you'll witness TrainingFromHell with actually lethal results, torture, and worse. Needless to say, this makes roleplaying a [[KnightInShiningArmor paladin]] in this game an extremely difficult task. This is driven home by the fact that Keldorn Firecam, a Paladin in his own right, will just flat-out leave your party [[LostForever forever]] should you pick the vampires over the Shadow Thieves. (Keldorn isn't happy about working with the Thieves either, but, fortunately, he's very pragmatic for a LawfulGood sort).

** Played straight in ''StarControl''. When the Alliance of Free Stars, the ostensible good guys, captures a Hierarchy mine or colony, they just bombard it to destruction from orbit. When the Syreen, one of the Alliance races, captures a Hierarchy colony, they first use mind control to recruit crew members from the civilian population, and then annihilate the rest from orbit. Oh, and one member "race" of the Hierarchy, the Androsynth, are actually just human beings, but, because they were clones, they were enslaved by the rest of humanity. They joined the Hierarchy because the Alliance recruited humanity. And another Alliance race, the Shofixti, use suicide bombing as a standard tactic.

* The VideoGame/{{Homeworld}} series plays into this somewhat. By the time the player is controlling them, the Kushan seem to be the [[TheWoobie punching bag]] of the galaxy. As the backstory is revealed, however, it's shown the Hiigarans [[spoiler:broke several treaties, attempted to conquer everything, attacked plenty unprovoked, and misused the Hyperspace Drive to attack large swaths of the galaxy]]. They could well have been a Big Bad in a prequel game. It's no real wonder they were smacked down like they were.

* ''GearsOfWar'' starts off like this and falls prey to [[FromBadToWorse getting darker as things go on]]. The humans are not portrayed as the nicest guys to start off with, and while Myrrah, the Locust queen, claims at the end of the first game that that the humans have actually done something incredibly horrible in the past -- something that, to the Locust, completely justifies their own war of extermination -- the Locust kidnapping of humans expressly for torturing them, as revealed in the second game, gives them absolutely no moral high ground to condemn humanity with. Moreover the COG forces have been intentionally and explicitly designed as [[PuttingOnTheReich Space Nazis]]. They even have their own medical concentration camps and they're perfectly willing to stunt the Locust advance by killing the vast majority of their own people with [=WMD=]s and preserve the human race by impregnating women against their will.
* During ''ModernWarfare'', members of your party regularly engage in torture, one murders an unarmed man tied to a chair, and another holds an ally over a ledge with the full intent to drop him. By the next game, your party gets even more ruthless, at one point (implicitly) interrogating someone with electricity. When playing as an American going undercover, [[spoiler: you're forced to gun down an airport full of civilians.]] [[spoiler: However, you were playing directly into the BigBad's hands with that one.]] By the end of the second act, [[spoiler: Capt. Price, your team leader, launches a nuclear warhead at the United States, nullifying all technology on the East Coast.]] And by the end of the game, [[spoiler: Soap, your character, and Price have become fugitives with only one intent in mind: kill the bastard who set them up, and fucked over world history in a big way.]] There is no question, however, that these men are infinitely more heroic than [[ChaoticEvil the people they fight]].

* A similar setup was used in the sadly defunct MMORPG ''AutoAssault'' with the Humans, Mutants, and Biomeks. Each faction had reasons for wanting the other two dead, although the Humans may have been the biggest bastards of the bunch depending on how justified you think their desperate measures to protect their own existence were.

* In ''KnightsOfTheOldRepublic'', you're going to kill Malak no matter what your moral persuasion. Carth even explicitly uses this to rationalize staying with you after [[spoiler: [[TheReveal finding out who you really are]].]] The Jedi might also qualify for this, given that [[spoiler: they might or might not have erased your memory and turned you into a drone so that they could use you to uncover [[ArtifactOfDoom the source of Malak's power.]]]] You can try to turn him, and if you do he'll repent as he lays dying. Even a character you had ''just'' previously turned back to the Light side will act surprised you even made the effort, though.

* In ''{{killer7}}'', the protagonists are a group of amoral assassins who do work for people manipulating the fates of entire countries. Killing one of their targets, Toru Fukushima apparently results in the entire population of Japan being massacred, and if you refuse, Japan becoming BigBrother to everyone else. The villains include a [[CardCarryingVillain card-carrying terrorist]]. Dan's old mentor is a black-market organ dealer - and that's the face he ''doesn't'' conceal from the world. And then there's the fact that the protagonists are embodiment of good fighting against evil.

* In typical RPG fashion, TheWitcher allows you to side with one of two warring factions in the Vezima area. One the one side you have a racist order of human knights who wage a genocidal war against elves and dwarves, and on the other side you have a racist terrorist group of elves and dwarves who wage a genocidal war against humans. Fortunately you can TakeAThirdOption, which means siding with neither faction and becomming an enemy of both. While all 3 options are gray to some degree (neutrality ends with a huge kill count on ''both'' sides), the main enemy, Salamandra, has no redeeming qualities.
* SlyCooper leans in this direction, he robs the wicked and gives to himself as part of a family tradition that goes back thousands of years. Most of what's been stolen hasn't even spent but rather dumped in a vault because when it comes down to it the Cooper Clan steals things purely to stroke their own egos.

* Believe it or not, {{Mario}}'s world was like this in his debut game. In the arcade ''VideoGame/DonkeyKong'', Mario had captured the eponymous ape and wasn't very nice to him, leading to DK escaping and abducting Mario's girlfriend as revenge by proxy. Nintendo of America workers even named Mario after their landlord as a result of being mad at him, [[SpringtimeForHitler which backfired in a truly epic fashion.]]

* In ''WarcraftIII'' the factions ranged from genocidal (Undead) all the way to willing to let everyone die out of sheer prickishness (Night Elves). VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft turns around and averts this with Tirion Fordring. Despite the questlines in Northrend which appear to be arguing that good people must sometimes do bad things, the only man who keeps his hands clean [[CurbStompBattle melts the face off the Lich King]] every time they meet.

* The ''[[{{Earth 2150}} Earth]]'' RTS series. The Eurasian Dynasty is TheEmpire, combining the worst aspects of Soviet Russia and the Mongolian Khanate. Against them in ''Earth 2140'' are the UCS -- a group of lazy hedonists completely dependent on machines for labor. Sequel ''{{Earth 2150}}'' introduces the Lunar Corporation, who start off as ALighterShadeOfGrey... but get worse ''fast'' due to actually having to participate in the war. By ''Earth 2160'', they're confirmed to be working on chemical weapons.

* In ''ShadowTheHedgehog'', certain missions allow you only to align yourself with the Black Arms (Black) as your villain option or Doctor Eggman (Grey) as your hero option. Then, you can go neutral, killing everyone.
* ''TotalAnnihilation'' is a galaxy spanning war-game about two factions that have ultimately desecrated and destroyed all of the principals they once fought for over an obsessive determination to annihilate their enemy.
* ''{{Darksiders}}'' follows this to a tee. You are War, a horseman of the Apocalypse. [[spoiler:The game opens with Heaven and Hell battling it out, with humans stuck in the middle, during a premature Apocalypse. You are later accused of starting it, and go on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge to take them down, and find out who really started the war, allying yourself with a high-ranking servant of the Devil, as well as a benevolent "Old One" along the way.]]

* ''SplinterCell: Conviction'' seems to be headed this way.

* In ''{{Risen}}'', after the prologue, you must align with one of two factions to progress further. One is a group of fanatical, fascist {{Knight Templar}}s, and the other is a clan of brutal, unscrupulous bandits.
* In the ''Overlord'' series of games, you play a [[CardCarryingVillain stereotypical]] EvilOverlord in a world where you face foes who are arguably worse due to their extreme cruelty and corruption while maintaining that they're the good ones. In ''OverlordII'', you embark on a campaign to conquer a corrupt Romanesque empire which advertises itself as a beacon of civilization, yet is run by fat morally bankrupt beaurocrats who practice slavery, execute all dissenters, and enjoy ethnic cleansing against any magical creature or suspected magic user. It's even worse when you discover that [[spoiler:the emperor founded the empire with the support of the common folk by promising to destroy all magic (and following through on that promise) after he himself secretly caused a magical cataclysm which caused all the suffering of the common folk in the first place.]] Compared to that, everything you do in the game is positively heroic, even the destruction/enslavement of the all the "innocent" people, all of whom are nasty, selfish, racist and morally repugnant anyway. In fact as the Overlord, you are the only one who displays any virtue of goodness; at least you're honest about your intentions compared to everyone you end up facing.

* ''AlphaProtocol''. You work for a shady, accountability-free government agency that 'recruit' you by kidnapping you [[spoiler:and are secretly collaborating with the BigBad to escalate global politics for money]]. Your enemies include a CorruptCorporateExecutive, a CaptainErsatz of Osama Bin Laden, a psychopathic torturing gangster, and an ex-rogue agent who takes hostages and blows up museums because it's his job to do so. It speaks volumes that the only person who doesn't openly mislead, lie to or manipulate you is the game's SociopathicHero, who's only in it to hurt people you point him at.

* ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'' is filled with BlackAndGreyMorality, along with GrayAndGreyMorality and sometimes outright EvilVersusEvil. The BigBad of the game is a [[YourSoulIsMine soul-eating]] OmnicidalManiac, and the [[PlayerCharacter Dragonborn]] can be a ''real'' bastard too; you can [[spoiler:steal other people's things, rebuild the [[PsychoForHire Dark Brotherhood]] to it's former glory, murder the Emperor, trap people's souls to power your weapons, and torture people]], and your mentor Paarthurnax [[spoiler:[[AlternateCharacterInterpretation may or may not]] be a patient [[TheStarscream Starscream]] with a MeaningfulName]]. There's also the Civil War sidequest. One side is an iron-fisted but [[WellIntentionedExtremist well-intentioned]] VestigialEmpire that goes around executing innocent people because there may be a ''slight possibility'' that they are members of a rebel group that fights them (read: your first encounter with this faction ends up with you almost getting a [[OffWithHisHead discount haircut]], even though you're ''proven to be nothing more than an innocent bystander who was in the wrong place at the wrong time'', the commander in charge '''''[[KickTheDog orders you to be killed anyway]]'''''), and may or may not be happy to [[StupidSurrender cozy up]] to a faction made up of genocidal fascists. The other is a group of bull-headed [[FantasticRacism racist]] rebels who are led by a guy who's either a revolutionary war hero, a StupidGood freedom-fighter who [[UnwittingPawn doesn't fully grasp the consequences of his actions]], or a power-hungry tyrant who seized power due to a KlingonPromotion. Their mutual opposition? A faction of [[GuiltFreeExterminationWar genocidal]] [[ANaziByAnyOtherName Nazi]] [[CantArgueWithElves High Elf supremacists]] who are plotting to KillAllHumans and destroy the world. [[CrapsackWorld Things have]] '''really''' [[DarkerAndEdgier gone to shit since]] ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion]]''.
* ''NoMoreHeroes''. The name says it all. The game series is severely lacking in any truly moral characters, with the main character Travis being a [[ALoserIsYou loser]] and AntiHero who mostly kills simply under the the promise of getting sex with the beautiful young lady who arranges the fights and to get enough money to pay of his rent. And while he does have some morals keeping him at a rather light shade of grey, the other assassins he has to face range from {{Tragic Villain}}s forced into the line of work due to circumstances, to [[AxeCrazy complete psychopaths]]. [[spoiler:Subverted at the end of the second game, though, when Travis vows to destroy the UAA after seeing how many lives it has destroyed]].

* Videogame/DiabloIII thrives on this, combined with GoodIsNotNice and LightIsNotGood. The angels were mostly disgusted with mankind, which resulted from the union of an angel & demon, after they discovered it. Angels and demons once voted on whether to kill humanity; many angels were for it and only Tyrael's vote prevented genocide. [[spoiler:In Act IV, Archangel Imperius blames Tyrael and the [[PlayerCharacter nephalem]] for Diablo's assault, issues a death threat when he first encounters them, and tries to kill the nephalem while Diablo is on the verge of destroying Heaven.]] Demons are only marginally less sympathetic.

* ''LegacyOfKain'' is the KING of this trope. Your hero is either a SociopathicHero or an UnwittingPawn with a habit of [[NiceJobBreakingItHero screwing everything up]]. Your villain tends to be a corrupt EldritchAbomination that would fit in well with H.P. Lovecraft's horrors and all of his minions. Even the Sarafan Brotherhood, a bunch of priests, were noted by Kain as being ignoble in the opening of Soul Reaver 2. The closest thing you get to something RELATIVELY good is [[LastofHisKind Janos Audron]].

Also compare NominalHero, where a character on the side of good doesn't have any good intentions.

** The Novis Orbus Librarium, or NOL for short, is an oppressive, authoritarian organization who unilaterally declared themselves to be the guardians of {{Magitek}}. Its equivalent to a war hero is Jin Kisaragi, a cold, apathetic JerkAss who doesn't even remember the last person he killed on account of already having a large body toll. At his worst, he's a maniacal, AxCrazy {{Yandere}}, who's so obsessed with killing his brother (Ragna) that Jin completely flips his shit just by being in Ragna's presence. Its most visible enforcer is Tsubaki Yayoi, a law-abiding citizen who only fights her best friend because that's what her orders are. At the same time, she harbors resentment over her best friend for [[RetGone replacing her in another timeline]], and it spurns her to pull a FaceHeelTurn. Said best friend is Noel Vermillion, a sweet soul with a heavy heart a lot of the time; she's incredibly easy to manipulate due to her submissive, naive nature. Its top engineer, Relius Clover, transformed his wife and daughter into weapons of mass destruction, and he's responsible for turning his son into a psycho. Its top informant, Hazama, is not even his own person; he's the current host for Yuuki Terumi, a sadistic, manipulative {{Troll}} who's in some way responsible for every bad thing in the series. Its leader is the Imperator, the one you can cast culpability for all of the NOL's less savory policies (apart from Relius and Terumi, of course).
** Sector Seven is just about the only organization powerful enough to challenge the NOL. Not because it's the "right" thing to do, mind you. It's more that Sector Seven simply prefers to use full-on technology instead of {{Magitek}}. The face of this agency is the ever-so-foul-mouthed Kokonoe, who is so obsessed with killing Terumi that she's fully prepared to use ''nukes'' should her plan goes awry. Lotte Carmine, one of its scientists, was a glory-seeking fame hunter with an inferiority complex against Kokonoe. He's been transformed into Arakune, an AxCrazy BlobMonster who's only quaintly aware of his insanity. Azrael is a ManlyGay OneManArmy that you'd ''love'' to have on your side... only that he's indiscriminate in his penchant for bloodshed should he lose his temper. Makoto Nanaya is kind, friendly and compassionate, but if you [[BerserkButton make the mistake of threatening her friends]], she'll [[BewareTheNiceOnes hunt you down and]] [[GoodIsNotSoft pound you into hamburger]]. Iron Tager is a decent man with a conscious, but he ''will'' stick with Kokone through thick and thin due to feeling indebted to her.
** How about the (largely) unaffiliated characters? Carl Clover is a serene, polite young boy who will murder you if his sister says so, if you have any information, and/or if he wants to test his new weapons on you. Bang Shishigami is a preacher of justice and righteousness, but he's a bit insensitive, heavy-handed and largely a JokeCharacter to everyone else. Taokaka is a ''moron'' who has a good heart and a boisterous attitude, but picks fights at random and gropes people for the hell of it. Litchi Faye-Ling is a motherly, compassionate young woman who retains her caring side, but her biggest flaw is her being a LoveMartyr. It gets to a point where the object of her affection, Arakune/Carmine, actually screams for her to keep away to save herself. Hakumen is an unflappable BadAss who is damn effective at leaving a trail of pain in his wake, and one of the few who can force ''Relius'' to bail from his mere presence. A KnightTemplar with a BadassCreed, he believes the only way to save the world from destruction is to burn this world to the ground and restart the world anew, as he believes ItIsBeyondSaving [[KnightTemplar and he is not open to alternatives whatsoever]]. Amane Nishiki is a man obsessed with youth, and he's taken a liking to Carl because of it. Nu-13 is an EmotionlessGirl who coldly targets everyone in her sight, switching into an AxCrazy YanDere when it involves Ragna. Really, it's incredibly hard to state for sure who's a true hero here.

* ''Manga/DGrayMan'' is a bit of an odd case, as while the protagonist is [[TheMessiah unquestionably a good guy]], the ChurchMilitant he works for displays a ''terrifying'' lack of reservations about doing anything necessary to stop the OmnicidalManiac they're up against. The more we learn about them, the worse the Black Order looks.

** While ''Slayers TRY'' (an anime season) initially sets GreyAndGrayMorality between the Golden Dragons (of the main ''Slayers'' world) and the ''Shinzoku'' of the [[LostUniverse Black Orb]] - they both want to save their own worlds by destroying the other - it ultimately devolves into this, as while the Black Orb ''Shinzoku'', while pragmatic, show sympathy to mortals, the Golden Dragons couldn't care less about them. [[spoiler:Also, late in the season, one of their own (Filia) finds out that the Golden Dragons themselves slaughtered the entire race of the BigBad, Valgaav.]]

* The bread and butter of ''{{Drakengard}}''. The protagonist is a bloodthirsty psychopath with a penchant for vengeance; your allies are a pedophile, an insane infertile child killer, an elitist bigot and religious fanatic, and a dragon with an unbridled hatred for all of humanity; your former "friend" goes nuts with jealousy and grief; and the most innocent character, your sister, wants to jump your bones and because of this she [[spoiler:kills herself]] sfter revealing that. This is all much less clear in the American version, where they greatly toned down these quirks, but they're still there... and to think, you're the ones trying to save the world. The rest of the world is trying to kill you. In the sequel ''Drakengard 2'', this is much less so.

* ''{{Exalted}}'', because they wanted any kind of Exalt to be an acceptable player character. Let's see: the Solars used to be the mind-raping fascist overlords of the First Age and were fond of creating and later destroying entire races, the Lunars tend towards the SocialDarwinist end of the scale, the Dragon-Bloods are ruthlessly militaristic tyrants, the Sidereals are {{Manipulative Bastard}}s, the Abyssals poison the world merely by existing, the Infernals have made deals with {{Eldritch Abomination}}s to screw up the world as part of a frankly insane plan, and the Alchemicals are the propaganda face of a totalitarian state modelled on ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour''. These guys, even the Infernals, are the ''Grey''. You don't want to know what the Black are like.
** There is a slight distinction in between the Exalted splats that are the Grey when they play ''to'' type, and the ones that are the Grey when they play ''against'' type. For example, while its entirely possible to have an antiheroic Abyssal or Infernal, the default Abyssal is a loyal servant of the Neverborn seeking to bring Oblivion to all that is, and the factory standard Infernal (DependingOnTheWriter) is a loyal servant of the Yozis seeking to free their hellish masters plunge Creation into an eternity of ultimate pain. It's the ''rebels'' of those two splats that are the grey.

* ''Series/OrphanBlack'': Sarah and Felix are morally dubious characters at best - Sarah gets involved with the clones so that she can steal Beht's money. The clones are willing to get their hands dirty to survive. On the other hand, they're up against one conspiracy that performed illegal human cloning experiments and another of religious zealots who want to kill them.

If there are 'true' heroes around along with the 'kinda bad' and 'very bad' characters described above, it's TheGoodTheBadAndTheEvil.

* ''Anything'' made by QuentinTarantino.

* ''Anything'' made by MartinScorsese when it involves the Mafia, the [[TheDeparted Irish Mafia]], or any criminal element whatsoever.

* ''PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' slowly turns white-as-snow Will and Elizabeth into lying, stealing, killing pirates, although all in the name of saving their skins from the undead and the corrupt. Jack Sparrow is a bullseye grey AntiHero who cares enough about freedom to free slaves (BackStory) and save his friends, but cares more about himself than anything. It seems to try to avert the trope by having the gray villains and harmless lackeys around. But then there's Beckett, the epitome of repressive order and the only person in the whole trilogy (except his Dragon, Mr. Mercer) you can properly hate, who [[KickTheDog kicks various dogs]] and doesn't stop for two movies.
* ''WhatEverHappenedToBabyJane'' looks like a straight case of black-and-white, with [[WhiteDwarfStarlet bitter, angry former child star]] Jane Hudson intimidating her more popular, crippled sister and feeding her rats for dinner... until the end, where it is revealed that [[spoiler:the accident which crippled Blanche was caused by Blanche herself as she was trying to kill ''Jane'', and not by Jane in a drunken bender.]] Notably, [[ColorCodedForYourConvenience Jane, the "villain", is blonde, and Blanche, whose name means "white", has black hair.]]

* ''{{Payback}}'' is all about an AntiVillain getting revenge on even worse people for setting him up. The cinematography emphasizes dark colors, cloudy skies, etc.

* ''TheMechanic'' is a good example with its KnightInSourArmor existentialist assassins as protagonists, and the ones who they kill.
* ''InTheLoop'' is ostensibly about the backroom sausage-making behind a war in [[strike:Iraq]] an unnamed Middle Eastern country, though the real focus is on [[ClusterFBomb epic]] [[CountryMatters language]]. Proponents of the war are depicted as clueless, cavalier bureaucrats with zero appreciation of the consequences of what they are doing. Meanwhile the opponents are shameless weasels mostly interested in milking it for political favors.
* Most Guy Ritchie crime films, especially as even the main characters/protagonists tend to also be crooks, usually matched up against other, worse ones. Not counting the mandatory {{Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain}}s, lets look at some characters from several of Ritchie's works:

* ''MadMen''. Due to the nature of the times, the men more so than the women. Most men tend to be lying cheating assholes, and the women either act this way too or they are ''screwed''.

** ''{{Dollhouse}}''. The show is all about a business that brainwashes people to act like other people and service the needs and wants of the business' clients (sometimes sex, sometimes other things). Most (but not all) of the brainwashed people "volunteered" for it, so YMMV on wheather or not this is wrong. The business sometimes uses the technology and brainwashed people for clearly good things (rescuing kidnapped people, trying to help an abused child grow up into a healthy adult etc.) and sometimes for clearly bad things (theft, ruining an innocent man's reputation etc.) In any case, they are never as bad as their enemies, which include The Ghost (a child molester) and [[CreateYourOwnVillain Alpha]] (a sadist who [[KnifeNut carves up people's faces with a large knife]] ForTheEvulz).
* As ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' is becoming more and more of a CrapsackWorld lately, it's only right that they should start to wallow in this too. Dean and John's [[DealWithTheDevil deals with the devil]] are seen more as selfish suicides than {{Heroic Sacrifice}}s, they now kill demons without any thought to the human host, John was a suicidally broken man who fucked up everything, Dean's annoying martyrdom, low self esteem and messed up death wish frustrates Sam and Bobby and Sam's willing to destroy everyone and everything that might hurt Dean. After all this, you start to get the impression that becoming evil might look like a much better deal.
** Listen to Castiel's speech to Dean about how every human is a work of art and thus all precious to God, and reconsider. When Uriel's disdain for humanity is answered by an icy cold "You're close to ''blasphemy''", you can't say that Good doesn't exist or that it doesn't care. It's just very ''outnumbered'' right now.

* ''CSIMiami'' has been guilty of this for years. The head of the lab, Horatio Caine, informed an unresisting pedophile that he was "resisting arrest," meaning he was about to get a serious beating. Horatio and his brother-in-law went to Brazil to kill the man responsible for his wife's murder. The instances of police brutality are too numerous to count, all excused by the idea that the victims are all bad guys and the 'good guys' needed information from them.
* ''TheThickOfIt'' and its film ''InTheLoop'' both have this view on the morality of humanity and the political workplace. Here, ''no'' character is without his or her flaws, and are all varying degrees of moronic, cowardly, backstabbing, manipulative, or just generally unpleasant bastards in general, all more concerned with keeping their jobs than with doing the right thing.
* OrphanBlack: Sarah and Felix are morally dubious characters at best - Sarah gets involved with the clones so that she can steal Beht's money. The clones are willing to get their hands dirty to survive. On the other hand, they're up against one conspiracy that performed illegal human cloning experiments and another of religious zealots who want to kill them.
* ''{{Profit}}'': However, the [[VillainProtagonist protagonist]], Jim Profit, might be the character with the blackest take on morality.

* The British miniseries ''{{Ultraviolet}}''. On one side is a cabal of vampires who plot to enslave humanity in order to save us from ourselves (thus eradicating their food supply). On the other is a shadowy government organization that answers to no one and follows a very end-justifies-the-means kind of program.

* ''SonsOfAnarchy''. The title biker gang is mostly composed of {{Sociopathic Hero}}es (except for Tig (PsychoForHire), Jax (AntiHero or AntiVillain depending on ones viewpoint) and Opie (TheWoobie). The cops are all hopelessly corrupt or psycho except for Hale, the KnightInSourArmor and Stahl, the KnightTemplar. And then there are the ''really'' nasty gangs.

* ''[[Series/BattlestarGalacticaReimagined Battlestar Galactica]]'' skirts this, particularly during the middle of the series, but for the most part is GrayAndGreyMorality instead. (Though when characters get too sympathetic to the Cylons, someone will usually point out that the Cylon's opening move in the war was to kill fifty billion people with a surprise attack.)
* ''{{Caprica}}'' is this. It plays with GrayAndGreyMorality but so far the various players are a fundamentalist monotheistic terrorist group, a racist and corrupt gilded society, a ruthless crime syndicate "family," and a corporate CEO who's willing to enslave another race (albiet one he believes has no free will to begin with) in order to save his personal fortunes.

* ''{{Intelligence}}''. The nicest character on the whole show runs a multi-million-dollar drug smuggling racket.

* {{Community}}. There's the study group who are often judgmental, self-righteous jerks, and then there's Chang, an insane psychotic attempted murderer, and Pierce, a racist, sexist, sociopathic bully whose prime goal in life is to make everyone's life a living hell.

* ''{{Series/BeingHuman}}'': Mitchell and Herrick were basically this every time they were fighting, but the final series kicks it up a notch. The only properly white character remaining is Alex. Hal is an Old One and when he reverts he makes Herrick look like an ineffectual wimp, and Tom has basically been turned into a weapon for destroying vampires by his adoptive father. When they start going at it, the only things making them seem like the 'good guys' is their friendship with Alex and the fact that their enemy is Satan himself, trapped in human form.

* ClassicalMythology rules this tropes. In contrast to the above, the gods aren't even contrasted with anything particularly terrible, they're just generally dicks who happen to be in charge (Zeus, fittingly, epitomised this, being a violent rapist and MagnificentBastard but also powerful enough to defeat all the other gods combined). Well, some were alright - but you never hear about them, because the Greeks generally considered any story that doesn't involve both sides of the conflict being colossal jerks to be one not worth telling.

** Though while everyone in ''PulpFiction'' is amoral, the only time it really kicks in is when Butch (a boxer running for his life) and Marsellus (the gangster who wants him killed) end up in a pawnshop... and the owner locks them in his basement, calls his partner to rape one, and it's heavily implied both would be beaten and\or killed if Butch didn't manage to break free.
** Greatest example being ''InglouriousBasterds''. One of the "good" guys is Bridget Von Hammersmark, a double agent working for the [[WorldWarTwo Allies]] who kills an unarmed and highly sympathetic German soldier in cold blood to stop her cover being blown ([[spoiler: unfortunately it is anyway because she forgot [[TooDumbToLive she left an autographed napkin at the scene of the crime]]]]). Of the major characters in the film she has the ''least'' controversial blood on her hands. You know your film has a morally gray cast when a Jew-murdering Nazi and a Jew who beats Nazis to death with a baseball bat while quoting baseball celebrities are the {{Ensemble Darkhorse}}s.

** ''ReservoirDogs'' is another example, with the exception of [[spoiler: Orange]] everyone of import is a criminal, but Mr. White and Mr. Pink draw distinctions between themselves (who try to avoid killing people if at all possible, but will if they must) and Mr. Blonde (who goes on a senseless killing spree during the heist)
* ''KillingZoe'' takes place in a world best described as [[QuentinTarantino Tarantino]] meets BretEastonEllis. From the co-writer of PulpFiction and director of TheRulesOfAttraction.
* Any film based on TheMafia, by necessity (this is the Mafia we're talking about, after all). This includes ''Film/TheGodfather'' series, ''{{Goodfellas}}'', ''TheDeparted'', etc.