Unintentionally Sympathetic / Live-Action TV

• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
  • A surprising number of viewers apparently felt sorry for Skye's ex-boyfriend, despite the fact that his selfish actions resulted in multiple deaths... because Coulson left him to fend for himself in Hong Kong while fitted with a bracelet that would prevent him from hacking at the end of the episode.
  • Grant Ward, despite being a killer and a traitor was shown to have deep emotional turmoil caused by having been abused as a child and then turned into a killer by a sadistic HYDRA agent when he was only 17. He seemed to grasp and understand the wrong in the things he did when he's imprisoned, and he was so tormented that he attempted suicide at least once. Many fans got behind him and wanted him redeemed while the writers didn't share that same viewpoint. Any attempts they made to make him irredeemable either towed the line for many or came off as forced and only sought to alienate his fanbase and call the writers out on Villain Decay.
• Arrested Development sets up GOB as the least likable Bluth sibling, with the first few episodes emphasising his insensitive womanising and the fact that his "career" as a magician is an exercise in extreme self-delusion supported by his family's money. However, the fact that he's openly treated as The Un-Favourite by his (even less-likable) parents, and that his constant attempts to interfere with Bluth Company business show a deep insecurity about the fact that he was passed over in favour of his younger brother from a very young age, got this trope going quite early on. By Season 3 it's increasingly obvious that most, if not all, of his front is a lie: that he is not only a "Well Done, Son" Guy but so desperate for the approval of anyone in his family that he'll do nearly anything they ask him to without question, but that most of his "conquests" actually involve him breaking down about his family problems while the woman in question looks bored and ignores him. Never has the title of Jerkass Woobie been more well-earned. The fact that he's often contrasted with Michael, who is often regarded as Unintentionally Unsympathetic by fans, actually just makes this trope more noticeable.
• As the World Turns: Julia Lindsay, the Betty to Jack's Archie and Carly's Veronica. After several months with Jack, she leaves him when she realizes that he's still in love with Carly. After Carly leaves Jack at the altar, he goes running after Julia—who rebuffs him as (a) she's trying to get on with her life, and (b) she (correctly) suspects he isn't over Carly. He spends months courting her and convincing her otherwise. She finally gives in, only to have Carly resurface on their wedding day, and for Jack to promptly begin mooning over her at every opportunity, ignoring his wife. . .and ignoring the fact that all this is slowly driving her insane. When she miscarries and he dumps her right afterwards (and confides to Carly that he's relieved, as this means he has nothing to connect him to Julia) , it's the straw that breaks the camel's back. Every terrible thing that Julia does afterwards is clearly made to make the viewer feel sorry for Jack and Carly, but given their abhorrent treatment of her, it has the opposite effect. Not until Julia kidnaps and rapes Jack (desperate to replace the child she miscarried) did viewer sympathies shift.
• Ashley from the "Ask Ashley" sketches on All That. The joke about her is that she seems cute and friendly, but whenever she reads a letter from one of her viewers, she explodes with rage at them. The thing is, her reaction isn't that unreasonable—the kids she gets letters from are almost always blithering idiots who needed help with the simplest of tasks (for instance, one of them somehow didn't know he was actually a kangaroo). This is actually lampshaded in one episode, wherein a therapist tries to get her to tone down her aggression a little, only to explode with rage herself upon reading one of the letters a viewer sent to Ashley.
• The 2002-2004 PBS show American Family (not to be confused with the 1973 PBS documentary An American Family) has one of these in the character of Evangelina Gonzalez, played by Rachel Ticotin. The show tries to make you think of her as a shrewish and uptight traitor to her ethnicity simply because she's a motivated Type A-type businesswoman who speaks flawless English. Instead, you find yourself preferring her over her professional martyr weakling sister Nina.
• Better Call Saul: In the season 4 finale, Jimmy revealing to Kim that he didn't mean any of the kind words he said about his late brother Chuck and that he had simply been crying Crocodile Tears to get the New Mexico Bar Association to reinstate his law license is treated by the show as a Moral Event Horizon, especially with how betrayed Kim is at the affair. Many fans of the show, however, have noted that since Chuck did absolutely everything in his power to screw Jimmy over no matter the cost to himself or anyone else (a vendetta that Kim herself became collateral damage of), Jimmy was well within his rights to despise his brother, and when expressing his true feelings about Chuck got him nothing but judgement from everyone else then it was logical that he would try the exact opposite strategy.
• Whether Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer deserved the audience sympathy he got after being chipped, whipped, and generally getting his ass kicked by characters, writers, and the universe alike is still highly debatable. Some do stick with the writers' interpretation (and intended response) that it was karmic retribution, deserved or brought on himself. Others think of him as a Jerkass Woobie whose ongoing Humiliation Conga made the heroes look like bigger assholes than him!
• Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory is indeed a Jerkass, but the things that his equally quite unlikable friends do to him tend to be rather mean-spirited, making it hard not to feel at least a little sympathy for him. Many episodes have the other characters acting needlessly nasty towards Sheldon unprovoked or giving him Disproportionate Retribution.
  • One rather blatant example is "The Electric Can Opener Fluctuation". After Sheldon and his friends return from the North Pole, he discovers that his friends faked data in order to get him to be less obnoxious. They tell him this AFTER he sent out an email to the university about how he'd discovered magnetic monopoles, and as a result he is humiliated and mocked. Even if they were planning on telling him before he sent out the email and just didn't realize how fast he would do it, the others just shrug him off and act like he's overreacting (the only one who has his back is Penny). We're presumably supposed to side with them, but can you really blame him for being upset and betrayed considering that they humiliated him and on top of that faked data — which is a big breach of ethics in the academic community — just to get him to be less annoying?
  • In "The Bozeman Reaction", Sheldon and Leonard's apartment is broken into and ransacked with numerous valuables stolen. For the remainder of the episode, Sheldon is paranoid about the burglars returning, is uncomfortable sleeping and being alone in the apartment, asks for a security system to be installed, and finally decides he no longer feels safe in Pasadena and is moving to Bozeman, Montana. While moving to a different state is admittedly a bit of an overreaction, all of the other ways Sheldon reacts to the robbery are perfectly understandable after dealing with such a frightening experience, yet the cast treats it like it's his usual antics. In fact, Leonard seems more upset with Sheldon's behavior than he does over the robbery despite the fact that his laptop was stolen as a result.
  • In "The Agreement Dissection", after Priya abolishes the Roommate Agreement, we have Sheldon coming home to discover that Leonard, Howard and Raj got Greek food, which they know that he loathes, on Pizza Night just to tick him off, which was not justified at all — none of them had said anything about not liking pizza, and Leonard hates Greek food just as much as Sheldon does and yet he's okay with getting it for no other reason than to make Sheldon angry. When Sheldon points out that Leonard hates Greek food, Leonard just replies "Not as much as you." How exactly is Sheldon in the wrong for being angry about this?
  • "The Apology Insufficiency" has Sheldon accidentally telling a government agent that Howard is the one who crashed the Mars Rover, resulting in Howard not getting a security clearance. Thus, Howard gets ticked-off at Sheldon and refuses to accept his apology, and we're apparently supposed to side with him. Except that A) Howard is responsible for not getting the job, he was the idiot who crashed the rover while attempting to impress a girl and didn't even have clearance to enter the control room in the first place, and B) Sheldon telling her was an accident and he DID feel genuinely guilty about it. Nobody ever points either of these things out to Howard, though at least they don't join him in lambasting Sheldon.
  • In "The Habitation Configuration", Wil Wheaton helps Sheldon out with his Web Show, "Fun With Flags". Amy repeatedly stops filming to berate him for being a poor actor, and Wil tries to take it in stride the first few times, but after a while becomes fed up and says that he can't do it if Amy's being a pain, and Amy gets angry at Sheldon for not calling him out. We're led to believe that Sheldon was wrong for not taking her side, even though Amy's the one who initiated the conflict and it's obvious she's doing it purely out of petty jealousy. Wil and Sheldon were right to want her to stop being such a jerk to Wil, and yet everyone sides with Amy.
  • This is even lampshaded by Sheldon in one episode: after Leonard whines about Sheldon being a pain, Sheldon retorts that Leonard is actually pretty mean to him much of the time despite Leonard claiming that he's really tolerant of Sheldon's behavior.
• Maria Joaquina from Carrusel. Granted, she was not always the friendliest person. But nobody would blame her for not liking Cirilo back. In no way is she obligated to return his love romantically for any reason. Sure, sure, his parents donated blood to her mother. And he was always showering her with unwanted gifts and attention. But is she truly required to be anything other than civil and respectful towards him? That, and she is nowhere near as cruel as her other rich classmate, Jorge.
• Cole Turner from Charmed is very much this. He spent most of his life working for the forces of evil but became good because he fell in love with Phoebe Haliwell. After a great deal of work, he became a normal human. He ended up being possessed by the Source of all Evil and the Charmed Ones had to vanquish him. After he came back, the sisters just flat out dismiss him as evil and didn't trust him from the start. Cole tried over and over again to prove that he was good until he snapped and become evil. This caused a lot of Phoebe fans to hate Phoebe and feel sympathetic to Cole. Furthermore, a despondent Cole even realised that he was losing the battle with his dark side and tried to trick them into killing him at one point, but Phoebe realises that he's trying to commit Suicide by Cop and refuses to do it out of petty revenge. Meaning that once again, every death he caused from that point on was technically her fault.
• Cobra Kai:
  • Ironically, the treatment of Daniel LaRusso's past and how it affected him. While plenty of time is spent showing how Johnny was affected by the loss at the tournament and Kreese's actions after, Daniel's seems rather like they're being downplayed. One such example is Daniel's story of how he went down the hill on his bike, and it's treated as if this is a story he will not shut up about and implies he blows it out of proportion by his son's confusion over it when Daniel's mother tells the story. In all reality, this was a horrible experience for him where he goes home, tearfully throws his bike in the trash, and argues with his mother, while begging to go back to their old lives. The last time as they're going inside the boy again quietly says, "I just want to go home." and states he wishes to take the bus from now on due to it being safer. He's begging to go where he is safe in both major and minor cases in the film. Yet his emotional issues are often played off as, "Not being able to let go of a 33-year-old rivalry," despite showing he does not blame Johnny for what he'd done but the dojo that had in fact poisoned his mind. The way Daniel's feelings are treated is fairly strange considering the show's cast and creators have said the show is about shades of grey and that both sides have valid points. And there's the fact that when Daniel makes mistakes, he tries to fix them.
  • In season 1, while Daniel certainly did play a hand in ruining Sam's first relationship with Miguel, he also had actual valid reasons to distrust and be concerned about Cobra Kai, misgivings primarily directed at Cobra Kai’s philosophy and at whatever teacher (Johnny in this case) is putting that philosophy in kids’ heads. His experiences at the hands of Mike Barnes and Terry Silver (bullying, violence, physical injury, at least three life-threatening situations, manipulation, deception, coercion) and his residual trauma from those experiences have him on guard about any Cobra Kai student.^note It shows in Johnny's warning to Miguel vs. Daniel's warning to Sam. Johnny's is targeted and specific, and from a place of pettiness, in a "I know the LaRussos. I have a history with them. You can't trust them." Whereas for Daniel, his warning is from a place of principles, and a cautionary one based on his past experiences of "Cobra Kai as an entity can't be trusted. Their teaching produces bullies. Stay away from Cobra Kai students."
  • In general, many of Daniel's actions and reactions come off as more sympathetic when viewed through the prism of his experiences with Terry Silver in The Karate Kid Part III. The show treats Daniel as overreacting in a lot of situations, but this is largely because the show mostly focuses on the events of the first Karate Kid movie while only touching on the events of Part III in passing.
  • Daniel's decision in season 1 to manipulate Armand Zakarian into raising the rent on the strip mall where Cobra Kai is located is treated as Daniel overreacting after Johnny spraypainted a penis on one of Daniel's billboards. While Daniel was certainly in the wrong in how he went about it and deserved to be called out by Amanda for the collateral damage this caused, many viewers have pointed out that he was also in the right to respond to Johnny's stunt to begin with. What Johnny did was damaging to Daniel's business image/branding at a time when he was dealing with Tom Cole trying to poach business from him through ads that were making not-so-subtle digs about Daniel's business being unpatriotic and environmentally irresponsible. Having his billboard vandalized with such vulgar graffiti could have served to further draw potential customers away from Daniel and to Cole. Not only that, but Daniel's daughter Sam gets bullied at school as a result of Johnny's stunt, as it gives Kyler more fuel to slutshame her after she'd fought off his attempt to date-rape her.
  • Hawk's beatdown of Brucks in "King Cobra" is supposed to be seen as another example of him being corrupted by Kreese's influence. But since Brucks was, along with Kyler, one of the main perpetrators of the bullying against the nerd group of Eli, Miguel, and Demetri back in Season 1, it instead comes across as Hawk dishing some much needed Laser-Guided Karma. The show cuts back briefly to Eli "pre-Hawk" while he's bashing in Brucks's face lends some credence to this.
  • Miguel beating up Hawk at Coyote Creek in "Lull" is meant to be a sign of him being corrupted by Kreese's teachings. However, by that point, Hawk had vandalized Miyagi-Do and stolen Miyagi's Medal of Honor, a dojo that happened contain one of Miguel's friends (Demetri) and his ex-girlfriend (Sam), and this act had cost Johnny a fair number of his students. And Hawk was parading the medal around with no remorse of what he had done, so it's hard not to agree with Miguel. Johnny calls him out on this, even though he would've handed Hawk's ass to him had he known about the Medal of Honor.
  • Sam and Miguel kissing at Moon's party in "Pulpo" is treated as wrong, given that they're both cheating on their significant others (Robby and Tory) at the time. At the same time, though, considering this happened because Sam had just found out that Robby had lied to her by withholding from her that Miguel had returned the Medal of Honor, it can be hard not to be sympathetic to her.
• Wyatt's sisters on Crash & Bernstein are intended to be seen as girls who don't seem to respect the fact that Wyatt is a boy who likes boy things and are trying to get rid of Crash. However, it's easy to see things from their perspective: they're fed up with all the hijinx Crash is causing around the house and in their lives in general, so it's hard to blame them for not liking him. But no, The Complainer Is Always Wrong.
• Degrassi: The Next Generation
  • Season 2 of Next Class had Frankie's racism storyline, in which the aforementioned character, who at that point had always been depicted as the Only Sane Man of her family and friends, gets publicly labeled as a racist due to drawing a poster depicting a rival sports team as zoo animals, specifically the team's captain, an African-Canadian girl, as a gorilla. The storyline got this reception from fans for a multitude of reasons, namely that Frankie was far from the only person who worked on the poster and was singled out unfairly (implied to be purely because she was the only Caucasian member of her friend group), that said poster only happened in response to the opposing team pranking her and her friends first with a very mean spirited fire-alarm-locker-room scheme unprovoked (which arguably qualified as sexual misconduct), and the fact that viewers felt the show was going out of its way to demonize Frankie for what many saw as an genuinely innocent mistake born from youthful ignorance and privilege. Fan backlash to the plot got so bad that the showrunners, as well as Frankie's actress Sara Waisglass, were forced to make numerous statements online explaining that even if she didn't mean it, it was still offensive.
• Desperate Housewives:
  • Paul Young. In season 1, his wife commits suicide. As it turns out, Mary Alice was being blackmailed by Martha Huber, who didn't even care, she just wanted money. Paul then murders her with the blender she stole from him. After this, we meet her sister, Felicia Tillman, who knew Paul from the past. Suspicious of Paul, but lacking proof, she cuts off her fingers and spills blood in his house. He's caught, arrested, and sentenced to life in prison. During this time, not a single one of his neighbors, who were best friends with his wife and had known him for years, came to visit him. When Felicia is discovered, he is released. Unsurprisingly, he wants to ruin the lives of those who betrayed him. And, when you consider what the housewives have pulled, involving leaving a man to die, and that they have forgiven far greater acts, like Katherine Mayfair, who can honestly blame him?
  • Mike Deflino's mother Adele, is supposed to come off like an overbearing busybody, but she actually raises perfectly good points that Susan should really learn to cook and clean her own house as a full-grown adult instead of relying on her teenaged daughter to do it, and that if Susan got a decent-paying job instead of part time work as an illustrator (which we never see her doing), Mike wouldn't be working himself to the bone trying to support not only himself and Susan, but Julie and the unborn baby as well. Mike even ended up hooked on painkillers because he hurt his back working so much, but Susan gives him No Sympathy about it and instead blames it all on Mike and Orson (for supplying Mike the drugs) instead of taking into account how her demanding behaviour impacted her husband — she even barges in on Orson while he's with a patient to confront him. Susan herself doesn't even have a decent rebuttal to anything Adele says and resorts to pretending her water broke so she can get out of the situation and tells Mike it's because his mother "make her crazy". The fact Adele genuinely apologizes and says she didn't mean to hurt Susan's feelings also doesn't do any favours for Susan, since she never admits Adele's intentions were good or that she could stand to be more mature — Mike sides with Susan because she's in labour and Adele doesn't show up again after that.
• Romantic False Lead Kinu on A Different World. The viewer is supposed to hate her as she's an obstacle to Dwayne and Whitley getting together, and she does in fact get nastier as time goes on. But who can blame her with her boyfriend blatantly ogling and drooling over another woman who's constantly hanging around and trying to interfere in their relationship? As bitchy as she gets, she never says or does anything to harm Whitley, she just wants her to leave them alone.
• Empire: Cookie's older sister Candace is portrayed as an uptight, snobbish sell-out who married a rich white man she met in college. The implication is that she forgot where she came from after marrying into money, whereas Cookie has always been true to her roots. However, Candace still grew up in the exact same ghetto with Cookie and had the same struggles growing up. Her only "crimes" are wanting a better life for herself and her children, and wanting little to do with the endless complexities of Cookie's life.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Stannis Baratheon was this for many viewers, admittedly due to his more nuanced portrayal in the source material. He's viewed as a monster both in-universe and by the showrunners for killing his brother Renly, despite the fact that Renly explicitly plans to kill Stannis and makes fun of him for his personality, which comes off as insulting to audience members who aren't socially adept. Other factors are his nature as a badass frontline general and Reasonable Authority Figure to the Night's Watch (in contrast to everyone else in the show) and his intense commitment to duty and law. Oh, and also the fact that by law he is Robert's heir. His burning of Shireen, his daughter, is seen either as his Moral Event Horizon or as a plot contrivance to turn the audience against him. It also doesn't help the writers' case that Stephen Dillane is considered one of the best actors on the show.
  • Robert Baratheon, as well. Back in Season 1, he's portrayed as a pathetic man who is stuck in the past, particularly for how he's unable to let go of Lyanna. The showrunners clearly intended Robert to be an unsympathetic ruler due to his hounding of Glory Days as well as his whoring attitude. However, The Reveal of the true nature of her and Rhaegar's relationship through this episode painted Robert in a more sympathetic light in the eyes of fans. To realize Robert destroyed his life pining after a cheating woman who never loved him, which ruined his marriage and caused his death. Also, for all misunderstandings of Rhaegar's motives, he still saved the realm from the Mad King. And Robert was further vindicated in Season 8, where his views regarding the last Targaryens were completely right, with Daenerys, the woman Robert wanted to execute, finishing the plot her father started, and being generally right in regarding the Targaryens and the Dothraki as a threat.
  • Considering that one of the first thing Daenerys does when she invades Meereen is crucify his father, who spoke out against butchering the slave children but was overruled, then forces him to become her fiancé so that Meereen will accept her as a Queen, it can be really easy to feel sorry for Hizdahr zo Loraq, especially after he's unceremoniously slaughtered by Harpies during the Season 5 finale and nobody seems to care.
  • Daenerys' Face–Heel Turn in the later parts of the eighth season was meant to show her as fallen into Targaryen madness and become so unstable that other characters were right to distrust her and plot against her, especially with her ignoring their advice. Fans of Dany quickly pointed out that Daenerys had sacrificed more than any other character in the name of her cause (including losing her closest friends, most of her army, and multiple dragons), and most of the advice she was given actually made things worse (such as not simply burning the Red Keep), so it is understandable that she would be angry and not listen to them. It came across as a understandable response to multiple Diabolus ex Machina and the selfishness and idiocy of everyone else, rather than her being crazy. That being said, that sympathy disappeared for most viewers when she burns down King's Landing, killing millions of innocent people, and then justifies it as being Cersei's fault when Jon confronts her about it. And at the same time, many Daenerys fans couldn't even imagine her acting this way, even though she does have have sadistic and narcissistic tendencies. So, this example really zig-zags between Unintentionally Sympathetic and Draco in Leather Pants.
• Scott Baldwin from General Hospital. He was portrayed as a bad guy because he hated two of the show's heroes: Luke and Sonny. Why did he hate Luke? Luke raped his wife and then ran off with her. Why did he hate Sonny? Sonny got his under-aged daughter hooked on drugs, slept with her, and forced her to strip. Yeah, Scott did a lot of bad things, but his grievances were very valid.
• Glee:
  • Finn in the episode "Theatricality", who essentially got thrown out of his own home for using a bad word to refer to Kurt's interior design choices. We're supposed to hate him because he uses an anti-gay slur, but Kurt had been pursuing him over a long period of time knowing he was straight, even to the point of encouraging their parents to get together because he would have more opportunity to seduce Finn if they were stepbrothers. Kurt gets called out for his part in this situation later on (though only after multiple fans called out the writers), and it is also established to be a bad habit of Finn's: resorting to low blows against someone when he's frustrated with them (i.e., calling Brittany stupid, calling out Santana for being closeted, and using a slur to describe Sue's baby who has Down Syndrome). Notably, in all of these situations, Finn is treated as the bad guy, no matter what the other person did to earn his ire.
  • Also, Quinn. Yes, she starts out a bully who cheated on her boyfriend with his best friend and then lied to said boyfriend that he was the father of the resulting baby and then made him help pay her medical bills. However, she is only sixteen when all this happens, with two deeply religious and conservative parents who kick her out of her home when they find out. The best friend, a trouble-making bad boy, fed her alcohol until she agreed to sleep with him, and the timeline suggests that the cheating occurred early on in her relationship with the boyfriend, who cheats on her twice before he knows about her own indiscretion. As a result, she is one of the biggest reasons for the many splits in the fandom.
• Similarly with Guiding Light's Annie. As despicable as most of her actions were, they're pretty understandable when you consider how much Josh jerked her around regarding his feelings for and involvement with Reva and how often the two of them would practically taunt her.
• Despite being a large, carnivorous dinosaur, the Ceratosaurus in Jurassic Fight Club is an unusual example from a documentary (albeit of the speculative kind). Compared to the Allosaurus, it is repeatedly stated to be smaller, weaker, and an obsolete relic from a bygone age, destined to be usurped by the superior Allosaurus. Except, the Ceratosaurus is the combatant who gets humanized far more, being both the underdog in the scenario and having a mate (who the Allosaurus kills), and is apparently smart enough to feel grief for his mate’s death and attack his enemy because of it, while the Allosaurus is depicted as a bloodthirsty loner who barges into the territory belonging to the Ceratosaurus pair and instead of simply chasing them away (since they don’t pose a threat to him), he kills both of them in cold blood. The end result makes the Ceratosaurus look like an innocent couple lost in the woods while the Allosaurus is the Ax-Crazy serial killer who mercilessly slaughters them with ease.
• On Kirby Buckets, a lot of viewers feel this way about the title character's older sister Dawn. She's meant to be written as a foil who is jealous of Kirby's growing popularity as an animator and has been trying to antagonize him since then, often by pulling pranks on him. Unfortunately, she spends every episode of the show being humiliated and ridiculed not just by her brother but by everyone else on the show, and is more often than not The Unfavorite between her two parents. Even in her solo stories she almost always comes out on the losing end, not doing anything to deserve it. As the series went on, Kirby often was just as bad towards Dawn as she was towards him, the only difference being that Kirby would get away with it while Dawn would be punished. Yes, Dawn may be a jerk, but after everything that’s happened to her in the series it’s easy to see things from her point of view.
• Law & Order: Criminal Intent has Dr. Kelmer from “The Good Doctor”. He is depicted as an abusive, Jerkass, Control Freak throughout the episode. But he generally comes across as just a guy whose wife has repeatedly disappeared before and he's just tired of dealing with her and her enabling friends and family. His wife is shown to be cheating on him, repeatedly disappears on binges and has a history of drugs abuse, multiple affairs and suicide attempts. Her enabling family does not deny any of this, while claiming that Kelmer was abusive yet nothing is ever shown onscreen. They instantly suspect him when he calls looking for her, and they don't even seem to care about finding her body. Making him the only one actively looking for her. They had no body, no forensic evidence; they couldn't even prove that she was dead. Goren even flat out stated that he wanted to prosecute the guy because of how smug he is. Even the circumstantial evidence they did have didn't hold up to Audience Awareness Advantage. His flight was shown but he didn't have a body as the attendant was there with him when he took off. Her cousin said her therapist told her that he was going to harm her yet the therapist stood behind doctor patient confidentiality. In the end it is out right said that he was convicted for being a Smug Snake. While he wasn't a nice guy, nothing shown proved that he was a killer. Given the Moral Myopia he had to deal with, his actions come across as far more understandable.
• LazyTown: Robbie is a Harmless Villain who wants kids to be lazy and quiet so he can get some sleep, and as such many LazyTown fans found Robbie easy to relate to as they got older, especially parents. A great amount of fanfiction and comments on official LazyTown videos are sympathetic to Robbie, especially in instances where everyone was really being noisy or he really needed sleep.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power:
  • The snow troll killed in the first episode gets some light-hearted sympathy from fans who point out he was minding his own business in his cave until a bunch of troublemakers came to his house looking for the long-disappeared Dark Lord.
  • The Dark Lord himself, given that some viewers find his Retired Monster / Reformed, but Rejected version of the events convincing and the first Season does not show him doing anything particularly evil.
  • Adar (an Elf who was captured and corrupted by Morgoth) garnered a great more sympathy than intended particularly in the scene where Galadriel brutally interrogates him. His anguished cries while chained up that he has as much right to live as much anyone else in the world is utterly heartbreaking and Galadriel responding to this by stating he’s a blight that needs to be wiped out is horribly cruel. Not helping this is that Galadriel got Adaptational Jerkass into a Darker and Edgier and less likeable character so it’s not too difficult to feel sorry for Adar in this instance.
• Frank Burns from M*A*S*H is similar to Rimmer in that, though he's obviously supposed to be such a Jerkass we don't like him, the hints of a terribly abusive family life and the constant treatment as the Butt-Monkey make people sympathise with him anyway. And unlike Rimmer, there's a lot more evidence for Frank's malevolence (for example, Frank has several times tried to get Hawkeye charged with mutiny, at least once on trumped up charges, knowing that the odds of Hawkeye being hanged until dead if found guilty are quite high).
• Morgana from Merlin (2008) does make a Face–Heel Turn in Season 3 to become the main villain, and she does some legitimately evil things. But the set-up for her turn to the dark side has been a sore spot for many fans; she's introduced as a heroic ward of King Uther with magic powers she didn't know about. As magic is outlawed in Camelot - and Uther infamously executed magic users in the Great Purge - she fears for her life under his rule. She also first becomes disillusioned with him when she tries to stop him executing a child, and then wanting justice for him executing Gwen's father. These serve to make her far more sympathetic than intended, especially once Season 2 comes along; Merlin sees the trauma she's suffering because of her powers and he considers revealing his magic to her so that she can have a friend and confidant who understands what she's going through. He doesn't...because Kilgarrah the dragon claims she's dangerous and not to be trusted. The dragon's warnings only come true thanks to Moral Luck; Morgana's evil half-sister Morgause is able to corrupt her by being that ally Merlin could have been. Even that is brought on by Morgana getting screwed by other characters; Morgause makes her the subject of a spell without her knowledge^note The spell causes everyone in the city to fall into a coma, allowing Morgause's army to enter and assassinate Uther. Morgana agreed that she wanted Uther stopped, but gets knocked unconscious before Morgause tells her what's going to happen. and Merlin decides the best way to break the spell is to trick Morgana into drinking poison. Merlin chooses to poison his friend because it's more convenient for him than letting her know anything about what's happening to her. The writers overcompensate when she returns after a Time Skip now as a pantomime villain who has no problem murdering innocent people - but this just results in a gaping hole of how she became that irredeemably evil. The whole thing was summarized in "The Problem of Morgana".
  "Merlin, our protagonist, tries to kill his friend because someone else told him she was evil."
• On Mighty Med, Alan is supposed to be the Normo-hating snobbish nephew of the titular hospital's chief of staff Horace and a foil to Kaz and Oliver. But it's hard not to take his side at times because of his tragic backstory, where he was taken away from his father at a young age and always treated like dirt by everyone at the hospital.
• Once Upon a Time
  • Sir Percival. Many fans have compared his attempt for revenge against Regina to be similar to that of Inigo Montoya; both had their families killed by their nemesis when they were young and now they seek to kill the nemesis. The fact that he is unceremoniously killed by Charming after his failed attempt to kill Regina also came off as tragic to many fans.
  • The Black Fairy. Her son — Rumple was destined to be Savior, but a fairy foolishly showed her a prophecy that said he was destined to be a killed by a great evil born that same winter who had a crescent moon scar. She then became an unhinged Mama Bear desperate to save her son, Jumping Off the Slippery Slope until her efforts to protect her son ensured that she became the evil she was trying to protect her son from. The Blue Fairy then banished her to the Dark Realm — even as she was crying that she would find her son. In the Dark Realm she lost every bit of humanity and became obsessed with becoming more powerful. The Season finale then reveals that her son was never in danger; if good and evil decided to do the right thing during the Final Battle, they would both be given a "happy beginning"; in fact she was never destined to kill the Savior — her grandson Gideon was, she was just the one destined to put him on that path — she was a Cosmic Plaything.
  • Drizella. Though she's meant to be as bad as the other major villains, she comes close to Not Evil, Just Misunderstood given her tragic backstory and kind treatment of Gretel, and one could argue that she reacted rather well to her tragedy, at least when compared to Regina. In fact, putting aside her part in the Seattle Dark Curse, it can be argued that she is a contender for being the least evil Arc Villain. Regina, Gold, Zelena, and other villains both redeemed and unredeemed have murdered hundreds during their past days of evil. Drizella's kill count? Three, one of which was an act of self-defense. There's also the fact that none of Drizella's victims seemed particularly innocent.
• T-Bag at various points in Prison Break. This is partly because he had an egregiously awful childhood and partly because he was very well-acted by Robert Knepper. Late on in the show's run, he ends up showing more compassion for a wounded foe than Linc, but by the end he's turned despicable again.
• Alfred Tomson from The Pillars of the Earth mini-series. He starts off nice and sympathetic enough, but starts going downhill quick and picking up speed. He becomes a jerkass to Jack early on, accuses Jack's mother of witchcraft, starts stalking Aliena, eventually pushes her into marrying him, beats her when he can't get it up on their wedding night, screws up the construction of the church, accidentally causing over seventy deaths (though it is made to look like his fault due to his arrogance and incompetence), and throws Aliena out onto the street after she gives birth to a red headed son 1`Q(Alfred and Aliana both have brown hair, Jack has red). With all of these horrible things he does, he certainly crosses the Moral Event Horizon, but what makes him unintentionally sympathetic is that all of this comes off as horribly unnecessary. It is as if the writers were trying to make him look as bad and pathetic as possible specifically to make Jack look better. He becomes a meta example of The Woobie.
  • Apart from the witchcraft accusation, most of this is how Alfred behaved in the book. However, his motivation for all this was better handled; he was shown to have a somewhat legitimate grounds to feel that his father showed Jack preferential treatment, and Jack himself wasn't especially likeable as a teenager. Alfred doesn't come off as sympathetic by any means, but his antagonist status never feels contrived.
• In Power Rangers Ninja Storm "Shane's Karma Part 1", Kapra and Marah were simply trying to have their high school reunion on the beach. They were trying to stay out of Lothor's way and the Rangers simply crashed their party when they weren't really trying anything evil. It's hard not to feel sorry for them at that point, even if they are villains.
• Arnold Rimmer from Red Dwarf is most frequently described in-series as a "smeghead" or a "git". He's petty, vindictive, spiteful, a backstabber, selfish, cowardly, hypocritical, a Know-Nothing Know-It-All, aggressively nerdy, two-faced and... well, he has a lot of character flaws. However, he does have some genuine, deeply buried noble aspects and his combination of stubborn determination to achieve his goals despite how hopeless they are, combined with how often he is made the Butt-Monkey, lead to many people sympathizing with him, despite the fact that in this case of Jerkass Woobie, The Woobie part in no way excuses or justifies the jerkass part. He's the same in the novels as well. Yet the fans still love him.
• Isabella from Robin Hood is clearly meant to be unsympathetic by the end of the show's run, thereby justifying Robin and Guy's attempt to kill her (which ends up successful... at the cost of their own lives). In that case, it probably wasn't such a good idea to have her back-story consist of Guy selling her into an abusive marriage to a sadistic rapist at the age of thirteen, or to have Robin constantly breaking into her bedroom at night to make thinly-veiled threats, flip-flopping in regards to his attitude and feelings toward her, and breaking every promise he ever makes to her. And any woman who is put into a Betty and Veronica Love Triangle with Kate as their rival is inevitably going to look good in comparison. Even Isabella ordering the execution of Meg, which is meant to be her Moral Event Horizon, is somewhat understandable, considering that she frees Meg from an arranged marriage only to catch her releasing a prisoner that has already made at least two attempts on Isabella's life. Likewise, the fact that she is one of the few characters on the show to avoid carrying the Idiot Ball earned her extra points, and when she's Ax-Crazy, she manages to outsmart everyone around her.
• Roseanne / The Conners: Downplayed with David. It's a fair assessment that running out on his family for ten years was a crappy thing to do, but the reason he ran out was because he suffered a nervous breakdown after the death of his brother and caring for a new baby while his marriage to Darlene was falling apart. He returns to Lanford only to be initially banned from seeing his children by Dan, who could have stayed out of it and let Darlene deal with her estranged husband, but Dan was clearly projecting his own daddy issues onto David.
• The cast of Seinfeld, as revealed by the negative reaction to the finale in which they get their comeuppance. Possibly spurred by the ones that triumphed over them being the even more vapid and petty side characters. The audience may have wanted the main four to get what they had coming to them, but not by way of a weird judgment driven by people worse (in some cases far worse) than they were. It doesn't help that the premise of how they get their comeuppance is a comically flagrant misuse of a "Duty to Rescue" law that directly contradicts national Good Samaritan law. In other words, their comeuppance came from a time when they were actually obeying federal laws.
• On Sesame Street:
  • Bert. He's admittedly a stick-in-the-mud, likes dull things, and can be cranky, but there are some occasions where Ernie, who is (presumably) the character kids are supposed to relate to more (since he's meant to be "the fun one"), goes from doing silly things to just plain being rude. In one particular example, Bert plans to give his nephew Brad a bath, and Ernie criticizes him for not giving the baby any toys to play with. Bert agrees with Ernie and tells him that it's certainly OK to put a few toys in the tub... only for Ernie to throw too many toys in, to the point where he can no longer safely bathe Brad, and doesn't apologise for it, instead getting into the tub himself.
  • Oscar the Grouch in one "Trash Gordon" skit is supposed to just be being a sourpuss like usual when he complains that the story he reads (in which Trash Gordon has no problem except for being tired, which immediately resolves itself when he realises he's on "Planet Vacation") is boring. However, he had a point because the story never went anywhere at all.
• The Sopranos: Due to Tony Soprano being the protagonist, genuinely funny, and masterfully acted by the late James Gandolfini, the audience was far more sympathetic to him than showrunner David Chase expected. Chase kept writing Tony as doing increasingly heinous crimes, but the audience never really stopped "rooting for" him and the writers were aware that his tragic circumstances build a compelling bathos.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Original Series: Spock in "The Galileo Seven" was meant to be in the wrong for not giving the dead Red Shirt a proper burial, even though doing so would put everyone's lives at risk. His not being aggressive to the attacking aliens and trying to scare them away instead was meant to be the wrong choice too because they didn't scare away, even though he had no way of knowing they wouldn't.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
    • Worf especially when you look at the series as a whole is a lot more sympathetic than he has any right to be. While yes he is a grumpy Jerkass Proud Warrior Race Guy who suggests often short-sighted, violent or xenophobic course of actions, it’s still extremely unfair to see him get constantly denied and disrespected as in a lot those episodes (e.g “Samaritan Snare”, “Legacy”) Worf’s suggestions and warnings were actually completely right and had the crew agreed and not subjected him to Informed Wrongness their lives wouldn’t be in danger. Not to mention the fact it does unintentionally makes the command staff look like they are demeaning their non-human crewmate whose entire job is to keep them safe, no matter how much the story wants to paint them as being wise and diplomatic.
    • Kila Marr in “Silcon Avatar” can come across as this, in regard to her actions over the Crystalline Entity and how the Picard and the crew treat her for it. She’s supposed be seen as a shallow minded woman blinded by vengeance who destroyed a beautiful Not Evil, Just Misunderstood creature and deserving of the You Monster! treatment from the crew after she destroys the Crystalline Entity. Except if you take the Enity’s previous appearance in “Datalore” into account, where it was following Data’s Evil Twin Lore’s orders and after Lore was defeated actually fled like some cowardly lackey — then Marr’s demonisation of it was pretty well founded as it’s clearly an intelligent and calculating being rather than the misunderstood hungry animal Picard makes it out to be. Even if you ignore the Enity’s portrayal in “Datalore” completely (like “Silcon Avatar” does) or Hand Wave it as Lore being an evil influence; the Enity was still consuming all life on planets like the Borg and was going to continue doing so as it needs to consume organic matter to survive. This again makes Marr’s choice destroy it understandable and not dissimilar to many of the hard choices that Kirk, Picard, Sisko and Janeway make though unlike them she gets vilified for it.
    • Spot, Data's cat, is meant to be seen as a badly-behaved pet, yet the only bad things he does are cough up a hairball (which couldn't be helped), break a vase (which could have been an accident, and even if it was on purpose, it's relatively minor), and scratch Riker, who, as he admitted, hates cats (cats are known to dislike, or even be nervous of, those who dislike them). Moreoever, Spot as a cat probably shouldn't be onboard a starship in the first place and it can be considered irresponsible and cruel to keep an animal on there.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
    • Zig-zagged with Gul Dukat as the creators were deeply divided on exactly how sympathetic he was meant to be, with some advocating a full Heel–Face Turn and romance with Kira Nerys. By the time of "Waltz", however, the intention was clearly to remind the audience of how horrible he really was, clearly showing him as a deeply disturbed mass-murderer whose Affably Evil facade is a mere sop for his ego. Unfortunately, it just made some people sympathize more.
    • In "Homefront", O'Brien discusses the recent bombing of a diplomatic conference on Earth, lamenting on how frustrating it can be to see something you care about in danger and be powerless to help. Quark attempts to empathize by talking about the dwindling of his financial investments during an economic crisis, but it's written off as typical Ferengi greed. Yet for someone who does not live in a post-scarcity utopia, living through an economic crisis actually can be a severely stressful experience (just ask anyone who lived through the 2008 recession).
  • Star Trek: Picard: The "Zhat Vash" are a Romulan secret organisation whose goal is the banning and destruction of synthetic life. They have an alien warning device they believe shows a future where synthetics destroy all organic life in the galaxy. This turns out to be completely correct. The premonition device functions properly if exposed to synthetic life, providing them with the schematics to build a beacon to call for an invasion of synthetic horrors who will proceed to obliterate all organic life in order to protect their fellow synths. In the final episode one android colony actually builds this beacon and activates it until Picard convinces them to shut it down with the synthetic horrors about to enter our universe.
• Strangers with Candy: The whole show is a Dark Parody of 1970s Afterschool Specials and anti-drug PSAs. But if you actually take Jerri Blank's life into consideration — her history of prostitution, drug abuse, issues with her appearance, relationships with her family and the world at large, her lack of general common sense — it makes scenes like the end of "A Blank Stare" a bit poignant: Jerri, saved by her friends and family, but still rejected when she attempts to hug them, simply wraps her arms around herself while standing alone in a basement.
• On Summer Heights High, it would appear that we are meant to dislike Jonas' English teacher, a shrill and shrewish woman who on at least one occasion verbally humiliates Jonas. However, many viewers (especially teachers who have to deal with students like Jonas) found her sympathetic because Jonas is relentlessly disruptive in class. She's clearly not getting any support from the principal or the rest of the staff either, and most of the time she simply comes across as a teacher whose job is being made a living hell by one student who refuses to shut his mouth.
• Everyone not named Ted Nugent on Surviving Nugent. A likely good reason that it only lasted one barely-noticed season was that instead of the usual band of reality show contestants that could at least make it Jerkass vs. Jerkass Sadist Show was the fact that they were a cherry-picked list of all the kind of people he didn't like (gays, minorities, metrosexuals and PETA) and said as much whether it was kicking off a guy fresh off the bus that never even gave his name or said a word because "he smelled like a French whore on fire" or how he outed the Manly Gay big enough to curb-stomp him and stated he didn't like the guy due to said homosexuality despite said guy never doing/saying anything related to his sexuality. The PETA member hyped to be the Sitcom Archnemesis never achieved such status and was only memorable for wearing her shirt and being a strict vegetarian, so she went out with a whimper instead of a boom. Even his family proved to arguably be the biggest Woobies on the show because they have to live with him as his wife went out of her way to personally cook for the case, including a vegetarian meal for the PETA woman and his son got mocked for favoring the Black guy to win as "You only like him cause he's BLAAACK!" And yes, this show was an Early-Bird Cameo for a pre-Attention Whore Tila Tequila and yes, you fucked up when you can even make her a Woobie even in hindsight.
• The Designated Villain of The Twilight Zone episode "Time Enough at Last", where a bookworm type who spends the whole episode being abused by every person he meets, and only wants to be alone with his books. Then a nuke wipes out the city while he's safe in a bank vault, and he's finally free to read his books in peace...until his reading glasses break. While Word of God says that this was his just punishment for his misanthropy, the character comes off as very sympathetic in a world where people act like such jerks. Serling's case is further hurt by one scene in which as a cruel joke, the bookworm's wife asks him to read poetry from one of his books to her; he eagerly obliges, only to find that she has drawn lines over the text on every page.
• The Twilight Zone (2002): In the segment "The Pool Boy", a guy is murdered over and over again by a man he doesn't know. It's eventually revealed that he's trapped in a Lotus-Eater Machine as punishment for murdering the husband of one of his clients. It is stated to be a fitting retribution for him, but the episode's Sympathetic P.O.V. (he doesn't actually remember committing the crime, the circumstances of which are somewhat ambiguous as well) and unending torture he goes through just makes it come off as Disproportionate Retribution instead.
• Victorious: During the episode "Prom Wrecker", many fans felt that Jade was rightfully angry that her one-woman show got cancelled to make way for Tori's prom, as the two were scheduled on the same night. This was something Tori had no control over this, but she showed no remorse or sympathy towards Jade when confronted about the issue. While Jade went too far by trying to spoil the prom for everybody, many fans felt sorry for her by the end of the episode. This even included a few fans of Tori's character.
• Vikings: King Harald Finehair was originally set-up as a massive jerk and initially conceived as an "ultra-right" viking who burns people alive, murders defenceless civilians and wants to usurp Ragnar. However, his motive for his actions is to win the hand of a princess he is in love with who ends up marrying someone else anyway and he seems to be very lonely (he does not seem to have anyone close to him). Also given the show's setting and that the heroes of the show are not really saints themselves, he does not seem that far morally from them. This is an example where both audience and creator came to the same conclusion as showrunner Michael Hirst admitted to having found he had written Harald more sympathetically than he intended and started writing Harald as an Anti-Villain.
• In The Witcher (2019), the first episode concerns a dilemma between Stregobor, a wizard who wants to kill a former princess he claims is a dangerous monster, and Renfri, said former princess. Renfri is intended to be causing just as many problems as Stregobor, despite being somewhat sympathetic, as the point of the episode is that Geralt doesn't want to help either of them because they're both wrong. Stregobor's theory about the "Black Sun Princesses" and why they need to die is mostly if not entirely incorrect and later episodes show that he's murdered innocent girls because of it, and Renfri, in her quest for revenge on Stregobor, is callously putting innocent people at risk, willing to throw their lives away as long as she gets to kill him. Except the episode doesn't do a very good job of actually showing that she's putting innocents in danger for 90% of the runtime, so this is easy for viewers to miss. The result is that right up until Renfri takes a teenager hostage, she doesn't seem to be doing anything wrong and just seems like she's on a straightforwardly justified quest of vengeance.
• In Yellowstone:
  • Jamie Dutton is The Fixer for his family — a lawyer who has to repeatedly step in to solve tenuous situations involving their antics, including a notable instance in Season 1 where he intercedes to get Kayce off the hook for a potential double-murder charge. Despite all this work (and the recognition of the Governor and her Attorney General, the latter of whom he succeeds), he's treated as a Butt-Monkey by his family. His father, John, refers to him as a black sheep and more-or-less gaslit him for his entire life about his heritage until it's revealed in Season 4 that he was actually adopted, not born into the family. His sister, Beth, repeatedly accuses him of being gay and tells him more than once to kill himself. When we find out the reason for why she behaves like this towards him (getting a hysterectomy for her after she underwent an abortion in Season 3), Beth has little-to-no remorse for her own actions in the matter. And for all of this, he's repeatedly insulted and put down by several members of his family, to such an extent that Beth ropes him into killing his own father at the end of Season 4, complete with her blackmailing him. The guy just can't catch a break!
  • The show hits a fever pitch during Beth and Jamie's rivalry in Season 5A. At the advice of Sarah Atwood, Jamie initiates impeachment hearings against John for ostensibly abandoning his post... which is exactly what John did, outright ignoring the job for several days to join the rest of the ranchers for a herding operation. Beth eventually breaks into Jamie's house by the mid-season finale, assaults him and threatens to have his life torn apart, only for Jamie to throw her argument back in her face. He points out that he's been trying to save the ranch the entire time, stating that if she hadn't sabotaged Market Equities' airport development, the ranch would have remained untouched and thousands of jobs would have been brought to Montana. He then points out that, unlike her assertions that she's going to destroy his life by stealing his child, he's going to ensure that the ranch stays in the family, specifically citing Tate (Kayce and Monica's child) and his own son as the only bloodline that matters. This response leaves Beth so flummoxed that she immediately leaves and tries to have John put out a hit on him, only for her to be told to stop being irrational.
  • Dan Jenkins also dives headlong into this by the time Season 2 rolls around. Season 1 establishes that he's a developer who's not above taking advantage of opportunities to get rid of his competition (he engineers the attempted car crash against John Dutton that kicks off the series)... but also establishes that he's completely out of his element in Montana. He routinely gets bossed around by John and Beth Dutton (the latter of whom ropes him into getting beat up several times in an attempt to prove he's cut out for the New Old West nature of the setting, and then turns him into an Emasculated Cuckold by setting his wife up with a much younger man), his aspirations to build Paradise Valley go out the door when he gets roped into a scheme by Rainwater that forces him to give up most of his equity for a share of revenue down the line (which everyone else realizes is going to bankrupt the latter in a matter of months), and he's nearly hung to death (suffering serious injury in the process) when he runs afoul of the Duttons one too many times. By the second season, he's become a Butt-Monkey who's routinely mocked by other parties behind his back, is forced to get weapons training and security to defend himself after he's falsely accused of a scheme (actually helmed by the Beck Brothers) to destabilize the Dutton ranch, and ends with him being shot outside his home by one of Beck's hitmen as he talks about The American Dream. In Seasons 3 and 4, several characters reluctantly admit that Jenkins had the right ideas about developing in Montana, but that his vision was too narrow.
• Carmen Mesta from The Young and the Restless. When she came to town, she quickly took up with Neil Winters, who was estranged from his wife Dru, having just discovered that she cheated on him with his brother and that he's actually the uncle of the daughter he's raised for 15 years. When Dru returned to town, she was enraged to discover Neil and Carmen's fling and promptly broke into Carmen's apartment and trashed it. When Carmen filed charges and a restraining order against Dru, somehow SHE was made into the bad guy. Her and Neil's mutual relationship was suddenly retconned as her being The Vamp out to wreck a blissfully happy marriage and her filing a complaint against Dru was made to look like the vindictive act of a Woman Scorned. When Dru put her in a headlock following another argument and she filed new charges regarding the physical assault and violation of the restraining order, this attitude was ramped up even more until Carmen became the supposed Asshole Victim in a murder mystery that had every member of the Winters' family as a suspect. Dru was clearly supposed to be the sympathetic person in the whole mess, despite her hypocrisy repeated criminal actions, but given that Carmen suffered the consequences of Dru's crazed behavior and had every right to press charges, plus spent the last few weeks of her life receiving unjustified The Reason You Suck Speeches from Neil, Dru and their two children, it seems far more obvious that she was.
• Young Sheldon: Sheldon in "A Pager, a Club and a Cranky Bag of Wrinkles", when he doesn't want to join the chess club because they regularly meet outside. This is Played for Laughs, but those on the autism spectrum who regularly experience sensory overload understand exactly why Sheldon would be bothered by this.