Anti-Protagonist Morality

The polar opposite of Protagonist-Centered Morality, but just as bad. This tends to come in one of four variants:

Type 1: The main character has a misunderstanding or a falling out with a loved one, and it's invariably the main character's fault. It doesn't matter that they typically can't read minds and know what the loved one was thinking, or that maybe the other person specifically brought these problems in themselves by not communicating their feelings. The damage is done, and it is now the protagonist's job to spend the rest of the episode reflecting on how horrible a friend/family member/significant other they've been, recite the lesson they learned, and beg forgiveness. And because their loved one is oh so good and mature, they will grant it because the wayward protagonist has "earned" it.

Type 2: Similar to Type 1, except without any relationships involved. A mistake is made, but only the main character must apologize even if they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time or forced to make the wrong decision under duress.

Type 3: The main character is bullied or harassed and treated as in the wrong for fighting back in any way, shape, or form. Doesn't matter how civil or nonviolent they were, their anger and frustration are wrong because they don't know their aggressor's story and should be making nice with them instead. When they inevitably do the right thing, the aggressor is never shown apologizing or thanking them. Stories that try to teach the "be the bigger person" moral can easily slide into this.

Type 4: "It's only wrong if you do it." Everyone's messing around and doing things they shouldn't, but the second the protagonist tries to join the fun they get scolded, either by an authority figure that let it slide for everyone else or by the rest of the group for "going too far". Or people are teasing each other and the main character just happens to make a harmless jab that unknowingly hits another person's sore spot, upsetting them, and now they have to learn a valuable lesson that teasing is actually very mean.

It's one thing if the trope comes from the main character's own feelings: they think the argument was their fault, they think everyone can get away with things they can't, they assume trying to stand up for themselves will result in everyone getting mad at them. This can be used to showcase a character's issues (low self-esteem, coming from an abusive background where they were taught this) or flaws (paranoia, the inability to see past their own anxiety to give others the benefit of the doubt, being too selfless for their own good). It's when the narrative agrees with them that it becomes this trope.

A blend of Never My Fault and Selective Enforcement. Might be the result of The Unfair Sex in romantic comedies and sitcoms. Compare No Sympathy. Contrast It's All My Fault for when the protagonist applies such morality to themselves.

Examples of Anti-Protagonist Morality include:

Anime and Manga

• Fushigi Yuugi is thankfully a subversion of the trope. Yui blames Miaka for her misery because Miaka made a mistake that put her in a horrible situation and spends the entire series doing so, and Miaka believes this as she makes it her mission to apologize to Yui and make ammends. But it's also made clear that Yui is being manipulated by Nakago, and at the end she's the one to apologize.

• This is the main problem with the Pokémon episode "Challenge of the Samurai." Samurai is a snotty, egotistical jerk who interrupts Ash's catch of a Weedle, forces him to leave Metapod behind when they get stormed by Beedrills, and blames Ash for risking his Pokemon's life! He never apologizes, instead Ash is forced to realize his error and reflect on what a bad trainer he's been. Pokemopolis put it best:

"Well isn't that lovely and mature of Ash, gentle Dodgers, haven't we all learnt a valuable lesson about owning up and....... BOLLOCKS! It WAS Samurai's fault and Ash ISN'T to blame! The fat little bastard is responsible for Weedle getting away, he ran away when the Beedrill's attacked, the Beedrill dodged Ash's best efforts to get Metapod back, the Kakuna evolved and Ash would have died if he'd stuck around and Team Rocket got involved when he risked life and limb to return for Metapod."

• Subverted in Marmalade Boy. When Meiko gets angry at Miki for prodding her about her secret relationship with Mr. Namura, she tells her "if [telling our deepest secrets] is what friendship is, I don't want it." Miki spends a good deal of time wondering if she's misunderstood her best friend the whole time, but Meiko does end up apologizing for what she said in the end.

• Love Hina in both the manga and especially the anime is rather notorious for this trope being constantly in play, as the girls frequently beat up (and in Motoko's case even attempted to outright murder) Keitaro Urashima for "perversion" even when in most if not all those cases, it either was clearly an accident, or otherwise he was outright forced by one of the other girls to look (and once, was even punched purely out of reflex when it was one of the girls who walked in on him for a change). And each and every time, Keitaro is the one who constantly has to grovel and apologize with absolutely none of the girls actually owning up to their behavior.

Comic Books

• In Goldie Vance volume 2, the title character's best friend Cheryl goes off on her for "taking her NASA dream" because the NASA people gave her an offer to study with them, even though Cheryl knows Goldie has no interest in space. Cheryl throws a tantrum, rips up the ticket Goldie gives her, and Goldie is the one who is supposed to "look at it from her side" and make things right. She ends up realizing how "wrong" she was for hurting Cheryl, even though Cheryl is the one who withheld just how insecure she was and chose to believe the worst about Goldie.

Film

• Much of The Other Guys operates on this. While it's sometimes justified, namely that Hoitz and Gamble forget to identify themselves as police officers and claim the protections there in, it's more often than not treated as entirely their fault when things go wrong. In one scene, Gamble is tricked by Martin and Fosse into firing his gun at the ceiling but it's him who must give up his gun until he can be trusted with it. Are Martin and Fosse punished? Or is their role even acknowledged? No.
• Downplayed in The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, mixed in with The Unfair Sex. While on the one hand, Finn definitely could have approached the situation better than outright destroying Bianca's LEGO set, the fact remains that she had been, for the past five years, taking his LEGO figures and defacing them with glitter while vandalizing his own sets all without his consent. She may have been Obliviously Evil but Finn's anger towards her is quite justified. Yet the film acts like the majority, if not the totality, of the fault for the Sibling Rivalry is on him and he is the one who has to make amends.
• Just barely averted in What's Eating Gilbert Grape when Gilbert goes off to meet his Love Interest and leaves Arnie alone. Arnie, told he can take his bath himself, almost drowns when he can't figure out when to get out and dry off. The boys' mother yells at Gilbert, tells him "sorry's not good enough," and Arnie whimpers that his brother's "gotta do better". Gilbert has been taking care of Arnie to the point where it's his entire life, basically, so one might think they're being way too demanding. However: Arnie is mentally disabled and can barely take care of himself, relies on Gilbert because their sisters are always busy and their mother is too depressed and obese to do much, and many times Gilbert is seen promising to protect Arnie. Even failing to do so once after saying he will is breaking a promise to someone who depends on him, and Gilbert himself understands this despite his growing frustration with Arnie.

Literature

• The American Girls book about Lindsey Bergman just cannot allow the heroine to win anything. She gets in trouble for trying to do the right thing, no one cuts her a break for it, and she's always made to apologize for upsetting the other person even if she was the one who was wronged. Meanwhile, the Alpha Bitch and her Dragon get away with their abuse of Lindsey's friend, and the former even wins a collage contest.
• In Babysitter's Club book 12, Claudia makes a new friend. The BSC disowns her for it and trashes her room, but she's the one who has to apologize for being a bad friend because she wanted to focus on something other than babysitting-namely, her art, which the rest of the club knows is important to her.
  • Also happens in book 43, when Stacey snaps after being used as a go-between by her bitterly divorced parents and tells them to shut up. They promptly scold her for speaking so rudely, and she apologizes. This is bad enough, but when you factor in that this scene takes place in her hospital room while she's being treated for complications from diabetes? This makes Ed and Maureen look even worse.
  • Subverted in the Little Sister spin-off installment "Karen's Prize", where Karen is forced to learn a lesson in humility by losing a spelling bee and apologize to her friends, but only after she's actually wronged them by acting like a diva and treating them like the bad guys for getting tired of her bloated ego.
• Harriet the Spy is absolutely awful about this. The heroine's friends steal her private notebook, read it, and treat her like shit for saying things they didn't like. Rather than them learning the lesson that it's not okay to invade people's privacy and blame them for your hurt feelings, Harriet is forced to reflect on what a bad friend she's been and make nice with the others so they'll forgive her when she would have had every right to drop those "friends" like hot potatoes and find new ones who respected her privacy.
• While The Pros of Cons was about two of the main girls making up for actual problems they'd caused and attitudes they'd copped (Callie sabotaged her father's taxidermy display in a fit of anger, while Phoebe was a borderline Female Misogynist), Vanessa is called out by her girlfriend for "riding her coattails" in their shared fandom and being a "lazy writer who abandons her novels". Said girlfriend was a manipulative attention-seeker who toyed with Vanessa's heart, broke their plans, led her on, faked a flame war by making a sockpuppet, and basically treated her like crap the entire time they were together in person. She was, objectively, in no position to criticize Vanessa as if she'd done anything oh so wrong. But Vanessa ends up taking the accusation to heart and learning a lesson from it, and learning to understand the girl's own feelings better. In no way was she obligated to do any of that after the way she was treated.
• This seems to be the ultimate lesson of The Pigman. While John and Lorraine did lie to the titular character for the sake of mischief and John is something of a delinquent, in the end he comes to the conclusion that the events of the last few chapters were all his and Lorraine's fault, and growing up means accepting that and not blaming others. Which is mature of him, but the fact of the matter is that his and Lorraine's parents were not good people. If the Conlans had shown John any affection or support, or Mrs. Jensen hadn't spent the entire book browbeating and berating her daughter, John and Lorraine may have made better choices.
  • Thankfully, the sequel The Pigman's Legacy undoes all of this. Not only have John and Lorraine grown up some, but they save another old man from dying alone by befriending him and introducing him to their lunch lady, whom he marries shortly before he passes away. Through this, Lorraine and John realize their love for each other and let go of their fears and hang-ups as they begin a new relationship.
• In Paula Danziger's There's a Bat in Bunk Five, Marcy is constantly antagonized by a troubled girl named Ginger despite Marcy's efforts to reach out to her. When Marcy's had enough and decides to focus on having fun by herself, that's when Ginger decides she wants to talk, and Marcy gets chewed out by everyone for being selfish and choosing time with her crush. As opposed to Ginger being told she's at fault, too, for constantly pushing Marcy away.
• There are a lot of instances of this in Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing and the Fudge series in general. While Fudge does occasionally get punished for his antics, more often than not Peter will be scolded for being annoyed at all and forced to learn lessons about loving his brother. One glaring example is when he asks for a lock for his door so Fudge can't mess with his stuff, and his mother says no because "family doesn't shut each other out."
• In A Court of Silver Flames, Nesta learns Feyre's pregnancy is dangerous and childbirth could kill her, but Feyre's husband Rhysand and everyone else in the Inner Circle refuses to tell Feyre this very important detail. Nesta eventually snaps and tells Feyre herself, but when Feyre starts crying Nesta "realizes she went too far." At no point is Rhysand (the one who lied in the first place) called out for his decision, and at no point does anyone apologize to Feyre for lying to her.

Live-Action TV

• Way, way too many teen or kid-oriented sitcoms to count.
• This was often coupled with The Unfair Sex in Home Improvement's early episodes, where Tim was always the one in the wrong even if Jill was no saint. Thankfully dialed way back in the later episodes where Jill was allowed to be wrong more often.
• Everybody Loves Raymond, dear lord. Raymond was never, ever allowed to be right about anything, especially where his wife was concerned.
  • One episode had his own mother refuse to talk to him after finding a diary entry from when he was a kid saying he hated her. Does his mother learn that it's rude to read her child's private writing and that his feelings when he was young don't reflect on the present? Nope, Raymond edits the entry to read that he loves his mother and apologizes to her. Lesson learned? "Never express your feelings in a diary, because even private writing is hurtful and mean."
• In an early episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Hilary gets Will in trouble by tattling on him repeatedly. When Will learns she dropped out of school and hasn't told her parents yet, he uses it to blackmail her. When Phil and Vivian find out, they get angry at Will because blackmail is such serious business. Yes, Will was a jerk, but Hilary didn't exactly smell like roses either; not only did she lie to her parents, she only tattled on Will for the sake of getting him in trouble rather than out of concern for his well-being or because he was doing anything dangerous or illegal.
• Subverted on Married With Children. Al Bundy was constantly paying the price for things that weren't entirely his fault and seldom allowed to have nice things, while his family were a bunch of freeloaders who expected him to do everything. However, Al was a Jerkass in his own right even without frustration with his family as an excuse. Everyone in that show was unpleasant, annoying, and miserable 90% of the time and that's what made it work.
• Greg Warner on Yes, Dear was almost never allowed to be right about anything when it came to Kim. Even when the arguments were her fault or she was being unreasonable, he was always the one to learn a lesson and apologize. He shared a similar relationship with his brother-in-law Jimmy, who was usually portrayed as in the right even when he was being a lazy slacker or trolling Greg on purpose.
• Subverted in the Monk episode Mr. Monk and the Panic Room. Sharona scolds her son Benjy for getting into a fight on the schoolyard and would hear none of his side of the story where he explained the only reason he entered that fight in the first place was to protect another kid from a bully. However, when Sharona herself has to suffer from something similar when she directly attempted to interfere with a police investigation by intercepting a chimpanzee that was believed to have murdered his owner in a panic room and (without Monk's knowledge) putting said chimp inside Monk's apartment and got arrested for it, she made sure when being arrested to tell Benjy that now she understands why he got into the fight and admits she had been wrong to scold him.
• JD on Scrubs. His friends act like assholes, but he's the one portrayed as in the wrong so he can Learn A Lesson.

Western Animation

• Played with on Doug when the titular character throws a rock and knocks down an old house. Patti Mayonnaise gets upset, doesn't explain why, and gets even more angry when Doug asks why she was upset over a "crummy old house." Doug's best friend Skeeter is the one who has to explain why Patti was so upset: it was her old house, where she'd lived until her mother died. Doug tries to hold onto his annoyance that Patti expected him to read her mind, but then he remembers how hard it was to leave his childhood home behind when he discovers his old height chart. He then decides on his own to make it up to her, and it's portrayed entirely as Doug being thoughtful and sensitive rather than being forced to learn a lesson.
  • Subverted in "Doug's Brainy Buddy," when Doug lashes out at Skeeter for being smarter than him. It's made clear early on that he's jealous of his friend's success and is afraid of Skeeter moving away from him, and Skeeter admits he was being a showoff, too.
  • Played straight in the Disney series episode "Doug Gets a Roommate." Ned Cauphee is shown bullying Doug several times, and in frustration Doug yells that Ned will "get his." Right after that, a fire burns Ned's home down with enough force that the ashes reached all the way to their school and caused the kids to mistake it for a snow day until Skeeter tried to taste the "snow". Now, it makes sense for Doug to feel responsible because that's the kind of guy he is, but it makes no sense for even his own family and best friend to keep implying it was all his fault anytime Doug objects to the idea of sharing his home with, you know, a guy who bullies him. Furthermore, no one seems to show any sympathy for Doug while Ned is continually an ass to him and only starts behaving himself when Doug's grandma treats him with kindness. The lesson is that with a little love and care a bully can be a good person, but at no point does Ned show any contrition for his earlier behavior or any gratitude towards Doug for sharing his room with him.
• Played horrifically straight in the Family Guy episode "Seahorse Seashell Party." Meg, more or less the heroine of the episode, calls her family out for treating her like shit. Then she realizes how "wrong" she was when they all turn on each other and learns that she must be the lightning rod for their abuse so they can feel good about themselves. She apologizes for speaking her mind and goes back to letting everyone abuse her like a Good Girl.
• The Simpsons:
  • "How Lisa Got Her Marge Back". Lisa's feelings are understandably hurt when Marge gripes about jazz and how all of Lisa's songs sound the same, but the episode is all about forcing her to forgive her mother. Worse, she's shamed by a total stranger for being upset at all! Her brain lampshades this by forcing her to accept that this is her lot in life, that no one understands her and that it's time to stop hurting her mother's feelings.
  • This is one of the many reasons "Lisa Goes Gaga" is hated. Lisa rightfully loses her temper with Lady Gaga, who's been stalking and nagging her to cheer up instead of letting her work through her feelings by herself. At the end, Lisa rushes off to apologize to Gaga for being "ungrateful" and they have a shiny musical number.
  • A similar situation occurred in the episode "Yellow Subterfuge". Bart spent the entire episode trying to really act as a model student (something that he's not exactly known to do, causing his family to be suspicious) all so he could get a chance at riding a submarine. Unfortunately, after he ended up unintentionally dragging mud through the school (which wasn't even his fault, as he was forced to run to school due to a combination of both the bus breaking down and risking him being tardy and Milhouse taking the taxi over him), he was then forced by Skinner to miss out on the submarine. Homer sympathizes with Bart and vows with him to get even with Skinner by manipulating him into expressing glee at his mom having died, only to reveal she's still alive. Both Bart and Homer end up punished by Marge for this, despite them being perfectly justified in doing so in this case.
• Mr. Mackey and Principal Victoria try to invoke this trope on Kyle in the South Park episode "Tonsil Trouble" by making him apologize for tattling on Cartman, who fed him his HIV-infected blood. Kyle's response is to storm out of the school, go to Cartman's house, and destroy everything he owns.
  • Done again in "Le Petit Tourette" when Cartman fakes Tourette's Syndrome and Kyle calls him out on it. Cartman manipulates the adults into making Kyle apologize, and Kyle is forced to attend a special support group meeting. Thankfully, one of the kids at the meeting realizes Cartman's a big faker and teams up with Kyle to expose him.
• Miraculous Ladybug:
  • The show creator once tweeted out that Marinette must make a mistake and learn from it each episode. Not a bad idea in a vacuum but it leads to a lot of cases of Informed Wrongness in practice. The episode "Antibug" has Marinette/Ladybug not listen to Chloé when she, ultimately correctly, guesses the location of Sabrina/Vanisher's akuma. Both Chat Noir and Tikki then chide Marinette for not listening to Chloé and the episode ends with Marinette apologizing to Chloé and saying that she shouldn't be so quick to assume and judge. Why did Marinette just not listen to Chloé from the start? Because Chloé had remorselessly lied about literally everything else in the episode and was The Millstone in the fight, nearly leading to a Near Villain Victory. As one might gather from the other examples on this page, Chloé learnt literally nothing from that experience and the blame was placed squarely on Marinette's shoulders.
  • Miss Bustier for the first five seasons. Marinette is being bullied? Maybe she should try being the bigger person and set a positive example for Chloé instead of being rightfully angry. Even Hawk Moth lampshades that Marinette is being punished for Chloé's misdeeds. And all this mindset ends up doing is providing fertile ground for a Face Heel Turn on Chloé's part, convinced that she can do anything she wants, consequences be damned.
• This is why the Arthur episode "Arthur's Big Hit" is so despised. D.W. messes up Arthur's model plane despite his repeated warnings for her not to touch it, then hassles him about how "badly built" it supposedly was until he snaps and punches her in the face. This looks like it's being set up for a simple "hitting is wrong" moral... except later, Arthur gets punched by Binky the bully and when he tells his father, David says "well, that's how D.W. felt when you punched her" in a milquetoast tone while D.W. looks smugly on. So basically, the lesson is that if you hit a person who ruined your personal property and provoked you, you deserve to be bullied at school. Notice how D.W. doesn't even get punished for her behavior.
• Hey Arnold! has this in "Arnold Saves Sid." Sid does the "I Owe You My Life" thing after Arnold rescues him from a falling sign, and Arnold is clearly not comfortable with it. His well-meaning grandpa encourages him to just go along with it, and Arnold does. Sid ends up getting pissed off at Arnold for going along with it, and it's up to Arnold to make amends...when he didn't even want Sid being his slave in the first place! Even if Arnold is a nice guy, Sid was still in the wrong both times.
  • Subverted rather beautifully in "Arnold's Thanksgiving". Arnold and Helga both run away from home on the titular holiday due to the former being embarrassed by his grandmother's insistence on celebrating the Fourth of July instead of being "normal" and the latter feeling more unappreciated than ever by her family. They try to find some form of joy by visiting their teacher Mr. Simmons's home only to find he's faced with a hostile family who barely appreciates what he does, and realize they've been acting the same way towards their families. However, when they decide to go home and apologize, Helga discovers her family has been frantically searching for her and is legitimately relieved to see her home safe, while Arnold discovers his family put together a traditional Thanksgiving dinner (albeit with fireworks). While Helga and Arnold had to learn to appreciate what they had, their families came to the off-screen realization that maybe they should consider their children's feelings as well.
• The Fairly OddParents! episode "It's a Wishful Life" is hated by fans for this reason. After trying to do a bunch of good deeds and only being berated for it when his efforts made a mess of things or "weren't good enough", Timmy wishes he was never born. Jorgen and the narrative accuse him of being butthurt because he was fishing for praise and didn't get it, and as a result Jorgen shows Timmy how much happier everyone in the world is without him and says that unless he can find one person whose life is better with him in it, Timmy should die. The thing is, Timmy didn't do any of the stuff he did before just to get praise, he also wanted to help his friends and do nice things for them. The narrative takes the side of everyone who berated him and made him feel worthless, and the lesson he has to learn is that it's wrong to be hurt by it or to want to be appreciated at all. Rather than AJ and the rest learning that just because someone's good deeds cause trouble doesn't mean it's okay to treat them like crap.

Real Life

• Sadly, the kind of thinking that inspires this trope is very real. Too many schools handle bullying by suggesting the victim "try to see it from the bully's point of view, be the bigger person, reach out to them" while never trying to suggest the bully do the same thing. This is especially common if the bully in question has a bad home life compared to the victim's. The message? "If your life doesn't suck, it's your fault you're being harassed, it's your job to make friends with the bully, but don't expect anyone to cut you a break. And heaven help you if you try to defend yourself!"
• This has also become depressingly common in fandom. People who regularly bash other fans for their personal tastes in ships or characters will always make their victims look like the bad guy if they defend themselves.