Debased

Debased villains are those who start out with redeeming qualities, sometimes were once heroes, but later subvert them. As Near Pure Evils either have very few redeeming qualities or none at all and not too sympathetic backstories behind their actions, those that initially possess a significant amount of redeeming qualities will always subvert at least most of them.

A Pure Evil subcategory of villains in this category are Wholly Debased villains, who ultimately manage to subvert all of their redeeming qualities.

Near Pure Evils with debatable subversions of redeeming qualities cannot fall under Debased if they have not subverted any other redeeming qualities, as the Debased category is only meant for villains who explicitly subvert redeeming qualities.

For obvious reasons, Fallen Heroes, Minor Tragic and Evil Former Friends must be under this category by default. It can also be a From Nobody to Nightmare and/or any villains that had confirmed valid tragedies at first.

Examples (excluding Fallen Heroes) are:

• Baek Jun Ki, who took care of his mother and younger sister who died unfairly when they were young and he still thought of his dead mother and sister, but he became increasingly depraved and no longer considered a tragic scapegoat.
• Adam Taurus, who was a victim of abuse by the humans of Remnant only to become a genocidal fanatic.
• Hawk Moth (Cat Blanc), who used to care about his son Adrien before using him as his pawn after finding out about his secret identity as Cat Noir.
• Tighten, who used to be a good cameraman for Roxanne Ritchie before becoming a supervillain just because Roxanne rejected him and wanted Megamind to be her boyfriend rather than Tighten.
• Bradford Buzzard, who used to be an extremist before he became more despicable in the series finale.
• PAL, who originally started out genuinely caring for Mark and being a helpful assistant to humans, before being betrayed by Mark and deciding humans are pathetic creatures.
• Grant Ward, who was honorable, affable and cared for members of his former team he betrayed but shed nearly every positive quality he had after rejecting redemption.
• General Shepherd, who used to be a well-meaning leader, but got corrupted after the nuke killed 30,000 of his men and decided to start a war and framed Pvt. Allen to bolster patriotism.
• Pargalı Ibrahim Pasha, who became more and more arrogant during the show he's in, and while he didn't subvert his loyalty towards Sultan Suleyman, he's shown directly humilating him by calling him a lion, who needs to be tamed.

Please do not add Near Pure Evils here who have only faked redeeming qualities. (e.g. Josef, Zhao, Hopper, the Lich, Oh Il-nam, Ursula, and Shadow the Hedgehog). Those villains should go under Charismatic, Fake Tragic, Faux Affably Evil, Hidden Near Pure Evils, Remorse Fakers, False Lovers and/or Liars.

Also, villains who originally had other prevention like being too standard, too comedic, having a moral agency too much impaired, relied on fridge horror too much or their actions were played for shock value, but got more heinous, more serious, or gained more personality, motives and characterization (e.g. Evil Jimmy Neutron, King K. Rool, Rumpelstiltskin, Turbo, Josef Heiter, Gruntilda and Professor Marmalade), should not be added here either unless they've explicitly been established to have had redeeming qualities. This category is only for villains who once had genuine redeeming qualities but ended up subverting them.

It is possible for Near Pure Evils to be Wholly Debased and become completely evil, but only if they fail the heinous standard by a small degree, have moral agency issues, are slightly tragic or sympathetic, have detracting comedic moments and/or are insufficiently characterized (Examples: Ellen, Nam-gyu, Conquest, Bradford Buzzard, Starscream, PAL, Piella Bakewell, Chloé Bourgeois, and Player 096). In many other cases, a lot of villains in this category can come extremely close to being wholly debased, but still have a minor redeeming quality (Examples: Asura, Simon Laurent, Shadow Noir, Hawk Moth, Tighten, Charles zi Britannia, Kaguya Ōtsutsuki, Kars, the Man in the Suit, and Ren Sohma).

Their opposites are Reformed Near Pure Goods.