I also approve of his attitude vis a vis mimes and scorpion pits.
Havelock’s motives are largely unknown, which is one of (not the only) ways we’ve been judging hero vs. antihero. Legally, he is the authority in town, so his decisions aren’t normally going to be judged on a criminal basis. If anything, he’s arguably merciful in the most amazingly pragmatic sense: if you’re useful, he’ll put you to work in a way making the best possible use of your past skills/crimes (See Moist), but with sufficient care to make sure that he doesn’t lose out on the gamble.
If we ever spent enough time to examine his morals overall (personally I don’t think he’s absolutely tied to high ethics, he’s more disturbed at how badly humans tend to run things, a sentiment I share!), he could end up as a very morally gray hero. But in truth, I think he’s a pragmatic anti-hero, whose basic morals tend to support some degree of the least pain for all as a goal. Not the greatest good for the greatest number precisely, but making sure that everyone can have a place, and enough order (in a VERY chaotic world) to try to make it a decent place.
Technically, I place him in the Lawful Neutral category, though that’s in world without an absolute (imposed by outside forces) definitions of law and morality. IMHO he can’t be considered a villain, as he almost never works from a position to grant himself any sort of real, tangible personal advantage (though his attitudes towards mimes, while understandable, means he’s not above some villain moments). In a prior thread, I mentioned my theory that Havelock is grooming Moist to be a new ruler for A-M as some form of popularly elected/selected next generation, so he could finally retire and let someone else do all the work of keeping people (of many flavors!) from being too terrible to each other.
What makes Discworld interesting from the POV of this thread, is that their definition of heroes and villains is fully abstracted from their very real, though far from omniscient or omnipotent gods. So a god-granted hero (a common trope of the genre) is utterly subverted and/or played for laughs. And of course most of the other hero tropes are played with as well, in interesting ways.
Thinking of anti-heroes, how about Detective Miller in The Expanse?
He’s a cop, but as he explains, it, “There’s no law on Ceres, only cops.” We learn he became a cop after growing up as a street urchin, when his best friend suggested they become cops because “It’s better to be the boot than the ass”.
He’s corrupt, taking bribes from low-lifes to look the other way, but when someone gets a little too low-life, Miller slaps him around, and tells him, “Take care of the air filters!”
He is given a job to track down a missing girl, which leads him into the whole narrative of the story, and he ends up saving the Earth from complete destruction. But along the way he kills at least one guy in cold blood, kills several more in various gunfights, steals what is literally the largest spaceship humanity has ever built, and does a lot of other questionable stuff.
So he’s clearly based on what are IMO the canonical anti-heros, namely the protagonists of the classic film noir like Sam Spade and Rick Blaine.
Though of course those classic film noir antiheros were never police officers as it would not do in that era to portray them as anything other than morally upstanding and unambiguous.
LN. Very LN.
Same here. 
Yep.
One could occasionally have a cop turn out to secretly be the villain provided of course that this was clearly portrayed as an aberration and never, ever the result of institutional policies.
Depends - am I, or am I not, the mime in this scenario?
(IMO, anyone who keeps a scorpion pit at all is not heroic.)
Vimes, though - especially Dark-encumbered Vimes? And Granny Weatherwax?
The presence of the Guarding Dark puts Vimes in the “anti-hero” slot to me. Same same for Granny. Because Lily left she had to be The Good One and she stayed pissed about that her entire life.
I believe he also killed Zod in the second Christopher Reeve movie.
That’s a weird situation because it literally depends on the cut. In the US theatrical cut it seems that after losing his powers Zod probably died falling down a pit. The director’s cut includes time traveling that undoes the “death”. But there is a deleted scene, which aired overseas, showing Zod being arrested (therefore alive) after the pit.
~Max
Wile E. Coyote: Hero, antihero, or villain?
Hero!
Wile E. Coyote - Supra-genius!
Since he’s apparently fully sapient (in some versions) and has the resources to get food beyond that of the roadrunner (he can order birdseed, as well as gadgets, so I think it’s safe to say he could get a couple of hams or steaks), then he’s in it for the yuks, a perceived need, or a desire to win. So villain. Of course, there could be a nefarious backstory (roadrunner stole his baby making him an anti-hero or possibly hero), or, like his efforts with sheep, he could just a schmuck punching the time clock, were he’s none of the above.
Nitpick: Ralph Wolf is the (would-be) sheep stealer.
Wile E. Coyote is a villain, he’s just a Butt-Monkey villain, too pathetic to hate or fear. If we had even a shred of sympathy for him we’d be appalled at his living damnation; as it is, we can regard his perpetual failure as the instant karma we wish all villainy received.
Ah, ignorance fought. Thank you for the knowledgeable nitpick! Then absent a future ret-con or reveal, where the Roadrunner killed his entire family, I think my initial evaluation as villain (a pathetic one as you pointed out) stands.
Who says it’s always the same coyote? Maybe plenty of coyotes have gotten themselves killed pursuing the Road Runner; in the short “Ready.. Set.. Zoom!” we see an entire pack of identical coyotes chasing the main protagonist who’s disguised as a female road runner:
The mention of Havelock made me think of Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers.
I haven’t read the book or seen any of the film versions in years, but I recall him as the antagonist (or at least directing the primary antagonists) and power behind the throne, but at the end he rewards the captured D’Artagnan with a commission to the Musketeers. Now, I need to visit his Wikipedia page.
In Dumas, Richelieu was not really a villain, just a force of nature with his own agenda. In my copy of the book, the editor makes the comment that “Dumas loved nothing more than to take a complex interaction of social, economic, religious, and political movements, and turn it into a simple personal duel between two Great Men.”
Yes, those two films are the best adaptations of the books. Richelieu wasnt evil like shown in other films- just a chauvinist, a patriot, and unscrupulous.
Yep.
I read the novel back in the '90s, and that definitely struck me. In the films (with which I was more familiar), Richelieu and Rochefort were unquestionably villains; in the book, while their agendas put them at odds with the Musketeers, there was respect between all of them, and even a certain level of camaraderie, if not friendship.