Heroic Comedic Sociopath

Belkar: So, I did what I always do—murder people horribly—but because I killed the people everyone else wanted me to kill, I get presents instead of prison time?
Roy: Uh, well, it's a lot more complicated than that, but—
Belkar: HA HA HA HA HA HA! It's working! It's WORKING, SUCKERS!

— The Order of the Stick

The Heroic Comedic Sociopath is a very special sort of comic relief who works toward a positive, morally affirming goal whilst being as malicious as possible along the way. He differs from most Anti-Hero archetypes in that he's never ineffectual or angsty—he loves what he does for a living. His punishment, at worst, is that he may be on the receiving end of some Comedic Sociopathy. Far more often, he deals out Comedic Sociopathy and Crosses the Line Twice. (Note that it is not always a "he", but female Heroic Sociopaths are rarer.)

A Heroic Comedic Sociopath can and will eat the souls of jaywalkers, swindle old ladies, detonate buildings, punt puppies into traffic, and steal candy from babies all in broad daylight with a hundred witnesses present. The Karma Houdini is a natural part of his being — it's simply more hilarious for him to get away with it. Being cranked up to the top and Played for Laughs as he is, the Heroic Comedic Sociopath is so fun and invincible that the audience naturally cheers for him and his wacky antics. At the same time, he may serve as Wish-Fulfillment: a fantasy for the audience. Some who have wanted to give the boss what they deserve can wish they were like the Heroic Comedic Sociopath, hopefully ignoring his sociopathic and inexcusable acts and instead putting emphasis on his role as an avenger.

At this point you may be wondering why the "good" characters in the story put up with him. Sometimes, it's because while he may be a monster, he's their monster. Sometimes the other heroes have protection from the Heroic Comedic Sociopath's hijinks — it might be a Restraining Bolt, or the fact that the heroes combined can stand up to him. Failing that, they may be in some way endearing to him. Or possibly the Heroic Comedic Sociopath just finds the heroes amusing enough to see the advantage of not pestering them too much, or may just find it more fun to target the bad guys instead. Other times, they don't have that luxury and are stuck with an "ally" as disruptive to them as to their enemies. And there are times depending on the course of the plot and the characters where he isn't an ally at all and is just one more enemy to deal with particularly if he hurts innocent people and the heroes decide to step in, but most examples will be just as often heroic since this is part of what makes him special. And despite the variety of possible motives that leads them into a hero's choices the majority is surprisingly often led by a common antagonism towards the main villains who they may see as rivals or trespassers in their playground.

Compare Comedic Hero (which is this minus most of his sociopathy) and Sociopathic Hero (for when this kind of behavior is not Played for Laughs). See also Token Evil Teammate and Psycho Supporter. Heroic Comedic Sociopaths are either a Nominal Hero (when they fulfill the heroic part) or Villain Protagonist (all the other times).

---

Examples

Anime and Manga

• Main Character Jokyuu of AIKI counts as one of these as well, being a violent, womanizing, alienating son of a shepherd. Just look what he says, all in the presence of the rest of the cast, all female, who proceed to get freaking pissed (but everybody's crazy in this manga).
  Jokyuu: "Friends" is what you call someone who likes to be someone else's minion, isn't it? I don't need such things as friends! I mean, I don't have any friends to begin with.
• The pirate crew and surrounding characters in the manhwa Aron's Absurd Armada practically run on this; they have very little regard for one another, with every explicit mention of "friendship" or "comradeship" by one party (it was the reason they stayed with them for so long, it's the reason he's sticking his ass out to save him, and so on) being flippantly struck down by the other party with 95 to 100% sincerity in the next panel, and yet through some twisted form of True Companions they still stick together and might possibly somehow even like one another in a way. It's largely due to the fault of their humongous Fatal Flaws, whether it be money/treasure (for Robin), rich boy frivolousness (for Aron), or misanthropy/genius (for Ronnie), etc. The only character by the end of volume one who's shown to have regular amounts of human compassion is Anton (and maybe the sushi chef, but mostly Anton), but his lone tendency to care in a manhwa full of Heroic Comedic Sociopaths usually doesn't turn out well for him at all.
• Bleach has Mayuri Kurotsuchi, a psychotic Mad Scientist, and Kenpachi Zaraki, an equally psychotic Blood Knight. While they're both Played for Drama upon their first appearances (though Kenpachi considerably less, given his complete lack of direction and the Running Gag that he keeps looking for heroes to fight but gets lost), their villainous qualities quickly become Played for Laughs once they turn face. Especially Kenpachi, who came to be treated as almost a friend of Ichigo despite nothing at all about his personality changing. Then again, Kenpachi sees no contradiction in being somebody's friend and wanting to have a duel to the death with them.
• Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan: Dokuro-chan is an angel with the power of resurrection whose intent is to protect the male protagonist Sakura... when she's not manipulating, torturing, or killing him in a hilariously over-the-top manner.
• Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo uses his allies Don Patch and Jelly Jiggler as shields and weapons, usually against their will. Sometimes he'll even outright attack them for no reason, only to blame the villain and say he'll never forgive them for what they did to his friends.
• In Brave10, Kamanosuke, the Token Evil Teammate, has no filter and a penchant for mixing bloody murder and affection which is usually Played for Laughs.
• Hiruma from Eyeshield 21. Threatens, blackmails, and violences his team into existence. Treats everyone to their own personal "fucking" nickname. Is generally a jerk. Thank goodness he's on the Devilbats' side because he's so ridiculously over the top, he's hilarious.
• Barry the Chopper from Fullmetal Alchemist, who's treated as sociopathic comic relief after his Heel–Face Turn. While this is true of the manga and the Brotherhood anime, the 2003 anime series version of Barry was niether heroic nor comedic.
• In Full Metal Panic!, Sagara Sōsuke is a "heroic" commando soldier with No Social Skills due to his military upbringing. The anime's second season, Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu, is a full-fledged high school romantic comedy rather than an action series, and Sōsuke's behavior is accordingly escalated into a case of full-blown Comedic Sociopathy that brings him under the auspices of this trope by doing things like completely breaking his school's Nice Guy rugby team with The Spartan Way, interpreting standing model for an art project as "hide in a forest and booby-trap it to be on the safe side", scaring down some hostage-taking delinquents by threatening their friends and family members, and opening fire on a light gun game using a real gun because the alternative—pointing the light gun outside the screen—"would be horribly unsafe".
• Okita Sougo from Gintama. He's a sadist and is proud to be one. Yet, he is one of the good guys and indulges in Pet the Dog occasionally. Lampshaded by the man himself that the benefit of being a heroic sociopath is that he can avoid Heel–Face Door-Slam when he feels like being nice.
• Nejiru and the titular protagonist from HEYBOT!, who will do anything to get Bokya Neji screws.
• Kogarashi from Kamen no Maid Guy is a seven-foot musclebound monster of a maid (and a male one, at that) with a permanent Slasher Smile, more wacky superpowers than you can shake a stick at (including 37 senses), an extremely perverted and sadistic streak and with absolutely no respect whatsoever for his erstwhile "master"—the only way his master keeps him under control is by frequent beatings in the skull with a nail bat, which is only effective for a few minutes at a time.
• Minoru Mineta from My Hero Academia is a Nominal Hero whose initial motivation for joining the superhero class was because he's a lecherous pervert who thought it'd get him girls. Even beyond that failing, he's a smug, self-serving, cowardly, uncharismatic bastard who cares nothing for his classmates and will happily exploit them (especially the girls) or even throw them under the bus, with his behavior during the U.A. Sports Festival being quite unsettling if it weren't entirely played for comedy. Whilst he does get some Character Development and start to grow into more of an actual hero, he is one of the most hated characters in the series, even more than many of the legitimately vile villains, especially in America, where his "comical" perversion is seen as far less funny.
• NEEDLESS:
  • Adam Blade, a foul-mouthed, perverted, borderline pedophile and extremely arrogant Cloudcuckoolander priest with an extremely rare and overpowered Fragment. Adam could probably unite the Black Spot under his rule if he had chosen to, but considers it too much work. Just about all of the carnage he inflicts, both on his enemies and his erstwhile 'allies', is treated as light comedy unless he's fighting a particularly monstrous opponent.
  • To a lesser degree, Eve also counts for this trope, but she seems more scatter-brained and oblivious and not to mention gets beaten a lot more than Adam does.
• Nyarko from Nyaruko: Crawling with Love! doesn't understand the meaning of the word "mercy". The second Mook she fights in the first episode learns this the hard way, as she beats it to death with a rock (off-screen) and comes away covered in its blood, as she does when she rips apart the third Mook with her crowbar. On top of that, she's perfectly willing to break the very laws she's supposed to be protecting (namely, smuggling goods off the planet), justifying it by saying "It's only a crime if you get caught". This all gets lampshaded by Mahiro, who responds to this behavior by remarking that most of the time she looks a hell of a lot more like a criminal than a policewoman.
• Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei:
  • Kitsu Chiri eventually got the role due to Characterization Marches On, and frequently snaps and murders (or is implied to murder) the extremely non-killable cast or attempts crazy stunts like splitting the Earth in half, taking over Sengoku-era Japan by killing everyone, or playing "meat doll". It gets so bad that when Chiri's attempt at 'surprising' the teacher ends up demolishing a wall and flattening all the desks in the classroom (and Ushio), everyone points out that this kind of behavior is not very 'surprising' coming from her.
  • Another example is (possibly) Kafuka, whose role as being a living horror is mostly Played for Laughs.
• Ross of Senyuu., who's on the side of the hero, Alba, and has even saved more people than him in really cool ways (to Alba's mute shock), will nonetheless do things like: stab him with a dagger and tell him in a very shoujo finger-fiddly tsundere-ish manner that he bought the dagger just to stab him with it, poison the hero's coffee in the morning and leave him to pay for it because it's "his hobby" (cue shoujo sparkles), give a huge Psychotic Smirk in answer to Alba's misfortunes, and fantasize happily in the previously mentioned shoujo sparkling manner at the thought of Alba being hunted down as a fugitive after escaping jail for harboring the Token Mini-Moe Demon King at his side, among other things. He'll screw around with every other guy he comes across if the opportunity presents itself, too, to the point that one characters has to ask, "Is he a demon?" as if he (said character) isn't the actual demon there.
• Slayers: Lina Inverse. In the comedic parts of the series she has accidentally released a dragon onto a village and refused to help the village until paid for her services as well as rescue a captive from pirates... then sell her (a fishwoman) to a chef for money.
• From Soul Eater, we have Dr. Franken Stein, the "greatest meister to ever graduate from the DWMA". He was also Spirit's meister for many years, and would do experiments on him in his sleep every night. Spirit never suspected anything, simply wondering why new scars would show up on his body every morning. One day, another girl at school found out and told Spirit, who left Stein and partnered with her. She also bore his child. Many years later, Stein was asked to return to the DWMA as a teacher, and gained an apprentice. Her name was Maka, The Hero and a Badass Bookworm. She also happened to be Spirit's daughter. Upon their first meeting, Stein talked about replacing her skin with sandpaper, while complaining about Maka's mother who "stole [his] test subject". This was just the first day. As the series goes on, his sociopathic side is shown in a much more negative light, and Stein himself actively fights it.
• Thorkell The Tall from Vinland Saga. Imagine a good-natured, enthusiastic Manchild who literally bubbles with joie de vivre and throws himself into life with single-minded glee and delight. Good. Now, imagine him as an eight-foot-tall Viking, Dual Wielding axes, who lives for fighting people and really isn't particular about who he picks a fight with as long as they've got the promise of a good fight in them. You have Thorkell. Other people in the series comments on how easily likable he is for a man prone to Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, pillaging, scaring the piss out of people merely by getting psyched, and who casually smashes the skull of one of his own subordinates for mocking a Worthy Opponent of his. It should be noted he started out as a Psycho for Hire, only to join the main characters when he realized the Big Bad would be more fun to fight.
• Hamel from Violinist of Hameln is a pretty stunning example. From the very first pages, we see him playing a violin to call some birds nearby... and kill them by brutally bashing them with his huge violin. He always charges exorbitant amounts for his monster-fighting services (turning an entire small town into his personal playground/harem to settle their debt at one point), has no qualms selling his prospective love interest into slavery or abusing her and his other friends in hilarious ways to make money, and you don't want to know about how he treats his enemies. He gets kinder after a certain plot development, but gets subverted almost immediately when he's shown making steaks out of a smiling cow he just rode on happily...

Comic Books

• Batman: The Creeper is basically a heroic version of the Joker. There have even been instances where the latter found him too unstable.
• The scarab from Blue Beetle is quick to propose the murder of whatever obstacle Jaime has to deal with. Jaime eventually influences it enough to give it a full Heel–Face Turn, but that doesn't stop it from occasionally proposing solutions so overkill that they have "theological implications".
• Rasputin in the Corto Maltese series has no qualms about killing, and is generally considered as stable as a landmine while far from that dangerous.
• The slightly-cracked, catchphrase-spouting, ever-shameless Deadpool. He's also Faux Affably Evil, loves to make people go What the Hell, Hero?, and is the Trope Codifier of a few other tropes. Note, however, that it seems to depend on the writer. Sometimes he's this with a very large helping of Success Through Insanity, while at other times (particularly in the newer issues) he becomes a Noble Demon who would Never Hurt an Innocent. As noble as someone who is insane can be anyway. Considering that he's an absolute fruitcake, there is absolutely nothing preventing both those interpretations from being true, depending not so much upon the writer as on the state of Deadpool's brain-pan.
• Death's Head (Marvel Comics): As a Freelance Peackeeping Agent, Death's Head often falls into this role. He doesn't really care who his targets are as long as he gets paid, yet by various coincidences only the truly deserving end up dead.
• The Space Marine from the Doom comic. He may be batshit insane and enjoy his job way too much, but he is fighting demons from hell and is a human space marine. The intentional Played for Laughs aspect is debatable in that nobody is entirely sure if the comic was meant to be serious or not, but he's definitely "funny" either way.
• Similarly, Harley Quinn is often treated as this in works where she's a protagonist, in particular in the Amanda Conner-Jimmy Palmiotti run covering volume 2 and the first part of volume 3 of her solo series.
• Gertrude from I Hate Fairyland is essentially an Ax-Crazy expy of Dorothy Gale who was Driven to Madness by the overly saccharine nature of the eponymous fantasy world. She has no compunctions with slaughtering every cutesy-wootsey creature in her path to find the key that will get her back home.
• The title character of Jhonen Vasquez's Johnny the Homicidal Maniac; at least when he's not being full of wangst.
  Johnny: On a crowded street, I could drain a flower vendor of all his blood, and not get caught! People would scream and vomit, and yet, somehow, I would walk away unscathed. I could do that!...Oh, wait...I did do that!
• Also Depending on the Writer is DC's Lobo, who can be anything from this trope to outright Villain Protagonist depending on how seriously he's being played in that particular issue.
• The Blazing Skull of The Invaders used to be a pacifist. He doesn't exactly remember what that means, but anything with the word 'fist' in it can't be all bad.
• Sam & Max: Freelance Police, in most of their media appearances, are a Heroic Comedic Sociopath duo. The dynamic being that Max is much more sociopathic than Sam, who is mostly of the "apathetic towards anyone I don't personally know" variety. Sam basically keeps Max from blowing up the world by being several times larger than him. Also, did we mention that Max is the President of the United States, following the decapitation of the robot that the previous president turned out to be?
• Sebastion O. from the comics of same name is a complete dandy and more interested in filling the void of a dull life (and getting revenge on the people who put him in Bedlam) than any form of kindness. Also one of his best friends is a pederast.
• Several main characters of Sin City can come across as this, especially Marv: A lot of the quite horrible things he performs with his usual boyish enthusiasm seems to be played for (somewhat reluctant) laughs.
• Many of the members of the Squadron Supreme in Supreme Power, though mostly Zarda. She kills with particular glee, and has secret desires for global domination.
• The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye:
  • Whirl, the Autobot twice voted most likely to defect and the only person ever thrown out of the Autobots' legendarily brutal black-ops squad, the Wreckers. He's introduced giving a passionate thank-you speech to some corpses he's just been mutilating and actively seeks out opportunities to wreak havoc and do violence, to the point of deliberately misinterpreting an order not to engage as a plausibly deniable order to engage. On a personal level, he does things like, when stuck on an overcrowded ship, try to take up as much room as possible. Following a key role in some Police Brutality at Megatron's expense, Megatron personally credits Whirl with teaching him that words couldn't fix Cybertron unless backed by violence, making Whirl one of the main players in bringing about the Great War.
  • Brainstorm used to make a hobby of making the most destructive and unethical weapons he can to Troll the ethics committee, a habit he hasn't quite dropped in the series (a gun that transforms its target into a soul-devouring Mechanical Monster is not even the worst of it). In the series proper he's a quirky inventor who once joked about a weapon that made a sun go out once, and also cracks a joke when he finds one of his comrades lethally fused into a Quantum Generator. Ironically, when his plan to prevent the Great War from happening through time travel leaves him standing in the past holding a gun on a mid-construction Megatron, he can't bring himself to pull the trigger - he's never actually personally killed anyone.
  • The Scavengers all at least border on this trope, particularly in the early stages, when loyalty to their own and rabid desperation to survive were the only things keeping them alive in the teeth of a hostile universe. Fulcrum joins the team when he wakes up in the middle of having his parts stripped and has to persuade them to give his fuel pump back, for example.
• Princess Lucinda, of her own comic and the second volume of Witch Girls Adventures, on those occasions when she's not being played as an outright Villain Protagonist. Yes, she actually is being played for laughs, despite what some might tell you—the Witch Girls franchise has tended toward Black Comedy.
• Zombo: The "hero" is a Flesh-Eating Zombie, but since the comic treats everything like Black Comedy Zombo remains a Comedic Hero.

Comic Strips

• Dilbert: Dogbert. A great deal of what Scott Adams wishes he could say or do ends up in Dogbert's actions. Specifically, the part he can't say "for fear of retribution".
• Tech-bro quadrillionaire Rudy Zoom in Doctor Who Magazine comics is an unusually benign example. He is completely and utterly sociopathic, but he's so lacking in actual malice and has such a pampered life that he has no inclination to intentionally harm anyone, although he has got quite a few people killed by going where man was not meant to. On one occasion, a group of Emotion Eater aliens who fed on people's guilt and self-loathing tried to feed off him. They didn't just find nothing, they got poisoned.
• In a similar vein, Rat from Pearls Before Swine. Like Dogbert, he's also The Barnum and enjoys manipulating or just mocking the dumb people around him. He even quotes him on one occasion with the line "Sweet, sweet death". While characters from other comics frequently appear in the strip, we sadly have yet to see the two meet or collaborate.

Fan Works

• In Becka Rangers Nemo Thunder, Kyle's Jellyfish Ranger suit tends to turn him into one.
  "Tell the coroner I said hi!"
• Rampage from Fallout: Equestria - Project Horizons, at least whenever she's in a good mood and her foal-murdering personality hasn't taken over her body.
  Rampage: Can't we just kill them all and not care?
• In Incarnation of Legends, Kojiro comes from a time where murder, duels to the death, and calamity were common. Because of this, he feels nothing when killing others and tends to solve most of his problems with violence, weather it's slitting the throats of men trying to kill Bell or threatening to kill a man if he doesn't confess his crimes. Even after a hard-fought duel against a Level 2 adventurer that ends with the latter in pieces, Kojiro's only real reaction is satisfaction from achieving his Tsubame Gaeshi again. As Bell comes to grips with this, he starts to worry if Kojiro cares about him at all, though Kojiro's own perspective shows that he cares about Bell more than he ever thought he would. Aside from this, it's mostly played for Black Comedy.
• The shadow demon, introduced late in The Legend of Link: Lucky Number 13, is equal parts ruthless and hilarious. His Establishing Character Moment is murdering the families of twelve men while they're powerless to do anything about it, after which we get this little exchange:
  Man: Who are you? What are you?
  Demon: The "what" am I is "demon". As for "who"...I'm not a big on names. I suppose you could think of me as the Left Hand of God.
  Man: ...
  [no one responds, which makes the demon seem genuinely uncomfortable]
  Demon: ...That's not too long, is it?...How about "the hand"? No, "handy"? No? None of those?
• Abra in the Pokemon fanfic A Mid-Sinnoh Night's Dream, to an extent. He threatens to invert his friends' anatomies on multiple occasions. They all know he's joking. Probably.
• Chaos from the Tamers Forever Series always takes the simplest solution to any problem. E.g., Love Interest is a bitch->Love Interest is dead->Love Interest is not a bitch.
• Vow of Nudity: Kay'la's series is far more zany than the rest of the canon, and she's constantly taking the most ethically-dubious option in any situation, starting with killing a Royal Knight and stealing his armor to run around claiming its hers. Once she actually achieves her honest knighthood, she spends it getting drunk in bars and then claiming the alcohol as "civil forfeiture" so she doesn't need to pay her tabs.
• The Hunter in With Strings Attached. Though he considers himself "good", he constantly brags to the four about all the people he's killed and the destruction he's wrought. They find him completely repellent. Until The Power of Friendship (not of them to him but amongst themselves) causes him to reexamine his life and ultimately have a Heel–Face Turn. They're actually quite surprised to hear that he doesn't consider himself or his BFS evil.
• Sognic: Mall-tiverse of Madness: Sognic is not a stable person. He starts the series running from the police with his friends. He apparently caused a fire at Casino Night Zone, and whenever he talks about it, he stares at the camera and grins ominously. He also despises Original Characters so much that he orders Shadoo to beat up Chroma the Cuttlefish. He also steals from Beeg's booth.

Films — Live-Action

• The entire cast of The Addams Family and its sequel Addams Family Values is based around this trope.
  Debbie: I bet you are a lady killer.
  Gomez: Acquitted.
  • They also use a dead body instead of cans tied to the "Just Married" sign in the car after Fester's wedding. Their sociopathic behavior is not only towards society in general but also among them (especially between the children—Pugsley seems to genuinely enjoy a lot of the torture Wednesday inflicts on him and isn't seriously harmed by it, and there doesn't seem to be that much genuine dislike between them, but they do both seriously try to kill the baby out of jealousy), but the charisma of the actors and great writing made them lovable still. All other versions of the Addams Family (with the exception of the original comics, where several of the darker scenes such as pouring boiling pitch on Christmas carollers come from) are lighter in tone and, though with eccentric and bizarre behaviors that often include violent motifs, they are shown as often being quite friendly, though even the 60s show occasionally implies they've killed people offscreen (for instance, Grandmama's line while holding an axe of "I haven't used this since the taxman came!").
  • However, it's slightly unclear how much of this is genuine sociopathy and how much is Blue-and-Orange Morality caused by the fact they are totally unharmed by many things that would kill a human (or it hurts but they enjoy it—either way, they don't always seem fully aware of what is and isn't fatal for humans), and that even death isn't quite as permanent a state for them what with them having the ability to contact dead people in the afterlife, and their dead ancestors can even be "woken" from their graves on Halloween.
• By the events of Avengers: Endgame, Thor is in bad shape. He’s now a fat alcoholic who sits around at home with his friends Korg and Miek playing video games all day. When their Sitcom Arch-Nemesis NoobMaster69 calls Korg a “dickhead” over Fortnite, Thor gets on the headset and tells the kid that he’s going to come to his house rip his arms off and shove them up his butt if doesn’t log off. When the kid starts crying, Thor tells the kid to run off and cry to his dad.
• Chev Chelios, the main protagonist in the Crank movies. Most of the stunts he pulls off would have been pretty reprehensible in other context such as threatening civilians, shoving up shotguns up his enemies's bottoms, picking up fights at random and having public sex with his reluctant girlfriend. He would have been a Villain Protagonist if not for the fact that these antics are Played for Laughs and Rule of Cool and the people he fights against tend to be much worse.
• Although the description of the trope refers to wicked characters, Tom Cruise's protagonist Roy Milner in Knight and Day still comes across this way despite having elements of The Cape. He racks up a massive amount of property damage over the course of the film and a body count to match while maintaining a totally nonchalant attitude as a humorous contrast. At one point, the villains try to persuade the heroine that Roy is actually a psychopathic pathological liar, and that is a surprisingly believable explanation. The effect is helped by Meta Casting/Reality Subtext which thinks of Cruise as mentally unstable. For a representative exchange:
  June: The pilots are dead?
  Miller: Shot.
  June: Shot...by who?
  Miller: Uh, me. Actually, I shot the first pilot...he shot the second pilot accidentally. It's just...one of those things.
  [later]
  Miller: I'm going to go talk to the men in the tunnel. [Beat] Actually, I'm just gonna shoot them.
• The titular Major Payne, albeit being a more kid-friendly take on it, is this all the same for his unabashed love of killing. He just loves it, to the point that going three weeks without "killing him a man" drives him insane. He also views breaking a person's finger, even a child's, as an acceptable way to take one's mind off of pain and even his dream of an idyllic married life includes a visit from the Vietcong, who gets his face thrust in a barbecue while Payne and his family laugh. He's revealed to ultimately be a good person at heart and does change for the better, though in the end he's still not above shaving his recruit's heads with his field knife for speaking out of turn.
• The Mask in his film and cartoon incarnations is an id-dominated maniac who is liable to act on everything that Stanley Ipkiss represses and it's all Played for Laughs. He also isn't actually that villainous when compared to the actual villains of said film and cartoon. His comics incarnation, meanwhile, is a pure-up Villain Protagonist while The Mask is a genuine hero who cares about his friends, his dog Milo, the people who are nice to him in Edge City and cares about his unmasked alter ego Stanley with The Mask being the cooler older brother while Stanley is the unlucky younger brother who the Mask will take revenge on those who pick on him. It also helps that so many of the characters who get picked on by The Mask are Asshole Victims. In fact, in the movie it often seems as if Edge City is swarming with all kinds of pests, weirdos, bullies, and all-around Jerkasses whose only purpose in life is to drive Stanley to impossible levels of madness and inspire him to wreak creatively ghoulish destruction as The Mask. Fittingly enough, it is eventually revealed that the title mask is an Old Norse archaeological find in which is trapped part of the power of Loki, God of Mischief. Among Stanley's outrageous actions as The Mask in the film:
  • Folding a balloon into a tommy gun and chasing off some (unarmed) muggers with it (by firing wildly into the air).
  • Shoving car parts up two auto mechanics who tried to gouge him. (And it's still better than their fate in the comic.)
  • Carrying around a signed photo of the wife of the Inspector Javert in lingerie, which he finds during a frisking session.
  • Acting extremely sleazy (in a Pepé Le Pew kind of way) towards Stanley's Love Interest.
• Mean Guns: Christopher Lambert gives us a rare example of this in his filmography as Lou, one of the movie heroes. He joined up specifically so that he could engage in Hunting the Most Dangerous Game, but his love of violence is played up to make him crazy awesome.
• Lancelot from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. When he receives a note via arrow that someone is being forced to marry against their will, he rushes to the poor (presumed) princess' aid... and slaughters not only every unresisting guard in his way, but about half of the party guests as well, including brides' maids and elderly folks. Afterwards, he sincerely apologizes for the misunderstanding.
  King of Swamp Castle: You only killed the bride's father, you know.
  Lancelot: Well, I didn't mean to.
  King of Swamp Castle: Didn't mean to? You put your sword right through his head!
  Lancelot: Oh dear...is he alright?
• The Naked Gun: Protagonist Frank Drebin is a ditzy Cowboy Cop with a very high offscreen body count. In the first film, it's stated that he once shot five actors^note Good ones. during a Shakespeare in the park production of Julius Caesar. At the beginning of the second film, he's rewarded for having killed 1000 drug dealers. The last two he ran over with his car by accident, fortunately, they turned out to be drug dealers.
• Junior in Problem Child, a Bad to the Bone seven year old who ruins the lives of those who wronged him even the slightest. In the third movie his victims are left severely injured and are mummified in bandages.
• Frank D'Arbo, the protagonist of Super, has a case of hyper-morality after being told by God himself to bring justice to the streets of his neighborhood. Inspired by comics, he assumes the superhero alter ego Crimson Bolt and uses a wrench to smash the faces of not only criminals, but people who push in queues, all For Great Justice. His sidekick, the self-named Boltie, is another, even more extreme version of this.
• Ironhide from the Transformers Film Series is one of these. His introduction has him seemingly threatening to blast Sam with his cannons, only to reveal he was just joking and wanted to show them off. He later asks to take out Sam’s annoying parents, and says it’s still an option when Optimus scolds him for it. And it is said in the tie-in game that he may or may not have blown up a planet with the aforementioned cannons in the past. But he is an Autobot and will defend humans from Decepticons, even if his methods are a bit violent.

Literature

• The Acts of Caine: Caine of Garthan Hold skirts the line of this. Well, maybe dances on it. Okay, he does a full soft-shoe number up and down with Broadway routines and a full stage orchestra in the background.
• Carnival of the Deepgate Codex series is about as Ax-Crazy as Ax-Crazy gets (and has a Hair-Trigger Temper), but she's just so damn cute that her insanity winds up being part of her appeal.
• Discworld: The Luggage and Greebo are both allied with the heroes, but don't display much in the way of scruples themselves, and are capable of dishing out extraordinary amounts of humorously-portrayed violence, especially for a travel trunk and a house cat.
• Viruk from David Gemmell's Echoes of the Great Song. Viruk takes great pleasure from fighting and killing his enemies. He believes that the Source (God) talks to him and orders him to kill people. He is described as being very changeable as a person; he kills a convoy of raiders and their caravan drivers and finally decides to let one live. Later on in the book he kills a king and is about to kill the man's bodyguards when he sees some flowers nearby and becomes distracted. Near the end of the book, when all of the remaining Avatars go on a death charge against their enemies, everyone is grim and determined; however, when it switches to Viruk's point of view, it shows that he is in ecstasy and truly enjoying the brutal fighting.
• Flashman is this. He’s an absolutely abhorrent individual even by the standards of Victorian England, but the absurdity of the situations he gets himself into are generally played for laughs and a great deal of the series’ draw is finding out how his cowardice and various misdeeds will somehow end up resulting in him being hailed as a hero or (at worst) a lovable rogue by everyone else. It doesn’t hurt that his sociopathy is mostly of the Chronic Backstabbing Disorder variety; the people who think they’re doing good are usually responsible for far more horrific acts than him.
• Yulia Latynina's sci-fi political thriller Insider gives us Kissur The White Falcon, imperial favourite, former prime minister, supreme tactician and feudal overlord of the Aloms. He is also a reckless madman that spends most of the book either committing or threatening to commit acts of over the top violence. In the first chapter, for instance, he drives around recklessly at night, slams his car into the first other car he finds and mugs the recently arrived protagonist. Twice. Just for fun. He befriends the protagonist out of respect for him actually fighting back on the next day. It gets better and better through the novel. In the words of another character, "If [Kissur] sees a house that is on fire, he'll rush inside to save the baby; if he sees a house that isn't on fire, he'll set fire to it."
• Jeeves of Jeeves and Wooster constantly throws people—especially his employer—under the bus in order to further his Zany Schemes. Since most of the said schemes ultimately benefit the people involved, he gets away with it.
• In The Spellmonger Series most of the Warmagi have shades of this, but the best of all of them is Azar the magnificent. He loves to use his magic to kill in as many different ways as possible, and he is actually seems happy to learn of an invasion of hundreds of thousands of genocidal goblins, because it means he gets to kill as many of them as he can and no one cares. He's also got a very short temper, which can lead to some hilarious Black Comedy.
  Lord Mayor: it violates the bans on magic, and it will invite the censorate down on--
  Azar: I warned him! He mentioned the bans again and I warned him. You all heard me. I can't be held responsible for that—if I tell a man I'll kill him if he does something, I have to back it up, don't I?
• Meursault in The Stranger, if you go for the Alternate Character Interpretation.

Live-Action TV

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Spike is this in season 4 and part of season 5—his Restraining Bolt meant that helping the good guys was the only way he could get his Blood Knight kicks.
  • Anya couldn't act on any of it (at least until mid-season six), but she openly missed the days when she could solve her problems by eviscerating people. She and Spike ended up drowning their sorrows together more than once.
    Anya: I'd kill for [R.J.]!
    Willow: You'd kill for a chocolate bar.
• The Colbert Report once did a segment that more or less showed a repo man as one: he jokes that his job is more or less stealing the cars of people that are in debt, and is pretty damn happy about it.
• Dirk Gently: Dirk treats everyone around him like dirt and it's hilarious. At one point, he goes so far as to give the wrong address to a pizza place in the hope of getting it free because it's late. He also has a fine line in lying to the police and going through the pockets of the dead.
• Jayne Cobb from Firefly does this a lot. He manages to knock some decent giggles out of the audience by being an amoral, violent, intimidating bastard.
  Jayne: Hell, I'll kill a man in a fair fight...or if I think he's gonna start a fair fight, or if he bothers me, or if there's a woman, or if I'm gettin' paid—mostly only when I'm gettin' paid.
• Frasier: Bebe likes to portray herself as this. When Frasier fires her in "Roz's Turn":
  Bebe: That's it, is it? I'm not virtuous enough for you, not noble. Fine, quit! Next time you need a deal made, call the Dalai Lama. A long time ago, I had to make a choice between being a good agent and a good person, because trust me, you can't be both! So forgive me if I don't have time to make everybody warm and fuzzy. I am just too busy spending every waking minute pouring any drink, pulling any shameless tricks I can to make my clients' dreams come true! I AM A STARMAKER!
• The eponymous protagonist from House. He goes out of his way to humiliate and torture co-workers and patients and seems to get off on it. Said sociopathy is Played for Laughs, but is surprisingly effective at producing results and usually well-intentioned.
• Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother has been this, and he's not afraid to admit it, sometimes even being proud of these tendencies. Lily has elements of this, also.
• iCarly: Sam anytime an incident goes from a regular run of the mill incident to something that threatens Carly.
• Mick Rory (AKA Heatwave) in Legends of Tomorrow. Notably is that he hardly considers himself a hero. He just enjoys killing people and sees Time Travel as an opportunity to party and steal things.
• On Leverage, Parker is this, stealing from random people out of boredom and without really concern over their possessions. She starts to become more caring as the series goes on.
  • One of the later episodes in the series has an exchange where Parker is genuinely surprised when someone explained to her that pushing other people off buildings without any warning is, in fact, Not OK, and that the screaming and flailing wasn't just them playing along with the joke.
• Nathan from Misfits certainly borders on this. Other characters do occasionally suggest that he probably has some kind of mental illness (usually when they're trying to explain his bizarre behavior to baffled and offended strangers) but it's still played exclusively for laughs. In fact, everybody from Misfits can be classified as this since they constantly kill people(in one specific episode more then a dozen at once) and with one or two exceptions this never seems to bother them all that much
• NTSF:SD:SUV::: The Agents (especially Trent Hauser) regularly resort to the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique and "shoot first, don't ask questions" tactics to combat any threat, but it's all played for Black Comedy.
• Peacemaker: Vigilante is an Ax-Crazy vigilante who kills people for graffiti and admits to getting pleasure from it, but he's also a dorky Cloudcuckoolander who's frequently Played for Laughs.
• Person of Interest: Root and Sameen Shaw are both self-acknowledged sociopaths, but once they join Team Machine their antics are often played for laughs.
• Stuart Jones, one of the two leads in Queer as Folk (UK). He's much more of a bastard than a hero really, but every now and then he does something so outrageous and awesome you can't completely hate him.
• The eponymous Sherlock Holmes of the BBC's Sherlock, despite solving crimes and catching murderers, is actually more interested in the intellectual challenge that his cases present than helping anyone. And while Sherlock's manipulative, callous nature turns out to be something of a front, it's still played for laughs in nearly every episode.
  Molly Hooper: I was wondering if you'd like to have coffee?
  Sherlock: Black, two sugars please. I’ll be upstairs.
  [Sherlock leaves the room]
  Molly Hooper: ...Okay.
• Sledge Hammer!: Sledge Hammer's over-the-top Cowboy Cop behavior and violence towards criminals is played strictly for laughs, as an Affectionate Parody of Dirty Harry.
• Supernatural: The demon Meg in Seasons 7 and 8. What starts out as an Enemy Mine situation with the Winchesters leads to a Heel–Face Turn when she decides to throw her loyalty to them partly because they are the safest option for her and in part because of her growing affection for Castiel. She's then seen killing demons, angels, and anything else that gets in their way without much thought and being completely confused by Sam's story of stopping to aid a dog he hit with his car.

Music

• Eminem's Slim Shady character is this, especially early on - a Psychopathic Manchild alter ego who's had a similar life to the real Marshall Mathers, but is a rampaging white trash mass murderer, persuades children to shoot up schools, rapes female celebrities, masturbates until his palms are covered in hair, a woman-beater, pervert, homophobe, Depraved Kids' Show Host, and (worst of all) a vocal supporter of abortion rights and equal marriage.
• Gorillaz: Murdoc Niccals. His rap sheet includes fraud, kidnapping, extortion, Organ Theft, tons and tons of assault and possibly homicide. Despite this, he's still technically a protagonist, and maintains a sizable fanbase as such.
• Insane Clown Posse likewise portray themselves as mass murderers and serial killers, mitigated by the sheer Bloody Hilarious nature of their murders and by mostly attacking acceptable targets such as Dirty Cops, Corrupt Politicians, and Pedophile Priests.
• The Mechanisms are played as immortal Space Pirates who think things like mass-murder and planetary destruction are fun hobbies.

Pinball

• Red and Ted from Red & Ted's Road Show, who travel cross-country in their bulldozer, blowing up everything along the way.

Podcasts

• Shannon dips into this during the rules explanation in the Cool Kids Table game Homeward Bound 4.
  Alan: You can reduce your Panic by 1 for each human you kill.
  Shannon: I relate a lot to that.
• Riley from Less is Morgue has some trouble with empathy as a result of their numerous mental illnesses and personality disorders. The show derives plenty of comedy from how unaware Riley seems of the fact they're being a jerk, up to and including eating people alive.

Professional Wrestling

• "Stone Cold" Steve Austin is a massive Jerkass who will often stunner fellow faces even if they've done nothing to deserve it, simply because he finds it funny. Usually, the crowd agrees with him and will laugh and cheer along, even if they like the wrestler that he's just assaulted.
• Edge (during his final face run).
• John Cena (when he's in a really bad mood).
• Kane is a living manifestation of unstoppable rage, which makes him terrifying as a heel and hilarious as a face, when he tries his best to control his demonic urges. He gives a memorable summation of this dilemma when forced to attend anger management class:
  Kane: Well, I grew up locked in a basement, suffering severe psychological and emotional scarring when my brother set my parents on fire. From there, I shifted around among a series of mental institutions until I was grown, at which point, I buried my brother alive... twice. Since then, I've set a couple of people on fire, and abducted various co-workers. Oh, and I, uh... once electrocuted a man's testicles. Years ago, I had a girlfriend named Katie, but, uh... let's just say that that didn't turn out so well. My real father is a guy named Paul Bearer, who I recently trapped in a meat locker. I've been married, divorced, broke up my ex-wife's wedding, and tombstoned the priest. And for reasons never explained, I have an unhealthy obsession with torturing Pete Rose.
• Triple H and Shawn Michaels in D-X. They could best be described as 40-year-old juveniles.

Tabletop Games

• Virtually everyone in Alpha Complex, as well as any Troubleshooters who plan on surviving the first five minutes of a mission.
• In Pathfinder, antipaladins of Chaotic Neutral thunder god Hei Feng lend themselves to this approach. While most antipaladins are Card Carrying Villains, Hei Feng's code allows his unholy warriors to perform benevolent and altruistic deeds, as long as these deeds are accomplished through violence, and the god's love of drinking, boasting, and explosions encourages his followers to pursue all manner of destructive wacky hijinks.

Theatre

• Cyrano de Bergerac: Deconstructed by Cyrano. Possessing severe Mommy Issues and a strange upbringing, Cyrano's actions are a cry for acceptance, delivered the only way his broken mind knows how. Cyrano is a rare example that is not a Karma Houdini. When Cyrano is sad, he bullies annoying people and picks up the occasional Sword Fight. When Cyrano is happy, he searches for various Asshole Victims to kill. He kills eight thugs paid to ambush one of Cyrano's friends as he lampshades this in Act I Scene VI:
  Le Bret: Now, you'll be calm, I hope?
  Cyrano: [beside himself with joy] Calm? I now calm?
  I'll be frenetic, frantic—raving mad!
  Oh, for an army to attack!—a host!
  I've ten hearts in my breast; a score of arms;
  No dwarfs to cleave in twain!...
  [wildly] No! Giants now!

Video Games

• BioWare loves this trope:
  • Baldur's Gate: Xzar.
  • Baldur's Gate 2: Korgan Bloodaxe.
  • Knights of the Old Republic: HK-47, an assassin droid who loves his job and constantly refers to organic life as "meatbags".
  • Jade Empire: The Black Whirlwind, an ax-wielding drunkard whose stories would be horrifying if they weren't so hilarious.
  • Mass Effect: Wrex, although he's a mild example, since his comedy is mostly from snarking. His entire species appears to be sociopathic by human standards.
  • Mass Effect 2: Zaeed, Jack, and especially Grunt.
  • Dragon Age: Origins: Shale and Zevran.
  • Dragon Age II: Hawke, the Player Character, if played with the right mix of Silly/Sarcastic and Aggressive dialogue options and some of the more evil choices (though given the Grey-and-Gray Morality of the game, it's often unclear which choices are the most "evil").
  • Mass Effect 3: Javik.

---

• In Abobo's Big Adventure, Abobo kills a whole slew of other video game characters, sometimes because they were trying to kill him, sometimes for no reason whatsoever.
• Alpha Protocol's Steven Heck will, during the course of the game (if you play your cards right):
  • Tie up, beat the crap from, and threaten to pour dry-cleaning fluid down the throat of his assistant in order to locate his keys.
  • Mount a Gatling gun to a train car and fire wildly on enemy agents as his train passes the station when asked to provide unspecific "support".
  • Cut off three of a man's fingers for calling him "Steve", before setting him on fire for trying to bribe him.
  • In one ending of the Taipei storyline, finger the aforementioned assistant for the assassination of the president of Taiwan.
  • React to being told "no casualties" like a normal person would to being told to eat a puppy.
  • Consider "tie down this [rival character] and give him the bees!" a reasonable suggestion.
  • Be reputed to have killed an agent of the papacy by choking him with communion wafers, murdered a Triad boss by lodging a ten-speed bicycle in his abdomen and decapitated a politician with a soccer ball.
    • And despite all this, if you get him on your side, he's an excellent support character, doing everything he does out of loyalty to his friends and country. And he will never betray you if you don't piss him off, because his only loyalties are apparently to himself and his own batshittery and he's easy to befriend with the right mindset.
• The Angry Birds, who laugh while massacring their pig enemies.
• Riki from Bangai-O seems to qualify, to an extent. While he has the noble goal of using the title mech to defeat the Cosmo Gang, he doesn't hesitate to blast anyone that stands in his way (no matter how sympathetic they are).
• Bayonetta is a witch with dark powers who, despite being good, is casually sadistic to the angels that she kills and she apparently loves the sound of them screaming. Even her few friends are not safe from slapsticks she regularly doles out; among other things, she has smashed Enzo's car several times, kicked Luka out of the scenery to save him from angels, and shot Rodin to stop him from talking.
• In BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm, we have Anonymous. He’s Catie’s best friend and loyal protector… but he’s also a total Troll with no regard for (virtual) human life. The very first thing we see him do is “practice his magic” by lighting a random passerby on fire and watching him burn to a crisp. This seems to be a trait shared by all members of his inexplicably identical species, as we later see several more Anons committing similar “pranks” in different sites.
• Borderlands 2 has the downloadable character Krieg, a psycho whose old, sane self is Fighting from the Inside against the violent conductor of the poop train currently in control. He has made it clear in no uncertain terms that if the beast in charge kills an innocent, or a hero, he will exert his will to gain enough control to kill them both.
  • Really, most of the Borderlands 2 main characters (except Maya) would probably count as this trope to one degree or another. Axton is a self-centered Glory Hound with an appealingly high tolerance (not to mention tendency) for "collateral damage", Zer0 is a sociopathic Blood Knight Ninja who only speaks in haiku and misinterprets people with hilarious (and bloody) results, Salvador is a testosterone-addled cackling maniac with a rep sheet taller than he is who thinks killing people is fun, and Gaige is a playable Tiny Tina who blew up one of her classmates and has a pet killer robot. Most of them are only after the vault because they're some variant of bored and can't think of anything better to do.
• Sergeant Viktor Reznov in the Russian/Soviet campaign of Call of Duty: World at War seems to enjoy killing Germans a little too much. He even twice encouraged the Player Character to kill helpless German soldiers (first was when they surrendered, second was when they lay dying).
• The three protagonists of Day of the Tentacle have to do some unscrupulous things in order to proceed.
  • Bernard pushes Edna Edison down the stairs as part of a puzzle. The latter is never seen or mentioned afterward, so one can only assume what fate befell her.
  • Bernard also uses invisible ink to ruin Weird Ed's stamp book, which is noted to be the only thing bringing Ed comfort after a very traumatic event and undoing the work of five years of therapy. Additionally, Bernard is also required to take Ed's new pet hamster and send it into the future, presumably permanently, which is extra terrible when you remember that what incited Ed's trauma in the first place was his first hamster being stolen and exploded in a microwave in Maniac Mansion...by one of Bernard's own friends.
    • At least in the case of the stamp book, Bernard has the option of showing him the book is fine to undo the damage, but he can also choose to keep the stamp book for himself.^note Unless you used the invisible ink on Ed's book before picking up his hamster. If you did, he will prevent you from picking up the the hamster until you show him the book is okay, returning it in the process.
  • Laverne can't win the Human Show with Dead Cousin Ted because her opponent Harold is the best in every category, so she gets him disqualified on purpose. This gets him sent down a trapdoor to have a presumably unpleasant checkup.
  • Hoagie steals the revolutionary super-battery protoype from Red Edison so he can power his Chron-O-John.
• Princess Sapphire from Disgaea 3 is one part this and one part Cloudcuckoolander. She's liable to flip out and kill anything she perceives as a "threat", only to come to her senses the next moment and apologize profusely to the very dead and broken body of her would-be opponent. Her solution to practically every problem the party comes across is one form or another of "murder", including the suggestion to "open Mao's heart"...with a chainsaw. Unlike most examples, she usually means well...for a certain definition of "well".
• Duke Nukem has always been this. His idea of a good time is finding an army of evil aliens and splattering their brains out with a shotgun; all of his dialogue is bragging about how amazing he is; he's content to toss money at exotic dancers when someone less egotistical would be evacuating them out of an active warzone. Stupid as hell, but so over the top you couldn't help but laugh. This is probably why Duke Nukem Forever didn't go over well with the critics — the entire plot is that Duke earned the right to be a huge Jerkass (by saving the planet three times) and thus spent all his time being a huge Jerk Ass, but the novelty of playing a huge Jerk Ass wore off long ago.
• Lance in Epic Battle Fantasy. As part of the party, he's one of the only four people capable of saving the world from various Eldritch Abominations. He's also a perverted kleptomaniac who has a fondness for Putting on the Reich. Matt is one as well, though to a lesser degree: He lacks the SS outfit and perverted tendencies, but loves stealing to fund his sword collection and fights evil more to test out his collection than out of any selfless desires. Averted with the other two members of the party, Natalie and Anna.
• In Evolve, Hyde serves this role. He's a pyromaniac who enjoys wanton violence, but because the enemies are giant monsters rather than humans it's played for laughs.
• Thanks to the Karma Meter, your character could be like this or a straight villain, in the Fable games.
  • An NPC example would be Reaver, the Hero of Skill from Fable II. He's a smug and egotistical pirate who is seen trying three times to immortalize his likeness in art, only to shoot the artist for some slight error in their work^note Of those artists that are killed, the first two maybe, maybe deserved it for screwing up the work. The third? It's everyone's favorite photography dude, Barnum, who happily takes the picture and promises to deliver it in three months when it's "developified". Which, according to Reaver, is too long and a murderable offense., and tricks you into sacrificing your youth (or that of an NPC, if you're playing an evil character) to the Shadow Court in order to prolong his life. Of course, he's the one who will execute the final boss if you don't want to commit murder with hatred. (Oh, you wanted to shoot him? Too bad, Reaver shoots the son of a bitch if you try to hear the end of the villain monologue!)
  • He just becomes a regular Evil Jerkass in III, though, as a classic robber baron and the willing representative of the decadent, incomprehensibly corrupt, and occasionally bloodthirsty upper class. However, it is his job to act as a spokesman for a significant group of powerful people, and he will be pressed to help you mitigate the PR damage if you choose virtuously expensive edicts.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Selphie of Final Fantasy VIII edges into this on occasion, making friends with adorable animals and then suggesting they skin them, or yelling about blowing everything up with huge bombs.
  • Shantotto of Final Fantasy XI is a good-aligned character, but she has no qualms blasting random poor adventurers with her magic if they irritate her, and she'll deliver her trademark Noblewoman's Laugh after. Carries into her appearance in Dissidia Final Fantasy where she's far more bloodthirsty than the other characters, but she's just so funny about it.
• When you meet him, Henry from Fire Emblem: Awakening is this trope taken to the extreme. He's happy and optimistic to the point of complete insanity, and seems have no concern for human life. Over the course of the game, he tries to raise an army of zombies that are at risk of killing civilians without a care, offers to kill your entire army on a couple occasions, and says that he'll kill anybody who gives him "stupid" orders, like "don't kill the enemy." One of his battle cries when getting a critical hit is "I'M GONNA KILL YOU!" yelled in the most happy, cheerful voice possible. However, he actually turns out to be a subversion. A good part of his supports demonstrate that while his idea of morality is whacked, he ultimately just wants to make people like him. But due to a horrifying childhood of neglect, abuse, and torture, he can't understand that his obsession with violence and mischief is bad until others ask him to stop. At which point he always ceases said violence and mischief immediately because he doesn't want to upset his friends. While he's still a weirdo and very fond of blood and slaughter, he does care for the Shepherds in his own Henry way, and, if he gets married, he turns out to be a pretty decent husband and father. His support with Ricken has this exchange:

  Ricken: If I were cut down in battle tomorrow, would you just shrug and carry on?
  Henry: No! I'd be very sad and angry. And I'd find out who did it, hunt them down, and exact bloody revenge!...Oh, yes. There would be blood.

  • The most blatant example is also from his Support with Ricken, where he cheerfully talks about his old Plegian friends that you, the player, slaughtered:
    Ricken: Henry, it's my job to kill Plegian soldiers...So I have to believe they deserve to die. But now you've reminded me that they aren't faceless blobs with axes. They have friends, and families, and...h-how am I going to fight them if I know that? What if I hesitate?
    Henry: You're weird. I don't see the problem here at all.
• Genshin Impact: It's very rare for Yae Miko to do anything to help people unless she stands to gain something from it, even if that something is simply amusement. At the same time, her relentless trolling of much of the Inazuman cast is entirely Played for Laughs, and one of her idle animations has her bait a finch into getting close to her, and then laughing when said finch gets eaten by a fox spirit. Being the Head Shrine Maiden and essentially the familiar for the ruling archon helps her get away with a lot.
• Though most GTA protagonists fit the bill for this, Luis Lopez of Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony openly admits to being this. The only people he shows any attachment to are his mother, who he doesn't even particularly like while she frequently shows contempt towards him; his friends, with whom he has probably the healthiest relationship; and his benefactor Tony, who is a father figure to him, but who also uses Luis specifically because the only qualms he has about doing anything are purely practical ones. When asked by Brucie about him having a softer side, Luis replies with a flat "Not really, I like killing people for money."
  • Trevor, the Token Evil Teammate of the three main protagonists in Grand Theft Auto V is deliberately designed to be a reference to the average GTA player, going through the game as a complete psychopath only in to cause as much mayhem as possible and enjoying it. The real redeeming factor to make him likeable in the eyes of the audience is that he manages to be both hilarious and awesome while doing it.
• Iris Heart in Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory. While she is one of Neptune's True Companions, she's a Token Evil Teammate who spends most of the time mercilessly tormenting and scaring friend and foe alike and getting away with it. All of this is used as the source of comedy in the game. Plutia herself isn't immune from this, as one of her EXE Drives has her gleefully beating up her dolls to make her enemies suffer.
• The commentators from MadWorld. One is a former contestant in the Death Watch, the other is a wife-beating Too Kinky to Torture Jerkass who's probably voicing this gig because he's too wanted to get work anywhere else and both of them are Played for Laughs.
• Master Detective Archives: Rain Code has Shinigami, a death god with Blue-and-Orange Morality who constantly belittles the dead and opposes the other heroes, serving as the Token Evil Teammate of the Nocturnal Detective Agency.
• The Monkey Island series is consistently funny, much of the humour coming from the protagonist, Guybrush Threepwood, constantly using underhanded and destructive means to solve problems. It's implied that he's not particularly skilled at anything outside of Social Engineering and MacGyvering things together, so when he's up against anyone who outclasses him in traditional ways (i.e. everyone), he needs to resort to petty theft and trickery to save the day. If it ruins someone else's day at the same time, Guybrush rarely seems particularly concerned. This gets lampshaded by Elaine in Return to Monkey Island as she learns of all the misdeeds he committed in that entry, but as usual it all gets shrugged off in the end. Among his pettier crimes, he's also committed fraud, blackmail, assault, perjury, destruction of property, grand theft pirate ship, grave robbing, and reckless use of gardening tools.
• Travis Touchdown of the No More Heroes series, at least in the first game. Character Development in the sequel makes him much less of one.
• Nok-Nok from Pathfinder: Kingmaker, a goblin believing he is the fifth legendary goblin hero. He is a Chaotic Evil Heroic Wannabe who likes stabbing people (after first setting them on fire), but as he believes the Player Character is The Mentor who will guide him to his glorious destiny of herodom he remains completely loyal to you. The player character can play up either his heroism or his comedy aspects depending on his personal quest, but either way Nok-Nok remains a Psycho Knife Nut who offers to solve most of your problems by stabbing them.
• The protagonist of the Rance series, the eponymous Rance, is perhaps the worst human being in existence. He owns his own personal slave (when few to no others are shown to do so) that he constantly abuses, has sex with everything in sight that doesn't have a Y chromosome whether they like it or not (though to be fair, he's the protagonist of an eroge series, so sometimes his journey requires him to), and constantly looks for ways to extort money, items, or information from everyone in general. And yet, his actions always somehow seem to have a positive effect on the societies he visits (not that he cares) and it's always Played for Laughs...
  • To be fair, Sill (the slave in question) and Rance do care for each other, but Rance is terrible at showing it. He is basically just the most tsun and least dere tsundere ever. Rance also actually understands that rape is a terrible thing to do, he just usually doesn't connect it to what he does, because in the Rance games Sex Equals Love since he's so good at what he does.
• The Saints Row protagonist is somewhat heroic (but still on the looser side of sanity) in the first game, considerably even more insane in the sequel, and gets a healthy boost in both categories in the third entry of the series. Anyone who's in the Saints also counts.
• Sam & Max: Freelance Police: Same as the comic book version. In Season Two of the games, it's revealed that they even have a wing of Hell dedicated to them. Better yet, you don't even have to be a particularly bad person to get sent there when you die; you just have to have been involved in Sam & Max's shenanigans during or near the time it happens. But remember, everything Max does, is just because Sam "can't think of a reason not to". In fact, Sam and Max are such impossible assholes that they once dreamed that they died and went to Heaven, but got kicked out for being too rowdy. That's right: even Jesus can't stand Sam and Max!
• Shadow Warrior (2013): Lo Wang is a vulgar douchebag, primarily motivated by money and opportunities to relieve his violent urges. He's also humanity's best (and probably only) hope against demonic invaders.
• Gig from Soul Nomad & the World Eaters is a gleefully Omnicidal ex-Psychopomp, responsible for why the game world is set After the End, who spends the game possessing your character. Because Gig has little direct control over your actions, he spends most of the game insulting, tricking and annoying the rest of the party and everyone else you interact with, snarking at your character's motivations and personal history, and repeatedly trying to tempt you to do evil and accept more of his power so he can gain more control of your body. The main character is forced to go along with his because a) he/she can't get rid of Gig as their souls are fused together, and b) Gig is the only being in the world powerful enough to defeat the World Eaters, and letting him possess you grants you access to some of his powers.
• Tales of Destiny 2: Harold Berselius, the resident Mad Scientist. She routinely poisons the rest of the party to test experimental drugs, asks if she can vivisect them (in fact, her idea of a date with Kyle is strapping him to an operating table) and mostly tags along with the party because she finds the idea of killing a goddess Squee-worthy.
• The entire team of Team Fortress 2 are a bunch of Laughably Evil loonies with loads of Comedic Sociopathy and Amusing Injuries thrown into the mix.
• Marisa Kirisame from Touhou Project, who habitually steals from the mansions of the enemies that she beats up. Despite this, she's still considered heroic, especially when compared to her partner and fellow protagonist Reimu.
• In The Walking Dead: Season One, some of Lee's "jerk" options are this, most notably being the infamous "Fuck you, Larry! Eat, up!" line in Episode 2. He can generally be a dick to everyone, even to Clem, but still has the end goal of keeping Clem and the group safe.

Web Animation

• The title character of The Annoying Orange often torments other foods and makes jokes whenever they get killed in front of him, but he will save the day on occasion.
• Bugbo is the main character of his self-titled series, and his questionable exploits are largely Played for Laughs due to his funny, snarky personality. He has multiple traits of a sociopath:
  • He shows no remorse for pushing Gradient Joe down a hole without knowing what's down there, or for presumably killing the Stone Merchant, the Mayor, and possibly the Mayor's security guards as well.
  • He is constantly manipulating Gerbo under the guise of teaching him lessons.
  • He rarely shows any emotions. He is always eerily calm, with a monotonous voice and a perpetual, empty smile. For example, in "Under the Oak," when Gerbo is panicking because Gradient Joe won't be able to give a speech at the mayoral election (since Joe doesn't talk, and Gerbo and Bugbo only just remembered this), the most concern that Bugbo can muster is "Oh."
  • He defies laws and rules to get his way:
    • In "Set in Stone," he refuses to pay the Stone Merchant for his rocks. Then he calls the merchant "stubborn" for asking for money, even though that's a merchant's job.
    • In "Under the Oak," after convincing the mayor to hold an election between himself and Gradient Joe, Bugbo says the election will be held the following day. The mayor protests, saying that that's not enough time to set up an election. Bugbo implicitly threatens the mayor to follow his request.
• Dorkly Originals:
  • Pokémon Rusty has the titular character Rusty; an Obliviously Evil Pokémon trainer who has abused and even killed several of his own Pokémon (not to mention those of others) out of sheer stupidity. Not that he ever feels bad for it - or, at least until his actions come back to bite him in the final episode.
  • Bodybuilders Go has Byron Oakington III. Picture Rusty, but with ignorance replaced with Lack of Empathy, and human children added to the list of those he mistreats. Ironically his "Pokémon" is relatively better treated, as it's usually the one inflicting harm.
• Alastor from Hazbin Hotel. One of Hell's Overlords, Alastor is immensely more powerful than the other protagonists and scares the crap out of most of them. He acts like an Affably Evil old-time Large Ham Radio Announcer, but will casually tear people to shreds with tendrils of pure darkness if they annoy him before immediately going back to talking about his old mother's cooking. Oh, and he only hangs out with the protagonists' attempt at redeeming the demons of Hell because he's bored and thinks the whole ordeal is doomed to failure, wanting to savour the inevitable crushed dreams of Charlie and anyone who enters the Hotel in person.
• Helluva Boss: Blitzo fits the bill to a tee. He has absolutely no qualms about killing technically innocent people on earth if it means he gets paid, insults as often as he breathes and enjoys trying to mentally torture an old man into killing himself. However, it's all a facade for how he's unable to form meaningful relationships with people due to his past.
• Plan 3: Stephen enjoys roleplaying a version of himself that has no qualms about committing the occasional casual murder.
  Fate Lord: Your next trial: you must take the head of your best friend! Whahahaha!
  Stephen: What? That’s easy! Ok!
  Fate Lord: WOAH WOAH WOAH, dude calm down, that was a joke, that was a joke!
  Stephen: Huh? Tha-j- why would you joke about something like that?!
  Fate Lord: WHY WERE YOU READY TO DO THAT?!
• Unbiased History decides to depict some of the more nutty Roman emperors - notably Caligula, Nero, and Caracalla - as being good leaders as a joke. Instead of brushing over their morally questionable deeds the narrirator acts as though they were actually right.
• Eddsworld: Although most of the main cast can apply due to their comedic bouts of villainy, former member Tord stands out for being extremely trigger-happy and violent, apparently once playing a game of paintball, using 'real' guns . That being said, his antics are all Played for Laughs, until ''The End"...
• Battle for Dream Island: Blocky is a red building block who takes delight in murdering fellow contestants for his own amusement, or at least harming them. However, since they are usually recreated in recovery centers, there are no lasting consequences so he frequently kills the same contestants, sometimes making Rube-Goldberg devices from their recovery centers causing a loop of deaths.

Webcomics

• Black Mage from 8-Bit Theater exemplifies the archetype, in spite of being the comic's major Chew Toy on top of it.
  • As Fighter himself once said...
    Fighter: Oh, we usually murder our way to the top and claim victory whilst astride a pile of mangled bodies.
    Garland: I see...
    Fighter: But we're heroes, so it's okay when we do that.
• Ansem Retort: Insofar as the protagonists can be called "heroes", about half of them qualify. Axel kills people constantly for no reason, and if he's looking at you you'd better hope it's no reason, 'cause he gets brutal when he has actual motive beyond "likes killing things". Zexion takes pride in his Jerkass credentials and commits crimes just to prove he can. Red XIII views the whole of humanity as food. And as for Larxene...well, we're not sure what Larxene's deal is apart from huge quantities of drugs and Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!, but she's a little too fond of killing things.
• Doctor Hubris from The Apple of Discord (and later Apple Valley) is usually responsible for whatever horrible things are going on in the comic, including inventing the technology that created Gayzilla and creating a highly contagious form of "robot cancer". It's been implied several times that he hired Doyle just to kill him, and that the superheroes of Apple Valley classify him as a supervillain. It's even been implied that he is the one who actually broke the barrier separating reality, not Arthur, which has been more-or-less confirmed by Word of God.
• Most of the characters from Charby the Vampirate fit this trope given how little they value human life (though the titular character eventually decides to stop killing people for the sake of his friendship with resident Badass Longcoat demon hunter Vic, the other characters continue to maim, kill, slaughter and eat whomever the want, whenever they feel like it).
• Chicanery has Ness, Pokey, Jeff and Mr. Saturn from EarthBound (1994). The gang have saved the world on more than one occasion—but are just as likely to steal, cheat and murder indiscriminately to get what they want.
• The Fear, The Pain, and The Fury from The Cobra Days. When they're not fighting agents of the Axis powers, they spend a lot of their time violently bickering with each other or picking on The Sorrow.
• Skoll of Cry 'Havoc' qualifies. She is a good guy...but only because the people she mutilates and kills are slightly worse, or at least less skilled, than her.
• Ethan from Ctrl+Alt+Del who consistently has absent-minded daydreams about strange ways to kill or injure his co-worker Rob, a Counter-Strike-playing idiot, and sometimes enacts these daydreams...he also daydreams about killing or injuring customers of the video game store he works at.
• Most of the cast in EVIL qualify—except for the "heroic" part, since they are all Villain Protagonists.
• Freefall:
  • The robot Edge, who helps Florence Ambrose to prevent a genocide on Ridiculously Human Robots...so HE doesn't get lobotomised.
  • Sam, the kleptomaniac, greedy, totally self-centered squid.
• Girl Genius:
  • Bangladesh DuPree. Although technically more of a Psycho for Hire because she works for the antagonist Baron Wulfenbach, DuPree crosses the line over into this trope: The extremely over-the-top acts she inflicts upon the remaining cast with a smile on her face while cracking jokes about it are played as much for laughs as for horror, and Wulfenbach is both a viewpoint character and an Anti-Villain (and one may wonder how she plans to kill someone with a block of cheese...).
  • An even clearer example is Castle Heterodyne, a sadistic, sentient building loyal to the Heterodyne family. It gleefully inflicts gruesome acts of violence on anyone nearby at Agatha's command, or after interpreting an otherwise-innocent comment from Agatha as a command, or simply because Agatha isn't around to tell it not to. Because it thinks it's fun.
  • Then there are the Jaegers. Their loyalty to House Heterodyne comes first, and (for most of them) their loyalty to the baron comes second, but their third biggest motivation is sheer bloodlust. They are self-proclaimed "killing machines" who regard the evil Heterodynes as "the fun ones". They always charge into battle with great enthusiasm and laugh at the grisly deaths of their enemies. Nevertheless, so long as Lady Heterodyne is on the side of light, so are they, and most effective at it.
• Mal of Head Trip. Her antics include: arson, assault with a deadly weapon, breaking and entering, holding Fox executives at knife point until they agree to give Joss Whedon full artistic control over all future projects, abducting and threatening with torture a writer for lost, giving Jack Thompson a Karmic Death and murdering Sailor Moon. She is likely not joking when she says that Ebert of Ebert and Roper has a restraining order on her. She even has her own demon assigned on a permanent basis to follow her around holding a handbasket.
• Homestuck has Vriska Serket, a sociopathic, egotistical serial killer who only cares about winning and being the best, and among other things threw one of her friends off a cliff, paralyzing him and then later making him apologize for being a cripple. While she eventually undergoes Character Development and starts earnestly fighting against Lord English, she never fully abandons her callous, smug and cruel behavior and remains a source of much Black Comedy throughout the story.
  • Terezi Pyrope is a morally detached, creepy girl who licks and sniffs everything, mercilessly teases and picks on her friends, and almost never stops grinning and giggling. She aspires to be a Legislacerator one day, and practices for this role by roleplaying courtroom scenes with her plush toys, which always end in hanging. Later on, her reaction to finding the corpse of one of her best friends is roleplaying a Police Procedural with the aforementioned toys, and kicking them off a cliff for doing a bad job at the scene of the crime. All of the aforementioned things are absolutely hilarious in context, and incidentally Terezi is one of the most heroically-aligned characters in the comic.
  • Meenah Peixes, leader of the ghost army against Lord English. Cheerfully ignorant, violent, loves her bling more than her friends, and idolizes a genocidal tyrant who is responsible for at least a third of the horrible things going on in the story. The hilarity is further increased by the fact that her mannerisms are based on Nicki Minaj's.
  Meenah: dont know who she^note Roxy is but i know W)(AT she is
  Meenah: shes done
  John: huh?
  Meenah: ever do any baking nerd
  John: yeah, a little...
  Meenah: then you know -EXACTLY what you do with somefin thats done
  Meenah: you stick a fork in it
• Mary Dixon of Joseph & Yusra shoots up robbers with a Slasher Smile on her face, and is perfectly willing to hold her friend hostage on top of a partially constructed building (tied to a chair) and kick her cousin off said building from lethal heights (sure, it was to test their hidden psychic powers, but still).
• Lackadaisy:
  • Rocky, while being a fairly well-meaning guy overall, has very little grasp of what's socially acceptable and scares most "normal" cats he talks to. When carrying out rumrunning duties, he is completely unaverse to revenge and forcibly putting other "establishments" out of business... and he does. Oh, and he's a pyromaniac. Yet, his childlike enthusiasm, general clumsiness and ineptitude, and lyrical ability make him pretty endearing to the reader.
  • Calvin (a.k.a. "Freckle") is probably this trope in training. A quiet, shy fella, he undergoes a complete and psychotic personality change any time he gets his paws on a gun. The end result can involve a lot of bodies (and horror on his part, once he comes back to himself). The story as it stands seems to suggest that he will put this particular "talent" to use, and then his "training" will probably be complete as far as this trope goes.
• Psycho Mantis from The Last Days of FOXHOUND. The webcomic also gives an excellent insight into the differences between this trope (Mantis) and the Magnificent Bastard (Ocelot)—anyone who tangles with the latter on an intellectual level is going down, but it is hard to engage in intellectual battle when your opponent just sets you on fire with his mind instead.
• Richard from Looking for Group is an undead warlock spellcaster of immense power with Cloudcuckoolander tendencies who likes to slaughter innocent peasants and eat babies. His catchphrase is a variation on a line spoken in this comic: "You all saw it! That orphanage attacked me!" with the burning building in the background. Being undead, he can take normally fatal injuries (as being impaled through the stomach, getting an ax in the forehead or being Too Kinky to Torture) and joke about it, and is capable of destroying anything with his ice and fire spells (at the cost of needing to rest after exerting himself). His "partner" is the naïve elf Cale'Anon Vatay, who wishes to be good and noble (even though elves in his time are feared as brutal and callous after wiping out the last remaining nation of their noble kindred in the past). Richard's excuse for traveling with the other characters is that he "likes killing things" and gets bored easily. Richard treats Cale like an amusing pet, but he "respects [Cale's] willingness to kill" whenever Cale is confronted with obvious Bad Guys.
  • It's been said that if they changed LFG's title to "Richard Fucks Shit Up", all about Richard and his nonsense, readership would double. Hell, they even made him a musical.
  • It may explain both Richard's callousness and his popularity that, of the group, he seems to be the only one who knows he's playing a game... and anyone who's ever played a video game knows that no sympathy needs to be wasted on NPCs, and the only thing to do is to amuse yourself with them.
• Drew from Mac Hall, a foul-mouthed, utterly cynical Comp Sci major who loves tormenting freshmen and is grandmaster of humorous Disproportionate Retribution. Like so.
• In Magical Boy, Max's mother Hikari has a rather narrow view of things when it comes to her family's role as the descendants of Aurora to the point of being insufferable. She tries enforcing strict gender-roles onto Max while completely overlooking him coming out as trans, does everything she can to make him fulfill his role as the current goddess without considering how he feels about any of it. It is even implied that the only reason why she married her husband was because she would have named her daughter "Áine Own", a name that has symbolic significance with the Creation Myth and the Legacy of the Chosen.
• Aram from Men in Hats, the prototype of Black Hat Guy.
• In Noblesse, we have Franken, who sounds like a mostly Nice Guy (albeit with a little obsession with cleanness) but he's actually THE BIGGEST Mad Scientist in the series who can pull out very scary Slasher Smile and impale people with brutal ease and the worst of all, enjoys it.
• Kenta Daisuke of No Need for Bushido does ultimately have a motive (guess what it is), but it hardly covers all of his gleeful, wanton violence. He leaps at the chance to fight, loves nothing more than to slaughter countless enemies with a grin on his blood-spattered face, obtains all his money by mugging passers-by, and feels no regret whatsoever for harming others. Nor does he seem to understand that his casual violence makes others regard him as somewhat...disagreeable.
  Ken: (punches Fumio) THAT'S FER SAYIN' I WASN'T AGREEABLE!
• "Red" from No Rest for the Wicked. She carries around an ax, enjoys causing fear in the people around her, smells death, and tells little girls her cloak is dyed in blood. Her partner is Princess November, a young naive girl who bruises easily. A very mild form, but still qualifies.
• Belkar Bitterleaf from The Order of the Stick is a hot-headed, impulsive, homicidal Chaotic Evil halfling ranger/barbarian. Almost all of his screen time is spent being a giggling killing machine, a wacky hijinks victim, or both. However, he's been growing out of this behavior post-Blood Runs in the Family, as his faked Character Development actually ends up turning into real Character Development.
• Milkman Dan from Max Cannon's Red Meat, author-proclaimed "Booze-fueled paragon of pointless cruelty and wanton sadism". Especially noticeable in his repeated pestering of Bratty Half-Pint Karen.
• Fuzzy from Sam & Fuzzy began the webcomic lapsing between this trope and The Imp depending on what would be funnier. As Cerebus Syndrome set in, this trope became increasingly dialled down as Fuzzy began suffering consequences for his actions and they got re-contextualised less as 'funny' and more 'Jerkass using learned behaviour from the first person he met after suffering Laser-Guided Amnesia'. By the end of the comic Fuzzy sees his previous behaviour as his Fatal Flaw.
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal brings us the aptly-named Iron Sociopath.
• In Scandinavia and the World, Finland. Drunken, mute, ax-wielding, sniggers-at-your-misfortune Finland. Only Sister Sweden gets the better of him for long.
• The title character of Schlock Mercenary. At their worst, several other members of Tagon's Toughs would qualify as well, but Schlock is responsible for the lion's share. This is lampshaded by Tagon, who says "Schlock may be a sociopath, but he's our sociopath."
  • Schlock has been known to refer to his "random act of violence fix for the day".
    • And he literally Eats Kittens. As snack-food.
      Lt. Sorlie: I've read your dossier. It's fat with the blood of kittens.
  • And then there's Lieutenant Piebald, for whom sociopathy would be the least of his conditions.
    Ennesby: Thurl's really fleshed out the company. He had to turn away a few crazies, though.
    Tagon: Violent sociopaths?
    Ennesby: No, those are all getting signed right up.
    Tagon: Good man, Thurl.
• Unity of Skin Horse is an unashamed cannibal, with no concern for age.
• Bun-bun, the lop-eared switch-blade-wielding rabbit of Sluggy Freelance. His plans usually fall through, often due to Kiki's screwups, but he almost never suffers any consequences... usually because no one's brave enough to try punishing him.
  • He does still kill a lot of people, even innocent people, especially in the early years. Though it's debatable that telemarketers are "innocent".
• Walkyverse Abductee Mike Warner, who especially enjoys Halloween: in different years, he's tried to sacrifice Joyce's dog in a Black Mass, dressed up as Saddam Hussein (and putting a fake beard on the same dog he tried kill, calling him "Osama bin Doggie"), dressed again as the recently deceased head of the Government Conspiracy they worked for, and given out candy with razor blades in it. And that's what he does for fun; he's even worse the rest of the year. He crosses the line so many times that it has become blurred beyond all recognition.
  • He's almost as bad in the DumbingVerse, although with the more realistic setting he's more into emotional manipulation than wacky hi-jinx.

Web Original

• Many Let's Play sessions wind up turning video game protagonists into these, partly to keep it more as an OC. For instance, take Misty from Chorocojo's LP of Pokémon Emerald. In her spare time, she apparently enjoys beating things and watching her Pokémon eat smaller ones and has killed (and eaten) several of her own Pokémon simply because they annoyed her. Her cameo in Pokémon Crystal has her kill Red.
• 1 For All follows a Dungeons & Dragons adventuring party consisting of a murderhobo fighter, a pyromaniac mage and a hedonistic, narcissist bard; nearly all their sessions inevitably devolve into them slaughtering and pillaging innocent NPC's. On occasion they've brought in other players, who want to play as Lawful Good classic fantasy heroes and turn on the main three, deciding they are the real villains of the story. The only thing that keeps them from being full-on Villain Protagonists is that they occasionally defeat a greater evil, if the DM can prod them that way with a promise of violence and loot.
• In The Adventure Zone, Taako, and to a lesser degree, Merle and Magnus, have shades of this. Hilarity (and a not-entirely-necessary death count) ensue.
• AlChestBreach. Kills kids who talk over him, murdered his teammate Cass for speaking after a funeral, but generally directs his sociopathic tendencies towards "good".
• Simon, the Bastard Operator from Hell, whose sole purpose is to act out all the malevolent revenge fantasies of the readership.
• Cox and Combes' Washington, albeit heavy on the "sociopath" and light on the "heroic" part. Well, he did save the children... but not the British children. In fact, he was about to save the children from their burning school, realized they were British, and then pushed the whole building over a cliff.
• The Dark Id often creates these via Alternate Character Interpretation. Billy FUCKING Coen, Serge and Caim are the most notable ones, though in Caim's case all it took was a few pieces of internal monologue and/or a few chats with Angelus.
• Mr. Popo from Dragon Ball Z Abridged. He is able to control an ancient Namekian starship just by saying his name to it — not because of any programming, but because it knows better.
• DSBT InsaniT: Alex is a good guy, but he's also rather violent and Ambiguously Evil.
• Freeman's Mind posits that the best explanation for Gordon Freeman surviving the Black Mesa Incident would be if he were "some sort of paranoid psychopath."
• In The Gamer's Alliance, the pirate Bashkar, despite working for the Alliance, abuses his allies, openly shows his dislike for elves in increasingly ridiculous ways, actually represents Arawn Losstarot in a council meeting and is willing to betray and kill anyone for a chest full of treasure.
• Goblin Slayer in Goblin Slayer Abridged. His entire life revolves around killing Goblins, and he loves every single second of it.
• The "anti-walkthroughs" featured on it-he.org make the protagonists of the Ultima series, Thief, Deus Ex and The Elder Scrolls into these, partially for sake of Sequence Breaking and partially for the pure fun of Videogame Cruelty Potential.
• Glorion from JourneyQuest. Just imagine the page image with Belkar replaced by a glory seeking knight. "You killed every single orc to cross our path, and some that were nowhere near our path".
• The Most Popular Girls in School: Brittnay Matthews; a volcanic-tempered, mentally unstable Tsundere Beta Bitch cheerleader who is capable of violence against anyone and anything and whose level of bitchiness is, ironically, greater than the school's actual Alpha Bitch's. Despite that, this show is mostly Grey-and-Gray Morality.
• My Little Pony: Totally Legit Recap: Twilight, to an extent, as she's quick to threaten bodily harm when annoyed that others aren't taking her friendship lessons to heart. DWK, creator and narrator, maintains that she just knows the value of a good bitch-slap when people are acting up.
• Oxventure: The Oxventurers Guild is almost entirely populated by greater or lesser examples of this. Prudence's open Nightmare Fetishist tendencies, Cthulhu worship and "pro-murder" stance stand out in particular, but none of the members will object to, say, killing and eating a lobster-like elder god with her. Even the party Paladin, on his search for atonement, can't help but poke a man with a cursed transformation item until he turns into a seal just for giggles. However, they generally wind up doing the right thing on balance, so long as you ignore the time they turned a forest blind. Or the blood orphanage.
• A common attribute of Protectors of the Plot Continuum, especially those in the Department of Floaters, the Department of "Mary Sues," and the Department of Geological Aberrations. Given that the last two are Assassins and Pyros, and they are all volunteers, this should not be particularly surprising.
• Pure Pwnage's FPS_Doug gives off this vibe sometimes, particularly in the "BOOM HEADSHOT!" segment from episode 5.
• The protagonist of Rachel Bloom's video "I Steal Pets" steals the pets of her schoolmates, locks them in a shed, dresses them up like their former owners and lives out with the pets the social life she'd like to have but doesn't have in real life. Climaxing when she recreates the Seventh Grade dance, slow dances with "Greg Mandelson's Terrier mix" and actually makes out with it.
• Sarge of Red vs. Blue: "I love blood and violence! I've got a boner for murder!"
  • Tex sometimes qualifies as well. In the first couple seasons she has to remind the Blue team that she's a mercenary. When a teammate asks sarcastically if she could kill one of them, she treats it briefly like a contract negotiation.
• Shiny Objects Videos: It's kind of hard to determine if it's this or flat-out Villain Protagonist, but the protagonists are pretty unfazed by the suffering of others. Particularly of Guido.
• Sonic of Sonic the Other Movie doesn't care about the people he saves, just the praise and adoration he gets for doing so.
• Kirito in Sword Art Online Abridged starts out as a Smug Super, before the events of Episode 3 push him deep into "sociopath" territory, but he still remains subject to Chronic Hero Syndrome. As the series has gone on, though, Character Development is moving him closer to the "heroic" side of this trope. Also, it turns out that Asuna isn't so different.

Western Animation

• Jake the Dog from Adventure Time borders on this. He sometimes comes off as an asshole, holding off on helping Finn (when he really needs it too) just to suit his own needs. But he usually ends up saving the day afterwards.
• American Dad!
  • Roger Smith is a camp and omnisexual coward who loves to play dress-up. He's also utterly amoral, selfish and unpredictable, and his childish games sometimes turn homicidal. It doesn't help that he's also a drug addict.
    • When a fraternity refused to pay for Roger's limo service, he hunted them down in the limo and turned their lives into a cross between The Car and Final Destination.
  • Stan Smith himself, in his capacity as a CIA agent, is capable of brutally murdering people without a second thought, even casually stating that he has shots his family and that is simply how they communicate in their family. One episode even has Stan destroy a man's house, ruin his business, brainwash his wife into leaving him, and eventually drive him to suicide (albeit unintentionally) after finding out he is an athiest.
• While most heroic characters in Aqua Teen Hunger Force are this or worse, even most villains play this role in at least one arc, usually related to torture or rape committed by another villain. Since many episodes arguably take place in alternate universes or are otherwise noncanonical, each protagonist has relatively heroic/innocent and villainous/corrupt episodes, often becoming this trope by relation to a temporarily or existentially worse character. For example, serial rapist, frequent torturer, and normal New Jersey male Carl Brutanananalewski can be a comedic or tragic villain in many episodes, but is often the Heroic Comedic Sociopath in a pitched battle against an equally immoral but much more dangerous rapist, like a demon, Frylock in an Evil Frylock episode, or a secretly sapient (and criminal) artificial dog. Of course, because the landlord and most neighbors are even more vile, Carl frequently dies in horrible pain regardless of his role in the episode, providing a degree of dramatic tension to those in which he isn't immediately ripped apart.
• The title character of Archer. He is an unrepentant Jerkass parody of James Bond, who despite being a somewhat incompetent alcoholic philanderer often ends up saving the day when it conveniences him or when forced by his mother Mallory Archer (also arguably an example of this trope). Also an example of a Politically Incorrect Hero.
• The title character in Assy McGee may very well qualify, being a ultra-violent and remorseless parody of 70s/80s cops that makes Jack Bauer look tame by comparison.
• In The Boondocks Riley Freeman takes juvenile delinquency to whole new levels. He often hangs out with local criminals such as Ed Wuncler III, Gin Rummy, or Lamilton Taeshawn, helping them out as an accomplice to their mayhem.
• The Brak Show features Zorak Jones, an Eddie Haskell-esque character who is also a sadistic, sociopathic, morally bankrupt misanthrope. He is basically what you get when you mix Master Shake and Cartman. Luckily though, he often gets killed horrifically during each episode, which might make him somewhat of a subversion.
• Bugs Bunny alternates between this and a Karmic Trickster. In his earliest shorts he was actually much worse, attacking for no good reason other than his personal amusement, but Tex Avery and Bob Clampett soon established a moral code for the character that, for the most part, he followed for the next five or six decades, using tricks and cartoon physics to deal with bullies, thugs and other kinds of miscreants mostly as self-defense but also occasionally for other characters' benefit. And even in those cases he was not above getting a random person blown up if that meant that he could pin the blame on the villain and have him thrashed by said victim.
• Dan Vs.: Dan's entire purpose in life is to exact revenge on anyone or anything he perceives as having wronged him (whether they actually did anything or not). Many of his schemes result in spectacular failure, but when he does succeed, more often than not it turns out that his victims really did have it coming.
• On Disenchantment, Luci may be a demon, but he's actually not a bad friend or adventuring companion. Nevertheless, even apart from his mission to corrupt Bean, he is prone to doing things explicitly to cause mayhem. But he can also turn it off when he wants to, although he will almost certainly complain about having to do so.
  Luci: I should be the one killing everyone! I should be the one creeping everyone out!
• Drawn Together:
  • Captain Hero from is ostensibly a superhero, but has almost no regard for human life whatsoever (although he may simply be too stupid to know what he's doing). An example of his sociopathy is throwing an entire planet (which happens to be his home planet) and everything living on it into a star to prove he's "heroic". And his clever use of human shields. This led to the character becoming a controversial Creator's Pet as the writers found out that a character who was a moron and someone with no sense of morality or restraint whatsoever was ideal for a show where 95% of the humour is Cringe Comedy.
    Hero: Captain Hero One! Billions of Innocent Zeblonians... um... dead. Oh. I uh... (Slinks away)
  • Ling Ling, the Pikachu spoof from the same show is initially portrayed as this as well; a murderous sociopath who wants to kill and destroy everyone he encounters in hilariously brutal manners, but later becomes a frequent Chew Toy/Butt-Monkey (given the nature of the show, this could apply to anybody, though). It takes on a whole new dimension when "Clum Babies" reveals that among his people, battles to the death are an allegory for sex, complete with one-night stands and unsatisfied opponents faking it.
• Stewie Griffin from Family Guy is a fan favorite whose antics are over the top mostly for comedic effect and he has little intent to kill or harm his family save for Lois. Yet it is made clear at varying times he does not always think much of Peter, Chris, or Meg either.
  • It should be noted that Stewie routinely murders people on and off-screen.
    Brian: How would you feel if you killed another baby?
    Stewie: (offhandedly) I've killed seven...
  • Stewie has clearly inherited his evil traits from Peter Griffin. Peter is not so much a genuine moron and more a moron-themed super villain. He has been shown to murder for fun and profit, commit acts of terrorism and arson and even wipe his boogers on Meg.
• Killface (real name Evelyn) from Frisky Dingo. His goal for much of the series is to use his Annihilatrix to propel Earth into the sun for no apparent reason, and he kills and mains people at the drop of the hat. In the pilot episode he kills a man and uses the corpse to stage an impromptu ventriloquist act (oblivious to how appallingly lame his jokes are). Watch some choice moments.
• In Futurama, Bender is a megalomaniacal robot who is only after his personal stimulation. He is frequently shown stealing just about anything he can get his claws on, as well as indulging in all manner of other crimes and immoral behavior. A recurring joke is his apparent desire to "kill all humans." Depending on the Writer, however, he can also be a Loveable Rogue and/or a Manipulative Bastard.
  "I came here with a simple dream... a dream of killing all humans. And this is how it must end? Who's the real 7 billion ton robot monster here? Not I... Not I..."
• Cesar Salazar of Generator Rex is a subversion of this. He is described as "kooky" and "kinda off" and appears for a while to just be a wacky inventor, but pretty normal otherwise. But as time goes on, he begins to display a marked lack of concern for people (including his own brother) or ethics. It seems he has no moral code of his own, even.
• Grunkle Stan in Gravity Falls isn't a true sociopath, but he certainly seems to enjoy acting like one: it's mentioned early on that the last "family bonding day" the twins had with him involved forging money, casual theft is a major part of his arsenal, his day job is essentially "scam artist", and he makes casual reference to a multitude of past crimes, arrests, and schemes.
  Stan: When there's no cops around, anything's legal!
• Mandy and Grim from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. The show sometimes subverted it by having Mandy do everything right, but fail because of the idiots around her, or bad luck. For a little girl, though, her achievements are quite impressive. She did once erase every living thing from existence except herself but, probably because the Crapsack World the show is set in is so surreal, it didn't last. Of course, she doesn't often save the world out of any goodness in her heart, but simply because she is the passive one of the comedic trio who often defends HER turf from monsters and Billy's active plunging it into chaos.
• Gaz in Invader Zim when it comes to the crunch (it's probably worth noting that she leaves Zim alone mainly because she's savvy enough to realize that he's too dumb to succeed in his mission).
  Gaz: Are there any video games around here?
  Zim's computer: No, not really.
  Gaz: I guess I'll help save the Earth, then.
• Heloise from Jimmy Two-Shoes is this. She works for Misery Inc. as top inventor to make hazardous products and she also like to destroy things for fun. However, she likes to hangs out with Jimmy due to her crush on him.
• Korgoth from Korgoth of Barbaria is basically a combination of Conan the Barbarian and Brock Samson. He is an apathetic and anti-social badass with an insatiable appetite for sex and violence in the most graphic degree. In just the first fight of the pilot episode, he tears off a man's arm and beats him to death with it, chops a man in half down the middle with an axe, and tears off another man's skin, douses him with alcohol, and lights him on fire. For laughs.
• Each member of Dethklok in Metalocalypse, brutally killing and maiming people even live on stage with no consequences whatsoever. In fact, it seems that because of this nature they are ridiculously powerful and wealthy; ranking as the 12th most powerful nation in the world, despite only being a band. It should be noted that very rarely is Dethklok the direct cause of the violence around them, and even when they are, it's not always intentional. Not that they necessarily care about a few thousand casualties, of course. Until it starts to affect their record sales.
• The Penguins of Madagascar:
  • Possibly Rico who is described at least once in universe as a "world-class psychopath," and he especially likes blowing stuff up and causing other characters bodily harm. That said, is there anybody out there who doesn't absolutely love Rico? I doubt it.
  • Skipper too. In less then five minutes he's admitted his dream future involves a post apocalyptic scenario with roving bands of irradiated mutants and then proceeds to help stop a time paradox from erasing existence.
  • Kowalski has shown us some of the many ways yelling "For Science!" will lead to the death of us all and he constantly ignores the huge warning signs and actual consequences of his inventions. But still, watching him get childishly giddy about his giant monster, or whatever that weeks invention is, working makes him a fun character
• Rick Sanchez from Rick and Morty is an excellent example. Rick's motives are generally revealed to be at least minimally heroic by the end of most episodes, particularly where protecting his family or For Science! is concerned... but the means he employs are invariably of a strong sociopathic bent. Given that he's a supergenius Mad Scientist, the aforementioned means tend to be either hilariously gratuitous (like his murder of King Jellybean for attempting to rape Morty) or hilariously indifferent (like establishing an interdimensional daycare center for Jerrys since Jerrys have a high tendency to die on adventures, but then not caring whether he takes the correct Jerry home afterwards).
• Eric Cartman from South Park tends to flip-flop back and forth between this and Villain Protagonist, depending upon the demands of a particular episode. Yes, he is a smarmy, self-serving, thoroughly sociopathic bully who has no qualms about doing literally whatever he wants, damn the consequences. But one side effect is that he's so completely fucked up that he can occasionally be called upon to get everyone else out of catastrophic situations when all else seems lost — and he does so in ways so ruthlessly efficient and imaginative, only he could have ever come up with them. In The Movie, for starters, he saves the entire world from being swallowed by the legions of Hell by electrocuting an undead Saddam Hussein with a combination of an overcharged anti-swearing implant and his own colorful vocabulary.
  • Lampshaded in "The Snook" when he makes the case to Kyle that his fanatic racism toward Muslims is what led to the thwarting of a terrorist attack. Kyle was not amused at the fact that racism saved the day.
    • Even better is that while Cartman triggers the hunt due to his suspicion of Muslims, the actual terrorists were the British..
• Chopper, the crew's astromech droid on Star Wars Rebels is a good guy and he will usually end up helping or even saving the day when necessary, but he often seems to enjoy his shipmates' distress or embarrassment a bit too much, and is so outright jealous of other droids he functionally "kills" at least one by throwing him out of a ship! And when Hera tells him to gather up all the explosives he can find in Hera's Heroes, he's...disturbingly overenthusiastic about it. To the point fans have speculated he's an assassin droid in disguise or a former assassin droid that's had his CPU put in an astromech droid.
• A possible case in the Warden from Superjail!. While dedicated to his job and perfecting the art of incarceration, he is AT LEAST a psychopathic sadist the show isn't afraid to play for laughs. Most of the people he ends up killing — generally indirectly — are dangerous inmates who pose a clear threat to society.
• Lobo's incarnation in Superman: The Animated Series and Justice League, in addition to being a Bad Butt, was a clear version of this once he underwent a nominal Heel–Face Turn (which didn't really change his personality any, just the people he was currently beating up). He's a sleazebag and a jerk to both heroes and villains and both gives and receives Amusing Injuries a lot, and gets a lot of funny lines.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) has an In-Universe Show Within a Show example with Captain Ryan, the "hero" of the Star Trek: The Animated Series parody "Space Heroes". He's clearly an utter maniac with no respect for his crew, casually letting his crew die, describing himself as "humane" for opening an airlock and sucking out the noisy Tribble-expies into space, and a rampant womanizer, but he's supposed to be the hero of the show and is played for laughs. Admittedly, the actual audience laughs more at Leonardo, who seems to think Captain Ryan is a good "heroic role model" for himself and never seems to notice his Nominal Hero status.
• The titular team from Teen Titans Go! are this, especially when compared to their previous incarnations. When they're not giving each other hell, they're driving their foes crazy.
• Jerry of Tom and Jerry often displays these characteristics. In most (but not all) shorts, Tom Kicks The Dog at the beginning and Jerry spends the rest of the short dishing out Disproportionate Retribution. While his goals are usually either his own survival or to help out another animal Tom is picking on, he does sometimes screw with Tom's head just for fun.
• Izzy of Total Drama, who not only looks back at the time she BLEW UP A MOUNTIES' CAMP with cheer, but enjoys being hunted down by them!
  Izzy: You'll never get me alive! AHAHAHAHAHA!!
• The Venture Bros.:
  • Brock Samson is a scientist's bodyguard whose main priority (at least in the beginning) is to brutally murder his enemies while having sex with as many women as possible. His college football career (and scholarship) ended when he accidentally killed another player, so he joined the army. He wound up as a government agent with his own license to kill, which he's been known to take advantage of if a bartender makes fun of his mullet.
  • Also Rusty, from the same show. While not as bloodthirsty as Brock, he isn't above screwing over friends, family, or innocent bystanders just to gain the most minor of conveniences. Not to mention his Joy Can, a virtual reality simulator powered by an orphan's heart!

---