Unintentionally Sympathetic / Animated Films

• Animalympics: Some viewers saw Joey Gongolong’s boxing opponent Janos Brushteckel as this. Not only did Joey berate him before dishing out a brutal Curb-Stomp Battle, but afterwards anchor Rugs Turkell wastes no time delivering him a brutal recap on why he lost, forcing him to relive his humiliating defeat, saying that he let down his coach, country, mother, and himself, to the point where Janos is in tears. To add insult to injury, Rugs then finishes his rant by telling Janos that he can now let him down, before proceeding to jump up and down on top of the crestfallen Janos’ head.
• Jade winds up being this in Arctic Dogs. She has aspirations of fame and went through it the way she knew how, in the way she would send her inventions to Otto Von Walrus under the promise of fulfilling her dream. When it turns out Otto Von Walrus was using her inventions to build a potential doomsday device, she turns against him but he responds by throwing her in a cell apart from the rest of the heroes. She is vilified by them because apparently if she was stupid enough to be deceived by the villain she's just as evil as he is. Despite the movie wanting us to agree with Swifty in that she did the wrong thing, we know what it's like to be hosed by a worthless friend so Jade is awarded our sympathy.
• Ken from Bee Movie. Yeah, he's got anger issues and he did try to squash Barry, but to be fair, his girlfriend was for all intents and purposes leaving him for Barry (although that wasn't Barry's intention). Can you really blame him for being ticked-off? Also, Ken is allergic to bees, so Barry does pose a threat to Ken (not that Barry intended on harming Ken, of course).
• Cars: Yes, McQueen is still an arrogant jerkwad that destroyed the road at this point, but he did it completely unintentionally and was lost, panicked and confused when he destroyed it. Having lost his ride, gotten lost in an unfamiliar location trying to catch up, and then gets chased by a cop who he thinks is shooting at him, and then he gets forced to fix the road without ever getting a chance to explain himself, with any attempt made afterwards getting immediately shot down by the other characters. And then there’s the whole fan theory about him developing Stockholm Syndrome during his forced stay.
• The main antagonists of Cars 2 are a group of "lemon" cars who plot a widescale act of terrorism in revenge for being mocked. That may seem petty, but if one thinks about it, lemons are essentially like disabled people in real life- looked down upon for being less useful, forced to pay for expensive repairs on a regular basis and potentially being threatened with being phased out, which is not unlike the idea of eugenics. This doesn't justify the villains' plans, but it makes the return to the status quo seem rather depressing, since nothing has improved for the lemons.
• Cats Don't Dance: The scene where a furious Darla sics Max on Danny after he upstages her in "Li'l Arc Angel" is meant to show what a horribly spoiled brat Darla is and how she has no qualms about putting potential rivals back in their place through violent methods. However, quite a lot of viewers noted that while Darla's reaction wasn't justified, her anger was pretty understandable. Danny had not only ruined the entire scene by singing over his fellow extras, but also actively pushed Darla out of the spotlight and stole her solo (while Darla herself, though clearly irritated, had tried and failed to stay in character and pull the scene through to the end). Overall, Danny comes across as less trying to make a name for himself by breaking out of a restrictive role and more like a stage hog pushing everyone aside to have his moment.
• Charming: The three princesses are all presented as stuck-up Alpha Bitch types in comparison to Lenore, but between their life circumstances (namely, the fairy tales they originate from) and the discovery that their fiancé was essentially cheating on them all, they come off as more sympathetic than intended. This especially applies to Snow White; during the scene where the trio's character flaws are shown off, hers are shown to be paranoia and a fear of apples — both of which come off as completely understandable Trauma Buttons instead of flaws.
  Musical Hell: It's funny because multiple attempts on her life have left her with severe PTSD, and now she's no longer marriage material!
• The Carnotaurs in Dinosaur were intended to be portrayed as insane, nonstop killing machines in DVD bonus features, but in the film many fans see them as minor, but developed characters. They seem to be a mated couple who only kill for hunger, are smart enough to know when not to attack the herd, and after one's death, the other goes insane with grief.
• Akiko Glitter from The Emoji Movie was meant to be seen as an antagonist, but she can't help being part of the Just Dance app and being subject to its rules. Plus, it's Hi-5's fault the app was activated in the first place. This, combined with her personality, made her the movie's Ensemble Dark Horse, to the point that a major criticism of the movie is that she gets deleted when the bots catch up to Gene in the JD app, but he doesn't rescue her alongside Hi-5 when he goes to the recycle bin.
• The director's commentary for Kung Fu Panda states this almost word for word about Tai Lung. He is raised up for most of his life believing that he is destined to receive the legendary Dragon Scroll, a belief that his master Shifu actively fed and encouraged. When he is denied that right and Shifu says nothing in his defense, he unsurprisingly goes completely ballistic, attacking Shifu and then rampaging through the village. Interestingly, in the original script Tai Lung's only crimes were a) trying to take the Dragon Scroll and b) attacking his master and father. While this latter crime, filial impiety, was extremely serious in ancient China (and to some extent still is), Values Dissonance caused test audiences to sympathize greatly with Tai Lung since he hadn't hurt anyone else and was only taking out his anger on the one who, arguably, had failed him by not teaching him proper humility while at the same time raising his hopes too high. So the rampage was added in precisely to make him less sympathetic. But even then, he's never stated to have killed anyone during his rampage, and after his escape, he actively avoids hurting any civilians, bypassing the evacuating populace to go directly to the Jade Palace; then there's his fate at Po's hands at the end, being taunted by the panda and given false hope before Po then applies the Wuxi Finger Hold on him despite Tai Lung not being a threat anymore due to simply being too tired and weak from the beating he took, making the whole thing feel like Disproportionate Retribution. All these things amount to Tai Lung firmly fitting this trope, with many fans to this day feeling that he wasn't actually evil, that his final fate was too harsh, and that he deserved the opportunity to repent, reform or try to make amends.
• Luck (2022): Babe's desire to create an utopia where nothing bad happens is hard to reason against, with the counter-arguments being mostly happenstances that could theoretically occur had there only been good luck.
• Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas: In "Donald's Gift", Donald suffers through a stressful day of Christmas-related annoyances. When he gets home and tries to relax with a cup of hot chocolate, Daisy drags him to the mall against his will. Once there, he's bombarded with sound effects that seem to play "We Wish You a Merry Christmas", which stresses him out to the point where he finally snaps and destroys a Christmas display. This causes Daisy and his nephews to ditch him, and a security guard chews him out for having no Christmas spirit. He's supposed to be a grumpy, unlikable Christmas hater, but it's easy to feel sorry for him when many of his Christmas-related grievances are in fact legitimate, and no one ever seems to care about how he feels.
• My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Flash Sentry was The Scrappy of the first film due largely to his romance with Princess Twilight Sparkle, which many viewers disliked due to either feeling that it was badly written, having a different opinion on who Twilight should be with, or both. This led him to be made into a Butt-Monkey in subsequent movies, with Legend of Everfree being the point where some found it went too far. In it, Flash is similarly crushing on Twilight's human counterpart who is not interested in him and has her own Love Interest, causing Sunset Shimmer to tell Flash to get over his feelings for Twilight. While Sunset had more urgent matters to deal with, this ignores Flash's feeling to Princess Twilight, who was reciprocative of them last we've seen. Add Sunset having a way to contact Princess Twilight to determine if she was still interested in Flash and let them have a Long-Distance Relationship or otherwise work things out, it came of as trying too hard to end the romance of a Nice Guy who was willing to put his feelings aside for the sake of others.
• Reeka and Draggle, the two antagonist daughters of Hydia in My Little Pony: The Movie (1986). Sure they're evil, but they have a seriously abusive mother and genuinely sympathetic qualities.
• ParaNorman: Agatha's treatment of the Puritans. While Norman was telling her that she was becoming just as bad as them, that message somewhat falls flat as Agatha's curse wasn't as severe as what the Puritans did to her. They had murdered an innocent 11-year-old child and had gotten away with such a heinous action. Agatha only cursed them to rise from their graves (it's ambiguous as to whether or not her curse had actually killed them, since neither she nor her descendant Norman showed such an ability in life, so it's possible she gained that power after her death) so they could be ridiculed and tormented by the townspeople. While the townspeople would accuse Norman of being behind the zombies and try to lynch him, that was not part of Agatha's plan. She only wanted to make the people "see how rotten" the Puritan judges were. Compare that to the Puritans' act of killing a child and Agatha seems like the lesser of two evils. While getting revenge on someone is wrong, here, is understandable why Agatha wants it on the Puritans.
• Vincent from Over the Hedge. He's spent the entire summer hoarding food to get him through the winter, only for all of it to be destroyed when RJ the raccoon tries to steal it (who, given his size, surely didn't need to take all of it). The two come to an agreement: RJ has to replace everything that he lost, or else he'll be eaten. Vincent is portrayed as the bad guy simply because he's trying to survive — just like every other animal in the movie. Bears Are Bad News, but the fact that Vincent ends up in a Hannibal Lector gurney and mask feels like overkill for an animal that was just trying to reclaim what was rightfully his in the first place. The filmmakers seem to have realized this late in the production and gave Vincent an out-of-the blue monologue about how he got where he is by selling out, betraying, murdering, etc. all of his former friends. This (and Vincent's praise of RJ for being just like him) is of course the catalyst that starts RJ on the path to redemption, but remove those two lines and you've got no villain.
• Captain Hook, the Big Bad of Peter Pan ends up coming across more as a woobie. Portrayed as a sinister threat, he never actually accomplishes anything (except for killing one man, but he was just a minor character), being effortlessly outclassed by Peter Pan in every fight, and even his own crew makes fun of him.
• Pinocchio 3000: A lot of viewers found Scamboli to be sympathetic since he actually starts the movie benevolently (to the point of building an amusement park to please his daughter and the other children of Scamboville) and coming off as rather incompetent when he actually starts acting evil.
• Pocahontas: Percy the pug, who is supposed to be a spoiled and unpleasant purebred dog. The film does this so badly that the only thing that really counts against him is one growl in agreement with Ratcliffe, his loving (to him) master. The rest of the time, he's just enjoying the luxuries that come with being a governor's pet and getting justifiably angry at — similar to Over The Hedge — a raccoon stealing his food.
• Marcel's rivals in Ratatoing. They only cut off his source of fresh ingredients (stealing food from a human restaurant) because they believe his restaurant is hurting their business, and that having to risk their lives once a week just to get ingredients is unreasonable. When they find out that sabotaging Marcel's restaurant didn't really help their business, they're forced to try to steal food anyway. Sure, they encounter the "heroes" and want to take their cheese, but they immediately agree when Greg tells them to get their own cheese because there's enough for everyone... and then the "heroes" decide to capture them and have them sent to a lab anyway.
• Raya and the Last Dragon: In the final act of the film, Raya is meant to be viewed as being just as in the wrong as Namaari, for their inability to trust each other resulted in Namari accidentally killing Sisu, tying into the film's theme regarding the importance of trust. However, Namaari started the world ruining conflict that created the current setting to begin with, having betrayed Raya when they were children, and spending all the years since antagonizing her. While Raya's lack of trust did play a role in causing Sisu's death, it's because she reacted in entirely understandable self-defense upon seeing Namaari begin to tighten the trigger on her crossbow. A crossbow she shouldn't even have been wielding because they were both under parley.
• Toy Story 2: Stinky Pete is meant to be a deserving victim for betraying Woody and his friends, but we can really sympathize with him as he spent pretty much his whole existence sealed in his box on a shelf, watching other toys being sold while never having been sold himself or feeling like he had ever been loved. As far as he's concerned, being put in a museum to live out the rest of his days being admired by visitors is his reward for enduring such isolation and loneliness, and now Woody is going to take that away from him.
  Jessie: Prospector, this isn't fair!
  Stinky Pete: Fair?! I'll tell you what's not fair. Spending a lifetime on a dime store shelf, watching every other toy be sold! Well, finally, my waiting has paid off... and no hand-me-down cowboy doll is gonna mess it up for me now!
• Up: Muntz could be read as this to some. While whether or not we're intended to like him is debatable, it's obvious that he's supposed to be in the wrong because it's implied that he killed tourists who came to Paradise Falls offscreen and tried to murder his biggest fan and a child. However, many fans found themselves feeling sorry for Muntz because of his sad backstory: he was unjustly labeled as a fraud and rejected by the scientific community, eluded by a stupid bird for sixty years, all by himself and lost his mind all because of a bird. Because of this, many fans found themselves rooting for Muntz and felt sorry for him.