Well-Intentioned Extremists in The DCU.
- Batman villains:
- Ra's al Ghul's intention was to stop mankind's destruction of the environment. This could be accomplished by wiping out roughly 2 billion people.
- Eco-Terrorist Poison Ivy wants plants to be respected. It's the "and completely dominant" part that causes trouble.
- Mr. Freeze is probably the straightest example: he just wants to save his wife and cure his disease (which makes him have to live in a cold suit 24/7 and never be able to have human contact or die.) As he's fine with killing innocent people and doing other bad things, he's still a villain.
- The Civic Virtue serial killer in "Petty Crimes", a story in the Batman: Black and White anthology series, murders people for antisocial actions like littering and blocking traffic, and claims to be holding the line for civilized society. Several characters, including Batman, say that while of course they can't condone his methods they do kind of see his point.
- Batman himself comes close to this from time to time, especially in the Frank Miller variations. It's implied that the reason Batman sticks so close to his code of no killing is because he's afraid that once he crossed that line, he would become this.
- Black Adam is a perfect textbook example. Generally, all he wants to do is rule over and protect his homeland of Khandaq and its people from any foreign invaders. It's just that it involves utterly decimating said invaders, which doesn't gel well when he applies his mindset in modern times and ends up incurring the wrath of the authorities and superheroes who use non-lethal methods for stopping criminals.
- Cinderella's fairy godmother, as well as Geppetto, in Fables embodies this trope. The fairy godmother just wanted people to be happy, and Geppetto didn't start out intending to conquer the world.
- One of The Flash's most dangerous enemies, Zoom, fits this pretty well. He just wants to make the Flash a better hero... by killing his friends, family, and lesser villains.
- Lex Luthor in Gotham City Garage is confident that he can save the remains of mankind not wiped by the apocalypse, but he can only achieve this if everybody follow his orders, so he keeps people mind-controlled and caged inside "his" walled city and represses dissenters brutally; and then he doesn't get why people rebel against him.
- In H'el on Earth, all H'el wants is to ressurect his home planet, Krypton. Unfortunately, Earth has to be destroyed for him to bring back Krypton.
- Alexander Luthor Jr. was willing to kill an uncountable number of people to reach his goal during the Infinite Crisis. His goal? To find and create the Perfect Earth, free of crime, grime, and, possibly, super powers.
- Issue 20 of Justice League: Generation Lost shows us why Maxwell Lord is willing to do all the horrible things he does: he sincerely believes that if he doesn't take dictatorial control of the metahuman community, the inevitable result will be the sort of spandex genocide we saw at the end of Kingdom Come.
- Legends of the Dead Earth: In Batman Annual #20, the Old Gotham Warden Harvey Bent came to believe that it was not enough to banish criminals to the hell of Arkham but that they should be put to death. The Bat-Man refused to consider this as he believed that it would make them as bad as the criminals that they fought. Bent resigned as Warden in protest. In order to end the battle between good and evil raging inside of him, Bent tried to burn the evil out of himself. This only served to make things worse as the resulting disfigurement turned him into Split-Face, who resorted to bribery, perjury, evidence tampering and even murder to bring criminals to justice (or at least his idea of it).
- Sinestro falls into this, especially during his debut and the Sinestro Corps War. His planet was, by all accounts, lawless and wild, so he used his Green Lantern ring to conquer it and instill order, by brutally oppressing the entire population. When the Sinestro Corps starts up, he seeks out people who can instill great fear, including Batman (who refuses), so he can save the galaxy from itself. Again, by ruling the entire population through fear.
- In the end of the Sinestro Corps War, Sinestro admits that what he really wanted was to improve the Green Lantern Corps by making them accept the use of deadly force when necessary. He achieved his ends either way.
- After Hal Jordan's home town was destroyed, he was driven insane and became the supervillain known as Parallax. His goal was the destruction of the universe to rebuild it and make it better, and in particular to save all the people that had been killed. It was noted several times by other characters that Hal believed he was acting for the right reasons, but had simply lost his way. Eventually, he would regain enough of his former morality and nobility to sacrifice himself to save the world and redeem himself, and it was later retconned that he had been possessed the entire time.
- The Red Lantern Corps (emotion: rage) fall into this as a whole, since their rage is universally driven by loss; all any of them want to do is avenge their loved ones, no matter the cost. It doesn't help that their power is one of the two least controllable ones of the emotional spectrum and, as a result, they tend towards being The Berserker, destroying anything or anyone that they see as being in their way.
- The Entity of Compassion, Proselyte, is dedicated to eradicating evil by spreading empathy and compassion across the universe. It sees nothing wrong with brainwashing people to make them feel compassion. Although the individuals it brainwashes are all borderline sociopaths, psychotic killers, and unrepentant monsters who are forced to wear the rings so they can finally understand why their past crimes were wrong. Indigo-1, a.k.a. Iroque the Child Killer, legitimately begged to have her ring returned and the Tribe restarted because she finally began to understand how terrible she'd been. Also, Proselyte doesn't brainwash every Indigo ring wielder, and they are capable of seeking out individuals who are fully capable of great compassion, not just those who lack it.
- The Guardians of the Universe. They've been screwing up since the universe started, and while it's (usually) obvious that they are at least trying to do the right thing, more often than not, it just blows up in their faces.
- The White Light Entity has committed a few morally ambiguous acts in order to save all life in the universe.
- Amanda Waller, from Suicide Squad. She's a tremendously shrewd politician and a chessmaster in the dog-eat-dog world of DCU politics, who often has to battle her possessiveness and prejudice to do what really's right. Deep under the Iron Lady and the Black Boss Lady, she's still human, even if she mutes her conscience on a daily basis.
- Supergirl:
- In Red Daughter of Krypton, Atrocitus — leader of the Red Lantern Corps — is determined to avenge injustice... by killing whoever he finds guilty.
- In Elseworld's Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl, Batgirl's actions (virtually taking over Gotham, running it as her own private kingdom with spy eyes installed everywhere, banning parahumans from her city...) are questionable at least, but her only goal is saving innocents and protecting the good people of Gotham.
- In the Supergirl (2005) story arc "Way of the World", villain Aftermath wants to turn the public against superhumans because he thinks good people always gets screwed when they fight. So he kidnaps a couple to blackmail their daughter into putting a mind-control hex on Supergirl, intending to mind-control Supergirl into causing mayhem until everybody hates her.Aftermath: NO!!! I only did this to make them understand— to make the world better.
Supergirl: I know. But that doesn't mean you're right.
- Superman:
- General Zod, long-time enemy of Superman, was reinvented in the Last Son and New Krypton storylines. Normally a conquering madman, he was named military commander of New Krypton and was devoted to protecting the new planet by any means necessary, but he was shown to be fairly honorable and decent. He cracked down on his sadistic minion Gor, promoted Superman in his place when he was incapacitated by an assassin, and came to appreciate his former enemy while still maintaining views that are much harsher than those of Superman's. When New Krypton was destroyed, all bets were off.
- When the Eradicator took over as Superman during The Death of Superman, he had no qualms about using deadly force and thought he was doing what Superman would do. However, he's shown to be shaken by Guy Gardner's admiration and a couple of What the Hell, Hero? speeches from Lois Lane and Steel.
- And in Superman: Red Son where Superman was raised under the belief of communism, he does just this. Taking over Russia and becoming a dictator to protect the people. He tries to do this to the whole world but is stopped by Lex Luthor with a simple note that makes him realize he is no better than Brainiac trying to put the world in a bottle.
- In A Mind-Switch in Time, Euphor increases his power by absorbing Metropolis' negative emotions until he is powerful enough to put the whole city under his total mind-control. Even so, he seems to believe he is really the good guy, since he privately insists he is just helping people and Superman deserves to be kicked out of Metropolis for not removing its citizens' unhappiness.
- V from V for Vendetta is the poster child of this trope. He wants to free England... by causing riots and crippling the government.
- The head of said government, Adam Susan, is A Nazi by Any Other Name who may be the only thing keeping order in a nuclear wasteland.
- Watchmen: A very spoilerish example, but: Ozymandias? Possibly the most successful Well Intentioned Extremist in fiction. He kills three million people to achieve world peace... and, as far as the reader can tell, it works, though the last panel opens up the possibility that it may have all been for nothing. This is later confirmed in the sequel Doomsday Clock, and Ozy's Karma Houdini Warranty finally ends.
- Another example would be Rorschach, whose violent and murderous behavior towards criminals is fueled by his own twisted desires to protect the world and defend the good. However, due to mental trauma, he tends to view almost everything and everyone as bad and needing punishment, making him come off as a Sociopathic Hero.
