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"Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it."
Lady Macbeth, Macbeth Act 1 Scene 5.

You meet someone you think is a really Nice Guy/Gal, or perhaps you meet a favorite celebrity for the first time, thinking that they'll be just as warm-hearted and cool as they are on camera. However, something happens to show their true colors, revealing an immature brat, total Jerkass, or even outright villain.

Congratulations. You've just met the Bitch in Sheep's Clothing — the polar opposite of Hidden Heart of Gold.

The Wounded Gazelle Gambit is a favorite tactic of this sort of antagonist, and if they are genuinely evil, expect them to be a Villain with Good Publicity. Can also possibly overlap with Alpha Bitch, or more especially Rich Bitch.

It's also worth mentioning that this trope isn't exclusive to female characters. The title is a play on "A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing," and can apply to any gender. All it requires is a person appears to be nice but is actually cruel and/or manipulative.

In romance plots, the Bitch in Sheep's Clothing is usually the Romantic False Lead, being set up by the plot as appropriate boyfriend/girlfriend or spouse material for a character we know is destined to end up with one of the protagonists. Occasionally, this character was a nice person until they suffered sudden Character Derailment in order to remove them from the equation. In any case, expect them to make an Engineered Public Confession in one form or another.

In some cases, however, a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing can be sympathetic. Many lighter cases involve a scenario in which a fairly flawed yet well-intentioned character makes themselves out to be more benevolent than they really are (especially if they have a high opinion of themselves). More often than not, this charade falls apart and their true persona blasts out, usually in an extreme manner that makes them look even worse than they usually are. In some cases, a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing can lean more towards Jerk with a Heart of Gold if they aren't too busy hiding their unpleasant qualities with an over-enacted facade, instead of showing their genuine (and usually resented) redeeming aspects. Maybe someone will seem like this, then you realize they are just a Lovable Alpha Bitch or a type B Tsundere.

See also: Devil in Plain Sight, Fair-Weather Ex, Fair-Weather Foe, Villain with Good Publicity, Warts and All, False Innocence Trick, and Confound Them with Kindness. The Fake Cutie is a subtrope where the (usually young) bitch tries to invoke cuteness or childlike innocence. The Troublemaking New Pet is a related trope where someone takes in a new pet, only to learn that the pet is a huge troublemaker or outright evil and gets rid of it afterward once discovered. A Romantic False Lead is often like this. The Enfant Terrible is also a related trope (possibly the Annoying Younger Sibling with Sibling Rivalry from Hell). Evil All Along is a subtrope comprised of purely villainous examples. Jumping Off the Slippery Slope is for characters who are already morally shady before they commit an unambiguously evil act. For a version specifically concerning actors and actresses, see Nice Character, Mean Actor. For a more extreme version of this trope, see Bait the Dog, where the 'bitch', oddly enough, likes to Kick the Dog.

Not to be confused either with Affably Evil or Beware the Nice Ones, where the person is genuinely nice rather than just putting up a facade. Most especially, do not confuse this with Faux Affably Evil. Such a character does not attempt to hide their evil nature, they simply engage in faux pleasantries while committing evil acts in a deliberately cruel or mocking manner. It could only overlap if the villain initially attempts to disguise their true nature, but then kept up the act after the reveal when they have no reason to do so beyond being a creep.

Contrast With Took a Level in Jerkass, where the character was genuinely nice and became... well a Jerkass. Also compare and contrast Jerk with a Heart of Jerk. Compare Jerkass to One if they are nice to everyone but horrible to one particular person.

Contrast Bitch Alert for a bitch who lets everyone knows that she's one, Sheep in Sheep's Clothing for a character believed to be a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing but turns out not to be, and Jerk with a Heart of Gold, for someone who comes across as a jerk but turns out to be a good person deep down. A subtrope of A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing and a supertrope to Jerkass at Your Discretion.


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    Asian Animation 
  • Mechamato: Payapi appears as a kindly firefighter robot, but he causes fires to extinguish them for good publicity. At first, he congratulates Amato and his friends for putting out a fire, but later he tries to set Amato's house alight.

    Comic Strips 
  • In For Better or for Worse, when Elly is interviewing a replacement for Kourtney, she thinks the candidate seems like a nice person from her application, and wonders why she was let go. She calls up, and the woman on the other end seems polite up until she screams at her child for acting out. Elly politely removes her from consideration, having heard all she needs to.

    Films — Animation 
  • Barbie: Mariposa has Henna, who is Mariposa's friend at first until she poisons the Queen and nearly kills all of the fairies in Flutterfield so she can take the throne.
  • Darla Dimple in Cats Don't Dance has a reputation as "America's sweetheart lover of children and animals," but in reality, she's a Spoiled Brat who hates animals and absolutely cannot tolerate the thought of them stealing any limelight from her.
  • Coco gives us Ernesto de la Cruz. At first, he looks very friendly and charming, as not only was he loved by all of Mexico before his untimely death, but he even offers to help Miguel go home before the latter is stuck in the Land of the Dead forever. Then we learn that he not only poisoned his best friend Hector to death when the latter wanted to go home, but he also stole his songs to become the famous singer that he is. His true colors are later exposed to the entire Land of the Dead, and he ends up stuck in a Fate Worse than Death.
  • Incredibles 2 gives us Evelyn Deavor. At first, she seems kind and supportive of her brother wanting to bring superheroes back and strikes up a friendship with Helen, but is later revealed to be the true mastermind behind the Screenslaver and prejudiced towards supers.
  • Megamind: Hal Stewart acts like a decent guy to Roxanne, but in truth, he's rather possessive of her, as shown by his meeting with "Bernard" (who is actually Megamind in disguise). Once he receives his powers and is rejected by Roxanne, he reveals himself to be an unstable psychopath.
  • The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature: Gunther, the head exterminator, is introduced assuring Muldoon that he can humanely capture and transport the animals somewhere else. When he finds out that Muldoon wants to kill the animals rather than humanely trap them, he looks shocked for a second, then lets out an Evil Laugh and takes to the task with Ax-Crazy enthusiasm.
  • Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Candace Against the Universe: Super Super Big Doctor comes off as someone who relates to what Candace is going through with her brothers, stating that she used to be the same way. However, it is revealed that she is a petty, childish overlord who enslaved the planet and only wanted Candace so she could restore her brainwashing plant to life.
  • Lola the Gold Digger lionfish from Shark Tale. She dismisses Oscar calling him "cute but a nobody." When Oscar becomes famous, Lola starts dating him much to Angie's jealousy and dismay. After Oscar finishes a shark slayer stunt, Lola swims up to the cameras and forcefully kisses him, causing Angie to leave in jealousy, anger, and sadness. Once Angie confesses to Oscar her feelings for him, Oscar rethinks his feelings and dumps Lola — which, unfortunately, leads to her great anger as she mercilessly slams him against the windows. Lola then crosses the Moral Event Horizon by arranging for Don Lino to kidnap Angie in demand for Oscar's obedience even gleefully threatening Angie's life to do so.
    Lola: You know, Sharkslayer, there's only one thing I like better than money: Revenge!
  • Fairy Godmother from Shrek 2. We assume all fairy godmothers are nice, kind, and friendly — this one definitely is not. Point in case, she has no qualms about resorting to trickery and extortion to get what she wants; in this case, the crown of Far Far Away. She intended to have her son rescue and marry Fiona to put him on the throne and reign as queen mother. This doesn't go according to plan as Fiona fell in love with Shrek, thus the Fairy Godmother attempts to get rid of him, either by blackmailing Harold into getting rid of Shrek or by using Shrek's own feelings to manipulate him into thinking Fiona doesn't really want to be with him. When Fiona didn't fall in love with Charming on her own, she decided to drug her with a potion so that she would marry Charming. Then when it's revealed Harold never gave Fiona the potion, Fairy Godmother then snaps and resorts to killing Shrek and Fiona.
    Fairy Godmother: I told you, OGRES DON'T LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER!
  • Mother Gothel in Tangled pretends to be Rapunzel's loving mother, but in actuality, she was the woman who kidnapped Rapunzel as a baby because her hair was full of magic from the flower used to de-age Gothel that got crushed into medicine for Rapunzel's real mother, the queen.
  • Lotso in Toy Story 3. In the Art of Toy Story 3 book, the revelation of his true nature was said to be like "finding out Mister Rogers was a mafia don".
  • Zootopia has a literal sheep case with Assistant Mayor Dawn Bellwether. At first, she appears as the only ally and friend Judy has when she joins the ZPD and helps her in one instance that cracks open Judy's case. All the better to frame her superior, Mayor Lionheart, for the disappearance of various animals who have gone "savage" and being herself the mastermind behind aforementioned condition to initiate prejudice/discrimination and most likely war between preys and predators.

    Manhua 
  • Xiaxi, the protagonist of Goddess Creation System, acts sweet, cultured, and demure around the Wang Pu brothers in order to make them fall in love with her. She actually thinks they're a bunch of total assholes so she doesn't mind how her influence destabilizes the family or how hurt the brothers are by her seemingly sweet and benevolent actions. She has her reasons, but even she worries that it's starting to come too naturally to her.

    Manhwa 
  • Doe-Doe Eun of Pig Bride is publicly a sweet Yamato Nadeshiko maiden who enjoys being demure and needlework. But it's almost entirely an act to snare the main lead, who has made no secret that that's the kind of girl he likes. When there are no boys around, Doe-Doe is a ruthless gangster-type who bullies the other girls so they won't move in on her territory. What makes her a touch more sympathetic is that she is stuck in a You Can't Fight Fate competition with the title character, rendering all her efforts fruitless from the start.
  • Shinghi from Zippy Ziggy, especially at first. It's pretty much the entire point of his character. The same with his father.

    Music 
  • In Flower of the Plateau, Mikulia is a florist but she actually was an ex-prostitute who even kills two people, an ex-suitor/client and her own son because they're the only ones who know that.
  • Macabre has many of the Serial Killers they sing about be this, mainly because they were actually this in real life. Like Ted Bundy, who pretended to be a handsome and sweet guy to lure in his victims.
  • Progressive rock band Coheed and Cambria makes a reference to this in their song "Welcome Home", with the "bitch" context taken a little up:
    "A whore in sheep's clothing, fucking up all I do."
  • The Elvis Presley song, Devil In Disguise. At first, the girl being described is an angel, but Elvis sees through it.
    You look like an angel
    walk like an angel
    talk like an angel
    But I got wise
    You’re the devil in disguise!
  • Referenced vaguely in Mumford & Sons' "Little Lion Man".
    "Your grace is wasted in your face. Your boldness stands alone among the wreck."
  • By Word of Goddess, Sara Bareilles considers herself one of these. She's said at more than a few interviews that she finds it very amusing that she can fill her albums with angry songs that chew people out or tell people off, and people turn around and love her for it. In her words, "You can be a total bitch, but if you say it in a happy, peppy, sweet way, absolutely no one will notice."
  • "Down At The End Of Your Road" by Jethro Tull, a Broadsword And The Beast era song describing a man who, by day, is a well respected real estate businessman, yet, by night, is a Jerkass who messes with the neighbors in various ways.
  • Daniel Amos's "Cloak & Dagger" (from ¡Alarma!) is about the character type in general, not about any specific examples:
    There's Cold War tactics hidden in a smiling face
    A pretty kind of poison that will leave no trace
  • Taylor Swift's "Blank Space" describes a woman who turns out to be this, and explicitly refers to herself as one before the second chorus:
    "Darling, I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream."
  • Set It Off has a song called "Wolf In Sheep's Clothing", which talks about someone who manipulates people and poses as a nice person.
  • "Stupid Girl" by Garbage berates a woman for faking innocence as they manipulate others.
  • "2 Faced" by Louise plays this straight, being about two-faced people, but contains a line that plays with the traditional metaphor. She describes them as "sheep in wolf's clothing", nothing to do with the trope of the same name, but suggesting that two-faced people believe their behavior makes them hard and tough, but in reality, they are weak and just follow the crowd.
  • “Smiling Faces Sometimes” by The Undisputed Truth could be the trope maker when it comes to people who put on a facade but beneath the surface are wicked as they come.
  • Origami Angel: "Say Less" from Somewhere City is about someone who disrespects the singer, making fun of him in front of their friends but refusing to say it to his face. He doesn't buy it, with one line being "you're not so good at hiding the fact that you don't like me", and wishes to stand up for himself.
  • TOPS did this in their 2017 song "Cutlass Cruiser". The context of the song is that there is a guy who gives his "girlfriends" a hard time. The singer is telling one of the girls that they can get themselves out of this mess.
    Standing on the same road again
    Sister's in the master bedroom
    Time to dig that hole again
    You have the tools but you did not choose them
    You are a cutlass cruiser
    I'm just a part-time loser now
    Do you take scars or bruises?
    All have proof that we struggled somehow

    Myths & Religion 
  • From Greek Mythology, Hera in all depictions. Queen of the Gods! Goddess of Marriage! Nice entity, right? Wrong — many, many of the myths involving her focus on her utter wrath toward the children of her husband (and brother) Zeus, who slept around on her all the damned time, the biggest example of this being Heracles, who Hera sent two snakes to kill as a baby on top of other wrathful acts when he came of age. That being said, there are times that Hera actually got things right; why don't you ask Medea on how it turns out for Jason betraying her marriage?
    • Aphrodite is also a good candidate. Looks like the Brainless Beauty, and seemingly too innocent to perpetrate a single evil act. But she regularly runs the gamut from petty and mean to pure evil. Just like Hera, there are also times, depending on the version and the city-state that it originated from, that Aphrodite actually showed compassion, but good luck spotting them in between her mean outbursts.
  • Grimhild in Norse Mythology. She made Sigurd forget about Brynhildr so that her own daughter Gudrun could marry Sigurd. This ends up getting both Brynhildr, Sigurd, Sigurd and Gudrun's son, and Grimhild's youngest son killed. Then she forces her daughter to marry Brynhildr's brother despite that he may want to kill Gudrun's brothers in revenge. Grimhild herself gets away.
  • In The Bible the reader is warned not to trust every teacher and prophet that appears to be telling you the truth and/or spinning some ground-breaking message, but instead, you must test their genuine nature. Just to illustrate how easy this can happen, it's pointed out that even Satan is capable of appearing as an angel of light; things that look beautiful can actually be out to destroy you.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • Allysin Kay wants people to think of her as a classy lady. To this end, she will compliment her opponents, give them plenty of room to enter and prepare, allow them to recover, as long as she is in control of things. Should a match ever become competitive Kay will get rough in a hurry and has even baited a few people into traps that could have well been fatal.
  • Maryse, in an angle with Gail Kim. She even began tag-teaming with (then-face) Gail, saying friendly things to her in English while insulting her in French. (This backfired.)
  • Melina in her appearance at Maryland Championship Wrestling's "Ladies Night" event in 2015. She served as the enforcer in the MCW Women's Championship match between Amber Rodriguez and Mickie James and ran Amber's henchmen out of the arena to keep them from interfering on Amber's behalf. However, after referee Lisa Marie Varon was taken down by accident, Melina revealed her true colors and attacked Mickie, renewing their WWE rivalry. Melina was attacked by Varon, and Mickie went on to win the title.
  • Tina San Antonio feigned an injury to get out of WSU tag team championship defenses with Marti Belle so she could try out for WWE. She revealed this after relieving Jazz, who was acting in her place, and right before choking out Belle.

    Roleplay 
  • In The Gamer's Alliance, Desdemona and Vaetris seem genuinely nice and likable people but underneath that kind exterior, they're anything but. The former is actually a power-hungry, backstabbing schemer who killed one of the heroes and is currently manipulating King Marcus into marrying her in order to subtly take over the Remonian throne, and the latter is one of the four dreaded archdemons in disguise whose goal is to keep other races divided so that she can take over the world with her demon horde.
  • Lacrimi ap Danwyn from Soul Trigger is a Manipulative Bastard whose control freak tendencies have him seeing everyone in the galaxy as an actor of a play in which he is the director. Over his almost six centuries of life, he has gotten his hands into the affairs of all sorts of people and married several times, each of which tended to end with his wife's tragic death... which unbeknownst to everybody else, he causes for his own entertainment.
  • Survival of the Fittest v4 has Aaron Hughes as a male example. He starts out wanting to start an escape plot, but throughout the game, he manipulates every single character he comes across and eventually decides to play the game conventionally while still keeping the guise of the leader in an escape plot. Ashlie Jackson of Evolution is also hinted to have been one of these before being put in the experiments, and although her power rendered her unable to pull it off as much, she attempts to pull off a Cute Mute facade at one point. And as early as his first appearance, Simon Leroy of Virtua is already shaping up to be a male example, who started out the game attempting to get Sycanus Appletin's trust by pretending to be a Nice Guy...while planning to use her trust to his advantage.

    Tabletop Games 
  • In Exalted, the Black Claw Style of Supernatural Martial Arts is based entirely around this concept; most of the techniques of the style are variations on the Wounded Gazelle Gambit, and the final Charm in the style is a powerful attack that becomes unblockable, undodgeable, and more powerful if its target is someone who genuinely loves the user of the style.
  • In the game Secret Hitler, the majority of Fascist wins come not from passing six Fascist policies, but from getting Hitler elected Chancellor after three Fascist policies are enacted. As such, this is required of the Hitler player - pass yourself off as a perfectly normal, cooperative Liberal up until the third Fascist policy is on the table, then begin angling for the Chancellorship.

    Theatre 
  • In The Little Foxes, Regina puts on a particularly charming Southern Belle act for Mr. Marshall, and she plays the fact for her husband is seriously ill for some extra sympathy. However, her caring and polite manner is a façade for an ambition even more ruthless than her brothers, and when Horace does come home to her (because she demanded it), her attitude towards him rapidly deteriorates from passive-aggressive needling to telling him, "I hope you die. I hope you die soon."
  • In Heathers, JD acts kindly to Veronica at first and acts as a love interest to her. Turns out, he was manipulating Veronica into killing the other students at their school.

    Web Animation 
  • Anon: Lilly seems like a harmless wallflower at first, but then goes on to reveal her hobbies of stalking popular students on social media and impersonating her former best friend online in an attempt to make everyone hate her.
    • Also Miranda. Comes across as sweet, innocent, and slightly ditzy in her introduction episodes but when her crush Ryan ends up falling for her cousin Candace, her jealousy escalates into her assaulting Candace at the Thanksgiving dinner. And when it seems like Miranda had finally taken a level in kindness, she's back to her old shit-stirring ways, lying to Candace that Ryan was trying to get with her all while pretending to be completely innocent and oblivious.
  • In the Travel Channel website-original animation "Anthony Bourdain's Alternative Universe", we see a fictional side of travel hostess Samantha Brown we don't normally see on the air, in the episode "Romanian Rhapsody". Seeing the burned corpse of the fictional Anthony Bourdain, she goes, "Yeah, NOW who's laughing, funny man?" Sam kicks the head off the body, then gets an evil look on her face as she goes, "Guess that 10:00-time slot just. became. AVAILABLE." Spouting off to a nearby cameraman, she tells him when she's calmer, "Go get the head and send it to Rachael. She'll appreciate it." One final rant, and then she gets the clapboard in front of her face. Once the clapper comes down, she's her normal smiling self again.
  • ATTACK on MIKA:
    • Mina may seem like a nice and cute girl but it is in fact all an act to manipulate the boys. When the boys bungle saving her from drowning, she cusses the boys out, inadvertently revealing her true self. The boys stopped talking to her after that, with the exception of Abram, who actually liked being cussed out by her.
    • PTA board president Ms. Fukuda from PTA President promotes autonomy in her children, and the children give her a gift... seems like a nice, joyful, fun lady, but this is an act. She is actually a condescending authoritarian who can't tolerate the slightest bit of criticism, singling Hanae out for being the only one who doesn't bow down to her.
    • A rare male example is found in Takapiro Saionji. When he and protagonist Hitomi Shiroki first met, he acted cordial and nice to her, warranting her to accept his offers for dates. However, when he met her childhood friend Yuji, he insulted the fact that he came from a poor family, with her calling him out. Things worsened when he came at her with a marriage application form and revealed his true colors when she turned it down, even driving Yuji away by barring him from work at Shingeki Corporation.
    • Morao appears as a kind husband, but his act is exposed when a drunk Mika opened Yuka's shirt, exposing the bruises he (and his mother) left all over her body. When questioned by his in-laws, he justifies the abuse under the pretense of "educating" her and deriding her as "coming from an inferior family". However, his bravado falls apart when Mika tells him she hired a detective to get proof of his abuse and a lawyer on top of asking the neighbors. He instantly begged Yuka not to tell the police.
    • Habumi seems like a Nice Girl at first glance, but it's actually an act. She is the queen bee of the class and no one can say no to her, especially Suzuka, whom she forced to attend a pool party in order to embarrass her and have Shouya all to herself.
  • Ayasaki-san: Nene Haraguro is a pretty girl who acts nice in public, but drops the act when no one is watching.
  • Epithet Erased has this downplayed with Molly. It is less that she is "malevolent underneath a kindly act" as she is "mostly cynical and angry underneath a kindly act", being far more skilled at manipulating others for her own benefit than any child her age should be. Most of her actions throughout the Museum Arc are her tricking people into helping her and Giovanni, right down to emotional manipulation of Sylvie, and Word of God states that Molly probably would have been on track to become an actual villain if it wasn't for Giovanni taking her under his wing.
  • Helluva Boss:
    • In the first episode, Martha appears to be a sweet, if glory-loving and somewhat slutty woman who does a lot of charitable work with her unfairly-earned rep. She's actually the bloodthirsty and sadistic matron of a deranged, Satanist (not a genre-savvy kind) Cannibal Clan with her only redeeming quality being that her clan genuinely love her and each-other.
    • Episode 4 with the cherubs has more than one example. Keenie's overly-sweet and righteous facade cracks and crumbles, revealing that she's a spiteful, bigoted and self-righteous creature who lords her holiness over anyone she perceives as inferior (which is pretty much anyone who's lower on Heaven's totem pole than her or isn't on it at all), and she bullies her meeker colleague Colin.
    • Moxxie's mob boss father Crimson in Season 2, Episode 3 is polite and refined if forceful when he greets I.M.P., but his interactions with his son and Moxxie's flashback reveal that he's actually a spiteful, sociopathic, sexist and homophobic gangster who wants to forcibly marry Moxxie off for money, and is willing to murder his son and all his friends to get them out of his way.
  • Kanon's RomCom Mangas: Hina acts like a nice girl in front of everyone she knows, however she shows her true self to Shiro after he finds out that she was cheating on him.
  • Manga Soprano:
    • Mariko may seem like a nice drama club leader. In reality she is a rude Jerkass who constantly shoots down Akari's dream to be on the stage and be a playwright. After she humiliated Akari after seemingly giving her a chance to do her own play, Erica exposed her real personality when she uploaded a video of her dissing a fan when he left.
    • Mayu dated a guy named Hiro, of which Kairi told Ram he was a shady guy. Turns out Hiro only dated Mayu to make her work in a cabaret, of which Ram and Kairi exposed.
  • Refreshing Stories:
  • RWBY:
    • Emerald Sustrai masks her intentions behind a polite façade, being nice to the old shopkeep while stealing his wallet, discussing books with Tukson as a build-up to murdering him, and faking friendship with Team RWBY to obtain intel for the villains. On each occasion, her mask drops once away from the event, such as complaining to Mercury Black about his teasing or how much she dislikes the heroes' cheerfulness. As a street urchin saved from starvation by Cinder Fall, her Undying Loyalty is increasingly tested as she learns more about the villains and Cinder's unsympathetic personality. Eventually, she joins the heroes and discovers the camaraderie she's always yearned for].
    • Upon returning to Atlas after Beacon's destruction, Weiss Schnee becomes surprised and suspicious of her younger brother Whitley's decency, despite resenting her and her older sister Winter. She later finds out why after it's too late. Their father Jacques has abused his wife and children for years; while Weiss and Winter escaped his abuse, Whitley felt his only "escape" was to comply with his father's wishes. Eventually, once Weiss has Jacques arrested, Whitley becomes an extremely useful "ideas man" whenever the heroes aren't sure what to do.
  • Sekai No Fushigi: At her wedding, Ms. Mami is firstly described as a "friendly person with a kind smile", but Riku's suspicions of her fakery got proven right when Ms. Yuriko, her older sister, exposes the former's malice through the wedding speech. She then leaves an envelope filled with Mami's hospital bills, investigation reports of affairs, and brand shop receipts. Moreover, it's revealed that Mami planned to have Yuriko pay for all the wedding fees afterward.
  • SMG4: Saiko Bichitaru. At first, she's just a love interest in a typical Visual Novel, but she starts becoming more and more clingy towards Fishy Boopkins. When Fishy Boopkins breaks up with her, she has Wario and Waluigi build a mech for her so she can kill him.
  • Tanabata Manga: Ryuji Kuraki appears to be a nice guy to his fiancée, Lili; however, he only wants to marry Lili because he wants to get her family's money. Whenever Lili is not around, Ryuji abuses her daughter Mimi because he hates children and he also turns out to have a lover behind Lili's back.
  • Trouble Busters: Aaron's girlfriend Sharon seemed to be a nice woman. On the day of their wedding, Aaron got into an accident while trying to save a kid and couldn't attend the wedding on time. When he arrived, Sharon showed her true colors and called off the wedding and they broke up.
  • Voodont: Ellie at first appears to be a sweet and innocent cheerleader in contrast to the Jerkass that Sam is. The Voodoo Doll that Sam makes even sees her as such and attempts to warn her about what Sam plans to do to her. However, when it finally gets the chance to tell her, Ellie just calls her a gross little thing and swats her away. Upon seeing how mean Ellie actually is, the doll tears its own arm off, resulting in Ellie's painfully coming off off-screen.

    Webcomics 
  • Between Yearning And Obsession: Julia is in love with Camille since he’s the only person to treat her so kindly as opposed to the bullying she suffers from the jealous servants and Camille’s older brother, but she does not want to trouble him with the knowledge that she’s tormented. Except Camille knows she’s bullied, but he’s also a major Yandere who finds her at the peak of her beauty when she’s at her most miserable. To him this means she’ll cling onto him more so he looks the other way.
  • Cashmere Sky: Daphne establishes herself as this in Volume 2. When she needs help with her science project, she tries buttering up Enzo to try to get him to be her partner, then offering to have him be seen with her to boost his social status when he sees through it. When he refuses on both fronts, she's visibly a hair's length from snapping and opts to set fire to the radio he was working on when he isn't looking to incentivize him to partner up with her.
  • Drowtales: Snadhya'Rune comes across as a ditzy Napoleon Bonaparte; power-hungry but willing to aid the common masses in exchange for her absolute rule. She states her liberal-idealist intentions and has every possible threat to her rule slowly obliterated through war, betrayal, and propaganda. Until the clusterfuck that is Chapter 46: After being injured for the first time ever in the comic, she breaks the masquerade and freaks the fuck out, murdering everyone within a ten-yard radius. And may have destroyed her castle in a fit of rage if not for Mel's intervention. Later, her firstborn daughter Kalki is busy trying to use the airship to lay waste to Ariel's squad. She proceeds to destroy Kalki's physical body by using a magical grenade that manifests as ripper hands. And call her a faulty tool. Hemophobic bitch is an understatement.
  • General Protection Fault has Trudy, who puts up a polite façade to Dwayne (her boss) and Nick (the guy she likes), as well as various people whose good side she needs to stay on, but treats everyone else like dirt. In fact, for the first few years, she was outright evil, scheming with the supervillain organization CRUDE to take over the world, and disposing of her former allies once they're no longer useful.
  • Ghost Theater: The ghost of Pureun Shim seems to be an innocent, guileless girl who wants to say goodbye to her father before passing on, which the protagonists do their best to assist her with. It turns out to be a ruse so she can murder him. It's hard to call her too much of a bitch, though, since her father sold her to human traffickers to support his gambling addiction.
  • Girl Genius:
    • Zola seems to be an innocent, rather ditzy pawn of high-ranking plotters, but she's really a calculating villain, fully aware of what she's involved in, and possibly the biggest threat Agatha faces.
    • Giles Heterodyne, third-younger brother of the Castle's master at the time, joined the clergy and, through forty-two years of working his way up, was finally ordained Pope... Whereupon he prompty grafted wings onto the entire college of cardinals and looted the Papal Library. The family was very proud of him.
  • The Guide to a Healthy Relationship: Daniel is a friendly and charming young man who's easily liked by Apollo and his circle of friends. As to his home life, he manipulates and abuses his romantic partner, a mentally ill person.
  • His Face All Red: The narrator is a quiet, unassuming nerd who wishes he could be as well-liked as his older brother. So he murders him out of jealousy.
  • Homestuck: When the characters traveling on the meteor to the new session meet Aranea Serket, Vriska's dancestor as a ghost in the dream bubbles, she seems to be a friendly, helpful Ms. Exposition who provides other characters, and especially the reader, with lots of useful information. She's also best friends with Meenah and is very kind to and supportive of her dancestor Vriska. Dave, Rose, and Terezi all comment separately on how nice she is. Over the course of Meenah's flash games, several other members of the A1 session, Meenah especially, comment her like she's an Attention Whore who wants to be the most important player in the game, and actually pays people to listen to exposition they already know because she loves hearing herself talk. When John meets her, she and Vriska are mind-controlling hundreds of ghosts to use as fodder against Lord English. Finally, she steals the Ring of Life to resurrect herself, plans to stop Lord English her own way, and is willing to hurt or kill any of the main characters who don't go along with it. During her ill-fated attempt to carry out her plans, she pulls a Mind Rape on Jake (who previously had a crush on her), kills Jade, unintentionally kills Jake when he tries to save Jane from her, kills Jane anyway, mortally wounds Terezi, and destroys several of the kids' Lands before the Condesce finally manages to off her.
  • Joe vs. Elan School:
    • The titular school is this as a whole; they've perfected ways of making it look like it's a lovely rehabilitation facility for troubled teens, effectively covering up its abuses.
    • Specifically, Ron is this. Joe lists several of Ron's abuses, and says he's a complete psychopath, "...but when that man was on your side you really felt something special." During Joe's parents' first visit, he's amicable and personable to Joe's parents, but when they leave the room, Ron smugly tells Joe that he thinks Joe's dad is a closet homosexual and that his mother is a slut. The final irony is Ron's giving a speech at Joe's "graduation" that Joe's mother finds so touching that it sends her into dramatic hysterics, and his last words to Joe are a hollow, "You are enough."
    • Ditto Christy, whose cruelty gets a lot of attention in the story. On Joe's graduation day, Christy berates and threatens Joe for about an hour before giving an impassioned speech about how Joe is a "hero" and a "shining example."
  • Marry My Husband: Sumin, the 'best friend' of Jiwon. She admits that she sought Jiwon out to make herself look good, and during high school set up bullies against her during the incident with Eunho Baek. As Minhwan is also this to a certain extent, Jiwon comments internally that they were made for each other.
  • My Deepest Secret: Sophie. She was behind a lot of Emma's troubles, like the video of Yohan and her that spread around the school, and pushed her into a river. All the while, she'd been acting like a friend.
  • Perfect Marriage Revenge:
  • Rebirth: Parish appears like a sweet wife, but...she ignores one of her sons while doting on the other, she betrayed Noah in the previous timeline, and she's had an affair with Ian for years. She's never been that good at hiding this side of her.
  • Ryan from Sidekicks is introduced as another supublic that failed Justice College being sent to the Under Corps and he acts like any other corpsman, even trying to help the heroes when shit hits the fan. He's actually Phantom, an infamous villain whose real appearance has never been seen and who possesses a powerful mind control power. Having acted as The Mole for Metheos for a while, his cover is blown by a telepath he'd just finished controlling.
  • Survivor: Fan Characters: Bonnie used this trope to great effect in season 9, pretending to be a sweet and innocent girl to hide her Manipulative Bitch true colors. If not for an Engineered Public Confession staged by a seemingly useless robot, she could very well have walked away with the million. She tried this tactic again in season 16, pretending to be Bonnie's kind therapist with "Bonnie" being an actress hired by her, but this time her tribemates saw through her act much more quickly.
  • Vampire Cheerleaders: Heather may have seemed sweet and innocent, but it didn't take much for her to reveal her true colors, and it didn't take long either. All she needed was a taste of power. After choosing to become a vampire, she turned on her own parents; reducing them to being her mindless slaves.
  • Ziggy Pig and Silly Seal (2022) : Used by Ziggy Pig when he is interviewed on the Daily Bugle and angelically apologizes for the current rampage of bad behavior from the animal community (which he secretly started).

    Web Original 
  • Toki is kind and gentle to some but bitchy to others Actually, make that abusive.
  • This article of HearlessBitches.com is a rant about the Entitled to Have You sort of person.
  • Solange of the Whateley Universe started out this way. As a frosh, she was kind and understanding to Montana even though he looked like a sasquatch... and then she publicly humiliated him. All so she could force her way into the top clique of the school.
  • Wormwood Institute: The male host of the program seems very cheery when delivering whatever news story on the tapes, but when the news broadcast is done for the day, he doesn't hesitate to act as a jerkward to his co-host for saying a line in the script incorrectly.

    Web Videos 
  • AirPro Texts: Tina seemed to be the perfect girlfriend to Rod. However it turned out that she lied to Rod about his mother abusing her when it turned out that she had found out that she was cheating on him and had a dark past.
  • Gameboys: Terrence. At first he projects this scorned but concerned ex of Gavreel to Cairo by sowing doubt about Gav's advances. He is also concurrently trying to rekindle his relationship with Gav behind Cairo's back. He grows out of it in later episodes though.
  • The Nostalgia Chick combined this with a Sarah Palin impression to try and overthrow the Critic during Kickassia. To a less homicidal extent, how she is normally. There's something darker underneath that cute, girly exterior.
  • The Veronica Exclusive: Jane comes off as a sarcastic but charming outcast at first, and seems to be a genuinely loving girlfriend. Then the bodies of her enemies start piling up, and you find out that her love really isn't something you want.


 
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Alternative Title(s): Crouching Nice Guy Hidden Jerkass

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The Mayor's Aide

Leela dates Chaz the Mayor's Aide in the episode since he pulls strings to get her nice perks. They both went to the Rocket Skating Rink that he has reserved just for them - impressing her once more. But the reservation means that the orphans from the Cookieville Minimum Security Orphanarium can't take their turn on the rocket skating rink as planned and are missing out. Leela asks Chaz if the orphans can join them, but he refuses as he wants to impress her with his amazing influence. This leaves Leela extremely testy, and she makes him eat his own badge - meaning that the romance is over.

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