History Main / HeroWithAnFInGood

* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'': Zuko yells "Why am I so bad at being good?" after he accidentally burns Toph, but he may not fit the trope. Zuko did waver between bad and good, but it was more a case of wavering between MyCountryRightOrWrong and DefectorFromDecadence than wavering between AntiVillain and AntiHero. Probably helps that he was pretty [[IneffectualSympatheticVillain ineffective]] as a villain too. In the episode "Zuko Alone", he fits the bill better than usual, though. He's just beginning to find himself in that episode and gets reluctantly drawn into a conflict with some corrupt Earth Kingdom soldiers that are abusing their position in a small village. He struggles with not wanting to get involved (and of course hiding that he is a Fire Bender), but in the end, saves the day. When he tells the Earth Bender EXACTLY WHO just beat his ass, turns sour when the townsfolk (including the little boy he just saved) no longer want anything to do with him after seeing his Fire Bending. On top of ''that'', the reason the boy was in trouble at all was that Zuko gave the child his own dagger as a parting gift and the boy threatened a guard with it.

* ''Series/Charmed1998'': Cole Turner. While, admittedly, he is the victim of double standards, he does have trouble doing good, even during the times he isn't being [[DesignatedMonkey treated unfairly]]. Often end up solving problems using violence.

* Elric Womanslayer from ''Literature/TheElricSaga'' wishes to turn his kingdom of Melnibonea and its cruel, hedonistic [[OurElvesAreDifferent inhuman inhabitants]] away from its indulgences and usher in a new age of Enlightenment, with Melnibonea becoming a byword for justice. And to his credit, Elric is idealistic and deeply concerned with morals (which he alone of his people understands - because he's the only one that [[{{Bookworm}} reads much]] beyond spell books, exotic art and whatever else a Melnibonean is interested in) plus he's one of a tiny handful of Melniboneans that find torture to be distasteful. Unfortunately, he's got the Melnibonean trait of being cruel when angered and he's very vengeful. While most Melniboneans are indolent, Elric is [[DidNotThinkThisThrough rash and has resultant lapses in judgement]] such as installing his cousin Yrkoon, who earlier tried to kill him and lusts after his own sister Cymoril (Elric's fiance), as regent while Elric goes to learn more about morality. Elric's issues make him such a poor hero, that soon after he's revealed to be an avatar of [[GuardianOfTheMultiverse the Eternal Champion]] and supposed to keep Chaos from wiping out the world - he fails and is reduced to just banishing Chaos and using an artifact that allows a new world to eventually be born. Sadly most other Eternal Champion avatars aren't much better.

* Elric Womanslayer from ''Literature/TheElricSaga'' wishes to turn his kingdom of Melnibonea and its cruel, hedonistic [[OurElvesAreDifferent inhuman inhabitants]] away from its indulgences and usher in a new age of Enlightenment, with Melnibonea becoming a byword for justice. And to his credit, Elric is idealistic and deeply concerned with morals (which he alone of his people understands - because he's the only one that [[{{Bookworm}} reads much]] beyond spell books, exotic art and whatever else a Melnibonean is interested in) plus he's one of tiny handful of Melniboneans that find torture to be distasteful. Unfortunately, he's got the Melnibonean trait of being cruel when angered and he's very vengeful. While most Melniboneans are indolent, Elric is [[DidNotThinkThisThrough rash and has resultant lapses in judgement]] such as installing his cousin Yrkoon, who earlier tried to kill him and lusts after his own sister Cymoril (Elric's fiance), as regent while Elric goes to learn more about morality. Elric's issues make him such a poor hero, that soon after he's revealed to be an avatar of [[GuardianOfTheMultiverse the Eternal Champion]] and supposed to keep Chaos from wiping out the world - he fails and is reduced to just banishing Chaos and using an artifact that allows a new world to eventually be born. Sadly most other Eternal Champion avatars aren't much better.

* Elric Womanslayer from ''Literature/TheElricSaga'' wishes to turn his kingdom of Melnibonea and its cruel, hedonistic [[OurElvesAreDifferent inhuman inhabitants]] away from its indulgences and usher in a new age of Enlightenment, with Melnibonea becoming a byword for justice. And to his credit, Elric is deeply concerned with morals (which he alone of his people actually understands - because he's the only one that [[{{Bookworm}}reads much]] beyond spell books, exotic art and whatever else a Melnibonean is interested in) and he's one of the only handful of Melniboneans that find torture to be distasteful. Unfortunately, he's got the Melnibonean trait of being cruel when angered and he's very vengeful. While most Melniboneans are indolent, Elric is [[DidNotThinkThisThrough rash and has resultant lapses in judgement]] such as installing his cousin Yrkoon, who earlier tried to kill him and lusts after his own sister Cymoril (Elric's fiance), as regent while Elric goes to learn more about morality. Elric's issues make him such a poor hero, that soon after he's revealed to be [[GuardianOfTheMultiverse the Eternal Champion]] and supposed to keep Chaos from wiping out the world - he fails and reduced to banishing Chaos and then using an artifact that allows a new world to eventually be born.

* Elric Womanslayer from ''Literature/TheElricSaga'' wishes to turn his kingdom of Melnibonea and its cruel, hedonistic [[OurElvesAreDifferent inhuman inhabitants]] away from its indulgences and usher in a new age of Enlightenment, with Melnibonea becoming a byword for justice. And to his credit, Elric is deeply concerned with morals (which he alone of his people actually understands - because he's the only one that [[{{Bookworm}}reads much]] beyond spell books, exotic art and whatever else a Melnibonean is interested in) and he's one of the only handful of Melniboneans that find torture to be distasteful. Unfortunately, he's got the Melnibonean trait of being cruel when angered and he's very vengeful. While most Melniboneans are indolent, Elric is [[DidNotThinkThisThrough rash and has resultant lapses in judgement]] such as installing his cousin Yrkoon, who earlier tried to kill him and lusts after his own sister Cymoril (Elric's fiance), as regent while Elric goes to learn more about morality. Elric's issues make him such a poor hero, that soon after he's revealed to be the Eternal Champion and supposed to protect the world from Chaos - he fails and reduced to banishing Chaos and then using an artifact that allows a new world to eventually be born.

* Elric Womanslayer from ''Literature/TheElricSaga'' wishes to turn his kingdom of Melnibonea and its cruel, hedonistic [[OurElvesAreDifferent inhuman inhabitants]]

* ''WesternAnimation/CareBears1980s'': When Beastly tries to join the care bears, they send him to their school so he can learn to be good. The teacher asks what to do upon seeing a bully picking on a little boy. Beastly responds that he would help the bully to shove the boy into a mud puddle. After the teacher declares that answer wrong, Beastly asks if it should be [[ComicallyMissingThePoint a water puddle instead]].

* The titular character of ''WebAnimation/DrBees'' interprets "heroism" to mean "releasing massive swarms of bees upon people." He's never met a problem he didn't try to resolve through large-influx-of-bees-based methods, including a family picnic, a crowded bank, and an office suffering the repercussions of International Bring A Shit-Ton Of Bees To Work Day. Despite this, he seems to be genuinely regarded as a respected hero, and is regularly called upon to face dastardly supervillains like [[VillainyFreeVillain The Comforter]].

* The Heroes with an F in Good have redeeming qualities that make part of them want to be heroes out of a desire to do good or the right thing, in other words a [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold Jerks With Hearts Of Gold]] rather than [[{{Jerkass}} Jerkasses]]. They may also be close to [[JerkassWoobie Jerkass Woobies]].

* PunchClockVillain: neither character type is inherently malevolent; villainy is just a job. However, the Hero with an F in Good usually hates this job, and does it because it is the only one that sufficiently pays the bills.

Allowing them entry into a SuperHero organization, etc. may cause serious problems for the group's reputation, cohesiveness, etc., so instead they sometimes become {{Flanderiz|ation}}ed into recurring [[IneffectualSympatheticVillain Ineffectual Sympathetic Villains]] who the heroes can still count on when the BigBad crosses the MoralEventHorizon, because EveryoneHasStandards.

** Half of this show's cast fits this to varying degrees, as even the protagonists are often TheMafia, a NobleDemon, a liquor bootlegger etc. Also note ''Durarara'''s entry as well. The author, Ryhogo Narita, is in love with this trope.
* ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'': Don Kanonji was a harmless version. He believed he was a role-model for children everywhere, a hero who made life bearable for children everywhere by showing there that there was someone in the world who stood up to the monsters that go bump in the night. And then he [[CharacterDevelopment learned]] the tactics he was using were actually [[NiceJobBreakingItHero creating the very monsters he thought he was fighting]].

** Danzo is an even worse example, being the guy who influenced Itachi; He's a WellIntentionedExtremist who's methods can be condensed into "If it's dangerous to the Leaf, destroy it" and "If it can be useful to me, force it under my control". Unsurprisingly, these coldhearted policies have given Konoha more enemies than allies, as basically every flashback involving Danzo shows that his actions are connected to the StartOfDarkness for such villains like Pain and Kabuto. And Danzo's definition of "Village" goes only as far as what he controls directly; everyone else is "Acceptable losses". When he goes to an international summit as substitute Hokage, he causes an incident getting caught trying to hypnotize the meeting moderator.
* The G-5 Marines in ''Manga/OnePiece'' are known for doing hideous things that on surface are hardly considered "good", but they have good hearts and they do things that they did to help the populace.

* Karl from ''ComicBook/MarvelAdventures: ComicBook/TheAvengers''. He used to be a MinionWithAnFInEvil, but reformed, meaning he's now more of a danger to the Avengers than he ever was before. Basically Karl is succesful at everything that's NOT what he's currently trying to accomplish, as exemplified by him nearly tearing the Avengers apart with a Hate Beam [[ViolationOfCommonSense thinking this would improve their teamwork]].
* ComicBook/{{SHIELD}} in general. They are supposed to be a super police force to respond to super human threats, but they regularly screw up, or make things worse, or were the cause of it from the beginning.

* ''ComicBook/TheSpectre'', God's Angel of Vengeance, has such a horrifically skewed sense of proportion and priorities that he needs to be kept bound to a morally upstanding human soul just to reach the level of GoodIsNotNice SociopathicHero. That's right, not only did he get an F in good, but God gave him a cheat sheet, and he's still only getting Cs and Ds. The [[Franchise/GreenLantern Hal Jordan]] version of the Spectre is a lot less vengeful, but makes up for it by being incompetent, such as the time he restored [[Franchise/TheFlash Wally West's]] secret identity by making everyone in the world forget who the Flash was. Including Wally.
* ComicBook/BoosterGold before he grew out of it. Aside from being big on corporate sponsorship, Booster once opened a Justice League themed casino using the entirety of the League's funds without the League's consent to use the funds or their endorsement. He also stole all the tech he uses to fight crime as well as the time machine he used to escape to the past. His partner in the casino venture, ComicBook/BlueBeetle, would fall into this category too, but he had a longer history of heroism and only got into this sort of trouble when Booster was around.
* During Marvel's event ''ComicBook/{{AXIS}}'', many characters get their morals and personality traits inverted, and in the process Carnage becomes this. He feels a desire to do good and help people, but he is TERRIBLE at it, and is still incredibly violent.

** Fred shows poor use of his powers; his astral projection is useless in confronting villains; Mary has to save him from robbers in Issue 1. He does use his powers to escape twice, but [[spoiler: he ends up being broken to pieces, but put back together by Mary in Issue 5, then broken permanently in Issue 11.]] However, Tina, Sue and Consuelo help him use his powers for surveillance effectively in Issue 11.

** Amelia recklessly uses magic once she gets to Crepe City in Issue 8. While it's effective on common criminals, Roadmeister, and in a fight against Mary, she [[spoiler: naively walks into Coco and Mary's trap in Issue 9, then uses her most powerful magic artifact as a death ray, killing Coco in cold blood, trying to kill Mary, wounding Paige, smashing Fred's body, and killing 11 homeless people and an actor researching being a hobo who get caught in the shoehorn factory collapse. Perhaps use your magic to bind Coco and Mary and turn them over to the police?]]
* This was a persistent problem with {{ComicBook/Magneto}}'s first HeelFaceTurn in the 1980s. THE BigBad of the entire franchise, [[MakeWayForTheNewVillains making way for the new villains]] by ''[[EnemyMine joining up with the heroes]]'', on a ''permanent basis''? Unprecedented in American Comic Books. That Big Bad going from a MagnificentBastard who had [[IncomingHam ham]] as a side dish with every appearance to a whimpering mess who [[ContemplateOurNavels couldn't make a decision to save his life]] and deferred to the team leader without even acting as a HypercompetentSidekick, but rather just another — or even an underpowered and unexperienced — member of the team? Not so good. Thankfully, his more recent HazyFeelTurn during the 2010s has been much better handled.

** Shouto Todoroki is a less obvious example, but also arguably a ''worse'' one. On top of being smug, cold, and distant, he's insistent on doing everything his way and brushes aside attempts to compromise or make friends. He also uses his powers to vent, causing property damage in the process, with no signs or remorse or reflection. It's telling when ''Bakugou'' of all people compares him to Two-Face, a outright super villain. This reaches its logical apex at the USJ incident when [[spoiler:he continues the fight Nomu despite it being clearly out of his league and refuses Izuku's attempts to extract him, to the point of outright attacking him. His actions cause Izuku to be severely injured, which the rest of the class blame on him, and gets him suspended on top of that. And when he gets back, he's [[NeverMyFault completely unapologetic]] about nearly getting Izuku killed and even embarrassed him by spreading the rumor that he's All Might's son -- which is something he just theorized by sheer InsaneTrollLogic]].
* In ''Fanfic/TheVigilanteBossAndHisFailedRetirementPlan'' this comes to bite Bakugo (again) in the ass even harder than in canon ''and'' the above example when he takes U.A.'s admission test, because the teachers in charge of supervising it notice that while he got a near-perfect Villain Point score, he has absolutely ''zero'' Rescue Points. It is then mentioned that ''everybody else'' who has ever scored high in the test obtained ''at least'' a single Rescue Point, even if accidentally, by stopping to help some fellow test student that was going to get hurt out of basic decency. This raises a red flag, because they now believe that Katsuki [[ItsAllAboutMe gives absolutely zero shits about the rest of the world if it's not directly affecting him]], so they decide to [[PullingTheThread do some additional background research]] and, once they find his history as a bully, [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome they refuse to enroll him because they fear he will be a disruptive student]].

* ''Literature/TheLostStars'', a spinoff of ''Literature/TheLostFleet'' series, gives us "Planetary CEO" turned President Gwen Iceni of the Midway star system. She led a successful coup d'etat against the brutally repressive [[OneNationUnderCopyright corporatist]] oligarchy known as the Syndicate Worlds in the first chapter of Volume 1, and then spent the rest of the book trying very hard to stop herself behaving like a brutally repressive oligarch out of sheer force of habit, and not always succeeding. Her character arc throughout the rest of the trilogy is about bringing that F up to a passing grade, and overcoming some of her trust issues in the process.
* ''Literature/TheOnceAndFutureKing'' describes Tristam as one of these. Basically, he's got the rough idea of the KnightInShiningArmor, but doesn't really understand ''why'' he should act like one -- particularly when sex is involved.

* The superhero team The Seven in ''Series/TheBoys2019''. Once in a blue moon they'll actually try to be heroes. However, they lack skill with their powers, pay little mind to collateral damage and Vought is very selective about which crimes they can prevent. [[spoiler:Notable examples include The Deep's attempt to save a dolphin, the barbaric mishandling of Flight 37, and Hughie's girlfriend Robin's (accidental) murder at the hands of the speedster A-Train.]]

** Spike from in seasons 5 and 6 frequently falls into this trope, often doing things not because it's right but because it's what Buffy would want.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': The First Doctor is this for most of the first season. He grows out of being the TokenEvilTeammate after his [[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E1AnUnearthlyChild first story]] (where he [[AlienAbduction abducts two schoolteachers]], dumps them in the Stone Age and tries to bash a man's brains out with a rock because he might slow him down) but even in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E2TheDaleks "The Daleks"]], where he takes a more heroic role and uses his brains to defeat a bunch of [[ScaryDogmaticAliens horrible racist tanks]], he deliberately sabotages his own TARDIS to persuade the teachers to explore a ruined city with him, and expects them to forgive him for it once he admits it. In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E6TheAztecs "The Aztecs"]], he does his best to save the other travellers from the results of Barbara's meddling but still gives a warrior a sleeping drug to use to cheat in a fight, only deciding this might have been wrong when he finds out the opponent is Ian. He negotiates peace between two warring races, ousts a corrupt politician and gets proper treatment for a victim of MindRape in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E7TheSensorites "The Sensorites"]], but still ends the story by attempting to dump Ian in the middle of nowhere just because Ian made a sarcastic comment about his driving skills. It's not really until [[Recap/DoctorWhoS2E2TheDalekInvasionOfEarth "The Dalek Invasion of Earth"]], when he declares himself "a protector of Earth" while yelling at a Dalek, that he graduates to hero status.

* [[DrJerk Dr. Cox]] of ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'' may be an insensitive egomaniac incapable of what perceiving what "being good" truly is, but he always, ''always'' has his patients' best interests in mind. At least when it comes to their health. He genuinely doesn't give a crap whether they like him or not.

* Captain Martin Walker, protagonist of ''VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine'', was sent in to Dubai six months after monster sandstorms wrecked the city to find out what happened to the 33rd Infantry Battalion, its commander Colonel Konrad, and the civilians they tried and failed to evacuate. Walker's orders are to simply find survivors, pull back and report in to his superiors, but when Walker blunders into a civil war between the rogue soldiers, he decides to get involved to try to fix things. He fails -- first Walker kills US soldiers in self-defense when they mistake him for a CIA operative inciting the civil war, then he uses banned white phosphorus mortars on a camp between him and his next objective ([[spoiler:inadvertently massacring civilians in the process]]), and when he decides to help the local (also possibly rogue) CIA team put an end to the conflict, [[spoiler:they trick him into destroying the city's water supply, dooming thousands to die of thirst]]. In short, everyone would have been better off if Walker had simply turned around after the game's first chapter.

* ''Webcomic/{{Roommates}}'': [[Film/{{Labyrinth}} Jareth]] is a RunningGag... when he succeeds by some miracle the [[VillainBallMagnet power of]] NarrativeCausality gets him. Just take a look at this lovely [[http://asherhyder.deviantart.com/art/Roommates-105-Congratulation-159654767 banner]]. To explain he has a quite [[TheFairFolk inhuman personality]] and if he didn't want to be a hero this badly he would make a quite terrifying villain. ("This must be like being gender confused just with good and evil.")

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': In "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS8E21TheOldManAndTheLisa The Old Man and the Lisa]]", [[RichesToRags after losing his fortune]], Mr. Burns unsuccessfully tried to be good. He tries his hand at recycling, and ends up using the plastic he recycled to overfish the nearby sea.

'''Bender:''' Wow, crime-fighting. Cool. You say you're a duo? Yeah duos are good. Of course sometimes they're a little short-handed. See ya. With two humans you'd think there'd be a robot in there... to balance things out. But, whatever. I have these three costumes you could use. But, I guess I'll just throw one away.\\

* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'': Zuko yells "Why am I so bad at being good?" after he accidentally burns Toph, but he may not fit the trope. Zuko did waver between bad and good, but it was more a case of wavering between MyCountryRightOrWrong and DefectorFromDecadence than wavering between AntiVillain and AntiHero. Probably helps that he was pretty [[IneffectualSympatheticVillain ineffective]] as a villain too. In the episode "Zuko Alone", he fits the bill better than usually, though. He's just beginning to find himself in that episode and gets reluctantly drawn into a conflict with some corrupt Earth Kingdom soldiers that are abusing their position in a small village. He struggles with not wanting to get involved (and of course hiding that he is a Fire Bender), but in the end, saves the day. When he tells the Earth Bender EXACTLY WHO just beat his ass, turns sour when the townsfolk (including the little boy he just saved) no longer want anything to do with him after seeing his Fire Bending. On top of ''that'', the reason the boy was in trouble at all was because Zuko gave the child his own dagger as a parting gift and the boy threatened a guard with it.

** Princess Luna turns out to be this. She is a genuinely sweet and nice pony, but she is thin-skinned and her aggressive awkwardness comes off as creepy or threatening. When she is rejected, she has a tendency to lash out with hordes of spiders and lightning storms, then desperately try to cover it by joking about [[ItMakesSenseInContext getting the spiders in the net.]] She later decides to embrace EvilIsCool and RuleOfScary by playing herself up as a fake, pretend villain. Because [[WesternAnimation/TheNightmareBeforeChristmas life's no fun without a good scare.]] In Luna's case, she is genuinely good at heart and doesn't have trouble ''doing'' things that are good, but there is the ''slight'' problem that (a) she used to be the setting's version of the devil, and (b) she is ''scarily'' powerful, to the point that the weather changes with her mood, her hooves cause the ground beneath her to crack, and if she forgets herself and ''uses her real voice'' it will send you flying, and ''that is'' when she is actually trying to be ''friendly.'' She has got a B+ in good and an F at reassuring the populace, until Twilight helps her with that.

* Cartman's alter ego The Coon in ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' is perfectly convinced he is fighting crime and making the world a better place, oblivious to the fact most of his acts of 'heroism' revolve completely around glorifying himself or harassing innocent people he mistakes for criminals (eg. attacking a "rapist" that was having a romantic moment with his girlfriend, or bullying HarmlessVillain Professor Chaos). Both of his appearances so far have culminated in him turning on another hero he believes is outshining him and more or less becoming the episode's villain in the process, still convinced he is the town's beloved hero.

** Also, Klump in "Klump's Lumps"; when allowed to stay with the apes after being fired by King K.Rool, He proves to be just as big a bungler when it comes to doing them good as he was helping K.Rool's schemes.

* Creator/CouerAlAran tends to write Team [=RWBY=] as this in his fics, particularly in non-comedic works, with the four of them often running on HeroCentricMorality and throwing themself at anything they think is bad without bringing it to the attention of the teachers or the authorities.

* Captain Martin Walker, protagonist of ''VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine'', was sent in to Dubai six months after monster sandstorms wrecked the city to find out what happened to the 33rd Infantry Battalion, its commander Colonel Konrad, and the civilians they tried and failed to evacuate. Walker's orders are to simply find survivors, pull back and report in to his superiors, but when Walker blunders into a civil war between the rogue soldiers, he decides to get involved to try to fix things. He fails -- first Walker kills US soldiers in self-defense when they mistake him for a CIA operative inciting the civil war, then he uses banned white phosphorus mortars on a camp between him and his next objective ([[spoiler:inadvertently massacring civilians in the process]]), and when he decides to help the local (also possibly rogue) CIA team put an end to the conflict, [[spoiler:Walker accidentally destroys the city's water supply, dooming thousands to die of thirst]]. In short, everyone would have been better off if Walker had simply turned around after the game's first chapter.

* ''Literature/TheLostStars'', a spinoff of ''Literature/TheLostFleet'' series, gives us "Planetary CEO" turned President Gwen Iceni of the Midway star system. She led a successful coup d'etat against the brutally repressive [[OneNationUnderCopyright corporatist]] oligarchy known as the Syndicate Worlds in the first chapter of Volume 1, and then spent the rest of the book trying very hard to stop herself behaving like a brutally repressive oligarch out of sheer force of habit, and not always succeeding.

* In the obscure children's book ''Simson and Samson'', Sir Simson looks like and does his best to be a classic heroic knight. He's not very good at it, generally wreaking so much incidental havoc that the peasantry desperately hopes he ''won't'' try to help them with their problems.

** In the comics, Illyria's road to heroism hits a few roadblocks. To prevent a demon from leeching off of Jeremy's energy, she dutifully punches a hole clean through Jeremy's chest. Ouch.

* Nagito Komaeda in ''VisualNovel/Danganronpa2GoodbyeDespair'' is this, as he's a WellIntentionedExtremist whose actions make him come across as more of a TokenEvilTeammate. He tries his hardest to be TheParagon but his [[BlueAndOrangeMorality insane]] MiseryBuildsCharacter ideology frequently causes him to play right into [[BigBad Monokuma]]'s hands. [[spoiler: In the very first case it's revealed that he attempted to murder the first victim but was beaten to it by the real killer who he manipulated into doing it, and he spends the entire rest of the game offering to help the others plan murders (which nobody takes him up on). Near the end of the game, he pulls a ThanatosGambit in the hopes of [[TakingYouWithMe killing everyone but the "traitor"]], but it's revealed that had his plan worked it would've led to the [[BigBad Junko AI]] [[GrandTheftMe taking over everyone's bodies]] and destroying the world ''again''.]]

* The titular character ''WesternAnimation/Megamind'' accidentally turns an ordinary cameraman named Hal Stewart into Titan so he can have a hero to fight. Unfortunately, what he didn't know was that Hal has a crush on his co-worker Roxanne Richie to almost stalker levels and he sees the powers as a way to finally be with her. When she justifiably tells him that they will never be together, he throws a temper tantrum and decides to become a villain instead. And when he finds out Megamind was the one who orchestrated everything, he tries to kill him.

* The titular character [[''WesternAnimation/Megamind'']] accidentally turns an ordinary cameraman named Hal Stewart into Titan so he can have a hero to fight. Unfortunately, what he didn't know was that Hal has a crush on his co-worker Roxanne Richie to almost stalker levels and he sees the powers as a way to finally be with her. When she justifiably tells him that they will never be together, he throws a temper tantrum and decides to become a villain instead. And when he finds out Megamind was the one who orchestrated everything, he tries to kill him.

* The titular character {{''WesternAnimation/Megamind''}} accidentally turns an ordinary cameraman named Hal Stewart into Titan so he can have a hero to fight. Unfortunately, what he didn't know was that Hal has a crush on his co-worker Roxanne Richie to almost stalker levels and he sees the powers as a way to finally be with her. When she justifiably tells him that they will never be together, he throws a temper tantrum and decides to become a villain instead. And when he finds out Megamind was the one who orchestrated everything, he tries to kill him.

* The titular character {{''WesternAnimation/Megamind''}} accidentally turns an ordinary cameraman named Hal Stewart into Titan so he can have a hero to fight. Unfortunately, what he didn't know was that Hal has a crush on his co-worker Roxanne Richie to almost stalker levels and he sees the powers as a way to finally be with her. When she justifiably tells him that they will never be together, he throws a temper tantrum and decides to become a villain instead.

** Itachi might not be what he appeared to be at the outset, but there's still the fact calling him "one of the good guys" is quite a stretch. [[spoiler: While Itachi killed the Uchiha family to prevent a devastating civil war (although wholesale genocide as a peacekeeping measure is rather fucked up, too) rather than simply as a way to test his own powers, he made some rather ''complicated'' decisions regarding sparing his little brother Sasuke; rather than simply kill him, Itachi decided to spare his life and try and make Sasuke hate him enough that he could commit SuicideByCop later to turn Sasuke into a hero and let him live free of the shadow-conflict that consumed their family. Unfortunately, he did this by inflicting '''horrific''' MindRape upon Sasuke on the night of the massacre and later on, emotionally crippling Sasuke for the rest of his life, and Itachi's eventual suicide at Sasuke's hands was implied to be just as much for Konoha's sake and his own self-loathing as it was out of any affection for Sasuke. Unsurprisingly, a lifetime conditioned into obsessive hatred for his brother to the exclusion of all else means Sasuke goes completely off the deep end once Itachi's gone and Tobi gives him a slanted account of Itachi's life, but Itachi turns out to have had a plan for this; using Sasuke's erstwhile best friend Naruto as the delivery system, if Sasuke failed to become the hero Itachi wanted him to be, Itachi left behind a posthumous genjutsu that would ''brainwash'' Sasuke into protecting Konoha with his dead best friend's mind-controlling eye.]] While he is depicted as a man who made many sacrifices and tough choices, [[spoiler: Itachi]] is still dangerously close to just being a ManipulativeBastard with an OmniscientMoralityLicence.
** When he was revived [[spoiler:via Edo Tensei]], he eventually acknowledged that he was wrong, and realized that the most he could do was hope Naruto would fix everything.

* Plastic Man in ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold''. Recently redeemed and enthusiastic about being a hero, but frequently exasperates Batman with his difficulties being competent and not stealing stuff.

* Captain Martin Walker, protagonist of ''VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine'', was sent in to Dubai six months after monster sandstorms wrecked the city to find out what happened to the 33rd Infantry Battalion, its commander Colonel Konrad, and the civilians they tried and failed to evacuate. Walker's orders are to simply find survivors, pull back and report in to his superiors, but when Walker blunders into a civil war between the rogue soldiers, he decides to get involved to try to fix things. He fails -- first Walker kills US soldiers in self-defense when they mistake him for a CIA operative inciting the civil war, then he uses banned white phosphorus mortars on a camp between him and his next objective ([[spoiler:inadvertently massacring civilians in the process]]), and when he decides to help the local CIA team put an end to the conflict, [[spoiler:Walker accidentally destroys the city's water supply, dooming thousands to die of thirst]]. In short, everyone would have been better off if Walker had simply turned around after the game's first chapter.

** Rachel's the most powerful example, but really, they all get this way after a while, particularly Marco and Jake. It's one of the running themes of the series -- and the great thing about a series that's 52 books long is that it happens so slowly and gradually that there's never really a moral event horizon. It just happens. One of the themes is that WarIsHell and you become less... ''you''... as time goes on, one IDidWhatIHadToDo moment at a time. Worse, (well, ''best'' in terms of writing, worst in terms of what it's like to live in that world) it's hard to say that any of the things they ended up doing were unnecessary.

Compare TheTeamWannabe and UnderlingWithAnFInPR. Contrast NominalHero.