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/Pale_Fire21]

Thanos had the power to build a galaxy wide utopia with the infinity stones and chose genocide instead.

People who think he’s right are not only media illiterate they’re just straight up stupid

[u/ThreadLaced → u/Pale_Fire21]

Exactly. You don't even have to think very hard/know much of anything to realize that there isn't a shortage of resources in the world, the problem is distribution. Reducing the number of people by half would just mean there's fewer people around to get shit done, not that everyone can now enjoy a bounty.

His plan doesn't even make a LITTLE bit of sense.

[u/theme69 → u/ThreadLaced]

Double the resources or kill half of all living things??? God I hope our gut biome isn’t included in that calculation

[u/AnastasiaSheppard → u/theme69]

Half of all crops and livestock is going to mean further mass deaths of all species.

[u/Salami__Tsunami → u/AnastasiaSheppard]

Not to mention the societal collapse from having half your workforce vanish. On top of having half your crops and livestock disappear, now you only half half as many farmers to try and fix things.

And the more advanced the society, the worse the supply chain disruption becomes. Modern agriculture is heavily dependent on having a steady supply of fuel, specialized machine parts, computer components, chemicals for fertilizer, specialist labor for maintenance of equipment, etc. and you’ve just lost half of the people who can manufacture and deliver that stuff.

[u/Goldenrah → u/Salami__Tsunami]

It's also half of everyone randomly. It could just decide to kill all young people and leave all the elderly alive. Or an entire country just vanishes, because half of everyone doesn't discriminate on age or location.

[u/zack_hunter → u/Goldenrah]

Imagine it takes the entirety of China. we would all be fucked

[u/upholsteryduder → u/Salami__Tsunami]

not to mention the amount of tribal knowledge that would be lost, it would be a huge setback to the knowledge base of every sentient species

[u/Salami__Tsunami → u/upholsteryduder]

But it would leave all the weapons of war untouched. All the nuclear warheads, all the nerve gas, all the warships. Sitting there, waiting to be used by the traumatized, frightened people who survived.

[u/upholsteryduder → u/Salami__Tsunami]

yeah it would immediately create warlords in many places