Hypocrite / Marvel Cinematic Universe

Captain America: We don't trade lives, Vision.
Vision: Captain, 70 years ago, you laid down your life to save how many millions of people. Tell me, why is this any different?

— Avengers: Infinity War

---

Marvel Cinematic Universe

Hypocrite in this franchise.

---

Films

• The biggest hypocrite in the MCU has to be Thaddeus Ross especially since his reintroduction in Captain America: Civil War brings his previous actions from The Incredible Hulk to light. He's a General Ripper who hunts down Bruce Banner relentlessly, blaming Bruce for injuring his daughter Betty as the Hulk. Except that the only reason Bruce became the Hulk in the first place was that Ross never told him what the gamma project really was. Ross even orders an air strike to kill the Hulk, which nearly kills Betty in the process, though he is called out on it. The peak of his hypocrisy is to demonize the Avengers for the collateral damage they caused while saving the world.
• The World Security Council from The Avengers considers The Team a dangerous risk to the populace, then plan to nuke 8.35 million people in New York to stop Loki and the Chitauri. In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, they support Project Insight, which can kill billions of people and nearly does (or at least until they find out that part).
• In various Marvel films, Steve Rogers is portrayed as a hero, but he also has a deep-rooted need for war and conflict. He also doesn't like it when others keep secrets from him, but Civil War reveals that Steve has been keeping a secret from Tony: HYDRA was responsible for the death of his parents. Needless to say, Tony did not take the news well. Steve later apologizes to Tony by letter and phone, admitting responsibility and telling Tony to call him if he ever needs help. In Endgame, he runs group therapy sessions after Thanos' destruction, yet he is unable to move on from his losses and pretends to. He supports Scott's plan to use the Quantum Realm to go back in time, returning the Infinity Stones and starting a life with Peggy, despite not having fully recovered from his Heroic Sacrifice during World War II.
• Tony Stark accuses Steve of letting his emotions cloud his reasoning regarding his opposition to the Sokovia Accords, even though Tony's own reasons for supporting them are largely due to his own guilt. Tony then throws reason out the window in the final act as he tries to kill Bucky over something Bucky had no control over. This is all compounded by him not disclosing his attempted murder, facing no consequences for said crime, and proceeding to walk past the cells of the imprisoned Avengers, who ultimately helped prove Bucky’s innocence.
• Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, also known as Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, have an Irrational Hatred for Tony Stark, whom they blame for their parents' deaths. They join HYDRA, a powerful organization that helped Tony inherit Stark weapons in the first place through Howard's assassination. They later join Ultron, a group that destroys the world. They brainwash the Hulk and unleash him on a defenseless town, causing tragedy.
  Agatha Harkness: Ah, Wanda, the rebellious years. Quick question: your reaction to the bombing of your civilian apartment building and the murder of your parents was to join an anti-freedom terrorist organization?
  Wanda Maximoff: We wanted to change the world.
• Ultron himself proves to very hypocritical on many levels, but foremost is that he considers A.I the next step in evolution compared humans and yet his very first action is to mercilessly destroy Benevolent A.I. J.A.R.V.I.S, and Ultron has no qualms ripping apart his previous body just so he can fully “upgrade” himself. True he did care greatly for Vision, but that’s just because he wanted transfer his consciousness into him, again showing his selfishness and megalomania.
• Doctor Strange: Kaecilius calls the Ancient One this in the Batman Cold Open as she taps into the Dark Dimension despite forbidding it at Kamar-Taj.
• Odin, the father of Thor, berated his son for his warmongering actions towards the Ice Giants and banished him for it. Yet as Thor: Ragnarok reveals Odin conquered the other Nine Realms by force with his daughter Hela, killing billions of lives in the process, which makes Thor topping off a few Ice Giants look completely tame in comparison. It’s strongly implied this was Odin’s regret and he became a benevolent ruler as atonement for his actions, justifying why he was so hard on his sons Thor and Loki for their misdeeds.
• Loki ensures his “oaf” brother Thor wouldn’t be crowned king, citing his brother’s immature Hot-Blooded personality as unworthy of the throne. Come Ragnarok, Loki (disguised as Odin) is ruling Asgard and is a downright terrible king who spends most of his time on a couch, drinking wine, and watching plays about his “heroics”.
• Black Panther: Killmonger hates white people for believing their superior technology gives them the right to conquer the sovereign people across the globe, only to then assert that Wakanda's superior technology gives Wakanda the right to conquer the world. He also acknowledges Wakanda's complicity in European colonialism that apparently ruined Africa, but he subjugates non-white racial groups, including Hong Kong. Despite claiming to help black people, Killmonger is willing to kill or boss them around if they get in his way, even shooting his girlfriend dead without a second thought.
• Dr. Strange has two moments in Avengers: Infinity War. Firstly, he remarks over Tony’s ego saying he wonders how he fits his head into his helmet. Sure most people have a right to call out Tony’s Awesome Ego, but this coming from the doctor who got his Career-Ending Injury solely because he was too damn egotistical for his own good is a little rich. Later Strange has a Hypocrite Heartwarming moment since despite stating coldly he’d sacrifice Tony and Spider-Man to protect the Time Stone, when the moment came he saved Iron Man’s life by giving up the Stone. However, given that this one happened after he watch over 14 million possible futures, it's more than likely that he changed his mind, due to the possibility that some of those futures go to hell due to him sacrificing Tony and Peter.
• Ego the Living Planet from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is a huge hypocrite. He gave a Motive Rant about how he wanted to find meaning by exploring life on other gualaxies because he was alone. However, his entire Assimilation Plot is to destroy that life he claims to have admired and he killed Peter's mom because his love for her would keep him from fulfilling his plans. So even though he wanted to find other lives to not be alone, he still dropped the ball on his chances of turning his life around.
• Thanos kills half of the refugee Asgardians and halves their population, despite the fact that there are few left. Thanos' goal is to save all life by cutting species' populations at random, but he bends his rules to make exceptions. He slaughters all dwarves on Nidavellir after they built the Infinity Gauntlet for him and spares Eitri due to personal preferences. Thanos berates the Avengers for their arrogance but displays stunning arrogance himself after seeing a future version of himself succeed, with his last words, "I am inevitable", being nearly a declaration of godhood. In Endgame, 2014 Thanos is furious that the Avengers gave Earth and the Universe a second chance by obtaining the Infinity Stones via Time Travel, even though his main source of angst comes from being unable to save his own planet.
• Spider-Man: Far From Home: Quentin Beck, also known as Mysterio, calls Tony a "boozy manchild" unfit for wielding technology, but he is a Psychopathic Manchild and Heroic Wannabe who aims for the wealth, fame, and status of Iron Man. He uses Tony's holographic technology as a self-therapy machine, B.A.R.F., as a reason for Tony being "a terrible boss", disregarding his own actions towards his loyal followers, including bullying, belittling, and threatening to shoot them if uncovered. Tony would never have done such things to his allies, so his firing of Beck was justified. Beck also gloats about Peter being a "scared little kid in a sweatsuit" in a holographic Mind Screw, despite having no superpowers, wearing a full body Motion Capture suit, and relying on a team of henchmen to disguise these facts.
• Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: Wanda calls out Strange for his abundant use of time travel and dark magic for his own aims, despite Wanda doing similar magic and being deemed a threat. Strange, while using questionable and reckless means, nevertheless fought to protect the universe and willingly laid down his life hundreds, if not thousands, of times in a row to drive off Dormammu and let himself get turned to dust to follow the path to victory against Thanos. Wanda intends to murder an alternate version of herself to steal that person's life and family and will sacrifice an innocent teenager to gain the needed power to do it, along with dozens of people trying to protect said teenager.
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: The High Evolutionary criticizes humanity's bigotry and violence, yet he treats Rocket and his creations as failed experiments, ordering their deaths for their physical defects. His experiments are often haphazard and brutal, yet he believes his creations should be compassionate and moral pillars. 

Live-Action TV

• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: A constant theme with the villains.
  • "Who You Really Are" (S2E12): When Mack finds out about Fitz and Skye keeping Skye's powers a secret, he says "Secrets don't help any of us." This from the guy who is hiding the fact that he is working for a rival faction of S.H.I.E.L.D. to usurp Coulson.
  • Throughout season 2, the "real" S.H.I.E.L.D. insists on transparency among its leadership and blames the whole HYDRA debacle on Fury's secret-keeping. This comes from an organization even more unknown than the above-ground S.H.I.E.L.D. that Coulson is running, and which is actively trying to undermine Coulson without having to confront him personally. They also criticize Coulson for how he has been running things and feel like he hasn't been doing his job properly when as far as we know they've done nothing to help fight HYDRA (their moles notwithstanding) and seem more concerned with reining Coulson in than actually helping the world. The fact that they call themselves the real S.H.I.E.L.D. is also fairly hypocritical when they more or less acknowledge that Fury turned over power to Coulson (they may not know Fury's alive, but they know Fury gave Coulson the Toolbox). Hunter is quick to lampshade all of this.
    • Not to mention that almost all of Coulson's actions that they bring up as "proof" of his unsuitability were all done to keep potentially nuke-level weapons out of Hydra's hands. What, would they rather he'd sat back and let Hydra take an object that turns people to stone?
  • "Afterlife" (S2E16):
    • Gonzales, head of "real" S.H.I.E.L.D. He talks about how Coulson cannot be trusted because he is acting like a fugitive when it was his own coup that turned Coulson into a fugitive in the first place. He later makes a long speech to May about how S.H.I.E.L.D. cannot stand divided at a time like this, even though he's the one refusing to work with Coulson. May even threw this same point in his face when she said they should both be fighting HYDRA, which he ignored. He also disregards input from others despite the fact that he claims "Real" S.H.I.E.L.D. runs on democratic principle and makes it clear that his offer to May was done only because he has to abide by those rules rather than because he actually wants to.
    • A minor case with Skye; she kept ranting about how Raina couldn't be trusted because she's killed people. Jiaying called her out on this by saying that she was just as capable of killing as Raina, though the fact that Raina did so far more maliciously and by choice rather than necessity as Skye did, not to mention the laundry list of other crimes she committed, is glossed over.
    • Gordon hates the way that inhumans are treated by the world, but not only is he intolerant of normal humans, he's just as intolerant of abnormal humans who got their powers by different means. Gordon tells Cal "you're not one of us, you're just a science experiment." Which ignores the fact that the inhumans are also a science experiment, the only difference is which planet the scientists are from.
  • "The Dirty Half Dozen" (S2E19):
    • When May tells Coulson off about all the secrets he's been keeping from her, he fires back that she kept him in the dark about his resurrection.
    • For all his talk of transparency, Gonzales gets put on the spot by Coulson when the latter mentions the dangerous cargo the Iliad is carrying. It's not clear just how much Gonzales has told his own branch about it, but he's nevertheless shocked that Coulson knows of it.
    • Gonzales (again) justifies potentially getting Coulson's entire team killed because their enemy has no honor. Says the man stabbing fellow agents in the back, as Bobbi calls him on, and plans to betray Coulson as soon as it's convenient.
    • Gonzales for the third time this episode: He's been suspecting Coulson of recruiting and stockpiling superhumans for a personal agenda the entire time, yet when Skye, Lincoln, and Deathlok make it back to the Playground, Gonzales plans to hold them prisoner so he can learn the location of even more superhumans. He even goes so far as to admit that the only reason he endorsed the mission was that he'd be able to take them prisoner if Coulson succeeded.
  • "Lockup" (S4E5):
    • Director Mace's Catchphrase is "The team that trusts, triumphs." Mace seems to miss the fact that his continuous security screenings of Simmons at the very least provide the impression that he doesn't trust her, which is why nobody on Team Coulson trusts him.
      Jeffrey: A team that trusts is a team that triumphs. But trust must be earned with random non-invasive testing.
    • There's also Nadeer, who accuses S.H.I.E.L.D. of working with criminals, one of whom (Robbie, to be exact) she calls a "cold-blooded killer", while she herself is working with The Watchdogs, an organization of murderous criminals.
  • "The Good Samaritan" (S4E6): Mace chews out Coulson for not keeping him the loop, but it falls flat since he himself frequently keeps his agents in the dark about his plans.
  • "Wake Up" (S4E11): Nadeer again, when she accuses S.H.I.E.L.D. of taking the law into their own hands. Ignoring the fact that that is arguably S.H.I.E.L.D.'s job in the first place, Nadeer herself is funding an extrajudicial terrorist group.
  • And then there's Grant Ward. He wants forgiveness from others, but never grants it himself; he punishes others for their disloyalty to him, yet he's a traitor; he resents the abuse he suffered, yet is himself a walking collection of red flags.
• Daredevil:
  • A lot of attention is called to the fact that Matt enforces the law as a lawyer, while simultaneously breaking it with reckless abandon by acting as a superhero. Similarly, he and Father Lantom struggle with the fact that he's a Catholic who may have to actively kill a man.
  • In "Nelson v. Murdock", Foggy is right to call Matt out for not seeing the negatives of his Daredevil work, yet Foggy is guilty of doing the same thing (going out and putting a stop to crime) to a lesser extent, seeing as he did use his softball bat a few episodes earlier to beat up a few thugs who were attacking Karen, and in season 2 we see him go into a Dogs of Hell clubhouse all by himself to seek out information.
  • While Karen is one to call Matt and Foggy out for holding secrets, she's seemingly ignoring the fact that she's kept secret from them the fact that she killed James Wesley, as well as the secret past of hers regarding her brother.
  • Wilson Fisk does not welcome intrusions on his privacy or people using his loved ones against him. He's perfectly willing to do those sorts of things himself to underlings or innocent pawns to control them.
  • Leland Owlsley thinks that Fisk's new relationship with Vanessa is distracting him from getting on with his criminal ventures. Fisk points out that Leland has a son, which means at some point in the past he fell in love with a woman, and still had time to be a successful criminal.
  • Dex tells Ray Nadeem how cold it was for him to hire a lawyer to help him get reinstated into the FBI while secretly working with Matt to investigate him. That's very rich coming from a sociopath who stalks people and secretly enjoys killing but hides it behind a nice guy facade.
• Iron Fist:
  • Colleen Wing has to uneasily admit to hypocrisy when, right after telling Darryl to not fight in the name of money, she participates in some underground cage matches to get money for her dojo's upkeep and video from one of them surfaces on YouTube.
  • Joy Meachum states that she's more open-minded than her brother's Black-and-White Morality. But at the end of the day, she's as obstinate as Ward in her opinions and is all too willing to side with her untrustworthy father despite Ward warning how dangerous Harold is while spitting excuses for his behavior.
• Luke Cage:
  • For all of Mariah's stance about Harlem and not liking the n-slur, when Misty has her on the ropes she shows that it's just a front and not only does she call people the n-slur, she also isn't above using stereotypes to get away as she says it's common for black workers to steal inventory when Misty asks why the microphone stand that she used to kill Cottonmouth mysteriously vanished.
  • During her rally at Harlem's Paradise, Mariah suggests that Jessica Jones lied about Kilgrave's powers and his raping her, which is the exact kind of skepticism and victim-blaming that led to her snapping and killing Cottonmouth.
  • Luke's father preached a high standard of morality from the pulpit, all the while keeping a mistress on the side, employed by his church and having sex in his office there (siring Willis Stryker in the process).
  • Diamondback tells Mariah "You should never talk about murder on an open line," right after blatantly talking about dispatching Shades and Damon Boone on an open phone line.
  • Hypocrisy clearly runs in the Stokes family. Season 2 reveals that for all Mama Mabel's talk about "family first," and an anecdote Shades gives in season 1 about her standing up to wifebeaters, she also allowed her brother-in-law Pete to rape Mariah repeatedly and did nothing to stop it. She even forced Mariah to go through with giving birth to Tilda, with no regard for Mariah's wishes. It's also made apparent that Mariah's rape was just Mabel's excuse for having Pete killed; she really only cared that Pete was betraying the family by allying with Salvador Colon.
• The Punisher:
  • William Rawlins III tries to make it look like everything he's done is for the sake of national security, something he does by overseeing an illegal drug trafficking operation that involves desecrating the corpses of servicemen to smuggle heroin to the United States.
  • Lewis Wilson talks a lot about rights (including his freedom of assembly when he's arrested on the steps of the courthouse). Then he's set on killing Karen for writing a story critical of him. Moreso since military personnel swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, which includes the First Amendment, which explicitly covers "Freedom of Speech" and "Freedom of the Press".
• WandaVision:
  • When their dog Sparky dies, Billy and Tommy beg their mother Wanda to use her powers to resurrect him. Wanda then gives them a lecture about how they have to learn to cope with death as a natural part of life. Never mind the fact that Wanda recreated Vision and enslaved the entire town of Westview to act out her fantasy of suburban domestic bliss in a sitcom setting and avoid having to cope with her grief. (Although she eventually did cope with it in a way.)
  • Agatha claims that Wanda doesn't know what she's unleashed by becoming the Scarlet Witch, right after having awakened Wanda to the full potential of her powers in trying to steal them.
  • In a flashback, Agatha begs her coven and mother not to kill her by stealing her life and magic, and it is implied that she planned on doing the same thing to them. She then does the same thing to Wanda.
  • Tyler Hayward is critical of Wanda for disregarding Vision's wishes by resurrecting him, and notes that Vision's will stipulated that he didn't want to be brought back out of fear of being used as a sentient weapon...which is exactly what Hayward is doing himself. The final episode confirms that he's actively framing Wanda for his own crimes.