Beware The Superman / Western Animation

• Justice League:
  • The episode "A Better World" deals with this trope, presenting the Well-Intentioned Extremist version of the League: the Justice Lords, who run an authoritarian earth free of crime, but likewise also empty of free speech or self-government. Bruce Timm states in the commentary that the episode was originally supposed to be a straight up "Crime Syndicate" story, which involved characters that are almost-Evil Twins-but-not-exactly, but fell in love with the idea of using actual alternate versions of the regular characters. He comments during the Batman vs Batman fight in the Bat Cave that the scene was specifically animated to not make it clear from visual clues who was talking, so either character could be saying either side of the argument. Ultimately, Justice League Batman is unable to respond when Justice Lord Batman points out that in this new world "no eight-year old boy will ever lose his parents because of some punk with a gun." This scene arose from conversations among the writers, who were trying to find a way for Batman to successfully respond when they realized that there was no verbal response; they had meant for League Batman to win the argument, but the fact of the matter was that, because of who the characters were, Lord Batman won instead. Justice League Batman does get his response later, though; after seeing the zeal of the Police State his counterpart helped create, he sarcastically mentions to Lord Batman: "They'd love it here. Mom and Dad. They'd be so proud of you." Justice Lord Batman is not pleased at this realization, prompting his Heel–Face Turn (or at least, willingness to rid his own universe of superpowered heroes). Perhaps the proper verbal response would be "I'm glad they're dead so they didn't have to live in this world", but there's no way Batman would be able to say those words.
  • The regular Justice League in the Unlimited incarnation, seeing the horrors the Lords have done, work to avert this trope by recruiting Green Arrow, a politically astute and strident Badass Normal to be the team's political conscience. Sure enough, he essentially saves the team's soul during the Cadmus affair, which revolved around this trope as it involved a secret government agency being set up to rival the League in the event it turned evil.
    Green Arrow: Hey, I'm the only guy in the room who doesn't have superpowers, and let me tell you: you guys scare me. What if you do decide to go down there, taking care of whoever you think is guilty? Who could stop you? Me?
  • The aforementioned "Crime Syndicate" story was the later basis for Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, where as planned the League is recruited by an alternate universe Good Counterpart of Lex Luthor to deal with the evil Syndicate which here are so powerful they are the de facto rulers of the world, bullying the President (Deathstroke!) and working on a bomb that can destroy the planet to hold the world hostage indefinitely (or as Owl Man chooses, to blow up every universe in existence). Animation and voice actors aside, its written in a way that it can easily fit into regular DCAU continuity, and implicitly serves as a bridge between the regular Justice League and Justice League Unlimited series, so the League had that hanging over their heads as well.
  • The Cadmus arc of Unlimited invoked this trope further, with Cadmus being reimagined as a covert government agency that exists to counter the League in the event they ever go rogue (which is what prompts Arrow's "you guys scare me" speech). That they are backed by Lex Luthor (and actually recruit supervillains to work for them) is neither surprising nor does their cause any favours, nor does all the disasters they inadvertently cause as a result of this crusade (such as creating, then accidently unleashing, Doomsday, as well as the Ax-Crazy Supergirl clone Galatea, or even indirectly helping Evil Sorceror Felix Faust take over the Underworld), basically showing that it's not the power but who wields it that matters.
    • The conversation between Amanda Waller and Batman in "The Doomsday Sanction" brings to a head the series' attitude towards this trope. After a number of run-ins with Cadmus, Batman does some digging and then confronts Waller after bypassing her house's heavy security to catch her in the shower.
      Batman: Whatever you think you're doing, if you present a threat to the world, the Justice League will take you down.
      Amanda Waller: If we present a threat? You've got a space station floating above our heads with a laser weapon pointing down. In another dimension, seven of you overthrew the government and assassinated the President! We're the good guys, protecting our country from a very real threat: you.
    • Lex, for that matter, is running for President during this arc, and he milks this trope for all its worth, most notably by tricking Superman and Captain Marvel into a very public and very destructive fight in order to make Superman look bad in "Clash", and later hijacking the laser the League attached to their Watchtower and using it on a city in order to frame them in "Flashpoint". The whole Justice Lord fiasco started when their-President Luthor murdered the Flash and seemed ready to start World War III (if that big red button on his desk was any indication) and regular-Luthor only ran for President just to make Superman and the League paranoid and ticked off — his true plan being to get superpowers for himself, though that ironically ends up working in a way he didn't expect when it is revealed that a copy of Brainiac had been living inside him since the days of Superman: The Animated Series. Once Luthor merges with Brainiac, the resulting fusion becomes dead-set on destroying the world and remaking the universe, once again showing that Luthor, if given the appropriate superpowers, can potentially be a bigger threat to humanity than the entire League combined.
• Another example is the Batman Beyond episode "The Call" — although not exclusively this, it is basically centered around the premise that Superman has lost it and is taking out Justice League members one by one. Although he doesn't give the theory any more credence than any of previous brainwashing or mind-game Superdickery Superman has gone through, Bruce Wayne does acknowledge the real possibility of the world's strongest man snapping from the strain of his responsibilities.
• Superman: The Animated Series:
  • Mala (an Expy of Ursa and Faora) and Jax-Ur (an Expy of General Zod, since Jax-Ur is a scientist in the comics) serve as Superman's evil counterparts.
    • In "Blasts from the Past", Superman discovers Mala in the Phantom Zone, and Braniac reveals that she and Jax-Ur were imprisoned in the Phantom Zone because they tried to take over Krypton a few years before its destruction but were stopped by Jor-El. Jax-Ur was given a life sentence, but since the court ruled Mala was Just Following Orders, she was given twenty years. Mala seems to have been rehabilitated, but she then steals the Phantom Zone projector to bring back Jax-Ur, and when they imprison Superman in the Phantom Zone, they use their powers to take over Earth. When Superman is let out thanks to Lois and Hamilton, they imprison Mala and Jax Ur once again.
    • In "Absolute Power", after they escape the Phantom Zone, they take over an inhabited planet, and show Superman they are benevolent rulers who have raised the natives' standard of living. Superman decides to leave them alone, until a member of a rebel group shows that Mala and Jax-Ur are building a fleet of starships to invade earth. They are only stopped because they were sucked into a black hole that was near the star system.
  • In "Brave New Metropolis", Lois Lane goes into an Alternate Timeline where, due to her death, Superman has become a benevolent dictator over the years. He and Lex Luthor rule the world side-by-side.
  • The 2-part finale "Legacy" deals with this in some detail; Superman is Brainwashed into becoming a minion of Darkseid, partly out of petty vengeance for his earlier defiance of him, and becomes The Dragon, his ultimate soldier who leads his armies to conquer the universe. Superman is eventually unleashed on Earth where, with the help of Lex Luthor, the army manages to capture and defeat Supes, at around the same time his brainwashing is removed; he is also rather annoyed to find out that the army is also holding Supergirl prisoner, after he had beat her up while under mind control. After freeing Supergirl, an enraged Superman has to threaten Emil Hamilton into giving her medical treatment, since they are both technically fugitives. It's this show of rage that actually leads to Hamilton joining Cadmus in Justice League Unlimited, as it was the first time he was actually afraid of Superman (there's nothing like seeing someone pissed off that their family has been hurt to convince you that person can never be trusted again). The episode ends with a number of characters being asked if they can ever trust Superman again.
  • An unproduced final season would have been entirely Beware the Superman. Superman, coming off his perceived betrayal of humanity, would have had to deal with people's mistrust and skepticism of his actions at the end of "Legacy".
• In My Adventures with Superman, after she's made aware of the multiverse, The Trickster Mr. Mxyzptlk shows Lois Lane several alternate realities where Superman went rogue and started massacring civilians in order to create drama in their relationship for his own amusement. Meanwhile, her father General Lane is antagonizing their Superman because of an incident twenty years prior where a mysterious Kryptonian implied to be General Zod massacred his comrades.
• The Bad Future shown in Danny Phantom has been driven to ruin by Dark Danny, a Fusion Dance between Danny Phantom and Vlad Plasmius. He has all of Vlad's evil as well as Danny's powers, allowing him to dominate humans and ghosts alike without fear of consequence.
• The reason Thundarr the Barbarian's After the End world has not had any resurgence of civilization in 2000 years is primarily because the wizards like having their petty little kingdoms, and knock down any attempt by the Muggles to organize or build.
• In the Darkwing Duck episode "Time and Punishment", Gosalyn accidentally travels to a Bad Future where DW, not realizing that she was in the time machine, suffered a breakdown over her disappearance which resulted in him becoming Darkwarrior Duck, a dictator who punishes people harshly for the smallest of "offenses" such as eating too much junk food. Even though he doesn't have superpowers, he's still pretty scary, even being savvier than he was before his dark transformation. Also, he has a tank and an army of robots, which helps.
• A more comedic example occurs in the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog episode, "Super Robotnik", where after gaining superpowers, Robotnik promptly uses them to steal loot from others, including candy from 4,822 babies.
• In the Captain Caveman segment of The Flintstone Kids, the hero started competing with a new hero called Perfect Man, a classic Flying Brick. Perfect Man actually seemed to be a much better crime fighter than Captain Caveman, so the older hero considered retiring. Unfortunately, once Perfect Man got rid of all the crime in Bedrock, he took things too far and started running the place, changing the rules the way he thought they should be, figuring that's the way they should be because, well, he was perfect.
• Discussed in the Transformers: Prime episode "Grill", with regards to Optimus Prime. Eventually defied: if Optimus Prime were capable of going down this road, he'd be fundamentally incapable of being Optimus Prime.
• The Avengers Assemble episode "Hyperion", featuring Marvel's notoriously despotic Superman Substitute, naturally explores this concept, as Hyperion attempts to take over Earth in order to "save" it.
• The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "A Royal Problem" brings this up with Princess Celestia and her hypothetical counterpart Daybreaker, who would be what Celestia would become if she decided that, as the most powerful pony in Equestria, she stopped caring about the dangers of their own power and the wellbeing of others and decided to whatever she wanted with nopony capable of stopping her. Thankfully averted since the real Celestia is far too idealistic to fall down that path.
• Invincible (2021):
  • Unlike the comics, this version of Omni-Man is a full-blown supervillain masquerading as the world's greatest hero. Using his publicity allows him to get away with genocide of both heroes and enemies of Earth, intentionally causing unnecessary strife and warmongering for Earth so his true allies, an all-conquering empire, can steamroll over the survivors. When his cover is finally blown, he goes on a mass-murdering spree using his own son as a living weapon to break him. Realizing that he has a shred of empathy left for his family still doesn't give him empathy for the humans he murdered for sport, and he just leaves his family and Earth to die.
  • Season 2 shows that in a lot of universes, Mark is an evil supervillain who has no problems with mass murder and that being haunted by visions of the various alternate Marks turned Angstrom Levy (who in various alternate universe was a personal victim of some sort) into a psychopath dedicated to killing Invincible, which even includes going after his mother Debbie (who according to him is also evil in multiple universes) as well as his infant half-brother Oliver.
• Teen Titans Go! takes Teen Titans (2003) and its themes of The Power of Friendship and Family of Choice, and gleefully twists them into Sadist Show about a bunch of amoral Heroic Comedic Sociopaths who destroy everything they touch, including each other; to the point that the show at times resembles a PG-Rated version of The Boys and Marshal Law.
• Ben 10:
  • The Alien Force episode "Above and Beyond" is a Mook Horror Show for the Plumber's Kids, where Ben himself is the monster hunting them down. They conclude they have no way of taking him down directly and opt to throw him out an airlock just to get rid of him, and even that didn't take. It turns out to be a stress test as part of their training, but Ben still proved he could be terrifying on the other side of the law.
  • The Omniverse two part episode "Its A Mad Mad Mad Ben World" deposits Ben in Mad Ben's universe. Whereas Mad Ben was previously an annoyance as part of a Quirky Mini Boss Squad of evil alternate Bens, this episode shows that he's managed to conquer the wasteland he lives in by virtue of merely being able to turn into Way Big and stomp all opposition flat.

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