Knight Templar / Western Animation

• The Big Bad in the Season 3 finale of Archer is determined to colonize Mars, even if that means kidnapping, slavery, and hijacking because he thinks it's the only way to save humanity.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Jet in his first appearance, as he was willing to wipe out a village just to get back at the Fire Nation. He got better.
  • Fire Lord Sozin could be considered this because he wanted to conquer the other nations for their own good.
  • Wan Shi Tong, the Spirit of the Library, only allows Team Avatar into his library if they swear that they are only seeking knowledge for knowledge's sake, not for military purposes. Horror ensues when he attempts to trap them in his library eternally after discovering that they've broken their word.
• The Squadron Supreme from Avengers Assemble. They're determined to create a world free from crime, even if it means establishing a police state, vaporizing New York, and blowing up worlds that reject their rule.
• Megatron from Beast Machines willed the establishment of total order by eradicating free will. After conquering Cybertron by disabling the Transformer population, he extracted every single one of their sparks and stored them away. He intended to absorb every spark into his consciousness to create a perfect, technologically precise entity.
• Ben 10:
  • The Forever Knights in the Ben 10 franchise are revealed to be this in Ben 10: Ultimate Alien. Their founder Saint George fought an evil alien "dragon" from another dimension back in the Middle Ages. The Knights assume that all aliens are just as bad as the one George fought ages ago, and act accordingly.
  • Ben Tennyson himself almost becomes this after getting the Ascalon Sword from George and Dagon's powers from Vilgax, Vilgax pointing out he could eradicate evil by his mere will now. He is eventually stopped from doing it by Julie.
• Von Goosewing on Count Duckula can't get it into his head that Duckula's an exception to the bloodthirsty vampire norm. Nor does he want to.
• The Darkwing Duck episode "Time and Punishment" has Gosalyn get stuck on Quackerjack's Time Top and transported into a Bad Future, where in the years she had been absent Darkwing went through a period of Heroic BSoD after thinking Gosalyn had run away, then eventually snapped out of it when he decided to devote himself entirely to crimefighting. He took it way too far, becoming a tyrant named Darkwarrior Duck who had run every supervillain out of St. Canard and then started punishing people severely for "crimes" such as staying out too late and eating too much junk food.
• In Futurama, a robotic Santa Claus has been programmed to determine who is naughty and who is nice. Unfortunately, his standards for nice are set too high — everyone except Dr. Zoidberg is considered naughty, and to make matters worse, he ain't limited to putting coal in your stocking. He's more likely to turn you to charcoal instead.
• Gargoyles:
  • Demona thinks that she's on a just crusade to destroy the human race because it is Always Chaotic Evil and dangerous. Nearly everyone else, though, can see that Demona's an incredibly damaged individual lashing out at anyone who gets close enough to her.
  • Goliath, when he used the Eye of Odin to protect Elisa and Angela. The Eye amplifies the strongest personality traits of any mortal that uses its powers without protection; quickly warping Goliath's normal protective guardian nature into an obsession with controlling those he cared for and destroying anything that could possibly threaten them. When they complained that the eye was making him crazy, he got pissed. Once it was removed, he reverted back to normal and was horrified at how far he almost went.
  • The Hunters and the Quarrymen may have started out as He Who Fights Monsters, but they turned into genocidal villains. It's understandable if they want to kill Demona, who's trying to wipe out humanity, but they want to kill all the innocent gargoyles, too. To give you an idea of just how bad this is, in the episode that introduced the Hunters, one of them, presumably a rookie, questioned the Hunters' desire to kill all Gargoyles, stating that Demona was their group's original target. One of the other Hunters grabs him by the throat and threatens to kill him for even suggesting that any Gargoyle deserves to live. Those two hunters? They're brothers.
  • And back on the Quarrymen, gargoyles weren't their only victims. They brutally attacked a group of peaceful gargoyle activists and sent what's left of it to the emergency room. Elisa Maza was targeted twice by the Quarrymen leader, Jon Castaway (identity changed from his old Hunter persona) for being a "traitor to humanity".
• In Hazbin Hotel, the angels are Tautological Templars who believe that since they're the embodiment of goodness they're incapable of doing wrong, and the denizens of Hell are all deserving of painful death at their hands regardless of how minor their crimes were in life. Original Man Adam takes sadistic pleasure in performing genocide of his fellow former humans, even though he was a sinner in life himself.
• Justice League:
  • The two-part adventure "A Better World" features the League's Mirror Universe equivalents, the Well Intentioned Extremists called the Justice Lords, who decided to end crime by ruling their world as dictators. Interestingly, in this version, the straw that broke the camel's back was Superman killing Luthor, in response to Luthor's murder of the Flash. The aftermath of this encounter is seen in the first two seasons of Justice League Unlimited.
  • In the Unlimited episode "Patriot Act", General Wade Eiling takes a Super Serum in order to take out Superman, as he feels metahumans, aliens, and any other powered being on Earth is a threat to humanity. Unfortunately, Supes is off planet and confronts a group of leaguers that technically have no powers: Stargirl, STRIPE, Shining Knight, Vigilante, Green Arrow, and later the Crimson Avenger and Speedy.
• The Legend of Korra:
  • The Equalists. Their quest for equality for non-benders is realized through terrorism and what amounts to soul rape.
  • Tarrlok also counts, responding to the Equalist threat by setting curfews against non-benders and arresting any who complain. People are also arrested simply for having associated with Equalists.
    • Possibly subverted. Tarrlok indicated that his main goal in enacting the curfews was to play the Equalist-Republic City conflict for more personal power.
  • Unalaq from Book 2 of Korra is a religious fanatic that seeks to unite mankind with the spirits. By fusing with the God of Evil, that is.
  • Book 3 has the Red Lotus, who are a Renegade Splinter Faction of the White Lotus who seek to destroy all governments to create a world of disorder and spirituality.
  • Kuvira from Book 4 seeks to reunite the Earth Kingdom after the Red Lotus threw it into chaos by killing the Earth Queen. Her primary method is to bully state governors into sacrificing their resources and swearing loyalty to her, and sending those that disagree with her off to "Re-Education Camps". Eventually, she decides that the Royal Brat she's working for is not proper leadership material, so she publicly usurps him, declares herself ruler, and vows to crush anyone who says otherwise, to much applause.
• General Crozier from Metalocalypse, at least until Mr. Salacia took over his mind in the Season 2 finale.
• Starlight Glimmer prior to her reformation in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. After losing her only childhood friend because of him getting a cutie mark, she develops a worldview in which cutie marks (which are supposed to signify one's special talent) are essentially harmful and lead to disarray. This results in her founding a village where she takes away every pony's cutie marks, making them "equal" and brainwashing everyone who shows signs of dissidence. Ironically, she keeps her own cutie mark, because without that she wouldn't be able to "create equality". When her perfect society is ruined by the main heroes, she goes as far as traveling back in time to make sure that Twilight never meets her friends and they never get in Starlight's way. What's interesting though is that the main driving force behind Starlight's actions seem to be not cutie marks themselves, but her own loneliness and unwillingness to restore older friendships. So she does sincerely believe she's in the right, but deep inside she's still unhappy because, despite all her efforts, she doesn't have any actual friends. This becomes the key to her eventual Heel–Face Turn.
• The Owl House:
  • Emperor Belos. He's a tyrannical dictator who rose to power by sowing fear and discord across the Boiling Isles, and whose ultimate goal is to commit total genocide of the entire witch-population. Despite this, Belos seems convinced that his goals are completely noble, even preaching to Luz that he's trying to "save humanity from evil", since he believes that witches and demons are inherently corruptive and malicious. This motivation does not hold up under scrutiny however — Belos seems oddly invested in the glory he'll get when he returns home, and becomes exceedingly violent against anyone who dares question him, including the humans he's supposedly trying to protect. Case in point, the multiple murder attempts he's made on Luz, a 14 year-old human girl, and the successful murder of his own brother Caleb, after Caleb seemingly entered a romantic relationship with a witch woman.
  • Jacob Hopkins on Earth is an ego-driven Conspiracy Theorist out for attention who's convinced that he's the hero, while he's stalking and trying to kidnap what amounts to a scared if otherworldly child, past the point where it would become clear to most sane people that said otherworldly child is no threat.
• Two examples from The Real Ghostbusters:
  • In "Mr. Sandman, Dream Me a Dream", the titular creature seeks to end war - by making the entire human race sleep for 500 years.
  • In "Ragnarok and Roll", a depressed young man with a broken heart decides to end human suffering - by using a magic flute to play a "song of destruction" that will end the world.
• Alvin from Sabrina: The Animated Series. He starts off as a Ridiculously Cute Critter Morality Pet for Sabrina, but guess what happens when she neglects him and leaves the spooky jar out.
• South Park has thrown this label around on a number of occasions, sometimes becoming rather insufferable with it.
  • Eric Cartman especially exhibited this in the Coon and Friends episode, destroying all that annoyed him with Cthulhu.
    The Coon: I'm going around making the world a better place!
    Mysterion: For you! You're making it a better place for you!
    The Coon: Right, that's what superheroes do.
  • The Knights of Standards and Practices in "It Hits The Fan". Granted, they were somewhat justified because curse words were curse words and "shit" was causing an epidemic, but they seemed fine with killing people who were not the masterminds behind this incident.
  • In the movie, Kyle's mom is this, although she starts a war, a genocide against Canadians, and nearly causes Armageddon all in the name of cleaning up the entertainment industry.
  • Al Gore in "ManBearPig". When he floods Cave of the Winds, he takes pride in hearing that he probably just killed 4 children, since it means he killedManBearPig.
  • Kyle Broflovski himself is gradually leaning towards this trope in his rivalry with Cartman, some of their conflicts have shown his willingness to outright kill him (in "Fatbeard" for example, he attempts to convince Cartman to travel to Somalia in his ill-defined plan to become a pirate, he is later seen gloating about assisting in Cartman's supposed death, unfazed by the fact that Butters, Clyde, and Kevin went along with him, Ike joining, however, is enough to change his mind.
  • Rob Reiner is portrayed as an arrogant wealthy liberal who eats vast and unhealthy amounts of junk food, yet still harasses people who smoke in "Butt Out". The tobacco company he attacks is shown to have a nice executive and happy workers, and in contrast, Rob Reiner is a terrorist with creepy followers who tried to kill Cartman.
  • Season 20 gives us Lennart Bedrager, a startup company CEO from Denmark who creates a system that can match internet comments to a name and physical location. He intends to use it to cause mass hysteria and start a world war, and then build a better society once everyone else destroys themselves.
• Spongebob Squarepants
  • Mr. Krabs is determined to punish his rival Plankton for his unscrupulous deeds, even when he is using perfectly legitimate methods. Taken to extremes in "Plankton's Regular", where Plankton finally gains one regular customer and offers to call a truce with Krabs in return for keeping him. Krabs immediately becomes obsessed with taking away said customer. And that's not to mention the fact that Mr. Krabs often takes offense when Plankton simply isn't completely miserable and often goes out of his way to ruin Plankton's life For the Evulz.
    • Mr Krabs in general has become so over-the-top evil from his original "greedy-but-likable-boss" status that even the creator of Spongebob, Stephen Hillenburg, deemed Mr Krabs just as evil as, if not worse than, Plankton himself.
• Superman: Doomsday had Superman's clone turn into this. He's obsessed with protecting Metropolis but decides that he should have the final word on how it's protected, leading him to brutally slaughter Toyman for his murder of a 4-year-old girl.
• Most of the Superman: The Animated Series episode "Brave New Metropolis" takes place in a Mirror Universe where Lois Lane's death has turned Superman into a tyrant who cooperates with Lex Luthor. Obviously, this causes the line "It is forbidden to interfere with human history" from the movie to become Harsher in Hindsight. Though this could be a bit of a subversion as Superman truly thought he was doing good because Lex was lying to him and purposely got rid of people that could have told him differently. When Lois shows Superman the truth he is very ticked.
• Depending on what version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles he's currently appearing in, Casey Jones is sometimes portrayed this way. In other versions, he's more lucid (although even then he can be considered Good Is Not Nice).
  • Leo gets this treatment for much of the fourth season of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), after a Curb-Stomp Battle against Shredder and Karai at the end of the previous season that nearly killed him and the rest of his family, and would have done so if not for a last-minute rescue from the Utroms. Leo suffers a Heroic BSoD from this defeat that lasts for much of the season and makes him obsessed with perfection from himself and his brothers, essentially trying to turn himself into a joyless warrior so that they will never be so vulnerable again. At his worst, he almost became a Tautological Templar, as despite several What the Hell, Hero? callouts from various characters (in response to his overtraining, his constant anger, and his periodic violent outbursts), he continued to insist he was only acting to protect himself and his family. The situation only resolves when he's finally Put on a Bus for a couple episodes to meditate with the Ancient One and regain his tranquility.
• Ultra Magnus in Transformers: Animated, who is perfectly willing to suppress the truth in order to maintain order. He also urges his subordinates to do the same.
  • Sentinel Prime would count, but he's really just a Good Is Not Nice Jerkass with way too much power in his hands.
• Transformers: EarthSpark: Dr. Meridian aka Mandroid sees himself as a savior of humanity against the Cybertronian menace. After having lost an arm in the war he grew to hate Cybertronians and seeks a way to rid the planet of them even if he has to kidnap and kill other humans. He goes to extremes grafting Cybertronian tech to his body and in the season 1 finale he launches a device that will wipe out any and all things that run on Energon. This includes himself, but to him, it's a sacrifice he's willing to make to save Earth.
• Nerissa, the villain of season two of W.I.T.C.H., seeks to rule the universe in order to stop all conflict and war. She eventually gets this wish, if only as an illusionary world that she's unwittingly trapped in for all eternity.

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