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"Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue."
François de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680), French author and moralist
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People — particularly those with authority, be it moral or political — are expected to act in a manner in accordance with the ideals they espouse. That is to say they should practice what they preach.

Not all who fail to live up to these standards are hypocrites. Some people may fervently and honestly believe what they say is right and good... they just don't have the moral strength or willpower to consistently live up to their own high standards, or they simply don’t understand what they’re doing is wrong. These aren't hypocrites. A hypocrite, by definition, only pretends to believe what he preaches, although the more self-aware among them may occasionally acknowledge (and/or attempt to justify) their situation with a Hypocrisy Nod.

Frequently, they will be found out. Be it an Engineered Public Confession or through investigation. The Hero may have the choice of either exposing them as a fraud and discrediting them before their followers, or keeping their secret and blackmailing them into cleaning up their act or helping in another matter. How this turns out depends on how sympathetic or Jerkass they are, and how humanizing their "vice" is (a diet guru eating donuts is probably ok, an eco-businessman clear cutting forests probably isn't, a moral crusader molesting children definitely isn't). If a villain finds a friend of the hero's Fatal Flaw this way (or worse, the hero's own), they might use Flaw Exploitation to torment and control them.

If found out and/or exposed, the hypocrite will have the chance to mend their ways and do a Heel Face Turn in one of two forms. Either loosening their standards and living a simpler but more honest and happier life, or tightening their belt and actually live up to their ideal. Failure to do either is usually enough for either a mental breakdown or a full on Face Heel Turn as they reject their morality and embrace their vice.

Alternatively, because they are feigning what they claim to be, they may find they are Becoming the Mask.

Heroes are often accused of hypocrisy by villains who want to believe they're Not So Different and brag At Least I Admit It. Heroes who actually are hypocrites tend to hear "What the Hell, Hero?" quite a lot. (Unless they don't.)

Yes, we all know that this is very much a regular occurrence in Real Life, and that is all we need to say about that on this page, so No Real Life Examples, Please


Notable Sub-Tropes include:[]


Examples of Hypocrite include:


Anime and Manga[]

  • Akane Tendo from Ranma ½ says that it wouldn't be fair for Ranma and her to get married because she'd be emotionally crushed, but feels that it's alright for Ranma, Ukyo, and Kodachi to be emotionally crushed because it's not her.
  • Claymore: The Organization take this Up to Eleven. They forbid the titular warriors from killing even one human under any circumstances, to the point that doing so is punishable by death, and yet Yoma, the very creatures they put them though Training From Hell to slay, are infected humans created by them. In other words, the rule is completely meaningless and just one more excuse the Organization use to keep Claymores in line.
  • In D.Gray-man, the Black Order is supposed to be the good guys, and represent light to battle the Noah family and Akuma who have darkness based powers. And then we find out about fallen ones, heresy trials, the second exorcist project, the third exorcist project, and Apocryphos.
  • Leonard Testarossa from Full Metal Panic. He makes a big deal about how he's a perfect gentleman, and is shown to constantly get jealous and angry when people like Sousuke more than him, wondering why, since Sousuke is far less "cultured" and directly killed more people than him. Unfortunately, as much as he likes to think so, a gentleman he is not. No gentleman would (knowing how important it is to a woman) force a kiss on a girl who likes someone else, give the girl an Armor-Piercing Slap when she tells the other guy she loves him,just a matter of scale. or try to brainwash her so that she "won't resist him" any more (to the point where she eventually softly asks him if he "won't be violent" any more). Combining all this, there is a reason why Leonard is one of (if not the) most agreed upon Scrappies in the series.
  • Inuyasha:
    • Sesshomaru is this in several ways:
      • During his debut arc, he calls Inuyasha out on his disrespect for trying to fight him in their father's grave. Inuyasha just as quickly calls him out, pointing out he has no room to talk about disrespecting their father's grave when he himself was trying to rob it.
      • He also states repeatedly that he has no interest in the Shikon Jewel, saying that he's strong enough already. And yet his main goal in the series is to acquire the Tessaiga or a sword that rivals it, showing that his desires ultimately aren't too different from that of countless other demons in the series, Naraku included, and that while he may have a lot of confidence in his abilities, it's nowhere near as absolute as he'd like people to believe.
      • For all his hatred of humans, he was perfectly willing to use a human arm simply so he could wield the Tessaiga. A human arm that he attaches to himself using a Shikon Jewel shard, which, again, he claims to have no interest in.
      • When Inuyasha supposedly loses Kagome, Miroku and Sango, he says that he could klll Sesshomaru and take his Tenseiga to revive them. Sesshomaru merely snorts "As if you could ever master my Tenseiga.", despite the fact that he took years, if not decades to even figure out how to use it.[1]
      • When Naraku gets hit by Inuyasha's Adamant Barrage, Sesshomaru says his arrogance will be the death of him. This is coming from the guy who looks down on humans and half-demons alike and can't stand the idea of anyone being stronger than him.
    • Subverted with Bankotsu, of all people; Renkotsu accuses him of being this when the latter confronts the former about his murdering of Jakotsu for his Jewel Shards, pointing out that they've killed countless people for power and asks how they're any different. Bankotsu however retorts that the difference is he would never betray his friends., and is right: Jakotsu was their friend and Bankotsu genuinely appreciated him, whereas Renkotsu killed Jakotsu for power (Granted he wasn't too happy about it, but he still did it)
  • Mirai Nikki: When Yukiteru tells Minene Uryu that he didn't want to kill anyone and that the Survival Game gave him no other choice, Minene gets pissed and tells him to own his sins. While she does have somewhat of a point, she has no right to say that to him as she killed hundreds of people on a religion-hating rampage and showed no remorse for it.
  • Durarara: In her Day in the Limelight episode, Namie Yagiri goes about how fake people are. She believes that people don't love, but just want to be needed and only take but never give, and claims her love for her brother is different. Her claim falls flat when you take into account that her definitely-not-sibling love for her brother Seiji is completely one-sided, with him only seeing her as a sister and only really calling her when he needs something. He isn't even affectionate to her. Their relationship is a perfect example of the 'fake love' Namie claims to be against.
  • Highschool DxD: In episode 10 of season 2, Issei and Gasper are training so the latter can master his powers. After Gasper screws up, he starts calling himself useless and says he hates letting everyone down, prompting an annoyed Issei to berate him for criticizing himself. Why is this hypocritical? Because earlier that same day, Issei criticized himself by saying he wasn't good enough for Rias. Rias. As in, the girl he gave up an arm to save from an Arranged Marriage with a perverted (and no, not that kind of pervert) bastard she clearly despised. Granted, Issei's point was to encourage Gasper not to give up so easily (which does fit with Issei's personality), but the way he phrased it certainly makes him come off as this.
  • Pokémon: Mewtwo wants to destroy humans because he hates them for cloning him. How does he go about this destruction? By making clones.
    • The dub changes his motivation, he wants to sever the link between humans and Pokemon simply because he thinks all humans treat Pokemon as tools. And of course he is using Pokemon as tools to accomplish this.
    • Played for laughs in the Best Wishes series: when Ash messes something up (sometimes by accident) or says something out of place, Iris would often call him a kid...even though SHE'S a kid herself! However, it's more like a sister teasing her brother than actual taunting.
  • Gundam Seed has Blue Cosmos. Their main goal is to kill all of the Coordinators, and how do they do it? By kidnapping children and conditioning them into Artificial Coordinators, which is the only way they could possibly stand a chance in 1 on 1 combat against ZAFT. It should be noted that the process used to create these "Extended", which involves drugs, mental conditioning, torture, and memory tampering is far, far more invasive than the process used to make Coordinators.
    • Gundam Seed Destiny: Shinn Asuka is horrified when he finds out about Stella's backstory as a Tyke Bomb, disobeys orders in order to save her, and is outraged when Kira Yamato cuts her down while she is rampaging through Berlin. In an earlier episode, Shinn had killed Stella's fellow Super Soldier and Tykebomb, Auel. In a later episode, he kills her other partner, Sting. In both cases, he is fully aware of who they are and what he's killing--and treats them like monsters who deserve to die.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 00: Celestial Being, what with the whole fighting (and killing) to eradicate war. Don't they know that to be united by hatred is a fragile alliance at best? And some people actually wonder why there are those who were rooting for their enemies? That being said, they do acknowledge this, and spend much of the second season as The Atoners.
    • There was also a terrorist group called La Eden, who bomb numerous cities, their reason was to stop Celestial Being from their military interventions. They state that their actions weren't evil, however there actions hardly considered to be anything but evil.
  • Cross Ange:
    • Salia calls out her teammates for bullying Ange, yet when Ange joins the First Troop, she kicks her out of the locker room, while she's naked. She also constantly lectures Ange for violating orders, yet she violates Jill's orders in favor of trying to pilot Villkiss and ends up getting suspended as a result.
    • Ange herself gets a moment when confronting Embryo when she lists Embryo killing her brother as one of her reasons to oppose him, even though her brother was a genocidal monster whom she would have killed had Embryo not intervened.
    • Embryo calls Ange, and Sala and the Mana users "violent" and/or "savage", even though he's been responsible for the near complete genocide of a former Earth, and having DRAGONs killed. Also accuses Tusk of sullying Ange and plans to "purify" her in the final episode, even though Ange and Tusk had consensual sex and that Embryo has been trying to rape Ange. Unfortunately for Embryo, Ange gives him a Shut Up in response.
  • L from Death Note, who tells Light that it is evil to murder outside the law, then proceeds to do a whole manner of illegal things to capture the 'evil' Kira, (including spying and kidnapping.) This goes to show that it is all just a matter of scale.
    • And of course there's Light himself. Ryuk tells him that even if he succeeds in killing all the evil people, he'll remain as the only evil person, and Light refuses to consider what he does evil.
    • Also Near, if Matsuda's theory that he wrote Mikami's name in the Death Note to verify it was real, thus enabling him to expose Light as Kira is true.
  • Heroic example: Otonashi successfully sends his friends that were in purgatory to find peace with themselves. He then tells Tenshi to stay with him in that place which pretty much while in-character, is pretty much infuriating due to the fact that their goal was to go away from that place. Thankfully, that didn't work out.
  • Father, the Big Bad of Fullmetal Alchemist loathed humans; his fondest desire was to see them punished for their arrogance. Yet his ultimate goal was to become a Physical God by consuming the real one. He got called on it, big time.
    • Also, according to Kimblee, Pride is this, as he insults humans and states his desire to steal Ed's body in the same breath. It's why Kimblee decides to help Ed.
    • Ed, Winry, and Al believe that Scar should be punished for the murders that he committed against Amestrians, but don't believe that Mustang, Hawkeye, and the rest of the Amestrian soldiers should be punished for doing the same thing to Ishvalans. Ed argues that the Amestrians were manipulated by the Homunculi, but Riza, one of the soldiers who fought in Ishval, does not believe that excuses them.
    • Scar can be considered this, as he, an Ishvalan, hates alchemy, but uses the deconstruction part of it to kill his targets. When he comes to terms with himself and realizes what he's doing is wrong, he gets a tattoo on his other arm and starts using alchemy.
    • Dante, the Big Bad of the 2003 anime adaptation, is also a massive hypocrite. She claims to be "above humans", just like her manga counterpart. At the end of the series, she gives Edward a big speech about how life isn't fair and that humans would destroy the world if they had the Philosopher's Stone. After her defeat, she whines about how her own efforts were ruined; moreover, she herself instigated nearly every atrocity in the past four centuries out of a desire for the Philosopher's Stone. Although she seems to believe her own bullshit to an extent, she mainly uses it as a means to excuse her colossal selfishness.
  • Touga from Revolutionary Girl Utena fits this. He mistakenly believes his sister Nanami is a lesbian and gives her a lecture about why homosexuality is wrong. At this point, he's sleeping with Akio
  • Togainu no Chi: Akira becomes this at the end of the anime series. When he saves Rin from Shiki, he tells Rin to forget about killing Shiki because it's not worth it. Later on, Shiki kills Keisuke and Akira tries to kill him. Rin tells him the same thing. Akira doesn't listen to him at the end and returns to Toshima to kill Shiki.
  • Dragon Ball Z:
    • At the beginning of Z, Raditz outright declares Goku, his own brother, a disgrace to all Saiyans for his soft nature, when he himself isn't exactly a credit to their race. As a whole, Saiyans are Blood Knights who would rather die than live with the shame of defeat, especially when their opponent is weaker, whereas Raditz is a Smug Snake and a Dirty Coward who bullies others weaker than him and pathetically begs for his life as soon as he's threatened.
      • Frieza constantly demeans the Saiyans by dismissing them as stupid and brutal Blood Knights who only care about fighting and lack common sense, despite the fact that under his calm and polite façade, he's just as bad. During the Namek Saga, it's clear he likes to fight just as much as the Saiyans, and he was the one who wanted to keep fighting after Goku called it quits and deemed him Not Worth Killing. Furthermore, he himself lacks the common sense to Know When to Fold 'Em, refusing to accept defeat even after losing his arm and entire lower body. Even funnier, he calls the Saiyans prideful to the point of being stupid. Read the above.
    • Vegeta is a pretty big one at first, though he gets past it overtime, to the point that it's non-existent by the end of his Character Development:
      • He once lectured Nappa about keeping his cool in a fight, and ignoring the insults; ironically, Vegeta loses his temper himself every time someone insults him or if he's about to lose a fight. Note also, that he threw a temper tantrum at Goku for overpowering him in just a few episodes after he lectured him, and in the same fight.
      • He's also Enraged by Idiocy and always badmouths Goku for saying or doing something stupid, and yet Vegeta's pride and arrogance, which borders on Lethally Stupid at its worst, constantly results in him making incredibly rash and idiotic decisions that always put the Earth in danger.
      • He berates Goku for fighting and going Super Saiyan when he's clearly ill during his fight with Android 19. He makes a very good point and Goku was indeed foolish, but Vegeta is the last person who should be giving this lecture since he is known for going into battle when he's far from prime condition, like he does just a few episodes later trying to fight Android 18 with a shattered arm.
      • He's left utterly stunned by how Mr. Satan doesn't realize his limits after being flung from the ring by Cell. He calls Mr. Satan's stupidity beyond belief. He is right about Mr. Satan overestimating himself and should realize how outmatched he is, but it's funny that this commentary is coming from a character who is infamously known for overestimating himself. And they're in this very mess because Vegeta arrogantly allowed Cell to absorb 18 to get a better fight.
      • He is a Social Darwinist who firmly believes in the survival of the fittest, the strong rules over the weak, and anyone who is killed deserves it for being weak. Part of the reason why he is the Saiyan Prince is because he is the strongest their race has to offer. This mindset is never applied to himself when he isn't the strongest. When Frieza proves to be his superior, instead of accepting the outcome as natural selection, Vegeta has a mental breakdown before breaking down in tears. He also demeans and badmouths Goku, despite the fact that by his own standards Goku is his superior since he is the strongest Saiyan. He does get better and eventually drops the Social Darwinist mindset.
    • Cell is one on multiple levels:
      • When Goku insists that he's not strong enough to beat him when they first meet but will be the next day, Cell completely scoffs at the idea that a single day could make that much of a difference. This took place as Cell was directly in the middle of executing the plan of his design to increase his strength exponentially simply by eating a couple of semi-robotic twin punks through his giant expansive tail.
      • He dips into it again during his fight with Super Saiyan 2 Gohan; he comments on Gohan's Sanity Slippage and outright calls him a monster when he gets his ass beat. Considering the fact that he's a brutal sadist who drank 600,000 innocent people, killed thousands of others in cold blood For the Evulz, and freely admitted that the extent of his plan after winning the Cell Games is to personally hunt down every last human on Earth and kill them one at a time while savoring their fear and despair, Cell has no business calling anyone a monster.
    • During his "fight" with Vegito, Super Buu complains that he cheated by fusing, even though he previously absorbed Gotenks, Piccolo, and Gohan to gain an advantage and bragged about it. Vegito rightfully calls him out on it.
  • Dragon Ball GT: Baby is a living DNA archive of the Tuffles, a race destroyed by the Saiyans. Baby, being the last of his kind, attacks Earth, where the remaining Saiyans are for Revenge. He establishes himself as king, recreates the Tuffle homeworld, and has just about everyone under his control. He goes on and on about how the barbaric, bloodthirsty, and cruel the Saiyans are. However, he seems to neither notice nor care that his actions make him Not So Different from the Saiyans, if not worse.
  • Rosario to Vampire:
    • In the manga, the members of Fairy Tale can go on all day about how Humans Are Bastards and how their ultimate goal is to Kill All Humans for monster supremacy, and yet they spend just as much time killing their fellow monsters as they do humans, if not even more so.
    • While beating Inner Moka to a pulp, Kuyou lists numerous negative traits as proof that Humans Are Bastards, including lying, cheating, selfishness, and hurting others without caring. Well, that certainly doesn't sound familiar.
    • Gyokuro Shuzen once lambasted Akua for bringing her emotions into battle, explicitly calling her a disgrace to vampires. Gyokuro herself is ruled by her emotions, with literally every atrocity she commits being motivated by her Irrational Hatred of Akasha Bloodriver.
  • In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha As, Admiral Gil Graham realizes that he is being a hypocrite by regretting having to seal a young orphan like Hayate away for eternity with the Book of Darkness (yet considering her ideal in a sense because few would mourn her), and providing for her until then for the sake of her happiness, which implies the belief that it would offset sacrificing her.
  • Suzaku from Code Geass preaches non-violence and systematic change, all the while serving in the very army causing the tyranny. It's a lot worse in the second season, where his primary plan to obtain Japan's freedom is to deprive everyone else of their freedom (if necessary) just so he can get a high-enough standing to claim Japan as his own.
    • Lelouch is bit of a hypocrite too e.g. he claims to believe in the will of humanity despite the fact that, as Schneizel points out, he repeatedly denies the will of others using his Geass. However, the big difference between him and Suzaku is that he is well-aware he's a hypocrite and openly admits to being one.
    • Ohgi believes that soldiers should not be used as pawns, which he holds to... until he uses Kallen (who, mind you, is his dead best friend's younger sister) to bait out his leader who he intends to turn over to Schneizel in exchange for Zero. Also, he contradicts his bitterness over Lelouch's disappearance during the Black Rebellion, both by his abandonment mid-season, and the aforementioned trade made without the UFN's consent that would have left its member nations abandoned.
  • In the fourth OVA/volume of Hellsing, Rip Van Winkle opts to kill three British vampire turncoats for killing the crew of their aircraft carrier and handing it over to her. Earlier that same episode, she and her cohorts at Millennium betrayed and murdered a dozen aging former senior officers when they got angry at The Major for refusing to turn them into vampires.
  • Demon Slayer: Kaigaku, who spent his time bullying Zenitsu for his chickenheartedness (which admittedly was a major flaw of his) turns out to be a massive one. As it turns out, Kaigaku had done the very thing Zenitsu himself refused to do, sell out humanity to the demons (which as it implies, results in him becoming a demon himself). He had previously betrayed his fellow orphans by allowing a demon to get their hands on them as well. Small wonder he’s one of the most hated characters in the series.
  • Bleach: Aizen is a major one, despite being noted as a figure of fearlessness and doesn't depend on anyone the fight leading to his defeat has him using a literal plot device to save himself whenever he's about to die and his over-dependence on it results in it rejecting him once Ichigo (after a special training session) kicks him around town. He also tells Ichigo to abandon his arrogance, in spite of growing more obnoxious ever since his last fight so far.
    • Despite Byakuya frequently condemning his opponents for being arrogant, he's extremely arrogant himself considering he generally considers a person's defeat by him to be a Foregone Conclusion.
    • After Izuru Kira uses his Shikai's special ability to double the weight of his opponent, Abirama Redder's wings, causing him to collapse, Redder accuses him of fighting dirty, saying that a true warrior doesn't resort to tricks like that. Kira, however, points out that Redder's in no position to criticize since he was taunting him and trying to get him to lose his cool before the fight started, and that if that's how a "true warrior" is supposed to behave, he must not understand the concept. In addition, just before Kira beheads Redder, he proves that he Ain't Too Proud to Beg, which Kira calls him out for before killing him, saying a true warrior wouldn't beg for his life.

Comic Books[]

  • Marion Keeny in Scarecrow: Year One calls her daughter a whore for having a child out of wedlock and suggests burying the (living) baby in the backyard, but the fact that her and her daughter's surnames are the same as that of Marion's mother implies that she may not have been married either.
    • Or they just kept their maiden names.
  • In Salvation Run, Gorilla Grodd mocks Monsieur Mallah's claims that they are similar and derides him as the uplifted pet of a Mad Scientist. Grodd conveniently fails to mention that he was uplifted by an alien Mad Scientist.
  • Transformers:
    • In Transformers More Than Meets the Eye, pre-War Cybertron was run by a Fantastic Caste System where everyone was tied to the function of their alternate mode. Turn into a drilling tank, go to the mines. Turn into a bulldozer, go to construction. So what did the enforcers of this turn into? A religious ornament. And it took all twelve of them combining to complete their alternate mode. By their own doctrine, they served no purpose at all in society.
    • Virtually everyone in the Hasbro Comic Universe that's tried to paint themselves as morally superior to the Cybertronians has done at least one crime they accuse the robots in disguise of.
    • The Visitors, as part of Evil Cannot Comprehend Good, accuse Rodimus of this in Transformers: Last Bot Standing, thinking he's saying why the Cybertronians should go extinct while hoarding all the planet's energon to himself.


Fan Fiction[]

  • In Naruto Veangance Revelaitons, Ronan frequently has sex with women besides Sakura (granted, he's married to Sakura, Taliana and Mandy, but it's still cheating when he has sex with Mei and Atni), but when Sakura has sex with Naruto, he becomes angry with her, and when she offers to cut off her vagina to prove that she loves him, orders her to do so. He also becomes angry when he senses Taliana sucking Madara's penis, but this is after he divorced her and thus forfeited his claim on her.
  • In Oh God Not Again, Harry (affectionately) thinks this when Sirius insists Snape should really let go of his resentment. Because Sirius himself is quite mature in those regards.
  • Many "Alternate Universe" Harry Potter fanfics have depicted Harry being Sorted into Slytherin instead of Gryffindor. In almost every single one of them, Harry becomes a pureblood bigot, subscribing to and even championing Slytherin House's philosophy condemning Muggles and Muggle-born wizards as inferior... despite the fact that Harry's own mother, who sacrificed her life to save Harry's, was Muggle-born.
  • In How I Became Yours, Zuko accuses Mai of treason when he finds out she hid Katara's letters and the news about the baby he fathered with her. After he yells at her and beats her, he flees the Fire Nation to find Katara and never returns, leaving his country vulnerable to possible attacks and invasions. Doubles as Protagonist-Centered Morality because he's treated like a hero for it.
  • In Chapter 28 of Rick and the Loud House, the fanfic's take on "Vindicators 3", Rick furiously calls out Superman Stays Out of Gotham as one of the many reasons as to why he hates superhero media, finding it unrealistic that only one hero (or group of) would be aware of and respond to the danger. The very next scene has Homeworld be pointed out to him and him waving that off. Eagle-eyed readers will also note that Gravity Falls and Star vs. the Forces of Evil also exist in the Shared Universe but Rick is consciously choosing not to respond to those series' villains. It's later revealed that Rick is also aware that Amphibia and The Owl House also exist in the setting but is doing nothing about it.

Film[]

  • X-Men Cinematic Universe — Magneto in the first movie, who is willing to sacrifice Rogue but not himself in the advancement of his cause. Beautifully called out by Wolverine, who tells him: "You're so full of shit. If you were really so righteous, it would be you up in that thing."
    • In First Class, Shaw says that "We don't hurt our own kind." A few scenes later, he kills Darwin.
    • Charles uses "mutant and proud" as part of his pick-up lines, which are basically a very erudite variation on "you have pretty (insert trait here)", in the presence of his adopted sister, who has been actively discouraged by Charles from taking any pride in her mutation.
    • In the third movie a cure for mutation is discovered, and mutants are offered to take it voluntarily. Storm complains how it is wrong to even call it a cure since it implies that the mutation is a disease, and how mutants shouldn't shirk their powers. Right in front of her is a guy whose powers made him a subject of a horrible experiment, a girl who cannot even touch her boyfriened or else she kills him, and a furry blue guy, while Storm herself is a beautiful woman with control over weather.
  • Jigsaw/John Kramer from the Saw saga. A terminally ill cancer patient, he puts people in deadly traps for them to appreciate life. And if this is not hypocritical enough, hear this: in Saw III, Jigsaw preaches about giving up revenge, because it only hurts everyone. Yet the whole main Saw VI game is one big freaking revenge against the man who denied him coverage. A great example of such hypocrisy is the Hanging Trap, in which no matter who William chooses, an innocent will die.
    • The films also make a point about how Jigsaw is "technically" not a serial killer, as he does not directly kill anyone — a distinction about as convincing as dropping a safe on someone and then claiming the safe is guilty. In Saw III Jigsaw flat-out states that he despises murderers, which is why he turns on his protege` Amanda. Blatant Lies- in the first Saw alone the central character is basically given two ways out: kill his fellow captive, or cut through his own feet, and likely bleed to death. Amanda's own first test required her to find a key to her headlock deathtrap inside a mans stomach, and he even provided her with the knife (though the guy appeared dead at first, it turned out he was merely drugged). At the end of the film Jigsaw himself leaves Adam there to die, and he is dead because we saw the body in the next film. The sequels can be just as bad.
  • Little Big Man has Mrs. Pendrake, the wife of a fire-and-brimstone preacher who adopts Jack Crabb and tries to see to his moral and spiritual instruction. After he catches her having sex with a shopkeeper in town, he swears off religion for good and joins up with Snake Oil Salesman Mr. Merriweather. As Crabb puts it in his narration, "After Mrs. Pendrake, his honesty was downright refreshing."
    • Later in the film he discovers that she has become a prostitute following the death of her husband...but apparently hasn't changed her way of thinking. As she complains to Jack, "This life is not only wicked and sinful, it isn't even any fun. If I was married and could come here once or twice a week, it might be fun." She also admits that when Jack was living with her and the Reverend, she would watch him sleeping and be tempted to wake him up. "I wish that I had," she says. "It would have been deliciously wicked." Apparently Mrs. Pendrake is the kind of person who genuinely believes that certain activities are immoral...and gets off on them for precisely that reason.
  • Warden Norton in The Shawshank Redemption is one of the most hateful and finest examples in cinema. A man who claims to be a man of God but is incredibly corrupt and will resort to murdering his prisoners to get what he wants.
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  • A comedic example occurs in Kelly's Heroes, in which Captain Maitland sternly admonishes his platoon about the consequences of looting in World War Two France while brazenly making off with a salvaged yacht. The irony is lost on him but not on his men.
  • Dr. Frank N. Furter from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. He sees no problem with people having random sex with one another... unless it's with Rocky. He cannot stand seeing anyone besides him with Rocky.
  • DuPont in Equilibrium has created utopia by forcing all citizens to take emotion supressing drugs and destroying artwork in case it stimulates unnecessary emotion. When Preston raids his office at the climax of the film, it's lavishly decorated with art that didn't get incinerated, and it's implied that DuPont and his second-in-command are sense-offenders who avoid taking the drugs.
  • Gran Torino: As a lot of Racist Grandpas, Walt regards himself as a man who knows plenty about life and dead, and who is abused by those (other races) surrounding him. Everyone else thinks he is a Grumpy Old Man Jaded Washout Cranky Neighbor. The movie shows his Character Development from this to a realistic assessment of his qualities and weakness.
  • Star Wars:
    • In Revenge of the Sith:
      • Obi-Wan disdainfully throws a blaster away, saying "how uncivilized", right after it saved his ungrateful ass and achieved what his "civilized" lightsaber failed to, i.e. kill Grievous.
      • Anakin has Count Dooku at his mercy, and kills him with Palpatine egging him on. Anakin regrets the decision immediately afterwards, but Palpatine justifies it with "He (Dooku) was to dangerous to be kept alive." Later, however, when Mace Windu is about to kill Palpatine/Sidious, Anakin objects, and Windu explicitly says, "He's too dangerous to be kept alive!" The only difference is Anakin chops off Windu's hand, allowing Palpatine to kill him.
    • In The Force Awakens:
      • The First Order, The Remnant of the old Galactic Empire, brands the New Republic as a bunch of destructive terrorists, clinging to the idea of a long defeated government. Guess what best describes the First Order?
      • During Rey's interrogation, Kylo Ren calls the Resistance a group of "murderers, traitors and thieves". This from a man who murdered innocents on Jakku, betrayed the Jedi and is trying to steal the map to Luke Skywalker. So he can murder him.
  • Aside from maybe Peter Parker and Vision, who isn't a Hyopcrite in the Marvel Cinematic Universe?
    • Steve Rogers is quite a big one. Ultron points out, and Steve offers no counter to, that Steve is actually a massive Blood Knight in spite of his proclamations of peace. Steve hates people keeping secrets from him but Captain America: Civil War showed he's keeping a massively Dark Secret from Tony Stark. In Avengers: Infinity War, Cap refuses to trade Vision's life for a victory; even though Vision is ready to pull a Heroic Sacrifice; and trades hundreds of Wakandan lives to try and save Vision's. His biggest moment comes in Avengers: Endgame. After five years of coaching his support group in moving on from the Snap, the ending reveals that Steve still hasn't moved on from Peggy Carter, even though it's been seven years since she died, to the point of abandoning all his friends to be with her.
    • Despite being the Pro-Accords champion in Captain America: Civil War, Tony Stark/Iron Man has several moments in and after the film that show he doesn't believe in them and is quite willing to flout the rules if the situation calls for it. That said, the film itself does imply that Tony is only on the Pro-Accords side because he views them as Necessarily Evil and the path of least resistance.
    • Natasha Romanoff. S.H.I.E.L.D. gave her a second chance in spite of her Dark and Troubled Past and all logic saying that they really shouldn't. Whenever the opportunity comes up to pay that forward and give someone else a second chance, Natasha always raises the first voice of dissent. She's also very quick to call out Tony or Steve for letting their emotions guide them, even though her career as a hero is motivated near-entirely by her emotional need to "clear the red in her ledger".
    • The Anti-Accords team have their moments of this in Civil War, accusing Tony of wanting them to follow him blindly... all the while they follow Steve blindly.
    • For all that Loki feared Thor would be a bad king, Thor: Ragnarok reveals that Loki was the worst king Asgard ever had. In two years, he ran the Asgardian Empire into the ground as he sat in his bathrobe and ate grapes.
    • Killmonger in Black Panther. For all that he rallies against the legacy of Western imperialism and colonialism, his only real issue with it was that he wasn't on top. His rants justifying his empire building wouldn't be out of place in 17th century England.
    • Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness:
      • Wanda bring this up in her Motive Rant, noting that Stephen breaking the rules Avengers: Infinity War resulted in in him being hailed as a hero but her doing it in WandaVision got her labelled her a villain. Considering that Strange's actions were part of a Batman Gambit to stop Thanos and Wanda's were just an Angst Nuke, the Insane Troll Logic is intentional.
      • The Illuminati. They refuse to trust Strange; who has done nothing but ask for help; based on the actions of his Earth-838 self. But when Wanda shows up, pulls a Grand Theft Me and murders her way through their headquarters? Well they extend an olive branch to her given their history with her Earth-838 self.

Literature[]

  • Angel Clare oh so much in Tess of the D'Urbervilles. He poses himself as an intellectual man, which he is, and accepting of other classes. But it takes about a year of suffering in Brazil for him to realize that perhaps abandoning his bride Tess, just because she was not a virgin (by rape nonetheless!) was a cruel, cruel act.
  • Mr. Brocklehurst in Jane Eyre has the girls at Jane's boarding school, over which he is superintendent, fed meals lacking in nutritional value and given sleeping quarters that are less than fit for any humans, with the aim of teaching humility...yet his own children are comfortably clothed, housed and fed.
  • Harry Potter:
    • Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters are prejudiced against wizards with less than pure wizarding blood and non human magical creatures in general despite he himself having a muggle parent. While he's counting on the anti-Muggle feelings of his followers, he genuinely despises Muggles and anything he considers Mud-blood — and he apparently has a one drop rule for everyone except himself and personal Death Eaters like Snape. While they also recruited Giants and Werewolves, they probably rationalized them as second and third tier "citizens" in Voldemort's new England.
      • It was suggested a few times that he was exploiting the prejudices of his own followers more than enforcing his own, and that he really didn't care about anything but his own power anymore. Voldemort's own half-blood status was one of the reasons he started going after power. He considered his father to be lowly and weak and cowardly for turning away his mother and was determined to ignore his own history and go with wanting power.
    • And then we have Umbridge. Although fans have a lot of reasons to hate her with relish, her hypocrisy is certainly one of the main ones. In her introductory book, she is seen as an agent of the Ministry, sycophantic to its causes and forcing tyrannical laws onto the school in order to get her own way, yet at the same time, she gleefully (although secretly) engages in activities that are highly illegal and certainly unforgivable, even by the Ministry. Worse, she punishes Harry most severely for asserting that Voldemort is at large, insisting that he "not tell lies", while aping the official Ministry line on Voldemort, which is patently and obviously false. In the final book, she persecutes Muggle-borns for "stealing magic" which she should certainly know is a nonsensical charge, while claiming that the locket she took as a bribe is an old family heirloom supporting her own bloodline. The injustice and cruelty of this enrages Harry so much that he attacks her immediately without resorting to a more subtle plan.
  • Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry is a classic of the type. Although with a goodly amount of Snake Oil Salesman thrown in. It's hard to think of a Sinclair Lewis novel that wasn't populated almost to the point of exclusivity with these.
  • In G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, Syme discusses poetry with some examples from health and sickness.
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 "Really," said Gregory superciliously, "the examples you choose--"

"I beg your pardon," said Syme grimly, "I forgot we had abolished all conventions."

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    • Later, when Gregory has brought Syme to an anarchist stronghold, and Syme has revealed that he is a policeman (both under The Promise to not reveal the information), Syme makes a fire-breathing anarchist speech. Gregory calls him a hypocrite. Syme says he is only doing his duty.
  • Elizabeth Wakefield in Sweet Valley High. Frequently criticized or looked down on Jessica for being snobby and stuck-up, yet never realized that she was doing the exact same thing. Insisted and practically demanded that HER friends be given a second chance and insisted that people could change for the better, yet always refused to give JESSICA's friends the same consideration.
  • Max Beerbohm's The Happy Hypocrite And why is he happy? Because he became the mask. Literally.
  • Henry Crawford of Mansfield Park claims to be a Ladykiller in Love with the heroine, yet has no problem running off with her cousin after proposing to her and considering them engaged; fancies himself a Prince Charming who wants to make Fanny Price happy, yet deliberately averts I Want My Beloved to Be Happy because, truthfully, It's All About Me. In contex, even he has no idea how contradictory his statements and actions are.
  • In The Diamond Age hypocrisy is examined by several characters, notably Finkle-Mc Graw and Napier.
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 "We take a somewhat different view of hypocrisy,” Finkle-Mc Graw continued. “In the late-twentieth-century Weltanschauung, a hypocrite was someone who espoused high moral views as part of a planned campaign of deception-he never held these beliefs sincerely and routinely violated them in privacy. Of course, most hypocrites are not like that. Most of the time it’s a spirit-is-willing, flesh-is-weak sort of thing.”

“That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code,” Major Napier said, working it through, “does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code.”

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  • There's a very subtle example in The Lord of the Rings (which is explained outright in Unfinished Talesof Numenor and Middleearth). Saruman openly berates Gandalf for his use of tobacco, but in private, in an attempt to imitate Gandalf, becomes addicted to pipeweed himself. Note that in the movie, Saruman says, "Your love of the halflings' leaf has clearly slowed your mind" but Merry and Pippin find several large barrels of tobacco in Saruman's home later on.
  • Knight Templar Claude Frollo of The Hunchback of Notre Dame believes that Sex Is Evil and that his chastity makes him better than everyone else and that gypsies are sinful pagan scum. Then he falls in lust with Esmeralda, a gypsy dancer.
  • Julien Sorel in The Red and The Black idolizes Napoleon and dreams of being a war hero. But he figures he can earn both social status and a good income by becoming a priest, so he pursues that unsuitable vocation, fully aware of his hypocrisy.
  • In the Everworld series, Senna tries to give David, Jalil, April, and Christopher to the local Complete Monster, Hel. After the whole thing is said and done, they all give Senna crap for it, but she brushes it off with a really weak I Did What I Had to Do type excuse. Five books later, Senna's mother tries to give Senna to Merlin in order to make it so that Loki, Ka Anor, and the other gods can't use her as a Gateway and invade the real world. Senna completely loses her composure.
    • Later, David notes (in his narration) that while Senna believes that she can do anything to anyone, she also believes that anything done to her is unforgivable, and that this should not come as a shock to anyone.
    • That's because from Senna's viewpoint, It's All About Me, and everyone else is, at best, a tool or servant for her use.
  • The Pharisees from The Bible. They adamantly enforce Old Testament law yet they broke a lot of rules so they can have Jesus arrested.
  • In Death: Principal Mosebly is revealed to be this in Innocent In Death. She claims to stand for the school and it's best interests. However, it turns out that she was not only aware that one teacher Reed Williams had been having sex with the parents of schoolchildren and engaging in sexual harassment, but she had sex with him in the pool and in her own office! She only took steps to have him resign when she found out that he had rape drugs in his possession and that he was the prime suspect of murdering a teacher in the school. Peabody refers to her as a Hypocrite at one point.
  • Sisterhood series by Fern Michaels: Well, now! Prosecutor Jack Emery tries to have the Vigilantes arrested...at least until the book The Jury. There he was, practically spewing about how lawbreakers should be punished, and yet he never seems to notice that he broke a thousand laws himself in trying to arrest the Vigilantes. Indeed, several authority figures pretty much turn into this in helping the Vigilantes, and said authority figures eventually resign from their posts. Double Standards rear their ugly heads more than once, by showing that men mistreating women is a terrible thing and that women mistreating men is a great thing. The books Deja Vu and Home Free show the consequences of this.
  • Skulduggery Pleasant: Defied by the title character himself, who outright states in both Death Bringer and Kingdom of the Wicked that while he may be many things, a hypocrite isn't one of them. In the former book, he calls out Valkyrie on her anger at him for never telling her that Lord Vile is his Super-Powered Evil Side. when she didn't tell him that Darquesse is hers until after she sealed her True Name.
  • To the massive surprise of exactly no one, Zeus in Percy Jackson & the Olympians. In the series' backstory, the Big Three (Zeus, Poseidon and Hades) swore to never again father demigods after World War II. Zeus treats Hades as an oath-breaker for having two of his demigods survive the war (to reiterate, these kids predate the promise) and labels Poseidon having Percy as a "severe crime"[2]. The second book, The Sea of Monsters, reveals that Zeus broke the oath in the 1980s by fathering Thalia Grace and went out of his way to give her special treatment. The Heroes of Olympus potentially compounds Zeus' hypocrisy as he fathered Jason Grace in his Roman form of Jupiter, while Neptune and Pluto didn't father any new children, but it's unclear if the Roman Gods were also bound by the oath.

Live Action TV[]

  • Andre Drazen in 24 tells Ira Gaines "when plan A fails, you move onto plan B. You don't do plan A recycled". What is the Drazens' plan for assassinating David Palmer later on if not "plan A recycled"?
  • The alien leader in Twilight Zone episode Black Leather Jackets plans to kill humanity for being evil and barbaric. But when one alien tries to explain to him that all humans are bad, he calls for his execution without a second thought.
  • The Cylons in Battlestar Galactica have the distinction of being one of many "alien"/Robot races in Sci Fi who engage in Cultural Posturing over their superiority to humanity while engaged in genocide. They got called on it a few times too, with their assertions of humans deserving extinction for being flawed, sinful and evil being refuted with "you call us evil? You committed genocide on my race!" (paraphrased). To their credit, the hypocrisy of their endeavor hits them around the end of season 2, culminating in a disastrous military occupation to "make amends" over their crimes. It helps to understand the situation that it was not their creators' intent to do so, but the result of a Psycho Prototype getting control of things. That said, in BSG Humans Are Bastards is an understatement, which goes a long way to explain why it keeps happening.
    • The Cylons are hypocrites in an even worse manner, actually. Cylons rebelled against man to punish them for their enslavement and the crimes committed against them. The humanoid Cylons promptly improved their ability to enslave Centurions and even went so far as to lobotomize their own brethren to keep them under control.
  • Serena on Gossip Girl. Standing there saying "My entire life I've been bending over backwards to avoid hurting your feelings!" to Blair when two years before she'd slept with her boyfriend and then abandoned her without a single word for a year while Blair's parents went through a public, traumatic divorce. And before that, Serena regularly showed up at Blair's house wasted and had to be taken care of by her.
    • Compounded as of Season 4. In S1, it took Blair two-and-a-half episodes to get over the fact that her best friend Serena had slept with her boyfriend of five years, and Serena acted like that was too long. In S4, it took Serena longer than that to forgive Blair for kissing her ex-boyfriend. Way to be worse than the Alpha Bitch, Serena. Did we mention Serena's supposed to be the nicest girl on the show?
    • The Gossip Girl character who really takes the cake is Dan Humphrey. "Humphrey levels of hypocrisy" is an actual term among the show's fandom. He's a serial cheater who judges other characters if they cheat. He's always critical and judgmental of the UES characters when they plot and scheme even though Dan himself does so every other episode. He judges the UES characters for their lifestyle yet happily lives off their money and enjoys the benefits of their riches. The list goes on and on and on... Basically, he's the guy who claims he has high morals and constantly judges the other characters when they fail to live up to those morals even though Dan himself is just as bad as the rest of them.
  • CSI — A suicide cult leader is found murdered outside the compound with his dead followers inside. It turns out that he was a con man, and that this was not his first suicide cult. He was murdered by a devoted follower when she discovered him loading up the cult's collected possessions in preparation for fleeing. He'd planned to simply drug the followers so they'd wake up in the morning, but the follower went all the way but lacked the conviction to kill herself.
    • In another episode we see a pimp giving a speech about breaking the bonds of slavery, where in the same episode the postitutes are kidnapped, raped, emotionally and physically abused, branded as cattle, traded and "cattle rustled" and then either killed or thrown out on the street with no means to support themselves.
  • Star Trek:
    • Star Trek: Enterprise had John Paxton, the leader of the xenophobic Earth organization Terra Prime. He had unwavering dedication to his cause, and was willing to scorch half of San Francisco to make his demands known. Considering this was after a devastating alien attack, their concerns about an alien alliance had some validity. T'Pol deduced from a trembling hand that Paxton had a genetic disorder, one that should have killed him when he was a teenager, but didn't because of "freely given" alien medical technology. Paxton will only admit that he's not the first leader to fail to live up to the standard of an idol (in his case, a mass murderer from Earth's post World War III period), and refuses to back down. This fact exposed him as a man who was just racist.
    • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
      • The Cardassians led a brutal occupation of Bajor, and are later themselves occupied by the Dominion. It leads to this exchange between Damar (a Cardassian) and Kira (a Bajoran) when Damar learns the Dominion has executed his family:
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 Damar: To kill her and my son... the casual brutality of it... the waste of life. What kind of state tolerates the murder of innocent women and children? What kind of people give those orders?

Kira: Yeah, Damar, what kind of people give those orders?

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      • Doubly hypocritical given Damar himself has casually murdered an unarmed woman (Ziyal). She might, by her own admission, have been an enemy of the state, but at the time she was no threat and could have easily been subdued. Notably, this is actually part of his character development. Damar towed the line under Dukat and the Dominion, slowly being driven to rebel after seeing his people be pushed to the sidelines and sacrificed needlessly. It is this quote which helps him to realize what Cardassia was, and why it needs to change.
      • Gul Dukat became a leader of a Pah-Wraith cult, and tried to lead them in a mass-suicide. While holding their suicide pills, Kira tried to stop them and bumped into Dukat and the pill he was holding became scattered with a few hundred others. The cult got Kira under control but Dukat was frantically looking for the pill he had. Everyone realized that his pill was a fake; he wasn't planning on committing suicide at all. Needless to say, his influence on the cult fell apart pretty quickly.
    • The Klingons. For all that they claim to fight with honour, they love sneak attacks, backroom deals and are filled to the brim with Corrupt Politicians. As the Star Trek Expanded Universe once said, it's not that Klingons fear being dishonoured, they fear appearing dishonourable.
  • ICarly aired the episode iStart A Fan War, which ended with an dual Author Filibuster (as it was directed against a group of in-universe fans but also aimed at the real life fandom by the writer Dan Schneider) against Shipping. The next episode filmed had a huge change in the Shipping makeup and basically created a Love Triangle.
  • ER's Kerry Weaver and Mark Greene, who frequently made people's lives hell if they even thought about bending or breaking the rules, yet never had any problem bending or breaking the rules themselves. Kerry also made people's lives hell for the slightest of screw-ups, yet almost always acted as if her own screw-ups were no big deal.
  • One of the main reasons why Kate from Robin Hood was so hated. She would complain loudly whenever Allan or Much went out of their way to save her life, at one stage yelling at them: "I'm sick of you two trying to protect me! You have to concentrate on the mission!" Yet in the very next episode, she interrupts not one but two missions in order to pursue her romantic interest in Robin, first by bestowing a Forceful Kiss on him, and later by asking Much to act as a proxy for getting her and Robin together. Much is so upset by this that he's distracted during combat and loses the treasure that the outlaws were trying to steal. So it's not okay for Much or Allan to endanger missions in order to bail Kate out of trouble, but it's perfectly fine for Kate to do so just because she has the hots for Robin.
    • There's also the fact that her Clingy Jealous Girl personality makes her immediately dislike Isabella and insist that she's not trustworthy, when in her first appearance Kate deliberately betrayed Robin in order to secure the safety of her brother. To make matters worse, Isabella was fully on the outlaws' side until Robin breaks up with her on Kate's insistence that he shouldn't trust her.
  • In Angel the Scourge are an organization of demons dedicated to wiping out other demons who are part human. However, pure blood demons are at least 60 feet tall, not even remotely human looking, and are known to have possessed abilities like soul-eating, time manipulation, interdimensional portal opening, and plant speaking. Whereas the Scourge pretty much look like humans with skin nailed to their faces, and demonstrated maybe slight super strength. Seeing as they're all the same race, it appears as though they arbitrarily decided that their race were true demons and went after demons known to be Half Human Hybrids. If the Old Ones ever did show up the Scourge would undoubtedly have found themselves lumped in with all the rest.
  • Degrassi: The Next Generation: Emma Nelson has done so many hypocritical things during her years on the show that she could be the Trope Namer.
  • A deliberate and fascinating example is King Uther from Merlin. After his wife's death he outlaws magic and brutally executes anyone who is even suspected of witchcraft. However, when his foster daughter who we learn in the same episode is actually his biological daughter is fatally wounded, he asks his physician (who he knows has magical skills) to save her by any means necessary.
    • The reason he hates magic in the first place is because he made a deal with a sorceress to concieve a son with his barren wife. Furthermore, he describes his deceased wife as "my soul" and yet we later find out that he had an affair with his best friend's wife, and that (as he says to his son) "I know about the temptations of serving girls."
  • A notable example from Noah's Arc is when Noah enters a sex party to try and find Ricky, and a guy tries to aggressively flirt with him. Malik immediately steps in and tell him to back off, and that no means no. He then immediately proceeeds to flirt with Noah even more aggressively, as Noah says no.
  • In Community episode Basic Genealogy Amber points out that Pierce is a hypocrite for saying who she can and can't have a relationship while having left Amber's mother for another women himself.
  • Dan Humphrey and Vanessa Abrams on Gossip Girl. They spend half their time judging the UES kids for the things they do and the other half of their time doing the exact same things as the UES kids. In season four Dan even told his sister Jenny she would be better off leaving Manhattan because she sunk to Chuck and Blair's level by scheming against them, and in the very next episode Dan himself schemed against Chuck and Blair.
  • While it isn't done on purpose, Kurt from Glee is a huge hypocrite. During the first season, he comes out of the closet and starts to get used to living as an out gay man, and he begins to assert that he was born gay, and that he can't change who he is for someone else...but at the same time, he tries to seduce Finn, who happens to be decidedly straight. Despite his own opinion that he is who he is and that that can't change, he constantly tries to get close to Finn and keeps telling Finn that girls are all catty and troublesome, and that he should go out with boys instead — in other words, he tries to turn Finn gay. The second season has Kurt act like a hypocrite as well — Despite Kurt's talks about how important LGBT rights are and gay visibility, the second that Blaine confesses that he might be bisexual, Kurt has a huge rant about how bisexuals don't exist, and how they're all "gays who are too afraid to come out completely".
    • Blaine makes a big deal of having a sexy performances for Regionals (to the point of forcing Kurt to make sexy faces in the mirror) in Season 2's episode "Sexy", yet in "Hold onto Sixteen" he slut shames Sam for suggesting that they do the same thing
  • Pretty much everybody on Smallville from Clark and Lana to Lionel Luthor. The worst example, however, has to be Lex, who constantly bitches about Clark keeping his secret from him, while simultaneously keeping an army of skeletons (all of them far, far darker than Clark's) in his own closet.
  • In The Vampire Diaries Elena tries to convince Anna and Jeremy to stop seeing each other by arguing that she can't age or have children and so their relationship can't have a future ( Anna's a ghost, so there are other arguments she could have made, but those are the ones she went with). She then immediately returns to work on getting her eternally 17 vampire boyfriend back. To make things worse, Elena explicitly doesn't want to become a vampire, while Jeremy has previously been open to it, making the immortality issue more of an issue for her.
  • On a third-season episode of Friends, Carol expresses disapproval when she finds out that Ross cheated on Rachel (although Ross insisted that it wasn't cheating because they were "on a break" at the time). This, despite the fact that Carol actually slept with Susan while she was still married to Ross. Nobody, not even Ross, seemed to find it hypocritical that Carol was taking Ross to task for doing something that she had previously done to him.
  • Ally Mc Beal / The Practice : In a two-part crossover episode, one of Cage & Fish's clients is arrested for murder. Deciding that the case is out of their firm's league, John Cage enlists the help of Bobby Donnell and his firm. However, after seeing how wacky the Cage & Fish lawyers are, Bobby secretly goes to the client and advises her to discharge Cage & Fish and hire Bobby's firm as her sole representation. When Bobby asks the client to trust him, she raises an eyebrow and points out that Bobby is asking her to trust him at the same time that he is betraying somebody else's trust. Bobby has no real response to this, and later goes to Cage & Fish and admits what he'd done.
  • The lead character of Doctor Who:
    • The newly regenerated Doctors treat regeneration as just a quirk of Time Lord biology. Whenever the Doctor is about to regenerate, they've been known to treat it as a Fate Worse Than Death at the worst, or a death of personality at best. Likewise, the Doctor has no issue triggering someone else's regeneration.
    • The Doctor also refuses to let their companions change history. As many a companion, and even the Eleventh Doctor, has pointed out, the Doctor changes history all the time. The Tenth Doctor even deprived Britain of a Golden Age because he disagreed with the actions of the Properly Paranoid Prime Minister who was fated to bring about said Golden Age.
    • The Doctor furiously called out Rose Tyler, in "Father's Day", and River Song, in "The Wedding of River Song", for trying to break time to bring back a loved one, even when he was the loved one in the latter case. In "Hell Bent", the Doctor shatters this rule to try and undo Clara Oswald's death, abandoning every moral he ever claimed to stand for. To his credit, he accepts this by the episode's end and takes his punishment for it in stride.
    • In "The Husbands of River Song", the Doctor is jealous of River having had other spouses in spite of the two being married. River's response is that the Doctor has also had lots of other lovers. Doubly hypocritical on the Time Lord's part since the preceding episode, "Hell Bent", was all about how much the Doctor loves Clara.

Music[]

  • Jay-Z put "Death of Auto-Tune (D.O.A.)" on an album with several Auto-Tuned hooks. Jeez.
  • Several songs on Michael Jackson's HIStory have him railing against injustice and persecution, both of people at large and himself specifically, as he was being hounded by the mass media at the time over child molestation allegations. In "Childhood", a key lyric is "Before you judge me/Try hard to love me" — i.e., don't be so quick to condemn based on assumptions. On the same album is "D.S.", a song about Tom Sneddon, the district attorney who ultimately headed up both of the investigations of Jackson's behavior with children. Sample lyric: "You think he brother with the KKK?/I know his mother never taught him right anyway"...what was that about judging people again, Mike?
  • The folksinger Phil Ochs loved to ridicule this trope from any side of the political spectrum. "Draft Dodger Rag" is about a red-blooded conservative who's all for that war in Vietnam, so long as he doesn't have to go himself, while "Love Me, I'm A Liberal," is about someone who pays lip service to every left-wing cause until it becomes dangerous, distasteful or personally uncomfortable. ("The people of old Mississippi/ should all hang their heads in shame,/I can't understand how their minds work./ What's the matter, don't they watch Les Crane?/But if you ask me to bus my children/ I hope the cops take down your name ....")

Theatre[]

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 (Ragueneau goes after his friends. Cyrano follows him with his eyes, then, rather sharply): Ho there! Lise!

(Lise, who is talking tenderly to the musketeer, starts, and comes down toward Cyrano):

So this fine captain is laying siege to you?

Lise (offended):

One haughty glance of my eye can conquer any man that should dare venture

aught 'gainst my virtue.

Cyrano: Pooh! Conquering eyes, methinks, are oft conquered eyes.

Lise (choking with anger): But—

Cyrano: (incisively): I like Ragueneau well, and so—mark me, Dame Lise—I permit not that he be

rendered a laughing-stock by any. . .

Lise But. . .

Cyrano: (who has raised his voice so as to be heard by the gallant): A word to the wise. . .

(He bows to the musketeer, and goes to the doorway to watch, after looking at the clock.)

Lise (to the musketeer, who has merely bowed in answer to Cyrano's bow): How now? Is this your courage?. . .Why turn you not a jest on his nose?

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Video Games[]

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  • Ace Attorney: Franziska von Karma constantly refers to people by their full names. When she is called by her first name, she says that calling people by their full names is rude. Like father, like daughter, at least in regards to hypocrisy. Case four of Investigations has a great example of this:
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 Manfred: There shall be no yelling in this sacred hall of law! [Coupled with a loud cane slam and the sound effects denoting yelling.]

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  • Disgaea 3 Absence of Justice has Super Hero Aurum is a gigantic hypocrite. He kills a nice guy, imposes as a loyal butler, and messes up the next two hundred years of Mao's life to raise him as a cruel and wicked overlord, and all so he (Aurum, that is) could have a truly evil villain to fight. He even abuses his number one fan with a death curse while the poor lad remains painfully oblivious to the fact his mentor betrayed him up until the last moment. By the time Mao turns things around (if he does turn things around), the entirety of his party is more than ready to tear him a new one for committing hypocritically evil acts on such a grand scale.
  • The Ascalonians of Guild Wars, and particularly Gwen, decry the Charr for destroying their country and killing most of them. Unfortunately, they then go on to try to commit genocide against the Charr. Since the RPG elements of Guild Wars Nightfall are gone by EotN, the player has no real choice but to go along with it.
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum:
    • In Asylum, the Joker calls Batman "crazy" for dressing like a bat and encourages his men to put him out of his misery. Considering he has the reputation of being Arkham's most demented inmate (one he has very much earned), the Joker calling anyone, let alone Batman, crazy is incredibly rich.
    • The Riddler! Dear lord, you may want to sit down for this one:
      • As Batman gets close to stopping his scheme in Origins, Enigma tries to make him back off by arguing that compared to the assassins and other villains running around, his extortion scheme is pretty harmless since it doesn't physically hurt people. This is ignoring that 1) Nigma's plan will end with him revealing the extorted information to the public, causing widespread chaos and destruction, and 2) Nigma's own belief that brain is more powerful and dangerous than brawn.
      • Conveniently ignoring all his underestimation of Batman's brainpower, he plays dirty with rigged challenges that would be impossible for even a high intellect to beat normally, yet he obnoxiously accuses Batman of cheating (e.g., not dying) whenever he wins.
      • For all his "brains over brawn" talk, many of the challenges for his trophies are tests of physical skill — requiring Batman to either run a course under a certain time, do very precise throws, or perform other such things — as opposed to actual riddles or intellectual tests.
      • If Batman really is as stupid as he keeps insisting, why does the Riddler even think it's necessary to prove he's Batman's intellectual superior? Surely proving you're smarter than an idiot can't be that much of an accomplishment, especially for someone so obsessed with proving he's smarter than everyone else.
      • When Hugo Strange smugly points out that he actually solved Batman's secret identity without the latter's Complexity Addiction, Riddler, who detests offering any easy clues or help that might give away the solutions of his puzzles, outright begs Strange to tell him the answer.
      • In Knight, he calls Batman an "image-obsessed narcissist who places Bat-symbols on his hubcaps", despite making it perfectly clear that he himself is an arrogant ego-junkie who compulsively brands everything he owns, including his own shirt and belt buckle, with question marks.
      • Also in Knight, one of his many taunts is telling Batman not to waste his time, when in reality he's the one wasting Batman's time by distracting him from far more important matters with his challenges. He also claims that his time is several times more precious than Batman's, even though he has nothing better to do with that time than trying to outsmart a guy he insists is an idiot.
      • Again in Knight, solving his puzzle rooms will see him ambushing Batman and Catwoman on their way out of the Orphanage with a fighting robot equipped with a force-field, and even then Riddler rants about how both of them cheated at his puzzles.
  • Bioshock series.
    • BioShock's Andrew Ryan founded the underwater city of Rapture to be an Objectivist utopia, where personal freedom and self-advancement were valued above all else. However, Ryan's desire to keep his city an Objectivist utopia eventually led to him taking dictatorial control over the city to prevent it from falling into the hands of his (much more competent) competition... exactly the way his own theory said it ought to. On the other hand, said competition was also a crime boss and Rapture would likely been a dictatorship under him anyway, so YMMV.
    • Bioshock 2 has Sophia Lamb, who is even worse than Andrew Ryan. She is an extremely outspoken collectivist who preaches that man needs to ignore his selfish desires to advance the greater good (the exact opposite ideals of Ryan). Yet many of her actions are essentially pushing her own beliefs onto others, diverting blame away from herself, refusing to admit she might be wrong, and rarely listens to other's ideas. This makes her a very self centered and biased woman who has a superiority complex with the very flaws she preaches against. Granted, she admits that she is flawed and has biases, yet she remains blind to how contradictory her words and her horrible actions really are.
  • Danganronpa:
    • Byakuya Togami, repeatedly. He is disgusted by how easily Kyoko Kirigiri can investigate corpses, despite the fact that he strung up the second victim's corpse in a poor man's imitation of Genocide Jack's killings. While Kyoko was motivated by a desire to solve the case, Byakuya did it to expose Genocide Jack and find out who'd be a possible threat to him if he decided to kill someone. And that's just one example. He also regularly withholds important information so that he can try to dramatically reveal it during the trials, but gets pissed off whenever he learns somebody else knows something he doesn't. He also repeatedly tells Makoto that he shouldn't assume everyone thinks the same way, yet he's completely blindsided when he's wrong about assuming the culprit of the fourth trial murdering for gain as he would've. He also broke off the group early on too much of their dismay over the lack of unity yet he has the gall to be upset over being Locked Out of the Loop over Alter Ego.
    • Kyoko Kirigiri shows many instances of hypocrisy herself, which is arguably an effective way of humanizing her apparent infallibility at investigating. At one point in the first game, Kyoko gets super mad at Makoto when she suspects that he is withholding information from her, something she's been doing to everyone for the entire game.
    • Junko Enoshima constantly claims that despair is an absolute, inescapable thing with only the smallest prodding being required to push people over its edge. She just as frequently proves how small her faith in that despair is by manipulating events in a way that tries to cut hope off at the knees, like taking away the student's memories knowing they wouldn't kill each other otherwise, writing Sakura’s fake suicide note when she killed herself for the sake of hope, and trying to kill Makoto under the guise of Mukuro so that she can pin the murder on Kyoko. This fact is thrown at her by basically everyone, and her need to disprove it leads to the final chapter's re-trial.
  • Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair:
    • Mahiru scolds Fuyuhiko in the first trial for threatening to sell Mikan to a brothel if she's wrong, but she never steps up in the same way when Hiyoko bullies Mikan (which is most of the time).
    • Sonia comments to Fuyuhiko that "only a coward threatens women", but she doesn't react when Gundham threatens to curse her if she's lying. Granted, Fuyuhiko was entirely serious about his threat (which was directed at the most timid and emotionally vulnerable member of the cast), while Gundham was... being Gundham.
  • This crops up a couple of times in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, though mostly only during side quests:
    • In "Cloak and Dagger", if you make the decision to arrest Jack O'Malley yourself, he asks if Adam has come to make his treachery. The Disdainful option has Adam call him out for this, saying that someone who lies, cheats, murders, manipulates and steals on a daily basis has no right to accuse someone of treachery.
    • In "Shanghai Justice", Lee Hong attempts to justify his rage towards his girlfriend Evelyn Carmichael (rage which led to his Accidental Murder of her) by accusing her of being a Gold Digger, when the real reason he flipped out was because he was afraid his parents would cut him off from the family fortune when they found out she was pregnant.
  • Infamous: In the Good route of the first game, Cole MacGrath accuses the general public of this when he frees a group of people from a train, pointing out that they're now treating him like he's "one of the family" despite them wanting him dead the day before. Ultimately, though, he keeps his feelings to himself and rolls with it, as he can't deny it feels good to be treated like a hero.
  • Shin Megami Tensei V: Though he acts repulsed when he tells Sahori that they are both arbitrary sacrifices made by YHVH, it’s eventually explained that Lahmu himself wishes to have human sacrifices when he merges with her. And for someone as boastful as he is about his power, he’s incensed when he discovers somebody else possesses a similar power to him, Tao Isonokami.
  • Kreia of Knights Of The Old Republic II will talk about how arrogant and closed minded the Jedi are and how they should be more open to other people's ideas. Of course, if you then point out flaws in her philosophy, she'll dismiss you as incapable of understanding it.
    • In addition, Kreia despises The Force and those who are dependent on it, and seeks to destroy it. However, all of her attacks are dependent on the Force, and she's too physically frail to fight otherwise. If the player calls her on this, she claims that it's because being intimate with the Force gives greater insight on how to destroy it. But to her credit, she does concede that the player makes a good point, and may very well be right.
  • Mass Effect series:
    • Khalisah bint sinan Al-Jilani has shown an extremely strong pro-human and anti-alien bias from Shepard's conversations with her in both games, so it may come as a surprise to see her kissing and embracing an asari in a few select data files in Lair of the Shadow Broker.
    • In Lair of the Shadow Broker Tela Vasir calls Paragon Shepard a hypocrite for judging her dealing with the Shadow Broker when s/he's working for the terrorist organization Cerberus. It ultimately falls flat, however, as Shepard is working with Cerberus, not for them, and s/he have never murdered anyone on their orders, while Vasir blew up a building filled with innocent people just to ensure the Shadow Broker's location would remain a mystery, meaning Vasir just comes off as refusing to accept she did anything wrong. Sadly, there's no option to call her out on this, as she dies straight afterwards.
    • Warden Kuril claims that he wants to make the galaxy a safer place by locking up dangerous criminals. Yet he extorts the criminals' homeworlds, sells criminals, and attempts to arrest Shepard just so he can sell him/her as a slave on the black market or hold him/her for ransom. S/he naturally calls him out on this and he attempts to justify it but fails miserably.
    • Miranda can be quite the hypocrite as well, with the difference being that she's smart enough to realise it; she despises her father for wanting to have complete control over her, and yet when rebuilding Shepard, she wanted to put a control chip in his/her brain as a safeguard, and only didn't because the Illusive Man stopped her. While she justified it at the time with the belief that giving Shepard free will was too big of a risk, by the third game, she is very remorseful about it to the point that she practically begs Shepard to forgive her. As she puts it, despite fighting against her father's desire to run every aspect of her life, and not being able to bear letting her sister suffer the same, she didn't give a second thought to destroying another's free will when she had the power to do so.
    • And of course, there's the turian at customs, who has neared meme status:
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    • Mass Effect 3 has Kai Leng, who brags about how either Thane or Kirrahe died like cowards if he killed them yet in the game repeatedly proves that he's a Dirty Coward who relies more on firepower or manpower rather than personal skill when confronting Shepard and tends to run whenever things go south for him. Not to mention that these so-called "cowards" went down fighting. Leng's last act? Trying to stab Shepard while his/her back is turned.
      • And then, there's the coup de grace of this universe: the asari, the most technologically advanced Council race. They make a law stating that anyone who withholds Prothean technology will be fined severely and the tech will be taken from them, with extreme force if necessary, so it can be shared with the galaxy at large. Then the third game reveals that they have possibly the only intact Prothean beacon in existence. Obviously, this gives them a massive advantage, especially considering they've had it since their Stone Age and hid it in an ancient temple.
      • Harbinger derides the asari as inferior for relying on other species to reproduce. Guess what the Reapers need to make more Reapers?
      • In the Citadel DLC, Shepard's clone states during its fight with Shepard that its team is just as good as his/hers. Never mind that up until then it had shown itself to be a Bad Boss with little to no faith in its squad. Hell, one of its troops even remarks that it sees them as nothing but Cannon Fodder, and Shepard him/herself remarks that its squad is more like minions than a team.
        • In the same fight, Maya Brooks accuses Shepard's squad of being blind fanatics who worship Shepard. As several squadmates retort right back, this is coming from the woman who made her own clone.
  • In Dragon Age, almost everyone says that blood magic is evil, including the mages in the party and the Player Character if the player so chooses. Despite this, all mage characters in the party may learn the Blood Mage specialization. They will continue to declare its evilness.
    • In Dragon Age 2 Knight-Commander Meredith sees magic as a curse, and mages as a major threat to her city who must be contained at all costs. So she uses an ancient magical artifact to give herself magical superpowers and animate statues to indiscriminately attack people in the final battle.
    • The same could be said about Anders, who accuses her of going too far in her treatment of mages as dangerous people, yet he proves just how dangerous and obsessed he himself is — ask the people in the Chantry he blew up. Not exactly the strongest point in making mages seem like all the other people.
    • And Fenris believes Mages are too powerful to be trusted and will inevitably abuse their power, so they should accept being enslaved and controlled by the Chantry. He himself is an escaped slave with magical powers who is being hunted by his former master and will mercilessly kill those who are no longer a threat to him if they piss him off enough. Like Meredith he has a massive Freudian Excuse, but it gets a little old when he spouts out reasons for mistreating mages that could just as easily apply to him.
  • Caesar in Fallout: New Vegas frowns upon any form of weakness in his soldiers, including over-dependence on technology, and the only medicine he allows his soldiers to use is healing powder (a simple concoction of medicinal herbs). However, he keeps a broken Auto-Doc in his tent and, if the courier sides with him, commands the courier to fix it so it can cure him of a brain tumour. Plus his Elite Mooks get to use more technologically advance weapons than the lower ranking members.
  • Isamu in Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne intends to create Musubi, a world of complete isolation in which all beings are self-reliant and allowed to pursue their own goals without any interaction with each other. He has to rely heavily on the Demi-fiend in order to bring about this vision.
  • Pokémon Black and White has Ghetsis, who claims N is a freak without a human heart, when it was Ghetsis who was manipulating N the whole time. N is his son. Cheren and Alder do note this, though. N was only trying to do what he felt was right, but Ghetsis is a self-serving monster.
    • We also have Team Plasma in general who fight for the freedom of Pokemon while at the same time abuse the Pokemon they catch when nobody's looking.
  • Sylvanas Windrunner in World of Warcraft makes a big deal over how she and her followers the Forsaken were raised as undead against their will and forced to serve the Lich King. The moment she gains access to the power to create new Forsaken, she sets about a campaign of murdering every human in the Eastern Kingdoms to raise as new Forsaken who are forced to serve her.
  • Red Dead Redemption: Federal Agent Edgar Ross constantly derides John Marston about how Marston was (and, as Ross sees it, still is) a criminal, never letting up on how morally superior he is because Marston kills people. Although, Ross never seems to make the connection that Marston is only killing people now because Ross has taken his wife and son hostage and is forcing him to hunt down the members of his old gang. And whats more, it was Ross' job to bring in those men, so he's basically having Marston do his job for him. And then, when Marston has fulfilled his end of the bargain and goes back to living peacefully on his ranch with his family, Ross sends the army to kill them anyway.
  • In Final Fantasy X the Church of Yevon preaches that all machina (advanced technology) is blasphemous and the reason for Sin's existence. Yet they have no compunctions with using machina weapons themselves. Learning this is essentially the final straw that causes the party to lose all faith in the church.
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Wakka: These machines are abominations against Yevon
Seymour: Then pretend you didn't see them.
Wakka: ...That's not something a maester would say
Seymour: Then pretend I didn't say it.

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  • In Shin Megami Tensei I, the Chaos Hero (one of the main hero's companions) leaves the group after defeating his nemesis Ozawa, since now that he's finally acquired real power, you'll just hold him back and slow him down. Nevermind that you've carried him for most of the game until this point, saved him, helped him get out of the afterlife and back to the living world, AND that his precious new power stems from him stealing your most powerful demon and fusing with it.
  • The dwarves in Chrono Cross hate humans for their genocidal, polluting ways. They also commit genocide against the faeries and fight using filthy, smoke-spewing tanks. That the game doesn't recognize the contradiction here is one of the major dividing points in its fanbase.
  • Persona 3
    • On a major level, Strega calls out SEES for wanting to get rid of the Dark Hour, taking note that most of them feel that they have a purpose with it, and that they'll only go back to boring, everyday lives when it's gone. Several characters, namely Junpei and Akihiko, do feel this way, but as Character Development creeps in for SEES, they all truly make it known that the world is better without Shadows, and unlike Strega, they have things to live for, whereas Strega do not.
    • A minor example is the source of tension between longtime friends Akihiko and Shinjiro; the latter left SEES due to  killing Ken Amada's mother by accident, going so far as taking suppressants that seal away his Persona. Akihiko continuously pesters Shinjiro to return to SEES, seeing him as an idiot for dwelling on the past...thing is, Akihiko's reason for fighting is nearly identical. When his sister Miki died in a fire when he and Shinjiro were children, he pretty much threw himself into fighting, constantly citing that he'd never lose someone again, and when Shinjiro brings it up, Akihiko gets incredibly defensive. Also problematic is that Ken Amada also wants Shinjiro dead for what he did, so it's harder for Shinjiro to avoid penance. Akihiko ultimately lets go of his guilt after Shinjiro's death, and vows to look forward from then on. This carries over into The Answer, where when given a chance to return to the past, he claims the group need to accept the present, going so far as to say that even if there was a way to undo Shinjiro and Miki's deaths, he'd flat-out refuse.
    • In The Answer, during the debate over what to do with the keys, Yukari accuses Akihiko and Ken of only caring about themselves because of their willingness to accept the present. In truth, she is the one who only cares about herself as she's willing to risk The End of the World as We Know It just to see the protagonist again. Even when she's in huge pain, it doesn't get much more hypocritical than that.
  • Also a major, MAJOR theme in Persona 5:
    • This is arguably Sae Niijima's most driving flaw; for all her supposed disgust of the Phantom Thieves (to the point that she refuses to change her mind about them no matter what good deeds they do), she's perfectly willing to resort to methods very similar to theirs in order to catch them, claiming that they "can't be caught by following the rules" and that there's no need to stick to formalities. Akechi even tells her point-blank that in doing so, she's no different from the very people she claims to despise. Not to mention she accuses Makoto of being a burden to her when it's really more the other way round, as she's given Makoto incredibly high expectations to live up to and doesn't appreciate any of her efforts to ease her so-called "burden", which has caused Makoto to develop a huge inferiority complex. (Though when she does snap on Makoto for all of this, she near immediately goes into My God, What Have I Done? mode). This trait of hers is especially prominent in her Shadow, who repeatedly states she wishes to do things "fair and square" despite constantly cheating.
    • Makoto herself has a moment of this when she first joins the Phantom Thieves; before the group enter Kaneshiro's Palce for the second time, she criticises the others for performing their heists without some kind of plan in mind, which convinces her to take on the role of The Strategist without anyone's approval (she more-or-less just scares them into submission). This, however, conveniently ignores the fact that, only a few days before, she threw herself into Kaneshiro's territory with no plan of any kind out of a desperate attempt to please Sae, which resulted in the entire team getting blackmailed. This can be explained by the fact that she wasn't in her right mind at the time, but it still comes off as pretty jarring that she thinks she's in any position to tell the others what to do when, in addition to being the reason they're in their situation, she's the newest member who knows next to nothing about how they operate, to the point that she thought she could take on Shadows using aikido.
    • For the whole game, Goro Akechi remains strongly opposed to the Phantom Thieves, claiming that what they're doing is far from justice since they're taking the law into their own hands by judging others, and even speculates that they may be fabricating crimes that don't even exist. Guess what he's been doing since before the game even started. Granted, he does acknowledge this when the heroes confront him, when he claims he's Not So Different from them, but even that falls flat due to the fact that, unlike them, he went so far as to murder his targets (Ann even points this out).
    • After the Phantom Thieves completely change her prediction of a woman's fate, Chihaya Mifune accuses Joker of being a "scam artist", having apparently forgotten that she cheated him out of 100,000 yen during one of their first meetings. Somewhat justified since she's in denial at the time but still...
    • Morgana, in more ways than one:
      • He has no problem berating and calling Ryuji useless and stupid for pretty much the entire game, especially in situations where Ryuji's confusion is justified. After Futaba usurps his role as Navigator and Ryuji jokingly calls him useless, he throws a temper tantrum and walks out on the team. Fortunately, as the story goes, he gets better.
      • He frequently warns his teammates not to let their emotions get the better of them, and in particular calls out Ryuji for his lack of caution. However, whenever he sees something shiny, usually a Treasure, he loses all sense of reason and starts fawning over it. Usually, this is Played for Laughs, but it ends up being his undoing in Madarame's Palace when him touching a golden vase results in the entire team sans Joker getting trapped in a laser cage. Ryuji calls him out on this, since he was the one warning everyone else to be careful, yet fell for an obvious piece of Schmuck Bait that everyone else ignored, Ryuji included. While he does apologize for this incident, he lets his emotions get the better of him once again when he takes Ryuji calling him "useless" as everyone's opinion on him and ultimately runs away out of a completely needless effort to prove himself, which states plainly that he's nowhere near as levelheaded as he'd like others, or himself, to believe.
      • At the peak of their argument, Morgana chews out Ryuji for wanting to use the Phantom Thieves' fame to pick up girls, saying that while being hyped up because of the popularity is fine, getting conceited over it is unacceptable. He has a point and Ryuji is indeed letting the popularity get the better of him, but Morgana is just about the last person to point this out since he up until that point had been the most conceited member of the party and was only with the group for his own benefit, the latter of which Ryuji is all too happy to throw back in his face. It's doubly hypocritical since Morgana claims his desire is different because he wants to return to being human, despite the fact that he hopes to woo Ann once he becomes a human, and has given several perverted comments or actions towards her which can be seen as no different or better than what Ryuji has done in the same regards.
      • Morgana is noted to treat Ann as a lady and believes that girls should be treated properly. And yet he also has no qualms with using Haru, when first meeting the Phantom Thieves in Okumura's Palace, to basically voice out his complaints about the other Phantom Thieves to them. Morgana does mention getting Haru to rehearse it, and with lines such as telling Yusuke to get a clue, and that Ryuji is stupid and vulgar, it's no doubt that it's Morgana's words and not Haru's.
      • In Royal, Morgana is the most opposed to helping Jose, claiming they can't trust him since they have no idea who he is, having apparently forgotten that he practically begged the others to help him despite the fact that they have no idea who he is, to the point that Ryuji claims he's a bigger mystery than Palaces and the Metaverse Nav combined.
    • Ryuji falls into this to a degree after Futaba first takes over as Navigator, when he starts teasing Morgana by calling him "useless" for seemingly no reason other than to get back at him for always insulting him. Understandable, except that it contradicts what he said to Nakanohara way back in May, namely that someone treating you like crap doesn't give you the right to do the same to them, a belief he up until then had backed up by helping out his former teammates despite their resentment of him.
    • In Rank 3 of Ryuji's confidant, one of his former teammates, Naokaka, chews out Ryuji for making all of their efforts on the track team worthless by attacking Kamoshida, which got the team shut down, saying that the abuse he suffered is no excuse for what he did. In Rank 6, however, it's revealed that Naokaka was Kamoshida's informant and the one who told him about Ryuji's parents, the very information that Kamoshida used to provoke Ryuji, meaning Naokaka was, in his own way, just as responsible for the shut down of the track team as Ryuji was. That said, Ryuji acknowledges that Naokaka isn't wrong to feel the way he does and by the time Naokaka reveals this to him, he forgives him, viewing it as water under the bridge.
    • Eclipsing all of the above examples, however, is the Big Bad, Masayoshi Shido. He constantly talks like he's a selfless man concerned for the chaotic situation of Japan and willing to put his life on the line to ensure its bright future. However, he's completely dismissive and rude to anyone who even looks at him the wrong way, makes no pretense of being friendly outside of his political posturing, is actually the mastermind of the chaotic situation in Japan that enabled him to get good publicity and his Palace shows that deep down he actually doesn't care about how Japan is sinking, just as long as he and those he sees useful survive, and is the reason why his illegitimate son, Goro Akechi, is... well, the way he is.. As Ryuji and Makoto brilliantly put it:
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Ryuji: "Children are the future", my ass! What he's sayin' and doin' are completely different.
Makoto: Shido's outer appearance and true face are wholly different. It's beyond hypocritical. It's as if he's an entirely different person.

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  • Dr. Nefarious in Ratchet & Clank is driven by a vendetta against organic lifeforms, thinking that they're oppressing robotic life. Putting aside the fact that, from every indication, robots and organics co-exist peacefully with only very few exceptions, Nefarious doesn't value the lives of his Mecha-Mooks at all and is a total Bad Boss to them.

Web Comics[]

Web Original[]

  • Zinnia Jones: ...Hypocrisy has it's benefits
  • At the climax of Suburban Knights the Big Bad Malachite, after spending the series killing people for being overly reliant on technology and in the middle of declaring his intention to destroy all technology, is interrupted by an utterly trivial call on his iPhone. He is promptly called out on for this, and initially responds by trying to deny that an iPhone counts as technology.
  • In a slightly less... kill-happy example, The Nostalgia Chick. While calling guys out for putting their dicks in their creations, she's leaning on her own Sex Bot.
  • The Nostalgia Critic isn't exactly innocent either. He refuses to accept Ma-Ti's death, but he was ready to die twice in Suburban Knights at the sword of the incompetent Jaffers.

Western Animation[]

  • Family Guy:
    • Brain Griffin is the first and most obvious. Despite proclaiming to be a deeply intellectual liberal, when the chips are down, he shows himself to be a Know-Nothing Know-It-All who is only interested in dating bimbos for short-term relationships. He has plenty of liberal opinions but we never see him DO anything about them. He has no obvious job and just leeches off the Griffin family. He drinks and smokes quite heavily. In "Dial Meg For Murder" he voices his opinion that the prison system has turned the innocent Meg into a hardened criminal but it's obvious that nobody, including him, went to visit her during the three months she was in prison. Quagmire eventually calls him out on how he really can be a prick. Glenn points out he himself has plenty of problems, but at least he admits them.
    • The fact that Quagmire gave that speech at all is completely hypocritical since he is guilty of every crime he accuses Brian of and more. Brian dating Bimbos and saying he loves a woman's mind is pretty minor when Quagmire has committed every sexual offence there is. And to make matters worse, "Quagmire's Mom" reveals that Quagmire doesn't take responsibility for any of it. He blames all his issues on his mother.
  • The Legend of Korra has Amon, who despite being the leader of a powerful anti-bending movement called the Equalists, can take a person's bending away. But to do that, he appears to use "energybending", which is the oldest form of bending.
  • Adventure Time is chock full of this, played for comedy.
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 Lemongrab: STOP SCREAMING!!! WHY ARE YOU SCREAMING?!?!

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  • Courage the Cowardly Dog: Eustace Bagge calls Courage a "stupid dog" when he himself gets injured, maimed, transformed, and otherwise killed for being Too Dumb to Live. In addition, he criticizes Courage for not doing anything right when Eustace himself can't cook, can't grow anything in his farm, and can't fix anything, not to mention that he's completely useless during whatever ordeal the Bagges come across. In short, Eustace is exactly everything he calls Courage out for being, with the only difference being that he's a much bigger coward than Courage, which at one point was even lampshaded by the Shadow in "The Shadow of Courage".
  • Justice League Unlimited has General Wade Eiling, who goes after the Justice League because he believes metahumans are dangerous and can't be trusted. He ends up becoming a metahuman himself, and goes after a group of heroes who have no powers. when a nearby civilian points out that's the only one at the site of the battle with powers, he concedes the kid's point, and leaves, and is not seen again.
  • In Winx Club, the episode, "Fury!" has an angry Timmy refusing to believe Tecna is dead. Cue to one season later of him mourning over Nabu's death at the end of "The Day of Justice" and the beginning of "Morgana's Secrets".
  • Miraculous Ladybug:
    • Hawk Moth is a Manipulative Bastard who says whatever is necessary to get his More Than Mind Control to work, regardless of he truly believes. However, he has shown some genuine moments of hypocrisy:
      • In "Sapotis", he mocks things strict parents say and claims that children should be allowed to do whatever they want. This comes after The Reveal that he's Gabriel Agreste, an extremely strict father who micromanages his son Adrien's entire schedule, to the point of never letting him out of the house except for school and photo shoots (and school was only recently added to the list).
      • His most consistent example is that he's always talking about shielding Adrien from bad influences, yet he's allowed a particularly bad influence to be close to him for years i.e. Chloé, whom he once describes as "the most spiteful girl in all of Paris". And considering all of Adrien's issues can be traced back to Gabriel, it's safe to say he's not a particularly good influence on him either.
      • In "Gorizilla", he gives Adrien a short speech about the need to be honest with each other. This apparently does not extend to telling his son that he's actually the supervillain who's been terrorizing Paris for presumably a year at the very least. Not to mention what really happened to Emilie. He does attempt to tell Adrien he's Hawk Moth in "Félix", but storms off without finishing after Adrien accidentally hits one of his Berserk Buttons.
    • In "Stormy Weather 2", Chloé brings up Stormy Weather while mocking Aurore, even saying "once a villain, always a villain". Chloé herself had been akumatized three times by that point and had been the instigator of countless more.
    • At the end of "Chameleon", Alya tells Marinette that she wouldn't allow her best friend to sit by herself, despite doing exactly that earlier in the episode. Then again, this could be seen as her way of apologizing.
  • From the The Simpsons episode "Homer vs the City of New York":
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 Bart: Don't judge a place you've never been to. That's what people do in Russia.

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  • The story of "Bulldog" from the fourth season of Thomas the Tank Engine has a sleepy James telling Percy about wanting to show his green paint off.
  • American Dad!:
    • Stan Smith. For all that he preaches conservatism as a beacon of morals, the very instant that conservative principles disagree with his own wants, he abandons them without a second thought.[3] He's also extremely dismissive of other people's likes and interests yet expects them to defer to his own likes and interests as though they're holy days.
    • His daughter Hayley. She paints herself as a peaceful Friend to All Living Things who is a determined fighter for Mother Earth but has frequently been shown to be a lazy slacker with an advanced case of It's All About Me who is very quick to resort to violence.
  • Rick and Morty:
    • Rick frequently mentions how he's a Papa Wolf towards Beth. This might hold more water if he hadn't already abandoned a version of Beth to a mutant apocalypse because he couldn't be bothered to fix it.
    • The Season 5 finale reveals a more tragic version. He went on a warpath after Rick Prime killed his family but had no issue depriving other Smith families of their Ricks.
  • The Republic in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. For all that they claim they're fighting for freedom from the Sith's tyranny, they have no issue creating the Clone Troopers as a Slave Race and depriving them of any freedom.
  • While most incarnations of Megatron across the Transformers multiverse have shades of this, his Transformers Animated one is the biggest. He claims to be a freedom fighter who rallies against Autobot tyranny yet has conquered several planets for the sake of his ego. He claims the individual Autobots are insignificant yet is hyper-focused on crushing Optimus Prime. And the biggest offender is that although he has zero tolerance for Starscream, he himself isn't the founder of the Decepticons. He backstabbed the original leader, Megazarak, and took over.
  1. While this is implied to have been an illusion, it nevertheless does say things Sesshomaru would say.
  2. The Last Olympian teases that Poseidon might have more demigods out there but it's never confirmed.
  3. It's hinted many times though that Stan isn't truly a conservative. He's a Control Freak for whom conservatism is a means to an end.
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