Villain Has A Point / The DCU

The DCU

Villain Has a Point in this franchise.

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Comic Books

Comic Books

• Batman: In The Brave and the Bold #191, Batman suspects the Joker is responsible for the murder of the Penguin, only for the Joker to reveal it wasn't him — arguing that it couldn't have been him, since he always takes credit for his work. Batman begrudgingly admits that he's right. His reluctant faith is justified when it turns out the Penguin is alive and framed Joker so that Pengy could pull off a murder at his own funeral.
• The Batman Adventures: Bane becomes a champion of one of Gotham's downtrodden neighborhoods, and wins them over by pointing out the cops don't have their best interests at heart.
  Bane: They will not (make a move), because they are afraid. They think they are concerned about the welfare of the children. But where were they two months ago?
• Doomsday Clock: Batman calls Ozymandias out for the fact that he killed millions in a narcissistic plan that didn't even work. Ozymandias counters that the heroes have done nothing for their society besides locking villains up in Cardboard Prisons, that he actually tried to fix the underlying problems and that he actually succeeded in doing things like curing famine and cancer, solving the world's energy crisis and solving nuclear disarmament, and that not only is the DC Universe even more screwed up than the Watchmenverse the heroes aren't doing a damn thing to fix things because they're too busy indulging themselves. Batman is unable to answer the accusation.
• Green Lantern: Sinestro left the Green Lantern Corps and started his own Sinestro Corps, because he felt that the Guardians of the Universe were doing a piss-poor job at policing the universe. He also made Green Lanterns abolish Thou Shalt Not Kill rule to make them better deal with threats in Sinestro Corps War.
• In Injustice: Gods Among Us the reason Kalibak's words finally convince Superman to stop adhering to Thou Shalt Not Kill is that they ring true. Apokolips keeps invading and supervillains keep re-offending because they know the worst superheroes will do to them is beat them up a little — intimidating to a common street thug, but a questionable deterrent for those who also have superpowers. And on top of that, he points out that by doing so, he shows more concern for the lives of his enemies than those of the people he's protecting, and that an Alien Invasion by Apokolips plays by different rules than regular supervillain battles, making a no-kill rule burdensome at best.
• Superman: "Krypton No More": Superman is so frightened of losing another home planet that he goes on a rampage, destroying environmental threats such as super-tankers. Super-villain Protector clashes with him, accusing Superman of setting himself up as judge, jury and executioner. Protector is slimy, violent and entirely self-serving, but even Supergirl called her cousin out on his behavior until Clark backed off.

Films

Films

• DC Extended Universe:
  • Wonder Woman (2017): While Ares does give mankind new ideas for killing each other, he reveals to Wonder Woman that the humans carried out war crimes entirely on their own volition and that humanity is naturally inclined to violence. This is acknowledged by Wonder Woman herself in the final scene when she acknowledges that even if she can't change all of humanity, she can still save one human life at a time.
  • Part of Orm's motive in Aquaman (2018) is that he holds the surface world responsible for polluting the oceans and endangering his people. Not one character argues him on this, not even Arthur, but they feel that Orm's desire to wipe out humanity is far too extreme or that the ensuing war would cause devastation to both sides.
  • In SHAZAM! (2019), when Billy and the foster kids hide themselves among the attendees at the festival, Sivana calls them out for endangering innocent people.
• The Dark Knight Trilogy:
  • In Batman Begins, Henri Ducard cautions Bruce that his compassion is a weakness his adversaries will exploit, which Bruce shoots down insisting compassion is what separates them from their opponents. Sure enough his saving Henri's life allows the man, who is actually Ra's Al Ghul, to come back and nearly destroy Gotham. Sure enough the second time around Bruce doesn't make that same mistake: he remarks that he won't kill Ra's but won't save him this time either, coldly leaving Ra's to die on a runaway train.
  • In The Dark Knight, one of the reasons why the Joker is so effective a villain is that he's very good at pointing out the flaws in the principles of others, and exploiting those flaws to his advantage. Some examples are: 1) He immediately recognizes that Batman is the real reason why organized crime is threatened in Gotham and points this out to the mob, which causes the mob to hire the Joker when they realize he was right, giving the Joker access to Gotham's underworld. 2) He exploits the fact that Batman really is an unlawful vigilante by promising to kill people until Batman unmasks, turning the city and the cops against Batman. 3) He convinces Harvey Dent to become Two-Face by telling Dent that the so-called justice system that he supports is filled with corrupt people who constantly tolerate corruption and profit from crime, which is true since Jim Gordon is forced to work with suspect cops in order to have enough men to do his job. 4) He constantly claims that people are complacent and corruptible and backs up his beliefs by putting people in a position where they have to choose to obey the law and their principles, or lose something they dearly love (only Batman consistently demonstrates his incorruptibility).
  • Behind the back of his mobster employers, Joker remarks that their desire for things to go back to how they were before Batman showed up is futile. Of course in the context where he brings this up, he isn't inferring this is a good thing, since Joker is taking the opportunity provided by Batman to put Gotham on the path to becoming an even worse place than before he showed up.

Live-Action TV

Live-Action TV

• Arrow:
  • In the episode "Vigilante", while the titular Vigilante Man is clearly a Knight Templar, most of Team Arrow, a group mostly comprised of morally grey anti-heroes, support his actions at first, until his actions result in civilian casualties that Vigilante dismisses as "collateral damage". Oliver, while being against Vigilante from the start, has to concede Vigilante's point that Star City is worse than ever, and Green Arrow's gentler methods aren't necessarily getting the job done.

Video Games

Video Games

• Batman: Arkham Series:
  • Though the spirit of Amadeus Arkham/Quincy Sharp from Batman: Arkham Asylum is clearly insane, his observations are not without merit. Supervillains and criminals in the verse lean to be irredeemable and cause way too much death, so the best answer to permanently stop that is to kill them. And Batman is indirectly responsible for this too.
  • The tie-in comic to Batman: Arkham City has a cop denounce the Joker for killing "a lot of good husbands and fathers". Joker complains, not unreasonably, that nobody ever laments the dead bachelors. Though the usual format is "husbands, fathers, and sons".
  • Also from City, Strange points out that Batman's mere presence creates his villains, and later games show that he is largely correct. You can link several villains' rise to power and/or motives directly to Batman; he possibly created Joker who destroyed Black Mask's criminal empire which allowed Penguin to take over, Harvey was scarred in retaliation for Batman's actions against the mob, and Riddler did have good intentions and worked for GCPD before he went nuts and started risking innocent lives. Even Scarecrow takes his revenge by attacking the city, and the Arkham Knight would not exist if not for Batman's saving Joker.
  • There are some good ones from Batman: Arkham Origins:
    • The Riddler is an egomaniac and Tautological Templar who thinks he's Paying Evil Unto Evil by exposing dirty secrets in Gotham. During one of their exchanges, Batman demands that he stop. After Riddler states that he's mainly trying to clean up the streets, entice the police to do their jobs, and remove corruption, Batman replies that this is simply blackmail. Riddler then asks if what he's doing is worse than beating criminals up. Batman noticeably doesn't have a rebuttal for this.
    • Listen to Anarky's Character Filibuster after he's been apprehended and tied up, and he actually starts out with some good points. It's too bad that he quickly nose dives off the slippery slope and invalidates his own argument a few moments later.
    • The Joker points out how Batman hasn't accomplished much in his war on crime in the past two years, while he has only been in Gotham for two weeks yet he's done more help for Gotham by randomly doing his actions. These action include executing Commissioner Loeb, dethroning Black Mask, and exposing Blackgate as a Cardboard Prison. Despite being a psychopath, The Joker is entirely correct about these particular points.
    • The real Black Mask, after you capture him after the fight in the church, states that he will soon go free, as his resources are enough to buy or threaten the officials to release him, the judicial system (at least in Gotham) is a lie, and Batman himself is the sign of this. Add Anarky's information and your own knowledge about Gotham City, and it's difficult to disagree with his point.
• Injustice
  • In Injustice: Gods Among Us, the New Regime trailer. While Injustice!Superman and his fellows established a dictatorship and went to the deep end, their motivations are very understandable: before their coming to power, criminals were unstoppable, as it was essentially nothing to fear for them: the government did nothing to properly imprison or punish them, and heroes didn't kill in any circumstance. "Look at the Joker. Would he even exist if not for you?"
  • In Injustice 2, Regime Superman and his loyalists deconstruct Batman's adherencr to Thou Shalt Not Kill and traditional superheroics, pointing out how his misplaced mercy has let villains like The Joker break free from Cardboard Prisons like Arkham, run amok menacing society, and go Karma Houdini for their crimes. When Superman and Batman argue over what to do with Brainiac once he was defeated, the former asks the latter how many innocent lives would have to be shed before he realizes it's necessary to kill villains. In the same game, it's also pointed out that for all his posturing, Batman would absolutely go scorched earth on any criminal if they wronged him as deeply as Joker did to Superman. The events of A Death in the Family and Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker stand as grim proof of this, as in both instances, Batman came very close to killing Joker for what he did to Jason Todd and Tim Drake, respectively.

Western Animation

Western Animation

• The Batman: Francis Grey's complaint about his 17 year sentence for stealing a small item (his sentence was bumped up due a series of accidents during his escape that caused a boatload of property damage):
  Francis: I took a watch! Everything else was just an accident.
• DC Animated Universe:
  • Batman: The Animated Series:
    • "Lock-Up" points out that Arkham is a Cardboard Prison with a revolving door, and the villains keep coming back. This doesn't justify his excessive punishments (the fact that Scarecrow breaks out of Arkham just to get away from him implies his methods are just making things worse), but it's telling that, when he shows up in the comics, Batman does briefly team up with him.
    • "Joker's Wild" inverts this when Batman, caught in one of the Joker's explosive death traps with which he also plans to level a casino, manages to talk his way out by pointing out to the Joker that he's playing into the casino owner's hands, since the guy is trying to get the casino destroyed as part of an insurance scam. Much as it infuriates him, Joker realizes Batman is right, and he decides to abandon his death trap to go settle accounts with the casino owner instead.
      Joker: I hate it when you make sense!
  • Batman Beyond: In "Eyewitness", Spellbinder tricks Barbara Gordon into thinking Batman killed Mad Stan. When Spellbinder's finally caught and exposed, his taunt to her proves his point of her biased opinion and how she's ready to believe the worst in Terry. His trick just finally pulled the trigger for it. Barbara completely concludes with Spellbinder's point, genuinely apologizing to Batman and doing what she can to make up for him. For the rest of the series, she remains a supporting ally towards him.
  • It's quite hard to fault Agent Bennet's fears and animosity for the titular synthoid from The Zeta Project, even in spite of all the signs that the thing developing a conscience is genuine. His fears that its "conscience" is merely a Manchurian Agent ploy programmed into it by terrorists or just a malfunction is valid, and notably the synthoid used lethal force against Bennet's men in its Batman Beyond introductory episode until Max convinced it not to, proving it is indeed willing and able to hurt people to get what it wants.
  • Justice League Unlimited:
    • Although they shot themselves in the foot multiple times by being more of a threat to the world than the Justice League, it's acknowledged even In-Universe that Project Cadmus has a point about the scary potential of what the Justice League could do if they wanted (especially since they were visited by an Alternate Universe League, the Justice Lords, who had conquered their world and come to do the same to this one), especially given some of the questionable decisions that the Justice League has made. Most notably, installing a giant laser in their orbital base and aiming it at the planet without asking for anyone's permission or even telling them about it.
      Martian Manhunter: We must also consider the possibility that Cadmus is right to be afraid of us...
      Supergirl: [outraged] WHAT?!
      Martian Manhunter: ...and there is strong evidence of Cadmus having legitimate connections to the government.
      Superman: Maybe, to some rogue black ops group! The real government wouldn't get involved in anything like this!
      Green Arrow: Hey, I'm the only guy in the room who doesn't have superpowers, and let me tell you: you guys scare me. What if you do decide to go down there, taking care of whoever you think is guilty? Who could stop you? Me?
      Supergirl: So you want the government to have a bunch of superhuman weapons just to keep us in check?!
      Green Arrow: No... I don't know... Yeah.
      [Superman and Supergirl recoil in shock]
      Green Arrow: Look, I'm an old lefty. The government must do for people what people can't do for themselves. The people sure can't protect themselves from the likes of us.
    • The Justice Lord Batman pulled one of these on the League one in a scene that even the writers were unable to directly respond to.
      League!Batman: You grabbed power!
      Lord!Batman: And with that power, we've made a world where no eight year old boy will EVER lose his parents, because of some punk with a gun.
    • Subverted later on when League!Batman does gain a retort to this, after he watches a man get taken away by armed policemen just because he correctly pointed out his bill was wrong and refused to pay. League!Batman snidely informs Lord!Batman their parents would just love this place. Yeah, the Justice Lords have created a world where it's less likely for another kid to have his parents killed by a random mugger. Instead of worrying about that, he can worry about watching his parents get dragged away to life in prison for doing something as harmless as argue against being overly charged for their meal.
    • In fact, the Justice Lords themselves only took over the world because America had elected Lex freaking Luthor as President and allowed him to almost cause a nuclear war. You can kind of sympathize with their viewpoint that people that dumb shouldn't be allowed to rule themselves.
    • The Luthor from the Justice Lords' universe had a point in his Breaking Speech to Superman, saying that it wasn't the law that kept Superman from killing him. Superman liked the attention he got from being a hero. Superman admitted he was right, but seeing where that path led, he was done, and killed Luthor.
    • Justice Lord Superman had a point when he berates Superman for letting Luthor out of prison to stop them. Luthor doesn't turn on the Justice League, but because he was released his Evil Plan leads to him using the Justice League's Kill Sat on a civillian target, nearly uploads his brain into a new Amazo to kill Superman, fuses with Brainiac causing both villains to become more dangerous than ever and nearly destroy the Earth, and goes onto take over the Secret Society in attempt to revive Brainiac. His efforts to revive Brainiac fail, which instead brings back DARKSEID, who ends the Evil Power Vacuum on his planet that started after his death and leads his army to destroy all life on Earth.
    • In "The Return", the one who finally manages to get rid of Amazo is Lex Luthor, who causes the god-like android to question his purpose and motivation, telling him, quite simply, that he's doing nothing with his near-omniscient power. It seems that, if Amazo has a weakness at all, it's lack of imagination. Amazo can't deny this, and leaves to find a purpose.
    • In "Destroyer", after the League and the Legion of Doom defeat Darkseid together, the villains protest that they deserve better than being immediately incarcerated. Batman concedes the point sufficiently to give them five minutes to run for it.
• Young Justice (2010): While the Reach is just using it to discredit the Justice League, both they and early on, Mr. Twister point out that the Justice League are using their teenaged sidekicks as Child Soldiers. Twister goes as far as to point out their ages and say he's disturbed by it.

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