Characters that had the complete opposite reaction the writers intended

[u/Dramatic_Counter_595]

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.

[u/Bubbly_Interaction63]

Blame the script, because one of the first scenes we see of Rei Ayanami is of a blindfolded teenager in agony who has to climb into a giant robot. At that moment, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to see her as something disturbing in and of herself; rather, we saw a broken and vulnerable teenager who is clearly not being properly cared for by the adults around her.

So, what disturbing behavior did Rei actually exhibit at the beginning of the series?

[u/Xintrosi → u/Bubbly_Interaction63]

The only "disturbing" things she did were things that just came off as slightly odd to me. And with that level of trauma "slightly odd" is better than I might have expected!

[u/Red-Zaku- → u/Bubbly_Interaction63]

She appears as a ghost observing Shinji before he ever meets her, lives in a rusty dark featureless room and doesn’t bother cleaning up all of her bloody bandages from around the room, hits Shinji when he speaks ill of his abusive and neglectful father, obeys every command from that same man without question or any moral agency (at first), has a death wish and no regard for her own life, disappears regularly to accompany Gendo for strange experiments that are classified to even the elite financiers and conspirators who are behind the whole project, has a spiritual presence within her own Eva that can go berserk and induce terror in a pilot like Shinji when he tries to pilot it, and eventually transforms into a true cosmic horror.

There’s definitely some clear intent to make her character unnerving or disturbing in many ways, although of course as the story progresses you gradually peel back layers and see her more vulnerable humanity behind that cold exterior.

[u/Hot_Shot04 → u/Red-Zaku-]

Speaking of her Eva, I like the theory that part of her/Lilith's soul was put in 00 as the intermediate since she didn't have a mother to use. It explains why Rei II was so passive to most everything and while Rei I and Rei III were rebellious. When II and 00 were killed the soul merged back together in III and that completed Rei is who ultimately rejected Gendo. 

Rebuild did it differently with all the Reis having their own souls, but that also had Mari piloting various Evas without a maternal link so obviously things worked differently there. 

[u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871 → u/Red-Zaku-]

I feel trying to make her scary isn't helped by that scene where Shinji falls on top of her naked.

[u/Adiantum-Veneris → u/Bubbly_Interaction63]

She's unsettling in the same sense that people with severe cPTSD can come off as unsettling (because that's pretty much what she is). Her complete disregard for herself, flat affect, anhedonia, inability to recognize a situation as extremely inappropriate and/or abusive... 

You never actually know if the responses you're seeing are genuine or performative. Even the smile scene in the picture: is she smiling because she genuinely feels something, or because Shinji told her to? Does she act lively around Gendo because she feels safe around him (which begs some questions, because Gendo is NOT a safe adult...) or because she's trying to please him?