In a show like Once Upon a Time, where the villains are so entertaining, it is not unusual to see fans demonize the heroes in some fashion.
- While Emma did have some questionable actions in season 1 regarding her relationship with Henry and feud with Regina, fans of the latter often flanderize it to malicious levels by claiming that Emma came to Storybrooke with the intention of taking Henry back, disrespected Regina's status as his adoptive mother from the start, and intentionally sabotaged her relationship with Henry. In canon, Emma only came to Storybrooke to send Henry back to Regina and even after choosing to stay she insisted Henry call her by her first name and proceeded to refer to Regina as his mother, not to mention Henry and Regina's relationship was already strained before Emma entered the picture. She does not attempt to regain custody of Henry until near the end of the season when she suspects Regina had something to do with Kathryn's disappearance. How she proceeds to act from there is still questionable, but it was not as unprovoked as some make it out to be.
- Snow and Charming get this from Regina fans, getting portrayed as self-righteous hypocrites who operate on Black-and-White Insanity, which in some fics, mainly Swan Queen stories, gets to the point where Emma turns against her parents for Regina. This perception increased after it was revealed that they kidnapped Maleficent's child, and had the Apprentice send it away to another dimension even though this was largely the Author's fault for manipulating the situation to "make a better story". Snow also gets flak for telling Regina and Daniel's secret to Cora even though she was an innocent girl of ten at the time, ignoring the fact that she did not do it because she selfishly wanted to trap Regina into being her new mother as these fans claim but rather because she genuinely believed Cora was a loving mother who would let Regina marry Daniel if she knew the truth.
- Henry in the first season often gets demonized into an ungrateful Spoiled Brat who pettily turned against his loving adoptive mother just because of a magic storybook. This ignores that while Regina did love Henry, she nonetheless was an emotionally manipulative parent to him and a flashback in "Going Home" shows their relationship was already strained before he got the book. This died down in later seasons as Henry and Regina's relationship improved.
- The Blue Fairy gets the blame for Bae leaving the Enchanted Forest without his father by Rumple's fans. There are admittedly a lot of questionable things she's done, but this one really is much more Rumple's fault. Also, after things like tearing apart Dreamy and Nova and taking Tinker Bell's wings away (both of which were Kick the Dog moments but NOT done out of malice, not to mention Bossy the dwarf also had a hand in the former one but it goes overlooked), some fans start to take the "Blue Fairy as the Big Bad evil mastermind!" Wild Mass Guessing a little bit too seriously.
- Some give flak to August for being a smarmy, lying, dishonest, manipulative wastrel - even though that's the entire point of his Character Development.
- Fics about Regina's time with King Leopold tend to turn him into a generically evil rapist and abuser. In the series, Leopold is, at worst, a bad husband who is desensitized to Regina's unhappiness through Deliberate Values Dissonance and cares more about running his kingdom and raising his daughter (two domains he is very good and talented at) than his second wife's happiness. He is, for example, aware of Regina's unhappiness but certain that it is normal and she should accept it since this is the way things are in their world. He is also insensitive to her privacy and unconcerned with her comfort and freedom. Though he knew her mother was pressuring her into the marriage, that is not unusual based on the values of their world and he probably didn't demand sexual relations as the only thing he wanted was a mother figure for his daughter. As for the privacy issue, well, he is the King (supreme authority and all that) in a kingdom where this is considered normal, so he is desensitized to that, too.
- Queen Eva gets this treatment from Cora fans who hated her treatment of Cora in "The Miller's Daughter", even though the episode that preceded it showed that she had eventually grown out of being a Rich Bitch with no care for peasants. Cora killed her anyway out of Disproportionate Retribution.
- Milah was far from a nice person and allowing Rumple to think that she was gang-raped and killed by pirates for ten years was incredibly cruel, but she is often considered a flat-out evil bitch who deserved to be murdered in cold blood by her ex-husband even though he later became more morally bankrupt than she and would ironically abandon their son in a worse way than she did.
- To contrast with the fans who put them in leather pants, there are some fans who hate Regina and Rumplestiltskin for the things they've done and their inability to change that they act as if they have no redeeming qualities, shades of gray, or valid reasons for their villainy, despite evidence to the contrary.
- This is particularly noticeable in Manhattan and We Are Both reactions. These episodes show them doing nothing evil in the flashbacks, only entering the paths that will lead them to evil due to external circumstances.
- Regina post Heel–Face Turn in particular gets painted a little excessively as a Karma Houdini by some. Most point to her moment stating that she didn't regret the evil she did in her past, which was in Season 3 while she was still in the middle of her turn. While she does often take the moral high ground, criticisms of her behaviour in the search for the Author forget that the entire point of the arc is her learning the very Aesop they were complaining aboutnote . Likewise she fully acknowledges her past mistakes in Season 5 and is the one actively trying to prevent Emma from succumbing to the same fate. The show and other characters also have no problem calling her out when she does something wrong.
- Hook gets a lot of hate from fans (especially Emma/Regina shippers) to the point that there are more fics bashing him on Archive of Our Own than any other character from the show. A lot of fans claim that he's only doing good in order to get into Emma's pants, even when several episodes, particularly "Good Form" and "The Jolly Roger", show that this isn't the case and people who insisted he was playing the entire cast all along while working with the Wicked Witch in Season 3. A lot of fans like to try to act like Hook manipulates an unwilling Emma into kissing him in "Good Form" through emotional blackmail due to saving her, even though in the episode the scene makes it clear that she wanted to kiss him and it is presented as playful. Some fans are unable to forgive him for what he did as the Dark One, while ignoring that Emma forced that condition on him against his will while he was begging her not to since he knew this exact thing would happen or that he sacrificed his life to fix his mistakes. This hate continued even after he endured extensive torture in the Underworld, refused to betray Emma a second time when Hades demanded it of him, was hating himself for what he did more than anyone else, and even felt that he wasn't worth saving. A lot of these fans also ignore that he ended up doing several great heroic deeds that helped defeat Hades, instead portraying him as unhelpful throughout their time there in fanfics.
- Robin Hood is a Nice Guy In-Universe, who goes out of his way to help his friends, loves Regina deeply, and, unlike most of the "heroes" in the show, never does anything too unsympathetic. However, there is a large set of fans who portray him as a jerk who only pretends to be nice. When he first appeared, there was a fan theory that he was evil, which continued even to his death, despite there being little evidence. Some fans even paint him as abusive to both Regina and Marian, even though at worst he was indecisive. Some even blame him for sleeping with Zelena, ignoring that she was pretending to be his wife and had basically raped him. A lot of this comes from Emma/Regina shippers in the form of Die for Our Ship, with some these shippers trying to paint him as uncaring when Emma sacrificed herself to become the Dark One. Some of this also comes from Zelena fans, who feel like he is trying to keep her daughter from her, despite him having every reason to doubt her.
- Neal suffers from truckloads of this. While his abandoning of Emma to prison was a terrible decision that caused her a lot of trauma and grief, he is often made out to have been far more actively malicious than he was to treat the action as crossing the Moral Event Horizon. Many claim he knowingly left a pregnant Emma and that he was a deadbeat father to Henry even though he had no idea Emma was pregnant, being very remorseful upon finding out and making an active effort to be a part of Henry's life afterwards. Some also say he set out to have Emma take the fall for his crime and called the cops on her when that was clearly not his original plan and August was the one who called the cops on her, meaning Neal was at worst an Accomplice by Inaction in this situation. Due to Die for Our Ship, Emma/Hook and Emma/Regina fics often subject him to this, portraying him as an abusive Control Freak who acts Entitled to Have You towards Emma when he actually declared I Want My Beloved to Be Happy.
- Gaston and Moe French in many, many Rumplestiltskin/Belle fics. Actually, anyone that Rumplestiltskin has ever had a problem with is subject to this. Even Ashley Boyd, although she is more likely to be portrayed as a Dumb Blonde than outright malicious.
- In Gaston's case, being a well known Disney Villain does not help matters at all.
- This is retroactively justified when "Her Handsome Hero" reveals Gaston really was villainous after all, albeit not as blatantly, disgustingly, or irredeemably as he was in the Disney film, as he did feel remorse and tried to redeem himself... only to get killed for his troubles, making him regress... much like Rumple.
- Gerda for what she did to Ingrid, although she and her husband were admittedly already this trope for their questionable parenting skills displayed in the Frozen movie. However, her apology in "Shattered Sight" has redeemed her in the eyes of most.
- Even the beloved Belle by hardcore Rumple fans, after banishing Rumple from Storybrooke.
- Season 7's Cinderella has it bad. Many people view her as a whiny brat and a selfish jerk; additionally, a lot of Henry/Drizella shippers paint her as a Clingy Jealous Girl, even though none of that has even been hinted at.
