What is a story were the main villain actually turned out to be the good guy?

- "Presentation" gives me goosebumps every time. Such a great scene
  
  "Presentation!" is a regular reference in our lives.
  
  Unfortunately the sequel absolutely lacks presentation. Its like they completely forgot what made the first movie good.
- well he didn't "tuned out to be the good guy". He was a bad guy and later became good because of the girl.
  
  I think the message of the film was more that he was always good (to some extent) and that his earlier actions were influenced by his upbringing (in contrast to Metro Man’s)

Magneto in the 90s. He even built an asteroid as a refuge for any mutant.
- The older I get, more I agree with Magneto.
  
  More like, the older the character gets, the more they update his backstory to be something the audience can sympathize with. Because a villain for villain's sake gets old fast.
  
  Magneto ftw. Xavier is a naive little bitch.
  "You're always sorry, Charles ...and there's always a speech!....but nobody cares."
  
  When the Sentinels start rounding up mutants, it is the biggest "I told you so" to Charles.
- A Bioshock-like game set on Asteroid M would be, if you will excuse the parlance, baller.
  
  You could say it would be out of this world.

In the third season of the legend of korra, a group of people try to get rid of a monarchy (which is long established as especially unequal and oppressive) in favor of self government. They also try to get rid of the avatar, because she is an infallible being with incredibly outsized power. I love the avatar universe and get how they needed to fight them, but the group wasn’t wrong
- Even the first season had Amon, the guy that wanted equality between benders and non-benders. At one point we're even shown that power was cut to a predominantly non-bender neighborhood, and when people went outside to protest to get their power turned back on, they were all rounded up and arrested. Afterwards, when Korra goes and tries to get the people that were arrested set free, she's told
  All equalist suspects are being detained indefinitely. They'll be freed if and when the task force deems them no longer a threat.
  Just in case it wasn't clear enough by that point that non-benders were treated as second class citizens.
  
  All of the LoK villains were basically correct, and had to be caricatures of their stated beliefs in order to be villains. Amon was one of the better ones IMO though. Zaheer is too unrealistic
- I've been meaning to re-watch Korra, but I remember even the first time I watched it being a bit disappointed in the "enlightened centrism" where they are trying to paint every conflict as pacifists vs extremists.
  I think it's similar to looking at BioShock 1 and BioShock Infinite. There's a lot of writers out there who just use politics and ideology as a setting for the conflict rather than actually being central to their message. It's simply a solid formula to make a villain: take any sort of stance and push it to violent extremes. Comstock is a religious zealot, Andrew Ryan I don't think ever even mentions spirituality if I remember. Ken Levine's message in the two games is not about religion, but extremes.
  There are benefits. It makes the villains more nuanced and relatable. It gives the protagonist room for doubt and allows for some of the "good" guys to take on antagonistic roles. But Korra also ends up supporting an oppressive regime, and Booker DeWitt gets shoehorned into fights against the people rebelling against his enemy because... Reasons?
  
  Andrew Ryan I don’t think ever even mentions spirituality if I remember.
  "No gods or kings, only men."
- If you're talking about Kuvira you should read the comics that take place after the show. My feelings on Kuvira became much more mixed as I ended up sympathizing with her after finishing them.
  
  Its about Zaheer and his gang
  
  He's talking about Zaheer and the Red Lotus. They were extremely well intentioned, but set about their goals with violence.
- Even in the first season, I was siding with the equalists :s
- They also try to get rid of the avatar, because she is an infallible being with incredibly outsized power.
  Did autocorrect change "fallible"? Because otherwise it makes the opposite point.
  
  Probably a brain fart, thanks s
- I think what made that group such good villains is that you could definitely see their point of view. That said, they left behind a TON of collateral damage, and they didn't seem to care that innocent people, including children, died in their wake everywhere they went. They were terrorists that happened to have a noble cause.
- The formula for a good villain is "legitimate grievance, insane solution."
- No they definitely were bad guys. You cant try to murder someone just because they were born as a specific person you dont like and be good guys. And they didnt differentiate between the Earth queen and any other ruler. Their ideology when it came down to it, was indefensible trash.

The bible
- Damn... I thought I had a unique thought
- Who's the 'main villain' in the Bible?
  
  If you were asked that on family fued, the top answer would be satan for sure. Though I like the other persons answer of humanity too.
  
  Uhh...Satan?
  
  Humanity.
  
  https://youtu.be/X4RuB3gT8t0?si=LsAKtdEu2zEGsVdi
- https://youtu.be/sky6u0ntu24?si=3NcterSCz0mO7YZu
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
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  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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Watch 'The Wire' - the good guys are bad guys, bad guys are good guys. It's all mixed up!
- You have the most appropiate username.

Pokemon Sword and Shield.
Rose is trying to move the country off of fossil fuels and onto sustainable green energy. Somehow Gamefreak manages to portray this as being a terrorist and extremist. How dare he try to move Galar away from coal?
- I mean, he did recreate a cataclysmic event in the process, and the projected crisis was bound to happen in 1000 years... One can never be too prepared I guess.
  What is that even trying to say? That there is such thing as going too far when fighting the energy crisis? lol
  
  What is that even trying to say? That there is such thing as going too far when fighting the energy crisis? lol
  Game Freak's writing team is invested in oil and coal, lol

Not exactly a story. I just watched Babylon 5, and it's fascinating how the good guys are the bad guys are the good guys are the bad guys...
- Who are you?
  What do you want?
  Also, I think good and bad is a bit fluid there. It's just people with different agendas. Well, except emperor Cartagia. And perhaps Bester.
  
  It's Me, Myself and I.
  Achieving a state of complacementness in an unperfect world full of suffering and joy.
  Yep – that's what I like about it. Good and bad are fluid, like in reality. Even Bester is shown to be a caring character striving for the good of his people.
- What bad guys are good guys? The reverse is obviously Vorlons.
  
  No bad guys are good guys. And most good guys are not good guys, either.
  The Shadows, the Centauri and the PSI Corps are introduced as "bad guys" but gain a lot of positive aspects during the show without becoming "good guys". The Nightwatch and the Earth Governement under president Clark are "bad guys" – but quite a few of there supporters/members become important "good" characters, like Zach Allan, Elizabeth Lochley or Susanna Luchenko.
  That's my point about the Babylon 5 series – they deconstruct the good guy/bad guy meme. Mostly.

Voyager kinda fucks with my ability to set spoiler tags, so here is your Spoiler Warning.
The Cabin in the Woods (even tho the organisation is run by complete assholes, they also happen to postpone the end of the word)
Mass Effect series (the Geth are actually ok having peace with everyone. They just happen to be in a civil war with Reaper worshippers)
Witcher 2 (Letho turns out to be the good guy)
Wanted (the father turns out to be the good guy)
Battlestar Galactica 2004 series (yes, the Cylons enacted the nuclear holocaust on humanity, but there is a case to be made that the vast majority of them have been manipulated by a faction of ancient Cylons, which leads to a civil war later in the show)
- Cylons being manipulated by other cylons doesn't absolve them of guilt.
  BSG did have a few instances of the reverse of OP's question tho -- where the "good guys" turned out to be bad" -- trying to say this without spoilers; it's a 20 year old show but ffs of you haven't seen it, go see it now.
  the (temporary) new admiral
  several main characters during the part where they live on the dirty planet
  a very specific set of seven main characters (wink wink) ... .and more,..
  And there's one specific example of the full 360 -- a character that starts good, turns bad, but turns out they were actually good all along. I won't give the name, but they were passing messages to the resistance.
  That show was awesome.
  One note tho, on the topic generally: flipping character alignments is a frequent pre-shark-jump thing, and is often bad writing. In BSG, tho, all of the "flips" are pre-planned, or at least 100% true to their character (eg the 360 example above).
  
  BSG is one of the best shows I have ever watched and not a single twist came across as forced or unnatural.
  If I think about that I started watching it years after it was made and only started because I was bored out of my mind at that time. I could have missed it so easily.
  
  He doesn't "turn bad". He's good all along, but he's a target of a witch hunt, understandably gets jaded by it and gets absolved at the last moment. It's the judging commission or however they called themselves who are the bad guys there. Gaeta is innocent all along, even if he is annoying at times.

Does Dr Doom count for this? He believes he's seen humanity perish in every reality except the one where he becomes the absolute ruler.
- Yeah and he gets unlimited power from the sabertooth looking god or whatever.

Every story of Tom and Jerry.
- How was Jerry evil? Mice gotta skim
  
  Jerry antagonized Tom into attacking him more often than not. He viewed it as a game rather than a life or death struggle. Tom OTOH would be kicked out on the street if he didn't try to keep Jerry under control.

Does Snape count?
What about Loki(marvel)?
- Snape was never a good guy though. Very brave, yes and he had some good qualities. He was also vindictive and a bully - willing to put his petty dislikes above the quality of his teaching.
  
  He was also vindictive and a bully
  I formed the impression that James Potter and his gang were the real bullies, and Snape is a tragic character traumatized by their bullying.
  
  Snape was a good guy, in a sense of oposing the bad guy.
  He was however not a good guy in a sense of being at least a decent human being.

Can't believe it's not mentioned yet, but Alan Moore's Watchmen
- I cant see Ozymandias as a good guy. At all. None of the "heroes" are, but Oz was the worst of them.
  
  I should re-read it, but the impression I got was that Oz was the epitome of this thread's topic. A real "ends justify the means" villain, where his end goal is to save the world from itself by giving it a common enemy to vanquish. And he does it. In terms of the classical trolley problem, he pulled the lever to kill 1 instead of doing nothing and allowing 5 to die. Am I misremembering?
  
  In the movie the only one I would've considered good was Rorschach. He was the only one who only made personal sacrifices to save people.
  I mean dude legit let himself be killed because he couldn't live with not telling the world what Ozymandius actually did.
  
  Veidt would never consider himself the good guy for what he did, but I think that's what makes the writing so excellent.
- Nah ozymandies was kind of an ass regardless . Did he solve a big problem ? Yes . Was he a good guy ? Far from it.
  
  And as dr manhatten warned him, nothing would change in the end.
- I bought the book just this weekend. Until now I only watched the movie. Looking forward to reading it!
  
  There's some key differences, so keep an open mind!
  
  If you never say the HBO series, I would watch that after reading the book.
  
  holy shit, you in for a treat
  there's atleast an hour's worth more of a movie in the comic
  also, the motion comic's pretty freakin' dope

Evangelion, sort of.
Tom and Jerry
Metal Gear Solid 3
- If we're going with doomer anime Naussicaä is probably a better example.
  
  The villains aren't good though, it just turned out that the princess has some honor in the war
  
  Naussicaä
  I cannot find it anywhere. :((((

Kill la Kill, at least with the primary antagonist as the main villain isn’t really introduced until pretty late in the story.

Falling Down. Prendergrass is the good guy.

Game of Thrones, everyone is basically a villain but some of them are actually alright (like the Hound and Jamie).
- I think Jaime becomes a good guy. He starts out as a bad guy but he had a redemption arc.
  
  He starts out as a nepo-baby and then has to actually do shit throughout the show.
- Not everyone i thought jon, robert, ned, arya,hoddor and tyrrion was good and thats from the top of my head.
- Stannis was right but an asshole.
  Ned was right but an idiot. As were Robb and John.
  Sandor had a decent conscience he never fucking listened to.
  Brienne always listened to hers and never made a good decision.
  Jaime was only an anti-hero.
  Mance... probably could've left out the cannibals.
  
  Robb was such a fucking idiot... political marriages are a thing and affairs are so common that each region has a specific name for bastards. The series running up to the red wedding read like a Greek tragedy - just one person having a modicum of sense would've derailed the whole thing. Lust let loose.
  Stannis was wrong first. He was bitter that he was passed over and could never resolve that - if he had he'd be living on easy street. Stubborn fucking pride.
  My favorite part about aGoT is just how fucking obviously everyone gets fucked over by their flaws... the only real exception here is Jamie and Sansa - Jamie owes a karmic debt and Sansa was legitimately just "wrong place wrong timed"
- Did they make Jamie less of a tool in the show or something? Cause in the books he basically just goes back to doing what he was doing before, minus one hand and plus lots of moping.
  
  They did for a long time, having him gradually come around and begin to redeem himself, and then made an incredibly confusing decision to have him suddenly revert to his old ways right at the very end with no warning whatsoever
  
  Yes, very significantly. Jamie in the show introspected on the person he used to be and clearly grew. I think books Jamie was meant to feel the same way but got less focus to demonstrate that growth.
- Jamie pushed a kid to his death (edit: who miraculously survives to tee up a tone deaf depiction of a character with disabilities but that’s not important right now) and raped his sister over the corpse of their dead child.

Satan of the Bible, similar character to Prometheus https://www.enotes.com/topics/paradise-lost/questions/why-satan-considered-hero-paradise-lost-419454
- Proponent of knowledge and education. Isn't big on forced worship. Doesn't murder you for not paying enough attention. Guess it's all just a trick to capture your eternal soul.

Interview With the Vampire's Lestat was a bloodthirsty murderer. The Vampire Lestat's Lestat was a bloodthirsty murderer ... with a conscience.
- I loved the Vampire Lestat.
  The golden hour.
- In Tale of the Body Thief, he drinks orange juice and it makes him think of drinking sunshine.

God Emperor Of Dune. Leto II needs his bath time.

- I would say that Lex Luthor is more of a villain who sees himself as the good guy. He thinks he is humanity's savior from what he perceives as an alien threat. Whether he is evil or not depends on the actions of Superman.

The French version of La Femme Nikita, although it's more of a redemption arc than "villain turning out to be a good guy." She starts out as a junkie petty crook who murders a cop in cold blood, spends most of the film assassinating people for the government, and in the end seems to have gotten her life together.
But she starts out as a very not-nice person.

Artemis Fowl (Book 1) (he's the good guy in the following books)
- And the first was by far the best

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban comes to mind.

Does borderlands count?
!handsome jack started off as an honorable person with morals, but was repeatedly stabbed in the back and jaded over time. He still has the mindset of a good guy but the chaotic planning of a bad guy due to the experiences that he's had.!<
- Looks like your spoilers aren't working - spoilers on lemmy are three : on either side of the spoiler.
  
  Darn app users messing with our site, get off my lawn!
- There are no good guys in Borderlands. Full stop.

Peter Pan. Something, something, Pan's a little fuck

Ferris Beuler's Day Off
- Rooney? How did he turn out to be the good guy?
  Or do you mean Jeanie?
  
  It's been a while since I've seen the film, but I'd say both.
  Rooney just wanted proof that Ferris was skipping school, which he was. He went about it the wrong way by entering the Bueller household but he was basically just trying to do his job. He definitely gets obsessive about it but he's not in the wrong.
  Jeanie is pretty self explanatory. She also just wants Ferris to suffer the consequences of his actions.
  I think this movie never sat well with me because Ferris obviously does so many wrong and criminal things but is actually rewarded for it. Sure, you should take the time to enjoy life but not at the expense of others.

The Rock, starring Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage

Jafar in Twisted. So so good.
- Twisted is what made me love musicals. They're not a big thing in my culture, our theatre is strictly non-musical, and the movie ones seemed weird to me. But after watching Twisted, they all clicked for me. Everyone should give it a watch!

Lordgenome, Tengan Toppa Gurren Lagann
- the method was the problem as far as i'm concerned
  not that i saw enough episodes pre-timeskip to have a strong opinion, though

Xenoblade Chronicles

Texas Chainsaw Massacre
- The newer one? If so, yeah, that's true.

Despicable Me?

Assuming you're counting stories where the villain did very bad things for the purpose of a doing something good, there is an anime from 2005 called Speed Grapher.
- Oof that was a hard one to watch sometimes

"Villains by Necessity" by Eve Forward.

The Good Place, season 2.

Avatar: The Last Airbender
- Alright, I'm intrigued. Could you explain why?
  
  Zuko, maybe?
  
  I mean it’s a bit spoiler-y to do so, but this also came to my mind.
  Zuko is the villain in the beginning. By the end, he has completed a redemption arc and is a good guy.
  One could argue that he was always a good guy and was just clouded by his father’s ambition and the loss of his mother.

Saw X
- I'd say that's an "everyone sucks here" type of story.

Sophia, Garden of Eden, Genesis

The Sixth Day, one of Arnold Schwarzenegger's please-take-me-seriously projects, is possibly the wrongest it is possible to be about whether clones are people. Still a fun movie. Just ass-backwards in its motivation. I'm not sure how much of its moral grey area was intended by the script or the direction. The anti-clone "good guys" are pretty terrorist-coded. Arnie's just caught up in the middle of their guerrilla fight against a generic corporate bad guy. Who solved death. How terrible.
Off-topic Schwarzenegger faff: End Of Days is dumb. Jingle All The Way is the most 90s Christmas movie possible. Eraser is a slick action movie that somehow has no cultural cachet outside of every video game with a railgun.

Gru in Despicable Me.
Zangief in Wreck-it Ralph: "You are bad guy but this does not mean you are bad guy. ¯(ツ)/¯"

Interview With a Vampire ... kind of ... Lestat was by no means good to Louis, but their portrayals in the rest of the series was quite different ... I think that Anne Rice was trying to show that neither of them should be considered reliable narrators and Louis will always try to portray his situation as awfully as possible and Lestat is a narcissist and will always try to portray himself in the best light even when acknowledging what he did incorrectly.
But, when I saw that book 2 was about Lestat, I was like ... wtf ... I hate this guy, why would I want a story with him as the main character and then I read them all, lol.

Alex in A Clockwork Orange? 🤔
- I haven't seen the movie, but in the book, absolutely fucking not. At one point he abuses two 10 year-olds and from that point there was precisely 0 empathy from me. Bad shit happened to him while incarcerated which is unfortunate, but a lot of other things that happened to him before the incarceration and after he was released were completely deserved.
  Edit: To be clear, he did plenty of other bad shit, and I'm not comparing the things he did between themselves, that was just the tipping point for him becoming irredeemable to me. His age doesn't make a difference to me.
  
  Expanding a little on your point, I feel like a lot of people miss one of the themes of the book being "does forcing someone to be a good person by stripping them of their free will actually make them a good person?" I don't think Alex ever really regretted what he did, it's just for a short time he couldn't do it anymore. Even after they reverse his treatment, he goes and forms another gang. iirc The only reason he even thinks about stopping is because the violence isn't "fun" anymore. So yeah, not really a good guy.
  
  I haven't read the book, but yeah, that is pretty fucked up.
- Alex isn't a 'good guy.' He's the price you pay to liver in a free society where people are allowed to make their own choices, no matter how stupid they are.

I kinda think this about the Separatists in Star Wars...Dooku aside...
- I'll never stop complaining that in the second movie Dooku tells Obi-Wan that the Separatists are the good guys and that there's a sith influencing the Senate. Which would have been a cool reveal for the audience, that we're rooting for the bad guys.
  But then Dooku is also a sith anyway. What a wasted opportunity.
  
  something something "From my perspective the Jedi are evil."
  something something "You were supposed to bring balance to the force, not destroy it."

The Quarians vs the Geth...the Quarians did the Geth dirty
- It’s important to remember that the Quarians are living in the shadow of a war and exodus they didn’t personally start and have had generations telling them a story of survival and heroism against an unstoppable machine juggernaut. That’s what makes their decision to cooperate all the more powerful. They’ve spent their whole lives trying to plant a tree whose shade they’ll never sit in that they always feel is at risk of being cut down again.
  It’s also understandable when a significant portion of the geth just tried to kill everybody a few years prior and was abducting humans to impale on spikes that turn them into machines-monsters.

Braid
- still ain't finished it after all these years 'cause of how hard some levels are (and i don't wanna use a video every damn time)
  
  If it’s the purple/shadow puzzle world just look them up. Those get wonky and the game has so few it’s not like you’ll be watching a hundred YouTube videos

...so the (racist af) Tsukimichi series/manga/webnovel has this Demon race, right? Whole isekai happens because they instigate a war against the h(y)umans outta nowhere and the Goddess needs a hero.

it only sorta works for this post since the main character is quite indifferent to the ~~conflict~~ war for quite awhile
interestingly, the story primes you up for that reveal with a precursor villain of sorts

Terminator. Arnold was reprogrammed.

The Watchmen. Everyone thought Ozymandias was the supreme evil but what he did ultimately saved billions of lives.
- ...by killing millions. Let's not forget that part.
  
  The trolly problem. I guess saving billions is better than a million, unless you and loved ones are in the million.

In a sense, Bleach - twice!

Adrian Veidt, Watchmen.
- Absolutely not, unless you adhere to pure utilitarianism. Veidt kills untold numbers of innocent people on a self-imposed quest to do what he believes will save humanity. He was a straight up megalomaniac and the only upside is that his murderous actions eventually lead to peace.
  
  But he made himself feel every death, and he saved the entire world from (holds lighter under map)..
- Questionable. Depending on your attitude towards the follow-up Doomsday Clock, he is really just a megalomaniac who believes he's the good guy

Osama bin Laden
- Why the fuck did this make me laugh…now I need to downvote myself
  
  Reviewing his career and accomplishments - the guy was a real life Michael Douglas in Falling Down... but followed through on a larger scale. And deaths, a whole lot more deaths.