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There are subjectives, and then there are these. While you may believe a work fits here, and you might be right, people tend to have rather vocal, differing opinions about this subject.
Please keep these off of the work's page.

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Chaotic Neutral

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Character Alignment
Lawful Good | Neutral Good | Chaotic Good
Lawful Neutral | True Neutral | Chaotic Neutral
Lawful Evil | Neutral Evil | Chaotic Evil

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dec180544_500.jpg
"Good? Evil? Who cares, Pass the Popcorn!"

"Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun."
— Ash Williams, Army of Darkness

A character is Chaotic Neutral when, according to the best known Character Alignment system, they fail to qualify for either Good or Evil but fall on the Chaotic side of the Law—Chaos axis. As with all alignments, this can mean many things, several of which are described below. Some characters may abide by principles that they consider chaotic or autonomist, others may not have any major consistent principles at all (not even if the principles are considered inherently chaotic). For example, one Chaotic Neutral character might be part of a tribe that considers itself independent and anarchist, whereas another may choose not to be, as their lives may still be dependent on that tribe's principles (and as such they may not feel they are truly self-sufficient or independent after all). But then, this ultimately varies and depends on what type of Chaotic Neutral (as enlisted below) the character is portrayed as in the story. The Chaotic Neutral character may have a kind enough heart and even helps people out sometimes, but they do not feel committed to helping others and often do not think about the consequences of their actions.

Typically though, Chaotic Neutral characters do whatever the hell they like and damn the consequences (unless they're too noble or hurtful, watch out for that part)! Some say they're the ultimate free spirits, others that they're just crazy. Either way, there's no telling what they'll decide to do next — their main, and often only, concern is their own freedom. Whose side are they on? It's doubted that they even know themselves. Nobody else does. In some ways, their inherent uncertainty makes them an unknown quantity to deal with most times so they border on Jerkass in terms of their self-centered perception of the world, though they usually do have some redeeming features. Chaotic Neutrals detest the self-righteous and believe in power to the individual. These characters are also useful in any story that involves something that isn't damnably black and white in the outcomes.

Chaotic Neutral comes in a variety of flavours:

  • The Hedonist — they are interested in fulfilling their desires, and in pursuing their own interests. They have little to no respect for law and order either. They avoid an Evil alignment because their aims and desires are not evil, and they are less ruthless and malevolent. Their attitude often results in them being a loner, not willing to spend too much time with the real bad guys but not wanting to be held back by the good guys. At best they find benevolent behaviour emotionally rewarding when they can be bothered to do it; at worst they are Jerkasses who are indifferent or blind to the rights of others.
  • The Anarchist — They are prepared to work within a group system in order to challenge an establishment system or further their cause, which can sometimes push them into Lawful Neutral territory if they become particularly devoted (or fanatical). In practice, this can be a very tricky Type to maintain without quickly devolving into some type of hypocrisy, as it is difficult if not impossible to change or abolish the system without infringing on somebody's rights or desires to an extent considered Evil. At best they work towards the overthrowing of a genuinely corrupt or oppressive system and wish to replace it with something better, but at worst they can be led into The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized or end up supporting a cause that actually makes things worse. They may also hold Chaotic Neutral itself as an ideal, seeing it as their duty to stir things up and make things less boring, which can backfire on everybody.
  • The Rebel — They are counter-culture just for the sake of it. As such, their beliefs tend to be shallow and they may find themselves in over their head, or be duped into The Man Is Sticking It to the Man. This sort tends to believe Cool People Rebel Against Authority, which conversely often makes them vulnerable to the influence of powerful personalities or particular fads that they believe no-one else is following. Sometimes they have an issue or grudge against a particular authority practice or figure, other times they are aimless and adrift in their own lives. At best, this can be harmless or even lead to some beneficial Character Development, but at worst the character can fall under the sway of dangerous and evil people and perhaps become one themselves.
  • The Nutter — You don't have to be crazy to be this alignment, but it helps! More or less insane, these characters might behave as the Chaotic Stupid stereotype, or they might be unstable in some other way. Either way, they are too caught up in themselves to be good or evil. They can be a simple Jester-like character, or they can be a deep investigation into the minds of those with mental illnesses, but either way their actions don't follow regular logic.

Chaotic Neutral is both an easy and difficult alignment to play as. Easy, because its chaos and neutrality allows a player to do what they please, and hard because you really have to be careful about not annoying people when you can do whatever you want. Many players of Chaotic Neutral also have a tendency to end up in Good groups, playing Chaotic Good characters and doing things that are generally good, not just selfish — maybe feeling the need to Kick the Dog occasionally (even arbitrarily) for the purposes of a Character Check, to "neutralise" their Karma Meter. Many poor players also confuse Chaotic Neutral with "batshit crazy": a Chaotic Neutral character is not equally likely to jump off a bridge as he is to cross it, that would rather be Chaotic Stupid, and a competent Chaotic Neutral generally tries to avert being just that — although a player choosing to jump off a bridge is probably not all that interested in participating, anyway. Likewise, Chaotic Neutral characters typically won't stick their necks out for strangers or business partners unless the risk carries a suitable reward, but they might still fight and even die to defend close friends or loved ones.

In Tabletop Games, Chaotic Neutral is often the choice of players who want to do bad things when the GM forbids playing evil characters, perhaps breaking up the party, abandoning trusted companions to die, or killing Player Characters for the hell of it. (Protip: Killing someone or generally causing dissent "for the hell of it" is Chaotic Evil). The "chaotic" part of their personality is less about being "LOL so random!" and more about a strong dislike for tradition, order, routine, and laws.

See Also: Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, True Neutral, Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil, Chaotic Evil

If you have difficulty deciding which alignment a neutral-aligned character belongs to, the main difference between Lawful Neutral, True Neutral, and Chaotic Neutral is not their lack of devotion to either good or evil, but the methods they believe are best to show it:

  • Lawful Neutral characters believe the best way is to have a specific, strict code of conduct, whether self-imposed or codified as a law. Their first impulse when making a moral decision is to refer back to this code; those with externally imposed systems (codes of laws, hierarchies, etc.) will try to work within the system when those systems go wrong. They will refuse to break the code even though it would hurt someone.
  • True Neutral characters are indifferent to Order Versus Chaos, and their only interest is in living their own lives. They simply live their lives, whether that means tearing down a code of laws, following a code of laws, creating an orderly society, causing the breakdown of some kinds of order, or staying away from society altogether. They have no particular objective (At least, concerning picking a definite side between Order and Chaos).
    • Although in some works True Neutral can also mean that the character actively sees balance as a desirable end unto itself, and will fight Good or Evil organizations that they believe have become too powerful. This is a rather different type of character who actually has more of a Lawful Neutral mindset (obeying the law of balance is more important than conventional morality), but is placed into True Neutral to indicate that they cannot be assumed to back any side by default.
  • Most Chaotic Neutral characters don't constantly break the law, but they cannot see much value in laws. They believe that their own consciences are their best guides, and that tying themselves to any given code of conduct would be limiting their own ability to do what they want. They do not get along with anyone who tries to instill any kind of order over the Chaotic Neutral character, believing these people to be restricting their freedom. Chaotic Neutral characters often focus very strongly on their individual rights and freedoms, and will strongly resist any form of oppression of themselves.

Chaotic Neutral character types include:

Examples

When dealing with the examples of specific characters, remember that assigning an alignment to a character who doesn't come with one is pretty subjective. If you've got a problem with a character being listed here, it probably belongs on the discussion page. There will be no Real Life examples under any circumstances; it just invites an Edit War. Plus, real people are far too complex and multi-dimensional to really be classified by such a straightforward alignment system. noreallife

On works pages: Character Alignment is only to be used in works where it is canonical, and only for characters who have alignments in-story. There is to be no arguing over canonical alignments, and no Real Life examples, ever.

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Ryuga from Metal Fight Beyblade feels into this after his Heel–Face Turn. Despite not being evil anymore and often keeps to himself, Ryuga is still urges to get stronger and can be still merciless toward his opponents in battle. This was especially shown toward the end of Metal Masters where he sides with Gingka's team against Hades Inc.'s team but only because of their personal involvement with the Dark Nebula organization and the fact that they were indirectly responsible for Ryuga becoming corrupted by Lightning-L Drago. He also is the one that personally destroys Spiral Tower causing a lot of collateral damage in the process (which actually almost kills Gingka and Masamune but Ryuga probably didn't know they were in there at the time). Ryuga's Chaotic Neutral status is even more prominent in the third season, Metal Fury, where he is one of the Legendary Bladers that is tasked to take down Nemesis. When Gingka tried to convince Ryuga to fight for their cause instead of the Nemesis Bladers (who were, at the time, also trying to recruit Ryuga), Ryuga turns both sides down saying he and he alone will absorb the power from the other Legendary Bladers and become the strongest blader in the world. And while he was still making good on that promise, Ryuga was still fighting against the evil forces at the time and even dies in the process. He later then transfers his power to Kenta.
  • Michiko Malandro from Michiko & Hatchin. A wanted prison escapee, she's incredibly brash and overly aggressive, and lives lightly enough that her reckless ways can easily put anyone around her in mortal danger, too. And she'll go as far as she has to in order to reach the desired end of her Myth Arc.
  • Shakugan no Shana: Yuji becomes this towards the end of the series. He originally began as Neutral Good, and with an idealistic desire to build a new world where denizens can live without consuming humans to survive, he may be considered Chaotic Good. However, the ruthless pragmatism he implements in his plans place him into this alignment. He probably hangs between Chaotic Neutral and Chaotic Good.
  • Slayers:
    • Lina Inverse can be considered one of the best examples of this trope in a Dungeons & Dragons Player Character sense, being motivated almost entirely by self-interest and whim. While she has morals that do prevent her from going too far to the dark side, and comes off as Chaotic Good once in a while, she is extremely selfish, greedy, bad-tempered, self-centered and impulsive, and comes off as petty on occasions, as she often refuses to give any attention, never mind assistance, to people who don't offer her a reward of some kind. Notable stunts include refusing to a fight a dragon (which A: she set loose and B: happens to be tearing down the village she's in) unless the Village Headman agrees to pay her, only agreeing to help a girl whose village has been enslaved in one of the movies after recalling that said village is built near Elven ruins, saving a girl from a rampaging Golem in another movie and then harassing her for a reward, and demanding a new companion of his surrender a family heirloom of his to her after finding out it's a powerful magical weapon.
    • The creator-deity of the Slayers universe, the Lord of Nightmares, fits this alignment even better, being chaos itself. Lets put it this way, She's the source of all good and evil. She created the world, and will destroy it when it pleases her.
  • Hetalia: Axis Powers:
    • While he is generally True Neutral, Switzerland occasionally fits this trope, even shooting at anyone who enters his territory.
    • Prussia, Russia and France show tendencies towards this, too. Prussia is generally too uncontrollable to qualify in other alignments (at best he may be Chaotic Good sometimes), France tends to do things as he wishes and thinks better without paying much attention (with the little head doing a good part of the thinking), and Russia tends to be too immature and childish to really know/care if he's doing the right or wrong thing.
    • Belarus might fit in here too, as she does stuff mostly to get Russia's attention and doesn't give much thought to others.
    • Hong Kong and Netherlands seem to be good choices here. Hong Kong is very mischievous and pranks almost everyone in his surroundings much to the despair of his Neutral Good brother figure China, Netherlands keeps a super stoic face but does everything in his power to either get more money or avert spending what he already has, to the exasperation of his Neutral Good sister Belgium.
  • Dragon Ball Z:
    • Vegeta fits this alignment during the Cell Saga. He starts out as a textbook Neutral Evil who cares only for himself, and aspires to use the Dragon Balls to become immortal and take over the universe. This doesn't work out, and after the Frieza Saga he ends up stuck on Earth with no place else to go (his homeworld having been destroyed years ago). At this point he loses interest in immortality and becomes single-mindedly obsessed with becoming stronger than Goku. He's more than willing to help out against the arc villains, but mostly to feed his ego. That, and the fact that he doesn't want anyone else killing Goku.
    • Fat Buu after killing Babidi. He destroys and kills for his own amusement, but he doesn't realize what he's doing is wrong. Once Mr. Satan points out that fact, Buu immediately says he'll stop.
  • Outlaw Star:
    • Gene Starwind is a perfect example of this as the series begins, perhaps softening to Chaotic Good by the series' end. This has less to do with him being an outlaw and more with him being impulsive, hedonistic, lazy, immature and self-centered. This is one of the reasons why the crew is often broke; Gene refuses to take up small jobs, a very bad thing coupled with his spending habits (and his knack for randomly destroying things that he subsequently has to pay for). Aisha Clan-Clan also counts, though it seems that part of the reason for her acting so erratically is that she's something of The Ditz.
    • In a broader sense, the entire philosophy of the Outlaws centers around this.
      Narrator: Those outlaws who are adrift and roaming the universe say, "You may not have the urge to break the law, but you are still bound to ignore it."
  • Excel from Excel♡Saga. All she cares about is serving her lord Il Palazzo, regardless of his intentions. She's also somewhat insane.
  • Nao Yuuki from My-HiME. Though she's quite temperamental and hates dealing with people (and rules), she's not out-and-out evil. She'll very rarely stick her claws out for the "good guys" if it personally benefits her in some way. Still, it's a pretty bad idea to cross her, because she will attack you. Her My-Otome incarnation, Juliet Nao Zhang, is closer to Chaotic Good.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • The titular character of Lupin III. His motivation is to simply steal, sometimes for personal gain and sometimes for the greater good.
  • The titular Haruhi Suzumiya. She might help you out if you've got some problems which might be super natural in nature, and gets a couple of subtle Pet the Dog moments plus Character Development in the "nicer" direction; on the other hand...
    • So is Asakura Ryoko. She's definitely chaotic ever since she said "Fuck you" to the Entity, or at least their conservative faction. In the 10th novel, she says that she only plans on acting according to her own will. And while she did try to kill Kyon twice, she isn't outright evil and can be genuinely nice when she isn't trying to stab you. Mainly, she doesn't really care about humans, can't really grasp her head around that concept of "life" and "death" regarding organic lifeforms, so pray that her objectives somehow coincide with your own. Then she'll be a great ally.
  • Bleach's Kenpachi Zaraki fits this trope nicely. A battle-hungry warrior who has been known to let opponents live on a whim. Or not.
    • Also: Kisuke Uruhara during the flashback arc. In the series proper, he's closer to Chaotic Good, but still doesn't completely qualify (e.g. awakens Ichigo's inner hallow without telling him, hides an Artifact of Doom in Rukia's soul.
    • Much of Squad 11 counts as Chaotic Neutral. The characters tend to like fighting, and put it above all else (even their orders. In the final battle, Ikkaku gets defeated and lets a pillar be destroyed rather than use his bankai and risk being forced to become a captain. Yumichika tells Charlotte Cuulhorne that if not for the convenient Rosa Blanca smokescreen, he would not have used the true form of his zanpakuto no matter what).
    • Potentially the Visoreds, as they mainly want revenge on Aizen for causing their hollowification and exile from Soul Society, rather than wanting to save the world or help the Gotei 13.
  • The titular character from Akagi fits this alignment to a T. He spits on societal rules, regularly cheats while playing Mahjong, won't obey even if it means death (not that he cares about dying) and generally isn't a very nice person. He isn't particularly malevolent, it's just that you better stay away from him.
  • Baccano!: Oh, Claire Stanfield. Only you can massacre dozens of not-very innocent people for both money and a bizarre interpretation of train etiquette, only to go completely (well, almost) straight by sunrise. Granted, his real alignment is probably "HOLY SHIT" but this is the closest the D&D system can get.
    • Also a fitting example is Graham, who is chaos incarnate, often doing a 180 on his opinions, and is similarly inclined to go from threatening violence against someone to being creepily friendly in a No Sense of Personal Space kind of way.
    • Ronnie Schiatto is much more calm and collected than the two lunatics above, but nearly every decision he makes is ultimately towards one singular goal: The lulz.
  • Ryoko from all the various Tenchi incarnations. She's a lazy, conniving, hard drinking space pirate who robs banks for a living, but she's willing to fight to the death to defend her friends (even her arch-rival Ayeka).
  • Naruto:
    • Killerbee, who disregards his brother — the Raikage's — repeated reminders not to transform into his full Tailed Beast form and fakes being captured in order to leave the village and write music. He hardly cares about anything apart from what he wants to do at the moment, but doesn't do anything particularly bad in order to fulfill those desires.
    • Team Hebi (not Taka) can be classified as this: Jugo averages out between his Chaotic Evil and Neutral Good sides, Suigetsu has a bit of a cruel streak, but has some noble tendencies and Karin cares only about Sasuke. Sasuke Uchiha seems to change alliances as often as he changes his wardrobe (the two actually seem to be somewhat connected anyway, as in the case of the Akatsuki robes) but it's more the result of this trope, which drives him to work with anyone as long as it furthers his own goals (and, by extension, betray them if simply leaving isn't an option), which means he's on his own side and no one else's.
    • The Ten-Tailed Beast is portrayed as an enormous, infinitely-powerful Eldritch Abomination that lacks emotions and thus is incapable of evil; however, during its reign, it routinely swallowed and spit out oceans, split the land, and destroyed entire regions out of instinct. And then its true nature is revealed; The Ten-Tails is in reality Otsutsuki Kaguya, a dimension hopping godlike alien woman driven insane by her own power who thinks all beings that use Chakra stole it from her and wants to devour everyone to get it back, even her own sons. The mythology surrounding the Ten-Tails is a fabrication by her servant, Black Zetsu, intended to obfuscate the truth of her existence and manipulate her descendants into reviving her.
  • Evangeline of Negima! Magister Negi Magi swears she is Chaotic Evil, and has the reputation to back it up. However, she helps out Sayo, friendly neighborhood ghost, out of sympathy/boredom, is a sort of ally to Negi and willing to help him and others out if she considers them a useful pawn. She doesn't care about anything else, though, either. What she does or wants is anyone's guess. Except wanting to get out of that school. Who wouldn't?
  • Hiei follows this alignment after his Heel–Face Turn in YuYu Hakusho; while he tends to help the protagonists, he usually does it because he's forced to, or because there's something he wants. He tends to spare his opponents, but usually because he doesn't feel like killing them, or believes he is under no obligation to finish them off.
  • Rozen Maiden: Although arguably Chaotic Evil in the first season, Suigintou becomes this in Träumend with her devotion to her sick medium Megu, which changes her motivation to participate in the Alice Game from meeting her father to curing Megu. She also seems to value her sisters somewhat more (albeit she would deny it), as she herself starts believing nobody is junk.
  • Mugen from Samurai Champloo is a great anime example (especially since he's an expy of Spike Spiegel). He's a lecherous, hard-drinking Anti-Hero who never lets the law (or the yakuza) get in the way of any opportunity for mayhem and bloodshed. But he's not Chaotic Evil since he won't just kill for no reason and tries to avoid hurting innocent people (though he'd "help" them usually for his own interests).
  • Greed in Fullmetal Alchemist rebelled against his creator, the Big Bad, to pursue his own desires (especially immortality). While he is quite selfish, he cares for his friends (albeit because they are, in a sense, his possessions).
  • Dark Schneider, the Anti-Hero of Bastard!! (1988) is a ridiculously egotistical overpowered sorcerer, and a Handsome Lech. He fights on the side of good against various Evil Overlord types mostly because he wants to rule the world himself. This version of him (sealed in a Neutral Good human boy) is considered a saint compared to his earlier incarnation who was probably Chaotic Evil.
  • Fist of the North Star: Juza initially openly aims to do only as he himself pleases without any loyalty to anybody whatsoever, living a life of true hedonism. That said, even while he does try to do as he pleases, he still can't help but to be unconditionally kind to women, even giving a group of them more than enough food to support their families, letting them go even after having rescued them to introduce them to his harem. He does turn Chaotic Good when he swears his loyalty to Yuria after having been forcibly abducted to her and leads the assault against Raoh.
    • Bart starts out as a Chaotic Neutral scoundrel, but as he journeys with Kenshiro, he gradually develops good in his heart and eventually becomes a Chaotic Good leader of the Hokuto Army fighters in Fist Of The North Star 2.
  • Gundam: Captain Ash aka Asemu Asuno in Gundam AGE. He joins the Visidian Pirates to keep both sides of conflict from triumphing over each other just to lock them into an eternal war, although he also frequently denounces his Lawful Neutral (or possibly Lawful Evil) father's vengeful ways of doing things to piss off people around him — even the ones in the Federation.
  • Joe Yabuki, the titular main character of Tomorrow's Joe is the archetypical Byronic Hero and trickster protagonist in manga history. A wandering delinquent and scammer who isn't above involving kids in his money grabbing schemes and has no respect for authority figures. However he planned to use the money to make the slums a better place to live and once he's on the ring, he will fight to death for the sake of both his pride and his friends.
  • The titular characters of Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, being individuals driven solely by their own selfish desires and particular whims for the moment. There's a reason they are referred to as "the Anarchy sisters". The whole plot of the series (such that it is) is that they were such unpredictably self-centered individuals that God booted them out of Heaven because S/He couldn't stand them anymore.
  • On the darker side of the scale is the cold-blooded Golgo 13 who is willing to perform any sniping mission if the price is right. While he is far from a Hitman with a Heart the people he kills are usually far from innocent, and indeed, on some of his government missions he's probably ended up saving millions of lives, but it's always just another job to him.
  • Revy of Black Lagoon becomes this as part of her Character Development. Rock starts out as Chaotic Good, but later has shades of this alignment.
  • Inuyasha:
    • Inuyasha himself at the very beginning, as he's both childishly impulsive and too cynical to treat other people with any respect. Meeting Kagome and having to make moral choices in his adventures with her quickly brings out his potential nobility, and he upgrades to Chaotic Good.
    • Koga. Unlike most demons, he's not evil as such, though he suffers from Moral Myopia (loyal to friends but totally disregarding everyone else) and might hurt people because he's too dumb to understand it's wrong; he's at least as immature as Inuyasha was at the start. His idea of how things work is kidnapping someone to be his mate, with no malicious thought at all, and expecting that will work out just fine.
  • Death Note: Mello, especially after joining Near. He's a Nominal Hero example, being rebellious, ruthless, a criminal and self-serving.
  • Post-contract Homura, of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, is a type 4. She doesn't care for societal laws (or people in general), and her methods of protecting Madoka are based on utility, not philosophy. She doesn't do cruel things because she enjoys it, but doesn't have much reluctance about doing them either (see third movie). Notably, Homura is not mentally healthy, so this may not be her true alignment.
  • Citrus: Initially posing as a camgirl to rip older men from their hard-earned cash, Matsuri Mizusawa would often spend her time deliberately inciting people by trolling them or getting into other peoples' relationships and tearing them apart internally for her amusement. However, she does legitimately care for the main character, Yuzu Aihara, and eventually supports her when Yuzu seeks her stepsister Mei's love.
  • Happy Sugar Life: Satou's aunt loves everyone indiscriminately, getting off to being brutalized by them, and is open to any form of love regardless of the gender.
  • Durarara!!: Izaya Orihara believes his love of all humans (minus Shizuo) is reason enough to manipulate anyone and everyone. He's also The Sociopath and a Psychopathic Man Child. However, despite his highly immoral acts, he is directly stated to neither be good nor evil. Izaya will only help or harm someone to see their reaction, and is on no side but his own. He's just a manipulative, arrogant, and all around crazy bastard whose general motivation in the series is to cause Ragnarok so that he'll have a place to go when he dies.
  • Black Jack himself likes to cultivate this reputation, though his Pet the Dog moments lean him a bit towards Chaotic Good. However, he's very much a mercenary of medicine and will heal criminals if the price is right, and feels completely justified in refusing treatment to those who can't pay (though he does end up doing much more charity work than his reputation would suggest).
  • Naofumi Iwatani, the titular protagonist of The Rising of the Shield Hero, is generally Chaotic Good, but is still morally grey and has shades of this alignment. He's mostly motivated by keeping himself and his loved ones alive, and doesn't care much about what happens to the world he was summoned to. He will not hesitate to use morally questionable means to obtain what he wants, though he has lines he will not cross; he is not actively malevolent, except towards those who have wronged him, and he is willing to aid others, but he wants to be rewarded for his good deeds, though he is reasonable and will try to negotiate a profitable agreement for both parts.
  • While Monster Clown Hisoka of Hunter × Hunter is, at first blush, a Chaotic Evil psychopath, he's actually a very violent form of Chaotic Neutral instead of outright evil. His actions are very often purely out of self-interest (even when he does help people, it's more for him than them) and they usually revolve around finding, cultivating, fighting and killing strong, very entertainingly ''interesting'' opponents to possibly satisfy his sexual appetite (or something like it), whether the opponents are good, neutral, evil or anything else. However, he's so dedicated to this, and filters so much through his Blood Knight goggles, he goes beyond even self-interested Chaos or Evil and hits a very weird Blue-and-Orange Morality in which he has rules and standards he refuses to relent on. If it ain't attractive, it's a either a roach to squash or a reason to ignore it, tolerate it or, rarely, fear it. How he views other characters varies over time, and he can switch from "interested" to "not interested: boring, you are dead now" or visa versa at a very confusing moment's notice.

    Comic Books 
  • The Incredible Hulk: The Hulk arguably fits in here. Sure, he'll go Ax-Crazy if you make him mad, and he'll cause tremendous amounts of damage in the process, but a lot of the time he does go crazy, it's because one of his enemies pushed him too far. He's capable of showing a certain amount of empathy and friendship in rare cases, and rarely seeks to hurt people or try and use his power for personal gain... but God help you if you provoke him.
  • Marv from Sin City certainly qualifies. He's a violent brute who is more or less insane, and usually kills his enemies in horrible, horrible ways, but like Conan does not kill innocents.
  • Downer Tarantula, the down-on-his-luck titular renegade drow elf and Jerk with a Heart of Gold from the Downer comics published in the Dungeon magazine, has this alignment. His stats were published in one of the last Dragon issues, so this can be considered Word of God.
  • Batman:
  • One would expect that Lucifer would be evil, but though he is selfish and indifferent to the fates of lesser beings, he comes across as a good guy compared to Chaotic Evil omnicidal maniacs such as Sandalphon and Fenris. His own creation is portrayed as a much nicer place compared to our own, where Lucifer bans people from worshipping him out of his desire for freedom.
  • Captain America villains:
    • True to his chosen name, the Madcap is a deliberately (both in the alignment and the insanity) Chaotic Neutral Cloud Cuckoolander whose only goal is to show people that the world makes no sense.
    • The quirky French Jerk martial artist Batroc the Leaper, a mercenary who works for the highest bidder and for the thrill of the fight who tried to eliminate Cap as much as siding with him against a common threat.
  • John Constantine, Hellblazer, sometime Occult Detective and gambler with Fate, full-time smartass and Rebellious Spirit, is the ultimate individualist, always looking to Take a Third Option, and just as likely to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory as he is to pull a Moment of Awesome out of his butt. However, given that he is as likely to Rage Against the Heavens as battle The Legions of Hell, even at the best of times Constantine's victories tend to be bittersweet.
  • Delirium of The Sandman (1989) exemplifies Chaotic Neutral, of The Loonie variety. Destruction also becomes Chaotic Neutral in abandoning his duties to become a dabbling wanderer. For similar reasons.
  • Elizabeth from Gemini Storm only kills the monsters plaguing her town because she enjoys it. The fact that she may save everyone seems to be coincidence.
  • Deadpool became this thanks to the writing of Joe Kelly and Gail Simone. Early on, he didn't care so much about killing innocents. He'll still hurt them though, even his friends, though now they fall into the Amusing Injuries category.
  • Transmetropolitan: Spider Jerusalem, dedicated to the Truth, no matter what, and perfectly willing to shoot the President of the United States with a gun that makes you shit yourself. He hovers on the edge of, and occasionally slips completely into, Chaotic Good.
  • Writer Landry Walker used this exact phrase to describe Supergirl's doppelganger Belinda Zee in Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade. She embraced the idea of chaos without becoming a full-fledged villain, using her enhanced "superior vision" to turn her fellow classmates into more straightforward Bizarros. Walker described Belinda's emotional state as being on a constant hair trigger, and that "she's not exactly evil but she certainly isn't good". Before being manipulated into becoming Superior Girl, all Belinda cared about was her own popularity and "awesomeness" and making Supergirl as miserable as she could.
  • Adam Warlock's Plucky Comic Relief sidekick Pip the Troll is a sleazy hedonist and trickster who really doesn't care about what happens to the universe as long as he can get a good cigar and a good drink and he's on the side of the heroes mostly due to his genuine loyalty to Adam.
  • Kid!Loki was this by design. The regular Neutral Evil Loki realized that because he was evil and bound by his own neuroses and anger with Thor (that he alluded to being irrational), he could not be a true God of Mischief since he was so darn predictable (try to kill Thor/impress Odin while doing something evil at the same time, fail, rinse, repeat) So he got himself killed and made it so if Thor reincarnated him he'd come back as a boy without all the mental baggage that kept making him evil/predictable. Kid!Loki's only out to save Thor and himself and try not to be the monster he sees his older self as quite possibly having been. He even admitted that he'd rather have stayed dead (if Thor had not reincarnated him) than stay as he was. Later Lokis (with the exception of King Loki from the future who is back to Neutral Evil) generally average around this alignment too. Teen!Loki (the weapon that killed the Kid) was more of the cynical type with self-destructive tendencies, while the next one, Loki — the God(dess) of Stories,... let's just say for them turning their best friend into magical jewellery seemed like a good idea at the time. Apparently Loki decided that slipping back into evil is best avoided by periodically destroying and remaking himself to never get that old.
  • Though not easy to classify, V from V for Vendetta (the comic specifically) might be best described as a principled Chaotic Neutral, almost a contradiction in terms. He's a dedicated anarchist who believes in no government, hence chaotic; his goals are good but his methods extreme, averaging out to neutral. Ironically, it might be just the balanced presentation of the different sides that prevents him from being Chaotic Good instead, so that in a work closer to Black-and-White Morality he'd easily pass for good by doing the same things (killing "bad guys", mostly).
  • Mr. Mxyzptlk annoys Superman every chance he gets and can be a very sore loser, but he seldom actually means any harm and on occasion has helped Superman.
  • The majority of people in the Undefeatable Little Village in Asterix are hedonistic. They can't reasonably be described as good people, since their main interests are fighting enemies and fighting with each other, but neither can they be described as bad people, since they tend to feel bad the few times they cause actual serious harm to anyone and their violence is mostly good-natured. The only thing they really care about is their own freedom from the Romans, which they will secure at all costs, even if the Romans are actually benefiting them. People outside the village tend to find the people in the village really strange, and even nickname it a 'village of madmen'. The only exceptions are Asterix and Getafix, who are Chaotic Good (they never get involved in brawls, act altruistically even to enemies and keep something of a moral code while still enjoying outwitting Romans), Obelix (who is a Neutral Good selfless sidekick) and Cacofonix, who is more True Neutral (all he cares about is music, and he doesn't even mind when people force him to stop with violence).
  • Fingers, a kleptomaniac magician encountered by Lucky Luke. He constantly steals something from people around him, even if only to give it back braggingly (which may be a way of compensating the fact that he can't help stealing), and plays all kinds of tricks on everyone while having no clear goal. He doesn't want to hurt people as such and can be quite amicable, but he's always causing trouble. In the story where he appears, he's both an ally to Luke and the chief antagonist — sometimes more or less both at the same moment.

    Fan Fiction 
  • Zaerini, the protagonist (corresponding to the Player Character) from the Baldur's Gate fan fiction "In the Cards", is explicitlynote  Chaotic Neutral and makes a fine example — because her personality entirely makes sense but is still definitely Chaotic. She can be a sympathetic character, compassionate towards others and downright heroic — but towards those who happen to annoy her instead, she's a pretty awful (and awesome, if you sympathize) Karmic Trickster. She does whatever she happens to feel is right at the moment, and, in the end, seems to have no kind of consistent principles whatsoever, not even those that she might claim to. For example, shortly a quote from her that says she absolutely hates torture, she runs into someone who acts like an incredibly massive jerk towards her, prompting her to leave him tied to a tree in the middle of the forest covered in honey to be chewed upon by ants.
  • Voldemort of My Immortal is theoretically Chaotic Evil. This would be alright, except for the fact that he never does any villainy in-fic. He just goes around hijacking MCR concerts and yelling at Ebony.
  • The DC Nation version of Mento defaults to this. In that universe, his telepathic abilities are uncontrolled, so he tends to reflect the alignment of whoever he's with. It wasn't an issue when he was with the Doom Patrol, as they were all good guys. It's after the Doom Patrol died, and his company was infiltrated by a Religion of Evil that he started going off the rails. Still, even despite the company he keeps, he isn't necessarily the nicest guy, just the one who will get the job done.
  • Socrates from Calvin & Hobbes: The Series. His pranks are mostly the only thing he cares about.
  • Kyuubi from Eye Of The Fox is depicted as something like this as while he is fundamentally trapped within the mind of a 12 year old, he still divulges his own rules by making Naruto/Rad's training as grueling as possible and letting the boy take breaks and train when he says he can.
  • Gilda in Ace Combat: The Equestrian War. Type IV; she fights only for herself.
  • Imperfect Metamorphosis: Marisa, Rumia, and Rin. Marisa is a Mad Witch and a bit of a Jerkass, but even she has quite a few standards she wouldn't resort to, even going so far as to defy her own master for the sake of protecting her loved ones. Rumia is blatantly called out to be this since she's a man eating youkai and a prankster, but even she's terrified of the main antagonist in the story, her dark side Ex-Rumia, otherwise known as the Shadow Youkai, Rumia of the Darkness. Finally, there's Rin, who despite being convinced to help her and being regarded as "just a kid", Reimu doesn't believe she's not exactly a good person at all. This is probably because she failed a negotiation with her and quite willingly attacked her shrine to get away from her after a failed attempt at getting information from the shrine and learning about the Shadow Youkai's past or so. This may or not be an unsolved Plot Hole.
  • Ethan Rayne in I Am What I Am becomes the story's Big Good simply because he realizes that helping the Scoobies causes more chaos than anything else he could do. And the more chaos he causes, the more power he gains, which in turn allows him to cause more.
  • In the Danny Phantom/Beetlejuice crossover Say It Thrice, Tucker describes Betelgeuse as being this — though he notes that when his Morality Pet Lydia is involved, the poltergeist skews much closer to Chaotic Good.
  • Chapter 45 of Dragonball Multiverse makes it obvious that ultimate Buu is this after his evil self was tempered by all of earth's heroes he had absorbed. He spares the earth, uses the dragon balls to revive those he had killed, then casually tells them they will never see the friends he has absorbed again and absorbs Bulma on a whim because he realises her intelligence could be useful.

    Film 
  • A Fistful of Dollars has Joe, who bounces between Chaotic Neutral and Chaotic Good.
    Joe: The Rojos on one side of town, the Baxters on the other, and me right in the middle. Crazy bellringer was right, there's money to be made in a place like this."
  • One of the bad guys in For a Few Dollars More, Groggy, is a bandit who is quite crafty and works with only those he can trust. In fact, the only thing that keeps him allied with Indio, who's trying to kill his own gang out of greed, is a shared enmity against the bounty killers that are going after Indio.
  • Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean, a free-spirited Pirate who may or may not be out of his gourd. May be Affably Evil, may be a Jerk with a Heart of Gold — probably close enough to call him Neutral, and definitely Chaotic. He becomes a little more benevolent in the second and third movie, when he returns to the Black Pearl to save his crew after running away from the kraken, and sacrificing a chance for immortality in stabbing Davy Jones' heart to save Will's life, leaning towards Chaotic Good, but still Chaotic Neutral. The best proof has to be in the fourth film, when he wants eternal life from the Fountain of Youth... until he finds out someone else has to die for him to get the gift. This makes it, as he put it "a much less enticing prospect." He values freedom above all else, and tries to avoid impairing the freedom of others unless they absolutely will not get out of his way. Sacrificing an innocent life for no good reason doesn't fit with that.
  • Star Wars: This applies to both Han Solo and Lando Calrissian in their initial appearances, criminals only out for themselves but not malicious enough to be evil. They later moved toward Chaotic Good and Neutral Good in Return of the Jedi.
  • Torgo from Manos: The Hands of Fate is an insane, sexually-deprived Crusty Caretaker satyr of marginal loyalty to the Lawful Evil Master.
  • Tyler Durden, The Unfettered Übermensch anarchist of Fight Club. Looking for a better world by destroying society as we know it. But not actually Chaotic Evil, considering that he constantly takes steps to avoid actually killing anyone. It takes a fair bit of planning for him to destroy several skyscrapers without putting any lives at risk.
  • Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford), the unpredictable and erratic young con man in The Sting, especially in the first part of the movie.
  • The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Dr. Frank N Furter. Due to his hedonistic nature, he tends to do whatever he pleases without any second thought of the consequences. Then again, since those actions include murder and cannibalism, he's arguably Chaotic Evil.
  • Flip from Little Nemo was definitely Chaotic Neutral in the movie Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland. He did screw things up for Slumberland by convincing Nemo to open the forbidden door, thus releasing the Nightmare King, but he was just having some fun.
  • Willie Stokes in Bad Santa, Jerkass, thief, drunkard and slob. By the end of the movie he's still a mess, but he achieves the Jerk with a Heart of Gold status. Kind of.
  • The Plague in Hackers is an amoral mercenary hacker with an unusual philosophy;
    The Plague: There is no "good" or "bad". There is only "fun" and "boring"!
  • Mr. White from Reservoir Dogs. He's polite, loyal, takes honor very seriously, genuinely cares for his friend Mr. Orange enough to risk incarceration to keep him alive, and dislikes killing civilians. And he has no problem blowing several police officers to hell and torturing bank tellers by cutting off their fingers. And he's the nicest character in the movie. As Mr. Orange found out the hard way, "just because he's a nice guy doesn't mean he won't kill you."
  • Beetlejuice himself falls under this trope. He's dangerously unpredictable, and though he's willing to help others, his idea of "helping" often involves endangering lives or conning them in some way.
  • The titular Drop Dead Fred claims to be Lizzie's only true friend, but it doesn't keep him from acting like a complete jerk to her and all the rest of the characters.
  • The Mask in both the movie and the animated adaptation are this alignment. In the comics, wearers of the Mask are Chaotic Evil, ultraviolent, and seeking revenge and mayhem for its own sake. He just wants to have fun, even at the expense of certain people, and will fight those who cause trouble to him. Best summed by a moment just after getting the Mask, in which Stanley (as The Mask) says he could fight crime, protect the innocent, and work for world peace... but first, he goes to the mechanics who ripped him off and shoves engine parts up their asses as revenge. The next night, since he doesn't have enough money to get into the Coco Bongo, the Mask steals a ton of money from the Edge City Bank where Stanley works so that he can just bribe his way in. Without the Mask on, Stanley describes the Mask as something that brings one innermost desires to life, for better and for worse.
  • Si and Am from Lady and the Tramp. They're very mischievous cats that are willing to do as they please, even if it means going after birds, fish, and a baby's milk, whether Lady likes it or not.
  • The Chronicles of Riddick: Riddick is a guy who does good things in a horrendously evil manner because he wants to fulfill a deal so that people will just leave him the fuck alone.
  • Snake Plissken, protagonist of Escape from New York and Escape from L.A. He's a career criminal who only goes to rescue the President because he's coerced. At one point he comes across two punks passing an obviously drugged girl between them... and doesn't step in to rescue her or defend her, but just keeps on walking. While selfish, he does have strong opinions on right and wrong. In the end of both films, he takes a principled stand.
  • "Driver" from Faster (played by The Rock) is most certainly this but bounces on Chaotic Good. He's a former driver for bank robbers, but is on a mission to avenge his murdered brother (also a bank robber). He spends most of the movie going around shooting the killers, but when confronts "Killer", an assassin, he moves a little girl out of the way before they have a shootout. Also, he even allows killer to live once he hears about him wanting to stop being an assassin so he can marry his girlfriend.
  • Godzilla tends to be shown as this when not Chaotic Evil; he's the epitome of an Animal of Mass Destruction, but he's not intelligent enough to truly be evil.
  • Ferris Bueller definitely qualifies. His whole goal in life is just to have a good time, with little regard for rules or even moral righteousness (his incessant lying speaks for itself).
  • The Marx Brothers never take the plot seriously in their films and will annoy everyone equally but still reserve most of their harassment for the antagonists.
  • Walter Sobchak from The Big Lebowski. He probably thinks of himself as being Lawful Good, given his famous "AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT THE RULES?!" rant... but it's somewhat undermined by the fact that he says this while holding a guy at gunpoint in the middle of a bowling alley because he tried to mark the score of the game wrong. Walter is also heavily implied to have some kind of criminal background, given his comment to the Dude that "I could get you a toe by 3:00 this afternoon". In general, a hot-headed, temperamental asshole, but he really is trying to help the Dude out of the goodness of his heart, still genuinely loves his ex-wife Cynthia, and shows near the end that, despite what it may seem, he really does care about Donny.
  • Fagin from Oliver! technically qualifies. Though he works for Neutral Evil Bill Sykes, his role as a leader of thieves is mostly to steal for survival. Actor Ron Moody arguably portrays Fagin's conniving ways most famously.
  • For better or for worse, Surtur's role in Thor: Ragnarok is to bring Ragnarok upon the land of Asgard. He does his worst as the land is evacuated and ultimately kills Hela in the midst of the desolation as the people of Asgard flee from her wrath on a spaceship Loki helped some rebels steal from the Grandmaster.
  • Famously Clopin from Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame in his neutrality towards good and evil, unusual for a prominent Disney character. He appears as a harmless jester, entertaining children and adults alike; but he's also the leader of the gypsies and very protective of his people to the point, where he almost hangs the protagonists because he suspects them to be traitors. All while singing a catchy tune.
  • Troy: Achilles openly despises his king Agamemnon, and fights only for himself - for honor, glory, and to be remembered across the centuries. As the Greek's greatest warrior and hero, he has enough leverage to disobey Agamemnon, following his orders only when it suits him, or on the rare occasion he has no other choice. He has killed many many people in war, and seems equally capable of cruelty and mercy.

    Folklore and mythology 
  • Trickster Gods in general are usually of this alignment. They are just as likely to frame their own children for murders they committed as to fight The Man.
  • Puck (Robin Goodfellow) in most traditional incarnations, notably William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and especially in Gargoyles where he seemed to go out of his way to be a Literal Genie just for his own amusement.
  • In general, The Fair Folk are at best Chaotic Neutral, but can easily become Chaotic Evil, as they are extremely capricious, just as likely to torture someone to death as to help them. The ones in Discworld are more on the Chaotic Evil end, as is the villain of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (although his vendetta against Strange might move him into Neutral Evil). For instance, one story has a "faery servant" named Tom Brightwind who does good deeds for completely selfish reasons, and being a human raised as a faery, the Raven King is comfortably in this category.
  • Traditional Robin Hood (i.e. before storytellers added the "rob from the rich, give to the poor" schtick) was Chaotic Neutral: he was just as likely to go out looking for a random fight as he was to look for a rich person to rob.
  • Norse Mythology:
  • Most of the major gods from Classical Mythology fit this despite being bringers of order. They are extremely fickle and it is never known if an insult will slide or set them off. Their "gifts" often come with strings attached in unpredictable ways. They themselves often represent chaotic elements like the sea, war and love. Yet they are not malicious enough to be evil.
  • Dian Cecht, god of healers, of Celtic Mythology deserves special mention here; on the one hand, he saved all of Ireland by drowning a dragon and created a mystical spring that could heal all wounds, on the other he killed his own son for out doing him and scattered the healing herbs his daughter created.
  • Also from Irish Mythology is The Cailleach (Call-ahck) a.k.a. The Hag of Winter. She spreads freezing cold and winter storms, has dominion over wolves, can and will cause Winter of Starvation, and has been known to curse people for various reasons. However, she's also a protector and caretaker of livestock and crops during winter, and can be benevolent and helpful as well. What version of her you'll meet is largely dictated by what mood she's in at the time.
  • The Mastermaid, with her very considerable magic powers, which she first uses to serve a man-eating giant, then to help the prince she's fallen in love with escape from said giant, then to mercilessly torment three men whose only crime is wanting to marry her. She marries her prince; he'll be in trouble if she ever gets mad at him...
  • The Hindu Goddess Kali may be a Blood Knight and Horrifying Hero who scares even the other gods at times, but she is not evil, and is the god's main warrior against demons and other evil creatures.

    Literature 
  • Book of the Dead (2021): The Unseen gives each person a primary Class that suits them, with apparently no regard for "good" or "evil" in making that choice, and no regard for the individual's own feelings about the choice either. Society may proclaim some Classes to be evil, even illegal, but the Unseen does not seem to care in the slightest. This bites Tyron hard, when he hopes for a Wizard class, but the Unseen decides that his best fit is something else.
    You have made the darkness your home and the study of the arcane your passion. Solitude and Authority are your desires. They shall be granted.
    You have received the Class: Necromancer.
  • Conan the Barbarian could be the poster child for this trope. He's a thief, a reaver, a slayer, and everything else you can think of where there's an opportunity for violence, wenches and loot, including piracy, assassination, mercenary work and becoming warrior-king of the richest country on the continent. The only thing that separates him from being Chaotic Evil is that he never kills anyone who does not deserve it and is not trying to kill him, and never resorts to force or coercion when bedding a woman. Later in his life and after becoming king, he prides himself on having lowered the taxes and reined in the Aquilonian nobles' excesses, making his kingdom probably the best place to live in the Hyborean Age. He stalwartly refuses to abdicate even under threat of death (and with the promise of gold if he does) because he doesn't want to legitimize the claim of his evildoing adversaries, therefore making him more a case of being Chaotic Good.
  • Huckleberry Finn is of this alignment in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; the son of the town drunkard, he has no rules, no guidance, no reason to interact with society at all. He follows a classic "neutral to good" transition in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as his love for the escaped slave Jim, and, to a much lesser extent, his affection for his adopted mother, the Widow Douglas, grant him connections he never had and causes worth fighting for.
  • Despite all animals being True Neutral, rampaging animals in fiction, such as the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, often behave in a Chaotic Neutral manner — they probably aren't aware and don't intend the damage that they're doing, but they sure as Hell manage to cause a lot of it.
  • On the topic of Michael Crichton's work, the nanobots from Prey probably fit this trope too, at least to begin with, because the harm they cause isn't intentional. As events progress and they become more intelligent, however, they inevitably go from this to Chaotic Evil.
  • Achilles of The Iliad may temporarily devote himself to a particular ruler, but at the end of the day is loyal only to himself.
  • The Dresden Files:
    • Queen Mab, at least from Harry's perspective. Unpredictable, alternately helpful and malicious. This fits her pretty well. It's complicated by the Faeries' Blue-and-Orange Morality, as there are codes of propriety and behaviour that she is literally incapable of violating. An argument could be made for her being Lawful Neutral, since she guards reality against the Eldritch Abominations beyond the Outer Gates with dispassionate, logical ruthlessness.
    • Thomas Raith, in a Lovable Rogue kind of way. His willpower and Morality Pets Justine and Harry help keep him from really falling into the ways of his Big, Screwed-Up Family.
  • Forgotten Realms:
    • Jarlaxle Baenre. The drow who is not actively malevolent, but is a great opportunist. He dresses like a pimp. He'll stab you in the back on a whim (and patch you up if he decides he made a mistake). He tries to reform assassins and corrupt knights. He is, or at least was, the male favored one of a female misandrist goddess, from birth, not that he reciprocated. He thrives in the midst of chaos, a calm, smirking eye in the raging storm. He is Chaotic Neutral on legs.
    • Liriel Baenre, before she turned Neutral Good, though some of the attitude stuck well. Never appreciated typical drow viciousness, but just as competitive and scheming as her peers. Has a lot of fun with social engagements anyway, using high social status, arcane talents inherited from the city's Archmage and penchant for pranks. Was quite happy in such an environment, then had to leave in hurry, tasted the surface life and decided it's more fun. Found side-adventures for fun and profit even in the Death World of the Underdark. Was priestess to Lolth, whom she abandoned when she had to choose between goddess and lover, then tried Eilistraee for some time (she's really into dance, after all). This didn't work out well, so she converted again and served Mystra (for such a dedicated mage it's a natural choice).
  • The Meddler of the Firekeeper Saga is generally in this area. Besides what he does with the main characters, the stories that exist of him, as told in the fifth book, describe how he earns his name by getting involved in situations with seemingly good intentions but without ever considering the consequences. Most telling is a tale in which he persuaded a boy to run away with a girl his father was loudly opposed to his marrying, only to learn after the fact that the two were in fact half-siblings. While she was ignorant of the fact, the boy fully understood who she was to him.
  • Discworld: Elves, the local version of The Fair Folk, are essentially Chaos personified. They don't have enough of a concept of morality to be actively evil, but you really want them to stay far, far away from you. They have been compared to cats.
  • In her appearances in the New Jedi Order, Vergere appeared to be Chaotic Neutral, starting on the "side" of the Yuuzhan Vong, then flipping, then flipping back, then capturing Jacen Solo to torture him, then helping him escape, then claiming to be a Jedi of the Old Republic posing serious questions of morality and ethics to Luke's order. Later novels put the kibosh on that.
  • The Elric Saga: Elric is kept alive by the Gods of Chaos, but he'll tender his services to the highest bidder and he's capable of doing both heroic and nasty deeds depending on his mood. He eventually switches to True Neutral (or a pretty cynical Neutral Good) when he accepts his role as the keeper of balance between Law and Chaos. His sword Stormbringer on the other hand is Chaotic Evil to the core.
  • The plot of Spider Robinson's short story God is an Iron revolves around a criminal who burglarizes a woman's home, discovers her attempting suicide, and saves her life, nursing her back to health over the course of several days, but only out of a morbid curiosity as to what drove her to it. The novel expansion opens with the main character attempting suicide by jumping off a bridge and being saved by a man who just wanted to mug him before he leapt into the water.
  • Tolkien's Legendarium:
    • Gollum in The Lord of the Rings is definitely not good, but overall he comes across as more unstable and deranged than truly evil. He has some serious issues, after all. If we're to look at his two personalities as separate characters (as the movie did), "Sméagol" would be Chaotic Neutral and "Gollum" Chaotic Evil.
    • The Book of Lost Tales, the posthumously published first draft of The Silmarillion, contained two war-gods — Makar and his sister Meássë (whose names mean "battle" and "gore"). They were loyal to the side of good, but yet were sympathetic to the great enemy Melko, because they delighted in ceaseless violence. They were quietly dropped from the book, probably because having a pro-Melko/Melkor faction among the gods would have opened up a few cans of worms that Tolkien didn't care to deal with.
  • Simkin, a side character in Weis and Hickman's Darksword trilogy, sums up the Chaotic Neutral life philosophy (and his own) with the declaration that, "The game is nothing, the playing of it everything."
  • Archie, the gang leader in The Chocolate War and Beyond the Chocolate War, is either this or True Neutral. When Obie remarks that "You really hate this school," he responds "I don't hate anyone or anything." Obie is somewhat disturbed by this, wondering if he loves anyone or just walks through life in a fog.
  • Harry Potter:
    • Peeves the Poltergeist is a literal spirit of chaos. He delights in wreaking havoc wherever he goes, but his pranks tend to be more annoying/humiliating than seriously dangerous. The only individuals at Hogwarts who can exercise control over him at all are Dumbledore, the Bloody Baron, and on one memorable occasion, the Weasley twins. Nearly Headless Nick actually uses him in the second book to spare Harry from getting a possible detention for letting Argus Filch catch him track mud on campus.
    • Draco Malfoy is trying to be Lawful Evil, but he gradually shows he's not so much an evil person as a cowardly, narcissistic brat who got in over his head. He shows his true colours when he is unable to kill Dumbledore.
    • Witch columnist Rita Skeeter's primary motive is to publish sensational gossip about members of the magical community. She cares little about honesty or whether her subjects are good or villainous, so long as the articles make a splash.
  • The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress: Professor de la Paz describes himself as a rational anarchist. He doesn't want any laws, but he accepts that others do want them. If a law is tolerable, he tolerates it; if not, he breaks it.
  • The philosophy of the Dark Others in the Night Watch (Series) fits this, praising individualism with an attitude to the effect that everyone should look out for their own desires and not infringe on those of anyone else. In practice, they tend to forget the last part, making them more Chaotic Evil, although some of their members might qualify. The best example would be the Villain Protagonist witch Alice. Within the first several hours of her story she drains her mana reserves, staving off her mother's incipient heart attack, then replenishes them by infuriating a random guy who gave her a lift, rescues a mouse from some jerks who were torturing it and then demonstrates total consent with the prospect of child sacrifice in order to win a minor brawl with the Light Ones.
  • Lisbeth Salander, the Anti-Hero protagonist of the Millennium Series, is as Chaotic Neutral as they come. If you stay on her good side, great! She'll help you in your time of need. However, if you do anything bad (especially towards women) she'll make you hurt in ways you can't possibly even begin to imagine. The way she treats her victims prevents her from being Chaotic Good, but the nature of her victims prevents her from being Chaotic Evil as well.
  • Alaska Young of Looking for Alaska is the very embodiment of this trope. She's brash, impulsive, and hurts people on a regular basis with little to no explanation for her actions. Sure, she treats Pudge with a great deal of kindness, but only out of personal fondness for him. With her untimely death, due entirely to how impulsive and unpredictable she is, the entire book ends up being an example of how being Chaotic Neutral is not a good thing.
  • Balram from The White Tiger will do anything it takes to break out of the Rooster Coop.
  • Redwall: The Gawtrybe in Martin the Warrior'' are a tribe of Psychopathic Manchild squirrels whose morality operates solely on the basis of what makes a "good game". When the heroes first meet them, they want to play "chase" ... up a cliff, and if they catch the heroes, they get to throw them off. During the climactic battle, however, they are persuaded to help the good guys on the basis that slaughtering vermin makes an equally good "game".
  • In Naomi Novik's Temeraire series any feral dragon is likely to be this. Iskierka turns this up almost to Chaotic Stupid levels.
  • Ethan Nakamura from Percy Jackson and the Olympians works as this. As the son of Nemesis, his primary motivation for flipping sides multiple times is revenge, almost to the point of Chronic Backstabbing Disorder.
  • Lestat De Lioncourt from The Vampire Chronicles. True, he's no saint, but, he generally tries to do the right thing... most of the time. He often does things just to see what happens, and is especially delighted to buck tradition just for the sake of doing so. He actually does a number of evil things, but he tends to abhor other evil creatures, especially ones who are systematically and purposefully evil like Akasha.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire:
    • Sandor "The Hound" Clegane definitely fits this alignment, having no real loyalty but to himself... but he's still nowhere near as unpleasant as his Chaotic Evil brother Gregor.
    • As she becomes more anti-heroic, Arya Stark probably falls into this (having started off as Chaotic Good). She doesn't hurt innocent people and still feels sympathy toward them, but she is quite bloodthirsty in her desire for revenge, and by the fourth and fifth books of the series has killed people whose guilt was at least questionable. However, what keeps her out of falling into the True Neutral of her new associates is that she still retains her reckless, independent streak and has not yet succumbed to the Individuality Is Illegal ethos of the Faceless Men.
  • Eloise could definitely be considered Chaotic Neutral. While her actions in the underwhelming adaptations of the series tend to veer towards Chaotic Good, her actions in the original books often harmed both good and evil entities, and she clearly couldn't be bothered to give a damn about it.
  • Su Wukong aka Monkey King from Journey to the West starts out this way. He is not quite malicious enough to be evil (barely) yet he uses his powers to bully anyone and everyone he comes across to get what he wants, has no respect for authority, and does what he wants because he can. It takes being trapped under a mountain for 500 years and going on the pilgrimage to India to slowly mature him into Chaotic Good.
  • Michael Swanwick's pair of con artist adventurers Darger and Surplus don't go out of their way to harm people (outside of their cons), but they also have a habit of accidentally causing catastrophic damage-like burning future London to the ground and unleashing a plague of golems on future Prague-and they really don't care. In the story "Tawny Petticoats'', while they do a good deed in freeing people turned into zombie slaves in future New Orleans (likely because Surplus was briefly a victim), they do so in a way that will undoubtedly result in a bloody slave revolt leaving the city in ruins- but they skip town before they or the audience can see the consequences of their actions.
  • Winston and Julia in Nineteen Eighty-Four are devoted to bringing down the Lawful Evil Party mostly because they want to personally not have to worry about its laws, and not because they particularly value anyone else's freedom. When O'Brien asks if they would throw acid in a child's face to bring down the Party, Winston says yes without a moment's hesitation.
  • Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, with tendencies towards Chaotic Good. Holden is probably the most famous example of a rebel without a cause. He doesn't do anything particularly evil, but is a generally unpleasant person due to his disdain for people in general-though to be fair, he himself gets the brunt of the consequences of his misanthropy. On the flip side, he does nothing particularly good, but is still fairly compassionate and despite his cynical attitude towards society and humanity, he's not really mean to anyone.
  • Arsène Lupin, patron saint of lovable rogues everywhere, will rob you of your most precious heirlooms, after warning the police in advance, and make a fool of everyone present. Why? For the danger, for the publicity and (most importantly) for the kicks (and let's not forget the money). He will even work with the law as Jim Barnet if he thinks that's funnier. His crimes are nearly always non-violent (and when they are, it's generally because an underling slipped-up), he never takes so much that a target would fall into poverty and would never harm France itself (The Government, however is fair game) so he isn't Chaotic Evil, but he doesn't target people who particularly deserves it nor is he fighting for a cause either, so he is not Chaotic Good. All of this makes him fit the Hedonist to a tee.
  • N. K. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy:
    • Nahadoth, God of Chaos and Darkness, manifested the raw substance of the universe that his younger siblings gave structure and purpose. Within the universe, his influence is what allows things to have individuality and free will.
    • Sieh, god of childhood and mischief, is the archetypal Trickster in the setting, and his affinity means he has a child's capacity for both unconditional love and horrific cruelty. He's also powerful enough to create and extinguish stars.
  • Animorphs:
    • Rachel is a Blood Knight extraordinaire and sometimes borderline Sociopathic Soldier, but her sense of honor and loyalty keep her from being straight up Chaotic Evil.
    • The Skrit Na are this, with a bit of Chaotic Stupid as well, as they abduct humans and other species at random, and while they usually return them unharmed, none of the other alien races in the setting can figure out why the hell they do this,
  • The dwarfs in The Last Battle, the final installment of The Chronicles of Narnia. When King Tirion sets them free, expecting them to join his cause in fighting the Calormenes that are enslaving fellow Narnians, he is shocked to see them shrug their shoulders and walk away. In the eponymous last battle, the dwarfs stand alone and shoot at both the good Narnians and the evil Calormenes alike, trying to ensure neither side has an advantage so they will wipe each other out and leave the dwarfs to govern themselves.

    Live Action TV 
  • Star Trek:
    • Q is only out to entertain himself, and although he does enjoy needling people he finds stuck-up, he's not actually malicious and generally doesn't really hurt anyone. He even occasionally goes out of his way to help people, though often based on his own slightly askew morality. He stands in marked contrast to many other Reality Warper beings who do callously inflict misery on lesser beings.
    • Vash is largely the Hedonist, with a touch of Rebellious Rebel. Her primary motivation is profit (and tends to get mixed up with Ferengi, what a surprise), but she's genuinely fond of Picard and not malicious.
    • Quark is only motivated by profit, as any proper Ferengi should be, and he'll lie, cheat and scheme to get what he wants. However, he does have a sense of morality that keeps him from becoming truly despicable, which sometimes puts him in contrast to much more ruthless businessmen who serve as the antagonists.
    • Laas, the orphan changeling, has abandoned all connection with the rest of the universe and simply wanders the stars. He does what he feels like when he feels like it, ignoring all consequences to others. This is particularly striking since Odo, who was also orphaned by his people, still seems to have inherited their almost obsessive Lawfulness.
  • The Nietzscheans from Andromeda — they work on the principle of "enlightened self-interest", which means they can do anything the writers want. Lampshaded at one point in an Alternate Timeline episode where one of the Nietzcheans responsible for the uprising that destroyed the original Commonwealth finds himself completely disgusted by the current conduct of his people. They were supposed to be a race of Warrior Poets but forgot about the poetry and the "enlightened" aspect of enlightened self-interest.
  • House: Dr. Gregory House, sometimes. Definitely on the side of Chaos, as he chafes under authority — be it legal, professional, or religious. He rebels at every opportunity, and his rigorous problem-solving method seems holistic, piecemeal, and free-associating (complete with 'Eureka!' moments) rather than strictly logical and linear. House doesn't seem to care enough about his patients as people to be Chaotic Good, but is too dedicated to saving them to be Chaotic Evil. On a good day, or during Season 6 and most of Season 7, he uses his abilities for good to the point of being more Chaotic Good.
  • Burn Notice:
    • Michael Westen will help out the underdog if they appeal to his sense of justice, but his immaculately thought out plans often end with the episode's antagonist dead in an alley.
    • Fiona is another example. She's impulsive, violent, enjoys beating on people, and as likely to be unwilling to help the needy as she is to want to help them. She's not above using others to further her own ends, especially towards toying with Michael.
  • iCarly: Sam Puckett is a violently temperamental bully with no respect for authority, but she has enough Pet the Dog moments to keep from being Chaotic Evil. Without Carly, who acts as her Morality Chain, she'd likely end up as Chaotic Evil.
  • Zack Martin and London Tipton in The Suite Life of Zack & Cody and The Suite Life on Deck, Both just do whatever makes them happy while being a jerk about it, but they do have nice sides deep down.
  • Boy Meets World: Shawn Hunter is of this alignment, always defying authority, doing whatever he wants while dragging Cory along. Despite this he is extremely loyal to Cory.
  • Firefly:
  • Chiana from Farscape embodies Chaotic Neutral, being a Ms. Fanservice Lovable Rogue who ran away from her oppressive Lawful Evil society so that she could steal stuff, sleep around, and do drugs.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Claude Rains, the Ensemble Dark Horse Trickster Mentor from Heroes. He's lived as an Invisible Hobo for seven years, pickpocketing and following random people around because he can. He's a callous pessimist who puts Peter Petrelli through Training from Hell (which includes pushing him off a building). But we learn that his misanthropy is justifiable (his best friend betrayed and shot him), and that he lives as an invisible, homeless pickpocket to stay off the Company's radar. And he loves his pigeons.
  • Merritt Rook from the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Authority." He convinces people to do utterly vile things that never quite cross the Moral Event Horizon (although his first act, strip-searching a teenage girl, came close), his only concern being to subvert the power structures he blames for the death of his wife.
  • The Shadows of Babylon 5 are initially portrayed as Chaotic Evil. However, later we find out that their antagonism with the Vorlons started off as an educational partnership for the benefit of younger races, making them The Knights Templar for Chaos, and really more Chaotic Neutral than evil.
  • Stargate SG-1: Vala Mal Doran swings between fighting to save the Milky Way Galaxy from the Ori threat to being only in it for the money, including (but not limited to) pretending to still be a Goa'uld so she could take a planet for every cent it had. Occasional moments of heartwarming vulnerability may also just be her messing with your head.
  • Red Dwarf:
    • The Cat really does not care, so long as you don't mess with his clothes or his food.
  • Noble Demon Alex Russo of Wizards of Waverly Place. She is lazy, irresponsible, selfish, openly mocks authority, and at times treats her best friend like a servant. However she does actually love her family and Harper and in the end will usually do the right thing even though much of the time "the right thing" means fixing a problem she caused in the first place.
  • Rayanne from My So-Called Life is a total free-spirit, constantly partying, drinking and having sex with little to no sense of guilt over how she's affecting Angela or any of her other friends.
  • The titular Sherlock Holmes of BBC's Sherlock falls to this alignment, solving the numerous cases that the Metropolitan Police Service brings before him as an excuse to satisfy his intellectual vanity, and repeatedly stepping over regulations and normal practices in order to achieve what he desires, and proves to be an insufferable pillock towards those around him.. That said, his few friends are very dear to him, to the extent where he is willing to fake his death to ensure their safety.
  • Jesse Pinkman of Breaking Bad is a meth cook and murderer, yet his moral standards, overwhelming sense of guilt and overall puppy-like naivete make him, at heart, not cut out for crime. He is also impulsive, self-destructive and wonders aloud "what's the point of being an outlaw if you've got responsibilities?". Jesse's friends Badger, Skinny Pete and Combo also qualify. Though willing to deal meth, they are all ditzy, dumb and more dangerous to themselves than anyone else.
  • Supernatural:
  • Rebecca from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a type 4. While she is a fairly kindhearted person, she is too self centered manipulative and, well, crazy to truly be good.
  • Lily from How I Met Your Mother is an odd case, since she's generally either Neutral Good or Chaotic Good. However, while she's very nice towards Marshall for the most part, she has kind of a manipulative and sometimes downright crazy side to her, which leads her to morally questionable acts and is sometimes bad enough to prompt a What the Hell, Hero? from the rest of the cast.
    • Barney, of course, absolutely qualifies. The only law he believes in is the "Bro Code"; otherwise, he's an absolute rascal and opportunist, who does what he wants and doesn't give a fuck about any woman he manipulates and has sex with.
  • Bam Margera's MTV personality is infamously this, especially in Viva La Bam. He'll do any antics he feels like, evident in the tagline "Bam Margera, what will he do next? 'Whatever the (beep) I want.'"
  • Upright Citizens Brigade: According to the show's intro, the Upright Citizens Brigade exists for the sole purpose of creating chaos.
  • The Sopranos: Janice. A total free-spirit who acts strictly out of impulse and, though not quite as manipulative or sociopathic as her Neutral Evil mothernote , has no qualms about breaking any moral code she has if it benefits her in some way.

    Manhwa 

    Music 
  • Kavinsky the undead driver, from what we've seen of the music videos. He seems to really enjoy being chased by cops.
  • The Rolling Stones: Ruby Tuesday from the song of the same name seems to be this, as she's both mysterious and constantly changing.

    Newspaper Comics 
  • Calvin and Hobbes: Calvin is a definite example, being extremely unpredictable, as well as hating all kinds of rules and limitations. He's frequently at odds with authority figures, especially school and his parents, makes up his own rules to games — or makes up new games altogether — and has the kind of imagination that'd almost suggest he has a problem with reality itself. He's selfish and egotistical, and usually doesn't help other people unless he might profit out of it. His Super Hero alter ego Stupendous Man fights "tyranny", meaning any authority figure telling him to do something he doesn't want to — or might just drop a big snowball on Susie's head. His general thoughts about the state of the world and mankind, as well as his fondness for animals, would suggest an alignment change to Chaotic Good later in his life, though.
  • The Pointy-Haired Boss from Dilbert isn't so much evil as he is straight-out insane (and stupid). After all, what other alignment would give someone a bonus for something they did, then refuse to tell them what they did (because then they might do it again and expect another bonus)?
    Alice: Congratulations, you've motivated me to act randomly.
    PHB: I'm going over here, and I don't know why.
    • Switches between this and Lawful Evil whenever he talks to Catbert.

    Professional Wrestling 
  • A modern example of this trope would be CM Punk. His character absolutely despises authority, and will go out of his way to mock or provoke anybody who attempts to get him to change his mind. Punk will also take every opportunity he can to get ahead, even if it means cashing in on a weakened opponent, be they a babyface or a heel. Punk is straight-edge (both in Kayfabe and Real Life), and that means he's "better than you" and not afraid to tell you so.
  • "Stone Cold" Steve Austin lives by the motto "Don't Trust Anybody" and is concerned with nothing so much as drinking beer and kicking ass. He can occasionally be convinced to do the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing, but is just as likely to turn on the convincer and beat him up for shits and giggles once the good deed is done. About the only thing he's ever been consistent on is that he absolutely hates being told what to do.
  • Kane is another good example. He's been a face for a good portion of his career, but he's clearly not a case of Dark Is Not Evil. What makes him so popular with the crowds is simply because he's such an effective badass — that, and also the fact that he has often been bullied and tormented by even more evil wrestlers (not to speak of his near-death by burning at the hands of his "brother," The Undertaker), resulting in him becoming a most unusual version of The Woobie (most notably, it was hard not to sympathize with Kane during his feud with Triple H and Evolution in 2003). While Kane is undeniably a sadist and a monster, he only attacks people who actually deserve to have their ass kicked. He finally turned heel again in the summer of 2008 when he tortured Rey Mysterio Jr. and stole his mask, although he seems to get cheered by the fans even now.
  • Dean Ambrose has picked up the Chaotic Neutral ball and run with it. There's a reason the guy's nickname is "The Lunatic Fringe." The influence of Heath Ledger's portrayal of The Joker is plain in everything he does.

    Tabletop Games 
  • From Vampire: The Masquerade, the Anarchs are a faction of vampires that, most sympathetically, believe in freedom and the right to self-determinate. They also feel that the Masquerade can be upheld by common sense and occasionally smacking down those who step too far out of line. They hate the Camarilla and their formalized and highly-punitive legal system which can be readily abused as a means of control by the aristocrats and power brokers.
    • The Brujah clan tend to be this, being punk rock rebellious youngsters perpetually fighting against the "man". On the one hand, they are the most passionate and most likely to fight for a just cause. However, they are also the Kindred closest to their Beast, and will likely go into a Frenzied rampage. It is no surprise that many Anarchs are Brujah.
  • The Random Number God, appropriately. He'll give you great rolls or horrible ones, depending on what he finds most amusing that day.
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • Orks. They are a terrifying horde of gun-crazed marauders who were basically engineered as living weapons, and have no ability to understand that there might be people who aren't motivated solely by war. An Ork thinks that by besieging your fortress they're doing you a favour, because why would you build a fortress if you didn't want someone to come along and fight you? Throw in their social structure being built on a robust basis of fist-fights, and you have some pretty solidly Chaotic traits, without the deliberate malice it requires to qualify as Evil.
    • The Tyranids, a Horde of Alien Locusts who eat everything and everyone they come across. No-one knows their exact point of origin or how they came to exist, nor could such information be accurately traced because of how many galaxies they've already consumed. And yet, there's no malice to what they do. Even the Hive Mind, a highly intelligent entity that is the brains behind the numerous Hive Fleets, has been described by those who made contact with it as a "great hunger". Thus they spend their entire existences consuming planets, looking for planets to consume or planting Genestealer Cults to facilitate consuming planets. It's as simple as that.
    • While the Eldar commonly fight against threats to Order and Good like the Necrons, Tyranids and Chaos, above all they are concerned only with their survival, the deaths of innumerous members of the "lesser races" insignificant in comparison. Members of the Imperium describe them as a capricious, fickle force of the universe like the aforementioned Orks and Tyranids, yet realise that allying with them is often the difference between victory and defeat.
  • If you stretch it, some of the Chaos Gods in both Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 might barely count as Chaotic Neutral. Nurgle might be the best example, since he does love you. A lot. Then we have Necoho and Malal, while not any of the greater chaos gods, act more benevolent than the other gods, in Malal's case, he practically only focuses on other chaos gods, since he represents chaos turned against itself, and Necoho is the god of atheism, which means he practically only targets religious cults of any kind, in addition to the other chaos gods. In the earliest fluff, all of the Chaos Gods were Chaotic Neutral, being neither good nor evil, but simply embodiments of a particular set of emotions and related concepts. Though many Chaos worshippers did end up sliding into extremism and becoming evil, it was perfectly valid to have a relatively "good" Chaos worshipper, who applied the teachings of their patron in a manner that was at least not actively dangerous to most, and maybe even sometimes beneficial — a Khorne Champion who would never harm the weak, instead seeking to fight and kill only the strong and deadly in order to prove themselves worthy of Khorne's ideals, for example. Subsequent editions have played up the Chaotic Evil aspect of the Dark Gods, however. From a Certain Point of View, the Chaos Gods are still Chaotic Neutral. They aren't really concerned about anything but themselves, and rarely even pay attention to the mortals, unless they perceive something as a threat to them (in fact, most of the horribly evil things champions of Chaos do is to attract the attention of the Gods for even a split second so that they could be elevated to daemonhood). The Gods themselves don't really actively strive to do evil things, they just want to increase their own power. The Daemons and mortal followers of Chaos tend to be Chaotic Evil, however. The Chaos gods are treated as evil in the same way as Cthulhu is treated as evil, since they technically have a moral system that is beyond human comprehension. As to this, they technically are Chaotic Neutral, but due to human lack of understanding to the morals of the chaos gods, they appear Chaotic Evil in human moral terms.
    • Ogres and Orcs seem to fit in Fantasy. Orcs fit like they do in 40K, being bad but not really that much worse than the "good" armies, and Ogres are obsessed with conquering and eating everything on their path but will work for anyone for a good meal and some more gunpowder for their leadbelcher cannons, and they can be quite chummy when not on the opposite side of the battlefield.
    • Marius Leitdorf, the Mad Count of Averland, the Empire's resident Bunny-Ears Lawyer and absolute nutter is as chaotic neutral as they come. Legendary for his many eccentricities, his bouts of screaming rage, his periods of melancholy, his mercurial conduct at court, and his constant improprieties with the wives and daughters of the nobility. In spite of his madness, he was proven to be a cunning tactician and skilled swordsman.
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • The slaadi are the Anthropomorphic Personification of this in the same way demons represent Chaotic Evil and archons (sort of like angels) represent Lawful Good. They were switched to Chaotic Evil during 4th edition upon recognition that they were far more destructive than Chaotic Neutral typically exemplifies (and their method of reproduction is terrifying Body Horror).
    • A prominent Chaotic Neutral race in D&D are the grugach, also known as wild elves. Unlike the more noble high elves, they're a violently xenophobic culture of forest-dwelling nomads.
    • Forgotten Realms: The god Tempus is the erratic personification and judge of war. War itself is neither good nor evil, and no matter the best-laid strategies it is unpredictable and unable to be commanded once it starts.
    • In Pathfinder, the slaadi are replaced as Chaotic Neutral's exemplars by the serpentine proteans, the living embodiments of raw creative and destructive potential (as opposed to the slaadi, who represented rampant self-indulgence, another aspect of Chaotic Neutral). Perhaps not incidentally, the primordial gods of Egyptian myth, the Ogdoad, were depicted as frogs and snakes.
  • Almost every Shadowrunner, and most Shadowrunning teams fall victim to this standpoint. The ones who go too evil find themselves obsessed with either blood magic or insane amounts of cybernetics, while the ones who wind up too good eventually go legitimate. Or start up a television show once their statute of limitations expires.
  • While several characters in the Magic: The Gathering storylines fit this trope, most red-aligned characters are Chaotic Neutral, with a few slipping into Chaotic Good (the flamekin) or Chaotic Evil (the Mercadians).
    • Chandra Nalaar exemplified this trope until some Character Development, and help from Gideon Jura brought her up to Chaotic Good in time to join the Gatewatch (and brought him from Lawful Neutral up to Lawful Good).
    • The Blue/Red colour combination (exemplified by the Izzet guild) is probably a good example of "smart" chaotic neutral. Their thought processes are generally non-linear, they leap from idea to seemingly (often actually) unrelated ideas for the sole purpose of learning new things, regardless of what those new things are and often without even questioning why they need to know them.
    • Black in its most benevolent form is generally this or True Neutral. As an extension, more sympathetic examples of Black/Red characters are this, with black providing the selfishness of a typical Anti-Hero and red providing the empathy and love to provide Pet the Dog moments and sympathetic streak that keeps the character from being evil. It's rare, but it certainly happens occasionally.
  • The Destroyers factions in Monsterpocalypse, who go on destructive rampages out of pure instinct alone. The Planet Eaters mostly consume anything they can get their claws on. While the Savage Swarm smash anything that has bright and shiny lights.
  • The Dark from Nobilis third edition. Their goal is to encourage humans to pursue their own pleasure, even if it means their deaths, but unlike earlier versions (where it was the death of humanity that they pursued) it's more indifference to human survival than opposition to it that motivates them.

    Theater 
  • Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream does what he/she wants, when he's not being kept in line by Oberon.
  • Siegfried from The Ring of the Nibelung. Siegfried's disregard for law is emphasised by him breaking the Lawful Neutral Wotan's spear, a representation of law, while his father died when Wotan used his spear against him. Siegfried doesn't seem entirely good, coming across as rude and arrogant. His father Siegmund is a product by his father Wotan to create someone Chaotic Neutral who can defy the laws that prevent Wotan stopping threats to his power. However Wotan manipulating him into this means he isn't truly free and he comes across as trying to be Chaotic Good.
  • Hypercompetent Sidekick and The Trickster Boraccio from Much Ado About Nothing is a kind of type 4. Unlike his Chaotic Evil / Stupid Evil master Don John he is capable of showing remorse for his actions and even has a Pet the Dog moment towards his lover Margaret when she is implicated in his plots.

    Video Games 
  • Dr. Mosely/Zeta from Double Homework leads a life consisting of conducting experiments that are widely considered illegal and immoral. She does believe in her own ethics of what she does, and tries to save innocent people from being hurt whenever possible, but God help anyone who tries to pry into or derail her experiments.
  • Joel from The Last of Us. He fights and kills people strictly to survive, but there's one other thing. He sacrifices all of humanity to save one girl; Ellie. That shows that he is selfish, and didn't even give Ellie a choice on whether she wanted to not be used for a cure.
  • Naked Snake from Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. He builds his own country to avoid law, is willing to be a mercenary for any country no matter who's in charge, etc. In Snake Eater, he even says so.
  • Arcana Heart:
    • Lilica Felchenerow's main goal is to just have fun and play harmless pranks, she actively tries to break the rules, and she doesn't care much for the dimensional disturbance.
    • Insufferable Genius Kira Daidohji probably fancies herself to be a Lawful Evil Overlord, but despite her intelligence and overblown ego, her plans are too simplistic and random to make her really dangerous.
  • Borderlands 2:
    • The Vault Hunters with the exception of Neutral Good Maya. Most notable is Krieg, who for the most part is so insane that basic communication is difficult for him, but does have a (deeply suppressed) conscience and tries to prevent himself from killing innocent people.
    • The NPC Mr. Torgue is a complete lunatic whose moral scale isn't divided into good and evil, but into "awesome" and "not-awesome". On the positive side, treating women with respect is filed under "awesome". On the negative side, so are all explosions, regardless of source, scale, or location. He once tried to blow up the planet he was standing on because he thought it would be cool, and sold his weapons company for pocket change and a high-five.
    • Mad Moxxi would probably count as well: She's kind of a psycho but helps out the players in fighting Handsome Jack in the second game. And while she runs the Underdome in the first game, which may seem cruel, she can be surprisingly compassionate and soft heared as well.
  • Done again with the Vault Hunters from Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!. The exceptions being Nisha (who is probably Lawful Evil) and Athena (who is Neutral Good like Maya).
  • Eiji Shinjo, the brash main character of Battle Arena Toshinden, probably started out with this alignment, nevermind his more heroic anime incarnation. He used to only care about himself, his only objective being to surpass his brother Sho in fighting skill. He eventually matures, and by the end of the third game, he can probably be considered Chaotic Good. That is, prior to his Face–Heel Turn in the fourth game, which quite a few fans refuse to consider canon...
  • Akuma from the Street Fighter series would qualify. One could be excused for thinking he's evil, but he has his own code of honor that prohibits him from harming innocents or fighting in a match that would be too unfair (case in point, he stopped his fight with Gen when he realized that he was sick). He also killed M. Bison during the time he tried to make Ryu fall to the Satsui no Hadou.
  • Guilty Gear:
    • In his days as Dr. Baldhead, Faust was Chaotic Evil. After coming to terms with the death of one of his patients, he seeks redemption and acts much like Tezuka's Black Jack. However, he still takes some pleasure in bloodshed — as pointed out by I-No. Insisting on "curing" Chipp with an oversized scalpel and risking his own life to protect Venom, both due to his interpretation of the Hippocratic oath, he might not be eligible for the Chaotic Good badge just yet.
    • Happy Chaos learned all the secrets of the universe, but said knowledge broke him and caused the concepts of good and evil to become meaningless to him. Now the only thing he values is drama and he gleefully commits good and evil acts on a whim.
  • Team Fortress 2:
    • The Demoman clearly qualifies. He does look extremely unpredictable, does not play by the team's rules and uses explosives to inhibit the opposing team's advancement in the level, being a rugged Chaotic Neutral in this situation, even being a defensive class.
    • Most of the characters in the game can be considered this. The soldier, if not transitioning between Chaotic Evil or Lawful Stupid is an outright type 5 headcase.
  • In Warcraft III, Grom Hellscream◊, previously a Chaotic Evil Berserker, permanently cements himself as a Chaotic Neutral Berserker instead. Every action he takes that isn't fueled by his desire to atone for his past sins is fueled by his anger at anyone whom he views as an enemy. Near the end of the Orc campaign he falls once again to his Chaotic Evil side but redeems himself by killing the demon responsible for cursing the Orcs (and thus freeing them from the demons) in exchange for his life.
    • Illidan Stormrage◊ in the same game. His main goal is power, and at a brief glance it seems that he's willing to do absolutely anything for it, but he shows from time to time that there are things that still matter to him, such as his childhood friend Tyrande and the lands he grew up in. One reading of his actions would be "a really selfish and greedy guy who tries to be good to show off but doesn't really know how to"..
    • The goblin race as a whole, who care about nothing but their own personal freedom, profit, and explosions — in that order. They never pick a side unless their freedom is put at stake and Word of God says they'd be just as at home in the Horde or the Alliance — the Alliance simply accidentally attacked the Kezanian goblins first, prompting their joining the Horde.
    • This seems to be the default alignment of elementals in the Warcraft universe. While they are almost always hostile to the Titan created races, they are more like amoral forces of nature than actively malicious.
  • Planescape: Torment
    • Annah, the fiercely passionate, mercurial young tiefling, is a thief, a guttersnipe, and a corpse-seller—but while she has a sharp tongue she doesn't have a genuinely mean bone in her body.
    • The pyromaniac mage Ignus wants to burn down The Multiverse, but his mind has been scrambled too much to have a concept of "morality" and "malice" and is unaware of why setting fire to everything is something other people would have a problem with. (They set him permanently on fire as a punishment, and he likes it.)
    • Nordom is Chaotic Neutral because he was split from the Hive Mind and values his own newfound individuality more than anything even if he covers it up in Robo Speak and generally behaving like a Lawful Neutral regular Modron.
    • Coaxmetal is a stricter example in that he's an outright servant to entropy as a concept. Everything he does, be it aiding you in your quest, selling some of the most powerful equipment in the game or fueling the wars between planes, he does because the chains of Order must be shattered eventually, the end of the universe must come along one day, and he feels personally responsible for making sure it comes to pass. By his word, Entropy itself somehow built him from discarded weaponry with the exclusive purpose of becoming the Ultimate Blacksmith who'd forge the weapons that'd unmake the multiverse.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Rouge the Bat cares for her own hedonism above all else. Her personal theme song, "Fly in the Freedom", is all about how no one can tell her what to do, and that she lives for her own desires above all else. She only works for G.U.N. when she's promised that she'll be paid in gems, does thievery on the side, and has worked with series Big Bad Dr. Eggman before as well. As long as someone can pay Rouge and/or give her what she wants, the larger picture does not concern her. On various occasions, Rouge has risked the safety of Angel Island because she wants to steal the Master Emerald, not caring that it's a sacred treasure to Knuckles and the echidnas or that stealing it will cause Angel Island to fall from the sky. In the Archie Comics, Rouge was tasked with taking Blaze's Sol Emerald for G.U.N, even though taking it might put Blaze's world in danger. Yet even as she took the Emerald, Rouge contemplated keeping it for herself. Ultimately, while Rouge's intentions aren't malicious, she's far too hedonistic and selfish to be a 'Good' character.
    • The Chaotix as a team are this, taking any job that pays even if they don't know who their employer is. While generally determined to finish the job, it's only so that Vector can pay the rent, and they go about the job in a rather haphazard manner. As individuals, they are of Chaotic Good alignment.
    • Shadow comes to this realization in the Semi Dark - Hero ending of his own game. He declares that only he knows what's best and that no one can tell him what to do, and he demonstrates this by killing Dr. Eggman.
  • Neverwinter Nights 2:
    • Despite her character sheet listing her as True Neutral, the tiefling rogue Neeshka has a personality that practically screams Chaotic Neutral with most of her suggestions being (small-scale) evil or chaotic, but she still seems to have a nice streak that shows through on occasion.
    • Then there's Qara, who is listed as this alignment, but is Chaotic Stupid — she's quite selfish and tends to want to set things on fire just because she can, regardless of what the object is or the safety of anyone else around. One can make the interpretation that Qara is merely too pampered and immature to understand the concept of control, however, and she will risk her life for a true friend, though in the end, her hatred of Sand proves much stronger than any bond of friendship she feels towards the Knight-Captain.
  • Everyone in the Grand Theft Auto series is Chaotic Neutral, seeking only their personal profit; owing allegiance to nobody. Although the fact they kill people should count as Evil, you also have to consider that all the protagonists in Grand Theft Auto live in a world of crime where killing is like an everyday commute. The probable exceptions would be Victor Vance from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories who does what he does entirely out of necessity to help his sick brother, and though he absolutely hates what he's doing and tries not to hurt people, he also doesn't attempt to help them. And then there's Niko from Grand Theft Auto IV, whose aspiration is to live the American dream and retire from the life of crime he made in Liberty City, which would make him more True Neutral. Antonio Cipriani from Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories could be argued to be Lawful Evil, since he operates within a hierarchy and has absolute loyalty to his crime family and is willing to do anything, up to and including leveling the entire Fort Staunton neighborhood to weaken a rival syndicate, to further his gang's goals. He even ground up a man who refused to pay protection money to prove to his own mother that he was as tough as his father, and then gave the man's remains to the man's own store to be sold as meat to customers.
  • In Mass Effect Renegade Shepard's goal is fundamentally sound (stop Saren in the first game, stop Harbinger and the Reapers in the second and third games), and, if all Loyalty missions are completed and if s/he saves everyone from the Collectors, s/he does seem to genuinely care about his/her crewmembers, willing to risk his/her own life many times over in the name of helping them. But it seems that those are honestly the only two things s/he cares about, as his/her methods can be a little... extreme. S/he seems perfectly fine with punching out reporters, workers, scared survivors, and generally anyone who pisses him/her off, s/he will also happily allow a factory full of workers to burn alive in Zaeed's loyalty mission, will force Jack to kill someone else so as to embrace her killer's instinct, and generally just acts like a total Jerkass to everyone around him/her. During Samara's loyalty mission, he/she can choose to kill and replace her with her daughter.
    • Grunt also typifies this in Mass Effect 2, seeking to determine who is the strongest by fighting everyone, regardless of clan or alignment. It could be argued he turned more toward Chaotic Good after his loyalty mission, though.
  • Jak in Jak II is a textbook "Chaotic Neutral without being Chaotic Stupid". He's trapped in the battle between his natural compassion and the aftereffects of spending two years in prison being painfully tortured and experimented on with Dark Eco. He joins La Résistance not because he wants to help people, but because his sole desire at that point is to crush his archenemy's face into the ground, then place a gun to Praxis's head and fire. He eventually swings over to Neutral Good, though.
  • The Daedra from The Elder Scrolls, despite being technically beyond good or evil, often come across as Chaotic Neutral. Only problem is, their divine shenanigans can destroy entire worlds... Some of them do deeds that are disagreeable to the inhabitants of Tameriel that earn them the "evil" status.
    • Sheogorath, as the Daedric Prince of Madness, embodies Chaotic Neutral in his particular universe. Since he is the embodiment of madness, he could be compared to a pendulum that swings between Chaotic Evil, Chaotic Neutral and Chaotic Good, but tends to stick with Chaotic Neutral. On one hand, he can be psychopathic (killing a person for having a beard) and Ax-Crazy; while on the other hand, he helped the Chimer (who later became the dark elves) move from Summerset Isle and form their pre-tribunal culture, and is the source of creativity. He's also very keen on punishing those that deserve it, or teaching lessons to people, usually in the oddest way possible. So, in short, he IS the very definition of Chaotic Neutral. He does what he wants, and says fuck the consequences. Well, when his madness doesn't run in "take consequences into account a little bit too much"-ways (he is the God of Madness... including paranoia and compulsive behaviours).
    • Player characters. Any 100% complete playthrough will see the protagonist arbitrarily being heroic at one turn and fiendish at the next, blatantly disregarding the law, betraying friendly NPCs, slaughtering armies of mooks, helping some innocents and murdering others in cold blood, and stealing everything that can be carried off, with truly no goal other than the pursuit of power. In short, in order to achieve 100% Completion, the player has to make their game self Above Good and Evil.
  • Atton Rand from Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords is mildly insane, largely out for himself, and it's rather tricky to predict exactly how he'll respond to anything. More specifically, Atton starts out neutral. How the Exile behaves toward him can guide his Character Development to either good or evil — but he remains chaotic regardless, and the fact that the Exile can gain influence with Atton through either kindness or total gore-spattered psychopathy says a great deal.
  • Depending on how forgiving you're willing to be, Kirby is either Chaotic Neutral or Chaotic Good. He mostly seems to follow his instincts while saving the world almost by accident, half the time being the one to cause the problem in the first place. The most infamous example in the series is Kirby: Squeak Squad, where the pink puff ball nearly causes the destruction of the universe because some mice stole a slice of cake from him... and still only cares about the cake. The creators are on record as saying they treat Kirby as being basically a naive child.
  • Kingdom Hearts: Axel. While ostensibly a member of the bad guys, he does what he wants, when he wants, through the entire series. In Chain of Memories, his duty seems to be that of The Mole, but he really only does his job because he wants to, not out of any sense of loyalty to the Organization. Indeed, at one point he muses that "all the players are in place," and that he's looking forward to "one hell of a show." In II, he actively plays both sides, alternating between helping and hindering Sora as he feels like it. He follows his orders to bring Roxas back, but only because he himself has an interest in seeing him again. He kidnaps Kairi, but only because he knew it would bring Sora to their door that much quicker. At one point, he shows up and all but spells out the Organization's plot to Sora's face. He returns as complete-being Lea in Dream Drop Distance, unambiguously on the hero's side, so he may be closer to Chaotic Good now. He still loves screwing up other people's complicated schemes.
  • First Encounter Assault Recon: Alma isn't really evil, just a very insane and very angry eight-year-old girl in a twenty-year-old's body. All she wants is to be free to hold her children, and to be with a man she loves. And to get payback on Armacham, but considering what they did to her, it's almost justified.
  • Disgaea and the rest of the Nippon Ichi games tend to have this as their default alignment for virtually all demons. Mao, Rozalin, Zetta, Pram, even Laharl and Etna, plus virtually every NPC demon all can fall in this category. (For the main characters, that is assuming you get the good endings, at least.) While they loudly proclaim their villainy, it generally comes down to a few childish pranks, and picking fights with each other in a world where coming back from the dead is a quick stop at the nurse's office and some chump change. They really just want to live their lives goofing off, and hanging out with the buddies that they may or may not willingly admit they have, and in any time of trouble, always come to the aid of their fellows.
  • Boomerang from Wild ARMs has one goal in life: to fight the strongest opponent he can find. He is most definitely not a good person, but he isn't truly malicious either.
  • A large part of the cast of Touhou Project can be classified in this alignment. Effectively a giant band of little girls with various powers who stir up trouble just because they're bored, or because they're surprisingly old and just want to have a little fun. Nobody seems to die in Gensokyo, and Defeat Means Friendship, so it's really difficult to definitively say anyone is evil in Touhou. Well, other than that one demonic cherry tree and possibly the resident Necromantic "wicked" hermit.
  • Knights in the Nightmare's Meria. Some of her actions (rescuing you, her Taking the Bullet scene) lean a little towards Chaotic Good and others (her power fixation) towards Chaotic Evil, but she defiantly (and repeatedly) states that she's really only fighting for her own freedom.
  • The Secret of Monkey Island: Guybrush Threepwood is almost a human personification of chaos. While destroying the evil LeChuck is a good thing, he mostly does it out of trying to get into Elaine's pants (nevermind his Pant of Holding is big enough to put her in.... er, let's not go there). He lies, steals, and openly cheats to get what he wants — proper for a MIGHTY pirate, but hardly ethical; however, he doesn't do it out of malice (well, except for nailing Stan into a previously-used coffin, but that's Stan). In fact, he seems highly unaware of the consequences of his actions, and tends to refuse to take responsibility for his failures when it does blow up in his face.
  • Two characters from BlazBlue are very different forms of Chaotic Neutral:
    • Arakune, who is simply too insane to form any coherent thought beyond how to survive in his current state. Though he does have a few moments of lucidity (usually towards Litchi and Kokonoe, whom he loves and hates, respectively), during which he's Chaotic Good.
    • Kokonoe, whose singleminded devotion to bringing down Yuuki Terumi causes her to use any means whatsoever towards destroying him, up to and including nuclear warheads. That said, despite being a Jerkass, she isn't an actively malicious or evil person, and is shown to have genuine care towards her subordinates, particularly Tager.
    • There is also Ragna the Bloodedge, but he is only part-time Chaotic Neutral. Most of the time he is Chaotic Good on account of the Good is Not Nice trope. The occasional neutrality is due to him waging a one-man war against the oppressive NOL, indiscriminately slaughtering every Mook and Punch-Clock Villain he is able to find in its branch institutions. He isn't waging this war for altruistic purposes, like wanting to free the people from oppression or bringing peace and stability, either. No, he simply wants revenge on the NOL and Terumi for fucking up his life.
    • Jin Kisaragi, after his character development, becomes this. Yeah, he's a dick, but he's got his Pet the Dog moments, and he doesn't go the extra step into becoming truly evil. He was originally Neutral Evil, flying into Chaotic Evil territory whenever he bumps into Ragna or Noel, but he's cured of his insanity in the ending of the second game, after taking a level in badass.
  • Raziel from Legacy of Kain. He's belligerent, defiant, and rebellious against most everyone he meets. He expresses no remorse at cutting down the mooks that get in his way, even though they are completely incapable of killing him, nor does he bat an eye at draining the souls of helpless victims chained to walls, though he's not as sadistic about it as Kain is. He rarely thinks his actions through, making choices that cause great harm only because they benefit, or could potentially benefit him in the short term. Though he claims to be trying to restore balance to the world, his true motivation is selfish revenge and later, escaping a Fate Worse than Death, regardless of the consequences. Up until his Heroic Sacrifice, that is.
  • Black Whirlwind from Jade Empire, an Ax-Crazy mercenary whose chaotic and impulsive actions (sleeping with his employer's wife, cutting in two a girl two rivals were fighting over) normally end in him having to kill everyone in self-defense. The only thing that stops him being Chaotic Evil is that he seems to regret this outcome, if only because he doesn't get paid.
    • Same goes for Cha Dawn from Alien Crossfire, leader of the Cult of Planet, whose ultimate goal is to respect Planet's environments at all costs, even if that means returning Planet to its pristine state (making him at least borderline Chaotic Evil).
  • Super Mario Bros.:
  • Depending on who you ask, Morrigan in Dragon Age: Origins may be of this alignment. She is consistent about the fact that she will not be controlled or restrained by laws and rules, but what pushes slightly closer to this then outright Chaotic Evil is that several times in her backstory she mentions avoiding fights rather than just killing people that get in her way, though she is easily capable of doing so. However, her vanity and statements that power is the best method of getting personal freedom, and at least one VERY morally questionable action causes her to skirt Evil quite frequently. That said, Morrigan tends to be more Chaotic Stupid when with the Warden, making suggestions that would impede the party simply because they're more evil than the other choices.
    • Anders in Awakening is a nice guy, but basically Chaotic Neutral at heart, as his goals are personal freedom for himself, but he otherwise finds it too much work to worry about the rest of the mages in Thedas. Once merged with Justice, however...
  • In Dragon Age II, Isabela would have you believe that this is her alignment, but deep inside she's a surprisingly moral person. Her biggest weakness, appropriately, is the offer of getting a good ship and returning to the freedom of the sea.
    "I like big boats. I cannot lie."
  • Sera of Dragon Age: Inquisition pretty much epitomizes this alignment, being a Lovable Rogue, The Trickster, and a Rebellious Spirit with Cloudcuckoolander tendencies.
  • Alex Mercer of [PROTOTYPE]. He holds very little concern for individual human lives and kills often, out of necessity (unless you decide otherwise), or when bystanders get in his way (which is sadly very easy for them to do). On the other hand, he genuinely cares for his sister and his ultimate goals are downright heroic. In the war between The Virus and the Blackwatch, Alex is a side all by himself and such a pure force of destruction that it's impossible to classify him as good, but his alien and fragmentary mind and good intentions, even fueled by rage, exclude him from evil. Either way, funny little things like laws don't even slow him down.
  • Surprisingly enough, Gabriel from Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, in becoming Dracula after fate screws him over, does not turn into Chaotic Evil in spite of his desire and actions to get revenge on the world that has wronged him. Instead, he falls into the Type 4 Chaotic Neutral category, battling a threat even worse than he himself all the while dealing with cruel fate and his unforgiving offspring that want him dead. Post Lords of Shadow 2, he could arguably be considered Chaotic Good.
  • Tony Montana, originally a Neutral Evil in the movie Scarface (1983), turns into this after surviving the final battle, and helps several people to fend off the gangsters of Sosa in order to claim back his power in Scarface: The World Is Yours.
  • Shadow from Final Fantasy VI is actually an interesting case of how a character can have this alignment without being a raving loony. He's withdrawn and silent, but has little patience for any sort of laws or binding contracts. In the game itself, he'll show up as a Guest-Star Party Member, and has a random chance of leaving the party after a random enemy encounter. About halfway through the game he starts leaning towards Chaotic Good or possibly even Neutral Good, but when the World of Balance is destroyed his character development stops, hits the Reset Button, and when you recruit him again, all of his character development from then on is flashbacks ending with Redemption Equals Death. According to his character introduction:
    "He owes allegiance to no one, and will do anything for money. He comes and goes like the wind..."
  • In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn:
    • Shinon rolls with this, abandoning the player in the first game in the player's darkest hour simply for a lack of interest in working for you, going over to work for the enemy, and then coming back. Rolf serves as his Morality Chain.
    • As a more literal example, Yune, Goddess of Chaos, is more or less the embodiment of this, though she also takes the role of Chaotic Good during the last act of the game. As Yune herself explains, she is the embodiment of Chaos in all of its forms, both positive and negative. Which side she falls on depends on her connection to humanity.
  • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses:
    • On all routes other than Crimson Flower, Dimitri degenerates from Lawful Good to this alignment after his Freak Out. While he has sympathetic motivations and a basically-functioning moral compass (although much of his insanity is fueled by the belief that he himself is on the wrong side of said moral compass), he is completely indifferent to his own responsibilities as the rightful king of Faerghus, is obsessed with his own personal quest for revenge on Edelgard, is willing to torture an enemy general out of sheer bloodlust, and on the Verdant Wind route attacks Claude and his forces out of sheer psychotic rage. With Byleth at his side on the Azure Moon route, he eventually recovers and returns to Lawful Good; on Silver Snow and Verdant Wind, he remains in this state until his death.
    • Hilda is a milder example. She's mostly motivated by her own self-interest and self-preservation, and despite being technically the "retainer" character for the Golden Deer, she's the only one who can be recruited to other houses. If "poached", she says she's Not in This for Your Revolution and is mostly there because she trusts Byleth. That said, while she might manipulate people into doing work for her, she'd never go out of her way to hurt anyone, and the Crimson Flower and (if unrecruited) Azure Moon routes show she's more loyal to Claude than she acts.
  • Dryst from Brigandine. He's got a Kingdom, but didn't bother to rule it and instead uses his authority just to party all day and have fun with fighting and wars. Anyone who wants to join in the fun is allowed to join the party, people in Iscalio suffer but he doesn't care. What separates him from Chaotic Evil is that aside from some Pet the Dog moments, his idea of fun doesn't exactly require directly making others suffer like Bulnoil. There's a reason why he's called "The Mad Monarch".
  • Portal 2: Aperture Science founder Cave Johnson, who... well, we'll let the man himself speak:
    Science isn't about why, it's about why not? Why is so much of our Science dangerous? Why not marry Safe Science if you love it so much? In fact, why not invent a special "safety door" that won't hit you on the butt on the way out, because you are fired! Not you, test subject, you're doing fine. Yes, you. Box. Your stuff. Out the front door. Parking lot. Car. Goodbye.
  • Another one from BioWare: In Star Wars: The Old Republic, Tharan Cedrax is a bit of a mad scientist, experimenting cheerfully with technology from lost or obscure civilizations. He is of the opinion that knowledge itself is morally neutral, and will be very upset if you destroy that shiny Artifact of Doom, WMD, or highly unethical research project in his presence. Yet, he is very happy to solve situations without having to resort to violence, and is very fond of his lovely (virtual) assistant Holiday.
  • The robbers you play as in PAYDAY: The Heist. They rob and steal from high profile people or companies just to get rich quick and are willing to kill any law enforcer that gets in their way. However, the robbers don't target innocent civilians because they are not a part of their heist, but they can tie them down to use as a hostage against the police. PAYDAY 2 has the crew working for other people for heists that will pay them and their contractor very handsomely, showing that the player characters have no alliance with anyone and once they are paid, they stop working for their contact unless they have another job offer for them.
  • Final Fantasy XIII: Fang, whose primary motivation is to find Vanille, ensure she's safe and hitch a ride back home to Gran Pulse, whether that means helping the Calvary (Lawful Good), the party (Chaotic Good/Neutral Good — members vary), or neither. It's actually used against her, when she contemplates completing their Focus (i.e. do the opposite of your party's goal and destroy Cocooon) because it means Vanille won't become a Cie'th. It's best summarized in this line:
    Fang: Pulse and Cocoon can rot for all I care. [...] I'll tear down the sky, if it'll save her.
  • The Outsider from Dishonored is a scary example. He is basically a very powerful and nigh-omniscient Humanoid Abomination who seems to live in Another Dimension and only interacts with the world by appearing to people he judges "interesting", providing them with discussion, secrets and supernatural powers. What or who exactly he finds "interesting" is difficult to grasp, but what is extremely clear is that he couldn't care less for good and evil, morality, and depravity; he acknowledges they are powerful human emotional drives but appears completely unconcerned with them himself. Most of the people he touches have at least a bit of darkness in their soul, but it's arguably more because as a rule "happy people have no stories" than because he specifically enjoys evil, pain or sorrow. He has no grand plan or big agenda. In fact he looks rather pleased with himself and it doesn't seem he wants to achieve anything at all. That's why he does not expect or asks those he touches to do anything specific with their gifts; he is mildly surprised if you use them in an unexpected way, but never judgemental. On the other hand, the very choice of the people he bestows his gifts upon almost invariably leads to more chaos. It seems he just enjoys engineering "interesting" situations and letting them play out.
  • The Baldur's Gate series, being AD&D based, has alignment as an explicit attribute:
    • Jan Jansen is a mischievous and random gadgeteer who likes to make, use and sell illegal devices and is always telling extravagant stories.
    • Haer'Dalis is an actor and sees the whole world as a stage — and takes it about as seriously as one: you can have all sorts of drama, but nothing that happens really matters, especially when his Doomguard philosophy is all about how entropy will destroy everything sooner or later and that's just a good thing.
  • Augus from Asura's Wrath is a Type One. He works with the Seven Deities only because it promises him the best women, food, drink, and above all fights.
  • Queen in Super Robot Wars Z series is type 4. Sumeragi wonders what Queen's angle is by helping Z-BLUE, and Queen replies that as she intimated already, she doesn't give a damn about Chrono's creed. In fact, ideally she'd like to see both Chrono factions wipe each other out because both sides would like to see the status quo maintained.
  • Delsin Rowe from inFAMOUS: Second Son starts off as a comfortable Type 3, being a directionless delinquent who enjoys pissing off his older brother for his own amusement. After he gets his powers, it's up to you whether he matures into a "defeat the evil tyrant" Chaotic Good or dives headfirst over the Moral Event Horizon into Chaotic Evil.
  • Ripper Roo from Crash Bandicoot (1996) pretty much sums up this alignment, just a general freak of a creature that is too insane to comprehend good or evil. Instead he literally plays with Crash deadly games, mostly for a sick thrill of some kind.
  • Pretty much all of the Realm of Chaos (or Chaosrealm) in the Mortal Kombat series. They actively fight order, regardless of morals, and live to cause Chaos, especially the Clerics of Chaos like Havik. They also may attack for no reason, feel pleasure in being hit and their way of teaching is trying to kill their students.
  • Sombra from Overwatch is shown to be willing to (temporarily) ally with almost anyone to further her own goals. She is currently affiliated with Talon, a global terrorist organization, and has no trouble carrying out their dirty work. However, she seems to care deeply for her hometown's citizens, since they consider her a hero for protecting the defenseless in the aftermath of the Omnic Crisis. She is also very anti-authoritarian, with her hacking mostly targeting wealthy people and corrupt government officials.
  • Tales of Berseria is notable for having three wildly different examples, all within the same party:
    • Velvet Crowe. After Artorius is through with her, only one thing matters to her: ripping his head off for ritually sacrificing her younger brother. To this end, she will unhesitatingly firebomb a port town and rip through random exorcists who are just doing their duty. Her genuine friendship with the rest of the party, her lack of malevolence towards anyone not in her way, and her genuinely sympathetic motivations keep her out of Chaotic Evil.
    • Magilou. She couldn't really care less about Velvet's conflict with the Abbey, and basically follows her quest because she has nothing better to do.
    • Finally, Eizen. As opposed to Velvet, whose Chaotic Neutrality can be defined by her single-minded and selfish desire to crush Artorius, and as opposed to Magilou, whose Chaotic Neutrality comes from her cynicism and nihilism, Eizen's Chaotic Neutrality is best exemplified in his obsession with freedom and his belief in personal freedom above all other factors. It's why he became a pirate, after all; it allowed him to live free of the Abbey's control and of obligation. The only law he cares for is following Aifread around on adventures. His pirating activity is the main reason he isn't Chaotic Good, by the way; he does, in fact, participate in actual pirating, and he follows along with a lot of Velvet's less-than-savory plans. His desire to protect the world from his eventual draconic transformation spurring him to tell Zaveid to put a bullet in his head if he ever transformed and the fact he's opposing a Knight Templar Lawful Neutral faction keep him from being Chaotic Evil.
  • Pathfinder: Kingmaker has several chaotic neutral characters (it being written on their character sheets).
    • Amiri is a Barbarian Hero. She likes fighting and killing big, scary monsters. She likes to party after the fighting is done, and she likes having friends even if they disagree on things. She hates it when people think she's weak because she's a woman, has no problem with violence as the first resort, and is not above straight-up killing people if they insult her or people she likes. She's far from malevolent, but you do not want to get on her bad side.
    • Harrim is a nihilistic, perpetually downcast and partial Death Seeker dwarf who worships a somewhat malevolent deity that represents the inevitable destruction of everything. Of course, since he knows everything is going to die eventually, Harrim isn't big into hastening things along and considers himself more of a evangelist spreading the truth behind the universe to everyone. This attitude is also partially a cover for his own insecurities and sense of failure in being a good dwarf.
    • Jubilost is an Insufferable Genius who's a writer for the Pathfinder Chronicles. He looks down on practically everyone who's not him, is incredibly self-centered, and has a sarcastic streak a mile wide. This never translates into actual meanness to anyone below him, however, and his ultimate goal is to save the entire gnome race from The Bleaching, which is a straight-up heroic goal even if it also benefits him.
    • Interestingly, there's another canonical Chaotic Neutral character in the game, in an unusual position: The Greater-Scope Villain that's behind Nyrissa's curse, The Lantern King. He's pretty much a Fey god of trickery and deceit, so his entire Blue-and-Orange Morality runs on It Amused Me.
  • Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, the sequel, also has several chaotic neutral characters.
    • The Trickster ascension path is Chaotic Neutral, and a Commander who chooses that path will obtain a quest to shift their alignment to that path.
    • Woljif is a classical Lovable Rogue, a tiefling with a sharp tongue, trust issues and a much bigger heart than you'd initially think. His underlying motivation is that he really wants love and acceptance from people he can truly trust in a world that's continually let him down, but his 'do-unto-others-first' attitude means he's got difficulties getting it because he keeps looking out for number one.
    • Arushalae is an Ascended Demon — a succubus who was given a shock treatment out of evil from the mind of a priest she was assimilating. While on the path to redemption, she still has many hang-ups and doesn't fully understand the meaning of 'doing good' for its own sake. The Commander can either help her in fulfilling her ascension, or push her back into her old habits.
    • Trever, the game's Secret Character, is also chaotic neutral. In his case it's because he's a traumatised Shell-Shocked Veteran barely held together by rage and the desire to pay back his suffering tenfold on the demons who made the Crusades necessary in the first place.
    • Rekarth from the Through the Ashes DLC is a tiefling rogue, who's a shadow agent for the Eagle Watch. His goals in life are quite benign, to see the demons and their cultists driven from Mendev, and to protect his friends. He's very willing to deal in Dirty Business to that end and his methods often veer towards Shoot the Dog, which is why he is Chaotic Neutral and not Chaotic Good.
  • Ghat, the protagonist of Zeno Clash and Zeno Clash 2. It's not that noticeable in the first game — Zenozoic is already incredibly chaotic, so he doesn't stand out — but in the second game, the Golem Kax Teh attempts to install a regime of law and order. The Golem's first prisoner is the Big Bad of the first game, a creature who kidnapped infants, Ghat included, and raised them as its own, and Ghat still breaks them out because he hates prisons that badly, on principle. Ghat's philosophy eventually boils to a variant of Might Makes Right: you don't have to be the strongest, The Power of Friendship is just as valid a way to protect what's yours. The player isn't expected to agree with Ghat entirely, Kax Teh has very real issues but makes valid points as well.
  • The Untitled Goose, star of Untitled Goose Game, is a force of nature that seemingly exists solely to inject a little disruption and chaos into the villagers' lives, complete with a detailed to-do list of minor, generally harmless pranks like getting people to hammer their thumbs or throwing food into the lake.
  • Morrigan Aensland of Darkstalkers is of the Hedonist type. She is a succubus who lives for little more than to satisfy her own pleasures (mostly sexual or combat-oriented, sometimes both), and she often shirks her responsibilities as future ruler of Makai. But as long as you don't cross her, she is rather friendly and sociable, and sometimes in her crossover appearances she goes out of her way to help others for no apparent reason.
  • In Iji, a violent Iji is Chaotic Neutral. The various traumas she endures reduce her to a violent, impatient, short-fused woman whose only goal is to kill every last alien who points a gun at her. If Dan dies, she also begins losing her grip on reality, and her final act in the worst ending (executing Tor) prioritizes immediate gratification over her own self-preservation. She avoids Chaotic Evil by the fact that she does have loved ones (Dan) and every enemy she kills tried to kill her first.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei IV Walter seeks to create a world of true freedom where might makes right and "the strong can shape it as they see fit". He plans to do this by letting an army of demons run amok on Earth until only the strongest humanity has to offer remain. However, what saves him from delving into Chaotic Evil territory is that he genuinely believes that his plan will make everyone better off in the end.
  • Sienna Fuegonasus from The End Times: Vermintide is the feisty and pyromaniac member of the Uberseik Five. A rather capricious Bright Wizard who is addicted to the adrenaline rush of setting things on fire and always in search for an excuse to use her flaming spells. However, she has some level of compassion and dry sense of humor that prevents her from going into Chaotic Evil territory, and most of the time her team mates direct her spells towards vile Skaven.

    Webcomics 
  • Whispers in the Wind's main villains Bailey and his pirate crew fall in the category of chaotic neutral. They don't mind murdering and stealing but they can also do good if it serves their purpose. For example they first arrive in chapter 1 and create complete chaos in a town solely to set Scarlet on her journey -because for some reasons unknown to the reader- they need her. Starting chapter 7, they set out on a quest to save a man and his son. In order to do this, they murder a lot of people in cold blood. It is unclear for now as to why they helped him but it was made obvious they didn't do it for justice or kindness of heart.
  • Rocky Rickaby of Lackadaisy. He isn't a Wild Card; he has a strong loyalty to the Lackadaisy crew. But in a series with no "good guys" or "bad guys", where all the protagonists are criminals, Rocky falls squarely into Neutral territory. As for the Chaotic, after burning down the house and barn of some guys who tried to kill him: "I know it wasn't lawful, per se. But I find the scope of the law can be rather limiting. What's lawful doesn't always coincide with what's right, Freckle. And that was very right."
  • Celesto Morgan from Dominic Deegan. Sure, he'd call himself Chaotic Good, but he's... well... chaotic.
  • This applies to the Jaegers of Girl Genius most of the time. The main exceptions are when they are directly obeying or protecting a Heterodyne, in accordance with their centuries-old oath (bar Vole, who was kicked out of the Jaegers and now obeys Baron Wulfenbach).
  • Pintsize from Questionable Content. He's certainly chaotic, but he's not really good, considering the amount of gleeful havoc he spreads. But he's not really evil, since he never causes any lasting damage. Having said that, there's a reason why Faye and Marten were required to put down another $500 for the security deposit on their apartment.
  • Magarce from Tally Road. Diminutive feline Siamese pirate girl, as quick to kill you as she is to pounce you and ravage your innocence. Once you figure out she's Chaotic Neutral, she makes more sense- kinda.
  • Coyote of Gunnerkrigg Court, in keeping with his nature as The Trickster. He is quite mischievous, and seems to have an agenda that is opposed to the Court, but he is not actively malicious, shows a great fondness for Ysengrin and Reynardine (the latter of which he regards as a cousin), as well as towards Antimony and her dead mother (even going so far as to hug Antimony after seeing her sadness while he reminisces about Surma). However, while he is not exactly evil, as the series progresses it becomes very clear that he thinks nothing of hurting or even killing others in pursuit of his own amusement.
  • The titular Schlock of Schlock Mercenary is chaotic neutral, with a tiny dash of good thrown in. He mainly fights just for the "BOOM", chugs Ovalkwik like a drug, considers kittens "comfort food", and has little respect even for the loose rules of Tagon's Toughs.
    Schlock: The last time I let somebody lock-box my plasguns, my friend got sniped in the eye. I walked return fire all over the city and still couldn't hit the bad guys. With these I could have put a five millimetre pulse-bolt of plasma through Snipey McWipey's scope and into his brain. One shot, no collateral damage.
    Kevyn: But that's not what you would have done. If you'd had Plasma Cannons, you would have hit his window with a two-meter blast, vaporising him and setting the room on fire. Am I right?
    Schlock: Okay, that does sound like it would have been more fun for me.
  • In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, Galatea has undergone significant alignment drift towards niceness since she was first introduced, but she still seems to drift around the Chaotic Neutral area, with little to no respect for the laws of society. She was effectively raised in a box, and so maintaining her personal freedom and avoiding confinement are overwhelmingly important to her.
  • Larisa from Sandra and Woo is a classic example of this alignment. At the same time as her friend Cloud suggests to be quiet to not draw unnecessary attention to the group, she draws unnecessary attention to the group by pushing a cupboard out of a window (which is smaller than the cupboard itself!).
  • Julio Scoundrel (a cross between Han Solo and Obi Wan) from The Order of the Stick is very much this — there's even two shirts with him on it. The Chaotic Good one is "Job Security is for Wimps!" (Though Word of the Giant pegs him as Chaotic Neutral.) There's also a better one: "It doesn't matter whether you win or lose, as long as you look cool doing it."
  • Sam Starfall of Freefall would qualify. Laws mean nothing to him, and he enjoys breaking them, stealing things and blackmailing people far more than he should, but there's no actual malice behind his actions — he seems to steal for the fun of it rather than the profit, and cheerfully helps Neutral Good Florence save the robots of the world because screwing with Ecosystems Unlimited and the mayor is more fun than his usual petty crime. It's eventually revealed that his entire culture is built on crime, and even by their standards, Sam was such a chaotic figure that he ended up exiled after an incident involving a dirigible and a large quantity of pudding.
  • Sluggy Freelance:
    • Aylee is introduced as an alien stranded on Earth who wants to stop just eating people and get a job. She becomes a sidekick who tries her best to fit in but hasn't got a clue about how anything works in the human world and is constantly driven by her biological impulses — mainly hunger — which also means she keeps eating people when in a carnivorous form, not capable of properly understanding why and how it's wrong. When she thinks she understands how something in human society works, her ideas about it tend to be rather random: "They say you don't have to buy anything, but I know the deal! I ordered 50 subscriptions for each!" Eventually altered by Character Development.
    • Oasis is... well, it's a mystery, but it's known she was raised and experimented on by Dr. Steve, who established some kind of Mind Control over her that specifically affected her through emotions. After his death, she's left carrying all kinds of random orders to feel and act in certain ways, the result being that her actions don't make any actual sense. It's not just that following a number of different orders causes this, as single orders that she can't rationally process also cause her to act irrationally. Eventually, she decides she wants to be a hero and on the side of good, but she's still got a weird sadistic streak, as well as delusions that cause her to target actually innocent people. Bun-bun called her a "demented toddler".
  • Axe Cop, being "written" by a child as he is. He's a good guy and the hero, of course, but to a fairly large extent, when he's not fighting bad guys, he just follows whatever whim strikes him. His idea of something funny to do was to travel back in time to prank random people in ways that killed them, he went berserk with a tornado gun when his birthday cake didn't have a candle of him on top, and when he and Dinosaur Soldier were asked to act as babysitters, they ended up creating cyborg versions of themselves to punch the baby whenever she cried while they traveled to Magic World.
  • The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: King Radical. Short version: all he cares about is the Rule of Cool. Longer version: He comes from the Radical Lands, where absolutely everything runs on the Rule of Cool, and said rule seems to be the only moral compass he has. Though he's a villain and a criminal mob leader, he's often not terribly evil, making efforts to improve the town he settles in (Cumberland, Maryland) that make it both a better place and more radical. In an alternative future, he even became the Big Good in humanity's resistance against space dinosaurs. On the other hand, he cares little about people unless they're radical, and has no scruples against crime or just being a jerk. He's quite impulsive and selfish, and the more insane a stunt is, the more he likes it. Later on, Radical slides more into the villain role and seems much more Evil without any clear transition or distinct change. Maybe it's just that whether a narcissistic, amoral, ingenious nutcase comes across as Neutral or Evil depends heavily on context.
  • Felicia, Sorceress of Katara freely uses both black and white magic and cares nothing for the Magi Council's rules. And while she usually does good in the stories it's usually for convenience or because she was hired to, and she has no qualms about lying to her clients and manipulating her cohorts. As stated in Fred Patten's introduction to the Melari's Wish graphic novel: "If she is a heroine, she is a deeply flawed one. If she is a villainess, she is an unusually sympathetic one."
  • Sid and Stephen of Terror Island would probably be Neutral Good if they came out of their own little world for a bit. As is, they're both good examples of The Nutter; all they really care about is not buying groceries, and they're willing to do anything from summoning a demon to giving their friends electric shocks if their minds can somehow come up with a way to connect it to that goal. Still, they're not malicious enough to be evil.
  • Tower of God:
    • Princess Yuri Jahad is feared for her combination of extreme power and Hair-Trigger Temper. She's not so bad if she takes a liking to you, and she's not stupid (sometimes), but she loves to beat others up with extreme prejudice at any excuse. She also spends much of her screen time in the comic in places she's not permitted to be in, pursuing her personal interests. When she "accepted" the demanding position of Princess of Jahad when she was young, she did so with the idea that, since she's so good at breaking things, she'll one day break the limitations of the position.
    • As seen in "The Last Station", Evankhell would rather fight the king's army after she disagreed with one thing they were doing than give up any of her freedom not to serve anyone.
  • Project Blackfire: The protagonists are villains more in the sense of law-breaking than in terms of morality.

    Web Original 
  • Red from Ruby Quest, despite starting as Chaotic Good, has fallen squarely into this alignment by the time Ruby and Tom find him, mainly due to insanity. The fact that he's technically responsible for everything going haywire probably didn't help.
  • For all his attempts to join the Evil League of Evil, Dr. Horrible really comes off as this rather than Chaotic Evil. While he has good intentions, most of his disrupting of the status quo benefits him.
  • Dad of the Dad Series fame. He may have a knack for destruction, the attention span of a stupid goldfish, a healthy disregard for the laws of physics and a permanent insane grin, but he doesn't seem to lean towards good or evil in particular.
  • Gordon Freeman's Alternative Character Interpretation in Freeman's Mind. He spends most of the time trying to escape from Black Mesa, and while he does occasionally help others along the way when it is convenient, he will never take huge risks to rescue other scientists. The lack of true harm from his actions and the fact that he has a fairly sympathetic goal keeps him from the evil side of the scale, but the fact that he mostly just cares for himself (making him an Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist) keeps him from becoming Chaotic Good (although he does have Sociopathic Hero tendencies). The chaotic part, on the other hand, is really clear, even before he started killing off hostile soldiers (if his dialogue about his past is to be believed). In fact, most "Mind Series" protagonists fall under here, with the possible exception of Adrian Sheperd, who, as you'd expect from a marine, seems to be Lawful Neutral.
  • The Nostalgia Critic (the character, not Doug Walker himself). He clearly has a standard of morality as demonstrated by his faithfulness in pointing out evil as it occurs in the movies he reviews (as well as Broken Aesops), but isn't above issuing rivers of biting sarcasm, or maybe blowing the head off a sufficiently annoying character with his gun.
    • Really, everyone on Channel Awesome counts. They love their brawls, Comedic Sociopathy runs rampant; Spoony's a self-admitted rapist, The Nostalgia Chick gleefully abuses her best friend and pays her for to put up with it, Linkara's just nuts... and so on, but the majority of them have hearts of gold and will point out evil bastards in whatever they review. On the other hand, Linkara's persona seems to lean more towards Lawful Good, especially since he not only went out of his way to bring Spoony back from the dead but even showed sufficient mercy to grant his split personalities (one of whom is his arch enemy) lives of their own. Plus Benzaie was willing to risk exposing himself to an obviously homicidal Nostalgia Critic to save Spoony in Kickassia.
  • Dorroile of the Something Awful District Bulletin series. He appears to practice real life dadaism in an effort to emphasize the absurdity of District's customs.
  • In his Counter Monkey series, Noah Antwiler discusses alignments and the problems they can cause when the party comes to moral dilemmas and other players or the DM challenge if what the player wants to do is within their alignment. He mentions that to him, Chaotic Neutral is the "cop-out" alignment — a Chaotic Neutral character doesn't care about good or evil and has no regard for law or authority, so a player can do anything they like and it could be defended as being within their alignment. He further states he considers Chaotic Neutral characters to be borderline insane, caring only for themselves with no regard for anyone else and rebelling against authority and organized society.
  • Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation calls himself the "free-spirited, Chaotic Neutral rebel of video game journalism". This assertion actually fits into his personality in reviewing. He chose to be good while playing Infamous mainly to spite the game's seeming default assumption that you'd be a villain. And in his Overlord 2 review, he discusses at length how "Being a dick in a dickishness simulator is just as boring as being good in any other game." Yahtzee's gameplaying persona seems to derive sadistic glee not from morally questionable behavior, but from defying the preset expectations. He does sarcastically mention in The Stinger "debate whether I am actually Chaotic Neutral or not" so, even if this analysis is right, it's still wrong.
  • Most of the more dangerous creatures/humanoids the SCP Foundation houses fall under this, usually because they don't know or don't care about human morality.
  • Whateley Universe: While her teammates are all in the Good range, Generator is decidedly Chaotic Neutral, especially after Firecat's taking a third option speech — though her love of pranks sometimes pushes her into Chaotic Stupid territory. The nature of her powers, and the things she's experienced both before and after manifesting, has left her quite unstable mentally, though she manages to keep a fingernail's grip on reality most of the time, and much of her 'wackiness' is deliberate. She tends more towards good than evil overall, but she is more than willing to Pay Evil unto Evil, with interest.
  • Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do in an RPG: Mr. Welch's philosophy can be summed up with this quote:
    If given a choice of options, always take the crazy one. Nobody ever plans for crazy.
  • Saturn, Nejma and Wil all fall into The Hedonist version of this trope with Will tending somewhat towards evil because of her innate selfishness while Nejma might actually qualify as Chaotic Good if it wasn't for her fondness for setting things on fire. Saturn meanwhile is best described as simply Chaotic Fabulous.
  • RWBY
    • Neo was loyal to Roman, though after his demise she has become motivated by a desire for vengeance and tried to off Cinder the first chance she got, but was soon convinced Ruby was to blame. Since then, Neo has worked for the Fall Maiden, but makes it clear she would rather be allied with anyone else and is only there to kill Ruby, not for any actual interest in Salem's plans.
    • Raven Branwen, Yang’s Missing Mom, wants more than anything to avoid getting involved in the war between Ozpin and Salem at all, on either side, viewing it as a death sentence - she doesn’t trust Ozpin and believes that his fight with Salem is ultimately unwinnable, but she’s smart enough to know that Salem’s minions rarely wind up well off in the long run. As such, she’s willing to murder, cheat, and betray people on both sides of the conflict just to maintain her and her tribe’s independence and continued survival.
  • The Emperor in If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device is a former epic champion of humanity turned immobile Grumpy Old Man in constant agony and Surrounded by Idiots. As such, his actions consist mostly of, well, mostly complaining and insulting people, but aside from that, it's a mixture of trying to make the galaxy a better place for humankind and of messing with people in sadistic ways — often creatively combining both.
  • Gamer and Twitch-streamer, UberHaxorNova (aka James Richard Wilson Jr.) is part The Hedonist and The Nutter type, depending on the circumstances. Particularly in games where morals matter, Nova doesn't pay attention to them much. Hell he'll absolutely screw-up the environments, just for a laugh or two. Everything, from extorting glitches to harassing characters (sometimes outright killing them), there's not much that Nova won't do in a game for fun. That is, if the mechanics don't stop him first?
  • Internet Legend and infamous Meme Lord, FilthyFrank, ticks every type of Chaotic Neutral possible. Just...what can I say? Frank is just such a blunt, messed-up character people either pity or despise him. Society is NOT safe from Frank, especially from Pink Guy, who both terrorize random folk and establishments for laughs. Believe it or not, Frank just speaks the true, and is a way deeper character than what we initially think.

    Western Animation 
  • Looney Tunes:
    • Bugs Bunny was, in his early years, the all-time heavyweight champion of self-interested screwball mayhem, and pop culture's ultimate Trickster. In his later cartoons (from about 1955 onward), however, he often veered more towards True Neutral — typically playing the straight man to a wacky crew of co-stars. While Friz Freleng's version of Bugs sometimes fell more under Chaotic Good, especially when he was paired with Yosemite Sam. In The Looney Tunes Show, he starts to slide towards Neutral Good.
    • Daffy Duck is a very close second — he's equally as Chaotic Neutral as Bugs, he's just not as good at it. Though some of his cartoons with Speedy Gonzales, such as "Assault and Peppered" and "Chili Corn Corny," depict him more as a Neutral Evil character.
  • Yakko, Wakko and Dot from Animaniacs. Similar to Bugs in that they're screwballs who treat physics as a plaything, but they only strike back when provoked. However, their definition of "provoked", in this case, is far looser.
    Yakko: (aside to the camera): Looks like we've found today's special friend.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • Toph Beifong borders the line between Chaotic Good and Chaotic Neutral. She shows affection through mild violence.
    • Zuko spends most of season 2 as a Chaotic Neutral. After being fully betrayed by his homeland, he's reduced to Walking the Earth with his uncle trying to find himself.
    • The pirates. Pay 'em, and they don't care what country you're working for.
    • Jet starts out as a Chaotic Neutral Well-Intentioned Extremist rebel leader but eventually gravitates toward a more Chaotic Good standpoint.
    • Eccentric businessman Varrick from the sequel, The Legend of Korra, is the very definition of the trope. He'll help or screw over the good guys or the bad guys depending on where he'll benefit.
      Varrick: Korra, who warned you about Unalaq? I did. Bolin, who got you into the movers? I did. Asami, who saved your company? I did. Mako, who got you thrown in jail? I did. Oh yeah, guess that was a bad thing.
  • Bloo from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends is a big mischief maker. He's never malicious enough to be evil, but is far, far too selfish to be good.
  • Futurama has Professor Farnsworth, who apparently does whatever he likes, inventing things like the Smelloscope (thus saving the world) and incredibly destructive weapons that can blow up planets like the Sphereoboom (also saving the world, ironically). Despite this, he has never actually done anything bad with them — many of these weapons appear to be mainly for show.
    "I suppose I could part with one and still be feared..."
    • Hedonismbot, as you might expect from the mechanical embodiment of, well, hedonism. While focused on his own pleasures and entertainment, Hedonismbot isn't malicious at all, and never hurts anyone with his antics.
  • Kenny McCormick is often this in South Park. While he does right by his friends most of the time and will save the world if pressed to do so, he is nothing short of The Hedonist, has no problem shooting animals on sight, would much rather play video games, doesn't care about saving the whales, and gets it on with the school slut while still in 4th grade (and dies of an STD). He'll even go along with some of Cartman's schemes in the earlier seasons. It is notable that his superhero persona, Mysterion is Chaotic Good of the vigilante variant.
  • Beavis and Butt-Head tend to goof off, listen to heavy metal, piss off people, and generally do what they want whenever they want to stave off boredom, which may unintentionally harm some people. They are also too dumb to even be aware what's going on. This is very clear in their movie. Beavis and Butthead were in a terrorist plot involving a biological weapon that can detonate in Washington D.C. What do they think about at this time? "Scoring" with a chick.
  • Satan from Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil. Sure, he tries to be Lawful Evil, but he usually loses interest before his evil plans have the chance to do any real damage.
  • Harley Quinn usually averages out here; at least as she's depicted in the DC Animated Universe. She's not strictly evil, and shifts sides at the slightest prompting, but almost always falls back under the sway of the Chaotic Evil Joker. Her portrayal in the comics is more in line with her puddin', however.
  • Teen Titans:
    • While Terra tries to be Chaotic Good, she's got a whole slew of personal issues that leave her open to becoming a pawn for the Big Bad, and while she's not generally malicious she can be scary if you hit her Berserk Button. Fittingly, she spends her appearances torn between the two sides finally settling on Good, before dying. Maybe.
    • Red X is the show's best example of this trope: he makes it very clear that he's on his own side and no one else's, which makes him fully capable of playing the villain or the hero depending on whichever he feels is most advantageous to him.note  He sums up his character alignment in one dialogue exchange:
      Gizmo: Whose side are you on, Barf Brain?!
      Red X: Mine!
  • Chaotic Neutral is the best way to describe Marceline from Adventure Time. When Finn and Jake first meet her, she forcibly evicts them from what used to be her treehouse. The second time, Finn spares an old man's life to become her henchman, but all along, Marceline wanted Finn to kill a dangerous plant. Every appearance since indicates that Marceline is one of Finn's friends, and he's recently stated in song that she's one of "(his) best friends in the world".
    • Add The Flame Princess to the list, though her father insists that she's evil. We even have this exchange:
      Finn: And... everyone is evil here?"
      Flame King: "Mmhmm... all evil."
      Finn: "And... is Flame Princess evil? Or maybe chaotic neutral?"
      Flame King: "She's evil."
    • Lemonhope definitely fits here. While not nearly as bad as Lemongrab, he still puts his own freedom and desires ahead of others. He only goes back to save the lemonpeople because his conscience is preventing him from enjoying his freedom. After he disposes of Lemongrab, he promptly leaves.
  • King Julien in Madagascar and all spinoffs he's in (such as The Penguins of Madagascar). He is a Cloudcuckoolander, a complete Jerkass, and incredibly selfish and egotistical, but he also has done many good things, and while he often causes trouble, he has never intentionally done anything particularly antagonistic.
  • Oberon from Gargoyles isn't really malicious, but neither is he governed by any sort of morality more complex than his immediate whims. As he's also a Physical God, this amorality makes more dangerous than most of the show's straightforward villains—but only if he cares to be for some reason.
    • Most of Oberon's Children qualify, really, as none of them are particularly concerned with good and evil and more with their own desires. An outstanding example would be Puck, a notorious trickster, mostly concerned with his own amusement. While he often ends up working for the villains (willingly or not) he bears the heros and humanity in general no ill will and will usually avoid doing serious harm. His love for mischief still means he can give people a lot of trouble and enjoy himself immensely while doing so.
  • Freakazoid! is just, well, Chaotic. Period. He's technically on the side of the law, but he drives the villains so insane you can't help but almost feel sorry for them. He does what he wants when he feels like it, and his ADHD tends to just lean towards doing good. At least his handlers try to steer him that way.
  • Kaos, the god/personification of Chaos from Aladdin: The Series. He's not evil, he just sees order as stagnation and boredom, so he sees it as his duty to stir people up.
  • Star vs. the Forces of Evil: Despite having a reputation as an Evil Overlord, Eclipsa Butterfly, The Queen of Darkness is more this trope: she has no qualms about abusing her magic to get what she wants, and was ultimately a very flighty, irresponsible, and careless queen, but she never goes out of her way to hurt others or cause needless harm; she proves a valuable ally for Star and Moon, but she's not always a good influence either. She gets better after some Character Development when Star abdicates the throne to her.
  • GIR from Invader Zim takes this to the extreme — his only motivation is his own amusement, and what amuses him is completely incomprehensible to sane minds.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • When the Chaotic Good Cloud Cuckoo Lander Genki Girl Pinkie Pie uses the Mirror Pond to make copies of herself, they turn out to be more extreme versions of herself. They are not very intelligent and endlessly poing around happily looking for fun — heedless of the mess, bother and inconvenience they cause to others.
    • Discord, the spirit of chaos and disharmony, was originally a Chaotic Evil archetype. However, he eventually becomes friends with one of the ponies and realizes he can't go on wreaking random havoc everywhere now that he actually cares about someone who can't agree with that. However, he's still fickle, unhelpful and lacking in empathy, and his moral compass is largely limited to what will and will not make his one permanent friend happy. In season seven it's revealed that he has to be chaotic, or else — to everyone's surprise, including his own — he will simply disappear.
    • Trixie is far too gleeful in her Jerkass behavior to be considered good, but bar misadventures with evil amulets is never openly malicious. She is also capable of real empathy, kindness and sacrifice, even if it's only to those she considers friends. Her chaotic behavior on the other hand is pretty clear, constantly slipping back towards moral ambiguity no matter how many times she's been redeemed, pathological lying, a total lack of forethought and a nomadic lifestyle all constant aspects of her character.
    • Sludge only cares about what he wants to do. In his episode, he pretends to be Spike's father so he can be hospitalized in Twilight's castle. He has no problems with lying toward others, but he also never physically harms others.
  • Transformers: Animated has the Dinobots, as they only possess primeval animal instincts. They simply prefer to be left alone, but they tend to cause trouble to the Autobots for one reason or another. They were once threatened to by Prometheus Black, and were seduced by Blackarachnia.
  • Charmcaster was between this and Neutral Evil in the original Ben 10: siding with a Neutral Evil force when given a good opportunity, but otherwise following this trope and doing whatever because she could. The first two sequels devolved her into just plain Neutral Evil territory before elevating her to True Neutral. In Ben 10: Omniverse, she was brought full circle and is once more chaotic neutral, with an added emphasis on Chaotic.
  • Bart Simpson from The Simpsons definitely qualifies. All he cares about is doing his own thing, and he doesn't follow any rules.
  • Riley, Ed, and Rummy from The Boondocks. While all three aim to be Chaotic Evil (given that they want to either be thieves, hitmen or drug dealers depending on the episode), their complete incompetence pushes them towards Chaotic Neutral.
  • L.B. at the start of The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin is basically a Punch-Clock Villain who's mostly only out for himself. During his brief run as the head of MAVO he was a Benevolent Boss whose first major order was to throw a party. By the end of the series he had moved into True Neutral territory, not really caring about good vs. evil anymore. He even helped out Teddy a few times.
  • Family Guy: Peter Griffin probably fits this alignment best, at-least pre-Flanderization. Although his actions often cause large-scale destruction, he is rarely genuinely malevolent; rather, he is just stupid and impulsive. He is a lunatic with the attention-span of a goldfish and performs the most random acts for his personal amusement.
  • Amethyst from Steven Universe is going through her ‘difficult teenager’ phase and constantly chafes at any kind of control over her behaviour, reveling in her ‘wild child’ nature and using it to annoy the others. It also requires some pretty major danger to make her take things seriously, and she’s spent several episodes standing on the sidelines providing commentary without doing anything to help. She openly admits to Steven that she gives terrible advice and that he should never listen to her.
    • Bismuth, a Crystal Gem who was taken out of commission many years back, has a marked disdain for the ruling class of Homeworld and gets along great with her fellow rebels. However, she's more willing to resort to ethically grey means to secure their victory than the other Crystal Gems, and even got into a heated argument with her leader Rose Quartz over how they should treat enemy combatants. So heated that she actually attacked Rose and did the same to her son Steven when he also objected to her methods.
  • Rick Sanchez in Rick and Morty has an open disdain for government, authority, rules, and order. While extremely reckless and amoral, he has just enough Pet the Dog moments to not quite qualify for Chaotic Evil. Morty all but outright names this alignment when talking to Summer about Rick in the Season 3 premiere, describing Rick as neither a hero nor a villain, but "more like a super fucked-up god".
  • Archer:
    • Sterling Archer is the world's most dangerous spy... and he's equally dangerous whether you're with him or against him. How moral Archer is fluctuates wildly depending on his mood (as well as how much alcohol is in his system). When he's angry, he'll let innocent people die without a second thought; however, he's also capable of being shockingly kind, and not just towards those close to him. For example, in "Placebo Effect", he's less concerned with the fact that he was given fake cancer medication than that the same thing had happened to Ruth, a woman whom he had met earlier that day. Notably, he's much more consistently kind towards animals than humans: in one episode, Cheryl's ocelot Babou tears a hole in his suit, which is ordinarily one of his biggest Berserk Buttons, but instead he's more concerned that Babou is lonely in his room. Archer similarly sympathizes with a tiger that gets shot in "El Contador". In "Honeypot", Archer helps a distraught Dominican man bury his prized rooster in the Everglades after it was killed in a chicken fight for no personal gain, despite other episodes establishing that alligators are his biggest fear.
    • Most of the characters are on the border between this and Chaotic Evil, but special mention goes to Algernop Krieger. He's a rampant Mad Scientist who routinely experiments on people without their consent, insists that he isn't a ''serial'' killer, and freely sells ISIS weapons to gangs and criminals to fund his lab operations. However, he's also the only ISIS employee who could legitimately be described as friendly and the only one who actually gets along with any of his coworkers, and is always willing to help other people with their problems, for better or worse.
  • Dan in Dan Vs. is a short-tempered, paranoid, violent, immature, self-centred, vengeance-obsessed criminal lunatic who treats his friends like dirt. On the other hand, he does have his fair share of moments that show he's not all bad and that he does care about Chris and Elise deep down. His violence is more often than not aimed at people who really have it coming, and he never resorts to killing his victims (not intentionally, at least).
  • Helga G. Pataki from Hey Arnold!. While her default persona is being a pretty big Jerkass, she's really a LOT nicer than she acts and has some pretty massive Pet the Dog moments, though she usually works behind the scenes as she doesn't want people to realize she's actually a nice person.
  • The Collector from The Owl House is what would happen if godlike powers were granted to a young child. In fact, Word of God from Dana Terrace described the Collector as a "morally grey, neutral chaotic kind of mother[fucker]." While originally presented as part of a Big Bad Duumvirate helping Emperor Belos' genocidal plans, the Collector is eventually shown to be a naive, Obliviously Evil character whom Belos manipulated and eventually betrayed to gain the power he wanted. Most of the harm that the Collector inflicts on people is out of childish obliviousness, and when he learns how bad his actions were, he redeems himself anyways.
  • Season 4 of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power introduces Double Trouble, a shape-shifting nonbinary mercenary who thrums with dangerously intense theatre kid energy and may well fit under here. While they lean a bit towards evil, they have no particular loyalty to the Horde or the Rebellion, instead being motivated solely by the opportunity for mischief and pay. In particular, after the Rebellion captures them, they're hired to ruin the Horde's day, which they do with every indication of glee, luring their armies into a trap, mashing Hordak's Berserk Button so he tries to kill Catra, then verbally ripping Catra to pieces and feeding them into a paper shredder "for [her] own good".
    • Entrapta is an unusual and somewhat unintentional version of this trope: whereas a normal Chaotic Neutral just doesn’t care about the sides in a conflict, like Double Trouble, Entrapta doesn’t really seem to grasp that there are sides. She effectively defects to the Horde in Season 2 because they let her play with the more advanced tech, and because she thinks her friends left her behind, but when she encounters Bow and Glimmer again, she acts like absolutely nothing has changed, and greets them like they’re just friends she hasn’t seen in a while. Entrapta doesn’t get the war, or the conflicts, or connect them to anything tangible. Therefore, she'll switch sides on a whim, because she doesn't understand why anyone would think she shouldn't.
  • Frida Suarez of El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera. While the title character is torn between Chaotic Good and Chaotic Evil, Frida mainly just enjoys the chaos that happens around him. She alternates between urging him to do something selfish or urging him to be the hero that Miracle City needs him to be. In both endings to the show, Frida sticks with Manny no matter what, whether he chooses to be a law-abiding superhero, or a world-conquering supervillain.
  • Xavier: Renegade Angel: The titular Xavier can be either seen as this or in a more negative light due to the bizarre and inconsistent nature of the show. He genuinely wants to help people and become a spiritual mentor but he's too wacky, capricious, naive and dimwitted to be a competent hero, thus causing plenty of involontary death and destruction.
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars and its Sequel Series Star Wars Rebels have the pirate leader Hondo Ohnaka. He's the type of man who will gleefully do business with people, then kidnap them for ransom, then set them free to fight mutual enemies. He also cooperates fairly easily with the Republic and the Rebellion when there's profit to be made.
    • Hondo considers Kenobi a friend despite the fact Hondo has captured and tried to kill Kenobi several times.
  • Lauren aka Scary Girl from the 2023 reboot of Total Drama, may seem Chaotic Evil at first. However she doesn't actually want to kill people, just delight in their screams. Scary Girl is unnervingly unbalanced, that socializing with her is very hit-or-miss. Still despite her quirky nature, she isn't above vengeance or actually helping others.
    Other 
  • Anti-personnel mines fulfill the characteristics of Chaotic Neutral: they kill and maim anyone who steps on them indiscriminately, and they are used to cause chaos and distraction.

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