Jerkass Has a Point

"Never before have I been so offended by something I 100% agree with."

— James Acaster during his stand-up special Repertoire

They're not good. They're not nice. They're a jerkass. What they just said is probably the last thing you wanted to hear. But the worst part is that they're right.

The jerkass in question can be anything from your standard Jerkass (including its Sub-Tropes, Jerk with a Heart of Gold and Jerk with a Heart of Jerk) or Anti-Hero all the way up to any flavor of villain (though the chance is inversely proportional to the distance they go down the "slippery slope"). Whoever this jerkass is, they're seriously deficient in the morals department, at least from the point of view of the perspective characters. Then they have a moment where they say something undeniably true — the good guys don't have to like what they're saying, but they can't deny that they're right without deluding themselves. Cases typically involve the listener conceding the point or a trustworthy source agreeing with the jerkass. Perhaps even the protagonist is caught on a moral stumbling block, and the antagonist is all too glad to point out their hypocrisy. After all, at least the antagonist is honest about it. Or maybe it's the antagonist who is a hypocrite and sees the moral failings of the others but not his own. It is all too often that the character is Right for the Wrong Reasons, making some legit points, albeit for entirely selfish reasons.

The other main reason a character is likely to say something like, "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with them."

It's worth noting the Alpha Bitch (or Bastard) and the Jerk Jock, two of the main distributors of this trope, have a tendency toward bluntness. While our hero's friends may be hesitant to insult them, these characters don't really care what they think and are willing to say exactly what they're doing wrong, without sugarcoating their "What the Hell, Hero?".

A rare outcome of the claim that "We are not so different". A response of "Shut Up, Hannibal!" would be out of place and is likely to get shot down if it appears but a Kirk Summation could work. See also Not Himself/Not Herself (a situation likely to inspire this), What the Hell, Hero? (same), and Don't Shoot the Message (when this occurs in Real Life). Also a likely response to an Insufferable Genius. Compare The Horseshoe Effect, wherein two people claim to be ideologically opposed and yet have beliefs in common. Sister Trope to Dumbass Has a Point, The Extremist Was Right, Hypocrite Has a Point, Villain Has a Point, Wisdom from the Gutter, and The Dissenter Is Always Right.

This is an In-Universe Only Trope. For it to be Jerkass Has a Point, the work or characters within the work must acknowledge that the jerkass is right. If a character who is often unpleasant makes a point that readers are meant to see as wrong, but still comes across as more sensible than the counterargument, that's Strawman Has a Point. Also, No Real Life Examples, Please! noreallife

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Example subpages:

• Anime & Manga
  • Dragon Ball
  • My Hero Academia
  • Naruto
  • Pokémon
  • Robotech
  • Super Dimension Fortress Macross
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!
• Fan Works
• Film
• Literature
• Live-Action TV
  • A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon)
• Video Games
  • Spider-Man (Insomniac)
• Western Animation
  • Ed, Edd n Eddy
  • Gravity Falls

Other examples

Asian Animation

• Mechamato: As Bula and Bili pick on Deep, the former brings up that Deep's academic performance is poor, so he shouldn't be reading comics. Deep tearfully replies that to be the truth.

Comic Books

• The Authority: The Commander, an evil expy of Captain America, criticizes the Authority for thinking they know how to best how to tell people how to live their lives and how a "better world" should be. While the Commander is a rapist (in fact, saying this to Apollo after raping him), he's right that the Authority was composed of pretty screwed-up people themselves.
• Batman:
  • Batman tends to fall into this whenever he opens his mouth. What he lacks in tact he makes up for in usually having the right idea. As an example, the "Tower of Babel" arc has him pointing out that there need to be failsafes in place in case something happens and the Justice League goes rogue (and considering brainwashing schemes happen pretty often, he's right and the League grudgingly agrees with this)... only problem is, the arc has the League being nearly killed when the League of Assassins uses some of Batman's failsafe plans against them, and the moment Batman points this out is on the aftermath when he's completely unapologetic about the plans (and the fact that there were no plans to handle him if the League had to take him down) and the League votes to kick him out.
  • In the Under The Hood storyline, the Red Hood, a resurrected second Robin (Jason Todd), goes on a revenge spree that culminates in him and his former mentor, Bruce Wayne, in an apartment with a bound Joker. Jason and Bruce debate about whether or not Bruce should have killed the Joker to prevent the death and terror he has caused, with Bruce making a slippery slope defense that if he started killing, he'd never stop. Jason breaks down and says that he's angry that Bruce didn't kill the Joker... to avenge Jason. It's meant to show that Jason's bluster does somewhat boil down to him thinking that Bruce didn't love him enough and that he doesn't understand Batman's philosophy. However... Infinite Crisis had Bruce outright planning to kill Alexander Luthor Jr. with a gun when he thinks that Alex caused the death of Dick Grayson before Wonder Woman stops him. Similarly, he tries to strangle the original Lex Luthor to death in Forever Evil (2013) when he thought that Lex had killed Dick with Catwoman unable to stop him and Bruce only stopping once Lex reveals he just temporarily stopped Dick's heart. And in Batman (Tom King), when KGBeast shoots Dick in the head, Bruce tracks the guy down and brutally beats him and leaves him to die in a snowstorm (he didn't die, but Bruce didn't know he'd survive). So... Jason is right. Bruce didn't love him enough to avenge him, because his slippery slope argument will be ignored if his favourite son is killed or almost killed.
• Camelot 3000: King Arthur returns to save the world from an alien invasion, and announces that he will unite the nations of Earth to fight off the aliens. The major world leaders all privately agree to pretend to help him, but betray and kill him as soon as possible. They are all depicted as Corrupt Politicians and are clearly bad people, but to be fair, from their perspective some random nobody claiming to be a figure of legend back from the dead did just essentially declare himself military dictator of Earth.
• Chick Tracts: There's typically unambiguous depictions of who is right and who is wrong, and opposing characters who don't make valid points (or at least, aren't supposed to). However, there are times when an unpleasant unsaved character has a point.
  • In "Humbug", their take on A Christmas Carol, Scrooge accidentally references a Bible verse while arguing with Cratchit.
    Scrooge: Why in HEAVEN'S name would God bother with insignificant Man? Man is rotten to the core^note A footnote indicates Rom 3:10-19! MAN is a BLIGHT on the earth!
    Cratchit: What a coincidence, Mr. Scrooge. The Word of God says the same thing.
    Scrooge: It does?
  • In "Unloved", Jimmy's parents treat him as The Un-Favourite compared to his sister Nancy, praising her and putting him down so harshly it comes off as emotionally abusive. When Jimmy gets married, his parents disapprove of him marrying a woman with three kids, calling her "a tramp" and "trash." They're proven right when four years later, the wife divorces Jimmy, leaving town with her kids and his money, more proof of how awful Jimmy's life is and how no one cares for him.
• Empowered:
  • In Volume 4, the protagonist is overjoyed to be running for the Caped Justice Awards, until Sistah Spooky informs her that the award is a setup used to publicly humiliate the receiver and that she should watch out. Given that Sistah Spooky has been nothing but antagonistic from day one (and she breaks her own pedestal since Empowered was a big fan of hers until they met), she assumes Sistah is just raining on her parade. She's not.
  • After Sistah Spooky starts acting nice to Emp, Major Havoc takes over the role of "asshole who belittles Emp" on the team and does so with an utterly fanatical streak. Every single little victory Emp has throughout the series, he's able to demolish and then put her in an even worse position. The worst part is that (even if he's only doing so out of an Irrational Hatred for Emp) every single thing he brings up about why she's unreliable is true (e.g. the entire Superdead community vouching for her... considering the fact that they are superpowered zombies that could go back to be controlled by Deathmonger at any second and there is no way of telling if they are until they go on a rampage, having a very lightweight super that cannot fight any of them off as a liaison is just asking for trouble).
• The Incredible Hulk: General Ross is often portrayed as irrationally treating the Hulk and Banner as an irredeemable threat who needs to be destroyed, even though the Hulk just wants to be left alone and Banner doesn't want to be the Hulk, but on the instances where Hulk or Banner have been less benevolent, Ross's point about their destructive potential is right. Notably, when performing a (fake) eulogy, Bruce even admits Ross's actions over the years might've saved lives.
• Laika: Mikhail's mother scolds him for never showing any interest in Kudryavka the puppy for weeks. Mikhail rightfully points out that he never asked for her in the first place (and in fact, his introduction to Kudryavka was basically his mother screaming in his face that the dog was now his responsibility and that she would starve if he didn't feed her).
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW): In "All in Moderation", Temperance is quite right in saying that eating tons of sugary goods is bad for a person, causing such things as tooth decay and weight gain. The problem is that her extreme methods cause most people to believe sugar is pure evil and must be banned in all forms, rather than promoting ideas about a balanced diet and moderation.
• Pathfinder: In the comic series Origin, narrating the backstories for the characters, the leader of an adventurers' guild in Qadira refuses to send his men to save a ratfolk's village from vampires at Kyra's request, on the grounds that the ratfolk doesn't have any money to pay the guild with. While the guildmaster could have been less of a jerk about it, he does make a good point: Kyra cannot expect people to just go and risk their lives for, essentially, nothing but gratitude.
• Raptors: In the comic, the vampire nobility opted to abandon their old ways and live among humanity in hopes of conquering it from within. One of their members, Don Molina, rejected this since he preferred to prey on humans like a bestial predator and as such, he was killed by the rest for treason. Ultimately, he was proven right in the long run since vampires lost their powers and immortality over the years and are slowly becoming like humans themselves to the point they can be killed through conventional means and mundane diseases, while Molina's surviving children, who kept true to the old ways, retained their powers.
• Sin City: In Sin City: The Big Fat Kill, while Dwight's driving a car loaded with dead bodies — including a dead cop who wouldn't fit in the trunk in the passenger seat with a pistol slide lodged in his forehead — he gets pulled over. His passenger immediately starts talking about how screwed he is.
  Dwight: This time I can't bring myself to tell him to shut up. Sure he's an asshole. Sure he's dead. Sure I'm just imagining that he's talking to me. None of that stops the bastard from being absolutely right about everything he's saying.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
  • When Sonic is temporarily roboticized and set loose on Knothole, Antoine wastes no time arresting him on charges of treason. While Antoine is a French Jerk who's always hated Sonic and spends the subsequent trial doing everything he can to make him look undeniably guilty, he does point out that it's definitely suspicious since Sonic had previously approached them with a plan to let himself be roboticized using a Neuro Overrider to retain his free will so he could destroy Robotnik's empire from within, and the fact that Sonic was roboticized immediately after the other Freedom Fighters vetoed his plan makes it seem that Sonic just disobeyed orders and went through with it anyway. While that's not the case, even the other Freedom Fighters agree that Antoine's suspicions aren't entirely invalid.
  • Monkey Khan asks Sonic why they don't just kill Eggman and be done with it considering how much trouble he's caused everyone and the potential evil he can (and eventually will) do, especially considering at the time Eggman was going through a Villainous Breakdown, leaving him more than vulnerable. In issue 225, Eggman himself, having recovered from said Villainous Breakdown, gloats to Sally's face that they could have stopped him from making the Death Egg Mark 2 if they had just finished him off any of the numerous times they had the chance.
  • While they reek of Obstructive Bureaucrat tendencies, with a little bit of petty personal grudges on the part of some like Hamlin, the Council of Acorn make the hindering argument that, despite being the ones to elect them in charge in the first place to keep order, the Freedom Fighters routinely ignore or defy them whenever they don't make the decisions they want, essentially committing treason, pointing out that subverting the Council's authority shows them to be above the law and hurts the democracy of the country. Ixis Naugus uses this to his advantage when trying to seize the Kingdom, questioning whether Sonic's actions respect the people he vows to protect. Combined with the Freedom Fighters' recent number of casualties and bad decisions against the Iron Dominion damaging the public's trust in them, Rotor can only shrug very nervously at Sonic, unable to offer a good counterargument.
    • While the Freedom Fighters are annoyed and outraged when the Council refused to let them take Freedom HQ back from Scourge and the Suppression Squad in favor of focusing on the continuing assault on Eggman, they make the point that Scourge isn't much of a threat and, even if he conquered Moebius, couldn't possibly make any gains on Mobius as quickly, as their world is different from his. Their reasoning is vindicated when Scourge is attacked by Metal Sonic, along with a Metal Scourge that Eggman literally put together and sent after him at the last minute, and nearly defeated.
  • While Amadeus and Rosemary Prower led a Velvet Revolution and tried to overthrow the Kingdom of Acorn, their criticisms of the Acorns' leadership are perfectly valid; while King Max meant well, he was still a slave to tradition and Horrible Judge of Character whose decisions and refusal to heed the warnings of others led to the Great War, the destruction of Old Mobotropolis and Knothole Village, and subjected all of Mobius to Robotnik's tyranny for over a decade, and the Freedom Fighters, a group of children, were far more effective at forming and running a working government than Max ever was. Harvey Who makes those very same points when Elias approaches him for help in reclaiming the throne from Naugus, openly stating Amadeus and Rosemary were right and the Acorns don't deserve to rule; he only agrees to help after confirming that Elias is nothing like Max.
  • While Mina Mongoose using her songs to raise awareness concerning possible problems with Nicole after the Iron Dominion's occupation was viewed by the Freedom Fighters as Innocently Insensitive at best and overzealous and callous at worst, it doesn't change the fact that her intent and the points she raised were far from invalid. In the confrontation proceeding her first concert, Sally tries to lecture her on responsibility after her songs end up rallying the public against Nicole, only for Mina to turn it around and furiously chew her, and by extension the rest of the Freedom Fighters, out on their Moral Myopia; from Mina's viewpoint, nobody in the Freedom Fighters has any room to lecture her on being responsible considering the fact that even after Nicole, Bunnie, and Monkey Khan were Brainwashed and Crazy by the Iron Queen, they continue to keep Nicole in power at New Mobotropolis and don't even bother coming up with any failsafes to prevent her from being compromised again. In the very next issue, Sally herself admits that she can see where Mina is coming from and wishes she handled the previous confrontation better.
  • A major difficulty that Knuckles had in dealing with Helmut Von Stryker during the Dingo immigration into Echidnopolis is that Stryker was often in the right. The Dingoes were stuck as second-class citizens and Stryker's belief that the government was attempting to go back on their promise for housing is ultimately proven correct. Even though he was critical of them, Stryker really did try to have the Dingoes cooperate with the Echidnas and mobilized them to defend the city multiple times.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): In issue 6, Sonic refuses to let Shadow kill an amnesiac Eggman, insisting he's no threat and should be left alone until he is. Shadow counters that just because one loses their memory doesn't make them any less dangerous, speaking from his own experiences, and insists that Eggman is too much of a liability to keep alive lest he regain his memories. Shadow's ultimately proven right when Eggman does indeed regain his memory thanks to Metal Sonic and Starline and goes back to being evil, and he wastes no time blasting Sonic for not dealing with him when they had the chance, especially since it led to the Metal Virus outbreak. Come issue 23, Sonic, nearing the Despair Event Horizon, ends up agreeing with Shadow that the entire mess is his fault, musing that he put his faith in the idea that everyone, even Eggman, has a little good in them, and the entire planet is now paying the price. In the very next issue, Espio agrees with Shadow and snaps at Sonic that if they had just dealt with Eggman at Windmill Village before Starline got to him, none of this would be happening.
• Spider-Man:
  • In Issue #39 of The Amazing Spider-Man (2018), J. Jonah Jameson argues that Spider-Man is at least in part responsible for his own bad publicity. While most other superheroes often work in teams and communities and are fairly open with the public, Spider-Man has a secret identity, is usually a lone wolf, and frequently gets into fights with other superheroes before teaming up with them (though as Peter points out, this is very common for other Marvel superheroes). Furthermore, whenever Jameson made a false accusation against Spider-Man, the Wall-Crawler's response was never to reach out and set the record straight but rather to insult, antagonize and sometimes even threaten Jameson. Not a good look if you're trying to convince the world you aren't a public menace. Additionally, as Jameson points out, the Kingpin was able to turn half the city against Spider-Man without Jameson saying a single negative word against the Wall-Crawler.
    • Three issues later, Peter admits that Jameson is right about him keeping people at a distance in a phone message to MJ.
  • A very similar argument to the above was made by Monet St. Croix in issue #216 of X-Factor (2006).
    Monet: You showed up right after the FF. The obvious question is: What's Spider-Man's deal, that he's hiding behind a mask, when the FF is out in the open? You have total anonymity. Never having to take responsibility for anything.
• Transformers: Both Prowl and Rodimus get this at the beginning of Transformers: More than Meets the Eye and Transformers: Robots in Disguise:
  • Prowl argues that the Autobots should continue to prepare for war and can't afford to ease up now that Cybertron is healed and many of the Decepticons are captured and imprisoned. The other characters treat him as rigid and inflexible, but the story bears him out for the most part. There are still plenty of Decepticons roaming the galaxy and other potential threats that repeatedly come dangerously close to snuffing out the planet's fragile peace.
  • Rodimus argues that the Autobots should just abandon the planet to the NAILs and leave rebuilding to them while they go on a grand adventure across the universe. The other characters treat Rodimus as a lazy slacker shirking his responsibilities to chase foolish dreams and while his management style reflects this, he had a point in leaving the unaligned Cybertronians to govern themselves as opposed to trying to assert Autobot rule over the planet. Plus, his quest was fruitful and saved the Cybertronians from threats beyond their borders.
• Transmetropolitan: The Beast, who has been heralded as the Ultimate Evil by Spider, manages to make a few surprisingly salient points when doing a pre-election interview. Even Spider grudgingly concedes he may be onto something.
• Ultimate Marvel:
  • Ultimate FF: Sue can't stand Van Damme's infinite self-pride and constant reminders of the great hero he is, but, as Sam points out... he did sacrifice himself to save humanity, back in Ultimate Fantastic Four.
  • Ultimate X Men:
    • Ross and Wraith may despise each other with a passion, but when Ross tells him that Nick Fury has been captured, with all his secrets available for terrorists to get, and he needs the help of Weapon X, Wraith replies "Not exactly SHIELD's finest hour, General Ross". Ross accepted he had a point. "No, Colonel Wraith. Not our finest hour at all".
    • The X-Men are slightly more abrasive in this continuity but this is because, unlike 616, they're nowhere near as numerous and are one bad day away from being the victims of a government-sponsored genocide. The very first issue opens up with a Mutant being roasted alive by a Sentinel just for being there, in full view of the public and this was okayed by the US government. Doesn't leave much room for niceties.
  • Ultimate Spider-Man: During the "Ultimate Clone Saga", Xavier refuses to erase May Parker's memories of learning Peter's secret identity, something Kitty gets angry about. Jean asks him if perhaps Kitty was right, but the cute moment of May and Peter reconciling confirms that Xavier did the right thing.
• In Venerdì 12 (from the author of Rat-Man) we're presented with Bedelia, former girlfriend of the protagonist who Really Gets Around and dumped him very rudely (stealing his car in the process) before the start of the series, with her having planned to dump him that day since the start (she even had him tattooed with an expiration date)... Except she also pointed out his many personality defects, and she had multiple points to act so rudely: during the series he admits his incredible shyness drove him to a few rather disgusting actions before her (like kissing her dog at least twice, and eat the pieces of skin she had to peel off after getting a sunburn), and near the end, we see what happened the day before she dumped him: annoyed he had not picked up the many mountain-sized hints she wanted to have sex with him, she came at his home and told him flat-out she was there for that (she had apparently planned to give him a night of non-stop sex to give him a good memory before the break-up) while pretending to not know he was a virgin (for which Aldo was extremely embarassed), and he, after agreeing (he wanted too, but was incredibly shy), was overcome by his shyness and locked himself in the bathroom until she left. Seriously, you try being polite after that...
• Watchmen:
  • In both the graphic novel and film adaptation of the selfsame, Ozymandias is moved to set his plan into action after The Comedian mocks (Captain Metropolis in the novel, Ozymandias himself in the film) for trying to form a Super Team and points out that with the Cold War inching mankind closer to nuclear annihilation with each passing moment, running around beating up petty criminals was irrelevant. The Comedian's insight makes him one of the best (and nastiest) examples of this ever.
  • The Comedian also condemns Dr. Manhattan for his noninterference. The Comedian shoots a pregnant Vietnamese woman over Manhattan's objections and is then chastised for it. While this is obviously a heinous crime, he correctly points out that Manhattan could have prevented it with his godlike powers, by teleporting either party away or changing the gun into something harmless, but chose not to. As it turns out, this passive observation eventually leads to the deaths of thousands, if not millions.
  • The New Frontiersman newspaper, which Rorschach is a big fan of, demonstrates some pretty disgusting tendencies in the articles we read and are generally portrayed as racist lunatics. For some idea, it claims that a rival paper comparing superhero vigilantes and the KKK is a good thing because the KKK were just defending their homes and heritage, it openly refers to said rival paper as "coked-out commie cowards", and its political cartoon has multiple racist caricatures. But the New Frontiersman is quite right that most of the official versions of events don't make sense and various suspicious disappearances have been buried in the news media. Its suggestion that Veidt is working on some kind of malicious conspiracy turns out to be true as well, and you can practically hear them connecting the dots in the article proper. It's just that they stumbled upon it not through a desire to uncover the truth, but because they wanted any evidence to suggest that Veidt was up to no good since he's a wealthy leftist and Ambiguously Gay. Rorschach sends them the diary containing his deduction that Ozymandias is the mastermind behind the conspiracy (not including what he and Nite Owl learned in Antarctica) but it's unclear whether they will publish it.
    • The newspaper is also correct in accusing its rival reporter, Doug Roth, of not considering the long-term consequences of publicly confronting and accusing Dr. Manhattan, causing a pile-on that drives him to self-exile. With the lynchpin of American strategic superiority leaving for Mars, this ends up causing the Soviets to go on the offensive and escalating the Cold War at the worst possible time.
• X-Men:
  • All-New X-Men: During The Trial of Jean Grey, a time-displaced teenage Jean Grey is put on trial by Gladiator for the actions of Dark Phoenix during The Dark Phoenix Saga. Effectively, she's being put on trial for crimes she hadn't actually committed yet (or ever committed at all, depending on whether or not the Phoenix was or wasn't Jean). J'son of Spartax, of all people, is the one to call out Gladiator for his unfair treatment of Jean Grey and the absurdity of the Kangaroo Court, saying that putting her on trial for things she only might do (and certainly hasn't done yet) makes no sense, before cuttingly pointing out that Gladiator wanted to be the hero parading the Dark Phoenix through the streets. It doesn't help that Gladiator was really Bullying a Dragon by going after Jean on the off chance she'd become a Phoenix host — as J'son points out, the Shi'ar slaughtered her entire family (bar Rachel, Cable, and Nate Grey) in "End of Greys", and with that in mind, if she was the Dark Phoenix, would she really let him live? More to the point, even without the Phoenix, Jean has vast raw potential, as Oracle, Gladiator's right-hand woman and Commander Contrarian points out, making provoking her a ludicrously bad idea (as proved when a newly powered-up Jean fights Gladiator to a draw). While J'son only called out Gladiator to make the Shi'ar look bad rather than any concern for Jean personally, the point still stands — and the Shi'ar Imperial Guard concede that he has a point, with one remarking that "no one denies that the Spartax Emperor is insipid. But is he wrong?"
  • Senator Robert Kelly constantly encourages anti-mutant laws and registration. However, rather than just being a jerkass he actually has a reason for his rhetoric; namely that mutants can be massive threats to public safety and national security if they choose so or can't control their powers well. The first film has a sequence where he mentions Shadowcat (whose power is to phase through solid matter) and correctly points out how much of a huge security risk such a person could be if they decided to commit crime. It's often pointed out that Kelly does have valid points, but his rhetoric and fiery personality mean that he often takes it too far. (At which point this trope might be combined with Strawman Has a Point.) Later on, Character Development causes him to realize this and tone down his anti-mutant stance, keeping his old talking points while also making sure to encourage human/mutant equality. In these regards, he's often contrasted with Grayson Creed, who's just a bigot.
  • As cruel, insensitive, sadistic, and bigoted as she is, Lydia Nance gives a very valid reason in issue 1 of X-Men: Gold during a news report as to why mutants are so discriminated against compared to other superpowered beings. It's because they're the only group where a Person of Mass Destruction could spontaneously develop from anyone at any time.
  • Early on in Chris Claremont's run on Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine (pre-character development) snaps at Cyclops for being harsh on the X-Men over Thunderbird's death. Banshee steps in to point out that as obnoxious and rude as Wolverine is being, he's not wrong. Cyclops concedes the point.

Comic Strips

• In Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin is a lazy, egotistical Bratty Half-Pint, but he's often right about the things he rants about. This often comes into play whenever he talks about the environment.
  • In a similar twist, Calvin views his long-suffering teacher Miss Wormwood as overly cruel and sadistic, and she frequently plays an antagonistic role in his vivid dream sequences. However, in one strip, Calvin declares that he wants an education that will make him successful; Miss Wormwood bluntly tells him that that's up to him, and that it's not her responsibility to give him guarantees: "In that case, young man, I suggest you start working harder. What you get out of school depends on what you put into it." Calvin acknowledges her point and then immediately rejects it.
  • On Calvin's end, his laziness and apathy seems more understandable due to the fact that the materials she's shown teaching are often beyond first grade level, including advanced math, Newton's law of motion, and the history of the Byzantine Empire^note Granted, this can at least partially be explained by Rule of Funny, and the strips then tend to paint Calvin's hatred of school as being understandable have a lot more to do with his interactions with his classmates. Watterson's commentary on the interactions between the two occasionally veer towards Both Sides Have a Point. It's also been noted that Wormwood's main problem is simply that her old-school approach to discipline and teaching are about the least effective means to get through to a kid like Calvin.
  • When The Bully Moe prepares to beat up Calvin, Calvin demands to know why Moe doesn't pick on someone his own size. Moe replies they'd hit back, to which Calvin admits that has something of an unethical logic to it.
• In the October 26, 2013 Dilbert strip, the Pointy-Haired Boss asks a rather simple question that kind of debunks Alice's rather boastful and idealistic one very quickly. To an extent, it also overlaps with Dumbass Has a Point, given the PHB's typical intelligence.
  Alice: Futurists say that someday, humans will have the know-how to create an entire universe.
  PHB: Where would they put it?
• For Better or for Worse:
  • John’s distant cousin Fiona is a pain in the neck and a user (until she gets a job at a restaurant) but she’s completely right in her assessment that John and Elly have sheltered Michael and Elizabeth to the point where they can’t cope with the real world as adults.
  • Brad Luggsworth was a bully as a child, but isn’t wrong about Michael being a privileged child in a solid middle class home while Brad lives in poverty, and their teacher favoring Michael over him.
  • Thèrése is somewhat removed and walks out on her daughter, but she’s right that Anthony is still in love with his ex girlfriend Elizabeth, to the point where he personally waits for her to show up on his wedding day and constantly tried to see her behind Thèrése’s back. It ends up destroying their marriage and she’s vilified for it while he gets off scot free, getting their daughter and house and marrying Elizabeth.
• In Lupo Alberto, Moses uses his power as the farm's leader in rather tyrannical ways, and, being also the farm's guardian, beats up Alberto every time he shows up to meet his girlfriend Martha. Most of the farm's inhabitants are lazy and/or stupid (as shown when Enrico won the election to replace him with such promises as creating a river of milk and honey and getting to Mars before 2020) and need a firm hand (Moses often goes overboard, but it's clear most of it is out of frustration at their shenanigans), and as for his treatment of Alberto... Moses' a Bobtail sheepdog, Martha is a hen and Alberto is a wolf who who sometimes has eaten other chicken...
  • The election lampshaded it: aside from Moses and Enrico, there was Alberto in the running, and came close to beat Enrico by promising to do exactly as Moses did, only presenting it better.
• Mafalda: one strip has Susanita say that she want to have plenty of dresses when she grows up, and Mafalda reply that she wants to have plenty of culture instead. Susanita replies as follows:
  Susanita: Can you get arrested in the street for being uncultured?
  Mafalda: No.
  Susanita: Try and get in the street undressed.
  The last panel has Susanita crying, and Mafalda walking away with a sad expression
  Mafalda: It's so sad when you have to beat up someone who's right!...
• Danae from Non Sequitur is a Straw Feminist, a Windmill Crusader, has created a Scam Religion, and endless tries to use Loophole Abuse and/or Insane Troll Logic to gain money, influence, or both. However, unlike her brainy friend Jeffery (who usually points out the flaws in her hare-brained schemes) she's smart enough to know that zombies don't exist, something she tells Jeffery whenever he's preparing for a Zombie Apocalypse.
• In Peanuts, Lucy is a mean and "crabby" person who insults the rest of the cast, but sometimes she's very accurate in doing so:
  • For instance, in one series of strips where Snoopy becomes a Beagle Scout and goes on a hike, Charlie Brown wonders if he got lost; Lucy is pretty certain he did, saying, "That stupid beagle couldn't find his way across the kitchen floor!" Not only did Snoopy get lost (and as Lucy is saying that, is waiting for the moon to rise, thinking that he can use it to find his way home because he thinks the moon is always over Hollywood, he's eventually rescued by a Girl Scout selling cookies.
  • There was also the time Snoopy was promoted to Head Beagle. Lucy was comically terrified during the whole arc, calling him incompetent and saying he'd "probably get impeached". Unfortunately, she was right here too. Snoopy was a pretty incompetent Head Beagle (not helped by having Woodstock as a secretary or his predecessor, who left things an awful mess) and by his own admission, every one of the 120 decisions he made in a day was wrong. Eventually, true to Lucy's prediction, he was replaced.
• Stuart in Retail is a condescending and somewhat misogynistic district manager who always undermines his employees, but he was in the right when he chewed Marla out for letting her emotions get to her and firing her assistant on the spot for admitting that he lied to her about having a job offer to get a raise, rather than letting him work out the two weeks notice he originally gave her. As Stuart coldly tells Marla that covering the assistant's workload for the next few weeks is now her problem since it's her fault for firing him, she expresses her dismay that he's actually right.

Films — Animation

• A downplayed example from two perspectives in The 3 Little Pigs: The Movie:
  • During dinner in Feeno’s yet-unfinished brick house, Beemo points out that while he and Wally didn’t put much effort into their houses, all they use them for is a place to sleep, and that the area they settled in is fairly safe.
  • Feeno counters & points out that Beemo & Wally’s houses won’t stand up well to bad weather (or wolves), and that they should at least reinforce what they’ve built — if, for no other reason, to give Feeno peace of mind. By the next morning, Beemo actually comes around to the idea of reinforcing the houses and convinces Wally that they should go get materials from the nearby quarry like Feeno suggested.
• 1 from 9, for as big of a sniveling coward as he is, spends a good portion of the film raising very good points about how the titular 9's actions do nothing but put them at risk, and especially when he points out that 9's rescue mission ended in failure (as he predicted) and only served to awaken The Machine. When 9 tries to give him a dose of Shut Up, Hannibal! by calling him a coward, 1 again raises a good point:
  1: Sometimes fear is the appropriate response.
• Barbie in Rock 'n Royals: Even Erika's friends at Camp Royalty acknowledge Princess Olivia's point when she accuses Erika of hogging the spotlight.
• Batman: Bad Blood: Wayne Tech board member Ms. Bannister has an unpleasant personality, but she's not wrong to be critical about Bruce's apparent decision to personally lead a research expedition when someone else could do it and a big conference is coming up.
• Brave: One of the movie's points is that Merida and Elinor both need to learn this about the other.
  • Immature and hot-headed as she may be, Merida wasn't wrong on about her mother's controlling nature in her life.
  • Elinor is overly strict and controlling with Merida, but she's right that there are things Merida needs to learn so she can be a good queen one day.
• Chicken Run:
  • Rocky may be a selfish rooster who is interested in his own freedom and acts "cocky" around Ginger where she couldn't stand his attitude at the beginning, he wasn't wrong when he calls her out for her Brutal Honesty about what Mrs. Tweedy has in store for them, which she doesn't realize is unintentionally demoralizing the other chickens.
  • Fowler despises Rocky when he first arrives and at one point warns Ginger not to trust that "yank" so easily. Needless to say, he was proven correct when Ginger finds out that Rocky can't actually fly and was only a stunt cockerel.
• In Coco:
  • Miguel wasn't wrong to point out to Imelda that she was deliberately trying to force him to give up on something she knew he loved.
  • Ernesto recognizes that Miguel should be allowed to follow his heart and play music. He is also not wrong in saying that achieving your dreams sometimes means sacrifice and making difficult choices. It was too bad he was referring to the time he murdered his best friend and stole their songs.
  • On Imelda's side, she makes a valid point to Miguel that there are some things more important than music, a lesson that Miguel eventually learns.
  • Imelda was angry at Héctor even beyond death, but she did have a legitimate reason as he did leave and never come back to her and their daughter. Later she softens when she learns Héctor did want to return to them, but was murdered before he could.
• In Coraline:
  • Coraline is not wrong in feeling neglected by her workaholic parents. Their unintended neglect leads Coraline into trouble.
  • When trying to convince Wybie the truth about the Other Mother, Wybie calls Coraline unstable. Coraline angrily retorts that he was the one to give her the doll, thus ensuing the Other Mother could spy on her.
• At the start of The Emperor's New Groove, Kuzco unceremoniously fires Yzma, his longtime advisor and de-facto guardian. He's a jerk about it but as he himself points out, Yzma is blatantly trying to set herself up as Regent for Life and is clearly a bad ruler.
• Frozen: A strange example comes up when Prince Hans tells Elsa not to kill two soldiers who had just tried to kill her, saying that it will make her the monster people feared her as. This is most likely done to manipulate her since he's able to take advantage of her hesitation to redirect one of their crossbows to knock down the ice chandelier and knock her out, but she accepts his point. He also points out how stupid Anna was for falling for him at first sight — all the more of a jerkass move because he's gloating over his betrayal of her, and all the more of a good point after he's shown his true colors. Anna cops to it, just not to his face.
• The Incredibles: Mr. Incredible could have let Buddy down easier in the beginning, and he admits that he was wrong when confronted by Syndrome, but the kid was trying to jump straight into heroing with no training or experience and consequently almost got himself killed. Also, he had offscreen given the kid lots of merchandise while trying to let him down gently.
• Justice League: Doom has Vandal Savage stealing Batman's "Justice League goes rogue" plans to try and take out the League. After Savage and allies' butts are kicked, the League meets and, as in the comics, discusses what happened. Batman, unsurprisingly comes in for a lot of heat due to coming up with them in the first place; even Hal, who agrees the plans were a good idea due to how much power the League has, says it was dumb to let an enemy get ahold of them. Unlike the comics, Doom adds a scene where Batman agrees that there's no factual plan to take him down if he goes rogue... because he believes that the Justice League is all the "plan" he needs.
• Kung Fu Panda: Tigress and Master Shifu spend most of the film being completely dismissive and spiteful of Po. Despite their hostility, they are right about him being an overweight fanboy who, while enthusiastic and quite knowledgeable, has no actual training or experience. Even Po himself questions how Master Oogway can think he is the Dragon Warrior. Their skepticism becomes this trope when they consistently treat him with snide contempt even when the others, equally skeptical about Po, nevertheless see that he's well-meaning and making a genuine effort to learn. In Tigress's case, her point is undermined by the fact that her treatment of Po is pretty clearly motivated more out of jealousy and resentment over having her thunder stolen and feeling entitled to be named the Dragon Warrior, much as Tai Lung was.
• Lilo & Stitch:
  • The social services worker Cobra Bubbles is initially cold and aloof towards Nani and Lilo, even if he is sympathetic towards their plight, but he makes several good yet brutal points about Nani's attempts to raise Lilo:
    • She left Lilo at home alone accidentally — Cobra doesn't know that Nani went to pick Lilo up from hula class, but Lilo decided to walk herself home and locked herself in — left the stove on, and has been falling behind on household chores because she's too busy working to pay off all of the bills using her meager wages. Lilo also exhibits loads of Troubling Unchildlike Behavior and has an ambiguously defined mental disorder that makes it difficult for her to interact with others. Even though it's obvious that Lilo isn't being abused in any way, he bluntly tells Nani that none of this creates an acceptable living environment for her young sister.
    • After Nani loses her job as a waitress, Cobra gives her three days to find another job, or else he'll put Lilo in the foster care system. While the ultimatum is harsh, he's completely right that Nani will be unable to provide for Lilo or even herself if she doesn't have a reliable income to pay for food or other necessities.
    • While Nani is making an honest effort to show Social Services that Lilo should remain with her, the Promotion to Parent is overwhelming her, especially since she's struggling with her own grief over their parents' recent death in a car accident and that's affecting how she's taking care of Lilo.
      Cobra: I know you're trying, Nani. But you need to think about what's best for Lilo, even if it removes you from the picture.
  • While Nani arguing with her little sister isn't very productive, asking her angrily if she actually wants to be taken away after the disastrous visit with Cobra, she does genuinely seem to wonder if that's what Lilo actually wants. Nani is trying her best while Lilo flat out implies that her sister hits her with bricks in a pillowcase, and also refuses to communicate to Nani when the woman is trying to get her to talk about why she behaved like that, just screaming no over and over again. Nani clearly made an effort to coax Lilo on how to get through these visits so they can stay together while the little girl in her own grief seems to be intentionally making everything harder. While she isn't actually doing it with that goal in mind, it's no wonder her sister is beginning to think that and lashes out in her own grief because Lilo refuses to let her older sister try to help her.
• In Lucky Luke: Daisy Town, Joe Dalton, out for revenge against Lucky Luke and the titular town, tries to provoke a local Native tribe into attacking them... by warning them of a future in which the railways have brought civilization across the plains, the buffaloes have been driven off, and the natives are reduced to selling souvenirs. The chief still makes the Daltons prisoners for their bounties, but he decides to attack the town to prevent said future.
• Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers: As harsh as he is in mocking Mickey, Goofy, and Donald, one can't deny that Pete is right about how Donald's cowardice and Goofy's ditziness don't exactly make them musketeer material.
• Maui often snarks to Moana about her sheltered upbringing; namely, why The Chosen One is a naive girl who's never been past the reef of her island, and when Kakamora attack, he tells her to stop asking the ocean for help and that you need to help yourself when there's trouble. Given how very close Moana nearly came to dying after sailing away, it's something our girl takes to heart. For all his snark, Maui makes many good points, from the glaringly obvious (the ocean choosing a sheltered, naive teenager) to essential life lessons (she has to rely on herself). However, the most important one is arguably the most poignant. Near the movie's climax, he finally gets fed up with Moana and abandons her, but not before chiding her for being unnecessarily reckless and nearly getting both of them killed (which she's done multiple times at this point). The whole scene is sad, but Maui is still right about Moana being too headstrong and failing to consider the consequences. It's a fair bit more poignant if one considers that Maui may also be speaking from experience here.
• In Monsters University, there's Johnny Worthington, the leader of fraternity Roar Omega Roar, whose arrogance make him Mike's rival in the story. In spite of Johnny's brutal jerkiness, he is ultimately right that Oozma Kappa lacks the traditional Scarer traits, given the Dean directly addresses their faults and initially kicks them out of the Scaring program because of it. This does lead to Oozma Kappa learning to become resourceful about their own seemingly benign traits to become Scarers. Lampshaded by Sulley in a deleted scene:
  Mike: Tell them! That guy's a jerk! He's all wrong!
  Sulley: You're right. He's a jerk...but I'm not so sure he's wrong.
• Chi Fu in Mulan may be a sexist Obstructive Bureaucrat but he is right about the odds that Shang and his men face. Chi Fu says the men aren't ready for war and when the Huns attack them, Shang's group is easily outmanned and outgunned. They only win because of Mulan's creative solution. He also says Shang is an academy student who hasn't fought a real battle. When Shang fights Shan Yu, Shan Yu delivers a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown and would have killed Shang if Mulan hadn't redirected Shan Yu's wrath to her.
• My Little Pony: The Movie (2017): Queen Novo might have been too uptight about refusing to help the ponies and also banishing them back to the surface, but she isn't wrong about how she must protect her people (in this case Hippogriffs-turned-Seaponies) and as far as banishing them goes, Twilight did take advantage of her and her daughter's obliviousness and tried to rob her of the transformation pearl.
• Peter Pan: George Darling overreacted a tad by forcing Wendy to move out of the nursery the following day (and she didn't know what her brothers did since she was surprised to see the chalk map that was drawn on his shirtfront), but he had every right to be upset about John and Michael taking his gold cufflinks without asking and drew a treasure map on his best shirt-front (thankfully it was just chalk so he was able to easily clean it off), both important things he needed for his company party where he was the guest of honor just because they wanted to act out one of Wendy's stories about treasure-hunting pirates. He's also slightly justified for having Nanna the dog put outside for the night when he tripped over her, got his foot caught on a toy wagon and went flying across the room, then hit the wall hard, an incident which could have severely hurt him.
• Black Bellamy in The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists isn't a nice guy, but he has every right to inform the rest of the Pirates about The Pirate Captain's pardon since it means he can't win Pirate of the Year. In the film's timespan, when you're pardoned for your crimes, it means you no longer have any status as a criminal.
• The Prince of Egypt: When Moses returns to Egypt and urges Rameses to let the Israelites go, Rameses refuses and doubles their workload. The Israelites are not happy with Moses as a result, with Aaron bitterly asking Moses if he's only helping them after he realized he's an Israelite like them. Moses's wife Tzipporah stands up for her husband, but Moses admits that Aaron was right.
• Prince Naveen in The Princess and the Frog is spot-on when he points out Tiana's unhealthy workaholic nature and her inability to have fun.
• The Prophet: The Baker's frustrations with Almitra's stealing his wares is understandable and his response (along with the other merchants) to Kamila's excuse for her daughter's misbehavior is also correct: Almitra can't keep using her father's passing as an excuse to steal from others.
• Ratatouille:
  • Anton lambasted Gusteau's restaurant for declining standards — which it had under Skinner's stewardship. It's hinted at with Skinner wanting to commercialize Gusteau's name to serve fast food, like Mexican food (from a famed French chef.)
  • Skinner might be a petty tyrant who considers the meals to be business, not art, but a rat in a kitchen is a massive health and business risk. In fact, this gets Gusteau's closed by the end of the movie.
  • Django, Rémy's father, is shown to be annoyed with his son's refusal to eat trash and decaying matter and also staunchly opposes the younger rat's desire to interact with humans closely. However, as scavengers, rats can't afford to be picky about what they eat, and while humans may react positively to a domesticated rat, the same can't be said about a wild one.
• The Rugrats Movie: While trying to upstage Susie when the latter sings "A Baby is a Gift" at Didi's baby shower, Angelica brings up valid points that raising a new baby does come with difficulties such as dealing with dirty diapers and constant screaming.
• Shrek:
  • In Shrek 2, Shrek and Fiona get into an argument about how it would be a bad idea for him and Fiona to travel to Far Far Away. Shrek expresses his concern about how Fiona’s parents would react to seeing the latter’s Ogre form. He is proven right when Harold isn’t happy with seeing Fiona as an Ogre. Even Fiona comes to agree with Shrek’s viewpoint when she packs her things to go back to Shrek’s swamp (this happens after another argument that Shrek and Fiona have about this topic).
  • In Shrek the Third, When Artie decides to bail out of being king when the responsibilities of such a job are (inadvertently) revealed to him, one of Shrek's responses is effectively "Back to what, being a loser?". While these were harsh words and in context Shrek is just giving the kid the job so he doesn't have to do it, he isn't exactly wrong that Artie is still giving up a chance of a lifetime in favor of going back to a place where he was so unpopular even stereotypical nerds bullied him. It’s worth noting that Artie never does provide a real counterfeit to this claim besides the fact, he simply doesn't want the responsibilities laid on him.
• Sing:
  • Judith from the bank is very unfeeling and humorless about Buster's dreams about theater but she is correct that the theater's business has gone so bad that Buster had to steal electricity and water so she is well within her rights to repossess it due to unpaid bills. Also, she is legally correct that the comeback performance is technically trespassing on bank property without permission.
  • As arrogant and abrasive Mike is, he made two accurate points, even if it was done rudely. During the auditions, Meena, who was stammering and unable to sing, was holding up the line for the rest of the contestants, and Mike was the one who had to wait for her to finish. He's also the first contestant to get angry at The Reveal that Buster lied about the real prize money amount.
  • Nana refuses to lend money to Buster because his previous productions have failed and she feels that Buster's management was the cause of her beloved theater's fall from grace.
  • Meena's grandfather has a tendency to be abrasive to others, even to his beloved granddaughter. However, he's completely right that Meena has to overcome her Performance Anxiety if she actually does want to pursue her dream of singing. In fact, him putting his foot down and demanding her that she asks for a re-audition with full confidence after she bombed her initial audition due to her Performance Anxiety was what Meena needed to hear to overcome her problems in the long run, and it worked much better than her mother's gentle reassurances.
• Throughout Sing 2 Buster and the rest of the Troupe are rudely dismissed by personel of Jimmy Crystal. His talent agent, Suki, states their act isn't good enough for Crystal, and when they try to audition to him personally, they are harshly refused entry by his secretary since they didn't reserve it. As it later turns out Jimmy Crystal is a Hair-Trigger Temper Bad Boss who is willing to murder anyone who disappoints him or wounds his pride, so his employees are quite justified not wanting anyone setting off his temper. Sure enough when Buster does finally get approved by Crystal and starts making decisions he isn't happy about, Suki drops the snobby act and tries to bail him out.
• Miguel in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is a Jerkass and can be ruthless and aloof but he does make genuinely good points that the other Spiders have difficulty to contest.
  • While it's unclear if Miguel's theory about Canon events is entirely accurate, several Spiders, including Peter B. Parker, acknowledge that Miguel is right that certain traumatic events are vital to Spider-Man's existence, with Peter B. pointing out that if Uncle Ben hadn't died, most of the Spider-People present never would have become Spider-People to begin with.
  • Miguel is right to be very cautious of meddling with the stability of space-time no matter the reason, since it has been shown to be very dangerous to The Multiverse, something he experienced first-hand. His desire to stop such efforts is understandable but his methods are shown to be extreme and opposite to Spider-Man's call to always save those in need.
  • Miguel was furious with Gwen for being the subsequent reason Miles came to the Spider-Society and right under her nose but he is right that if Gwen hadn't gone to visit Miles after promising that she wouldn't, Miles wouldn't have left his dimension. Jessica agrees with Miguel and while none of the other Spiders are pleased with how Miguel punishes Gwen and sends her back into her universe, none of them argue about his point.
  • While his hatred towards Miles is misplaced, he does have a point that Miles being a Spider-Man at all is an "abnormality" and a mistake since the spider that bit Miles was from Earth-42 and was sent from the super-collider. Miles was never supposed to be Spider-Man and the more competent blond Peter Parker should still be alive.
• Spies in Disguise: If you take away the morality of Walter's Do No Harm practices, Lance's contempt for him at the beginning of the movie isn't exactly unmerited. Regardless of the effectiveness of Walter's unorthodox gadgets, it doesn't change the fact that Walter meddled with Lance's equipment behind his back without his consent, and doing so caused Lance to be affected the same as his assailants and got a knife dangerously close to his throat due to being caught off-guard. Such behavior in spying and government businesses is inexcusable since as little as one miscommunication or mistake can mean the difference between success and failure, or life and death. Lance was the most merciful compared to how Joy Jenkins would've handled the news. He also has a point that sometimes villains, especially the worst of the worst, have to be put down hard.
• Toy Story:
  • Toy Story:
    • Mr. Potato Head isn't quite fond of Woody, and loves mocking him at every angle he can find. However, Potato Head is justifiably ticked off at Woody knocking Buzz out the window and asks Woody if he would do the same to Potato Head (and on that note, every other toy in the room) if Andy started playing with him more often. While Woody only meant to knock Buzz behind a dresser instead of out the window, Potato Head's accusations are still on-point; it convinces the other toys to turn on Woody, and later refuse to help rescue Woody when he's taken to Sid's house.
    • Retroactively, while Woody was being a massive jerk about Buzz stealing his thunder, he wasn't wrong that Buzz believing himself to be a real space ranger and not a toy was extremely annoying. It takes Buzz most of the movie to accept this, to the point that any reminder of that time is a bit of an embarrassment for him. The rest of Andy's Toys and later Forky even agree with Woody's sentiments about the whole thing.
  • In Toy Story 3, Lotso Huggin' Bear is a backstabbing tyrant who exercises power by choosing which toys can be in the Butterfly Room (where they are played with properly) and in the Caterpillar Room (where the younger kids throw them around and break them). He's generally villainous, but when called out on it he does show that he has a point: there must be some toys in the Caterpillar Room. The adults in the daycare would just find them and put them in there, and the toys might as well do it on a rotation so they have time to repair themselves (this is spoiled by him not doing it fairly or rationally). Later, when Ken (part of Lotso's gang) suggests saving Barbie from the dumpster, Lotso points out that "there are thousands of Barbies just the same", and Ken replies "not like her". But Ken and Barbie have completely stereotypical personalities, fell in love at first sight with no consideration of them or any "unique" traits, and that particular Barbie has tied up Ken and interrogated him. These make it pretty plain that Lotso is actually right and Ken is just following his instinctive script as a toy (and, um, maybe also has some odd tastes).
    • Though this can be interpreted as how she pretended to give up only as part of a plan to save her friends, ripped his clothes as torture (which, for a dress-up doll like her must be quite serious) and how she had just stood up against Lotso and pointed out that a leader should be chosen. While Lotso does have a point, so does Ken.
  • Toy Story 4:
    • When the rescue mission to save Forky goes south and Woody refuses to give up, Bo Peep calls him out on endangering the group. She winds up walking off when Woody questions her concept of loyalty, but she comes back a few minutes later to help him when she realizes he had a point—his loyalty to his kid, even if a bit extreme, is his most admirable quality.
    • Likewise, Woody won't stop trying to help Forky, but Bo's harsh words make him realize that, intentionally or not, he's putting his friends at too great a risk to save a toy for a kid that's lost all interest in him, and he's trying to cling on to his time with Andy rather than move on. This motivates him to join Bo on the road and leave Bonnie's room at the end of the movie.
• Turning Red: Ming not allowing Mei to attend the 4*Town concert because she disapproves of the band's style and sound isn't very reasonable, but she does have a point about the concert not being the best place for Mei to go considering her situation. Since everyone, including Mei, is still trying to keep her red panda identity a secret at this point, she points out that it's very risky for Mei to go to a concert with thousands of other people and potentially expose herself there if her excitement gets the better of her. Also, while she was wrong to accuse Mei's friends of being a bad influence, especially since everything that she was blaming them for was Mei's own idea and not theirs, the fact that Mei had just violently attacked Tyler in a fit of rage lends further credence to Ming's concerns about letting Mei go to a big public event.
• Unicorn Wars: Padre is against consuming the colorful insects the team finds in the forest because they're not kosher with the religion he promotes. While his objections were entirely theological, and Ironstroke's argument that using these critters for food would take a load off their limited supplies was sound, the bugs wind up having hallucinogenic properties once eaten, which indirectly lead to the deaths of the Cuddly-Wuddly Twins.
• Wreck-It Ralph:
  • The Nicelanders are fairly justified in not wanting Ralph to join the party at their building, considering he is a Walking Disaster Area who is programmed to wreck anything (especially the building the party's in), and true to form, has completely ruined the party within minutes of attending.^note Granted, Ralph did cause some of the trouble after losing his temper for how badly they treat him, but that's still not an excuse to start breaking things. It doesn't come close to justifying how shabbily they (or any of the other characters for that matter) treat him overall, however, considering he is a genuinely good person who's just slightly rough around the edges.
    • Gene, leader of the Nicelanders who overall despises Ralph, calls him out for escaping a game during the arcade's operating hours just to get a medal. Yes, it was his fault for pushing him too far, but Ralph did not consider that the game would be declared Out-of-Order and put at risk of being unplugged, making everyone in his game homeless, so he's not entirely at fault.
  • Ralph, for his part, may be destructive and have a bad temper, which resulted in him inadvertently ruining the party, but he also has plenty reason to be upset. He's been shunned and has lived in the in-game dump for thirty years, and the Nicelanders and Felix never even bothered to ask him how he feels, connect with him, or help out. The destruction isn't nearly as bad as it seems either, since dead characters regenerate instantly inside their own game, and the damage can be fixed with a magic hammer in seconds. Admittedly, the Nicelanders may have had a point in banning him from this specific party, since characters from other games don't regenerate, but the fact that Ralph has never even eaten cake at all indicates that they've done nothing but ostracize him, which leaves them with no excuse.
• In Zootopia, Mayor Lionheart, without informing the police or the public, incarcerates several predator mammals who have gone savage, though he keeps them safe in rooms where casualties are minimized, provides them with food and water, and has a round-the-clock medical team trying to find a cure. While he does this partly because he's worried about his reputation, he's also worried that telling the public about what he's done before he can find a concrete answer will cause mass panic, even shouting his concerns after he's been arrested by the Zootopia Police Department. Sure enough, once what Lionheart was covering up gets made public, that's exactly what happens. Even the ZPD ultimately has to acknowledge that what Lionheart did, while questionable, made sense at the time. He even lampshades it when interviewed in prison by calling it "doing the wrong thing for the right reasons".

Manhwa

• He's Dedicated to Roses: The leader of the Girl Posse give I-Da one of these after breaking her glasses. Subverted in that that wasn't what she had intended.

Podcasts

• Lucas Miller of The Adventure Zone: Balance is a bit of an asshole from his introduction, but turns out to be right about the danger of the voidfish having a baby.
• Brimstone Valley Mall:
  • Misroch is an abrasive jerk, and their criticism of Hornblas is obviously tied into them being The Resenter, but that doesn't mean their criticism is invalid. Nice as he is, Hornblas is a total flake, and that is just not the sort of quality you want in a bandmate—anyone who's ever been on a team project of any sort and had to deal with this sort of thing can fully sympathize with Misroch's complaints.
  • Carpasinus is a Bad Boss who threatens the heroes with extensive bodily harm after Hornblas goes missing, but he makes a fair point when they ask why he doesn't know where Hornblas is: he's in charge of every single demon currently on Earth. There are literally thousands of them; he can't reasonably be expected to keep track of each and every one all of the time.
• Mom Can't Cook!:
  • They point out that Agent Morton from First Kid is entirely correct in that someone who likes to joke around during his job shouldn't be a Secret Service Agent, and yet he's portrayed as a stick-in-the-mud.
  • Ricky "Rules" from Phantom of the Megaplex is noted as receiving a similar treatment for wanting to stick to their Union's code.
• In Trials & Trebuchets, after doing poorly on her midterms, Mira Marchand gets paired up with her classmate Murundeen Purebone, who she dislikes due to his Jerkass behavior, as a study buddy. Murundeen suggests Mira spend less time on extracurricular activities and more time studying, much to Mira's annoyance, though when she is eventually forced to drop one of her clubs due to her losing an arm, she scores much better on her final exams, proving Murundeen right.

Pro Wrestling

• At the time of his heel run in 2012, CM Punk went postal when John Cena won the "Superstar of the Year" award of the Slammy Awards, demanding why someone who got destroyed by Brock Lesnar, lost to The Rock, lost to Punk, failed to win with MITB, and couldn't win Dolph Ziggler's title shot won an award over someone who held the WWE Championship every day of 2012. While these Slammys were determined entirely by popular vote, Punk brought up some credible points. To his credit, Cena obviously agreed as the look on his face when he came out to receive it was a combination of Oh, Crap! and This Is Gonna Suck, not aided by the fact that the award show was in Philadelphia. Punk was rightfully upset about not getting any respect when he was champion all year long yet mostly was still playing second fiddle to Cena.
• At the 2014 CZW Down With The Sickness, Rory Mondo gave Danny Havoc internal injuries, attempted to cut him and several members of the CZW staff with a weed whacker, a "weapon" that had been nationally banned from use in all sporting events, likely resulting in a fine or worse for CZW had he been successful, broke the stretcher Havoc was being carried out on and falsely claimed that Havoc had quit when it was referee stoppage that ended their match. Thing was, the match ended with one man unable to continue and another who could, yet the referee called it a "no contest". That might have even been reasonable in most fed but in Garbage Wrestling CZW the logical decision should have been to declare Mondo the winner.
• Randy Orton's whole motive for going after Triple H during the road to their WrestleMania 25 match was because Triple H screwed him out of his first title run-which was exactly what happened. It was not helped by the fact that during the feud he was going after Triple H's family the Mcmahon's who all were at best Asshole Victims. Humorously enough CM Punk's feud with Orton at WrestleMania 27 was over a similar issue where Punk was after Orton because Orton cost him his first title run by attacking him right before his title match and taking him out of the match therefore, thus Punk never properly lost his belt.
• Ryback's reason for turning heel against John Cena back in 2013 was because he was sick of Cena never having his back after he was constantly being attacked by The Shield despite the fact Ryback had always been there to help Cena. It was very telling the fans were originally unsure if Ryback was a heel since that was an understandable reason to turn on Cena. Further it wasn't helped by the fact Cena's rebuttal was simply just accusing Ryback of being a crybaby.
• Triple H and Stephanie McMahon calling out John Cena for attacking skinny middle-aged Jon Stewart. Granted Stewart had cost Cena his title match against Rollins, but still Cena did come off as a sore loser.
• Roman Reigns fell into this after his match against Braun Strowman at Great Balls of Fire where after losing the match, Reigns lost his shit and attempted vehicular homicide on Braun. When General Manager Kurt Angle tried to reprimand him for it, Roman called Kurt out on his hypocrisy, noting that Kurt, as well as Brock Lesnar and Paul Heyman who were also in the ring at the time, had been a part of the Attitude Era,^note Technically Lesnar wasn't, he was part of the Ruthless Aggression Era, but that era still had comparable levels of violence to the Attitude Era so the point stands where acts of violence of that nature were commonplace, and thus they had no right to criticize Roman. He also pointed out that Braun had been on a rampage throughout the last few months and Kurt had been completely ineffective at stopping him.
  Roman: [to Kurt Angle] You should be thanking me; you didn't know how to handle Braun Strowman, [to Brock Lesnar] and you're never around to.
• Chris Jericho's heel run in 2008 was kicked off because Shawn Michaels had faked an injury during his match against Batista (that Jericho was acting as special referee for and sympathized with) then pulled even more shenanigans when Jericho himself took on Shawn the following month to steal a win. Jericho, rightly annoyed at Michaels and the fans for validating such behavior, invited Michaels onto his Highlight Reel show and beat him down out of frustration.
• The turns of R-Truth, Mark Henry, and Christian all within two months of each other during Spring 2011. R-Truth won a title shot against The Miz's WWE championship, but the week after, John Morrison convinced him to put his title shot on the line. R-Truth snapped when Morrison won the match and took his title shot out of his hands. Mark Henry was in his fifteenth year in the industry and was tired of nobody taking him seriously for that long, so it's no wonder why he finally snapped. Christian finally won his first world title at "Extreme Rules", but Teddy Long forced him to defend it the very next episode of SmackDown against Randy Orton, seeing his dream abruptly ended in just two five days.
  • These stories all came together into the COO Triple H "vote of no confidence" angle that fall, as that time period would see heels being increasingly brutalized at the hands of faces, and the faces in question going completely unpunished (most notably, the fact that WWE did nothing to stop Hugh Jackman, a non-wrestler, from breaking Dolph Ziggler's nose in a match against Zack Ryder). Around the time, R-Truth formed the "Awesome Truth" tag team with The Miz (who was furious at how rapidly he had fallen down the card since losing the WWE Championship that May). Once Triple H fired them, they started randomly attacking WWE stars, creating an increasingly unsafe WWE environment, and eventually leading the heels to revolt and stage a walkout.
• Subverted with Muhammad Hassan. His story arc was that he was an Arab-American wrestler who was angry at the discrimination he faced post-9/11. Faces like John Cena conceded that Hassan might have had a point, but that didn't give him the right to attack people with no provocation or insult the audience that hadn't done anything to him.
  John Cena: These people don't have you because you're Arab-American. They hate you because you're Asshole-American.
• The feud between CM Punk and Jeff Hardy in 2009 depicted Hardy as a free-spirited Face, while Punk was the Jerkass Straight Edge Heel who just wanted to stop Jeff's fun. The problem is Jeff is not simply a party animal or even a recreational drug user, but a man with a real and serious addiction problem that has screwed up his personal and professional lives multiple times in very public incidents. Getting sober was probably the best thing Jeff could have done for himself.
• The whole Becky Lynch/Charlotte Flair feud can be seen as this. Becky turned on Charlotte after Charlotte won the women's triple threat match for the women's championship. Becky was initially portrayed as the Heel for turning on Charlotte. The problem however was that Becky calling out Charlotte for just waltzing in and getting a title shot after losing twice to Carmella was completely true. Becky had further pointed out how she had been working hard to get a title shot and Charlotte just came in and stole her thunder was also true. It didn't help that the audience was on Becky's side and cheered her over Charlotte. WWE eventually went with a Face/Heel Double-Turn over this-turning Becky into an anti-hero and Charlotte a Heel.
• In NXT Dakota Kai turned Heel by brutally assaulting her friend Tegan Nox. Kai revealed she turned on Nox because she was mad that Nox didn't support her in joining Rhea Ripley's Wargames team and in general not having her back. While the vicious knee assault she gave Tegan was Disproportionate Retribution, Kai did have a legit reason to be angry with Nox.
• The whole 2020 feud of Johnny Gargano's feud Tommaso Ciampa is this. Gargano turned on Ciampa and he was not wrong to call out Ciampa (who was his best friend) for not only turning on him previously before but also doing everything he could do to destroy Gargano's life.
• Gargano would discuss the issues between him and Austin Theory in an interview a week after his debut on Raw, stating that Theory didn't even call in regards to the birth of his child. Overhearing this, Theory would respond that he didn't get a call from Gargano when he had won the United States title and later Money in the Bank. It didn't help that Gargano and Theory previously had a mentor/student relationship back in NXT, even at times stating that Theory was like a son to him.
• In an interview following his Face–Heel Turn on the 11/7/2022 edition of Raw, Bobby Lashley explained how Seth Rollins won the United States Championship from him by taking advantage of Brock Lesnar attacking him before match with the fans cheering them on for their actions. This caused him to Madden Into Misanthropy, deciding to just hurt everyone in his way until he regains the US Championship.

Roleplay

• Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues:
  • Jessica points out that, while she might be rude and abrasive, she's also not wrong when she criticises the rest of the kids for being reckless and not actually coming up with a solid plan.
  • Jacob is correct when he says that trying to sneak around with Benjy, a ten-foot bug monster, is bound to fail. However, calling Benjy an 'abomination' while he explains himself doesn't win him any points with the others.

Radio

• In the John Finnemore's Double Acts episode "The Rebel Alliance", The Ghost Yvonne is absolutely terrible, and Lizzie is her most outspoken critic, especially regarding how she treats Extreme Doormat Eileen. When she learns why Yvonne is upset with Eileen (her husband refused to attend their daughter's wedding to Yvonne's daughter, and Eileen tried to say Both Sides Have a Point, even though she didn't agree with him at all), she says she can forgive Eileen for being a wimp, but she's not sure she can forgive her for making her think Yvonne might be right about something.

Theatre

• Subverted in 13 when Lucy tells Kendra she should thank Evan for getting Kendra and Brett back together But really. Lucy set the whole thing up so that she could be with Brett. It's a case of Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• Edward Rutledge is a great example in 1776, especially with the number "Molasses to Rum." Sure, he's arguing for slavery, but when he exposes Thomas Jefferson's and John Adams' respective hypocrisies, he not only has a point, but it's a historically accurate one.
• Freddie Trumper of Chess is correct in his assertions that his reputation as the bad boy of chess have help to renew public interest in the game. He later helps Anatoly realize winning the championship is his only chance to redeem himself.
• Hamilton
  • "What Comes Next" is King George telling the colonies that they're on their own now and will have to govern themselves, which isn't easy. Though there is some bitterness at having lost the war in his assessment, George Washington expresses similar sentiments, and the events of the second act (which focus heavily on the difficulties of politics and government) ultimately prove the King right.
  • Hamilton himself brutally cites Burr's indecisiveness and lack of principles as reasons for why Burr should not be president. While Burr doesn't take it well and Hamilton's statement was delivered coldly, he's not out of line.
• In the musical of Heathers:
  • Ram Sweeney is an overall dumb, hormone-driven Jerk Jock, but he does bring up a good point when he tells Martha (who is in love with him) that "people wouldn't hate you so much if you acted normal", as Martha's sweet, childish nature does not fare well against the cynical, harsh world of high school.
  • Heather Chandler is a "mythic bitch" and Asshole Victim, but she raises the very good point when Martha admits to Veronica she suspects J.D was involved in Ram and Kurt's deaths, Veronica does everything she can to throw Martha off the trail, including telling her that Ram never loved her and she wrote the love letter "he" sent her (because the Heathers coerced her into it). When Martha runs off in tears, Veronica tries to justify her actions to Heather Chandler by saying she had to protect Martha from getting too nosy about J.D, causing Heather to retort:
    Heather Chandler: Or he'll kill her? Is that what you're worried about?
• In Jasper in Deadland, dead souls can't leave the Underworld without Pluto's permission. When Jasper begs Pluto to let him and Agnes return to the Living World, Pluto rudely refuses because they're human and Humans Are Bastards. Jasper and Agnes don't even try to refute him, because they've already admitted multiple times throughout the show that their time in the Living World actually was full of awful people.
• The Witch of Into the Woods has this effect on the characters; regardless of whether they say so aloud, they are visibly humbled by the breaking speech that is "Last Midnight", in which she calls them out on the fact that their wishes and carelessness got them in the trouble they're in now.
  I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right! I'm the witch. You're the world!
• King Lear:
  • Lear gives up his throne and kingdom, granting half to each of his daughters, and then announces that he plans to stay with both of them in monthly shifts for the rest of his life. Goneril and Regan eventually get fed up with this arrangement — especially because Lear insists on travelling with an entourage of one hundred knights — and tell him that if he's going to live with them, he has to be more accommodating and send the knights away. Lear launches into a tirade when they do this, claiming that they're "thankless," but while Goneril and Regan do go too far, they're completely right. Lear spends his days partying and hunting with his knights, then storming into his daughters' castles and demanding that they wait on him and his entourage hand and foot. The princesses may be too extreme in their treatment of their father, but they're justified in trying to devise an arrangement that works for everyone, not just Lear. Of course, as Lear says he is a man more sinned against than sinning. To Jacobean audiences, him attempting to abdicate and divide the kingdom would not be approved of.
  • Edmund is clearly a despicable person, but he is right to criticize the way that society treats bastard children. He also points out the foolishness of Gloucester's astrological beliefs and how they provide a convenient excuse for people to pretend that their mistakes and misdeeds are somehow not their fault. Then again, Gloucester's predictions do turn out to be quite accurate.
• Legally Blonde: The Musical: In the party scene, Warner and Vivienne could have handled things more tactfully, and Warner particularly treats Elle pretty horribly overall, but they're not wrong when they note that Elle isn't on track to finish her first year of law school, let alone get Callahan's internship. The content of what they're saying isn't actually all that different from what Emmett tells her in the next scene, Emmett is just saying it in a kinder way and in the context of a challenge, whereas the others were saying it in an insulting way and suggesting she should just give up.
• In Madame Butterfly, Goro is a slimy marriage broker, eager to sell Cio-Cio-San to a new husband for his own personal gain, who even spreads rumors that no one knows who her child's father is after she rejects his wealthy client Yamadori. But tragically, he's absolutely right that her beloved Pinkerton will never come back to her and that only a new husband can save her from poverty.
• Westeros: An American Musical: While Walder Frey having the Starks killed at a wedding he hosted, thereby violating guest right (considered one of the worst crimes in Westeros society) is considered Disproportionate Retribution by a character who hears of it, this is soon followed by a scene in which Walder Frey points out that Robb Stark breaking his promise to marry his daughter wasn't exactly a trivial matter and another character points out that the act was a betrayal towards person on the receiving end of it.

Visual Novels

• There's many occasions in the Ace Attorney series when Phoenix, Apollo, or Athena will admit the prosecutor (be they whip happy, arrogant, a homicidal maniac, or just a plain jerkass) is making a valid point.
  • During the first game, Phoenix lays into Edgeworth about how he became a prosecutor, the opposite of being the defense attorney he wanted to be as a child, and asks him how he can be so ruthless and use any method available to get a guilty verdict for the defendants. Edgeworth immediately counters this by pointing out that the guilty will always lie to avoid the consequences of their actions, so even if a defendant denies having done anything, the court can't just take their word for it, so the best he can do is make sure they get their just desserts and he is doing his job. Phoenix is rather stunned after that.
    • He also points out that as long as the prosecutor and defender argue properly for their own sides, the one who wins the argument will be the one who is actually right, thus uncovering the truth of the case. This is nothing less than the core principle of adversarial trial, and Phoenix and Edgeworth come to an understanding that this is what their purpose is.
  • In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All's second case, it's strongly implied that Dr. Grey is right and that his nurse Mimi Miney was, in fact, (unintentionally) at fault for the malpractice incident that killed fourteen patients, as Phoenix says near the end of the trial. While Dr. Grey ultimately isn't the one on trial, it does shed light on his killer's motive.
  • Also in Justice For All, Phoenix spends most of the game seeing prosecutors as arrogant individuals who do nothing but obstruct his efforts to defend the innocent even when they should know that the defendants aren't guilty (although his feelings over Edgeworth's disappearance and return partially influence this), but after he's blackmailed into defending a guilty client while Maya's life is threatened, his ability to Take a Third Option is in no small part due to Edgeworth and Franziska's help, and he becomes somewhat more open-minded regarding the prosecution.
  • Zak Gramarye from Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney makes one or two choices that are more or less indefensible, and yet his decision to fire Kristoph Gavin for being untrustworthy was probably the best idea he ever had; if anything, cases 4-1 and 4-4 prove that his only real mistake was hiring Gavin in the first place. Gavin had been planning to use a forgery to get Zak off, but when he was fired he switched to using said forgery to ruin Phoenix's career for being Zak's choice for a replacement lawyer, and later killed Zak himself along with the man who got him the forgery, and he almost managed to kill the girl who created the forgery in the first place, who was twelve when Kristoph tried to poison her.
  • Magnifi Gramarye was a huge Jerkass, culminating with calling Zak and Valant to his hospital room to subject them to a rather cruel Secret Test of Character to determine who will inherit the rights to his tricks. However, he had a point in kicking Mr. Reus out of the troupe after the latter injured himself during practice and wanted to perform on stage regardless. Considering how dangerous Troupe Gramaryes' tricks have been shown to be, with one of them becoming a blind amnesiac as a result of one such trick, this was quite probably the best way to avoid an incident on stage.
  • In the second case of Spirit of Justice, the above-mentioned Mr. Reus, who now goes by Roger Retinz, has a grudge against Troupe Gramarye. While their methods make them much worse than those they hate, they are right about the Gramaryes (besides Trucy) being jerkasses. He also points out that Trucy is an inferior magician since she was unable to see through his trick, something Trucy herself admits.
  • In the second Ace Attorney Investigations game, Justine Courtney debuts in The Imprisoned Turnabout as a judge who wants to strip Edgeworth of his prosecutor's badge, and threatens to do so when he tries to investigate the murder of Horace Knightley, since Courtney and her rather incompetent prosecutor associate Sebastian Debeste are erroneously convinced that Simon Keyes is the murderer. Late in the case, Courtney says she distrusts Edgeworth because his logic has proven faulty on multiple occasions. Edgeworth, who'd erroneously suspected Sirhan Dogen of the murder, and only identifies Patricia Roland as the culprit near the end of the case, admits she's not wrong about him making mistakes in this case.
  • In The Great Ace Attorney, Barok van Zieks, the main prosecutorial rival, comes off as a deeply racist man, and his deriding the jury for allowing emotion to govern their decisions in Magnus McGilded's murder trial comes off as a case of sour grapes, since he's losing at the time. However, he has a point that the public are allowing McGilded's good reputation as a philanthropist to blind them to his unsavory dealings as a Loan Shark, hence why they changed their votes to Not Guilty toward the end, and it turns out that McGilded actually is guilty.
    • Soseki Natsume blames Herlock Sholmes for placing him under arrest and starting the whole mess of him being accused of attacking a woman. Herlock, never one to mince words, pointed out Soseki was the one who abandoned the woman and ran off in a panic after seeing her mysteriously collapsed. If he checked on the woman instead of assuming she died, the woman would have been taken to the hospital earlier and she would have regained consciousness sooner, thus avoiding the whole situation. Soseki concedes he did behave badly and was regretful of his actions.
• Sasazuka in Collar × Malice is not the nicest person and can be very cold, pragmatic and prickly but he does call things as he sees them.
  • He frequently needles Enomoto for not making any progress in his investigation for the April/May X-Day incident. Sasazuka is right, as Enomoto later admits to Ichika, that he has been pretty much useless compared to the others more due to hesitation and lack of will on his end since a police colleagues of his who he looked up to was one of the first victims.
  • After their first meeting, Ichika asks for more time to think whether or not she would work with Yanagi's investigation team. Sasazuka is the only one to make her face the harsh reality that she really doesn't have a choice because if she doesn't work with them, she will die or everyone in Shinjuku will suffer when X-Day arrives. And sure enough, in the common Bad Ending, Ichika attempts to work alone but isn't able to solve the crimes and X-Day occurs.
  • In the earlier parts of any route, he flat out asks what Ichika can do to help since the others have more experience than her and have been investigating the cases longer than her. She concedes he isn't entirely wrong.
    Ichika: He was correct, but he was being such an ass that I couldn't accept what he said.
• Danganronpa:
  • Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: Byakuya Togami often plays this role. He spends most of his time distancing himself from the group, believing himself to be one of the smartest and most capable people alive, and, therefore, above everyone else present. And while he doesn't have to be such a jerk about it... he's got a point, given how many incredible things he's accomplished without even being out of high school. Also, whenever something sad or horrible happens, you can count on him to coldly lay out the facts or state the status quo, like when he reminds Makoto that just because he might not be motivated to kill by one of Monokuma's incentives, he can't assume everyone feels the same way...
    • When Togami is first introduced, it's as the "Super High School Level Heir", because he's the heir to the giant Togami corporation. Many of the others, probably including the player, assume he was allowed into Hope's Peak just because he was born into a wealthy family. Nope! He's not there just because he's the heir to a giant corporation; he's there because he's incredibly qualified to be the heir to a giant corporation, having already succeeded in business independently as a teenager. Assuming he's an Idle Rich kid is actually Togami's Berserk Button.
    • He also brings up the harsh but very good point when Monokuma tells them the identity of The Mole — just because Sakura has denounced Monokuma and intends to defeat him, they cannot just take her at her word that she's trustworthy considering that she lied to them all this time and didn't even admit to being The Mole until Monokuma outed her and could very well still be working with Monokuma now in an attempt to catch them off-guard.
    • When a library of secret information concerning global conspiracies is discovered in Hope's Peak, Togami will advise Naegi not to read any of it, even though he is doing so. Naegi immediately calls him out for being arrogant. Togami replies that it's the kind of information that people get killed for knowing, and he only knows it (and takes that risk) because his corporation is powerful enough that he has to.
  • Celestia Ludenberg also does this with her curfew rule. While it's certainly rude and unfair of her to claim that a murder victim had it coming because they broke curfew, she is right that it's the best way to prevent murders:
    • All bedrooms are lockable from the inside, so someone who spends the night alone in their room with the door locked cannot be murdered. And, partially because of this, nighttime is the best time to get away with killing someone, as a) most potential witnesses would be asleep, and b) very few people would have a verifiable alibi, since they'd likely be alone in their rooms at the time.
    • She's right in that all murders take place at night ( Mukuro and Sakura being the exceptions, but the former was summarily executed for attacking Monokuma, and the latter committed suicide), and each time, the investigation is complicated because of the lack of witnesses. In fact, Celestia's own murder plan revolves around drawing Kiyotaka out of his room at night so he can be killed and the scene arranged without risking being interrupted, though her murder of Hifumi took place in the morning.
  • Hiyoko Saionji, a bully who enjoys squashing ants for fun, sometimes plays a role similar to the first game's Byakuya in the sequel. After the first murder, she points out that everyone has to get their acts together and find the killer, or everyone besides the killer will die. After the second trial ends, in which it is revealed that Fuyuhiko is indirectly responsible for the death of Hiyoko's best friend, Mahiru, she coldly blames him for everything that happened. Fuyuhiko agrees, then attempts Seppuku in an attempt to atone and apologize to her.
  • Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony:
    • Kokichi Oma plays this role most effectively, coldly deconstructing the series' themes of using hope, trust, and The Power of Friendship to solve the murder cases. Additionally, he retaliates to criticisms of his actions by calling out the other student's flaws, like Shuichi's indecisiveness, Maki's lack of cooperation, and Kaito and Kaede's blind trust in everyone else. It's very telling how his speeches often leave the other characters floundering for a retort. After the first class trial ends, Kokichi tells the murderer that no matter what their reasons may be (namely killing the mastermind so that Monokuma won't kill everyone when the time limit expires), deciding to kill someone gave Monokuma exactly what he wanted. Some other students call him out on it, but the killer agrees with Kokichi. It later turns out that Kaede didn't actually kill anyone, since the shot put missed Rantaro, but she was trying to kill the mastermind, so Kokichi's point still stands.
    • Miu Iruma may be abrasive and rude, but she's correct when she protests in the third chapter that Angie and her "student council" (i.e: cult) have no right telling everyone else they're not allowed to walk around at night, especially since they don't follow this rule themselves.
    • In the second trial, Tenko calls Angie out for throwing Himiko under the bus when she puts her in the hotseat following Ryoma's murder, since the body was discovered during Himiko's magic show. Tenko's upset that Angie would so easily cast suspicion on their mutual friend, but Angie retorts that they have to question Himiko if they are to get to the bottom of things and identify the Blackened.
• In Heart of the Woods, Evelyn Fischer, the mayor of the town of Eysenfeld, is an Ice Queen who is not at all happy about Tara and Madison coming to investigate supernatural phenomena in her town at her daughter Morgan's invitation, and would rather have them leave. That said, Madison, despite being intimidated by Evelyn, concedes that it wasn't a good idea for Morgan to wait until the last minute to tell her mother about inviting guests to the village and letting them stay in a cabin owned by the Fischer family, especially when her mother is also the mayor. It's ultimately subverted when the cast realizes how evil Evelyn, a woman who is willing to steal other people's bodies to prolong her life and kill anyone who gets in her way, is, so keeping Evelyn out of the loop was the wisest course of action.
• In Highway Blossoms, Mariah is a rather unpleasant person for a variety of reasons, from her casual rudeness to virtually everyone to even trying to cheat Marina in a card game, and therefore, Amber can't stand her. When Amber's at her lowest point, having had an argument with Marina over wanting to send her home, she meets Mariah, and after a few drinks, confesses that she believes she was using Marina as a Replacement Goldfish for her deceased grandfather. Mariah then gives Amber a lengthy "The Reason You Suck" Speech saying, among other things that people naturally use each other, and if anything, Marina was using Amber to get the treasure. Her points are rather harsh, and come from her selfish and self-serving worldview, but Amber realizes that Mariah has a point about how ridiculous Amber's behavior is, and this helps her reconcile with Marina.
  Amber: Nothing she says burns anymore. Now it only stings with the acidity of truth.
• Katawa Shoujo:
  • When Hisao suggests that Jigoro Hakamichi could visit his daughter Shizune, Jigoro counters by, among other things, asking when the last time Hisao has called his parents was. Hisao concedes that he has not made much of an effort to keep in touch with them, although he still hates Jigoro enough to be tempted to punch him in the face. Interestingly enough, Jigoro does appear to take Hisao's comment to heart, since he appears at Yamaku later in the route... to ask Shizune if she wants to go fishing with him. He's still a huge ass while asking it, but it does show that the above comment was just an attempt to change the subject and avoid thinking about it, even if he ultimately did have a valid point. It obviously didn't work.
  • In Rin's route, Nomiya, while not originally a Jerkass, asks Hisao at one point while arguing over whether it was right to let Rin walk away from the exhibition whether he has anything comparable to Rin's passion for art. Hisao is forced to concede that he does not.
• A Little Lily Princess: Lavinia may be one of the biggest jerks in the cast, and only shows sympathetic qualities on her own route, but even she can make good points from time to time.
  • On her route, she points out to Sara that Miss Minchin doesn't praise her students because she cares for them, but because they're paying for her school, and Miss Minchin benefits from receiving that money. Lavinia ends up being proven right after Sara herself loses her wealth and ends up being treated cruelly by Miss Minchin.
  • On Jessie's route, Lavinia tells Miss Minchin about Jessie's desire to become a ballerina, and Miss Minchin gives Jessie a harsh lecture about the dangers of such a profession, from ballerinas dying screaming after their skirts catch on fire to the implication that ballerinas have to prostitute themselves to make ends meet. Lavinia smugly notes that she was kind to tell Miss Minchin before Jessie put her harebrained plan into action, and Jessie gets the point. Sara, who dislikes Lavinia, notes that Lavinia is right, but she could have been kinder about making her points.
• In Melody, when Bethany first tries to convince the protagonist to come back home to her, one of her points is that he can’t continue affording his lifestyle now that the summer is over, and Melody won’t need his tutoring services anymore. He has to admit that she’s right about that.
• In Mystic Messenger, during V's route, at one point Yoosung calls his aunt/Rika's adoptive mother, an despicable woman who consistently treated Rika worse than dirt throughout her whole childhood, constantly telling her that she was going to hell and brushing her off when she confessed that their church's pastor had been sexually abusing her. He informs her that Rika supposedly died, and asks if she knows of any reason why she would have killed herself like V claims. She dismisses the idea outright and says that Rika must have faked her own death and V is helping her stay hidden from the RFA. She's completely right.
• Lotus from Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors brings up the fact that — for anyone to survive the game at all — people will have to be left behind, thus sparking conversation on who it will be. It was brutally pragmatic, but also necessary — nobody knew at the time everyone could escape the game. She was just trying to solve a bad situation the only way she knew how. And given the tense situation they were in, it's perfectly reasonable that Lotus would want them to decide on who they'd sacrifice as soon as possible. Letting time pass would only make it worse. Of course, when the time comes for her to be left behind in one ending, she is fully accepting of her fate.
• Nurse Love Syndrome has a patient, Sayuri, constantly abuse and berate the protagonist, Kaori, for doing a suboptimal job as a nurse, which a big part of is because Kaori and Sayuri have a massive personality clash. Sayuri's very first scene has her complain about having Kaori as a nurse, to which Kaori responds that a patient cannot choose their nurse and if they were to relocate to a different hospital, there was no guarantee that they would get a better nurse. This would normally be right, as nurses are supposed to put aside personal feelings, but Kaori is still a very new nurse fresh out of medical school. Having a patient who puts such an incredible amount of emotional stress on a new employee in an already very physically and emotionally stressful job is just begging for a lawsuit. It's even possible for Kaori to ask to not be assigned her, but the request is denied if the choice is made despite it being quickly obvious to everyone that it's a horrible idea.
• In The Pirate's Fate, Queen Nakhta often tries to rope the protagonists into her plot to use the magical coins to prevent her elder sister, Bilba, from returning to claim the throne. She insists that Bilba is an evil schemer who will do anything to reclaim the throne no matter how vicious. Nakhta is a paranoid, egotistical, and blunt ruler, and she's frequently brushed off depending on player choices, but should you meet Bilba, you'll discover just how right she was, and it's acknowledged that yes, she's about as bad as Nakhta made her out to be. For one thing, unlike Nakhta, Bilba is perfectly willing to let her sister die to get power.
• Piofiore: Fated Memories:
  • In Orlok's route, Gilbert confronts Lili and Orlok about deceiving the townsfolk about Lili's supposed status as a saint and tricking the people into supporting the Lao-Shu, even if it was done unintentionally. They argued that they had to go along with it because the church was being held hostage by the Lao-Shu. Gilbert counters that this means they were fine with everyone else in the town being sacrificed so long as only the church was safe.
  • In Yang's route. Lili naïvely approaches Lee in hopes he would simply let her friend Elena go if she asked. Lee then asks if Lili would switch places with Elena and become his Sex Slave instead. Lili isn't able to answer and Lee mocks her for asking something like that without offering anything in return, let alone not being willing to sacrifice herself in Elena's stead.
• In Plumbers Don't Wear Ties, if you choose to have Thresher reject Jane after she begs him for a job, he will launch into a "The Reason You Suck" Speech against her that shows that he's a rude, misogynistic pervert with a low opinion of job seekers. That said, the main point of his argument — that with over 200 qualified applicants for each position, Jane shouldn't think that she's the only "desperate" one out there — is fairly sound. Jane doesn't argue with him; she politely tries to excuse herself after he's made his point, then walks out.
• Raging Loop: This trope basically summarizes Kiyonosuke Nosato as a character. He is extremely prickly and has poor social skills, which leads to practically the entire village disliking or distrusting him, but he possesses a fine logical mind and is very good at observation (even if he's not as charismatic or outspoken as Yasunaga or as cunning as Haruaki). Practically every line he utters during the village meetings and votes sound insulting (as long as he's not talking to or about Rikako), but the rationale behind them is always sound.
• Shinrai: Broken Beyond Despair
  • Hiro Shiratake is, at his best, rather arrogant and abrasive, and at worst has no qualms about callously dumping or cheating on his girlfriends when he gets tired of them. That said, while his telling a ghost story to passive-aggressively accuse his girlfriend Momoko Mori of being a Clingy Jealous Girl is definitely not a nice thing to do, he's not wrong. Runa Hikari, who's otherwise a Nice Girl, agrees with him, since Momoko is an emotionally fragile person who'd be broken if Hiro and/or her best friend Kamen Eiga betrayed her. When Momoko believes Hiro cheated on her with Kamen (in actuality, he tried to ask Kamen out but she said no), she kills him and herself in a Murder-Suicide to frame Kamen.
  • Taiko Kikai is usually a Nice Guy, but after his best friend Kotoba Gaikoku is killed or badly burned as part of the killer's plan, he becomes overwhelmed with rage and falsely accuses Kamen of being the murderer. While he's acting irrationally, and Raiko Shinpuku calls him out on it, Raiko admits that his suspecting Kamen(as well as Runa, to a lesser extent) is not entirely baseless, and that he has some valid points. In the good ending, Taiko calms down, and while he argues against Raiko's points, does so out of a desire to help find the truth. After being convinced of Kamen's innocence, he apologizes to her.

Web Animation

• In the animation "Godzilla Gets a YouTube Award", Godzilla (cast as something of an egotistic celebrity) attempts to claim that his various awards and his epithet of "King of the Monsters" prove him to be a figure of immense cultural importance, if not an outright endpoint and embodiment of mankind's deepest anxieties, and far greater than lesser kaiju like Rodan or outright black sheep like Zilla. Zilla, in response, claims that Godzilla owes his success to film executives using him as a profitable franchise to sell merch, his status as the most acclaimed kaiju means little when kaiju is one of the least acclaimed genres in film, his enormous fanbase consists almost solely of children (both regular and grown-up), and even what film awards he has that aren't Damned by Faint Praise stand as little more than evidence of industry circlejerking. Zilla is depicted as incredibly slimy and unlikable throughout the whole thing, but Godzilla simply doesn't have any good answers to Zilla's needling aside from growing increasingly mad.
• Hazbin Hotel: As absolutely cruel as she is about it, Katie Killjoy's assertion that Charlie's rehabilitation plan won't work isn't entirely without merit; Charlie has no absolute proof that her plan is actually possible, her test subject just torpedoed whatever shred of credibility the hotel had on national television^note proving that Charlie doesn't actually know what she's doing, and conceptually, the denizens of Hell are there for a reason: they're bad people. Expecting them to be good "just because" isn't going to cut it. After all, if they were actually remorseful or empathetic, they wouldn't have sinned in the first place^note And that doesn't even address the fridge problem of not knowing what the standards for getting into Heaven even are.. Vaggie ends up validating this partially, acknowledging that Angel's antics have made the hotel an even bigger laughing stock than it already was, and Charlie concedes in a voicemail to her mother that she doesn't know what she's doing and is in over her head.
  • Later on in the episode, Alastor asks Charlie about her hotel staff, which so far consists solely of Vaggie. In response, the Radio Demon simply chuckles and says "You're going to need more than that." While Alastor is undoubtedly rather cold and dismissive saying this, he isn't wrong in that, to run a successful business of any type, one needs more than just one sole employee.
• Red vs. Blue:
  • South Dakota is not the nicest person but she did bring up certain valid points at times.
    • She feels that the class of learning about A.I. was fundamentally pointless for her seeing how she wasn't given any A.I. And it was later proven that South was deliberately withheld from getting an A.I., making her point even more valid.
    • She also says it was unfair for Carolina to request for two A.I. after giving up her originally assigned A.I., especially to the agents who were due to get them next.
  • Felix is even worse, but his two cases of Never My Fault had good reasoning behind them.
    • Locus blames Felix's Evil Gloating for allowing the Blood Gulch Crew to get away, to which Felix retorts that they don't know for sure. Carolina was disguised as one of their soldiers and could have attacked them at any time, meaning Felix is only guilty of Saying Too Much.
    • Locus says that comms will be useless in the nightclub, which leads Felix to drop his earpiece in the toilet, and gets him a gas grenade to the face when Locus tries to use the comms to warn him that he's going to throw one. Both Sides Have a Point in this case, as Felix shouldn't have removed his earpiece, nor should have Locus assumed Felix would automatically know that he meant comms would only be useless downstairs where there's too much noise.
• RWBY:
  • Weiss Schnee is introduced as an Academic Alpha Bitch, who goes out of her way to insult others until she becomes a Defrosting Ice Queen later on. During her jerkass phase in the first volume, she makes several good points:
    • After becoming team leader, Weiss furiously calls out Ruby Rose for being childish, slacking off, and not earning her position. Professor Ozpin overheard the argument and privately tells Ruby leaders need to act the part if they want others to follow them. Ruby listens and cleans up her act.
    • When Weiss and Blake Belladonna argue about the White Fang, Blake criticises Weiss' bigotry towards all Faunus because of her hatred for the White Fang. However, she does concede Weiss' point that the White Fang have become murderous terrorists and later admits she left the White Fang because of this reason.
  • In Volume 2, General James Ironwood tells Glynda Goodwitch that he's convinced Ozpin's keeping them in the dark. Knowing he has trust issues, Glynda dismisses his claim, so he goes behind Ozpin's back and turns the Vale Council against Ozpin. Volume 6 reveals the scale of what Ozpin has been hiding, turning the heroes and Qrow Branwen against him. Ironwood finally learns the truth one volume later. It strips him of his coping skills and contributes to him spiralling into villainy. The heroes end up reconciling with Ozpin once they understand his point about how this truth can trigger betrayal, something they originally dismissed because they thought he was just being an unreasonable jerk about it.
  • Raven is a selfish Dirty Coward who only looks out for herself and her Bandit Clan. However, she warns Yang and Weiss Ozpin is hiding a terrible secret and Salem is unstoppable. She believes anyone who takes on Ozpin's fight is a fool who is a lost cause. It later comes to light that Salem was cursed by the gods to have Complete Immortality, thus she can't be destroyed. Ozpin has been keeping this secret because he fears people will lose hope if they know that even he doesn't know how to permanently stop an Invincible Villain.
  • In Volume 6, Emerald Sustrai is having a crisis of faith and talks about how Cinder Fall's been the mother she's never had. Mercury bluntly calls her delusional for thinking Cinder cares about her. Despite the cruel way he approaches it, Cinder regularly shows how little regard she has for Emerald, Mercury Black, and anyone else she commands. Emerald only comes to her senses when she and Hazel learn Salem's trying to destroy the world, and Hazel sacrifices his life to save her; it results in her defecting to the heroes.
  • In Volume 7, Jacques tries becoming a councilman to restrict Ironwood's power and remove the Dust embargo that's eating into his profits, arguing that the embargo is damaging the economy. The embargo is indeed reducing Mantle to destitution and his complaints about Ironwood's paranoia and tyrannical leadership decisions are shared by by the council and even by heroes like Nora, Blake and Robyn. He was the closest one to actually doing something about Ironwood's encroaching power but Weiss stopping him inadvertantly led to Ironwood's spiral, resulting in him eventually transforming into a villain.

Webcomics

• In DM of the Rings, the players are a bunch of jerks who barely pay attention to what's going on, but most of their complaints about the DM's terrible campaign (harshly railroaded, low enemy variety, barely any loot, too much exposition, major events being driven largely by characters outside of the PCs) are framed as completely accurate, if rude.
• Drowtales: As part of the Grey-and-Gray Morality, this pops up frequently. The Kyorl'solenurn, for instance, are surprisingly justified in their extremism against the tainted, especially after recent revelations like the fact that most tainted have been given intentionally faulty demonic seeds that will kill them within 50 years. Quain'tana also has some of this, since while a terribly abusive parent and all around not very nice person she does make good points, especially when it comes to the Sharen, who the readers know are not what they seem at all. This also applies to her interactions with her daughter Mel, who has twice tried to claim submission to her mother, but Quain doesn't buy it, and we the audience know that she's actually right to not trust Mel since she was put up to it by the character who's effectively the Big Bad of the series.
• In El Goonish Shive: Every so often:
  • When Susan confronts Tom about being a Manipulative Bastard to score a date with her, he claims everyone manipulates people by responding in ways to get certain reactions. He sees himself differently because "At Least I Admit It". Susan acknowledges the point but shuts down his attempted Jerk Justifications by pointing out the majority of people do that sort of thing for good or otherwise benign reasons, like protecting a friend's feelings or keeping something private. Tom was just being selfish because he did everything he did to manipulate Susan into asking him out knowing she wasn't looking to date anyone.
  • EGS: NP has Sarah displaying her art to people in various combinations of rude/polite and expert/average. The rude expert's criticism gets begrudging consideration — in contrast to careful consideration for the polite expert and dismissal of the rude average person.
• Forward: Many of Patricia's criticisms (such as Lee's inability to take personal responsibility for their mistakes, that Zoa should not be allowed to act as an emotional support and is essentially funneling money to a private corporation by doing so, and that Lee is taking up enough space in their apartment to house three people) are legitimate. The thing that makes them a Jerkass is their overly antagonistic and unsympathetic approach to dealing with Lee.
• In Freefall, when Max Post argues for freeing the intelligent robots, the mayor (who has a slight anti-AI bias) points out that this will take billions of credits away from the megacorporation that owns the whole planet and all its military equipment — which will obviously calm everything down.
  • Sam also pulls this on Florence — she might not like to be called a slave, but as Sam points out, she is one, as would be her children (which would belong to Ecosystems Unlimited as "derivative products"). Florence sees his point, which helps prompt her to become more proactive in helping other artificial intelligences receive full rights.
  • During a public debate about whether robots should be allowed full intelligence if it poses a risk to humans, Blunt tries to use the vicious and narcissistic Edge as an example of the risks in intelligent, disobedient robots. Not only do the human audience find Edge's rudeness endearing, he points out that sapient robots are better able to compensate for user error than unintelligent robots. Or, as he puts it...
    Edge: You guys give some stupid orders!
• Girl Genius has the pretty unpleasant Zulenna who habitually advocated Baron's dubious actions including imprisonment of "Othar Tryggvassen, GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER!" Agatha and other students ignored this. The guy turned to be more or less as much heroic as he pretended to be... and a dangerous nutcase as a bonus. Zulenna generally has a point any time she is not posturing. However, it's also been pointed out in-strip that Othar's "Kill all the insane world-wrecking Sparks" master-plan is not entirely without its merits. In fact, Klaus Wulfenbach only has Othar dragged to Castle Wulfenbach for a little "talk" (read: Spark-destroying brain surgery) when the latter started killing Sparks who were doing their best not to threaten the Pax Transylvania.
• The Glass Scientists: Dr. Frankenstein is a horrible jerkass, Ungrateful Bastard and has made some highly questionable life choices, but is right on two points (so far): one, that Jekyll's dualist theory of human psyche is ridiculous; and two, that he's losing himself in his work, neglecting everything else. Like a proper Mad Scientist.
• Guilded Age: Most of what Miyamoto says about adventurers is harsh-but-true.
• Homestuck:
  • Karkat has a problem: he is constantly bickering with past and future versions of himself. He's berated for this by nearly everyone, including Jade. But when Jade has to deal with an incessantly whiny version of herself for reasons that would take hours to explain, Karkat pulls this one on her.
    CG: IF I RECALL, IT WASN'T THAT LONG AGO FROM EITHER OF OUR PERSPECTIVES THAT YOU WERE RIPPING ON ME AND MY SMUG WINDBAG FUTURE SELF FOR ARGUING WITH EACH OTHER
    GG: oh come on...
    GG: this is NOTHING like that!
    CG: HOW IS THIS NOT LIKE THAT
    GG: because she's...
    GG: well
    GG: she's ACTUALLY INSANE
    CG: OH I SEE, AND ALL THOSE IDIOT PAST AND FUTURE KARKATS WEREN'T???
  • When undyingUmbrage tells Dirk that Lil' Cal is a juju who will only bring misery to everyone around him, Dirk just waves it off as more of uu's aggressive trolling. Unfortunately, he was telling the truth that time.
  • When Meenah sees Cronus verbally abusing Mituna, she rightfully calls him out on it. He counters that she's a hypocrite since, in an alternate timeline, she grafted him to her spaceship and artificially extended his life to use him as her ship's motor, which is much worse. She can't manage to come up with a good response to that.
• Housepets!: Joel is portrayed as an obnoxious jerk who joined an Animal Wrongs Group for hypocritical reasons (he actually dislikes animals, and secretly approaches the organisation's anti-pet agenda from the opposite direction). When he gets a Forced Transformation into a corgi named King, he Took a Level in Kindness, but his ongoing insistence that there's something weird about the whole pet/owner dynamic is consistantly dismissed by other characters as a hangover from this. Unfortunately, this also includes his concerns about Daisy, whose owner is actually abusive. Eventually, something gets done about this.
• In Lackadaisy, Asa Sweet warns Mitzi that she lacks the means to continue operating her speakeasy and that she will be in over her head in the current crime world climate. Later, Mordecai bluntly tells Mitzi that she can only bring Lackadaisy's reputation into further disrepute by keeping it open.
• Played for Laughs in The Last Days of FOXHOUND. Revolver Ocelot runs out of medication for his Chronic Backstabbing Disorder (treated as an actual disease) while on a bus, and the bus driver refuses to pull over for him. Then the bus driver triggers his CBD by leaning down to pick up a quarter. Ocelot's inner conflict manifests as a Good Angel, Bad Angel, where the good angel says that he shouldn't stab the driver in the back. The bad angel tells him that he should because the driver refused to let off Ocelot after being told that he was very sick and could have a fit, and also because the driver is taking his eyes off of the road while driving a bus full of people. The good angel concedes his point and just suggests that he stops the bus so that no one else gets hurt.
  • Psycho Mantis is The Friend Nobody Likes in Foxhound due to various reasons, but when he decides to unleash some truth bombs, he rarely misses:
    • He points out to Ocelot that it might not be the best idea ever to let Naomi Hunter (who wants to kill Big Boss' descendants) date Liquid Snake (Big Boss' son) since, as much as he hates everyone, coworkers killing each other is usually a bad thing, Ocelot concedes the point but reveals that there's a countermeasure anyway in the form of a clingy jealous Wolf.
    • After Berthold gets electrocuted to death facing the Ninja and gets resurrected by Raven, at the cost of his human intellect and telepathy, turning him into a regular wolf, Mantis coldly tells Octopus (who calls him out on his reaction) that it won't make a difference for Sniper Wolf since Berthold always behaved like a regular wolf with her out of awkwardness. Octopus is visibly bummed but doesn't counter.
    • His Author Filibuster about the repeal of gay marriage in Utah, while being both condescending and insulting, asks how is it a good thing since, y'know, gay people marrying doesn't stop straight ones from doing so?
    • He derides the mission in Tknsydska, stating that having Foxhound (a unit that makes the Delta Force look like boy scouts) deploy in the middle of nowhere to rescue a one-bit diplomat from some no-name insurgency led by a nobody is a waste of their time. Raven agrees with him until they get the full picture.
      Mantis: Let Me Get This Straight...... We're being sent into the buttcrack of Eastern Europe to rescue perhaps the single least important official in the U.S. government from a bunch of wackos led by Colonel Shit-For-Brains there?
  • Big Boss gets a similar moment when he's managed to return from the dead by possessing Liquid Snake's body. This has Vulcan Raven thoroughly repulsed as it violates the natural order of life and death, which Big Boss refutes by pointing out how the clones of him were effectively designed to cheat death which Raven has no problem with:
    Raven: Death is nature's little way of telling you you aren't wanted anymore. The passage from this world to the next should be a one-way trip.
    Big Boss: No exceptions, huh?
    Raven: None.
    Big Boss: And having multiple clones of me running around after I'm dead is okay... how?
    (Beat)
    Big Boss: Weeeeeeeeeell?
    Raven: Give me a few minutes.
    Big Boss: Can't take a dose of your own bullshit, huh?
    Rave: You're not gonna philosophize yourself out of those restraints.
• Ménage à 3 is full of fairly dumb or self-deluded individuals, so the occasional snarky comment from less-than-perfect characters is all too often justified.
  • Roxie's reactions to DiDi's behavior and Damien's flirtatious ways are often ill-tempered and sometimes ridiculously violent, but most of what she says about both of them is true.
  • Senna is a classic Rich Bitch. However...
    • While they are in Paris together, she suggests to Gary that they might visit some of the famous museums and galleries — but Gary dives straight into a video game shop, much to Senna's annoyance. She may be a cultural snob, but some readers share her exasperation at Gary's narrow vision.
    • Later, Gary dumps her — for which few readers blame him. But he doesn't seem to understand that he's done so, and makes a joke of the idea to Senna herself. Few readers blame her for slapping his face, either.
  • Sonya is a drama-addicted Stalker with a Crush towards Zii but pursues Gary for his sexual skills and to put one over on her rival Yuki, actively setting out to seduce him while he and Yuki are a couple; then, when Yuki drops Gary, Sonya gloats over her and shortly afterwards dumps Gary (in mid-sex, even). "Jerkass" may be an understatement with her. But...
    • She is completely correct in saying that the phallophobic Yuki is a lousy girlfriend for Gary or any other man, she is very happy to show Gary just how much better off he is dating someone who doesn't regularly kick him in the crotch, and she even tries to offer him good advice (which he, as ever, ignores) when dumping him.
    • Even her attempts to seduce Zii away from Erik involve her shrewdly pointing out that Zii doesn't seem to find that relationship totally satisfying — which, given her usual level of smarts, could also qualify as a case of Dumbass Has a Point.
    • She's one of the few people to call DiDi on her monstrous, unthinking sense of entitlement.
    • And she manages a masterpiece of nearly-wordless point-proving when Yuki needs convincing that Zii's obsession with DiDi has gone over the edge.
• In Misfile, Emily ends up calling Molly for relationship advice.
  Molly: Now let's sit back, just us bitches and figure out how to fix this, 'cause being a bitch is kind of my thing, and two bitches is one bitch too many.
• NEXT!!! Sound of the Future: Roll tells Shine that she shouldn't be an idol with her usual Brutal Honesty, pointing out that she has no useful connections to any idols, is notoriously unlucky, and doesn't have any way to stand out from the hundreds of other Hatsune Miku androids in the industry. Although Shine initially argues against her, she does agree with Roll's suggestion for her to try and get a famous Miku's contact information, and later confesses to Gumiya that she feels like Roll was probably right about her not being suited to being an idol.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • In the first book, Eugene, Roy's selfish father, berates Roy for thinking he can beat Xykon, an undead sorcerer, with a normal sword. Roy takes this criticism seriously enough to have Durkon enchant his sword with disruption spell to affect Xykon's skeletal body. In the following arcs, Roy has his sword upgraded so that it can harm undead creatures on its own.
  • Xykon delivers some foreshadowing to Miko in "The Road to Heck", by way of paraphrasing Yoda: "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to suffering, and suffering leads to the Dark Side." Minus the fear, that's just what happens to Miko later on.
  • Several instances where Belkar says something useful. In "Temporary Weakness", Belkar gives a scathing and insulting speech to Roy, who is in a Heroic BSoD and strongly considering giving up after Durkon gets turned into a vampire. Roy is initially too angry to form a proper sentence, but reluctantly accepts Belkar's point and presses on.
  • Later on, after Vampire!Durkon rejoins the Order, Belkar insists that they should stake him as soon as possible so they can resurrect him as a living dwarf later because the vampire is not the dwarf they know. Roy refuses to do so until they have a way to resurrect him prepared, saying that the vampire dwarf is "Durkon enough for their purposes". Then it turns out that the vampire is not Durkon, but a dark spirit controlling his body for evil purposes, making Belkar right on both counts. However, in that case, the non-jerkass also has a point, in that staking Vamp!Durkon will deprive them of crucial capabilities that they need to complete their mission. The fact that he says "Durkon enough for our purposes" implies he isn't completely unaware of the risks.
  • Belkar earlier called out Hinjo on his Honor Before Reason, claiming that his late uncle Shojo was a braver man since he was willing to sacrifice his own personal honor for the good of his city. Subverted a bit since Hinjo had already been convinced to retreat, so Belkar didn't really need to make that point. He was just being a Jerkass. Though in that case, Belkar was already psyched up to rant at Hinjo before being interrupted by the Mauve Shirt who convinced Hinjo to retreat.
  • Vaarsuvius' killing of Kubota based on the correct assumption that he's evil is portrayed as a major Kick the Dog moment, as well as a sign that V's Sanity Slippage is leading the elf down a darker path, but they correctly point out that they are trying to save the world here, and don't have the weeks to waste that a trial would take up, as well as the fact that their failure to get involved until that point is because finding a way to reunite the Order was a far greater priority than dealing with minor villains.
  • Elan's father Tarquin is full of this, as he acknowledges that it's in his best interest to help the heroes save the world, so he can keep running his empire, and in the best interest of the heroes to let him because they have bigger fish to fry at the moment. He even admits that eventually Elan or someone else will take him out, but that could take years and in the meantime, he'll be living it up; for every plucky hero that eventually defeats The Empire, the Empire has to win first or there's nothing to defeat.
  • Hilgya, a cleric of Loki and Durkon's Evil Counterpart in the Linear Guild, is quite selfish and hedonistic, admitting that she follows Loki so that she can do as she wishes and still get into a pleasant afterlife. That said, she has a point when she criticizes the idea of dwarves being expected to live and die honorably, lest they be enslaved by Hel in the afterlife, simply because of Hel's "bet" with Thor. If Hel succeeds in her Evil Plan, and manages to convince the other gods to end the world, every single dwarf alive will die a non-honorable death and be damned for all eternity, thus granting Hel incredible power.
• Pintsize, resident extreme jerkass in Questionable Content, speaks and acts for many readers here.
• Schlock Mercenary: It's a comic about space mercenaries. Black-and-Gray Morality is a given, and the Toughs shade of grey tends to shift abruptly. However, it usually slants in favor of individual rather than collective action; Individuals can be kicked in the head when they screw up. The Government can't.
  • Such a moment when Thurl actually said "The pesky little virus has a point, sir."
  • The United Nations of Sol actually has humanity's best interests in mind mostly. Unfortunately, they're often Well Intentioned Extremists who refuse to admit they could be wrong — especially when it becomes increasingly obvious that the assessments they started with are just plain wrong. They're first-responders at disasters who refuse to change their tactics when the disaster isn't what they expected it to be.
    • Laws aren't unreasonable, the military is a completely necessary defense against internal and external threats, the intelligence community has plenty good reason to get involved where it does, and the transhuman immortality project is kept secret for perfectly valid reasons; in its early phases, it does make sophonts functionally immortal while also making them so powerful it takes heavy artillery to kill one; all it takes is one psychopathic immortal to commit mass murder. Later iterations provide the immortality minus the city-wrecking superpowers. The problem is that everyone employed by and running the government has used this as an excuse for indulging in unilateral solutions and generally sociopathic behavior. Admiral Xinchub claims to do what he does for the good of humanity, but it's clear that he actually enjoys all the horrible things he's ordered to do. The military and spies don't care the least bit about what collateral damage they cause and frequently end up causing even more problems trying to keep their constant screw-ups secret.
    • In Random Access Memorabilia, the strategy of the UNS specifically required the death of thousands, if not millions, of neutral human civilian scientists. And they couldn't even do that right, the nanotech weapon they use wasn't ready and its malfunctions compromised the mission (not that the abysmal response by management helped). Even the justification for all that turned out to be wrong, the alien artifact they were after turned out to be nothing like what they expected (or rather speculated, since the dig had only just started) and their interference ended up rendering the artifact useless to them. They literally decided that a device they knew almost nothing about was worth committing a massacre over. Then again, earlier in The Teraport Wars they also betrayed the entire galaxy in the middle of the largest war in history against the most powerful and advanced species in the galaxy, all because they wanted to take the Gatekeeper's knowledge and technology for themselves even though they had no idea what it was. They didn't even betray anyone to the enemy, they simply declared war on all their allies in the middle of a military operation. Oh, and they failed, for obvious reasons. It could be considered An Aesop; Once The Government starts crossing the Godzilla Threshold repeatedly, how long before it starts looking for reasons to cross it?
    • The main cast by all means should be arrested and/or executed for some of their actions, but their more heroic acts, constant attempts to limit collateral damage, fairly high standards and general lack of malice (along with some amazingly good luck) has earned them powerful and talented allies who repeatedly shield them from the consequences — though even Petey sometimes thinks they're not worth the trouble they cause. Also, their enemies are much, much worse than them and they've repeatedly demonstrated their skill at handling them. When short-sighted bureaucrats drop the ball and cause completely avoidable disasters, the Toughs can be trusted to get the job done.
• Slightly Damned:
  • When Buwaro is having relationship trouble Kieri, Cliff who at this point has been rude and disdainful to Buwaro points out that there's a good chance their relationship might not work out.
  • While Kieri isn't mean in any sense, when she attempts to drive away Buwaro and Rhea when she goes into save her brother, she is correct in saying that they aren't fighters, something Buwaro and Rhea immediately realise.
  • After Kieri has been captured by demons lead by Buwaro's adoptive older brother Iratu, Buwaro still thinks he can still be reasoned with till Rhea angrily shouts that he keeps making excuses for Iratu even though he keeps mistreating Buwaro and that he also needs to choose between saving Kieri or familial loyalty, he chooses the former.
  • Azurai is a Hot-Blooded, kill-happy Sadist, but he stops Lazuli from killing the main trio at the last second; not just for pragmatic reasons, but that it's especially a bad idea to kill Rhea, due to her unnaturally long tail similar to Moonshade's and Moku's. He's proven to be right.
• Something*Positive:
  • When Kharisma leaves the medicaid company at which she works with Davan, she advises him to get out, telling him that he can do better and that she wouldn't wish the job on her worst enemy.
  • Mike (who, granted, is trying to Take a Level in Kindness) is the only person to point out that Aubery's Zany Scheme to deal with PeeJee's intolerable work situation doesn't actually do anything about the problem. Aubery immediately says he's right, but it's still a short-term solution.
    Mike: Davan, I'm right.
    Davan: Please, one problem at a time.
• In Sticky Dilly Buns, jealous rival Angel tries to undermine Dillon's relationship with Jerzy... mostly by telling Jerzy the truth about Dillon.
• Sweet Home (2017): Seok Kim is a complete Jerkass (and, as we later find out, a hypocrite as well) but he isn’t wrong that keeping Hyun around could prove to be dangerous to the group.
  • Joon has a valid point about the monster infected: just because they're sympathetic doesn't mean they're not going to eventually be a problem when they inevitably turn into monsters, so killing them now is not such an evil strategy if it means ridding the group of future things to kill.
  • Pre-Character Development Hyun is an absolute dick — and his parents and sister were even worse, with his parents telling him to deal with the bullying he was dealing with on his own and his sister calling him an embarrassment to her friends.
  • Mostly when Hyein suggests leaving someone to die, it may be entirely because she's a Dirty Coward but she's still usually objectively correct.
• This is a trait of Mike from the Walkyverse. He seemingly exists solely to make others miserable, but on a few occasions he has done so by pointing out when they are being hypocrites or making bad decisions. Who cares if it causes Character Development in the long term, as long as it makes them suffer in the short term he seems fine with it.
• Zeke from Cheer Up Emo Kid constantly mocks, belittles and insults his "best friend" the titular Emo Kid. However, as hurtful as he is a lot of his criticisms of the guy and his tendency to get far too invested early in an relationship are valid. He also often sets up a stall in the street where he bluntly tells anyone who passes by what is wrong with them.

Web Original

• The Angry Video Game Nerd: In-character, he's a rude, vulgar, and overly hostile negative Nancy who takes video games way too seriously, but that doesn't make his much-needed commentary on the constant wrongs of game and hardware developers throughout the history of the medium any less valid.
• While the polarizing CinemaSins' "sins" are usually either just jokes or based on opinion, they do sin things that are genuine movie goofs (e.g. Captain America not having an ear radio, Bane entering a tunnel in daytime and coming out at night, etc.).
• The Clickhole article "Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point" parodies the usual reaction to the trope. Screenshots of the header have become a common response to Expectation Lowerer social media users who nevertheless end up with the correct take on something.
• Cracked's list of The 5 Biggest Assholes Who Turned Out to be Right gives us a number of Truth in Television examples.
• In the Downfall parodies, Hitler is a mean and hot-tempered villain who throws rages at a tip of a hat over anything and everything. Many versions of the meme have Hitler ranting while Burgdorf tries to point out some flaw in his position, while in others, Hitler is actually meant to be seen as right.
• In Season 3 of Marble Hornets, Tim finally calls out Jay for his actions, constantly interfering in the lives of others and getting them ''involved,'' while Jay does little besides filming it all. As out-of-it as Tim is, and as unstable as he may be, he has a very good point.
• MarioTehPlumber, a troll reviewer on YouTube, is infamous among fans of Sonic the Hedgehog and Nintendo games for his rants on how the games are "Hentai" and for bashing fans of those games for their perceived Perverse Sexual Lust. As decreed by Rule 34 and as demonstrated by Self-Fanservice Fan Art, sub-groups of fans that make porn or fanart that up the attractiveness do exist, and some of those fans have very... questionable tastes (especially in the Sonic fanbase, whose characters in the games are mostly anthropomorphic animals). However, MarioTehPlumber is also infamous for making sweeping assumptions of entire fanbases in his "Hentai" rants, in which case he doesn't have a point.
• On Not Always Learning, the teacher in one medicine class explains that the exam will be pass/fail: either you get everything 100% correct, or you fail. The teacher's response to the student's question is blunt, harsh and entirely correct.
  Student: Seriously? What if I make just one tiny mistake?
  Teacher: You kill your patient. End of discussion.
• In The Onion's articles by Jean Teasdale, "Hubby Rick" is an interesting intersection of Jerkass and Closer to Earth. He spends most of his time at the bar, mainly because Jean's arrogant Cloud Cuckoolander behavior frustrates him; however, one article has her squirreling away money to "invest" (read: buy Betty Boop collectibles), and when Rick finds out he chews her out because they could use that money to pay their bills.
• A text exchange which has appeared online:
  Texter 1: Your father just died
  Texter 2: Took him long enough, he's been buried since 1994
  Texter 1: You're a rude ass, all you had to say was wrong number
  Texter 2: No, YOU are the rude ass, if someone's dad dies they deserve an actual phone call, not an F'n text
• Welcome Back, Potter:
  • Jarry is right that he had no actual obligation to kill Voldemort.
    Jarry: Yeah, I'm sorry that when I was an orphan, and they asked me to fight Wizard-Hitler, I was like "muh."
  • In the second episode, Jarry and Don point out that all the Wizard World really did was send a bunch of what were basically children to solve their Dark Lord problem.
• Worm: Armsmaster's delivery could really have been better, but he was utterly correct to predict that Taylor would end up getting in too deep with the Undersiders and losing sight of her attempt to go undercover.
• Many online critics who play up a more caustic character, (like The Nostalgia Critic, The Cinema Snob, etc.) can come off as antagonistically snarky at best to over-the-top violent at worst when it comes to their reviews of various movies, games, TV shows, etc. But that doesn't make their criticism of the works they review any less valid. Given that a fair amount of the material they review often falls under lists of "Worst of All Time", it arguably makes their points that much stronger.

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