34 People Share Real-Life Villains They Regret Mistaking For Heroes At First

Cult leader Jim Jones. His early life was dedicated to racial equality and service and devolved into phony/illusory miracles to manipulate followers into gratifying both his socialistic and sexual goals, ultimately ending with mass s****de. Also a real life example of the axiomatic phrase "absolute power corrupts absolutely."

The guy who invented the orbital lobotomy. He preformed tens of thousands of them and was thought to be a hero for the mentally ill. Turned out later that literally aimlessly scrambling people's brains with an ice pick was a bad idea.

Maximilien Robespierre of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.
Helped to overthrow the monarchy and execute the king, then went on the execute a wack ton of people, mostly political enemies, by guillotine during the Terror as a part of the aptly named Committee of Public Safety. He was then later arrested and guillotined for executing a member of his own Committee.

Fritz Haber invented the process of making fertilizer from the atmosphere, alleviating food shortages in Europe in the early 20th century, and winning a Nobel Prize in chemistry for it. Later, during WWI he invented chemical warfare for the Germans. He developed a method of dispatching chlorine gas to enemy trenches. He is now know as the father of chemical warfare.

Mao ZeDong of China. He helped in ridding China of foreign influence, gave women equal rights as men, allowed all children to attend school, had massive social and industrial reforms to modernize China. Too bad he is not very good at running the place long term and ended up killing millions as a result of being forced to side with USSR during cold war, acting like an expert when he isn't, and kept worrying the revolutionary zeal will die.

A more modern example I can think about is Porfirio Diaz, in Mexico. He was a renowned general that fought in many wars in Mexico for the liberals. He was even part of the commanders who fought under general Zaragoza's command to fight off the French in the 5 de mayo battle at Puebla. At first he was quite appraised and had a chance to win the presidency, but had to win it from Juarez, the president who implemented all the reforms in Mexico which had caused quite many wars. A couple of years after Juarez finally died, ending 17 years of government, Diaz assumed the presidency. At first his government was characterised by a lot of industrial progress and a huge increase in railway tracks. However, he designed the country to be dependent on his rule, and felt no one was capapble of handling Mexico. So naturally, he decided to stay in the presidency 30 years. Ironic because he had fought Juarez because he was becoming a dictator. He was thebone who came up with the no reelection campaign. Aftter living so much and reelecting himself many periods, he ended up becoming a villain, sparkling a civil war after the imprisonment of one of his adversaries, Madero. He quickly quitted when he realised the US supported the revolutionaries and went in exile to France. The civil war continued, so called Mexican Revolution for many years, and the only scapegoat fot such a bloodshed was the "overthrow" of a dictator, thus official history textbooks now only see him as a villain, completely ignoring the things he did for our nation.

Sorry for any mistakes, english is not my native language, and I wrote this on my phone.
Hope you found this interesting.

Philippe Petain. He was a renowned Commander who helped lead the defense of Verdun, becoming a national hero. When France surrendered in WWII, the Germans saw this as an opportunity to increase the public image of Vichy France and convinced him to lead the collaborationist regime. Nowadays, Petain is regarded as a traitor, not a hero.

Richard Nixon for a more recent example. Everyone kind of forgets that he was generally considered to be a pretty good president and diplomat before Watergate.

Alfred Nobel.
Due to the number of deaths cause by the improper handling of nitroglycerin (including his own brother) he looked at creating a safer explosive. Invented dynamite , then gelignite and then Ballistite. Made a shed load of money from the military usage of his inventions.
When his brother Ludvig died, this caused several newspapers to publish obituaries of Alfred in error. A French obituary stated "Le marchand de la mort est mort" ("The merchant of death is dead") and went on to say, "Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday."
Alfred (who never had a wife or children) was disappointed with what he read and concerned with how he would be remembered.
On 27 November 1895, at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, Nobel signed his last will and testament and set aside the bulk of his estate to establish the Nobel Prizes, to be awarded annually without distinction of nationality. After taxes and bequests to individuals, Nobel's will allocated 94% of his total assets, 31,225,000 Swedish kronor, to establish the five Nobel Prizes. This converted to £1,687,837 (GBP) at the time.
So hero to villain and back to hero.

Kwame Nkrumah led the independence movement in Ghana in the 1950s and was universally loved when Ghana became a nation in 1957. He began work on hundreds of essential infrastructure projects which would help bring Ghana up to the level of developed nations quickly. He promised a powerful and prosperous country, which could be independent of the Cold War struggle between East and West and even serve as an intermediary.

He then decided it was better if he would become a dictator. He suppressed Ghanaian traditional culture, began imprisoning people without charges, almost immediately violated his own constitution, removed checks and balances in government, inspected and censored all media outlets, instated and removed judges erratically and at will based on whether their rulings suited him, rigged elections, and declared himself "president for life".

Ghana was driven into deep and lasting debt. Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown and banned from the country for life, ostensibly for creating a cult of personality and making himself the oppressive dictator of Ghana. After the coup, Ghana was ruled by politically unstable military dictatorships, and wracked by constant coups, for thirty years.

Boris Yeltsin.

He did Russia a heroic service as the USSR failed, but became mired in corruption and ineffectiveness.

Benedict Arnold might be a good example. Initially a high ranking military officer who is responsible for an American victory at Saratoga during the revolutionary war. Despite his military success due to many reason ( including the promotion of lower ranking officers instead of himself) he eventually made a deal with the British to betray the Americans

Fidel Castro. Worked to overthrow a brutal dictator and put power back in the hands of the people- wound up becoming a near-dictator himself: starving the country of economic and social growth, allying with Russia, and flirting for decades with nuclear war.

Nero. His first few years in office were rather prosperous overall (thanks in part to good advice from Seneca and Burrus). After having his mother killed, things went downhill fast.

Aaron Burr. Made it to the office of Vice President, yet somehow still had it out for Alexander Hamilton and blamed him for his short comings which led to his killing of Hamilton via duel. This ultimately ruined his political career and after some unrelated legal troubles on the western frontier forced him to escape to Europe to hide from creditors.

For me, Richard Lionheart and John Lackland are the epitome of this. Richard Lionheart died young after being King for I think nine or ten years. He lived in England for maybe six months of that, spent the rest on crusade. He also kind of hated the English, being raised in France by his mother. Died childless (modern history posits he was maybe probably not all that straight, which was of course a big no no at the time in a monarch. This is neither here nor there on the hero thing, just interesting). Buuuut history frequently remembers him as a guy who died a hero.

John Lackland on the other hand was King for a long-a*s time, even though he never expected to be (I think he had about three-five older brothers who all had to die without sons for him to be king). His last name was literally Lackland because he didn't even get like a pity earldom off his dad. He had thirteen kids (not all legitimate, but at the time, a relevant quality in a king). He signed Magna Carta, which was the very first step in making England's constitution. He wasn't really that into crusading. By modern standards, way better king. By standards at the time, eh, maybe he should have had more military strength to not get forced into signing Magna Carta. Still fucktons better than literally not being in the country for nine-tenths of your reign. Aaaand yet, mostly remembered as a villain.

Definitely blame Robin Hood for most of that, because Robin Hood insists on portraying Lionheart as the best king ever and Lackland as a super evil land-grabbing a*****e. But that's probably also because Lionheart, dying in a young and probably kind of romantic way and doing all that crusading, was romanticized, and Lackland was king for a while.

Marc Antony. First received overwhelming support by both military and the common people as the right hand of Caesar. Then averted a civil war following Caesar's assassination. However he then lost most support following the battle of Actium and the opening of his will confirmed him as a true enemy of the state due to Ptolemaic/ Cleopatra's influence leading to his demise.

Christopher Columbus, not so much the man himself changing but the people's perception of him. People are only now starting to turn on Christopher Columbus and his Columbus day. He was celebrated as an explorer but now people seem to focus on his conquering of native Americans.

Napoleon is arguably a good example of this. Whilst he is undoubtley a great commander and influential man, he does not exactly have a 'Hero' reputation, and certainly some would argue he was a war mongering despot, which is surprising considering his exploits.

Particularly his return from Elba was a huge waste of life in a war (the Hundred days campaign) that was always doomed to failure. Interesting, it is almost like some people see Napoleon as not part of the national story, but its own part of history. Like the Nazis and German History.

However, let say Napoleon died of natural causes before his disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812, I believe he would be the go to symbol of France most influential man and national hero, almost a George Washington style figure rather than the reputation he has today.

Caligula. Insanely popular emperor of the people for the first 8 months or so of his reign. He contributed to public works, got rid of the treason files and trials of Tiberius, returned his family's ashes to Rome for proper burial, brought back public games, and was generally popular and well loved.

So much for the man, now the monster. Caligula got sick and from there became the notoriously terrible emperor we know today.

Reinstituted treason trials, f****d everything literally and figuratively, cut the heads off of statues of the gods and replaced them with his own, had an entire section of spectators fed to the animals at a some sort of Colliseum spectacle (because there weren't enough prisoners to feed to the animals), spent the entire 3M sesterce surplus Tiberius left behind, killed, tortured, and debauched his way through the remaining three years of his reign. Had a man's family killed in front of him on the streets, except his daughter because she was a virgin and killing a virgin was considered wrong...so he had guards rape her and then kill her. Then had the guy killed. He did so many terrible things I can't even remember them all. Admittedly, though, some of the insane stuff he did (not the stuff I mentioned) is really funny. Worth looking into.

Who knows how much of what's written about him is true, but still an interesting story.