Articles about the recently discovered statue of the emperor Caligula get a lot of mileage out of casually referring to him as "the incestuous and lunatic Roman emperor" or "s**-crazed despot." I understand the impulse; I have found referring to bizarre figure in classical literature in a matter-of-fact, almost bored way an effective rhetorical tool in the classroom.
But it turns out that Caligula might not have been as crazy as we imagine. Very few contemporary accounts survive; the main sources for his reign are Suetonius and Cassius Dio, who wrote 80 and 180 years after his death. If you are a fan of the Tudors, you might compare this to the posthumous accounts of Anne Boleyn that accuse her of having six fingers and a giant mole on her neck, which are now acknowledged to be false and intended as anti-Protestant propaganda.
So maybe Caligula was actually as crazy as we imagine him to be, and maybe he wasn't. But in the final analysis, he was still a Roman emperor; it's unlikely he was a nice person.
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