Face Heel Turn - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Heel Turn

Mal Reynolds: How come you didn't turn on me?
Jayne Cobb: Money wasn't good enough.
Mal Reynolds: What happens when it is?
Jayne Cobb: Well... that'll be an interesting day.

— Firefly episode 1, "Serenity"

In Professional Wrestling, a "good" wrestler (a face) is occasionally tempted by The Dark Side, or just gets fed up, and becomes a heel. Magazines and other promotional material from the various wrestling "leagues" frequently comment on various wrestlers' changes in "alignment" (in wrestling's fictional plotline known as kayfabe) nearly as frequently as they actually cover events in the ring themselves. (They even actually use phrases like "Face Heel Turn.")

In other genres, it means "good guy turns bad," the opposite of the Heel Face Turn. Perhaps the former hero(ine) has become a Rival Turned Evil. Perhaps he or she has lost perspective, and become a Well Intentioned Extremist. Perhaps something horrible has happened that shattered his or her faith in good, and he or she has become a Fallen Hero. The hero may have bravely declared "You shall not pass!" or his companions may have found it impossible to ensure that No One Gets Left Behind, but he proved to be Not Quite Dead and, deranged by his suffering, blames his companions for abandoning him. Maybe he or she has had enough of being pushed around, laughed at and put through hell, or maybe he or she has snapped after one too many rounds of Break The Cutie. Perhaps there is a Writer On Board committing Character Derailment.

Contrast The Mole: The Mole was always working for the Big Bad from the beginning, whereas a character making a Face Heel Turn was a genuine good guy until their change of heart.

In a world full of Brainwashed victims, they may be the one who appears to be but really is Not Brainwashed.

See also Heel Face Turn and Deal With The Devil.

Examples:

Live Action TV

Londo Mollari begins the Babylon 5 Myth Arc as the human commander's closest ally, but becomes The Dragon (or at least The Patsy for the Big Bad) as the series progresses. In fact, Londo vacillates between good and evil repeatedly as the series goes on.
- Also on Babylon 5, Talia Winters, once her "sleeper" personality was unlocked.
- ...and Lennier, too.
- ...and Garibaldi in season 4, due to a bad case of More Than Mind Control.
The third season of Degrassi The Next Generation revolves entirely around Manny and Sean turning heel, then slowly turning back to face.
Half the cast of Alias.
- This troper thinks that Arvin Sloane and Irina Derevko (and, to a lesser extent, Jack Bristow) had so many turns in both directions it's amazing that anyone could figure out what side they were on.
  - Their own.
On Lost, Michael was of the Well Intentioned Extremist variety, as he just wanted to save Walt, his son. He felt really bad about it, but there's varying opinion over whether or not we should feel sorry for him.
- Locke also tagged along with the Others for a while, but he didn't really switch sides.
Gul Dukat of Star Trek Deep Space Nine starts off as a recurring annoyance, but gradually warms up to the crew and looks like he's on the road to BadassDecay... then he realizes Good Is Dumb and stabs everyone in the back.
- Eddington is a more straightforward example from Deep Space 9.
Willow and Faith of Buffy (both of whom get subsequent Heel Face Turns).
Jake Straka, for some reason, near the end of The Guardian
Tyr on Andromeda — though we all knew it would happen sooner or later, as Tyr was always playing his own game.
Every character on Charmed, at some point or other.
Agent Li (Lee?), who may have been a mole all along on NCIS.
Undersheriff Mc Keen on CSI.
Dr. Zack Addy, who turned out to be the serial killer's apprentice on Bones.
- This troper always thought he looked like Kevin from "Sin City", which makes The Reveal slightly worse.
Sweet-natured Kes returns to Voyager to crumple bulkheads and anonymous ensigns in "Fury". It turns out she's angry at her former friends because…well it's never really explained. But don't worry as everything's back to normal by the end.

Video Games

The supposed Face Heel Turn of Ralgha "Hobbes" nar Hhallas in Wing Commander 3 was considered a definite Wall Banger for most fans of that series. In this case, he was an (unwitting) mole.
Sorbet in Magical Starsign fakes one as part of an elaborate plan to trick the Big Bad, and it's so convincing that even your party falls for it...unfortunately, you waltz in just as her plan is about to come to fruition.
Ghaleon in Lunar: The Silver Star.
Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII goes through a particularly malignant Face Heel Turn in the main character Cloud's flashback...the awesomeness of which also made him the ultimate Draco In Leather Pants character.
Seifer in Final Fantasy VIII goes through a much more low-key version of this as well.
Kain from Final Fantasy IV, partly because of brainwashing, but also partly because of his envy for his best friends Cecil, who was the boyfriend of the girl he had a crush on.
Hardain and his cronies from Fire Emblem 3.
- Alvis From Fire Emblem 4 though he never was part of your party.
  - Orson from Fire Emblem 8.
Captain Lee in Super Robot Wars: Original Generation 2 pulls one of these, after spending his entire time kicking dogs. Even a Dead Little Sister, or in this case family, doesn't protect him.
Jerry Ying from the John Woo game Stranglehold, who starts out as Tequila's partner and ally inside Wong's Dragon Claw syndicate, only to go native during the Chicago History Museum stage and carry out Wong's orders to kill Tequila and [[OffingTheOffspring Billie, Wong's own daughter. Tequila survives, but Billie isn't so lucky, setting up a furious showdown between partners as Tequila seeks vengeance for Billie]].
Arthas in Warcraft III
Beat in The World Ends With You does a Face Heel Turn and the opposite.
Baten Kaitos has a fantastic example in the first game, where the main character, Kalas is the one who betrays the party. He does rejoin later.
Sialeeds in Suikoden V.
The Boss in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, who switches from United States allegiances to the Soviet Union. It turns out that The Boss was really doing this to help the United States regain The Philosopher's Legacy. Naked Snake kills her, taking her position as Big Boss, only afterwards learning the truth.
Riku from Kingdom Hearts was, unknown to his best friend Sora, gradually making the Face Heel Turn, desperate to save Kairi through whatever means possible. He ends up going a similar way as Kain from Final Fantasy IV, complete with a return to the good side and a My God What Have I Done .
Mario plays the antagonist in Donkey Kong Junior.
The player character and his Five Man Band in Mechwarrior 4:Vengeance becomes the Five Bad Band in the Black Knight expansion.

Anime

Yui in Fushigi Yuugi, and most other instances of Rival Turned Evil.
Kaiser Ryo following a textbook Freak Out in Yu-Gi-Oh GX. The dub even has Judai/Jaden compare this to, "when a pro-wrestler suddenly starts dressing in black and throwing chairs in the ring." Judai, like his predecessor in Yu-Gi-Oh, also temporarily turns to The Dark Side (hey, Superpowered Evil Sides take some getting used to).
Vegeta in Dragonball Z who was admittedly already a Heel Face Turn and technically, just returning to his original alignment only to go through yet another Heel Face Turn after the showdown of rivals although not before sucker punching The Hero, Goku. This whole arc also has the bonus of being a mid-life crisis as well as being a Not Brainwashed moment. Come to think of it, he is probably the one character in that entire series to do as many alignment changes as a pro wrestler.
We know that Griffith from Berserk is a bad guy at the start of the anime, but most of us wouldn't know this from the idealistic mercenary leader that we meet in flashback during the second episode, who is about as close to The Messiah as one can get in a series like Berserk. The anime, which follows the Golden Age manga arc of the series, is about Guts's time with Griffith's Band of the Hawks, and the events that lead up to Griffith's betrayal, his ascension as the fifth member of the Godhand, and Guts's circumstances in the very first episode. And when Griffith finally does go bad in the final episodes, he goes very, very bad.
The Uchiha Bros. (tm) from Naruto might be taken into account, though their Heel turns were not really a alignment change. Maybe except for Sasuke's latest.
Julia and Collins from Blood Plus, though the former does return to the side of good after a while. The other gets a bullet to the brain.
Bleach has the infamous revelation of the main villains Aizen, Gin, & Tousen which I won't go into, but the 2nd filler arc also has 3rd seat Kifune of Third Squad. He even get a literal Face Heel Turn animation in the intro starting in episode 179.
- Also, when Orihime was forced to go with the Arrancars in exchange of her friends and hometown's safety, the Shinigamis thought she had gone through a Face Heel Turn. Ichigo refused to believe it and decided to go rescue her, triggering the beginning of the Arrancar arc.
Lord Genome from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, as shown in Parallel Works Eight. When he snaps, he snaps hard.
- Post-Time Skip Rossiu, previously a good guy, sets up Simon as a scapegoat for the problems caused by the anti-Spirals and takes over the government - and his plan to survive the anti-Spiral attacks involves leaving a large portion of the world's population to die.

Western Animation

Kids Next Door had an agent, Numbuh 274, who had appeared in a couple Season 1 and Season 2 episodes become a villain from Season 3 onwards after turning 13. However, it turned out that he'd been working for the good side all along in the final episode of Season 6.
Raimundo in the season one finale of Xiaolin Showdown. Shortly into season two, he does a Heel Face Turn and returns to his friends, but not without suffering some consequences and trust issues.
Dinobot, in Transformers: Beast Wars episode "Maximal No More". He does a Heel Face Turn back at the end, though, upon realizing that just because everything's going according to Megatron's plans doesn't mean that Megatron isn't a dangerous madman.
- Blackarachnia, in "Transformers: Animated" pulls her Face Heel Turn during the (mainly)flashback episode "Along Came A Spider." We discover that when they were in the Autobot Academy, Elita-One, Sentinel, and Optimus went to an organic planet, even though it was forbidden, and they encountered giant spiders. Escaping from the spiders, Elita used her download power to borrow Optimus's grapplers, but ran out of time, falling into a pit full of the spiders when Optimus failed to catch her with his other grappler. She attempted to use her download power on the spiders, but, the spiders being organic, it turned her into a mutated part-organic, part-mechanical Transformer with one of the spiders as her alt-mode. The new signal type made her impossible for Optimus to pick up on his radar, and led him and Sentinel to believe Elita was dead, and Blackarachnia to believe they abandoned her, and she joined the Decepticons.
Tai Lung of Kung Fu Panda. In this case, perhaps somewhat justified after the number his masters pulled on him, which this editor considers close to an Et Tu Brute moment: Shifu and Oogway may not have literally pulled daggers on their former student, but after years of being raised to believe he would be the Dragon Warrior, training constantly until his bones cracked, having his head filled with dreams by his father-figure, and even being given the Meaningful Name, to have them turn on him and refuse to grant what he'd aimed for his whole life must have felt like a backstab to the snow leopard.

Professional Wrestling

And, of course, countless "competitors" in Professional Wrestling. Often, a heel turn will stem from a face feeling as though he doesn't have the respect of the fans or his fellow faces; this is sometimes set up by having the face lose for several weeks in a row, finally lose his temper and blame the fans or other faces. Usually, the new heel will prove his heelishness with a sneak attack on a former face ally, often aided by his new heel allies. Heel turns by wrestlers who constantly switch between heel and face (Lex Luger and Paul Wight are two examples who spring to mind) don't have all that much impact on the fans, but when a long-term face goes heel it's a big deal. The biggest example of this would be babyface Hulk Hogan's heel turn at WCW event Bash at the Beach in 1996 after over a decade of superheroics, which shocked fans and generated mainstream attention. A wrestler who turns often enough eventually settles into "tweener" mode, where they're basically a face or a heel as the storyline demands.
The heel turn is also a popular way to split up a face tag team, especially when one member of the team is thought to have more potential as a singles wrestler. One of the most famous of these was when the Rockers, a pair of high-flying pretty-boy faces, appeared on Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake's talk show "The Barbershop" to air out their tensions of preceding weeks. After seeming to reconcile with a hug, Shawn Michaels proceeded to kick Marty Jannetty in the face and toss him through the (fake) glass window of the set, setting up his new persona of The Heartbreak Kid and a lifetime of superstardom.
Another famous tag team split occurred in the early 90's of WCW, when Lex Luger and Sting were the top faces, feuding with Ric Flair's devious Four Horsemen stable. In the weeks prior to a huge tag team title match, the Horsemen constantly told Luger that Sting was only out for himself and would abandon Luger when he needed him most, teasing that Sting would turn on him and join the Horsemen. In the match itself, a badly beaten Luger tried to tag his partner, but Sting had just been knocked off the ring apron by Horsemen associates, thereby "proving" that he wasn't there when he needed him, and prompting Luger to turn on Sting and join the Horsemen himself.
There seems to be a distressing tendency for a wrestler's Face Heel Turn to coincide with his winning a championship title. Supposedly, this is to maintain the "underdog" status of the face wrestler, and let the fans root for him against the Jerk Ass with the title. Sometimes the turn happens in the title match itself, if the 'underdog' wins the title through a particularly cheap method (use of foreign object, another wrestler interfering with the match, and so on).

Literature

An even more "they shoulda seen it coming" example: Raistlin Majere in the original Dragonlance books.
- Well, they did see it coming. They just didn't want to believe it.
  - I'd say more that they saw it coming, but they kept him around because they needed his help. Anyway, though Raistlin was more Anti Hero, even after his color-change he never acted directly against the heroes and continued to help them when he felt like it.
Subverted in Red Seas Under Red Skies, where the first chapter has Jean betraying Locke to a pair of assassins, then it flashes back to the start of the story. When it arrives back at the betrayal scene, we find that Jean was tricking the assassins and Locke just missed the hand signal for "lying."

Film

Anakin Skywalker of the Star Wars saga, who turned his back on the Jedi to become the ruthless Darth Vader.
Harvey "Two Face" Dent in The Dark Knight.

Theater

Arguably Elphaba from Wicked fits this trope, after having everything she tries spectacularly backfire on her, and having everyone she loves die all around her, she snaps during the song 'No Good Deed' dedicating herself to a lifetime of evil. Almost immediately subverted when she is shown to be just very, very pissed off, but not actually evil a mere song later.

Web Comics

White Mage from 8-bit Theater. It didn't take.
- Although he was never much of a hero to begin with, Black Mage has now officially joined the villains, resulting in Dri'zzl being forced to become a Light Warrior.

Web Original

Any time a previous non-player starts to actively participate in the 'game' in Survival Of The Fittest. As you might imagine, this tends to happen a lot. Then again, the opposite is also becoming more common.

Comic Books

Hal Jordan, Green Lantern poster child, underwent a psychotic turn into a being that wanted to reshape all of existence. Later explained and retconned, but still heavily controversial.
Cassandra Cain, the latest Batgirl, to unanimous disapproval. After spending 76 issues delving into her fragile psychology and fleshing her out into a complex character with high moral standards, DC savagely tore her down and made her into a cheap, drugstore-variety Dragon Lady who started killing people like roaches. Now, they've very cleverly revealed it she was actually brainwashed. Her? Really DC? Drug control?
Mary Marvel provided an interesting contrast as a Golden Age teen amidst modern comics characters. Unfortunately DC decided to make her turn evil in notably Wall Banger ways. Her clothes even turned black.
- And her skirt was just as short as Supertorso's "Belt with a trim" microskirt after the switch! Bad move all around.
In a particularly bad example of Executive Meddling, DC planned to turn Captain Atom into supervillain "Monarch." At the last minute they changed their minds and made the character "Hawk" murder his partner "Dove" and don Monarch's armor. Then they changed their minds again, giving Hawk the new handle of "Extant", putting Captain Atom into Monarch's armor and creating a new Hawk and Dove team. I Am Not Making This Up.

Real Life

F1 racing driver Kimi Raikkonen seems to have pulled one of these, at least in the eyes of UK fans. Until 2006 he was a charismatic underdog in a badly malfunctioning car, and one of the few serious rivals to Michael Schumacher. In 2007 he moved to Ferrari, won the title, and thus immediately lost the sympathy vote. Needless to say, it didn't help that his move coincided with Lewis Hamilton's arrival at Mc Laren.
- Exactly what did he did do, except win the championship in a perfectly legimit manner (albiet thanks to Hamilton making so many crucial mistakes in the final two races)? I.e., Raikkonen did not, and I must give emphasys to this, use any dirty trick, cheat... to win. Putting him as a Face Heel Turn seems to be more of the case of pure jealousy and / or misunderstading what it means to be a villain. You could even blame FIA for eventual problems Hamilton may have had regarding punishments and the like, but not him.
- Fernando Alonso is a better example, who turned from the magnificent World Champion to a jealous angry kid envying Hamilton's driving skills expressing a "You might be the better driver, but I'm the World Champion, damn you!" attitude.

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