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    Comic Books 
Green Arrow: Green Lantern!
Hal Jordan: Not Green Lantern, Arrow. Not anymore. I've taken the name Parallax. I've seen the universe from many different directions, and I know how to fix it — even if it means destroying it!

"Let me tell you the kind of world I live in. It is a world of miserable, bitter, ungrateful paramecium who lash out at you in a state of perpetual rage for not solving their problems fast enough. You do astonishing things for them a hundred times a day. You bring wonder to the lives of ordinary people. And in the end, you realize it's like doing magic tricks for a dog. So you build a home out of a volcano and you hope the noise drowns them out."
The Plutonian, Irredeemable

"I once thought that I was impervious to the allure of the Dark Side. I was mistaken."
Ulic Qel-Droma, Tales of the Jedi

    Film 
"You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."
Harvey Dent/Two-Face, The Dark Knight

"You thought we could be decent men in an indecent time, but you were wrong! The world is cruel... and the only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased. Unprejudiced. Fair."
Harvey Dent/Two-Face, The Dark Knight

Two-Face: The Joker chose ME!
Batman: Because you were the best of us! He wanted to prove that even someone as good as you could fall.
Two-Face: And he was right.

Kirk: What happened to you out there, Edison?
Krall: "Edison..." I have to say, Kirk, I missed being me. We lost ourselves, but gained a purpose! A means to bring the galaxy back to the struggle that made humanity strong.
Kirk: I think you underestimate humanity.
Krall: I fought for humanity! Lost millions to the Xindi and Romulan wars, and for what? For the Federation to sit me in a captain's chair and break bread with the enemy!

Darth Vader: You turned her against me!
Obi-Wan: You have done that yourself!
Darth Vader: You will not take her from me!
Obi-Wan: Your anger and your lust for power have already done that. You have allowed this dark lord to twist your mind until now... until now, you have become the very thing you swore to destroy.
Darth Vader: Don't lecture me, Obi-Wan. I see through the lies of the Jedi. I do not fear The Dark Side as you do. I have brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new Empire!
Obi-Wan: Your new Empire?!
Darth Vader: Don't make me kill you.
Obi-Wan: Anakin, my allegiance is to the Republic! To democracy!
Darth Vader: If you're not with me, then you're my enemy.
Obi-Wan: Only a Sith deals in absolutes. (picks up his lightsaber) I will do what I must.

Obi-Wan: (on the verge of tears) You were the Chosen One! It was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them! Bring balance to the Force... not leave it in darkness!
Darth Vader: (gazes up at him remorsefully, but then his face twists into absolute rage) I HATE YOU!
Obi-Wan: You were my brother, Anakin! I loved you!
Obi-Wan Kenobi, to Darth Vader, Revenge of the Sith

"Your father was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force. He ceased to be Anakin Skywalker and became Darth Vader. When that happened, the good man who was your father was destroyed. So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view."
Obi-Wan Kenobi, to Luke Skywalker, Return of the Jedi

    Literature 
Armsmaster: What do you want, monster? Little point in coming after me. I don’t have much of a life to look forward to. I’ve already lost everything!
Mannequin: (says nothing)
Armsmaster: You’d be doing me a fucking favor! Come on! Come get me, you freak!
Dragon: Oh, Colin.
Dragon: The PRT got a tip from one of the villain teams. The Slaughterhouse Nine is in town.
Armsmaster: So I gathered.
Dragon: They ran it by some of the experts. Colin, the consensus they came to was that Slaughterhouse Nine are in Brockton Bay to replace their ninth member.
Armsmaster: Me!?
Worm

"Begone! The sight of you is all the fouler, knowing that you once were fair."

    Live-Action TV 
Daisy: Stop! People are dying!
Talbot: This is war; collateral damage is part of it. I need to arm myself so I can fight my enemies.
Daisy: You are becoming the enemy, whether you believe it or not.

"You start with a code. You hold onto it with every self-righteous breath, but then you take one life. Then another, then another, then another. You'll see."
Earth-99 Bruce Wayne, Crisis on Infinite Earths (2019)

Ultraman Taro: Return to the Land of Light with me! Restore the light within you, Tregear!
Ultraman Tregear: You know nothing, Taro! I reject both the light and the bond! Its all just an illusion!

    Music 
"If only I could stand and stare in the mirror, could I see
One fallen hero with a face like me?
And if I scream, could anybody hear me?
If I smash the silence, you'll see what fame has done to me"
W.A.S.P., "The Idol"

For the last time I've been betrayed
Never again will I subject myself to this hypocrisy
Something is drawing me to the other side
Only time will tell my true destiny

    Professional Wrestling 
"...and when it all came to pass, the name Hulk Hogan, the man Hulk Hogan, got bigger than the sport of professional wrestling brother!"
Hulk Hogan, during his famous Face–Heel Turn.

    Tabletop Games 
Those who have tasted the light of goodness and justice and turned away make the foulest villains.
Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition Dungeon Master's Guide, on fallen paladins who become Blackguards.

"In troubled times, there are few greater sorrows than a wayward savior."

Somewhere down the line, the Order of Reason lost sight of their goals. Invention and structure became ends in and of themselves. During the Industrial Revolution, Artificers introduced factories and the modern work ethic to churn out innovation upon innovation without thought for their effects on the Masses. The Guild encouraged mass production, laissez-faire economics and colonialism. The Cabal of Pure Thought stopped revealing truths to the Masses, and began restructuring their perception of history through archaeology and geology. The Hippocratic Circle lost interest in healing humans and considered how they could be improved through accelerated evolution. The Void Seekers remained true to their goal of exploration; the native cultures they encountered, however, were brutally enslaved, assimilated, or destroyed.
Mage: The Ascension, Core Rulebook (2nd ed)

Unfortunately, Fariq's noble goal will not come to fruition. The atrocities committed by both Christians and Muslims will destroy his idealism and fill his soul with bitterness. Muslims will be driven from the Kingdom of Hungary in the mid-13th century. Age will taint Fariq's mistrust. This will result in his refusal to attend the Convention of Thorns in the 15th century, his eventual indoctrination into the ranks of the Assamite antitribu, and from there, his initiation into the Path of Evil Revelations. Fariq will fall from grace, and he has a very long way to fall...
Vampire: The Dark Ages - Transylvania By Night

Once Mankind's greatest champions, now its direst foes.
Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook (7th edition) on the Chaos Space Marines.

    Video Games 
"A fallen hero. How regrettable."

"It is such a quiet thing, to fall. But far more terrible is to admit it."

"Once there was a man named Jack who wanted to find a Vault and become a hero. Things kind of escalated from there."

"While I was under his control, I realised something. Egil once wished only to break the circle of suffering, he believed that if blood was spilt now a new world would be born. But something terrible happened and now, now he is consumed with vengeance."
Gadolt talking about Egil, Xenoblade Chronicles 1

Rex: Mythra, don't tell me?
Mythra: Yes, he's a Blade too. He was the strongest Blade in Torna, until it fell in the war.
Jin: It fell, says the girl who sank it!
Rex: A Blade?
Mythra: There were none stronger, yet none kinder either and no one who hated to fight more than him. Why Jin, what changed?
Jin: What if I told you it was your fault?
Mythra: Mine?
Jin: If you hadn't sealed yourself away, she'd still-
Mythra: Oh, so that's it.

"In my years fighting crime, I've learned one truth: that every villain is the hero of his own story. Superman was no exception. The Joker drugged him. Tricked him into killing his pregnant wife Lois. And made him trigger the bomb that nuked Metropolis. So when Superman killed the Joker, I understood why. We all did. But once that line was crossed, there was no going back. He gave himself and the Justice League a new mandate. Stop all crime before it happened, by any means necessary. But he couldn't see his good intentions were leading him down a path of tyranny and evil. That's how our greatest hero...became our greatest threat."

Atrocitus: Earth's hero turned villain...
Superman: Justice requires order!
Atrocitus: Looks more like oppression.
Atrocitus, Injustice 2, to Superman on the Man of Steel's fall to villainy.

"I was their most devoted warrior. A champion of light. But I fell... Fell into darkness. And now I am feared as the Prince of Darkness. Ironic, don't you think?"

"I knew you as you used to be, long ago. You were once a fine investigator, and an example to others on the force. I'm sorry to learn that you are no longer that person."
The Judge, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney case 5

    Web Original 
When you get transported to a different world one too many times and 'become' the demon lord everyone else gets transported in to fight
Abrax404 on a piece of artwork depicting Anne Boonchuy as the first Big Bad of Infinity Train

Sephiroth wasn't eating. The man who would burn villages and bring untold suffering on the planet wasn't eating because he was upset and worried about his friends.
Whatever you think of Seph, no matter how incredibly evil and irredeemable he is now, at one point in his life, he was just a soldier with two friends who he loved dearly. Friends who he loved enough to go against the company that raised him. Friends who he was low-key essentially committing treason for. Friends that ultimately tipped him over the edge.
This Tumblr post on Sephiroth

    Western Animation 
Cheetor: Do you think [Depth Charge] will come back?
Optimal Optimus: There was a time he would never have left. Rampage changed all that.

"I did love being a hero. But if this is where it leads... I'm done with it."
Alternate-universe Superman moments before killing President Lex Luthor, Justice League, "A Better World"

Bumblebee: Megatron is my hero!
Windblade: No, he's not your hero! How could you say that? We've lost friends because of him. He's ruined everything we loved!
Bumblebee: Really? But... in the arena, everyone loved him.


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