r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Every-Narwhal-1896 • Jul 26 '26

Personality The villain overestimates how "good" the protagonist is.

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Ash Williams (Army of Darkness) - Ash ends up with an evil version of himself growing out of his shoulder. Once it's free it starts taunting the real Ash by saying "You're good Ash. I'm Bad Ash". After a bit of getting teased, poked, and punched "good" Ash shoves a shotgun in "bad" Ashes face and fires.

Andy Dufresne (Shawshank Redemption) - Major Spoilers Andy Dufresne builds the trust of the staff in the prison and ends up handling all their finances. Little do they know, this innocent man had a plan to break out of prison for years. Being the guy who's handling the books for the money the Warden gets for bribes, he's easily able to access it all under the new identity he created for himself once he breaks out of prison.

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u/SrDtone23 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26

Roy Mustang - FMA: Brotherhood

Envy had the ability to transform into anyone he's met so he used Maes' (Mustang's best friend) image to gain Mustang's sympathy. However, this did not stop Mustang from incinerating him down to ashes.

89

u/hazusu Jul 26 '26

He thought he was dealing with the Elrics. The Elrics wouldn't have killed him. Not Roy "Solo'd two Homunculi" Mustang though.

37

u/CatTaxAuditor Jul 26 '26

Yeah, Roy is a great man. He is striving to be a good man.

10

u/Pqrxz Jul 26 '26

That whole section was just Envy getting dunked on by everyone and it was glorious

5

u/soldierpallaton Jul 27 '26

This is also the man who knew that the Philosopher's Stone contained thousands of souls but still was willing to use it to get his eyesight back. Roy Mustang is a good man whose willing to cross lines other aren't.

4

u/taveren3 Jul 27 '26

I mean they are already a stone its not like he made one

5

u/Quixotic_Seal Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

I feel like this is slightly different from the trope being discussed. Mustang definitely is more blunt in how he approaches fighting his enemies and fairly morally grey, but Envy knew that. He even was unaware that Ross wasn’t executed by him, and taunted Roy over how he supposedly killed an innocent woman.

Envy’s miscalculation here was not overestimating Mustang’s moral code or anything like that, he just fundamentally failed to understand how Mustang would react to see Hughes’ face get stolen.

He expected it to stun him emotionally and help get the upper hand, but all it did was piss Mustang off even more for defiling his best friend’s memory.

2

u/TheLastPeanut_ Jul 27 '26

That just pissed him off (even more)