History Main / ObliviouslyEvil

* ''WebAnimation/TheAmazingDigitalCircus'': Caine, the A.I. ringmaster of the titular virtual reality game is a VirtualRealityWarper who has more than a few screws loose and does very little as his job as MissionControl for the dangerous adventures he has the players be unwilling participants in. However, its more like he doesn't really understand humans and actually does his best to fufill the desires of the players, such as creating an exit door...but it leads to nowhere because he had no idea they wanted to exit ''the game itself'', not the area it takes place in.

** Speaking of which, Escargoon may be considered a case of [[SelectiveObliviousness Selective]] Obliviously Evil. Being far more [[HypercompetentSidekick intelligent]] than Dedede, Escargoon should realize that NME's true goal is to spread chaos across the galaxy in order to conquer, but is skeptical of Meta Knight's revelation near the end of the series. It's most likely that, due to serving [[BadBoss Dedede]] for years, he's grown to just accept and obey his orders and opinions without question. On one side, this decreases his chances of the king pummeling him, but it also keeps him ignorant of the bigger picture.

* One of the things that makes [[TheFundamentalist Judge Claude Frollo]] from ''WesternAnimation/{{The Hunchback of Notre Dame|Disney}}'' such a particularly vile Disney villain is this trope -- to quote [[TheStoryteller Clopin]], "he sees corruption everywhere ''except'' within", and boy does it show. In his EstablishingCharacterMoment, he murders an innocent woman and tries to drown her infant son [[DisproportionateRetribution because she resisted arrest and he's ugly respectively]], and only spares the boy when the Archdeacon guilt trips him into it. Later, he grows increasingly more lustful for the beautiful Romani woman Esmeralda, assaults her at least twice and later tries to ''[[IfICantHaveYou kill her]]'', all while insisting that ''he's'' not the one who's at fault and pinning all the blame on Esmeralda (who he sees as a wicked witch who had cast a spell on him) and ''God'' (for making him capable of succumbing to such temptations in the first place). All throughout the film, he never even once considers that he's in the wrong and genuinely seems to believe that he's acting by the will of God. Like the aforementioned Shou Tucker, Frollo is a good example of the fact that this trope can sometimes make a villain ''even worse''.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLEGOMovie'', [[spoiler:The Man Upstairs is a parent who simply wants his LEGO toys to be organized, and glues them together so his son doesn't play with them. He has no idea that they are actually sentient, similar to [[Westernanimation/ToyStory1 Sid]]]].

* In ''WesternAnimation/RockAndRule'', [[ManChild Zip]] is unaware that he's working for the bad guys until a baby show explains the difference between good and evil to him. [[BigBad Mok]] may also count with his moral relativism mindset.

* Joseph Sugarman, Bojack's grandfather and Beatrice's father, in ''WesternAnimation/BojackHorseman''. Despite all the cruel things he does to his wife and daughter (burning his daughter's doll in front of her since she had scarlet fever, lobotomizing his wife to stop her grief, forbidding Beatrice from eating ice cream), none of them are really done out of malice and are meant to reflect the very different parenting standards of the time. He did all these things to keep his family stable but without considering the emotional and long-term effects.

*** Several episodes (including but not limited to [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E9TheEmptyChild "The Empty Child"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E10TheDoctorDances "The Doctor Dances"]], "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E3TheCurseOfTheBlackSpot The Curse of the Black Spot]]", "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E10TheGirlWhoWaited The Girl Who Waited]]") feature medical equipment wreaking havoc by innocently trying to "cure" members of species they are unfamiliar or incompatible with. "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" adds to it by having that technology under the partial control of a lost four-year-old who's desperately searching for his mother.

* ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'': In [[Recap/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnitS18E19Conversion "Conversion"]], Lucas Hale rapes his (secretly gay) church member Ann Davenport. He genuinely believes this was "[[RapeAndSwitch curative intercourse]]", and that by doing so he saved her soul and has committed no crime. The detectives and ADA even lament how genuine his beliefs are, as it will make a conviction that much more difficult. [[spoiler:The reverend who ordered it is just as sincere and oblivious, and has ''trained'' more people to do this.]]
** The episode [[Recap/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnitS9E13Unorthodox "Unorthodox"]] involves a 14-year-old boy who's been raping younger kids, completely unaware of the harm he's inflicting. He's imitating what he's seen on TV and thinks that everything, including his victims' protests, is just part of a script; it just somehow doesn't click for him that what he's doing is hurting the other kids. He ends up being acquitted because he literally couldn't understand that what he did was wrong.
** Pedophiles as a whole, tend to come in two flavors. One of them is the sadistic kind, that likes raping and hurting children. The other type is like this, and sincerely believes that they are in love with their victim. For example: the one in [[Recap/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnitS4E6Angels "Angels"]], who is raping his stepson, thinks he's better than a sadistic pedophile; and the one in [[Recap/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnitS4E15Pandora "Pandora"]], raping his own daughter, seems genuinely indignant when he's accused of abusing his daughter, saying he loves her in way the police can't even imagine. The police, however, have no sympathy for this; at one point, Stabler even suggests that this kind of pedophile is even worse than the first kind if they really can't understand why sex with a child is wrong.
** The appropriately namely episode [[Recap/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnitS17E12AMisunderstanding "A Misunderstanding"]] also features this. The case centers around a rape case with two teenagers. The boy seems genuinely shocked that she's accusing him of rape, and insists that they had consensual sex. The episode doesn't really dispute the idea that he didn't ''intend'' to harm her, but, as Benson explains to Dodds, it doesn't matter: he may not have meant to hurt her, but if the girl did not consent and he did it anyway, then it was rape no matter what his intentions.

*** The Nomad probe in episode [[Recap/StarTrekS2E3TheChangeling "The Changeling"]] has no concept of right or wrong, only perfection and imperfection.

* After ''VisualNovel/DokiDokiLiteratureClub'' [[DisguisedHorrorStory turns creepy]], it's eventually revealed that those events were influenced by [[WalkingSpoiler someone]] who didn't think they were doing anything wrong. Unfortunately, it's impossible to say anything much about that without spoiling a major late-game PlotTwist. [[spoiler: Monika, one of the characters but one who doesn't have a romance path like the others, has gained MediumAwareness after a period when she'd already been feeling the world was terribly unreal. She's obsessed with winning the player's love because they are a real person. In the process, she has stopped seeing the other characters as real, and when her increasingly intrusive and clumsy attempts to manipulate the game to get the player for herself end up [[MindRape mindraping]] them, it doesn't really matter to her. (Perhaps both because she doesn't ''think'' they're real, and none of it ''feels'' real to her either. Her reaction to seeing one of the most horrific scenes in the game, which she accidentally caused, is flat.) You could actually debate how right this is, since from this side of the [[BreakingTheFourthWall Fourth Wall]] none of them ''are'' real... but if Monika can feel pain herself, why would it be right for her to hurt others who only visibly differ from her in lacking MediumAwareness and RippleEffectProofMemory? She also doesn't realise she's creating a horrific experience for the player, who she does care about, since she knows the player knows it's a game too. She only understands this all once the player figures out the only possible and rather drastic way to communicate their reaction to her when the game's interface doesn't really allow it.]]
--> [[spoiler: "It's not like I could ever actually kill a person... Just the thought of it makes me shiver. But come on... everyone's killed people in games before."]]

* The Lepodopterist in [[Creator/VanBeurenStudios "Molly Moo Cow and the Butterflies"]] He's just a giddy butterfly catcher who does it as a hobby, and is too ignorant to realize the feelings of the bugs he catches. Molly, of course, will not let this stand.

* ''WesternAnimation/ThomasAndFriends'': In [[Recap/ThomasAndFriendsS23E1FreeTheRoads "Free the Roads"]], Bulgy the Double-Decker Bus believes that buses are better than trains, and he has an ImagineSpot depicting him as a superhero, when he's far from heroic in actuality, making [[FantasticRacism rude remarks about engines and railways,]] and trying to cheat them out of their passengers. In addition, his fantasy portrays Percy, one of Sodor's nicest engines, as a villain.

** [[MadScientist Shou Tucker]] is so [[LackOfEmpathy devoid of empathy]] that [[EvilCannotComprehendGoo he did not expect to anger the Elric brothers]] when he proudly showed them his chimera [[spoiler:he created by combining his own daughter and her pet dog]] and revealed that [[spoiler:he did the same with his wife two years prior, turning all three into inhuman abominations in constant pain]], [[ItsAllAboutMe convinced that any other alchemist would have done the same]] [[ForScience in the name of science]]. In fact, not only did he think that what he did was ''acceptable'', [[EntitledBastard he expected to be]] ''[[EntitledBastard rewarded]]'' [[EntitledBastard for it]]. A rare case where this trope does ''not'' make a villain more sympathetic or tragic -- if anything, it makes him ''worse'', because [[KnightTemplar he refuses to own up to what he did]] and even goes so far as to [[NeverMyFault whine about how "no one understands him"]] when he gets punished instead of rewarded. [[HateSink There's a reason this guy is one of the most reviled characters in the series]].

** [[MadScientist Shou Tucker]] is so [[LackOfEmpathy devoid of empathy]] that he did not expect to anger the Elric brothers when he proudly showed them his chimera [[spoiler:he created by combining his own daughter and her pet dog]] and revealed that [[spoiler:he did the same with his wife two years prior, turning all three into inhuman abominations in constant pain]], [[ItsAllAboutMe convinced that any other alchemist would have done the same]] [[ForScience in the name of science]]. In fact, not only did he think that what he did was ''acceptable'', [[EntitledBastard he expected to be]] ''[[EntitledBastard rewarded]]'' [[EntitledBastard for it]]. A rare case where this trope does ''not'' make a villain more sympathetic or tragic -- if anything, it makes him ''worse'', because [[KnightTemplar he refuses to own up to what he did]] and even goes so far as to [[NeverMyFault whine about how "no one understands him"]] when he gets punished instead of rewarded. [[HateSink There's a reason this guy is one of the most reviled characters in the series]].

* ''WesternAnimation/TheGhostAndMollyMcGee'' has Andrea Davenport, the popular rich girl at Molly's school. Outside her debut episode, where she's deliberately antagonistic towards Molly over [[BerserkButton the mispronunciation of her name]], every other instance of her causing conflict happens because she's too self-absorbed at the moment to notice how her actions are effecting others. When other characters can get her to actually realize there's a problem, [[LovableAlphaBitch she's always apologetic and happy to help with the solution]].

* ''WesternAnimation/TheGhostAndMollyMcGee'' has Andrea Davenport, the popular rich girl at Molly's school. Outside her debut episode, where she's deliberately antagonistic towards Molly over [[BerserkButton the mispronunciation of her name]], every other appearance has her be an oblivious obstacle to Molly's day -- either because she's too self-centered to realize the consequences of her actions or she inadvertently got involved in supernatural hijinks and is none-the-wiser to the chaos she's spreading as a result. This causes Molly to see Andrea as a SitcomArchnemesis and go out of her way to interact with the girl whenever she feels slighted... which results in Andrea believing that they're VitriolicBestBuds, much to Molly's shock at the end of the first season.

* Sasha Waybright from ''WesternAnimation/{{Amphibia}}'' is ''really'' not a good person, but she'd be shocked and offended to hear you say it. She's completely convinced that she knows best, and everyone who doesn't follow her lead is an idiot or an obstacle. Between being a complete ControlFreak, totally [[ItsAllAboutMe self-centered]], and a ManipulativeBitch, she is, by any objective metric, a ''horrible'' friend, and yet, she actually ''does'' care about Anne and Marcy, and sees her bullying behavior as harmless fun, "protecting" them, or encouraging them to live a little. [[spoiler:Anne [[GrewASpine grows a spine]] and calls her on it, and while she does [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone show some regret]], she refuses to acknowledge her faults and goes full RedemptionRejection instead. It's not until the third episode of Season 3, "Turning Point" that Sasha [[HeelRealization finally realizes just horrible she was as a friend and starts working to become a better person]].]]

* ''Fanfic/StarWarsVsWarhammer40K'': The Imperials are InvadingRefugees who have launched a campaign of invasion, occupation and outright genocide across a swathe of the ''Star Wars'' galaxy, with their first "colony", a conquered Neutral city-world named Axum, having actual ''death camps'' set up to make it easier to systematically murder any native Axumites who don't pass as "human" in the eyes of the Imperials. The Imperials feel ''betrayed'' that Axum's human population immediately rebels against them at the first sign of hope, believing themselves as the one and only true saviors of humanity and refusing to accept that humans in this galaxy don't '''need''' salvation and certainly not the ''Imperial'' definition of salvation.