Unintentionally Unsympathetic - TV Tropes

"There's a difference between having a sympathetic backstory and actually being sympathetic."

• I'm a Mac... and I'm a PC:
  • Aside from being a smear campaign against the PC, the Mac comes across more as a smug hipster than anything next to the poor put-upon everyman playing the PC.
  • British versions of the ads starred Mitchell and Webb as PC and Mac respectively, in a way that was reminiscent of their Peep Show characters, Mark and Jeremy. In other words, PC is a basically likable and honest, if rather geeky, guy, while Mac is a selfish, irresponsible layabout.
  • The features they chose to highlight had this problem too. All the PC advantages the ads waved off as boring were things most people actually need, while the Mac advantages were all things that are unnecessary or even useless to anyone who isn't a dedicated artist. More than anything, it makes the Mac character come off as someone who doesn't have a job and thinks that's something to be smug about.
• Commercials for the Toyota Highlander featured a kid bragging about how his parents are cool and not embarrassing now that they bought the Highlander. But he comes off as a smug little bastard, and we're supposed to sympathize with the other kids whose parents don't drive Highlanders, which gives off the message: "Being a nice, loving parent just isn't good enough, oh no, if you don't drive the right car your kid has every right to hate you!". Even worse, once they buy the Highlander, he's seen not only pitying his friends whose parents didn't buy one, but, to make his parents "cooler", makes them throw out everything in the house he doesn't like, including their family portrait.
• DirecTV's ads portray a man who married a... marionette and had a child with her. Yet he constantly brags about how his TVs have no wires now that he switched to Direct TV, often right in front of his wife, son, or father-in-law. While he attempts to deflect he was talking about the TVs, it all comes off as a man who's hating his own family for being different.
• This Kia Forte commercial posits the average attention span is 8 seconds and their emergency brake system, lane assist, etc., can all help keep drivers safe. They demonstrate this with a woman who gets so caught up singing along to the radio that she nearly crashes because she wasn't paying attention to the road. While emergency brake systems do have their merits, it's not hard to think a lady who can't sing along to a song and also pay attention to where she's going probably shouldn't be behind the wheel.
• The woman in this 1994 anti-speeding public information film. While the driver is indeed at fault for what happened (which isn't helped by his attitude) and it is sad she's dead, she's also partially to blame for not bothering to look both ways before crossing the street. The fact that her ghost is trying to shift all the blame for her death on him falls completely flat, especially since another ad by the same company had a teenaged boy that was killed in an accident after a driver struck his father's car who did nothing to cause his death other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

• In the Noonbory and the Super 7 episode "Rock and Roll Mamby", the audience is meant to be on Noonbory's side when he chastises Mamby for showing off against the magic rock. However, the magic rock being active in the first place was Noonbory's own fault, as he has been shirking his responsibility of watching it.
• Hayop Ka!: The Nimfa Dimaano Story: As the movie goes on, it gets a bit difficult to feel for Nimfa once she unapologetically cheats on Roger with Iñigo. Sure, Roger is shown to be a bit of a flake, but he still does his best to wine and dine her with what little money he's got. Then there's her treatment of Jhermelyn, her best friend, which looks rather mean-spirited when Nimfa rubs their relationship on her face, unbeknownst to the fact that Jhermelyn has been feeling like a third wheel. Her subsequent break-up with Roger and her reaction upon finding out that Roger has become Jhermelyn's live-in partner, who has admitted to Nimfa earlier that she would happily be a rebound should Nimfa and Roger separate comes off as petty and unreasonable as a result. This is rightfully lampshaded by Papa George when she rings him up for some advice and tells him all about the events that led to this.

• Calvin and Hobbes:
  • Calvin's parents are this. Parents as People is in full effect here (perhaps a little too much so), and Calvin is a Bratty Half-Pint, but his own parents were hardly ever seen interacting with him in a loving way or trying to understand him, even though many 21st century readers see Calvin as having, at the very least, an undiagnosed disorder. There are also several strips where they act like they downright hate or neglect Calvin and consider themselves martyrs for having to put up with him, like when his mother threw Calvin out hours before the school bus arrives so she can get a morning free, or when his father said he'd would rather have raised a dog and considered throwing Calvin into the alligator pit at the zoo. Some strips have them guilt-trip Calvin for giving him food, clothing and shelter — things they're legally obligated to provide him with as his parents, making it look like a textbook case of expecting praise just for doing what they're supposed to be doing, an attitude the strip unambiguously condemns whenever Calvin expresses it. There are some tender moments between Calvin and his parents, but they are few and far between. It would get so bad that Bill Watterson had to address it in a commentary, where he expressed regret that Calvin's parents were mostly seen when they were in a bad mood, but Watterson has also claimed that "they did better than [he] would've" with regards to Calvin. Which tells you a lot...
  • For that matter, Calvin himself. Sure he's a kid, but he's also cost his parents large amounts of money in repair bills, constantly harasses Susie, sprays his mom with the garden hose after she's spent a long time getting dressed up, etc.
• Crankshaft: A May 2021 arc involved the Valentine Theater facing closure due to the pandemic. But every marquee and promotional poster is for Radio Ranch, the film-length version of the strange 1935 serial The Phantom Empire, which Tom Batiuk is obsessed with. It's obvious why they're not attracting customers.
• Anthony in For Better or for Worse. You're supposed to feel sympathy for him because his wife, Therese, doesn't want their daughter, and he also feels like he no longer "has a home". But the fact is that he had harassed Therese into getting a baby when she didn't want one in the first place. Anthony lost even more ground when it was revealed that he promised Therese that he would stay home with the baby, but he didn't intend to keep his word for no better reason than because he just expected "the magic of motherhood" to kick in and make Therese want to quit her job (which was even implied to make more than his did) and become a stay-at-home mom. But she is supposed to be the bad spouse simply because she wanted Anthony to actually keep the promise he made as a compromise with her and because she's not the maternal type. Then throw in that after he saves Elizabeth from attempted sexual assault - on the very same night, in fact! - while she's recovering from the shock, Anthony decides that this is the perfect time to confess that he's in love with her and is so terribly lonely... while he still is married to Therese at this point, and even if he had been single, he was pretty much taking advantage of a woman who had just narrowly avoided being raped by a stalker. No words can describe the level of disgust that this garnered from readers.
• FoxTrot has Andrea during the Christmas storyline in which her mother comes over. Andy spends much of the visit quite upset about her mother's presence, partly because of long-standing bitterness, and partly because her mother actually endears herself to the rest of the family by being significantly nicer and more supportive of their interests than Andy is. The strip essentially treats this as something Andy's mother should feel guilty about, and has her give Andy the credit for getting the kids the presents they really wanted (presents Andy would never have dreamed of giving), thereby making Andy's mother the only one who makes any real effort at reconciling beyond a simple apology.
• Les Moore, the de facto lead character of Funky Winkerbean, is a clear example of a character who was meant to be sympathetic, and in theory should be. He fell in love with a woman (Lisa), who'd been in some abusive relationships in the past, married her, had a daughter, and then lost her to cancer. After her death he turned his grief into art, writing a graphic novel about his life with Lisa and another about new love with his second wife, Cayla. So what's the problem? He thinks entirely too highly of himself. He thinks Lisa's Story makes him an important writer, when in reality his writing career depends almost entirely on milking personal tragedy. Not helping matters is the fact that as a teacher he seems to be defined by contempt for his students.

• Gnarly Pop Production's Life Love And Lady Wrestling decided to have Mercedes Martinez defend the SHIMMER Championship belt as a heel, given Martinez was a heel in SHIMMER. The problem? Her challenger was Jessicka Havok, who is hard enough to a make a face as is, but was most famous for a program with Martinez in WSU, where Havok made racists remarks about people like Martinez, beat Martinez into hospitalization, disrespected an area of worship associated with Martinez's religion and got Brittney Savage to forfeit a match by threatening to kill Martinez with a machete. Despite having an extra segment early in the show to establish Martinez has a heel, to try and get as much sympathy for Havok as possible. Despite Martinez working in one of the most crowd unpleasing manners she ever had, the most vocal parts of the crowd still wound up cheering for Martinez whenever she connect with any remotely effective offense or when Havok seemed close to winning.
• On SHINE 63, Notorious Nadi cheated to win her match in the Shine Nova Tournament and then cost Candy Cartwright her match against Dementia D'Rose for no reason. The next night at SHINE 64, Candy Cartwright cost Notorious Nadi her match against Avery Taylor in revenge. The problem? Show 63 was in Michigan and show 64 was in Chicago, which meant pretty much none of the live audience had seen what happened the previous night and switched from booing Nadi to booing Candy.
• In summer 2021, Baron Corbin underwent a Humiliation Conga starting with losing his Cool Crown & status as king to Shinsuke Nakamura, that seemed to be an attempt to have him make a Heel–Face Turn. The problem with this is Corbin's troubles are so over the top^note  that his whole situation borders on the comical. Adding to this is massive Fridge Logic (if he's poor, why does he still appear every week on WWE TV?) and the fact that despite being depicted as a Squidward-level Butt-Monkey, he still gets booed by the fans cause they haven't forgotten how much of a Jerkass he was (which Kevin Owens even pointed out is the main reason people are reluctant to help him).

• The entire Mage Species of Witch Girls Adventures, partially courtesy of some really badly handled Black Comedy and transformation-based fetishes, mostly because the game literally portrays Witches as selfish, cruel Reality Warpers who are outright encouraged to bully muggles so long as they don't break the very few rules their society places on them. When the "heroes" of the setting do things like turn people into food and drink to consume them because it's more convenient than getting normal food, or turn people into sapient but immobile clothes, jewelry or other objects, or even straight-up disintegrate them just for laughs... well, the Malleus Maleficarum's viewpoint that you need a Final Solution to protect humanity from them looks like a perfectly sane response.
• Kender in Dragonlance are meant to be a race of cheerful, innocent, perpetual children who are firmly on the side of the Good races, despite an unfortunate carelessness around other peoples' properties. They have a very vocal hatedom amongst Dungeons & Dragons players as a whole, because they instead come off as annoying, smug little pests. In particular, the fact that kender are insulted by called "thieves" makes it clear that they do understand the concept of "personal property"... but this doesn't stop them from absent-mindedly stealing literally anything they can get their hands on.
• In a meta sense, the "murder hobo" style of play can come across as this. Adventurers who are ostensibly the "good guys" (and who may even maintain a capital "G" Good alignment depending on the DM) but whose first solution to every problem is kicking down the door and killing everything in sight, regardless of whether or not a non-violent solution would have been possible. Even for the characters that aren't played as omnicidal blood knights it can be hard to necessarily feel sympathetic for them when their life of absurd adventuring catches up to them. What did you think would happen when you jumped into that volcano full of undead and d''emons?
• Magic: The Gathering: War of the Spark tried to redeem Token Evil Teammate Liliana by having her (at least intend to) sacrifice her life to help defeat Big Bad Nicol Bolas, but it fell flat for a lot of people for several reasons. First, despite being enslaved by Bolas under threat of death, the situation fails to build sympathy by being entirely and predictably Liliana's own fault, being a direct result of her willingly bargaining with demons for her own power and vanity. Second, she only turns against Bolas when she realises how his victory would make her own life suck, making her actions feel more out of pragmatism than a genuine change of heart. Finally, her actions immediately afterward follow the same pattern they always have - fleeing the scene as soon as it's safe and convenient, putting the preservation of her own safety above trying to face and make amends to her victims. This made it hard for players to get on board with her "angsty victim" routine during her next appearance in Strixhaven.

• Don José in Carmen. He is tragic, yes, but he's still ultimately responsible for his actions due to his own jealousy and possessiveness. Yet the story seems to expect viewers to blame Carmen for everything he does and treats him like a hapless victim rather than his own person. Cristiano Chariot, who oversaw the 2018 Florence production, was concerned that Don José's killing of Carmen would lead to real-life crazy jealous guys to commit similar crimes, which influenced his own take on it.
• Evan Hansen from, well, Dear Evan Hansen. While it's initially not his fault that Connor's family believes Evan to be their deceased son's best friend, the fact he not only fails to correct their misunderstanding but actively tells more lies, dates the boy's grieving sister (after a frankly somewhat squicky song that manages to veer into Incest Subtext territory as he lies to her about how her dead brother loved her after all...by telling her things he, the boy romantically in love with her, likes about her), and almost accepts money from them, makes it very hard to feel as sorry for him as the show seems to expect. Other characters do criticize Evan's behavior (the entirety of the song "Good For You", for a start), so the show isn't trying to say he did nothing wrong, but at the end of the day, he's still portrayed as a basically good kid who made a mistake because of his bad mental health and desire for love—but his actions are so manipulative, selfish, and callous that it's a hard pill to swallow for many.
• Jamie from The Last Five Years. The basic conceit of the musical is that Jamie and Cathy both contributed to their marital issues, and in the end, they just weren't right for each other. Cathy and Jamie are both shown as being sympathetic — but much of the fandom finds it hard to feel too bad for Jamie. While his and Cathy's marriage clearly had problems from the start, some of which were her fault, and some of which were nobody's fault, most of the fandom lays the blame mostly on Jamie, since the final straw is him cheating (and he had a wandering eye for years before that). The fact he informs Cathy he's divorcing her via a letter does not help his case, nor does the song "See I'm Smiling," which shows that Cathy is trying to make it work, whereas he's given up by that point. The film adaptation made it even worse, showing Jamie cheating on Cathy with several women (as opposed to just one, like in the stage show), which makes it difficult to argue he genuinely loves his mistress - and they also added a bit of dialogue where he responds to Cathy's (correct) suspicions that he's cheating by telling her she's crazy.
• The Phantom from Love Never Dies is supposed to be someone who still adores Christine and conspires to bring her back because he misses her. However, his threatening to take Christine's son (who he later learns is really his own) away if she refuses to sing for him quickly ruins that—as does the fact that he dangles the kid off a balcony, implying he Would Hurt a Child. Additionally, it's much harder to sympathize with his quest to not be alone when, rather than being a complete outcast from society as in the original play, the Phantom is an extremely wealthy man with a good-sized social circle and support network. It becomes particularly problematic when one considers that in the original play that Love Never Dies is a sequel to, the Phantom murdered multiple people without remorse, something that Love Never Dies never acknowledges.
• The Queen of Spades: Liza's behavior towards Prince Yeletsky (she barely even looks at him!) has earned her quite a few detractors among the fans. After all, it was her who accepted his proposal, and he is extremely kind with her, assuring her of his love and telling her he will respect her decision if she has changed her mind. Even if she realized she only loves Herman, she could at the very least be polite about it.
• This is one of the main criticisms of RENT. At best, the heroes—Mark and Roger in particular—are Brilliant, but Lazy and want the adoration that being a respected artist would bring, but have yet to actually produce anything to earn it. At worst, they're spoiled elitist brats who think working a regular job is beneath them and expect to stay in their apartment rent-free as they wait for inspiration to come to them.

• Pandora – The World of Avatar was billed as a base camp built by Alpha Centauri Expeditions in the Valley of Mo'ara after the events of the films.The company is ostenably led by humans that found peace with the Na'vi and celebrates the natural beauty of Pandora. However, as the park consists of many ACE guides and very few Na'vi (mostly due to the difficulty of creating convincing Na'vi characters that could freely walk around and exist in the open space believably), it comes across as if ACE has taken over Pandora and is using it for profit without allowing the Na'vi to partake in their own culture.

• AGENCY: D.W. Read. The reader is supposed to feel sorry for her because she was kidnapped by The Nine, but both because of what a horrible little bitch she is in her home series and her treatment of fellow kidnapping victim Marcus McCloud (she once threw a book at his head), she comes across more as an Asshole Victim than anything else, and it's hard to not feel angry that Sandy Cheeks and the Pink Panther have to save her.
• In Doki Doki Literature Girls, there is Sayori. In the Friendship arc, Sayori reveals that she had known that her new friend Ako was infatuated with her, but she opted to be oblivious to it. While she does this as a way of preventing having to break Ako's heart since she was dating Monika, it instead comes off as Sayori being deceitful and playing with Ako's emotions.
• Hazel from Girls with Slingshots. The author, Danielle Corsetto, has said that she deliberately writes her as a flawed character to make her more believable and relatable. However, many times this crosses into Hazel being downright unlikable. It came to the point where many readers cheered when Zach broke up with her, even though it was portrayed as a very sad thing in the webcomic.
• A large chunk of the cast of Dominic Deegan come off as this, which is one of the main reasons for the series' rather large hatedom. Luna, Melna, and Dominic himself are probably the biggest offenders, though Melna at least has a Freudian Excuse to explain her behaviour even if it doesn't justify it for many fans.
• The Order of the Stick
  • Therkla. She's only in the comic briefly, but she's more or less every negative stereotype of modern teenage girls in the form of a half-orc Ninja: she compromises her mission because she has a crush on a boy, she's overly dramatic about her home life (treating the fact that her parents are sickeningly in love on the same level of horrific and disgusting as being a Child by Rape, though at least this is completely Played for Laughs), her primary complaint about the lack of reconciliation between her crush and her mentor (who are on opposite sides of a good-vs-evil conflict) is that it means she never gets her way, and she ends up committing what amounts to a form of suicide because a guy she liked wouldn't dump his girlfriend for her. It's sad that she died young, but she spent most of her time acting like a brat with levels in Ninja. The Giant says that Therkla is meant to represent the neutral in the good vs. evil conflict, but her idea of compromise is basically asking the good guys to let the evil guys (including herself, since she's complicit in the actions of her evil mentor) get away with the murder of dozens, if not hundreds, of innocent people.
  • Celia. She was supposed to come off as the slightly naïve "civilian" of the group, and a pacifist. However, she applies this pacifism in situations where it is very dangerous, like against an opposing army that has no qualms about killing her and the remaining good guys hidden in the caves. The fact that she couldn't even figure this out made her go past naïve and into straight-up stupid.
• Miyabi Otsuki from The Way to Your Heart. He's clearly supposed to be sympathetic due to how the death of his mother and the way his father withdrew from the family as a result deeply affected him. However, he frequently comes off as a massive Jerkass who overindulges in the wangst. He has friends with whom he's playing in a band that he's the lead singer of and a loving sister whose Number One concern has always been his well being. Plus, said band is very popular and is heading for mainstream stardom. However, he treats his friends like dirt, treats his fans with contempt, and is a total bully towards the school faculty and other students. He bullies the main character Yumi just for being at the wrong place at the wrong time and accuses her of trying to replace his late mother because Yumi coincidentally bears a slight resemblance to her, and then ends up falling for her, which he tries to deal with by leading another girl Yayoi (the daughter of Miyabi's manager and mentor) on and toying with her feelings (Yayoi may be nuts, but no girl deserves that), nearly getting Yumi killed by Yayoi when she gets jealous well as resulting in Yayoi's own Death by Childbirth, leaving her father utterly devastated. And aside from not only never receiving any real punishment for his actions, he's constantly Easily Forgiven by everyone because of his musical talent and Freudian Excuse. While the author Emi did take steps to mitigate this by giving Miyabi some Character Development, for some readers, it's way too little, way too late.
• The janitor in one two-part strip from Nip and Tuck. He stops a transwoman from going into the women's restroom, pinches her testicles to "prove" that she's male, before bluntly telling her that he doesn't believe in her identifying as a woman and threatening to do worse to her if she tries to go in the women's restroom again. We're meant to think of him as giving a potential sex offender what "he" deserves, but to many commenters who don't share the author's views on transsexuality, the janitor comes off as a transphobic jerk who should have been arrested.
• From webcomic artist Mallorie Jessica Udischas:
• Sly Cooper: Thief of Virtue has at least 3 of these; all affiliated with Interpol, all of them conservative, and all of them preachy as hell.
  • Bubo is meant to be a benevolent Reasonable Authority Figure to call out Torus who's supposed to be seen as overstepping lines and taking things too far, but more often than not the owl comes across as a patronizing and arrogant obstructionist who's more concerned about red tape instead of stopping crime who, as director, put no rein on his detectives at all given he allowed Jack to get away with affiliating himself with Sly's Father and Torus to go corrupt with a gambling addiction, both which lead to the tragedies that kickstarted the plot. He also criticizes Shelby for having bias in a ruling, but also does the same in a case he's presiding over during "Welcome to the Jungle" yet doesn't think twice about the fact and is still portrayed sympathetically despite the fact, which he tries to pass off to Torus as "perspective on civil cases" in the next chapter. It's also mentioned he has bank accounts that Torus apparently criticized in "Wrath of the Wolf King" raising speculation on what sort of dealings he had going on behind the scenes when he was Director and the kind of corruption he dabbled in/allowed.
  • Jack Lupus is supposedly a morally upstanding Cowboy Cop...yet, aside from having killed someone in the past because he thought they were armed instead of maiming them, he claims his wife left him for reasons he says were based on choice; given his reactionism lampshaded by Torus, however, there are many things that can put Jack in a negative light because of that which could justify his wife's actions, and the objectivism he displays at the diner he brought Drake to for his Birthday doesn't help his case either. Add onto the fact that he's extremely preachy in general, gets away with working with a thief, and essentially kickstarted Drake Lupus' plans in destroying Interpol by recklessly giving him the medallion which gave him the 3 crystals...his kindness and civility ends up just coming off as a disingenuous façade for being a bad person deep down.
  • As of "Serpent's Kiss", Ned was supposed to be a Dogged Nice Guy who we're all supposed to feel bad for because he didn't get Carmelita and wish nothing but the best for, but more often than not he seems more like an obnoxiously flat character who's constantly feeling sorry for himself to the point of being obnoxious; His behavior demonstrated through the entire chapter and at the midpoint with his conversation with Carmelita only exacerbates the incel-like feel to his character. Plus, he's demonstrated little to show that he's grown as a person aside from a preachy Sudden Principled Stand against Torus in "Wrath of the Wolf King", and yet somehow, this warranted him becoming the Director of Interpol and a love interest, the latter which bares no relevance to the comic or series.
    • The last part is made even worse in "The New Director" given how much Ascended Fridge Horror it's loaded with when he begins to reveal his originalism; the beginning of his answer to the second reporter asking to how Director Ned intends to fix the targeting of specific animal types? He begins it with a dogwhistle and then follows it with a tone-deaf speech that doesn't even bother to address the reporter's concerns. When asked if he intends to take Interpol down a progressive direction? Ned yet again dodges the question and states he'd enforce every law exactly how it was written, even if he “disagreed” with them; basically this insinuates he'd enforce the law even when it's the morally wrong thing to do and then hide behind disingenuous sympathy to downplay the fact, which reeks of hypocrisy given how he worked with a master thief similar to Jack Lupus. Essentially he becomes an Anti-Torus at the end of the story and runs Interpol exactly how Jack would have run it, which in reality isn't a good thing at all.
• In Goblin Hollow, Lily is supposed to be in the right when she reprimands and slaps Penny for being rude to a preacher. Considering said preacher was a Jerkass who had singled out Penny for bullying for no reason at all, and considering not everyone shares Ralph Hayes Jr's belief that religious authorities should be respected no matter how unpleasant they are, to say the readers disagreed would be an Understatement.
• It's (Not) Your Fault: Despite however how much the author tries to play off Sam's rape of Lincoln as a moment of weakness brought about a bad sequence of events, Sam is still guilty of taking advantage of and forcing herself on a 12-year old boy against his will, traumatizing him for life. Even worse, instead of his family rightfully getting her arrested and the fetus aborted for forced conception, they apparently decided to raise Lina in secret and shun Luna from the family, practically keeping Lina in the dark that she ever existed. All the while, Lincoln is forced to take care of a child he didn't want. But hey, it's still alright because she felt ''really'' bad about it after the act and failed to take any contraceptives.
• Princess Princess (2012): Amira and Sadie are less sympathetic than intended to some people given how they incessantly mock Vladric, mostly calling him "Butthead" instead of his real name just because he was marginally stuck up, not wanting to be rescued by a girl. It comes off as just slightly like Claire, Sadie's older sister, who cruelly bullies her.
• In Nineteen-Ninety-Something, Joel is supposed to be viewed as a misunderstood victim of oppression and uses sarcasm to cope with being emotionally beaten down all the time. The problem, however, is the fact that Joel doesn't come off as any better than those who oppress him; he always has a smug or cynical comment to say about everything regardless of whether it was appropriate to do so, constantly dismisses other people's opinions (which is pretty hypocritical since he hates it when people dismiss his own opinions), is incredibly impulsive, and generally acts rude to other people even if they did nothing to provoke it. All-in-all, a lot of readers feel that Joel is just as much of a jerk who brings most of his misery on himself. When the comic was rebooted, both Joel's cynical self-pity and the abuse he took from the world in general (and his family in particular) was toned down.
• Jack (David Hopkins): Central is always the first character to whip out the "Oh no, we can't help the people in Hell because of RULES" mantra, yet every single time progress has been made in helping individual souls leave Hell, it's because an angel or Jack has taken the initiative to break the rules. This makes her seem at best an Inspector Javert-type more concerned with the letter of the law than helping people and at worst someone who is remaining willfully blind on how to solve some very big problems. This was finally lampshaded in ''Megan's Run Part 2'' when Arty and Vinci call her out for being more concerned over her precious rules than helping a soul who literally went through Hell to find angels. The fact the ultimate result of this is that Megan gets to see God like she wanted to and Central would have directly prevented that from happening makes her seem willing to break before she'll bend.
• Penny and Aggie: Aggie often falls into this. Being a Soapbox Sadie in high school is understandable, but she judges Penny by appearance, attempts to subject Lisa to Slut-Shaming when she learns the latter is bisexual, and confesses to Marshall during "Suicide Run", knowing that he's currently happy with Karen (even with No Accounting for Taste being taken into account) and despite the fact that he's dealt with people who were friends with him in hopes of getting with him. She deliberately uses Darren (in a way doing to him what Robespierre cruelly did to Helen in Omega Sisters), then ruins the play she and her friends worked hard on when she learns she won't be able to hook up with him even though she didn't even like him. She later gets upset after seeing Penny happy after having rough sex with her. While wanting peace and stability in a relationship is understandable, her immaturity in regards to expecting her partner to be a "Shangri-La" of some sort was heavily derided as stupid and selfish by much of the fanbase.
• Las Lindas:
  • Mora in the early comic is quite a piece of work. She does all sorts of questionable things that either go unpunished or downplayed and has severe bouts of anger that eventually get brushed aside whenever she starts crying to elicit sympathy. Rehiring Miles (after having blackmailed and revenge slept with him) is literally the only time she ever manages to "fix" one of her many mistakes, and even then, it was as an apology to Minos instead of the actual victim.
  • Minos feeling hurt by Mora criticizing his artistry is one thing. Entertaining and validating Rachael's feelings for him because of that is another (as it comes off as uncharacteristically petty), especially since he's meant to be the wisest, most mature character in the cast.
• Lore Olympus:
  • The narrative presents Hades as being one of the most level headed and responsible gods but a common complaint about him from readers is that his love life consists of unequal pairings that are unethical at best, potentially predatory at worst. Minthe was his girlfriend and his secretary, with him being her employer and paying for her apartment. When things fell apart between them, Minthe was terrified at the implication that he would leave her homeless and unemployed, though he was thankfully not that cruel. He also immediately became romantically obsessed with Persephone, despite only knowing her for a short time and learning that she was only 19 years old. He even changed the rules for her internship to allow her to get paid, a blatant ethics violation.
  • Similarly, Hera is portrayed mostly as a victim of Zeus' constant cheating and otherwise abusive tendencies. Little attention is brought to the fact that Hera herself is anything but a loyal spouse with her frequently sleeping with Hades behind Zeus' back.There's also her extreme Fantastic Racism toward nymphs, to the point she disapproved of Hades' and Minthe's relationship mainly not because it was toxic but because she thought Hades deserved better than a river nymph. Adding onto that is her deliberately ushering Persephone into an Unequal Pairing with Hades, despite knowing about Persephone's plans to join the Godesses of Eternal Maidenhood, solely because she felt bad that Hades was single (even though he was dating Minthe at the time) with no thought to how that kind of relationship would affect Persephone's life and plans for the future.
• The vegans in Vegan Artbook are intended to be animal loving people in a world that does not tolerate Veganism or respect animals, and are thus victims of those oppressive omnivores and carnists. Unfortunately? The Vegans are at best sanctimonious hypocrites suffering who never actually do any actual animal welfare, and at worst genuinely dangerous to humans. The narration also backs up their Insane Troll Logic. The "Carnists" and the omnivores (the antagonists) are portrayed as strawmen who actually come off as more reasonable than the vegans.
• Zoophobia: Chapter three wants you to feel bad for Damian. This can be hard since he abuses his cousin, tries to sabotage Zill's relationship with Kayla, sneaks off to Safe Haven without his parents knowing thus putting his life at risk and threatens a man insulting him with violence.

• The Girlfriend in Friday Night Funkin' WITH LYRICS is horrified when she learns that the Boyfriend was planning to get her demonic father exorcized. The issue is that the Boyfriend wanted to do this because her father was making repeated attempts on his life, something she knows full well. What's more, by the time she finds this out, she met three of her parents' victims, the Spirit, Whitty, and Garcello, people whose lives were ruined thanks to her family, and the first one was her ex. Father or not, there's no excuse for her to see Boyfriend in the wrong. It gets worse when you remember she callously covered up the Spirit's fate and is implied to be after the Boyfriend's soul.
• Gord in Acts of Gord clearly lives in a Wretched Hive with loads of thieves, lunatics, Karens, and really bad criminals, but his actions sometimes don't invite a lot of sympathy. He clearly has a superiority complex, sees nothing wrong with insulting customers to their faces, at one point even harasses a retail employee who is just doing their job of seeing receipts despite that he himself would have tossed them on the street if they flouted the rules of his store and expects us to view it as him "Sticking it to the man", and at one point even doxxed a customer and invited readers of the site to harass them. Of course, being an Unreliable Narrator, one should possibly question if they're actually that stupid

• Dragonbored: Jessica, Taylin, and Carl's other friends are meant to be seen as good people who suffer from Carl's laziness and irresponsibility. However, we hear them talk about Carl's flaws far more often than we see him embody them, and while his addiction to video games is a serious problem, not one of them actually thinks to try to help him get over it. Jessica shows concern for Carl at first, but her efforts to snap him out of it make her come across as the stereotypical "nagging housewife", and she eventually gives up and drops Carl like a bag of dirt once Jimbroth comes along. Carl's friends show barely any concern for his wellbeing at all, instead barging into his house to eat his food and drink his liquor without his permission, all the while nagging him about his job at which he is verbally abused by his boss, LeBron. Only Taylin shows genuine concern for Carl, but even then he doesn't do much more than lecture him about his personal habits.
• Jet Lag: The Game: Ben in Tag EUR It 2, after he hides in the photo booth in Metz to throw off Sam & Adam. There is a rule against hiding in bathrooms, as the chasers searching through one would violate bystanders' privacy. Some fans want this rule to be extended to photo booths, since it would likewise be very rude to interrupt a stranger in one.
• Screen Rant Pitch Meetings often lampshades this trope when the Producer and the Screenwriter (neither of whom are supposed to be sympathetic), discuss the latter's pitches.
  • In the Die Hard pitch meeting, the Producer asks whether the tragic part of Powell mistakenly shooting a kid in the backstory is that a kid died or Powell "lost his cop mojo". After hearing that it's the latter, the Producer says "Interesting", and upon hearing that Powell's character arc involves him becoming able to kill people again, flatly says, "Well, good for him."
  • In Unbreakable, the Producer feels more sympathy for the woman on the train who rejects David Dunn (who's trying to cheat on his wife) than he does for David himself, despite the fact that the scene is trying to make the latter more sympathetic.
• joshscorcher's Top Ten Hated Characters We're Supposed To Like has ten characters that the uploader hates even though they were supposed to be liked, plus several honorable examples, some of which can be found on the Video Games page for this trope. It also discusses the trope, saying that many great villains have no sympathetic qualities whatsoever, but these are characters that did not come off as likeable as the creators intended.
• In Coby Persin's "The Dangers of Social Media" social experiment ^note , the parents who pretend to stage a kidnapping for child trafficking are meant to come off as doing Tough Love like other parents participting. However, instead of coming off as concerned but loving parents who at least do Anger Born of Worry and still try to show they did it out of love and more importantly didn't go as far as them, they are shown to only scold and guilt trip her, making them off as callous Abusive Parents. When the video was shared out of context in Twitter / X years later, many decried them for committing a traumatising act that would make their daughter less likely to trust them.
• The Vile Eye: In his Analysing Evil series, the narrator repeatedly deconstructs the villain's lesser of two evils justifications, revenge motives, and Freudian excuses. For characters, like Francis Dolarhyde, Tony Soprano, Max Cady, etc., the narrator repeatedly says there are no justifications and excuses for murder.

  "Francis may not have been born a monster, in fact, no one is. Rather he was conditioned to become one, a boy so heavily mistreated that it was almost an inevitability that he would grow into a horrid adult. For that, we give him sympathy as not a single person should ever be made to suffer such injustices. But neither should anyone be made to suffer the injustices that Francis brought down upon nearly a dozen people, as abuse and trauma are no excuse for murder. So while we can sympathize with the horrendous story of Francis Dolarhyde, we can't excuse the monster he became."

  "People like Tony Soprano are fond of comparing themselves to other people or organisations who commit greater crimes than they. Often arguing that yes, they may have beaten, maimed, and killed a number of people, innocent or not but there are far worse people out there in the legitimate and illegitimate worlds that have committed much worse crimes than they have. But pointing to another man who's killed 10 people and arguing that you only killed 2 is a poor argument to make for why you aren't so bad. And though there's always a greater evil, that doesn't negate the evil you sow or the crimes you commit."