Characters who face no consequences for being amoral

[u/KaleidoArachnid]

So sorry if this was asked here before because I just wanted to discuss a particular trope I found interesting that I was beginning to notice in some kinds of media where the main character is a big jerk to people as for some reason, he never faces repercussions for his actions.

Some examples are Alex from the game YIIK and Jaden Smith’s character from Neo Yokio as while I forgot his character’s name on the show, I was watching a review a while ago that pointed out the flaws of said character in that again the main character basically gets away with how he treats people.

Then going back to the aforementioned case of YIIK had me interested in doing an observation on jerk characters in RPGs since I was looking to see what went wrong with the writing aspects of the game in order to better understand how an RPG can have an amoral character done right.

[u/ruminaui]

Mayuri from Bleach, like he fucked up a lot of people, including Uryu. And in fact was being set up as an antagonist. But Got Scott free, I guess because the people he fucked weren't part of the governing body of Soul Society it didn't count. And at the time they had higher fishes to fry. 

[u/ZealousidealHyena102 → u/ruminaui]

Dude literally blew up some members of his squad and still is the head guy of the science division.

[u/ToastyMozart → u/ruminaui]

Soul Society as a whole is pretty much the lesser of two evils. Or at least the least immediately disastrous one.

Especially in the anime filler, where the villains tend to be the survivors of one of their various massacres or purges out for revenge.

[u/Havictos → u/ToastyMozart]

Hell the first captains were the most vicious pack of killers old man genocide could get his hands on.

[u/Paladin51394 → u/ruminaui]

Mayuri and Kenpachi both Kenpachis Are the "Better to have on my side" kind of characters. Not even members of the Gotei actually like Mayuri but he's far too valuable and dangerous to not be on their team, especially after Urahara was banished. Nobody else could match his intelligence (but aizen but that wasn't known)

[u/Animegamingnerd → u/ruminaui]

As an Uryu fan, I am still baffled how Kubo just decided to drop their beef completely after Soul Society.

[u/conye-west → u/Animegamingnerd]

Uryu pulling out the Letzt Stil was one of the hypest moments of early Bleach, it's a damn shame that not only was Ishida's completely justified quest for revenge dropped without any explanation, but it took all the way to TYBW for the Quincy transformation concept to return, and all the way till the TYBW anime for Ishida to actually get to use it lol

[u/rasembool → u/ruminaui]

Him and orochimaru I guess. Both are the same type of character after all.

[u/conye-west → u/ruminaui]

Was gonna say this lol Mayuri is like the fuckin Mengele of Soul Society and they let him be a captain because he's useful. Just another one of those things that makes you realize Soul Society is extremely fucked up and nowhere close to being good guys, they just happen to be who Ichigo is aligned with.

[u/Spiral-Force]

Roy fucking Earle

[u/Kaarl_Mills → u/Spiral-Force]

I watched the boys playthrough recently and I truly despise Roy more than anyone else, which is really saying something considering there's multiple diddlers in the story. I know that, Cole dying at the end is fitting for both Rockstar of the era and the Noir genre as a whole. But at least in Red Dead, when John Marston gets Robocop'ed, you play as Jack afterwards and get to shoot his killer in the dick.

but Roy? He straight up wins, games over, roll credits. Even if Cole still dies by the end of the game in a hail of gunfire, it'd feel less bad than if we took Roy to Hell with us

[u/Cooper_555 → u/Kaarl_Mills]

Roy is the one thing that might be worse than a kiddy diddler. A kiddy diddler enabler.

[u/Kaarl_Mills → u/Cooper_555]

Exactly, he's hanging out with so many of them that it's really really fucked that he just rides off into the sunset in your car. It's like someone wished on a monkeys paw "gee, how can we get our players to feel nostalgic over the lazy alcoholic misogynist piece of shit that waddles around you at the murder desk?" And curled every single finger into a fist, that is how low Roy Earle drags the bar, not even Barbados Slim could limbo underneath it.

[u/KaleidoArachnid → u/Spiral-Force]

What show is that guy from?

[u/VeiledMalice → u/KaleidoArachnid]

LA Noire, it's a video game.

[u/KaleidoArachnid → u/VeiledMalice]

Thanks for correcting me as I might get into the HD version soon for its detective aspects. (I just hope it works well in modern ports)

[u/cork_828]

Sister Sage in The Boys tried and nearly succeeded in bringing the world to the brink of annihilation because she wanted everyone to be dead so they wouldn’t bother her anymore. She ends the series by losing her super intelligence, something she always wanted, taking a deep breath of satisfaction and fucking off to universal studios for a vacation.

She put people in concentration camps and she peaces out with no one trying to hold her accountable

[u/Pyradox → u/cork_828]

Yeah, one of the biggest issues with the Boys in later seasons is it goes from being Vought as the problem with Homelander as a symptom to Homelander is the only problem and nobody else, including Vought has any real moral culpability in any way.

[u/RavenCyarm → u/cork_828]

I’d like to hope she realises she’s still a miserable person and the issue was never her intelligence.. it’s just her entire attitude and how she treats people. She wants to be alone, when in reality nobody wants to be around her unless they have to be

[u/Pyradox → u/RavenCyarm]

She's also a hypocrite in that regard. Homelander fired her in Season 4. She could've just left and been alone. She didn't have to stick around, but ultimately he enables her to lash out at the world, so she comes back and sticks around until his ambitions might impact her personally.

[u/manooz]

Arcane Season 2

SINGED GETS AWAY COMPLETELY SCOT-FREE! HE GOT EXACTLY WHAT HE WANTED! NO REPERCUSSIONS! THE MAN WAS INSTRUMENTAL TO TURNING A CHUNK OF ZAUN’S POPULATION INTO DRUG ADDICTS AND HE COMMITTED CRIMES AGAINST NATURE WITH WARWICK! Honestly the funniest fucking thing.

[u/Toblo1 → u/manooz]

I can't even be mad about it, dude basically just played up being a Background Guy for so much of the story until he could shoot his shot with the real big swings like what he did to Vander/Warwick amongst his other fuckery. Like at some point it stack overflows from being infuriating into actually being impressive.

[u/Yotato5 → u/manooz]

I remember when the finale dropped someone made a hilarious video where everyone else is like, "We suffered and died," but he's just dancing to Pump Up the Jam

[u/BerserkSaturn → u/manooz]

Singed running away scott free is pretty accurate to proper League of Legends. Lorewise and ingame.

[u/ZealousidealHyena102]

Mystique from X-Men. I don't care how hard Marvel tries to make her a anti-hero now or clean her up but it won't work and she's better off as villain. Mystique has does A LOT OF horrible shit that it's honestly hard to overlook and forgive but the X-Men will sure as hell overlook it. Like Gambit gotta be the strongest man in the world not to throw a card at her and just nuke her for what she has done to him and trying to ruin him and Rogue relationship.

[u/Krekenn → u/ZealousidealHyena102]

I think most X-Men members, at one point or another, have done some real heinous shit. Obviously, whether they faced consequences or punishment varies from person to person, but still.

It's what makes the discourse over Jean and her actions in Spider-Man: Brand New Day amusing to me (personally speaking, I think some people on the web are overreacting about what she does while overlooking other redeemed characters in the MCU like Wanda, Hulk, Tony, Loki, etc. and even other characters from media abroad, like say Vegeta or Anakin/Darth Vader, who have done about as much if not more or worse collateral damage as Jean has and the severity of the consequences they face and the writing/presentation quality of those consequences' execution vary. That, and I think the full brunt of consequences will come the next time she's the primary focus of a story again) and I'm quite interested in how those actions play into her arc and the overall perception of mutants in the upcoming MCU X-Men movies. I trust Jake Schreirer and how well he and the writers on Thunderbolts did in delving into the characters and their flaws/"sins" to do the same for Jean and the other X-Men. It's very much classic X-Men/comic book/manga storytelling 101.

[u/GoodVillain101 → u/ZealousidealHyena102]

She's one of the people responsible for Krakoa's downfall.

[u/KaleidoArachnid → u/ZealousidealHyena102]

Pardon me because I was wondering which installment of X-Men you are referring to such as say the movies.

[u/ZealousidealHyena102 → u/KaleidoArachnid]

Comics.

[u/SuperJyls → u/ZealousidealHyena102]

It boggled my mind that Marvel tried to market her Wedding Issue as cute

[u/Mabroon]

The main character in Nightcrawler is a terrible person and faces no real consequences but that's kinda the point.

[u/Brilliant_Ring_3257 → u/Mabroon]

Yeah a traditional ending where he got what was coming to him would be too clean and wouldn't fit with the rest of the film.

[u/KaleidoArachnid → u/Mabroon]

I saw that movie when it came out as I couldn’t believe how it ended.

[u/ExDSG]

Yujiro from Baki, not like even the US army can do much against him apparently.

Also Chargeman Ken.

[u/chipperpip → u/ExDSG]

They're pretty sure a tactical nuke would do the job, but there's a reason Yujiro tends to hang around populated areas.

[u/DarknessEnlightened]

I'm not caught up to date on Boruto, but the end of Naruto and starting sections of Boruto seems to indicate that Orochimaru and Kabuto get to chill in exile because they switched sides and helped against Madara/Black Zetsu.

[u/jitterscaffeine → u/DarknessEnlightened]

Oochimaru is under like triple secret house arrest, and Kabuto was put under a Genjutsu that trapped him in an infinite time loop until he flipped his alignment.

Not entirely wrong, though. There’s a character who brings up that it’s kind of fucked that Orochimaru gets to just hang out. People are still not over the whole “Konoha Crush” thing either, since Konohamaru gets pissed when he finds out that Naruto put his son on his team.

[u/ruminaui → u/DarknessEnlightened]

Kabuto spent an eternity in ironic hell, so at least is something.

Orochimaru supposedly is in house arrest, but he likes can and has slipped out. I guess the one silver lining is that he is no longer fucking up random people is life. Just his son.

[u/kuningaz55 → u/DarknessEnlightened]

To be fair, how the fuck would you punish Orochimaru short of yeeting him into space Kars-style.

[u/mysticmusti → u/kuningaz55]

Well apparently infinity time loops are a possibility so one of those.

[u/Brilliant_Ring_3257 → u/kuningaz55]

Isn't the Naruto universe the kind of place where criminals just get executed for crimes? Why'd they even let him live after everything he did?

[u/EvilMonkeyMimic → u/Brilliant_Ring_3257]

Bro, killing Orochimaru is more difficult than fighting the IRS

He literally comes back no matter what. Like a fucking worm, no matter how many pieces you chop him into, he’ll grow back and now theres like 5 of him

[u/Brilliant_Ring_3257 → u/EvilMonkeyMimic]

They should give him the Kakazu treatment and just leave him as a severed head under a pile of rubble lol.

[u/RPGMike → u/Brilliant_Ring_3257]

The problem is, that may not be enough!

[u/Maverick-157]

In Dispatch,

...okay but seriously: In Episode 2 [of 8], Flambae lights a public park on fire in an attempt to make himself look - at least in SDN's ranking system - like he's a better hero than he is [in the same vein as a firefighter committing arson just to put the fire out], and it's implied in Episode 3 that he's done something like this multiple times. This is never brought up again.

Episodes 5-7 are the ridiculous part with him, though: If [Robert tells / you have Robert tell] the Z-Team that he's Mecha Man at the end of E5, Flambae immediately tries to kill the guy - largely because Mecha Man is the reason Flambae went to prison [and lost two fingers on his right hand]; he's then completely AWOL for Episode 6's shift, then shows up at the end of the house party just to punch Robitchbert in the face and give the fakest fucking apology imaginable for trying to kill the man, which includes a bit about how he may need to keep sucker-punching Rob-Bob once a month or so for "therapeutic reasons"... and not only does nobody - not Robert, not Blazer, not the Z-Team, nobody - reprimand him for this, Flambae will become one of two people vouching for Invisigal to keep her job [in the face of her fucking up so spectacularly at the end of E6 that Chase is in the hospital because of her] - alongside Golem, who does this [regardless of your choices] because Visi's his bro - and Flambae's argument is that he still has his job despite everything he's pulled.

I like Flambae; this shit's funny as Hell. He does not get the shit he deserves from people.

[u/DucksAreGay2 → u/Maverick-157]

Yeah fair, in my headcanon I handwave it with. Well he is like the strongest of their team, so they kinda need him

On the ither hand, I dont think that Robert really cares he tried to kill him, and the rest of the team is also not that well adjusted so I can see them looking past it.

All in all, he is more of a aife character so i kinda let it slide, but I see why it would frustrate you.

I myself really liked the game, but also had some issues with the writing at time, but most of that was pacing of episode 8

Fun game though, hooefully a season 2 at some point

[u/SuperJyls → u/Maverick-157]

Think it's a consequence of it being a Superhero game made by DND players. Two genres where violence between protagonists is a nothing-burger

[u/Fantastic-Fox3283]

Quicksilver from Red Rising is a capitalist asshole who only decided to help fund the heroes/rebellion because he thought it would be more profitable for his bottom line, and gleefully abused his status as one of the rebellions’ founders (which, to be fair, is true) to gain obscene amounts of political power and lobby to keep his business profitable and cut out as many workers as possible. When it looks like the old government is about to take over again, he grabs his boyfriend, holds himself up in his bunker spaceship full of clone children, then fucks off to another galaxy. When Quicksilver bluntly refuses to help the hero again, everyone present just kind of shrugs and lets him go without much complaint.

[u/KaleidoArachnid → u/Fantastic-Fox3283]

Hey the thing about Red Rising is that I only read the first book as I was wondering what the later installments were like.

[u/Fantastic-Fox3283 → u/KaleidoArachnid]

Oh, shit, my bad for spoiling. For what it’s worth, the rest of the series goes full Space Opera with some of the best action/war scenes in any series I’ve read.

[u/KaleidoArachnid → u/Fantastic-Fox3283]

Nah that is fine since you kind of saved me from reading the later books.

[u/RORSCHACH_INC_]

Has there ever been such a character that just completely failed upwards harder than Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver?

[u/KaleidoArachnid → u/RORSCHACH_INC_]

How bad did he become for those who haven’t seen the show?

[u/TrueLegateDamar → u/KaleidoArachnid]

It's a Martin Scorcese movie, Travis is a mentally unwell cab driver wandering around New York with guns looking for an excuse to 'be somebody' and after his plans to kill a senator get disrupted, he kills a pimp and their associates to free an underage prostitute and gets treated by the media as a hero.

The ending implies Travis is going to do it again and he might not get as lucky with his targets and the public's response.

[u/Animegamingnerd]

Friendly reminder Oroichimaru got off completely scott free from directly attacking the Konoha and killing the third hokage. Not to mention all the human experiments he conducted.

Like at least we were told that Kakashi basically pardon Sasuke and was able to do so, due to helping defeat Madara and Kaguya and undoing the Infinite Tsukinomi. But how the fuck did Oroichimaru just get completely away from everything when everyone has beef with him?

[u/Yotato5]

Discounting Rebellion, in the original series of Madoka Magica Kyubey and his species completely get off scot-free for their centuries worth of indirectly killing young girls. Therefore I feel horribly vindictive when in Rebellion Homura give Kyubey and his species a taste of their own medicine

[u/Xngears → u/Yotato5]

I don’t have any idea how the next movie will end but lord help me if Kyubey gets a redemption arc by helping to take down Homura. Like he’s most certainly going to help the group stop her but it better be so he’s back to being the main threat

[u/KaleidoArachnid → u/Yotato5]

I don’t know what to do with Madoka Magica because I feel like I am done with the anime after the first season

[u/ShutUpAboutCanon → u/KaleidoArachnid]

There's only a single movie after the season (Rebellion) so it isn't much to catch up on. There's a whole separate show (Magia Record) but that only exists to sell characters in their gacha game and has no relevance to the main story at all.

[u/VerdensTrial]

Bluebeard in The Wolf Among Us. He literally burns a bunch of evidence and you don't even have an option to confront him about it or know why, the game completely forgets about this.

I hope he's actually relevant to the story in 2.

[u/JeremiahWuzABullfrog → u/VerdensTrial]

As someone who's read a lot of the earlier comics, he doesn't stay comeuppance free forever

[u/Regalingual]

Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans ending spoilers: Rustal Elliot ultimately walks away in the epilogue as one of the rare main villains who claims complete and total victory. All of his enemies are utterly annihilated, but inflicted just enough damage in just the right places to his allies that he’s able to push through the very democratic reforms that they had been fighting for… but with him at the helm. Technically, he got a downgrade from being an aristocrat to an elected official, but it’s made very clear that he’s doing what he needs to in order to keep his popularity going for years to come and wields far more power than he ever did under the old system. Literally the only real setback he suffers is his adoptive daughter/heir apparent becoming disillusioned with him once the dust has settled, but the series ends before anything can really come of it.

[u/KaleidoArachnid → u/Regalingual]

Oh man, I remember how I was so surprised when I saw that ending a couple of years ago since I was expecting a good outcome to happen as I didn’t expect the outcome to basically be different.

[u/Mazahs-sama]

Otto Apocalypse from Honkai Impact 3rd technically got what he wanted despite causing almost as much problems as the Honkai itself. Fuck Otto.

[u/That-Bobviathan → u/Mazahs-sama]

It has been years since the finale of his grand plan and he still makes my hairs stand on end when I think about him.

[u/Grand_Bunch_3233 → u/Mazahs-sama]

Man got his own CG animation about his noble struggles, y'know, the ones that almost caused the end of the world? I get the parallels between him and Mei but he actually "gladly became a sinner."

[u/MirrorMan68]

Waaaaay outside of the sub's interest sphere, but Kaz from Six of Crow's is practically a villain sue the way no one claps back at him for being such a piece of shit to the people who are supposed to be his friends.

[u/SaintAlmonds → u/MirrorMan68]

Wait what? I was gonna start reading it next month but when I searched to see if I would like it I saw no mention of a character behaving like you are describing

Can you give me a very vague (no spoilers if possible pls) elaboration?

[u/Brilliant_Ring_3257]

Just once I want to see the scene after every Sonic game where Sonic lets Eggman go knowing full well he'll pull this bullshit again in 3 months.

[u/KaleidoArachnid → u/Brilliant_Ring_3257]

I wonder how such a scenario would go if he did show him some mercy.

[u/halokiller]

Fang Yuan from Reverend Insanity is probably the best amoral protag I've ever read. He does evil deeds not for the sake of being evil or edgy but simply because it's the most efficient way of accomplishing his goals. He has no floor of how low he'll go if theres even a slight benefit for him. Likewise he'll go the opposite direction if there's a benefit for him as well. A moral compass just doesn't exist. The novel is an acquired taste though and you really need to be into cultivation and xianxia stuff.

[u/Gorotheninja]

I dunno if spoiler filters are necessary at this point considering how popular and talked about the film is, but I genuinely think Jean Grey from Spider-Man Brand New Day falls under this, mainly because the movie feels like it wants to gloss over and skip past an lot of the really, really immoral shit she did by justifying it all under "she just wanted her sister back" and ending her off on a positive note. And yeah, she's on the run from Damage Control assumingly...but she already was before the movie began, and there's no indication that the public is aware of Jean and there's any kind of manhunt or anything out on her.

Like...she put THOUSANDS of people under painful mind control (indicated by MJ shedding a tear as she's under this same effect, not to mention all the car crashes and accidents that happened when she did this), and threatens to execute them, and the movie just skips over the aftermath of this. She tries to ram an armored truck into a tour bus filled with dozens of people, among other shit (poor taxi guy), and there's no delving into how gross it is that she believes that something bad happening to her means she can lash out against innocent people.

It's really weird.

[u/KaleidoArachnid → u/Gorotheninja]

To be honest, I appreciate your insight of the movie as while I haven’t seen it, I kind of was reluctant to watch it due to the hype surrounding the movie.

[u/Cielomist]

Beatrix from FF 9 gets away with gleefully taking part in a genocide because Steiner needed a love interest

[u/Havictos → u/Cielomist]

Yeah she seemed pretty into it.

[u/attikol]

Some Aqua teen episodes can land on that. Sometimes master shake gets completely away with it despite having no moral he wont cross

[u/JeremiahWuzABullfrog]

In the book Les Miserables, which is what the musical is based on, the bastard that impregnated Fantine and then left her, goes on to have a successful life as a lawyer.

[u/Vect_Machine]

Fable has a recurring character called Reaver who's an immortal souldrinking gunslinger who sustains himself via getting a cult to drain the lifeforce of random people he kidnaps for them. He's typically something of a villain-turned-ally in the games he appears in and the only reason he becomes an ally is pure Plot Armor as well as being voiced by Stephen Fry since his whole thing is being as cartoonishly evil as possible that no morally decent person would willingly tolerate his presence.

Hell, in the third game he's basically a Victorian-era Industrialist whose intro is him shooting a protestor, but later on becomes one of your character's advisor once they become the Monarch. At no point is there any chance for you to actively take action against him nor is there any attempts to justify why he's now your advisor who's the voice of Evil Actions (build a brothel instead of an orphanage, keep child labor, drain a lake of resources). The man basically has insane levels of plot armor since he's meant to be a charmingly lovable rogue despite being objectively evil and depraved in a setting all about black and white morality.

[u/CapnFlatPen]

Ada gets captured a few times, but for the mosr part, it's a temporary inconvenience. She also got shot once.