Villain Protagonist / Western Animation

• Gumball Watterson of The Amazing World of Gumball sometimes crosses the line from Jerk with a Heart of Gold to what can only be described as "dangerous psychopath Played for Laughs".
  • In "The Saint", he spends the entire episode harassing Alan, making all his friends and his girlfriend hate him, and sells his parents into slavery just because it annoys him that Alan is so perfect.
  • In "The Spoiler", he goes crazy trying to avoid hearing any spoilers about a movie he's going to watch, even knocking someone out with a shovel and eating another student alive.
  • In "The Laziest", he and Darwin deliberately ruin Lazy Larry's life just so that he'll help them win a bet.
• American Dad!.
  • Roger Smith. He started out as a sympathetic, vaguely hedonistic alien, but over time he has established himself as a volatile, dangerous sociopath.
  • Stan Smith also counts. Like Roger, he started out as more sympathetic albeit a little extreme. But as time went on, the lows he would stoop to in order to get his own way or hide his hypocrisies from the rest of his family turned him into this in about half the episodes of any given season. Episodes like "The Scarlett Getter", "Seizure Suit Stanny" and "Father's Daze" just to name a few are prime examples of him playing this trope completely straight.
• The antagonists of Aqua Teen Hunger Force range anywhere from Harmless Villains to Nightmare Fuel Station Attendants. Master Shake, however, is disgustingly heinous and completely unrepentant with every last action, his ability to repel empathy outweighed only by his ability to attract poetic justice.
• The first season in Arcane is just as much about Jinx's downfall from a sweet and innocent young girl into an Ax-Crazy terrorist as it is about Vi. What's more, it's Jinx's actions that drive the plot: her messing with hextech crystals in episode 1 causes the explosion which gets Jayce's experiment exposed and sets enforcers on the undercity, her bomb in episode 3 kills her family, her stealing the Hexstone kicks off the conflict between Piltover and Zaun and her repeated actions keep it from being resolved, and in the final episode she kills Silco by accident and fires a hextech weapon at the Council, turning the cities' cold war hot and likely initiating weaponized hextech.
• A weird in-universe example mixed with Deliberate Values Dissonance in an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Play Within A Show "The Boy In The Iceberg" stars actors playing the Gaang as protagonists, with Ozai as the main antagonist. As all the characters are exaggerated parodies of the "real" people, the play version of Aang is a Wide-Eyed Idealist with Incorruptible Pure Pureness, whereas Ozai is a flamboyant Card-Carrying Villain; however, at the end of the play, when Ozai brutally kills Aang, the audience gives it a standing ovation. Although the viewers know that Aang is The Hero and Ozai is a monster, due to a century of propaganda and cultural conditioning, as far as the Fire Nation rank and file is concerned, Aang is the play's Villain Protagonist, despite not actually committing any evil acts onstage.
• One episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold parodies this trope by completely redoing the series as Joker: The Vile and the Villainous. The storyline was adapted from an issue of the seventies Joker comic. The episode uses the standard "Batman teams up with random DC superhero to stop the Villain of the Week" formula with Swapped Roles, in which the Joker teams up with fellow supervillain Weeper in order to stop Batman from building a machine that detects crime. Completing this Role Swap Plot are the police, who are depicted as Batman's Mooks, and Batman at one point even does his own heroic version of the Nothing Can Stop Us Now! speech.
• Beavis And Butthead: Beavis and Butt-Head are two trouble-making delinquents and representatives of the decadence of their society whose idea of fun includes beating frogs and poodles to death with a baseball bat and committing wanton acts of violence and vandalism for their amusement (although they do it as often accidentally). And they are still downplayed examples because their mental deficiency prevents them from having a particularly developed understanding of evil and as a result they lean towards Chaotic Stupid more than anything. Couple that with the fact that they end up as stooges to more capable scumbags who treat them like garbage despite their admiration and worshipping and you get the cruelest five-year old-minded fourteen-year-old low-lives that one could ever meet.
• Chip 'n Dale also fill this role, for most of their appearances in the cartoon shorts. While Pluto, Donald, and even Mickey (to a lesser extent) were the main characters, the chipmunks often stole the spotlight from them. In their cartoons, the chipmunks go out to provoke them, at any cost possible. Even when they are usually never provoked.
• Dan of Dan Vs., is short-tempered, paranoid, and violent, and each episode is about him seeking revenge for even the slight offense, real or imagined. It's somewhat muddled by the fact that most of the people he seeks revenge against turn out to deserve it, however.
• Captain Hero from Drawn Together is a psychotic murder-rapist who wiped out the entire rest of his species out of spite. The entire cast qualifies for this, really, with the exceptions of Xandir, Foxxy, and sometimes Wooldoor.
• Zordrak and the Urpneys of The Dreamstone usually act this, in that each episode starts and ends from their perspective and we generally spend more time following them than the heroes. Depending on the Writer however, Sympathetic P.O.V. is sometimes given to the actual heroes.
• Eddy from Ed, Edd n Eddy, while not evil, is still a cynical con artist who will do every dirty trick in the book for money. Including stealing Christmas presents from children. He has his reasons, but still.
• Stewie Griffin from Family Guy started out as this in early seasons (he still has his moments, but it's more general Comedic Sociopathy).
  • Peter Griffin has turned into this thanks to Flanderization, having gone from "well-meaning but incredibly dumb" to "unbelievably selfish and callous".
• Killface of Frisky Dingo is a supervillain protagonist who built a doomsday device designed to launch Earth into the sun, and he's still way more sympathetic than Jerkass superhero Xander Crews.
• Futurama:
  • Bender is a greedy and amoral criminal who constantly lies, cheats, and steals from everyone. Although Bender really does like his best friend Fry, he is not above swindling him as well.
  • Professor Farnsworth is a Mad Scientist who has no qualms with building doomsday devices, using people for his experiments, and sending his employees (whom he outright declares as being expendable) to go on dangerous missions which may lead to their deaths.
• Golan the Insatiable. The title character is a demigod from another dimension who has no problems with killing anyone and causing mayhem, but he's also a Large Ham who still wets the bed and tries to hang out with high schoolers and become homecoming king by pretending to be a teenager. The show's other main character, Dylan, is a young goth-looking girl who also finds joy in pain and misery, but also thinks turtles are cute, finds a molted Golan to be adorable, and deep down just wants her mom to be proud of her (though she doesn't like to admit it).
• Hector Con Carne is the Card-Carrying Villain Protagonist of Evil Con Carne and the literal brains of a terrorist organisation that aspires to take over the world. Keyword aspires as they would also aspire to be James Bond-caliber villains but he is just not a very good one.)
• Mandy of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy is so evil and ruthless that she makes Grim, the personification of death, look like a nice guy in comparison.
  • And so he ends up as a much more downplayed example than her, thanks to being passive and very Affably Evil to boot, unless he goes on a power-trip and starts siccing monsters on people for laughs, committing murder for profit or as a plan to get rid of Billy and Mandy.
• Many episodes (but not all) of Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids center on horrible people who make life hell for others, children specifically.
• Harley Quinn (2019): Harley Quinn breaking away from the Joker is presented as a woman standing up for herself and taking control of her own life back. However, Harley's ultimate goal is to be a super-villain, upstage the Legion of Doom, and generally cause the downfall of Gotham City, along with the rest of the world. Harley has a lot of personal victories and Character Development throughout the show, but she's still a bad person.
• The third book of the anthology series Infinity Train follows Grace and Simon, who were introduced in the previous book as the leaders of the Apex, a cult of passengers that steals from and attacks the train's residences and strive on increasing the number on their hand, which reveals how much further away they are from solving the personal issues that brought them onto the train in the first place.
• At her worst, Reagan of Inside Job (2021) can be considered this, given that she is a Mad Scientist working for The Omniscient Council of Vagueness as part of a company they run to oversee their conspiracies. However, despite the wildly unethical nature of her work (such as plotting to Kill and Replace the President of the United States in the first episode), she also genuinely wants to make the world a better place by reforming Cognito into a benevolent conspiracy, and has certain moral boundaries she will not cross.
• Zim of Invader Zim, an alien trying to Take Over the World. He is juxtaposed to Dib, a preteen paranormal investigator trying to stop him.
• Task Force X are focused on during their mission to infiltrate Justice League headquarters and steal an invincible armor forged by the gods in the Justice League Unlimited episode named after them.
• The titular League of Super Evil. Though calling them evil would be a bit of a misnomer.
• Looney Tunes:
  • While Bugs Bunny was generally a sympathetic character, there have been several episodes where he became a straight-up villain. Examples of this include Elmer's Candid Camera (a prototype version of him picks on Elmer unprovoked), Elmer's Pet Rabbit (where he heckles Elmer for no justifiable reason), Tortoise Beats Hare and its follow-ups Tortoise Wins by a Hare and Rabbit Transit (where Bugs is portrayed as an egomaniac who's willing to harm and cheat just to beat a turtle, even if Cecil wasn't any better), and Rebel Rabbit (where he wreaks havoc on the US solely because the bounty for rabbits was so low, doing atrocities like filling up the grand canyon and sawing Florida off the mainland, breaking into congress during a session and physically assaulting a senator, and by the end of the short gets so out of control that the military is called in to bring him down). This was also a common theme in most of the shorts directed by Bob Clampett, including Wabbit Twouble (again, picking on Elmer unprovoked), The Wacky Wabbit (picking on an unprovoked Elmer again), the aforementioned Tortoise Wins By A Hare, and Buckaroo Bugs (where he's a flat out thief and bully). Out of the shorts listed, Buckaroo Bugs is the only one where he's officially recognized as the villain.
  • Daffy Duck also had several bouts of this trope, such as Daffy Duck in Hollywood (where he causes trouble in a Hollywood studio for the heck of it) and Boobs in the Woods (where he heckles Porky Pig for the sake of causing trouble). This only intensified during his later meaner years when he evolved into a genuine villain by the time he became paired with Speedy Gonzales, albeit still often with the primary spotlight (see above).
  • Honey's Money is the only Yosemite Sam short where Sam is the star, rather than playing antagonist to Bugs Bunny.
  • Wile E. Coyote is the main character of the "Coyote and Road Runner" shorts, where we follow his constant failures at catching the Road Runner.
  • Chester and Spike as Villain Protagonists target Sylvester who is in one of his few "pure victim roles". The fact that Spike pays for his bullying ways by getting the snot beaten out of him by an escaped panther and ends up a Nervous Wreck and sucking up to Chester the same way that Chester was a sycophant who was abused by Spike makes for some hilariously ironic Laser-Guided Karma.
• The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack zigzags with this as the main character Flapjack is one of the most thoughtful and compassionate characters in the series and is at his worst a Minion with an F in Evil. The other main character who is he is a minion to however, Captain K'nuckles is a most definitely seedy and unsavoury type who makes a career out of being a lowly thief, cheat and criminal and who will commit all sorts of crimes in order to satisfy his candy addiction. By far his lowest moment must have been when he knowingly almost killed a mermaid just because of his petty whims. Also despite genuinely caring for Flap he is a terrible guardian and often verbally mistreats him. He is pitiable enough however and just often unfairly victimised.
• Clay Puppington is this in the third season of Moral Orel, which focuses more on him than the other two seasons. Several episodes showcase his Villainous Breakdown.
• The Title Character of Mr. Pickles is a satanic dog who kills and tortures many people and has a number of human slaves. Since he still saves the day a number of times, he can be considered a mix of this and Nominal Hero.
• Late in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Daring Do is revealed to be a Villain with Good Publicity when it's revealed that Ahuizotl is actually a guardian spirit assigned to protect the temples and treasures she steals and she's a thief capitalizing off of stealing from him and writing books that cast her as the hero. In her defense she's at least a good person who thought he was evil and his fierce behavior certainly didn't help sway that, but it's never-the-less brought up that she shouldn't have just assumed he was the bad guy. The fact was even subtly Foreshadowed in an earlier episode when she prevents him from unleashing an 800 year heat wave on a valley: watch it again now and you'll notice all the native ponies who live in the valley are actively helping him accomplish it rather than being victimized by it.
• Noveltoons: In Out of This Whirl a Martian comes to visit Earth. During his stay he disintegrates a dog, causes a vacuum cleaner salesman to be attacked by his own product, shrinks a policeman to the size of a mouse, and destroys a toy-sellers store. ^note  The salesman, policeman, and toy-seller were also Asshole Victims.
• Wolf from Nu, Pogodi! is one. Much like the Coyote from Chuck Jones' "Coyote and Roadrunner" shorts, the Wolf drives the plot... except that his entire raison d'etre is to eat the Rabbit, who more often than not is minding his own business.
• When Phineas and Ferb started out, Dr. Doofenshmirtz started out as a standard cartoon villain. But as time went on, he became more and more sympathetic, idiotic, and hilarious, to the point where he and Perry the Platypus were becoming the real stars of the show, even more so than the titular characters.
• The titular duo of Pinky and the Brain. One is a genius, the other's insane! To prove their mousy worth, they'll overthrow the Earth! However, the Brain genuinely believes the world will be better if he takes over, and Pinky doesn't even realize they are doing evil.
• In most every episode of The Ren & Stimpy Show there will a significant number of animation cels devoted to Ren physically mistreating Stimpy even if he isn't in one of his frequent con-man, hooligan or general miscreant roles.
• Rick Sanchez from Rick and Morty qualifies. A sociopathic, alcoholic, Mad Scientist that frequently builds doomsday devices out of boredom or to take care of serious problems that he created. Said problems are often created because of the numerous enemies he's made throughout his misadventures across the Multiverse, which often end in a massive body count. A couple of episodes have also shown that Rick has no qualms with selling wepaons to shady characters, or to make a quick buck. Rick also has no issues with putting his family in mortal danger, with his grandson, Morty, frequently acting as an Unwitting Pawn in his schemes.
  • Among the worst offenses Rick has done include: forcing Morty to gun down law enforcement officials in the pilot episode; giving Morty a Love Potion without warning of the side effects, and after trying to repair the damage results in the end of the world, Rick takes Morty into a dimension where he managed to fix the situation, and take the place of those Rick and Morty that just happened to die recently; Ricks from multiple realities abandon their sons-in-law, Jerry, in planet designated a "Jerrys' daycare" and many of them have been abandoned there inadvertently (if their Rick and Morty died) or even purposefully; created a "Microverse" populated by sentient beings, whose sole reason to exist is to generate the electricity needed to run his car, after he tricked them into thinking he was an alien, destroying one of the said universes and threatening to destroy the other; encouraged Morty to witness a "Purge-like" carnival, which then results in Morty wantonly massacring a number of people; Slaughtered a superhero team to prove that he prizes the approval of the team's janitor; repeatedly erased memories from Morty's brain, both traumatic events, and memories that would put Rick in a negative light because of how he screwed up; revealing that he created the imaginary fantasy land that Beth remembers playing in (to keep her occupied while he worked on his inventions)^note even though Rick says that it was either create the fantasy land or entertaining her wishes of creating devices of mass destruction, it can be surmised that she knew what her father was capable of, and was trying to connect with Rick in any way that she could think of along her murdered childhood friend. Upon entering, they discover that after decades of accidentally being left there, her friend went mad and became the de-facto incestuous-cannibalistic leader; indirectly destroying multiple planets in order to make a point about heists to Morty, massacring an alien civilization and sending them back to their Stone Age; cloning his daughter without her permission and sending one of them to space and not bothering to know who was who, which leads to said daughters disowning him.
• The Simpsons:
  • Homer Simpson occasionally drifts into this territory, especially when Flanderization kicked in and his Jerkass tendancies got amped up. One particularly extreme early example is "Homer the Vigilante", where he becomes the leader of an incompetent Vigilante Militia that violently beats people for petty crimes and apparently plans on world domination.
  • In-universe example: Itchy from The Itchy & Scratchy Show, who's a mouse who brutally and sadistically murders the perfectly innocent Scratchy every episode.
• Eric Cartman from South Park. He either serves as The Dragon for an even greater evil, or IS the Big Bad in most episodes. Occasionally though, he functions as a Nominal Hero and, on one and only one occasion, he had genuinely heroic intentions when he saved cats in Major Boobage.
• In SpongeBob SquarePants, Sheldon Plankton usually fills this role, mainly in episodes where he attempts to steal the Krabby Patty formula.
  • Depending on the episode, Mr. Krabs can occasionally be this in episodes focused on him, especially in the later seasons.
• Both Tom and Jerry can alternate between this role in any given theatrical short, a fact especially glaring if the former ends up being a Designated Villain and the latter turns into a Designated Hero.
• Total Drama:
  • Chris McLean, the sadistic host of ends up being the series' biggest villain. He doesn't care about the safety of the contestants or the interns, takes pleasure in seeing them suffering or ruining relationships and he doesn't even give Chef his salary. While all the seasons have a different Big Bad, Chris is the only one who plays the villain role in every season (excluding Ridonculous Race), especially the later ones.
  • Ex-Big Bad Heather, notable for being the first main antagonist introduced in the series, ends up becoming the main protagonist and hero of World Tour over the course of the season. Not because she pulled off a Heel–Face Turn, mind you, but because Alejandro, the new Big Bad, is actually much worse than her, leaving Heather as the one up to stop him from winning the season.
• Callie Maggotbone and Twayne Boneraper of Ugly Americans. As far as the series is concerned, demons from Hell aren't Always Chaotic Evil, but are incredibly apathetic towards all humans in general. Combined with varying degrees of outright psychopathy, and the eerie fact that they seem to be planning The End of the World as We Know It behind the scenes, it's a wonder the former is an Anti Anti Christ with standards, and the latter is an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain without a spine.
• Unlike most episodes, "King George and the Ducky" from VeggieTales has Larry being depicted as a villain - King George, who is obsessed with rubber ducks and goes as far as to steal one when he has a bunch of them.
• The Villainous (Cartoon Network) shorts are centered around Black Hat, the wicked head of an evil company that produces inventions specifically meant to be used by villains. And that's not getting into the fact that he's the Greater-Scope Villain to all of Cartoon Network.
• Wacky Races designated villain Dick Dastardly became this when he got his own show a year later. Always noted as being devious and despicable but saddled with three charges who rank from inept to chronic backstabber, Dastardly would often wonder (in one episode) "what's a nice guy like me doing in a cooped-up outfit like this?"
• Woody Woodpecker went in and out of being this and an Anti-Hero in the original cartoons. Sometimes, he just goes about breaking the rules or causing trouble for the mere thrill of it or just out of ignorance, and is clearly shown to be a selfish glutton who will mow down or manipulate anyone who gets in the way of his food. On the other hand, he did occasionally star in a sympathetic light (i.e. "The Hollywood Matador") and by the late 40's his Anti-Hero traits were played up more by director Dick Lundy, especially when Buzz Buzzard entered the series. By the 50's, Woody veered between being a straight up hero, a villain and an anti-hero, and by the mid-50's both of the former traits were dropped altogether in favor of making Woody a straight up hero character.

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