Basic Trope: The killer in a mystery is portrayed sympathetically.
- Straight: The killer was trying to save the orphanage he got into trouble.
- Exaggerated:
- The killer is a shining example of goodness who was just trying to save the orphanage he got into trouble, and the victim was an asshole who routinely murdered orphans in his spare time.
- The killer was trying to prevent the world from getting destroyed by an Eldritch Abomination by appeasing it with Human Sacrifice, once per month, and he's been plagued by the guilt for at least a decade.
- Downplayed:
- The killer, while a fairly horrible person, only graduated to murder in order to protect other people from a particularly nasty blackmailer.
- Alas, Poor Villain
- Justified:
- The killer is sympathetic merely because the other characters are even worse.
- The killer is sympathetic because the victim only narrowly missed pulling a complete and total Karma Houdini, and one of the major themes is how the detective handles Black-and-White Morality being averted.
- The killer pulled a Mercy Kill on his victim; People are mistaking it for him killing in cold blood.
- Inverted:
- The killer is a gigantic jerkwad, to the point of being the Hate Sink.
- The killer is a complete asshole, the victim sympathetic but they can't deny that it was self defense.
- Subverted:
- The killer, for all his Freudian Excuse and the fact that the victim was an asshole, just killed the victim for the money.
- The highly sympathetic "killer" turns out to have been an entirely innocent Red Herring as part of a Debate and Switch setup.
- Double Subverted: The killer, for all his Freudian Excuse and the fact that the victim was an asshole, just killed the victim for the money...that he needed to afford an operation for his sick little sister.
- Parodied: The killer interchanges between committing comically greusome murders and snuggling with newborn puppies. The narration frequently mocks the viewer during the latter moments for feeling sympathy towards him.
- Zig Zagged: The killer is a cold-hearted bastard who slaughters orphans to pay for his sick little sister's operations so she can help him with bank robberies, but they're really donating the money they steal to charities (that may or may not be scams).
- Averted: The killer is cold-hearted and/or sadistic, and nearly impossible for the audience to sympathize with.
- Enforced: It was decided that a murderer without convincing motives and a hero determined to bring him down would be too "one-dimensional".
- Lampshaded: "Oh look, the murderer has parental issues and a tragic backstory. You almost start to feel sorry for the guy."
- Invoked: "Come on! This guy is sympathetic! Leave him alone!"
- Exploited: A Serial Killer makes sure everyone he kills is an Asshole Victim so he looks sympathetic, even though he's still killing them For the Evulz.
- Defied: Despite everything revealed that would normally gain him sympathy, the show and its characters decide that the killer is still a killer and refuse to feel sorry for him.
- Discussed: "You ever see one of those movies that makes you sympathize with the killer? This was almost, but not quite, one of those cases for me."
- Conversed: "And it makes you wonder - so he has decent reasons. Does that really mean we should let this murderer go? I mean, he's a murderer...but he's so damn sympathetic..."
- Deconstructed: A detective observes that anyone is sympathetic if looked at from the right angle, but this may also mean that anyone who's sympathetic is a potential murderer from another angle.
- Reconstructed: This doesn't stop the murderer from having sympathetic motives, however.
Back to Sympathetic Murderer
