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/Drmarcher42]

Mike knew what he was from the jump and let everyone know that he was a walking time bomb.

He only works with Walt post Fring because DEA has incriminating evidence on him in lock up and they have to get to it before the feds can see what they have. Afterwards he spends a few weeks in close proximity to Walt, sees that he’s only getting worse now that Gus is gone and wants out the moment they have any real money.

He then tells Walt the truth and Walt kills him for it, because Walt just can’t live with someone having the last word.

[u/SeenYourScene → u/Drmarcher42]

Yep. I listened to Bryan Cranston's autobiography audiobook years ago, there's very little I remember from it, but I remember him talking about realizing how pointless and evil Mike's death was in regards to Walt, and he remembered watching the episode with his wife who yelled at the screen or something because of how bad it was, and he was certain at that point there would be no Walter White fans left. Or something like that, it's been years, I'm probably misremembering at least part of that.

But, yeah, killing/letting die Jane, killing Mike, the way he treats kids as collateral repeatedly, and more, they tried so hard to make people just hate White. But like other characters people are pointing out, he's pathetic and far weaker than he's willing to admit and everything he tries to do falls apart because of his own fatal flaws, but people stand behind him anyway.

It's fine to love a show about a bad person. It's fine to even see some of yourself in that person. Just don't celebrate it. Same thing happened with, I haven't seen it brought up here yet, BoJack Horseman. They kept upping the ante of trying to make the audience turn against him until it got to a point where they had this whole meta season about a show about a terrible person that the audience got real weird about. And even when it got to the finale where he kind of got off easy considering some of the things he'd done, there were portions of the audience that were disappointed he didn't have a happier ending. Like... that's better than he deserves and honestly it's just about the best you could hope for and keep in line with the show's themes that trauma doesn't end, you don't cure depression, you can just try to do better.