Follow TV Tropes

Following

Hypocrite / Comic Books

Go To

The following have their own pages:


Other Comic Books

  • 2000 AD:
    • Judge Dredd: Dredd himself, in an atypically dramatic fashion. Dredd wants to be, and is held up as, the foremost defender of the Justice system, but Dredd is well aware that the system is so self-contradictory, it is impossible to defend one part of it without either trampling on another part or defending the indefensible.
    • Torquemada from Nemesis the Warlock runs an empire where he encourages genocidal hatred of aliens, but he uses alien life energies to keep himself alive.
  • In a Archie comic, Jughead claims Veronica "made a big issue out of nothing" when Archie was late; then he yells at the pizza guy for being late.
  • Minor example: In a Beetle Bailey strip in November 2013, Sarge tells Cookie he should wear a helmet because they're in a combat zone, saying so while not wearing one himself.
  • Big Nate: Nate's father Marty is constantly trying to get Nate to eat healthier snacks instead of junk food like Cheez Doodles. However, Marty himself rarely, if ever, eats it, and has quite a problem with junk food himself. He also objects to the sexually-suggestive comic Nate reads, Femme Fatality, despite being shown on numerous occasions that he's a Dirty Old Man, even reading the comics himself.
  • Jamie Schaffer, the muscle of the Chaos Campus cast, has enormous breasts... however, they're not natural. She puts on a facade of being deep and "real", compared to her sorority girl comrades, but she's actually more shallow and vain than them and got, quote, "larger and larger breast implants" over the years to compensate for her small height. She's actually described in her bio as "Ripley with silicone implants".
  • Herbie is not fond of fat people or people with glasses. Needless to say, Herbie is profoundly fat and always wears a pair of round-rimmed glasses.
  • In Holy Terror, the Fixer despises the terrorists for their lack of concern for their own comrades and innocent lives... right before announcing his intent on killing them. In fact, a lot of his actions are just as gruesome as theirs.
  • In Maus, Art Spiegelman's signature work about his father's experiences during The Holocaust, there are some examples:
    • The main character, Vladek, is occasionally shown to be one. He accuses his second wife of being a Gold Digger, but it's implied that he originally pursued his first wife because she was from a wealthy family. Art also points out that Vladek's racism toward black people isn't so different from how anti-semites regard Jews.
    • Yidl, a Jewish kapo in Auschwitz and a self-declared communist scolds Vladek for having been an industrialist who exploited workers before the war. But he uses his position of power to extort food from the prisoners under his supervision.
  • Mélusine: The village pastor trying to burn Mélusine for witchcraft has sometimes recourse to anti-witch tricks that can sound very similar to standard sorcery at a glance. This has backfired on him at least once, with the superstitious villagers tying him up at the stake instead of Mélusine.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW): "Wings over Yakyakistan" (issues 55-56) has Dragon Lord Ember complain about how hard it's been for her to get the ponies to stop seeing dragons as mindless warmongering savages — right after leading a brutal attack on Yakyakistan over a perceived violation of a "sacred bond" between yaks and dragons (which turns out to be Pinkie Pie's title of "Honorary Yak"). Ember is initially reluctant to even bother explaining why she's attacking the yaks seemingly out of nowhere, and it is only after Spike points out her blatant hypocrisy that she is willing to attempt a peaceful resolution.
    Spike: If you don't like negative generalizations being made about you... STOP ACTING EXACTLY LIKE THEY EXPECT YOU TO!
  • Linus becomes a hypocrite in one arc of Peanuts strips where he and Lucy's mother takes the television away because they fight over it so much. Linus tells his very upset sister to find something else to amuse herself, like read books or listen to the radio, when in truth, he's sneaking over to Snoopy's house to watch TV.
  • Rick and Morty (Oni):
    • Jerry proves to be a very good gambler, causing him to receive the interest of a powerful mob family who decides to follow his system. Rick turns Jerry in for gambling fraud, resulting in his hands being cut off, and on the way home, Rick calls Jerry out not only for cheating (which he didn’t) but also for gambling in the first place. However, it turns out that by turning Jerry in, Rick not only received reward money, but all of Jerry’s winnings as well. He'd also already fixed the game.
      Rick: Well, yeah, MUTHAF*CKAAAAZZ. You don’t think the old Rickster’s gonna get his beak wet?!
      Jerry: But after all that about my…
      Rick: The difference between you and me, Jerry —- aside from the ability to comb my hair —- is “planning”. I make my own luck.
    • Beth has a lot of issues from Rick abandoning her during her childhood, resulting in her attempts to get him to stick around even though his presence damages the family. Yet when Mr. Hapsburg’s son shuts down the company specifically because his father did the same thing to him, she tries to get him to reconsider, telling him that St. Equis Hospital is a family and while they do put in a lot of hours and there are sacrifices, they save lives. This line says it best:
      Beth: Mr. Hapsburg, I have sympathy for you too. I know what it’s like to come from a broken family—my dad was gone for over twenty years. But I also know we chose our actions and our actions are who we are. I chose to be the type of person who kept things alive, not to shut them down.
  • Scott Pilgrim: This is lampshaded a few times in regards to Ramona Flowers, the titular protagonist's Love Interest. Ramona regularly gets angry at Scott for minor transgressions while she has either done or is doing worse. For example, she's a bit miffed at Scott for spending a platonic evening with Lisa, even though that same evening, Ramona was hanging out (and making out a little) with one of her exes (granted, it was only because of said ex sticking those ideas in her head in the first place.) She's angry when Scott goes inside her head, even though she regularly has fun teasing him when she goes inside his head. And she freaks out about Scott dating her before breaking things off with Knives, even though she cheated on several of her exes. She also is a clearer example of Never My Fault, blaming the Evil Exes for all of the troubles that she's experienced in life, while completely overlooking her own role in creating them. When compared to Scott, she comes off more as the Straw Hypocrite of the two, while Scott, though flawed himself, is more Innocently Insensitive.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
    • Sally has been a princess for an incredible amount of time and never just ascends to title of Queen. Contrary to all the obligations that goes with it nothing says she can't be a queen but lead the Freedom Fighters — her father was king and led an army into battle. She also never steps up and challenges her father but instead chooses to whine that his choices are unfair instead of calling him out and talking to him like an adult but as his little girl.
    • Knuckles often calls Sonic obnoxious and egotistical, but Knuckles himself is no easier to deal with. His entire training as guardian basically made him an antisocial hot-head who sees everyone, even children, as enemies and always resorts to his fists than to reason. That being said, he's miles better than the rest of his family as he actually tries to help everyone.
      • On the subject of Knuckles' family: The earliest Guardian was Edmund, whose brother turned evil after an accident caused him to absorb a massive amount of Chaos Energy, named himself Enerjak after an ancient evil, and conquered his people before he was buried alive in his own fortress. Edmund wanted his people to refrain from excess technology to prevent a repeat of this, something that not all echidnas agreed with. In fact one reader has noticed that Edmund considered adopting a persona of his own to control his people. Further, despite Edmund's desires regarding excess technology, his descendants managed to get the best technology the echidnas had for their use.
    • Antoine accuses Sonic of being egocentric and not playing well with others. There is some truth to this, but Antoine isn't any better; He himself had an ego for a time and in all honesty Sonic has earned the right to brag about himself, considering he runs head first into battle against tyrants that put him as number 1 on their shit list and never backs down or is intimidated. Antoine can only dream to get that far.
    • Geoffrey is the worst among them. He lost both his parents which made him easy to manipulate by Naugus, but here's the kicker...SO HAS EVERYONE ELSE. He's not the only person to lose loved ones. Sonic has had the displeasure of fighting his and other peoples' loved ones and having to break terrible news to people but he learns to move on as there are more important things to worry about. That's impressive considering that in one of his jaunts into alternate dimensions he had to kill that world's version of his own father. Another comes in as Geoffrey is honestly very insecure and has issues with envy. He never fully gets over his jealousy of Sonic's love-life with Sally and successes. This started when Sonic was teenager and he was a grown man and to this day despite being married and having a life he still has some hate towards Sonic.
      • Possibly the best example is in Endgame: Despite personally knowing about Robotnik's Auto Automatons, robots that can perfectly imitate people, he still believes that Sonic killed Sally until Dulcy confirms that Sonic's been framed, stating that dragons can sense truth. Throw in his jealousy, and Geoffrey just inexplicably seems to hate Sonic so much that all he needs is an excuse.
      • Ixis Naugus of all people calls him out on this in Universe #43. When he discovers that Naugus intends to brainwash the Council so he could have absolute power over them, Geoffrey balks at doing that, stating that while some lines need to be crossed to make change, Naugus is going too far. Naugus turns Geoffrey's words back on him, retorting that the skunk has no room to lecture on morality considering he's spent his entire life committing treachery by serving him in secret.
    • Fiona Fox tells Tails that he can't count on or trust anyone when she betrays the Freedom Fighters in issue 172. Later when she returns with the Suppression Squad who later betray Scourge, she stays loyal to him, something which Sonic calls her out on after she goes off and state how she won't trust or count on anyone. Sonic's words cause her to break into tears and deny the whole thing, which he obviously does not buy. Even after Scourge goes to jail, she gets the Destructix and breaks him out, almost saying that she loves him. It's made pretty clear that Fiona can't follow her own advice.
    • When he joined the Council of Acorn, Hamlin Pig was every bit an Obstructive Bureaucrat, constantly getting on Sonic and the Freedom Fighters for violating protocol and disrespecting their authority, but when King Naugus is late to a meetingnote , Hamlin gets impatient and suggests they just get on with ratifying the new constitution without him, itself a violation of protocol because policy required a majority of the council and the king. Dylan Porcupine even lampshades it, remarking that Hamlin always complains when Sonic and anyone else violates protocol, but seems to have no problem doing it himself.
  • Top 10: Played for Drama. After busting a ring of pedophiles who have been preying on their sidekicks, Captain Traynor has something of a Heroic BSoD. He is a former sidekick who started dating "his" hero when he was sixteen (and still underage) and has been Happily Married to said hero for nearly half a century. He wonders whether he has spent his life in A Match Made in Stockholm, or worse, has denied the sidekicks of the people he just busted the same kind of happy life he has had because he arbitrarily labeled their relationships as illegal, exploitative and sick, and his as perfectly fine. He eventually decides that there are enough differences in the situations that what he did was right, and that his marriage is the real thing, but not without a lot of soul-searching.
  • In The Transformers Megaseries, Megatron comes to Earth to punish Starscream for deviating from Decepticon infiltration protocols, which could have exposed the Decepticons’ existence to humanity. Yet when the local Autobots thwart Megatron’s attempt to start a war between Russia and Brasnya, Megatron gets so mad that he throws protocol out the window and calls in Sixshot, a highly conspicuous Person of Mass Destruction whose job entails destroying planets, to exterminate the Autobots.
  • Zipi y Zape: Don Pantuflo.
    • Just to add some examples: one story features him telling Zipi and Zape off because he thought they were smoking cigarettes (they weren't), explaining how unhealthy they are. He doesn't mind that he's almost always smoking himself.
    • Don Pantuflo often tells Zipi and Zape off because of their bad marks on school, telling them he always got A. One story, however, revealed he never achieved more than a B. Although whether this is canonical is questionable, the fact is that Pantuflo is always depicted as having trouble at the time of helping Zipi and Zape with their homework.

Top