Evil protagonists from fiction - or 'Examples of how to play the bad guy without being a total jerk'

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Rygel and Scorpius from Farscape. Well. Rygel is a weasely jerk, but that's his charm. Both worked as part of the crew.

 

[Dioltach]

Boyd Crowder, from Justified. Or Raylan Givens from Justified, come to think of it. Probably most characters from Justified except Art, Rachel and possibly Tim.

 

[TheSword]

Brock Samson is the deuteragonist of The Venture Bros. He is an O.S.I. agent and bodyguard of Dr. Thaddeus Venture. He is a parody of pro-wrestler Psycho Sid Vicious.

In the beginning of the series, he seemed to be hostile and closed off to most of the family. While loyal to them and has shown to care about them, he largely ignored them, focused on brutally murdering his enemies and having sex as often as possible. As the series has continued he has begun showing affection for the Ventures, and a great deal of concern for their safety. Though a departure from the unfeeling Brock of early episodes, the writers confirm he is still assumed to be the 'Swedish Murder Machine' behind the scenes.

 

[TwoSix]

Vic Mackey from the Shield.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Yep. And people in the real world still named their children after her. While the last season could have been done better, Game of Thrones was great long con - many people were fine with Daenerys because she was supposed to be the hero, until she wasn't.

She explicitly said on several occasions from as early as S1 that one day she was going to slaughter tens of thousands, rip down castles, and burn everyone to death.

But for her advisors (Jorah, Barristan Selmy, Tyrion) she would have burnt and massacred a lot more people, and a lot earlier as well. She was always going for the 'kill them all' and was always talked down by Good aligned protagonists.

 

[Sithlord]

Yep. And people in the real world still named their children after her. While the last season could have been done better, Game of Thrones was great long con - many people were fine with Daenerys because she was supposed to be the hero, until she wasn't.

I never saw Daenyris as a hero ever. She was a selfish girl who thought she was entitled to the throne because of her birth and she was going to fight for the status of queen. The care of people was just an afterthought to get them to follow her. Sure she wanted her people to do well under her. But only under her rule which was her right by birth.

 

[Tonguez]

Yep. And people in the real world still named their children after her. While the last season could have been done better, Game of Thrones was great long con - many people were fine with Daenerys because she was supposed to be the hero, until she wasn't.

People thought she was hawt and overthrowing the slavers made her hawt and edgy. But she was always a bit psychotic

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Pinkie Brown
Mr Ripley

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

That's A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones at its best, challenging assumptions and undermining tropes (in Daenerys, The Chosen One, for example).

I think a lot of people's feelings about the final season make it hard to extricate what was about rushed storytelling and what was them not liking Daenerys going in the exact direction that it turned out she had been heading this whole time.

I never saw Daenyris as a hero ever. She was a selfish girl who thought she was entitled to the throne because of her birth and she was going to fight for the status of queen. The care of people was just an afterthought to get them to follow her. Sure she wanted her people to do well under her. But only under her rule which was her right by birth.

People thought she was hawt and overthrowing the slavers made her hawt and edgy. But she was always a bit psychotic

 

[Bohandas]

To be included they must be

1) Protagonists of the story
2) Not jerks to the other protagonists (this rules out the CE Rick Sanchez)
3) Workable as a PC in your average party of PCs without bringing the game to a total screeching halt.

* The protagonists from the shock rock band GWAR's songs. The characters are mass murdering rapist cannibal war criminals but they get along with each other and are even sometimes heroic in the sense that they oppose other cosmic evils such as Satan, the robotic space tyrant Cardinal Syn, and the Scumdogs Of The Universe organization that they broke off from.

* The four libertines from the Marquis de Sade's The School of Libertinage. They're murderers, sex criminals, slavers, war profiteers, and involved in government corruption, but work together as a group to support their criminal empire and maintain their sybaritic lifestyle.

* Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars starts turning evil in episode 2 but doesn't become an antagonist until the second half of episode 3

* Charles Foster Offdensen, the band manager from Metalocalypse. While the band themselves are merely indifferent to human suffering, Offdensen is actively ruthless and vengeful, often solving issues that threaten the band's profitability by having people kidnapped, beaten, or killed

* Randolph Carter from the Cthulhu Mythos. The human sorceror Randolph Carter is basically a part-time villain and minor eldritch abomination in his own right, doing things like posessing a non-antagonistic alien for centuries in Through the Gates of the Silver Key and selling out one group of his allies characters to another group who is at war with them in The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath.


EDIT:
But the main one here is GWAR, who are basically an adventuring party