15 Disney Villains Who Were Totally Misunderstood

We grew up fearing and hating Disney villains, but as we look back, were they really all that bad? Of course, you've got your purely evil villains who had no excuse for their sadistic ways (looking at you, Jafar!), but if you really think about it, quite a few of the classic villains we're supposed to hate were kind of misjudged. In some cases, the Disney hero that we're supposed to idolize isn't actually that innocent, and we can't blame the villain for lashing out against them. In some cases, the villain was so scorned in the past that you can totally empathize with their need to go crazy and turn on humanity. Then there are those villains who despite Disney's best story-telling efforts, didn't actually do anything that wrong. Here are 15 Disney baddies who were completely misunderstood. To be honest, we kind of feel sorry for them!

15 Hades

Playing the antagonist in Hercules, Hades was originally a much more neutral character in Greek mythology. In this Disney portrayal, however, he's a total jerk who is out to steal Zeus' throne from him. Let's look at this carefully though. Hades is the younger brother of Zeus and Poseidon who was given dominion over the dead and the Underworld. Imagine being the youngest of three, and watching your oldest sibling inherit the control over the heavens and all things glorious, your next sibling inherit the glorious ocean, and you being left with the dry, barren Underworld. While your brothers get to control the creatures of the heavens and the sea, you're stuck communicating with the dead. Really, you can understand why Hades kind of has a grudge against his older siblings. Despite plucking the metaphorical short straw, Hades always tries to remain calm. He isn't in denial about his temper like some villains!

14 Dr. Facilier

In The Princess and the Frog, Dr. Facilier is the sleazy witch doctor who is secretly trying to gain control over all of New Orleans. He uses his connections with his supernatural “friends” to manipulate the people of the city, and on the surface, he seems like a terrible person. But when you look into his history, you can kind of see why he has a superiority complex! In his early days, he was treated badly by the wealthy classes, and was either ridiculed for his poor status, or totally ignored. That kind of treatment can leave somebody wanting to get back at those who were out of line, and there's no better way to do that than to be in control of them. Dr. Facilier probably shouldn't have set any plans in motion to carry out his revenge, and should have got some therapy to deal with it instead, but what can you do!

13 Queen Of Hearts

There have certainly been nicer queens than Alice in Wonderland's Queen of Hearts. She beheads people for the littlest things, she has a fiery temper, and the whole kingdom is terrified of her. But if we look at this objectively, she is a queen. Looking at the Cards that she has keeping her population in line, they definitely don't seem very stern. If she wants control over the people of Wonderland, she has to instil a little terror. It's the only way they'd respect her! You have to remember that as the Cheshire Cat puts it, “Everyone's mad here.” When the whole population is mad, you definitely don't want them turning on you, so it's better for the order of the kingdom if you run a tight ship. Also, the Queen may absolutely be in control when it comes to her relationship with the King, but she does listen to him too. Cute!

12 Mr. Smee

Mr. Smee is Captain Hook's bumbling sidekick in Peter Pan, and anybody can see that he's just a nice guy who got caught up in the pirate life. First of all, he's totally polite when addressing Tinker Bell, even if he is in the process of kidnapping her. Secondly, he's clearly loyal to Captain Hook, and will do anything for him no matter how he's treated in return. When you think about it, Mr. Smee is basically a big shaggy dog who loves his owner no matter what! Captain Hook is rude to him, is physically abusive, and never appreciates him despite relying on him heavily, and we think Mr. Smee actually deserves much better. The amount of times he's nearly been gobbled up by the Crocodile for his Captain is alarming to say the least. The other pirates are also mean to Smee, so we think he has it hard enough!

11 The Rat

This character was so insignificant that you probably don't remember him/her. At the end of Lady and the Tramp, a Rat sneaks into the baby's room in Jim Dear and Darling's house, causes a serious ruckus, and then the Tramp ends up getting sent to the pound. When you think about it from that perspective, Rat seems annoying AF. But that doesn't mean it's an evil character. It's simply a little lost animal who was looking for shelter from the rain in the house. Would everybody be so outraged if it were a little lost puppy instead? It isn't the Rat's fault that it isn't cute and cuddly like the more popular animals, and its appearance doesn't make it a villain! It gets a little defensive when Tramp tries to kill it, but that's because, you know, Tramp's trying to kill it! If anything, Aunt Sarah is the villain in that movie.

10 Edgar

Poor Edgar! For those who don't remember, Edgar is the butler in The Aristocats. Here is the deal with Edgar: he starts out as a loyal servant to Madam, ready to answer her every need. She's pretty much his whole life! Then one day as he's eavesdropping in on her meeting with Georges the lawyer, he learns that she's leaving her fortune to her four cats instead of him. Look, we love cats, but put yourself in the dude's position. We can totally see why Edgar loses his cool and kidnaps the cats so he inherits the fortune. It's not even that pets aren't worthy of love, but they can't go out and buy their own food. If she'd just left her fortune to Edgar, he wouldn't have been bitter and would have taken care of them. Also, if Edgar were evil he would have actually murdered the cats, but he couldn't do that!

9 Anastasia Tremaine

You might know her solely as the Ugly Stepsister, which is reason enough for the girl's hostile complex! Anastasia Tremaine is the younger of Cinderella's Ugly Stepsisters, and although as a pair they aren't that great for Cinderella's well-being, Anastasia as an individual really isn't that bad. In later films, we find out that she is different from her sister Drizella, is actually remorseful for her treatment of Cinderella, and is a decent human being. Looking only at 1950's Cinderella though, Anastasia's mother is Lady Tremaine, and her older sister is Drizella Tremaine, and they both suck. Without anybody else, it's no wonder that Anastasia turned out a little nasty. Despite having a kinder heart, jealousy, and vanity were the only traits she was taught to nurture. Anastasia never really had a chance from the beginning, so we're glad she turned fate around and shed her villain skin in her later years!

8 Madam Mim

In The Sword and the Stone, Madam Mim is Merlin's arch nemesis. She's a witch of sorts, who possesses a similar amount of power to him, although she is much more confident, which often leads to her downfall. She also has a preference for all things doom and gloom, and can't stand anything pure, least of all sunshine. We think Madam Mim is a bad villain, but the fact is she's totally mad. It's at the point where she even refers to herself as Mad Madam Mim. So you can't really blame somebody for being mad, because they have no control over that. It's different if they're all there and purely evil, but she just has no grasp of reality. She's one confused individual, and trying to lecture her about her nastiness would be pointless because for lack of a better term, the sister has a couple of screws lose.

7 Amos Slade

Amos Slade is the grumpy hunter from Fox and the Hound, and we absolutely hated him growing up. All we wanted in that movie was for Tod and Copper to be BFFE, and Amos always got in the way! The truth is though that Amos Slade is a hunter. That's his job, terrible as it is. We don't agree with it, but we're assuming that all his undertakings were legal at the time and perhaps selling skins was the only way for him to make a living. Copper is his hunting dog, and from Amos' perspective, Tod jeopardizes Copper's ability to do his job. If Copper is friends with Tod, Amos probably assumes he's going to be friends with all foxes, and that's majorly problematic for him. Also, Chief breaks his leg while chasing Tod away, and you know how you'd feel about somebody that inadvertently caused your dog to break his leg!

6 Si And Am

Here are more Lady and the Tramp villains who we believe were misunderstood. Si and Am are Aunt Sarah's Siamese cats that she brings to stay with her at Jim Dear and Darling's house. The cats emerge from their basket and cause a bit of trouble downstairs, and then manipulate the situation to make Aunt Sarah think that Lady is responsible, which results in her having to wear a muzzle. So from that perspective, we don't like Si and Am at all. But now that we're grown up and a little worldlier, we can see that these two are simply just cats. All cats scratch the curtains. All cats knock over antiques. All cats rub against you to the point where you feel suffocated. All cats love attention, being babied and having humans bow down to them. All cats eat fish and spend their time thinking about milk. These guys are just regular felines!

5 Shere Khan

Speaking of felines, The Jungle Book's Shere Khan is the ultimate scary cat when it comes to Disney. This giant tiger hates humans and makes life tough for Mowgli and his friends. Do you know what, though? At the risk of sounding self-hating, it is understandable that he hates humans. The poor love probably associates us with destroying his home in the name of development, kidnapping his family members to prop them up in cages at the zoo or stuff them for exhibitions at the museum, and causing other forms of destruction. Not to mention all the poaching he would have witnessed in his day! His hatred of humans probably stems from the fact that he wants to protect his jungle friends from our BS. And before you point out that he's intimidating to other jungle creatures, remember that there's this thing called a food chain (refer to The Lion King for an explanation).

4 Captain Hook

We've already touched on how Mr. Smee is misunderstood, but we also believe that Captain Hook is another Peter Pan villain who isn't as bad as they say. Let's look at the facts: Peter cut off his hand and fed it to an obsessive crocodile. How would you be after that? Imagine that you had to wear a hook in place of your hand forever because some brat was having a laugh and threw it to a man-eating reptile. We also would be bitter with Peter and after some serious revenge. There isn't a judge and a courtroom that Hook can bring Peter to in Neverland, so he's simply taking the law into his own… uh… steel. Really, Peter isn't a great hero. Not only does he go around cutting off people's limbs, but he's rude and is blatantly leading on Wendy and Tinker Bell, while stringing along Tiger Lily as a side chick.

3 Ursula

The fact that Ursula is half human and half octopus obviously does nothing for the argument that she's not so bad. The sea witch does look pretty terrifying! She also does some horrible things in The Little Mermaid. These include tricking Ariel into giving up her voice, signing a bargain that she can't keep, and then meddling when things are starting to turn Ariel's way. But what led her to this sad place in the beginning? Ursula actually used to live peacefully in King Triton's underwater kingdom, but by the time we meet her, she's been banished. We don't know exactly what she did to earn that punishment, but seeing as Triton is a scary, overbearing, bully of a king, we're assuming it wasn't a lot. So like so many of these other villains, Ursula has a chip on her shoulder, and her lashing out is understandable, if not totally warranted.

2 Scar

Everybody hates Scar, but let's just break that down. Scar has lived his whole life with Mufasa as an older brother. Do you have any idea what that must be like? Mufasa was physically superior, had much more confidence, was clearly more popular with the lionesses, inherited the pride based on his birth order, and was very likely his parents' fave. That's got to be tough for poor Scar, who was the scrawny, forgotten lion who nobody ever expected to amount to anything. Sure, there were other ways he could have released his anger. Rather than setting up a stampede to kill his brother, he could have gone and practiced his hunting. Rather than lure his nephew into an ambush, he could have gotten on board with some of Rafiki's meditation techniques. He didn't though, which is why he's a villain. But it could have been different for everybody, if his childhood had been happier!

1 Maleficent

Our final Disney villain who was seriously misjudged is Maleficent. With Angelina Jolie's portrayal, the world has realized that there are two sides to every story and the witch who cursed Princess Aurora isn't all that bad after all. But we could see this back in the original Disney animated feature. Yes, Maleficent sentences Aurora to die, kidnaps Prince Phillip and turns into an unstoppable dragon. But why does this all take place? Maleficent first gets her back up because King Stefan and Queen Leah exclude her from coming to Aurora's christening party. If you've ever been the only one not to receive an invitation to a cool party, you'll know that this doesn't feel good. Maleficent's feelings were clearly hurt over being excluded, and this led to her retaliation. Yes, her reaction was a tad excessive, but the royal family should have known she was a bit flamboyant. Lesson: just invite everyone.