Villains you felt sympathy for, but felt you weren't meant to?

[ToastiestZombie]

One of the few times I felt genuinely sorry for a villain was in a The Walking Dead story.

Andrew St. John from Starved for Help, to be specific. In the end the guy lost his mother, potentially his brother and his entire farm. I know he killed one of my guys, but I still couldn't help but feel slightly sorry for him when my Lee walked away and Andrew just kept mewling Lee's name in a sad, defeated tone of voice.

Yeah, that scene did make me a bit sad for the guy.

Spoiler

I killed his brother, so it was worse. And the fact that he thinks his mum's still alive just makes things worse. He was still part of the bad guys for the episode, but really there's rarely ever any defined "bad guys" in the Walking Dead. The governor's the closest you'll get to a bad guy in the comics, and in the games Lee can become the bad guy if you so please.

 

[teebeeohh]

While not an individual villain exactly, I had a lot of sympathy for the Enclave in Fallout. Sure, they were conducting evil experiments and were kind of dicks, but they seemed like the only faction that were still really pushing forward in terms of science and tech, they had helicopters!

also genocide. twice
the enclave allowed and wanted the great war to happen in order to increase their power and wanted to flood the entire US with FEV. however, you can hardly blame them for something their ancestors did 200 years ago and they kinda have kickass tech leaving us with one count of attempted genocide, i can get behind that GO ENCLAVE.

basically any villain who wants to do a power grab with the help of macguffin because he thinks he can make something better. and whenever they are "join me, rule the world together" and i can be pretty certain that i will get my chunk of power and he has no way of backstabbing me i would love the option to just accept the deal.

 

[Sushewakka]

Syndrome of The Incredibles. Incredibly smart, a whiz of technology, and is beaten by dumb muscle.
Amon of Legend of Korra. The fact that his faction was in the moral right (fighting for equal rights to end the oppression of the second class citizens) kinda helps in this regard.

 

[Yosato]

Galbatorix from Eragon.
Dude is hardly ever mentioned, we never actually SEE him doing anything evil. How do I know he did everything he's rumored to do? Maybe it's all just dragon rider propaganda.

Maybe he has a renegade general on the loose and that's why his minions are slaughtering villages.

(Apparently he does something evil in the final book, which I haven't read, but could probably chalk up to a nervous breakdown due to the heroes bugging him so much).

Mmm, I dunno. Not gonna spoil anything, but I think if you read his antics in the last book you'd definitely consider him an evil guy.

OT: Probably Toguro from Yu Yu Hakusho. I know most of the villains in the series are written to be sympathetic in some way, but a lot of people I've talked to about it couldn't get over everything Toguro did. He was wrong, but at least he stuck to his guns and pursued what he thought was best for him, and by the end he even WANTED to be beaten.

 

[WanderingFool]

Any villain who gets defeated by heroes who deserve to lose.

If the heroes spend their time whining, mucking about, and only win due to being designated heroes, I want the villain to kill them.

Really, to me, I dislike any story that has to designate who the hero is and who the villian is. The Hero is almost always a bigger jerk than the bad guy, and yet we have to root for that guy? Fuck that, Mr. Bad Guy gets my full support.

 

[Tonjac]

Teyrn Logain from the first dragonage game is what springs to mind for me.

I never really saw him as being greedy for power. From the novels its written out that he was the guy keeping Fereldan together during King Marrics breakdown after the queen died.
Then Marric dies and the new king is so hungry for glory that he sacrifices good war-strategy for direct assaults and unplanned grand stands, just because that's what singers will remember.

Just because the grey wardens and Cailen happend to be right about the arch-demon being real, that doesnt mean that there were any reason to believe a disgraced order that had been free-loading for centuries.
So even on that part Logain could be argued to be in the right. Acting as if this was a normal invasion by an inferior enemy, just like it had been for the past 400years.

Logain did some pretty harsh things after he gained power, but every one of them seems to be explainable and to some extent, justifiable.

(My Human noble still joyfully killed him though, bloody bastard giving my lands to the Howes!)

 

[Don Savik]

Shiro Tagachi from Guild Wars. He basically became bad because he was scared of dying from the Emperor whom he protected. So he killed the emperor and his guard. He was then executed and came back as a vengeful spirit. He's one of those "victim of circumstance" villains.

Also I feel for the Decepticons. Mainly because I never liked the primes because it feels like a monarchy. I hate monarchys and ruling by bloodline. Also, because Soundwave is a badass.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Griffith from Berserk. Yes, he was a complete maniac, but his entire world came crashing to the ground. I am not sure I would be too terribly sane either.

I admit Griffith was a character i did feel some sympathy for after Guts left the Hawkes. You can tell that Guts, however inadvertantly, had just crushed his happiness into a fine powdery substance. Maybe it was the fact it was the first time we'd seen this nigh-invincible magnificent bastard be unable to not only not predict something but completely fail at preventing it, and to see him so...distraught was a bit saddening.

My sympathies reached it's peak just before the eclipse: I mean hell, the guy had lost absolutely everything he'd spent his whole life building, he was incapable of now doing anything without assistance, and the people who had followed him so loyally were more or less going to abandon him (Although i did remember that Judeau and some of the other hawkes were gonna stay behind to help take care of him, but all the same his dream was completely gone).

After the eclipse though, i lost any sympathy i had for him as it instantly went to the rest of the Hawkes in the darkest moment i've ever seen in any anime or manga. Don't get me wrong, i understand WHY Griffith did what he did but...i sure as hell don't condone it for a second. So for however much sympathy i may have had for Griffith before the Eclipse, i sure as hell don't have any now.

Plus, he had endured a full year of methodical torture. His angelic face was sliced to pieces, his silver tongue was cut out, most of his skin was stripped away, and his ability to wield a sword or even walk was gone. He was going to have to spend the rest of his life in miserable agony both physically as well as mentally, not being able to talk or even move, constantly reminded of his fallen glory.

To any normal person this would be a living hell, and then realize that Griffith was basically Alexander the Great.

Not that I sympathized with the guy - because he basically brought it on himself - but there was simply no other option for him left.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

Light Yagami in Death Note. Yes, he was the bad guy. Yes, he did horrible things. But to me, he almost seemed like a victim himself. I guess what did it what

Spoiler: Death Note spoilers

the episodes where he forgot he was, in fact, Kira. Seeing how he would act without the influence of the Death Note...it just seemed to make him sympathetic.

 

[saluraropicrusa]

I'd have to say Mother Gothel, from Tangled. I know it likely wasn't their intent, but to me it almost seemed like she had some sort of misguided maternal instinct towards Rapunzel. I'm probably just reading too much into it, but to me it makes her much more interesting as a character to think that deep down, some part of her actually does care about her "daughter."

Also, as someone else mentioned, Saren from the first Mass Effect. He's basically an idealistic, ambitious alien, and though he's doing all the wrong things, he's not necessarily doing them for the wrong reasons. Clearly he's scared of the Reapers, and believes the only way out is bargaining. I know he's supposed to hate humans, but I can't help feeling he has some amount of respect for Shepard, especially towards the end of the game.

I know T.I.M is somewhat similar, but I don't have much sympathy for him because I just don't like him or his ideals, and I can't get behind a guy who can't even keep his own lackeys in check (seriously, how many "rogue experiments" did Cerberus HAVE?).

 

[Marcus Kehoe]

Samuel/Lucifer. Seriously the guy was Gods number one guy, did what God asked and yet was a slave to Gods commands. Then God makes humanity, and gives us free will and expects Lucifer to bow down to us too. I don't think it was unreasonable that Lucifer was mad about being a slave while humanity was given free will for free.

Spoiler: But we all know what happened to him......

Someone gets there bible information form supernatural.

 

[Charli]

Tch sadly most of the villains I feel 'sympathy' for end up getting a 'redemption arc' because apparently someone on the creation team agreed with me, and then I just go 'dammit, now I have to sympathize with him like everyone else' and the character gets boring to me.

Azula (At least purely in the show) was one character from TLA, that really grabbed me and thankfully

Spoiler

didn't go the way of the anti-hero like her brother, and that scene with her mother (?) was heart-wrenching. She was a messed up *****, but she had serious Mum and Dad issues, and a bit of a psychotic desire to outdo her brother.

Something I see a (much lighter) bit in my sister sometimes, she gets crazy trying to prove superiority over me in my mum and dads eyes, when she doesn't realize she usually succeeds anyway , it's only when she gets crazy about it when no acknowledgement is obvious, that they go 'wtf r u doin' and then she spirals into a mess of self loathing that if not taken inward, can only be directed at me, someone she mistakenly thinks is seen as somehow getting the better end of the deal just because I'm NOT being admonished.

I see a scary parallel between Zuko and Azula and my own sibling relationship. But obviously being too much like Zuko, I kinda dislike him as a character. Too much of 'me' there. Ick.


And Azula ranks very highly on my list of villains I was not really supposed to feel sympathy for, but did early on (even without the little personal insights later).

 

[Marcus Kehoe]

Teyrn Logain from the first dragonage game is what springs to mind for me.

I never really saw him as being greedy for power. From the novels its written out that he was the guy keeping Fereldan together during King Marrics breakdown after the queen died.
Then Marric dies and the new king is so hungry for glory that he sacrifices good war-strategy for direct assaults and unplanned grand stands, just because that's what singers will remember.

Just because the grey wardens and Cailen happend to be right about the arch-demon being real, that doesnt mean that there were any reason to believe a disgraced order that had been free-loading for centuries.
So even on that part Logain could be argued to be in the right. Acting as if this was a normal invasion by an inferior enemy, just like it had been for the past 400years.

Logain did some pretty harsh things after he gained power, but every one of them seems to be explainable and to some extent, justifiable.

(My Human noble still joyfully killed him though, bloody bastard giving my lands to the Howes!)

Your supposed to sympathize with him though

 

[Dangit2019]

I love the Joker in pretty much every Batman adaptation. Mainly because he's usually the only guy with a clear goal: be evil and have fun with it. He's just so theatrical and he enjoys his work. Sure, that work might be absolute damn evil, but technically that just makes a lot less morally ambiguous compared to everyone else in the Batman comics.

 

[Marcus Kehoe]

Big Boss in MGS2, why? Because if they just let him succeed he probably would have prevented all the actions of MGS4.

 

[TWRule]

I remember in high school we had to read Beowulf, and we had an assignment to narrate the story from the perspective of any character we wanted. I chose Grendel in the scene where Beowulf is brutally messing him up; I painted Grendel as agast at the horror and absurdity of the situation where he was just enjoying what to him seemed a casual meal when his food suddenly broke his hand and sprang up from its plate to begin willfully brutalizing him. I always wondered why a story of a guy ripping some beast apart was considered classic literature and required reading...

 

[mateushac]

IDK if Dr.Breen in HL2 would count, but that's probably the only one that comes to mind.

 

[Shocksplicer]

Zeus in God of War. Because seriously, when the protagonist is undeiably the most evil character in your story, you can't help but sympathise with the guy trying to kill him.

 

[woodaba]

The bad guy of Planescape: Torment comes closest for me.

Spoiler

At the end of the day, dude only wants to live. Can't do that as a part of the Nameless One, can he?