Peter Petrelli: Do you know me?
Adam Monroe: Of course I know you. It's me, Adam. Don't you remember? You and I are going to change history.
—
Heroes, "Out of Time"
The Hero, or a member of the
heroic band, finds a
Mentor with new secret techniques to teach. The student eagerly signs on, only to learn later that there's a catch — the mentor is evil, has a hidden agenda of his or her own, and those new abilities are seriously nasty (though certainly not
useless). The student may feel
"soiled" by having learned these
techniques and might swear off ever using them again, or they might have to
wrestle with temptation against using them regularly. Of course, the audience fully expects that there will come a time of great need, and
out will come the evil technique because
Its The Only Way.
The Evil Mentor might teach the character
Black Magic, a
Dangerous Forbidden Technique, how to use a
Deadly Upgrade (while downplaying the costs), advanced
Psychic Powers like
Mind Rape or
Mind Control, and generally introduce them to abilities or substances that are
painfully addictive and make
Psycho Serum seem safe to use by comparison.
The Evil Mentor's motivation for this are similar to those of an
Old Master, but with a
Zen Survivor's more elitist air: they're looking for someone to carry on their legacy, warts and all, and usually
against the pupil's wishes because only
they are "worthy enough" to learn it. This usually entails actively
corrupting the hero, not just to spread evil and
deny good a powerful champion, but also netting him a personal
Dragon. The Evil Mentor is also patient enough to wait, hoping that if attempts to actively corrupt fail at forcing a
Face Heel Turn, then more passive temptation will do their work for them.
A variant is the Evil Mentor's
Book, which is not evil
per se, but contains
dark-side-y formulas and things the student
might not be ready to learn. Unless, y'know, it's an
Artifact Of Doom, in which case it's an Evil Mentor in book form.
Contrast
Deceptive Disciple, who turns "good" or honorable martial arts or powers on their head to achieve evil ends or inverts them into
Black Magic. See also
Bastard Understudy for a villain's voluntary apprentice.
If the mentor pretends to be a good mentor but is actually a villain out to exploit his student, he's a
Treacherous Advisor. The step-down of this trope is the
Broken Pedestal, who trains the student well, but is eventually revealed to be bad or corrupt much to the student's chagrin.
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Examples:
Anime & Manga
- The Big Bad of Basilisk, Tenzen Yakushiji, takes a boy in ( Koushirou Chikuma) and trains him as his apprentice and right hand, years before the events of the series start.
- History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi introduces a whole organization of these in the manga after the arc covered in the anime called Yami. Unlike Kenichi's masters, Yami stresses the value of martial arts as killing methods. One member in particular Isshinsai Ogata aka Kensei-sama has taken an interest in Kenichi...
- Mahou Sensei Negima plays a lot with this one, with Negi becoming apprentice to Evangeline, who holds a reputation as one of the most powerful, evil, undead vampire mage alive. Negi is fully aware of this, but trains with her anyway after deciding that she's not really ''that'' evil. And he seems to be right, regardless of how evil she claims to be.
- The whole idea is played to the hilt when Negi's childhood friend Anya shows up and discovers the identity of Negi's master. She immediately freaks out and hastily informs the girls of the danger they're in and starts to formulate a plan to escape from Evangeline without getting killed. Evangeline takes the opportunity to sneak up behind Anya while in Uber-Evil-Adult-Mode and scare the crap out of her.
- At one point, when Eva is mentioned, one of the girls starts listing off all of Eva's names and titles in a bored voice to let the person know that, yes, Evangeline is that Evangeline and we are fully aware of her reputation.
Comic Books
- In Wee Tian Beng's The Celestial Zone, Xue Wu runs across one of these near the end of the series. Given that his insane competitiveness has been pushing him down the slippery slope—not to mention that a villain recently gave him the If You Kill Me You Will Be Just Like Me speech right before he kebabed her—it doesn't end well.
Fairy Tales
- In Farmer Weathersky
, the boy's master teaches him magic but will keep him forever unless his father can find and recognize him, which he manages only with difficulty. Father Weathersky then tries to get the boy back with trickery.
- In The Thief and His Master, the father only has to pay if he can't recognize his son, but the master uses magic to prevent him. And when the father succeeds, he tries to reclaim the boy.
Films
- Obviously, Anakin Skywalker and Chancellor Palpatine of Star Wars: "I can teach you things you need to know in order to save Padme. Oh, and you'll have to kill a bunch of kids for me too, but never mind that now..."
- This actually happens so often in the Extended Universe (to Ulic Qel-Droma, Luke Skywalker, Jacen Solo...), it's practically a trope of its own.
- The Karate Kid, part 3 had Mr. Silver, slowly training Daniel to become more and more vicious in his fighting tactics. This climaxes when Daniel punches another guy in the nose at a dance, which makes him realize what he has done.
- Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.
- Los Angeles Narcotics Detective Alonzo Harris from Training Day is THE poster boy of this trope.
- Henri Ducard / Ra's al Ghul in Batman Begins.
Literature
- Justin DuMorne, Harry's tutor in The Dresden Files. Later in the series, the fallen angel Lasciel attempts to become an Evil Mentor by teaching Harry how to power his spells with literal hellfire.
- Teresa Edgerton's The Castle of the Silver Wheel: the dwarf Brangwengwen plays this straight with Gwenlliant - Brangwengwen, a partially trained, elderly witch, knows the castle well enough to get into the Princess Diaspad's old rooms and thus to her old spellbooks (which feature Black Magic), and offers instruction in witchcraft to Gwenlliant (who otherwise has no teacher, and few people to talk to).
- In In the Midnight Hour by Patti O'Shea, Ryne's mentor Anise turns to the dark side. Ryne doesn't know for sure during her years-long training period with Anise that she's secretly evil, but eventually figures out that she must have been bad all along. (You'd think Anise's kinky bedroom antics would have been a clue.) As the person closest to her, Ryne is assigned to be the one who takes Anise down, and she's afraid that she may turn to the dark side as well.
- Another Evil Mentor's Book is the annotated Potions textbook in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince: Harry has no idea what one of the spells written in the book does until he uses it on Draco Malfoy and severely injures him. However Malfoy was trying to cast an Unforgivable Curse on Harry at the time.
- Falcone in the Warchild Series plays this role for Yuri. He attempts it with Jos and Cairo, too, but they don't jump at his call and both reject his teachings at once. Only Yuri follows Falcone's training and instruction without protest.
- Joruus C'baoth in The Thrawn Trilogy calls Luke to him, and for a few days Luke follows him around trying to learn from him, but quickly comes to believe that C'baoth was insane and had possibly fallen to the Dark Side. C'baoth believes himself to be the ultimate authority, naturally above those who are not Jedi. This is cinched when Luke tries to leave with Mara Jade and they are attacked, and later when they find that he was working with Thrawn.
- Interestingly played with in Outbound Flight, with Jorus C'baoth(the original) and his interest in the fourteen-year-old Anakin Skywalker. The original C'baoth had a superiority complex and beliefs much like his clone's, though slightly less obvious. Obi-Wan is uneasy about this. Anakin, in some of the most subtle this-kid-isn't-gonna-turn-out-right characterization in or out of the Expanded Universe, thinks that C'baoth is awesome. He solves things so quickly, and he doesn't take nonsense from anyone.
Live Action TV
- On Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Professor Maggie Walsh epitomizes this trope.
- Averted with Zaan in Farscape. She had to learn both offensive Psychic Powers and become willing to use them to beat the episodes big bad, both painful since she was a Technical Pacifist. Her teacher at the time was more of a Zen Survivor than evil though, but his lessons led to her using her abilities more assertively in later seasons.
- In Season 2 of Heroes, Big Bad Adam Monroe takes under his wing resident Idiot Hero Peter Petrelli, successfully manipulating him into furthering his plans to release an apocalyptic virus upon the Earth.
- Ruby of Supernatural, even if her intentions are good (and they may not be).
Theatre
- Roy Cohn to Joe Pitt in Angels In America. Despite being a hideously loathsome man, he has a genuine affection for Joe, and offers him much in the way of (what he thinks of as) advice, which later leads to problems when Joe refuses to believe his "questionable but good-at-heart" mentor could do the kind of horrible things Roy Cohn really did.
Video Games
- Kreia from Knights of the Old Republic II. She states fairly early that she used to be a Sith, and tries to impart upon the main character the lessons of self-reliance, how doing good rarely solves anything, manipulating others to do your bidding, and a whole lot of other lessons that run contrary to the Jedi code. She is also the Big Bad, but unlike a Treacherous Advisor she never uses her mentor position to backstab the protagonist, as she actually cares for The Exile.
- Riku in the Kingdom Hearts series had this as a recurring problem. The power he learned from Maleficent and Ansem was too useful not to use, but gave him serious self-image issues.
- Goutetsu in Street Fighter, who taught a form of martial arts that used murderous intent in every move. Two of his students were Gouken and Akuma; Gouken purged the murderous aspects of the martial art and went on to teach this form to his students Ryu And Ken, while Akuma used the form as it was intended. Akuma used it to kill Goutetsu (who died happy, knowing his legacy would carry on through his student) and later tried to pass it on to Ryu.
- Oh come on! Fable has only just been mentioned?
Western Animation
