It’s not always easy to know who is in the wrong and who isn’t, especially when history books and the media don’t always tell the whole truth. Someone recently asked online, “Who is a bad guy in history who actually wasn’t a bad guy?” We collected the top 19 replies.
Richard Jewel
“Initially lauded as a hero and a brave man who ran towards the bomb to help, then the FBI and media turned on him and accused him of doing the bombing himself because he was outlandishly brave and ran toward the bomb to help people.
“They took his truck for evidence; he had to go into hiding. He was made a villain by incompetent people for YEARS, then finally exonerated and died shortly afterward.”
Lydia Fairchild
“She has chimerism, so her uterus has different DNA from the rest of her body.”
“She was accused of kidnapping children because her kids didn’t have her DNA, but in fact, they had the DNA of her absorbed twin, which she could never have known.”
“The twin gets the last laugh because it gets to pass on its genes, and Lydia does not.”
William Thomas Green Morton
“He died broke, defending his discovery (anesthesia). He was a dentist and didn’t get much respect from doctors at the time. It is one of the most important medical discoveries of all time.”
“Anesthesia is arguably THE most important medical discovery in history. Modern surgery is literally impossible without it.”
William Murdoch
“In the film Titanic, the character Murdoch killed someone, took bribes, and was a terrible person. In real life, he was a hero and saved many lives. His living relatives were so disgusted that the VP of Fox personally apologized.”
“Dude went down saving lives. Cameron needlessly made him corrupt.”
“Fox made a £5000 donation to boost the William Murdoch Memorial Prize. That movie’s initial gross was over $1.8B! It was like giving them a dime.”
Robert The Bruce
“In the film Braveheart, William Wallace gets betrayed by Robert the Bruce, which actually never happened; Bruce was loyal to the end.”
“That film did Robert dirty, doubly so because he was actually a bigger hero of the people than William Wallace.”
“A Scottish tour guide talked about how Robert the Bruce was the greater hero.”
Captain Bligh
“His mistake was being too soft rather than too harsh. He let his crew slack off while they were waiting to make sure the breadfruit trees would survive transplantation, and they mutinied when he put them back to work.”
“So many of them wanted to leave with him on the tiny launch; they had to draw lots. Captain Bligh then had to sail this tiny, overcrowded, poorly provisioned boat 6700km to Timor using intuition. He did not lose a single man. Absolute hero.”
Captain Hazelwood
“He is often pictured on the helm of the Exxon Valdez, swaying drunkenly and going full throttle into the reef while talking like a pirate.”
“In fact, he had outdated nav equipment, no vessel tracking, was denied a relief crew, and his rich bosses paid the media to blame him. He didn’t even have a drinking problem. He was charged with pollution and died recently.”
Lindy Chamberlain
“A dingo really did eat her baby, but they screamed murderer.”
“This one is so awful. Her baby was brutally killed and EATEN. Imagine knowing that about. Then she was accused of murder. Then the world made a joke out of it.”
“These poor people suffered through their lives so much because people thought the death of their baby was FUNNY. I can’t even imagine their heartache.”
Stella Liebeck
“The woman who sued McDonald’s after she spilled coffee on her lap received 3rd-degree burns in her pelvic area. She was hospitalized for eight days and required a couple of years of rehabilitation. The media just made her a poster case for frivolous lawsuits.”
“I vividly remember this story! It was so sad. At first, I thought it was stupid too, but then I read she had severe burns and all. She really wasn’t overreacting.”
Jack Kevorkian
“People should absolutely be able to make the decision about end-of-life care, and I think with time, people will start thinking differently, and that conviction will be overturned.”
“Even at the time, I had no idea why he was villainized. He didn’t murder anybody. They asked him to help them die peacefully. We do that for our animals all the time, but we don’t extend the same compassion to people?”
Lorena Bobbitt
“She became a meme and was blamed for an ‘unprovoked’ attack on her husband. She was defending herself from a serial rapist/abuser. He had raped her earlier that day.”
“It was infuriating how the media jumped on her when he was a full-on sadistic psychopath who tortured a completely different woman in a hotel room for days. He will 100% murder someone someday, assuming he hasn’t already done so.”
Monica Lewinsky
“She didn’t deserve any of the hatred she received either. She was so young, and she was taken advantage of by the literal most powerful man in the world, but somehow HER name ended up labeling the scandal.”
“It’s disgusting how people go after her and let Clinton off. Once she was forced to admit the affair, Clinton called her a liar, maligned her, and painted her as a crazy stalker.”
Pharaoh Cleopatra
“She was actually a good ruler, focusing more on her nation than just abusing her position for her own benefit. She was very intelligent and learned around ten different languages.”
“First member of the Ptolemaic dynasty to bother learning Egyptian. She did amazing things in managing to actually expand Egypt’s territory in a time of Roman dominance.”
Julius Caesar
“He wasn’t executed for trying to turn Rome into a dictatorship. He was a political reformer who wanted to tax wealthy landowners. The senate was violent to reformers; they rewrote history to make him seem evil for trying to grant rights to poorer citizens.”
“In his time, the senate was definitely corrupt, and he would’ve made it better for the common person. It completely backfired when they killed him.”
Niccolo Machiavelli
“He didn’t invent lying or ruthlessness. He made an observation about what worked and documented this. Now his name is synonymous with being a heartless manipulator.”
“Agreed. People often reduce his message down to “you should be opportunistic and manipulative,” which wasn’t what he was saying at all.”
“One of the most honest dudes in history, and his name is synonymous with villainy.”
Alan Turing
“He was the reason we beat the Nazis because he decrypted their codes. He got arrested for homosexuality, forcibly sterilized, and died very young. Despite all the good he did, he was treated like a bad guy just because he was gay.”
“I’m glad he’s on the £50 note. And while I can see the symbolic value in the Queen pardoning Turing ten years ago, it just feels audaciously late.”
Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle
“An absolute tragedy and such a loss for film and comedy. Brilliant physical comedian and director and an absolutely stellar human being. His career and personal life were totally destroyed overnight by lies and scandal.”
“He was finally acquitted and received a formal apology, but it didn’t matter; the damage was done. He was a mentor for Chaplin and gave Buster Keaton his big break.”
Anne Boleyn
“She was not a seductress who tried to steal the King. She only agreed to marry Henry because she had to. Even before he met Anne, he was looking for a way to end his marriage to Catherine. Why? Because he had a daughter (Mary) to preserve an alliance with Spain, but he didn’t have a son. Anne didn’t abuse Mary either. Henry did.”
Sinead O’Connor
“She was trying to warn us on SNL about the Catholic pedophile problem, and the media just destroyed her for it.”
“I knew what her protest was about. Everyone always knew what the Catholic church did. If they didn’t know what she was protesting, they could throw a rock in the air, and it would hit another reason.”
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