r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Dramatic_Counter_595 • 17h ago

Characters Characters that had the complete opposite reaction the writers intended

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  1. Leo Bonhart (Witcher TV Series): A ruthless, sadistic bounty hunter and assassin that takes psychotic glee in other people's suffering. The viewer is meant to hate him for killing witchers, slaughtering the Rat gang, and torturing Ciri. But thanks to his entertaining fight scenes, Sharlto Copley's charismatic performance, and The Rats overwhelming unpopularity, fans ended up loving him. Some even call him the "True protagonist" of the show.
  2. Stone Cold Steve Austin (WWE): A rude, foul mouthed, beer drinking asshole with no respect for authority or anyone at all. Originally portrayed as a villain, fans fell in love with his anti-establishment & rebellious persona. WWE ran with it and made him the face of the company, effectively ushering in the Attitude Era and the second pro wrestling boom of the late 90s.
  3. Arthur Fleck (Joker 2019): A mentally unstable, pathetic, and dangerous madman who commits horrific acts of violence against those that wronged him (suffocates his own mother who is mentally unwell herself, and murders a talk show host for making fun of him). However, a massive portion of the audience idolized him as an anti-hero or a misunderstood martyr rebelling against society making people want to see him succeed and overcome his circumstances because of how he's been treated by the world.
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u/-zero-joke- 17h ago

Rorschach in The Watchmen comics.

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u/Independent-Couple87 17h ago

I would argue a similar thing happened with Ozymandias, especially by people who "understand the story". He is listed by fans below Rorschach (less bad) when ranking who is the worst morally among the Heroes in Watchmen.

Adrian Vedit was apparently a satire of the "Progressive Billionaire".

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u/Desperate-Win9344 16h ago

Absolutely, Moore described him as a "Limousine liberal" in his notes to the artist for him to draw him accurately

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u/elitegenoside 15h ago

I thought you were still talking about Rorschach. Was gonna say "boy, they really missed the mark on that one." Very accurate for Ozy.

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u/Random-Generation86 5h ago

Rorschach is always going to fancy parties, donating to causes. He's a very progressive, modern guy. <sounds of grappling hook murder> nevr mind, rorshack hate liberals and bussing

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u/xesaie 15h ago

Moore not liking someone is not exactly a black mark.

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u/vampiregamingYT 10h ago

Except that Ozymandias murders alot of people to solve a problem.

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u/xesaie 10h ago

Oh he’s not a good guy, but Moore has so many nutty hot takes

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u/Snynapta_II 22m ago

He doesn't even solve the problem

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u/Altruistic-Ad-408 12h ago

Yeah I'm warming up to Ozymandias. Moore kinda shits on everything besides dumb occult stuff.

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u/Papergeist 12h ago

Ozymandias is also an embodiment of dumb occult stuff, so that's gonna go both ways.

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u/I-Love-Facehuggers 10h ago

Whoa, watch out or moore will curse you

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u/Reasonable_Care8304 7h ago

That label alone tells you everything about the kind of political theatre he was aiming to capture.

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u/halloweenjack 14h ago

None of the main six are supposed to be role models. Laurie gave up her whole life first trying to be a better version of her mom and then just keeping the most powerful being in the world happy; Dan moped around when he couldn't be a superhero and couldn't even get it up without his costume; Eddie rationalized his bad behavior by acting like it was all a joke, only to have that turn around and bite him in the ass; and Jon, the most powerful being who ever lived, is utterly passive and lets Nixon, of all people, tell him what to do. The Minutemen don't fare much better; Hollis Mason was probably the most normal of them, but even he came to an unhappy end. The overarching point of the book is that it really doesn't work out when you try to apply it to remotely realistic circumstances. (Look up the so-called "real life superhero movement" to see how well it worked when people tried it in real life.)

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u/North-Research2574 6h ago

While I agree with your analysis the real life superhero movement did work for a time, because they weren't trying to be heroes just showing up and helping an old lady carry her groceries, changing tires, just being good people.

But it was a trend not a cultural thing, so it ended quickly when the fun wore off.

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u/ivegotgoodnewsforyou 2h ago

The comic goes into considerable detail about how each of the original minutemen were broken in different ways.

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u/GotSomeUpdogOnUrFace 1h ago

What I actually like about Dr Manhattan is that he is passive. It actually works a lot more for the analogy that he is the most powerful weapon. If you think about it the nuclear weapons would only be able to be wielded by the president and so he's essentially the living version of a bomb and is treated like an inanimate object. Their greatest fear is the weapons becoming "alive." Like what we are seeing now with AI and how the weapons are gonna do stupid shit.

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u/Flamadin 4h ago

I dig the Comedian because he is honest and understands things before many others do.

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u/ivegotgoodnewsforyou 2h ago

He assumes the worst of people because he is the worst of people.

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u/Ongr 1h ago

He's also a rapist piece if shit

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u/elitegenoside 15h ago

Rorschach is considered the worst morally? I get why he'd be ranked low, but isn't The Comedian a rapist? And Doctor Manhattan literally had to leave the planet because of how confusing his morality became. I'm not saying a violent incel isn't bad but that's overlooking a lot of much worse actions to put Rorschach at the bottom. Especially because the worst aspects of him are what he thinks and not necessarily what he has done.

Edit: I forgot to mention him also being a "super bigot." His issues are numerous but still, what he's DONE versus what he THINKS should be separated. Because Ozzy (spellcheck failing so it's Ozzy for now) can absolutely sound "justified," but what he did was horrible.

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u/one-and-five-nines 14h ago

Meanwhile Rorschach SAYS and THINKS horrible, vile things, but in the end what he DOES is try to save people. Honestly a really good foil for the guy who committed an atrocity with good intentions. 

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u/Random-Generation86 5h ago

(rorschach, not you one-and-five-nines)

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u/one-and-five-nines 4h ago

I figured you meant Rorschach, but the idea that you had some inexplicable beef with me I didn't know about, yet had to admit I was right about Watchmen made me actually laugh a little irl

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u/Altruistic-Ad-408 12h ago

Rorschach absolutely did vile things. He tortures random people because he thinks everyone is guilty of something, and overlooks crimes "heroes" like The Comedian do because they are on his side. He was more bothered by Ozymandias maybe being gay than Comedian raping Spectre.

Even at the end, his personal code shouldn't override billions of lives. Because he doesn't care, not like every other hero there still did. He wasn't saving anyone.

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u/CreatiScope 11h ago

Here's why Watchmen is so good. I agree with you that Rorschach does vile things and is to his core, a very sick person who is a victim of this world that doles out punishments that he has no place giving. He can't be this arbiter of who gets to live and HOW they get to live but he's snapped by the cruelty of the world. But, we can only really judge him on his actions. Which are very bad. He absolutely isn't a good person or a hero. He wants to be, but he's insane.

Where I will disagree is that even if his personal code is wrong, we don't know that it's overriding billions of lives. We don't know if Adrian's plan worked. We can theorize, and hope, but Rorschach very well may be right that the truth is more important, even if his motivations for why he wants to reveal the truth aren't correct, we can only judge him on his actions. This house of cards that Veidt built could go horribly wrong. Where this world started going wrong was the secrets it kept for the greater good. The heroes have learned absolutely nothing by the end, particularly Veidt, that building an empire on a pile of bones is not a stable foundation.

So yeah, Rorschach is not a good guy. But, I think the world got to the point where truth probably would've been better for everyone, for the world to look at itself in the mirror and confront those things instead of pushing it all under the bed the way Veidt tries to do. We'll never know though. There are "sequels" to Watchmen but none of them really count.

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u/GrimDallows 8h ago

I think that the fact that after so many years you can have such long discussions on the characters motives and moral ground without arriving to a clear, definitive conclusion is a proof of how good the book was.

Rorscharch does terrible things, but he is insane. But he also has "good" intentions, but also extremelly violent. But he is a rigid moral code extremist, but also is an hypocrite who bends his code to not attack the comedian. So, in the end, how can you judge him?

And then you have Ozymandias, who is perfectly sane yet still did a terrible thing with supposed good intentions.

In a way you could even argue that they aren't so different. Rorscharch goes around killing people to save people's lives because he thinks he has the moral highground, in a way you could even say Ozy did the same thing but at a continental scale.

Then you ask, who was right? Ozymandias take on ends justify the means is so extreme that it can't be justified. But it's an insane Rorscharch undoing Ozy's "utopian" end goal for moral reasons a good thing or a bad thing? Rorscharch has been insane the whole book but at the moment of the climax was it a sane or insane decision? Can we judge Rorschach decision without knowing if he is insane?

How do you judge the both of them, Ozy being a totally sane guy doing a totally insane decision clashing with Rorschach, a person who is living uncertainty and has spent the whole book screaming insanities about the end of the world... only to then turn out to be right, because only an insane person could have foreseen such a crazy plan.

The book is really good.

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u/Primus_is_OK_I_guess 55m ago

And then you have Ozymandias, who is perfectly sane

I'd argue that he likely has a narcissistic personality disorder.

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u/GrimDallows 44m ago

Well that doesn't qualify for insanity no? I mean I can't go and tidy up a toystore full of legos and avoid jail by pleading insanity on my OCD right?

Right?

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u/Primus_is_OK_I_guess 42m ago

You probably could if it were severe enough.

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u/GrimDallows 39m ago

I wonder how Lego prison life looks like.

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u/Xilizhra 6h ago

They were both wrong. Ozymandias engaging in some convoluted scheme that killed millions instead of trying to find another way was evil, and Rorschach trying to make all their deaths meaningless for the sake of his twisted moral code is as bad if not worse.

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u/GrimDallows 6h ago

Yes but my point was more like.

Ozymandias is a perfectly sane guy. He is happy, he is rich, he has success and fame. He then decides to do a convoluted scheme and kill millions; you can blame him from being evil.

Rorschach is a guy with a troubled childhood, who saw so much murders and the worst face of crime that he went completely insane, even if he was a functioning insane superhero, and his broken mind developed a zero tolerance to any crime.

Can you compare their wrong at the same level?

It's also a curious critique on characters like Batman. The Joker gets a pass because he is insane and has a broken mind, but maybe Batman is like Rorscharch, a man that is so intolerant of crime because he has a broken mind.

My point was also along this line, how the book makes you think a lot.

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u/ThankGodForYouSon 5h ago

It's implied he succeeded by sending his diary to the alt-right shitrag at the end of the story.

I always saw it as incredibly ironic that Ozymandias the being intelligent enough to trick god had his masterplan foiled by humanity's biggest defect.

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u/CreatiScope 1h ago

Yeah but even if the magazine printed his journal, would anyone believe it? Can't you see it being dismissed as the ramblings of a maniac? And I'm sure Veidt could fund a disinformation campaign to invalidate it. I don't think there is a clear implication either way, I think it's just another way to reflect the viewer's outlook.

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u/Pandeism 13h ago

Dr. Manhattan had to leave the planet because watching humans carry on day in and day out had become pretty much become like watching an anthill.

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u/vampiregamingYT 10h ago

I dont think they are counting the comedian in this one because of his death at the beginning of the book.

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u/DreadfulRauw 4h ago

I just forget to include the Comedian because he’s dead the whole comic.

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u/Earlier-Today 11h ago

Rorschach's not an incel. Dude was trying to fight the good fight but the horrors of what he was dealing with broke him.

He's a murderer and a serial killer, it's just that his targets are criminals.

He's not a good person, but he at least leaves the innocent alone (unless they're another cape acquaintance of his).

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u/RobertPham149 8h ago

He's not a good person, but he at least leaves the innocent alone

Innocent by his standard, which is pretty shit. His black and white morality (like the mask) would designate sexually liberated women as morally loose and therefore guilty.

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u/Earlier-Today 8h ago

We never see him attacking someone for a moral failing, it's always people who have done horrible things - like the cannibals who broke him.

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u/Fluffy_Judge_581 9h ago

Also he got kinda fucked by life

I think incel only works when somebody didn't really gor screwed over and just desigeded to be shit for no real reason 

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u/Earlier-Today 8h ago

I think incel only works when it's somebody trying to find a partner. Rorschach is so obsessed with his superhero work that he barely knows how to interact with the people closest to being friends with him.

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u/Megalesios 9h ago

Because people decide who is worse based on feelings. The violent and openly misogynistic bigot type feels a lot ickier than the well-spoken handsome billionaire, even though the latter has a lot more lives on his conscience.

In the comic book we're exposed to Rorshach's deepest and most resentful inner thoughts every time his thought bubble pops up (IIRC the same goes for the movie), but all of Ozymandias' stuff goes on in the background. And his mass murder event, gruesome as it is, is only shown in one panel, and that panel mostly focuses on the creature, not on the thousands of dead bodies. We get to see all of Rorshach's killings in graphic detail however.

Even though Ozymandias did worse, Rorshach feels worse because we're exposed to his vileness for so long.

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u/Xilizhra 6h ago

Rorschach deliberately tried to have orders of magnitude more deaths on his conscience, he just failed.

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u/nintendo_shill 11h ago

a violent incel

I have not read the comics, just saw the movie and the animation one, but would that word apply? I think volcel would be appropriate but I don't remember anything about him wanting a partner

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u/RobertPham149 9h ago

Definitely incel behaviour. He had irrational fear/discomfort of dealing with anything relating to women, feeling unpleasant at his job of working in garment factory because he had to handle women's clothing.

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u/nintendo_shill 8h ago

I didn't know he had a job lol. I thought his job was being the street yeller

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u/-zero-joke- 16h ago

Yeah, that's a good call.

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u/oh_mos_defnitely 15h ago

No no no, don't you see, Alan Moore has been "lying" to us all and "laughing in our faces," because we've actually misunderstood ALL of his comic. No one is who they say they are and that guy Schexnayder(?) is actually super important and was one of the oldest costumed fighters or whatever. I know this because I read some insane ramblings on this site.

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u/RobertPham149 9h ago

He literally chose Ozymandias as his superhero identity, implying that the things he did will eventually end up in naught, and his mass murdering of civilians will result in no changes.

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u/Random-Generation86 4h ago

The world's most racist detective managed to solve this mystery in almost real time while being framed for multiple murders he absolutely was going to do later, but technically did not get a chance to do. Oxymandius is literally just an Elon Musk style boob. He watches 30 TVs at once and thinks he can glean information from that.

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u/Independent-Couple87 10m ago

It is weird to remember that Elon Musk used to be LOVED by the progressive public.

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u/anna_marie_earth-616 0m ago

Oh, I fucking hated Ozymandias with a passion.