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I'm not infected, I just want to kill you!
Say you're a Genre Savvy character living in a world where being Brainwashed is a common everyday occurrence. More Than Mind Control is nothing new. Finding out your friends and teammates have been taken over by The Virus no longer surprises you.
Now say your closest friend, or a family member, or your Mentor, or love interest starts acting weird, doing morally questionable things they normally wouldn't do. Smiling evilly, laughing maniacally, having lapses of memory, being unusually quiet and reclusive, kicking small pets, and there's something not quite right with their eyes. Maybe you investigate and find correspondence between them and the Big Bad.
No worries, though. This isn't a Face Heel Turn. They have all the classic signs. They're just Brainwashed like everyone else, right? Right. The secret gets out, and their new boss laughs as he gleefully tells you he isn't forcing them to do anything against their will, but that's to be expected. You two eventually have to fight; they're giving it everything they've got, but you're not because you know they're in there somewhere. They tell you you're wrong and insist they're not Brainwashed, but that's what they all say. You break out your Magic Antidote that's worked on a million victims before and hit it... and nothing happens.
Sorry, but in this one case, they're Not Brainwashed. They've genuinely joined The Dark Side by their own volition, or had a legitimate Freak Out and now have a new but real personality. And you can't bring them back the way you can to everybody else.
There's also the comedy option, where a character, having gone into a seemingly dangerous situation, finds out that it's actually something pleasant and enjoyable; unfortunately, their allies who stayed behind don't realize this, and attempt to rescue them from the "brainwashing".
Having one person out of a million Not Brainwashed is becoming more and more common. Not so much a subversion as the natural cycle of the trope.
Related to More Than Mind Control.
Examples:
- Teen Titans Judas Contract Arc: More so in the comics than the cartoon, Beast Boy/Changeling initially hoped Terra was being Brainwashed or manipulated somehow by Deathstroke/Slade before he could accept that her alliance with Slade was completely voluntary. In the cartoon, while she is manipulated by Slade, she is very voluntary about doing his dirty work for him. Having his own traumatic experience with Slade, Robin shares the hope that Slade's forcing her into it, and Terra has to spell it out for him: "I DON'T NEED SAVING! I'm not some sad little girl who's waiting to be rescued! I wanted to be this way! I wanted to go with Slade! I wanted to annihilate you and your pathetic friends!"
- In The Shadow movie, Lamont Cranston assumes Dr. Reinhardt's assistant, Farley Claymore, has been telepathically controlled into helping Shiwan Khan, until he tries to snap him out of it and Claymore boasts he is helping Khan of his own free will, hoping to be rewarded with power. Given Cranston's earlier life as the vicious drug lord Yin-Ko, he knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men, and really should have considered that possibility.
- In Bleach, Aizen's Zanpaktou can cast illusions that can fool anyone, if they have ever seen the sword using its power. However, Tousen is blind, thus unable to see the sword. It is then revealed that he joined Aizen of his own will.
- The 9th Espada pretends to really be Kaien Shiba out for revenge on Rukia because she was forced to kill him when he was possessed by a hollow before the events of the series. She was actually willing to die at his request but he slipped up and she realized it was a farce.
- The best example hands down would have to be Kaiser in Yu-Gi-Oh GX. He's a champion of a game notorious for causing Split Personalities and Superpowered Evil Sides in players, and his Freak Out and Evil Costume Switch take place during the More Than Mind Control arc, but in his case, he really just snapped after a humiliating loss. He tells his mentor, his best friend, and his brother that when they try to "cure" him by dueling him since Defeat Means Friendship: "There's no darkness inside me. I am not captured by darkness. I just want to know what brings out the power to win!" Originally, he was still a cold, aloof loner, but at least he had a strong sense of respect for his opponent. He gets better
- In the Justice League episode "The Brave and the Bold", the villain of the week uses mental domination as his main weapon, but it turns out after he's defeated that the scientist who was assisting him was doing so entirely voluntarily.
- Webcomic example: It's Walky's final arc deals with several mind-controlled former teammates... and one who, it turns out, switched sides by choice.
- In Warcraft III, Thrall is enraged to learn that Grom Hellscream was not brainwashed by the Burning Legion, but instead knowingly led the entire orc race into accepting the Blood Pact. Grom later redeems himself via Heroic Sacrifice.
- G Gundam had Domon's mentor, Master Asia, turn against him. Domon didn't give this much thought at first, since he had seen many people become Brainwashed by the Devil Gundam before then, and was mighty displeased to discover that Master Asia was serving the Devil Gundam purely by choice.
- A perfect example is Connor in Angel's fourth season. The demon Jasmine has the power to enthrall anyone who sees her; only contact with her blood can break the spell, at which point the victim sees her true, horrific face. Fred is accidentally freed this way, and she manages to free the rest of the cast one by one. But when they try to cure Connor, he betrays them — turns out that due to their blood relation, he's never been under Jasmine's spell, he just prefers her to his dad. (This is the last straw for Angel, who finally attacks the little psycho.)
- Another episode involved a boy who was apparently being possessed by a demon. When the demon is finally exorcised, he reveals that the boy was already more evil than he was: he was so evil, in fact, that he was not so much possessed by the demon as imprisoning him.
- After Wesley conspired to kidnap the baby Connor (and got his throat cut for his trouble) Angel visited him in hospital. Angel was at pains to stress that he was still Angel (and not the soul-less Angelus) before proceeding to try to smother him with a pillow
- This trope appears in the last story arc of the live-action adaptation Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon. Queen Beryl, who up until this point has been brainwashing her four lieutenants, resigns herself to certain death and releases Jaedite from her spell, so he can escape. His personality doesn't change at all: he reveals that he's always been her willing servant, and he intends to remain by her side no matter what.
- In Inu Yasha, Sango's brother Kohaku is brought Back From The Dead with Easy Amnesia to work for Naraku. He kills women and children while under Naraku's influence, but then regains his faculties. His sister's attempts to "break" his brainwashing at this point convince him that the best way to protect her (and make up for what he's done) is to continue working for Naraku in order to find a way to permanently destroy him.
- In the pilot episode of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, our hero is surprised to find his ex-partner Warp Darkmatter is not only alive, but working for the Big Bad. Unable to accept that his buddy has pulled a Face Heel Turn, Buzz offers several tried-and-true possible explanations:
Warp: No.
Warp: No...
Warp: No.
- In a series fraught with Evil Twin and Brainwashed And Crazy Power Rangers, Power Rangers SPD chose to break the chain and give us the A-Squad, a team of "elite" Rangers thought to have been lost in space (no pun intended), but had really faked their disappearance to voluntarily join with the Troobian army, believing it'll eventually crush the SPD and wanted to be on "the winning side" when it happened. All well and good...until a Canon Dis Continuity in the Disney Adventures follow-up comic reversed it back to Brainwashed And Crazy...
- This Ret Con does illustrate how it can often be hard to tell when somebody's really Not Brainwashed: somebody who really has been brainwashed is rather unlikely to say so, after all. If they did it would mean they were brainwashed really poorly.
- In American Dragon Jake Long, Spud makes a deal with an evil Gorgon who claims that she will make his cheerleader crush Stacy fall in love with him. And when Stacy does decide she likes Spud, he thinks that it's because of this supposed "love spell," even though she continues to act far more fickle than you'd think someone truly under a love spell would act. In the end, like any other Deal With The Devil, Spud has to break off his alliance with the Gorgon, and prepares himself for Stacy to break up with him now that she's not enchanted anymore. But Spud is relieved to find that there was never a love spell, and Stacy was Not Brainwashed.
- In Earthbound, Ness' "friend" Pokey is often seen with brainwashed humans, even claiming to have been brainwashed. Halfway through the game, he finally just flat out admits that he is actually working for the main villain.
- Literary example: In Trader by Charles de Lint, Max Trader has involuntarily swapped bodies with another character. When his teenage neighbor Nia learns this, then sees her mother kissing another woman, she assumes her mother has been swapped too. Not so. Her mother is really a lesbian and just hasn't come out to her yet.
- Hellsing, battle butler Walter is seen de-aged and on the side of the Nazi Vampires. When Alucard fights him, everyone assumes that he's been brainwashed. While it's left slightly ambiguous, it's heavily implied that not only was he doing it all of his own free will, but he had also been the cause of various security breaches earlier in the series.
- In Lois Mc Master Bujold's The Sharing Knife series, Fawn is constantly asked if the sorcerous Dag has beguiled her into marrying him, when they are really just in love. Also, in "Passage", Alder is not beguiled by Crane. And in "Horizon", a halfbreed Lakewalker beguiles a farmer into loving and marrying her, only to learn that beguilement wears off over time, and her husband is staying with her of his own free will.
- Bujold also plays the comedy situation for dramatics in Shards of Honor. Most of Beta Colony believes that Cordelia has been brainwashed by the Barrayarans, when she's really just in love with Admiral Vorkosigan.
- In Erfworld, Jillian concludes
 that Wanda rejects her urging to desert Stanley because she is bound by a loyalty spell. When an ally with spell-detecting abilities informs her that Wanda is not under any loyalty spells, she flatly refuses to believe it. But she comes around for the most part when Wanda tries to kill her, though.
- in Super Robot Wars Original Generation 2, much of the early plot revolves around surviving members of the "School" on the opposing side trying to "save" one of your pilots from obvious brainwashing. Of course, she's on your side entirely by choice, and they're the ones undergoing brainwashing.
- In an episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Worf and the legendary Klingon warrior Kor find an ancient heirloom which has the power to create a new golden age for the Klingon Empire. As the episode unfolds, they become increasingly at odds with one another over who should be the one to present it to the Empire, and even who gets to carry it. The fans were expecting some kind of silly tech explanation for this behaviour (i.e. that the artefact was brainwashing them), but no - it was just ordinary jealousy and petty macho posturing. Is this trope therefore Truth In Television, do you think?
- In Transformers: Beast Machines, Optimus Primal believes that Megatron has brainwashed Rhinox and turned him into the villainous Tankor. Even after awakening his spark, though, Tankor continues to oppose Optimus, as he has grown disillusioned with him after the failure of the Beast Wars.
- In Suikoden I: The Big Bad of the game has most of the empire's soldiers under her Mind Control, and everyone (including her) thinks she has the king under that power, too. At the very end of the game, though, he reveals that he was never really under her control, and was acting the way he did because he genuinely loved her.
- In Order Of The Stick #640, after Vaarsuvius takes great pleasure in killing an opponent (and their entire family)it is revealed that the Deal With The Devil they made had no effect on their alingment or actions— essentially, the character merely revealed their true self.
- Kyp Durron in the Star Wars Expanded Universe was definitely Not Brainwashed, though Luke thinks he was. It's the one time Kyp Durron fans agree with Corran on Kyp.
- Kamen Rider Decade; on DiEnd's world it turns out that Junichi is working for the villain and is not under his control as everyone has believed.
- Horribly subverted in World War Z where "Quislings", humans who pretend to be zombies (to the point of literally believing they are zombies) are just so much more zombie chow.
- Varies between the Spider-Man series, usually involving the character Venom, but special note has to go to the Spectacular Spider Man incarnation, because, Peter and Eddie were very good friends, but Peter's actions caused Eddie to genuinely despise Peter, the Symbiote only worsened this when it revealed Peters identity to Eddie, Peter even tries to tell Eddie to "Fight it", and then, during the fight, Eddie says he is not Peters brother, saying that his parents died, but Peter got off good with his Aunt and Uncle, after this, Peter realizes that Eddie is not the same friend he knew.
Comedy examples:
- The Angry Beavers "Zooing Time": The supposedly brainwashed Norbert is genuinely disappointed at being rescued from a zoo, because he actually likes it, but Daggett thinks that he's saying that because he was brainwashed. (And he's taking responsibility for getting Norb sent to the zoo to begin with.)
- Same goes in Kids Next Door, "Operation: C.O.L.L.E.G.E.", with Nigel participating in snow cone research.
- The Castle Anthrax sequence from Monty Python And The Holy Grail.
- Disney's Oliver and Company, when the titular kitten is adopted by a rich little girl, only to be 'rescued' by his stray-dog friends.
- The Dresden Files, when Bob the Skull tries to get Harry to let him out for a night:
Harry Dresden: No way. Last time I let you out, you got into a frat party and started an orgy.
Bob the Skull: I didn't do anything another couple of kegs of beer wouldn't have done!
- Lilo And Stitch: In one episode, Lilo's friend Keoni has a crush on Pleakly (in his horrible disguise as a human woman). Lilo, Stitch, and Jumba are quick to blame the Monster Of The Week, but no, he actually does have a crush on Pleakly.
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