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The Mole / Live-Action TV

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  • 24 has probably the most famous example of this. Over the course of eight seasons, there have been fifteen named and confirmed moles, not counting the hundreds of unnamed ones in Day 7. This figure also doesn't include double and triple moles. Amazingly, even by the eighth season, the characters are still astounded when a mole within CTU is uncovered. This has prompted many fans to suggest that Jack Bauer needs to have a long talk with CTU's director of Human Resources. It's not just CTU itself, either; every agency in the series is plagued by numerous moles.
  • The Adventure Game: After appearing as a contestant in the last episode of the first series, former Blue Peter presenter Lesley Judd appeared as The Mole in the second series, ostensibly needing to be rescued by the three contestants but actually working to hinder them. The contestants would be told in advance that "one of [them]" was a mole, and around two-thirds of the way through each episode, they and Judd would be gathered together and asked to collectively identify the mole; if they guessed correctly, Judd would confess and allow them to continue, but if they guessed incorrectly, the falsely accused mole would be eliminated from the team (though this came with the blessing of exempting them from the episode's final game, the Vortex), Judd would unmask herself, and the remaining two contestants would have to continue on their own. Only one of the five teams from Series 2 (comprising mathematician and Rubik's Cube expert David Singmaster, Nationwide presenter Sue Cook, and marketing executive Philip Sheppard) correctly identified Judd as the mole.
  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
    • Multiple moles appear in "Turn, Turn, Turn". HYDRA has so thoroughly infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. that they are able to stage a coup, capturing multiple S.H.I.E.L.D. facilities. In addition, Agent Garrett turns out to be the Clairvoyant and a HYDRA operative, and Agent Ward turns out to be his right-hand man.
    • In Season 2, Episode 3, "Making Friends and Influencing People", it is revealed that Agent Simmons is undercover in HYDRA, leaking their projects to Coulson, and in Episode 5, "A Hen in the Wolf House", Bobbi Morse a.k.a. Mockingbird, Head of Security for HYDRA, is also a mole... put in charge of finding moles.
  • Andor: In episode 10, we discover that Luthen has a Mole in the ISB — Lonni, the one with the mustache. Luthen is willing to sacrifice an entire crew of rebel fighters he bankrolls in order to preserve his Mole's security.
  • Angel: Cordelia is like this in Season 4, although it isn't the real Cordelia as her body is being used by an antagonist higher power of ambiguous morality.
  • Arrested Development: Spoofed, when Tobias is asked to be a mole for the CIA; he think it's a casting agency, and assumes they want him to put on a mole costume.
  • In the Arrow episode "Vigilante", Artemis is revealed to be a mole in Team Arrow for Prometheus.
  • Ashes to Ashes (2008): It is revealed near the end of season 2 that Chris has been blackmailed into being a mole. He is however not a bad guy, so he redeems himself promptly with a Face–Heel Turn.
  • The Assets is the true story of Aldrich Ames, a CIA agent who was a mole for the KGB for years.
  • A couple of examples turn up in Babylon 5:
    • In "Chrysalis", Garibaldi uncovers a plot to assassinate the president of the Earth Alliance. Before he can deliver a warning, he is shot in the back by his aide Jack.
    • In "Divided Loyalties", Lyta Alexander delivers a warning that someone on the station has a deep-cover personality implanted by Psi Corps. It turns out to be Talia Winters.
  • A minor example in one episode of Barney Miller has the squad looking a "field agent" who is working for Internal Affairs. Due to the litany of excessively trivial offenses they're cited with, they quickly figure out that it's Levitt.
  • The Barrier: A nurse from the registry office tricks Álex into coming in her apartment by pretending to be part of La Résistance. She turns to be working for the Police State and to have lured Álex so she could use radical means to keep him from joining the real resistance.
  • Played with in Battlestar Galactica (2003). From the beginning of the first season, the audience is aware that Boomer is a Cylon, although the crew of the ship, and Boomer herself, are not. The season arc features her struggling with self-doubt over whether or not she's human, attempting suicide, and ultimately learning that she is in fact a Cylon. In the season finale, she seemingly sides against her kind and sets off a nuke destroying a Base Star full of other copies of her, and at that moment the Wham hits; as Commander Adama is meeting her in CIC and praising her for a job well done, she draws her sidearm and shoots him twice, point blank, in the chest. The reveal of several other characters in the season three finale includes two significant moles, as well as two lower-tier individuals. They're not really moles, though — their presence in the fleet turns out to be more like a punishment... or a joke.
  • One episode of Blackadder Goes Forth has Blackadder look for a mole within the military hospital. He takes the opportunity to torture... er, interrogate Darling for kicks, and gets cozy with the hospital nurse, while a man with an obvious German accent is a patient in the hospital. Come to find out in the conclusion, though, the nurse was the actual mole, and the 'German spy' was, to Darling's embarrassment, a British mole who picked up an accent during his time in Germany. Then the Twist Ending reveals that George was inadvertently the mole, writing letters to his German uncle.
  • Blindspot:
    • Jane's handlers in Sandstorm force her to be this for them in the FBI throughout Season 1, under threat against Kurt's life.
    • Throughout the first half of Season 2, it is repeatedly mentioned that Sandstorm has a second mole, meant to monitor Jane in case she defects. The midseason finale reveals it to be Dr. Borden.
  • Bones: Zack Addy is one for the Gormagon. He comes back occasionally, though, because he's a freakin' genius and nobody else can figure out the killer.
  • Shows up a few times in Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • Jenny was sent to Sunnydale in Season 1 to keep an eye on Angel.
    • After Buffy joins the Initiative, she considers herself still to be investigating them and not really a member.
    • Spike is a mole inside the Scoobies, for Adam.
    • Riley in Season 8 is The Mole on Buffy's side.
  • Charité at War: Fritz Kolbe is suspected of being a spy of the Gestapo (Nazi secret police). He's actually spying on the Nazis for the Americans. Nurse Christel becomes a mole for Nazi Professor de Crinis, and gladly denounces dissidents and homosexuals to him.
  • Sarah does this in Season Four of Chuck to rescue Chuck's mother, who is also revealed to be this after her subsequent Heel–Face Revolving Door when she left her family years ago to join Volkoff Industries.
  • Class of '09: Far-right terrorists get one of their members into the FBI academy, and he then shoots many agents or trainees while going in for firearms training.
  • The Closer: In the final season, a leak in Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson's department traces back to Lieutenant Gabriel's girlfriend Ann. Goldman hired her to cozy up to Gabriel for inside information about the LAPD and Brenda's cases especially. Gabriel is legally cleared of wrongdoing, since everything he shared with Ann was said in confidence. He's still heavily scorned by members of the team for his accidental role in the leak.
  • Criminal Minds: Emily Prentiss is added to the team by Section Chief Erin Strauss with the purpose of being the mole in the BAU and feeding Strauss dirt on leaders Aaron "Hotch" Hotchner and Jason Gideon so she can sabotage their careers. Instead, Prentiss resigns instead of betraying Hotch and is later reinstated on the team.
  • Day Break (2006): Booth has somebody working for him within the police department who will tamper with some of the evidence for the Garza murder in order to frame Hopper. Hopper at first suspects it to be Spivak, since he's leading the investigation, has been incredibly hostile to Hopper in particular, and is under investigation by the Grand Jury himself. However, on the final day, he finds out that it was Chad all along, despite Chad seeming to be a Jerk with a Heart of Gold beforehand.
  • Doctor Who:
    • "The Web of Fear" concerns the fact that one character in the group is working for the Great Intelligence. Oddly for anyone who knows anything about Doctor Who, the character clearly intended to be the primary suspect for most of the story is (then-)Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart. (The novelisation alters this by clearing him of suspicion early on.) The viewer's primary suspect is probably Chorley. The actual suspect turns out to be Arnold, a Mauve Shirt who got killed in an earlier episode and is still moving around as a possessed corpse.
    • In "The Masque of Mandragora", Sarah Jane is hypnotized into doing this.
    • The character of Vislor Turlough is initially introduced as a mole character who orchestrates his way into becoming one of the Fifth Doctor's companions under orders from the Black Guardian to kill him, but eventually does a Heel–Face Turn and defies the Guardian and goes on to become a loyal companion for the rest of his time on the show.
    • In "The Runaway Bride", Lance — the fiancé of the eponymous bride — is revealed to be working for the sinister Empress of the Racnoss.
    • In "Attack of the Cybermen", one of the gang is actually a police officer. Also, it turns out that Lytton was using the Cybermen to get to his real employers and help them against the Cybermen.
    • In "The Long Game", it turns out that Suki MacRae Cantrell, one of the reporters that the Doctor, Rose and Adam meet on Floor 139, is actually Eva St. Julien, last surviving member of the Freedom Fifteen, who infiltrated Satellite 5 to try and bring an end to the Epiphanic Prison it was keeping humanity in.
    • In ""Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel", the Alternate Universe version of Pete Tyler appears to be The Quisling as a high-ranking executive working for John Lumic... but he's actually Gemini, the informant feeding the Preachers information. However, he thought he was assisting someone more impressive than "Scooby-Doo and his gang".
    • In "Utopia", a Futurekind woman has infiltrated the bunker amongst the throngs of refugees in order to sabotage the base. The fact that she lacks the tattoos and piercings sported by the others certainly helps.
    • In "Last of the Time Lords", a scientist Martha gets help from turns her over to the Master. Exploited, however, as Martha's actually counting on her doing so as part of her plan.
    • In "Planet of the Ood", Dr. Ryder eventually reveals himself as a member of Friends of the Ood who spent ten years infiltrating Ood Operations to try and free the enslaved species.
    • In "Journey's End", it turns out that Dalek Caan is one. When he last escaped the Doctor with his time jump, he accidentally saw all of time and realized just how wrong and evil his own kind are, so he set it upon himself to destroy them, leading the Daleks to a point where the Doctor could destroy them for good.
  • Dollhouse: The early episodes set up that there's a spy somewhere in the House, eventually revealing it to be head of security Dominic. Notable in how the character was practically the only one fans hadn't suggested The Mole to be... because it was such an obvious choice, they assumed it ruled the character out. In the final episodes, it is revealed that in fact Boyd, a trusted figure in Adelle's house, is the one in charge of Rossum Corporation.
  • In Dominion, the humans now face a serious threat of this from the Powers, who don't need to possess human hosts, and can thereby get past the angelic detection equipment. Then there's the Black Acolytes, the cult that worships Gabriel, and are far reached enough that one of them is William Whele, leader of the Church of the Savior and son of the second most powerful person in Vega.
  • In Elementary, a powerful business man with few moral scruples is hardly a good man, but after Moriarty, Holmes' nemesis, is in jail and Moriarty's successor feared this man could take over and and so tried to assassinate the rival, the mole, Morland Holmes, father of Sherlock Holmes, does take over Moriarty's organization for the express purpose of destroying it from the inside.
  • Firefly:
    • Yolanda/Saffron/Bridget made a living out of being The Mole. She was introduced as an innocent and submissive young woman. She claimed she's a reward as wife for their captain because her people couldn't pay them in a standard way while in fact she's a trained companion and criminal mastermind who tried to kill the crew in order to sell their ship. She also ratted out her husband who loved her deeply and thought she was kidnapped from him.
    • Shepherd Book as well. It’s not shown onscreen but the comic The Shepherd’s Tale reveals he was working in the Alliance while actually working for the Independents. One of his eyes is actually cybernetic, meant to let the Independents see what he was seeing of the Alliance.
  • FlashForward (2009) executes a perfect Reverse Mole when Janis is first revealed to be a mole, then revealed to be working for the CIA. Technically, she is still a Mole, as she is supposed to be working for the FBI. This is also an example of Meaningful Name, as Janis' name recalls the guardian Roman god with two faces, Janis (also known as Janus).
  • Flashpoint has a couple, though not in the SRU itself.
    • In "Clean Hands", a serial killer is transported following extradition. Among his victims were the daughter of airport employee Walter Volcek and the sister of customs agent Delia Semple; Semple and Volcek team up to take him out. Volcek is caught and stopped, but if it weren't for an offhand comment Sam happened to drop and Parker happened to pick up on, the SRU wouldn't have caught on to Semple until it was too late.
    • In "No Promises", Spike's mentor becomes this out of desperation (he needs money to save his drug-addicted daughter). When he starts backing down, his daughter is kidnapped and held hostage, forcing him to go along with their plans.
    • "Just a Man": Ed Lane suspects that Anton Burrows is this, pretending to be helping while actually misleading him. He turns out to be wrong, however; Burrows risks his own life to protect the very people who had prevented him from getting parole the same day.
    • Two of the apparent hostages in "Grounded" are actually in on the plot. The two main hijackers do reveal that they have accomplices posing as hostage passengers, but they don't tell the passengers who they are. It's not until about halfway through the episode that the third conspirator reveals herself, and it's several minutes more before she orders the final member of the team to reveal himself because they need the extra hands.
  • The third season of Fringe features a rather mind-bendy version of this, as one of the characters is replaced by an alternate version from a parallel world who is sent to spy on the Fringe division and gather intelligence as part of a war the parallel world believe themselves to be in with our reality.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • Locke poses as a Night's Watch recruit to find Bran and Rickon, going so far as to actually take the vows. He's killed before we find out how he was planning to get out of that.
    • Jorah was originally one to Varys. He later becomes the mask and serves Daenerys loyally.
    • Varys serves in the Small Council at the Baratheon dynasty's pleasure, but he's secretly in league with a group of people who "saw Robert Baratheon for the disaster he was" and plans for a Targaryen restoration.
  • Gang Related: Ryan's one for Los Angelicos, a Latino gang, in the LAPD. Though, admittedly, he is (somewhat) reluctant in his role as this.
  • Glee: Quinn, Santana and Brittany, the three Cheerios who join Glee Club, are secretly spying for Cheerios coach Sue Sylvester, who is trying to bring down the club. As the series goes on, though, and Quinn's popularity and membership in the Cheerios are destroyed by her pregnancy, this gradually changes.
  • Greek: Jen K is a mole for the school newspaper, and puts a dent in the entire Greek system with her article.
  • The Handmaid's Tale: Nick is an Eye of God (i.e. part of Gilead's intelligence service), but also a part of the resistance. Joseph Lawrence is a Commander, though he too gets revealed to be working with them. The first sign he's a good guy is his refusal to rape Emily as part of the Ceremony. However, he still acts harshly to June (especially while his fellow Commanders are there), though it may be an example of Good Is Not Nice or so they won't get suspicious.
  • Horatio Hornblower:
    • Sailor Wolfe seemed to be an ordinary seaman who joined HMS Hotspur by mere chance because he just wanted to serve in the Royal British Navy. He's an Irish rebel who collaborates with Napoleon Bonaparte, trying to liberate Ireland from the Brits by invasion and war.
    • Captain Hammond was mentioned by name in several episodes and appeared in all three instalments, but he never looked to be a significant character, other than he was a rather famous figure in the Navy and a Hanging Judge during a court-martial in "Retribution". In "Loaylty", it's revealed that he was secretly working for Irish rebels his whole life.
  • House of Anubis
    • Vera, in an interesting Evil Versus Evil version, where she was pretending to like and work for Victor, when she was really on Rufus' team. However, she may have wound up Becoming the Mask by the end of the season. That didn't stop Victor from kicking her out when he learned the truth.
    • Fabian's godfather Jasper fell into this trope, as he was being blackmailed by Vera herself, making him spy on his own godson and his friends. Fabian was heartbroken upon finding out, but knew Jasper was doing it to protect him from Rufus.
    • Jerome, who was also working for Rufus in the first season, was using Alfie to get information and artifacts from the Sibunas. Alfie eventually stood up to him, refusing to spy on his friends. Jerome later becomes a heroic mole and tries to get information from Rufus to give to Sibuna.
    • Early in the third season, Fabian and Patricia thought KT and Eddie were working for Victor and caused Nina's disappearance, similar to how Patricia thought the same of Nina earlier. The two of them were isolated from Sibuna for a little bit until they finally learned that their friends were trustworthy.
  • It's revealed in the penultimate episode of How I Met Your Mother that Barney has spent over a decade acting as a mole inside the evil MegaCorp he works for and feeding information on their illegal activities to the FBI. Because the guy who stole his college girlfriend works there.
  • While not done in the direct sense, the same principle is used on Hustle frequently with a random character turning out to be part of the con.
  • In The Inside Man, main character Mark Shepherd is this, working inside the company to get the details on the merger, until he does his Heel–Face Turn. Charlotte is revealed to be this at the end of the first season.
  • Intergalactic: Echo turns out to be the spy for Commonworld in the midst of the crew, though everyone else thinks that it's really Verona.
  • JAG:
    • In "War Cries", the boy, his sister who the Marine was dating, and their mom were all sleeper agents for the Shining Path, and weren't even related to each other.
    • In "Brig Break", Gunnery Sergeant Gentry.
    • In "Ares", Lieutenant Commander Gino Campisano is the senior weapons officer running the eponymous computerized weapons system onboard the destroyer: and suddenly, while off the North Korean coast, it starts to go crazy, operating without human input, and allowing no vessels other than ships to approach it. What no one knows is that Campisano is a North Korean mole, planted in the United States many years ago.
    • In "Brig Break", Petty Officer Quinn, who turns out to be an agent from Naval Intelligence working undercover.
    • Happens in "Scimitar". One complication though is that Harm and Austin do not know who the Reverse Mole with codename scimitar is, and they must find out without revealing themselves. Scimitar's identity is finally revealed when he arrives at Harm's room and [[spoiler:turns on the shower so they can talk in private.
  • Kamen Rider Build:
    • In episode 9, Sento finds out that two of his co-workers, Shingo Kuwata and Eita Kawai, are willing accomplices to Faust.
    • Sawa is revealed to be working with Nanba Heavy Industries and has given Juzaburo photos of Build's recent Best Matches. Sawa defects to Build's team when Nanba pulls a You Have Outlived Your Usefulness, but it then goes deeper as she is revealed to Nanba's Tyke Bomb and the defection is part of the plan to regain the nascita crew's trust. But, she geniunely becomes the mask after spending more time with them. While Sawa later gives Nanba the data on Build's newest form, it is only because Nanba takes Nabeshima's family hostage. Sawa and Sento come up with a plan to deal with that and, once her job is done, she tells Juzaburo she is officially done working for him.
    • During the Touto—Seito war, it soon becomes clear that someone on the Touto side is spilling the Touto's Fullbottles locations to Seito. Masuzawa, a Touto goverment aide, is revealed to be another Nanba's Tyke Bomb and the spy who gave Seito the Fullbottles locations and plants a listening device on Banjo's Fullbottle.
  • Las Vegas:
    • Leo, one of the new guys at surveillance Ed hired in season 2, is revealed to be working together with a group of card counters.
    • Adam, an employee remotely overseeing the card games in "Hit Me" is revealed to be sending electronic signals to a player.
  • The Lazarus Project: George becomes Rebrov's secret agent inside Lazarus to save his girlfriend, but pins his crimes on Shiv.
  • Lost: Seconds after Flight 815 crashed, Ben dispatched minions to infiltrate the survivors. They later turn out to be Ethan in the main group and Goodwin in the Tailies. In season two, Michael is forced to act as a mole. In season three, an elaborate ruse is utilized to let Juliet infiltrate the survivors, but she turns pretty quickly.
  • MacGyver (1985): In "The Enemy Within", Mac must discover the identity of a mole within the DXS who has caused the death of four agents.
  • Merlin (2008): Morgana is The Mole for most of season 3, and Agravaine later takes over the role, working for Morgana.
  • The Mole is the Reality Show version of this trope. The contestants engage in various challenges, and the better they do, the more money goes in the winning pot; at the end, the winner gets the pot, and the Mole gets the rest of the prize fund as a measure of how well they screwed things up. The contestants are also periodically quizzed about the Mole's identity and actions, with the poorest scorer eliminated. Played with: as a metagame strategy, non-Mole contestants also screw up on purpose, to fool others into thinking they're the Mole and thus do poorly on the quizzes. Sure, it decreases the winner's take, but it increases your chance of being the winner. (Better yet if you can just look like you're trying to screw up.)
  • Motherland: Fort Salem:
    • Scylla is secretly a member of The Spree infiltrating the US Army.
    • In season 2, Nicte's Spree cell gets two assassination attempts on Alder through her airtight security by installing one of their own as a biddy.
  • NCIS: Very Special Agent Lee is coerced into being a mole and learns, naturally, that Redemption Equals Death.
  • NCIS: New Orleans: Season Four's "The Asset" has FBI agent Sarah Barns, who is revealed to be a Double Agent aligned with the Russians. Her heel turn comes when she shoots Eva Azarova (who survives due to wearing a vest) and attempts to kill a former Russian operative who has information on other operatives, including Barns.
  • Neverwhere: Used to good effect, where the Big Bad's Dragons inform the heroes that there is a traitor among them. The viewers are led to believe that it will turn out to be the Marquis de Carabas, and it is made clear that the heroes believe this as well, but it's really the bodyguard, Hunter.
  • The New Avengers: In "To Catch a Rat", a former agent recovers his memory after having amnesia for 17 years. He remembers he was hunting a mole known as 'the White Rat'. Realising the Rat is still in the department, he resumes his hunt.
  • Nikita: Alex is set up to be the mole from the very start, and we see it all from her point of view. She remains the mole for the entirety of season 1. There is even a Was It All a Lie? moment coming from a more minor character, Thom, directed at the main character of Alex mid-way through the season.
  • NUMB3RS:
    • In the season 3 finale, FBI agent Colby Granger was revealed to be a spy for the Chinese. But in the premiere of season 4, it was shown that he was a double agent the whole time.
    • Played straight with Dwayne Carter. Though Colby's the only one who knows him well enough to be shocked. He actually wasn't, he knew exactly what Carter was up to, but he played it well enough that Don put it down to an error in judgment.
  • Once Upon a Time in Wonderland:
    • The White Rabbit is reluctantly working for the Red Queen.
    • Jafar has one in the Red Queen's guard, Tweedledee. He asks him to remind him to reward him for his good work...
  • Resurrection: Ertuğrul:
    • The first season has Petruchio position several of his crusaders in Aleppo, donning aliases and sending pigeons back to his stronghold to secure information that they believe could give them an advantage over the Kayis and the Ayyubids.
    • Karabek and Efrasiyab serve as this for Noyan in season 2, though Ertugrul is aware of this since he saw them in the Mongol camp while he was held captive.
    • Titan in season 4 serves as one to Ares on one occasion, visiting the Kayi tribe under an alias and gaining the trust of the locals so they won’t suspect him of trying to abduct Ertugrul's son Gunduz in order to lead Ertugrul into a trap.
    • Dragos and his lackeys are oh-so befitting of this trope in the fifth season, in which they take on seemingly-normal occupations throughout the streets of Sogut while masking an elite military coalition bent on placing Asia Minor under their influence.
    • Hamza Alp and Abdurrahman Alp both pretend to side with Baiju Noyan in order to gain vital information for the Kayis and Dodurgas. Even though Abdurrahman manages to pull off the ploy as intended, Hamza sadly ends up succumbing to greed and actually betrays Ertugrul in the process.
  • Revolution:
    • Nate Walker/Jason Neville is revealed to be a militia spy as soon as they get to Miles in the pilot episode. In episode 5, it is revealed that he is Tom Neville's son.
    • In episode 8, Mia Clayton, Nora's sister, is not only this, but also a Bounty Hunter who captured Nora's fellow rebels and was working for that Sergeant Will Strausser. Nora was so disgusted that she abandoned her, even though they had made a promise to look out for each other.
    • In episode 9, Joseph Wheatley, ostensibly of the rebels (possibly going by "Captain Burke"). In fact, he's been a militia spy for some time.
    • Episode 17 had Miles quickly realizing that a mole has tipped off Monroe to the Resistance's whereabouts. Episode 18 has Miles trying to find out the mole's identity, and Jason Neville is the prime suspect. However, it turns out to actually have been Jim Hudson.
  • The Rise of Phoenixes: Zi Yan pretends to be working for the Crown Prince, who sees him as one of his trusted advisors. He's actually working for Ning Yi and giving him information on the Crown Prince's plans.
  • Robin Hood: A series 2 subplot features Allan a Dale working as an informant for Guy of Gisborne, resulting in his exile from Robin's gang and the end of all his friendships when his treachery is unmasked. He is technically a good guy, so he also occasionally acts as their mole, though this is much more rare until the season finale, in which he deliberately contradicts Guy's orders in a semi-suicidal bid to save the gang's lives and rejoins the band.
  • The Sarah Jane Adventures: Mr. Smith, though he turns to good for series 2.
  • Sister Boniface Mysteries: In "Scoop!", Sister Boniface is called by DI Gillespie to the home of minister of defence, Charles Stratham, where guest Mary Sparkes was found dead at the bottom of a staircase. As the investigation proceeds, a missing secret document concerning Britain's next generation of nuclear missiles points to KGB involvement, and it becomes apparent that one of the guests may be a KGB agent.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
    • Originally a by-the-book secondary character who is more loyal to Starfleet than the rest of the cast, Michael Eddington is eventually revealed to be a Mole for the rebellious Maquis.
    • Then there's the episode "In Purgatory's Shadow", in which Worf and Garak discover Dr. Bashir at a Dominion internment camp, meaning the "Dr. Bashir" who has been on DS9 for the last several episodes is a Changeling impostor.
    • The Romulan Tal'Shiar is shockingly prone to moles at its highest ranks. In "The Die is Cast", Colonel Lovok reveals himself as a Changeling. And in "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges", General Koval (the Chairman of the Tal'Shiar) is a double agent for the Federation.
  • Star Trek: Enterprise:
    • Archer's steward Daniels turns out to be a time agent from the 31st century.
    • Damsel in Distress Rajiin is a portable X-Ray machine for the Xindi Reptilians.
    • Malcolm Reed works for an early incarnation of Section 31, while reporter Gannet turns out to be working for Starfleet Intelligence and Ensign Masaro for radical Earth group Terra Prime. Reed, at least, wasn't all too happy about betraying his commanding officer, and when push came to shove, he stood by Archer. He is one of the few characters of whom this can be said.
  • Star Trek: Voyager: Seska was a Cardassian deep-cover agent disguised as a Bajoran and Tuvok was a Federation agent (but that's made known pretty early on), both infiltrating the Maquis on Chakotay's ship (much to his chagrin. Chakotay later asks Tuvok if he was so gullible that it was easy for spies and saboteurs to infiltrate his crew). When Seska defects to the Kazon-Nistrim, a minor Maquis crewman (Michael Jonas) is her collaborator who remains on board Voyager (though the Kazon do their damnedest to play the middleman).
  • Supernatural:
    • "Folsom Prison Blues" has Dean and Sam get themselves arrested so they can investigate a haunting at a prison. One of the prison guards asks for their help and helps them escape once they finish the job.
    • The angel Uriel turns out to have joined Lucifer's cause, trying to recruit fellow angels to join him and killing those who refuse. Note that the mole's successful conversions are never brought up again, making it possible that Lucifer loyalists may still be present in the ranks of the Heavenly Host in show canon.
    • The presentation of angels as a whole, not just Uriel, may qualify, at least in Season 4. They are initially portrayed as allies to the heroes whose differing view of what constitutes an "acceptable" sacrifice causes them to clash somewhat with the latter group. While they all turn out to still be reasonably sympathetic in their own ways, the season finale reveals that the higher-ups in Heaven want Lucifer freed in order to kill him and create "Paradise", which is suggested by an actor for one of the characters to be a Dystopia of brainwashed human slaves, as opposed to Lucifer's vision of a human-free universe, and in subsequent seasons, even angels not involved in this ploy are often enemies to be killed.
    • The demon Ruby is another mole for Lucifer (not that she knows that she's on the same side as the above mole or would have gotten along even if she had, due to Fantastic Racism). More accurately, Ruby is secretly working for demon queen Lilith, who Ruby sends Sam after to kill on Lilith's own orders, as the other demon's death is the last seal needed to be broken to release their master, Lucifer, from his prison.
    • Abaddon played this role 50 years before the series proper; she possessed and impersonated an inductee into an ancient mystical order in order to infiltrate and spy on them, planning to destroy them completely after learning all their secrets. She succeeded on all counts.
    • In "The Spear", Garth makes a show of betraying Sam and Dean to Apocalypse World Michael in order to find out more about what he's planning with this world's vampires and werewolves. (This comes a few years after his conversion to werewolf.)
  • Taken: In "God's Equation", Dr. Harriet Penzler, who runs Lisa's Alien Abduction therapy group, is an agent of the UFO project. She keeps them updated on Lisa's activities and Allie's progress and informs them that Charlie has arrived on the scene. In "Dropping the Dishes", Dr. Penzler reveals the truth to Charlie and Lisa, telling them that the project led her to believe that what was doing was in their interest as well as Allie's.
  • Tehran: Yael turns out to be a double agent in service to the Iranians.
  • The Traitors: Another Reality Show version of this trope, in which, much like The Mole, contestants engage in various challenges, and the better they do, the more money goes in the winning pot. However, in addition, three of the contestants take on the role of "The Traitor", while all other contestants are "Faithfuls", with the Traitors' identities unknown to the Faithfuls. By the end of the game, if all remaining contestants are Faithfuls, then they split the prize pot, if there are any Traitors remaining, however, they win it all (or split it, if there's more than one of them left). Unlike in The Mole, the Traitors are not trying to sabotage the team from adding money to the prize pot, but instead engage in their sabotage by eliminating the Faithfuls one by one each night, with an additional contestant eliminated by all the contestants voting around the Round Table (this is the only way to eliminate a Traitor).
  • The Twilight Zone (1985): In "Room 2426", Dr. Martin Decker's cellmate Joseph is an agent of the State. He was instructed by Dr. Ostroff to convince Martin that teletransportation was real so that he could learn the location of Martin's bacteria research.
  • V (1983) has a fair amount of the Fifth Column, some of them high-ranking. It seems that a lot of the Visitors aren't very happy with their orders.
  • In V (2009), Joshua and several other crew members on Anna's ship are members of the Fifth Column.
  • The Vampire Diaries: Damon starts out as a mole in the founder's council. But soon he becomes an actual member and turns out to be the most useful.
  • Whiskey Cavalier: The final scenes of the episode "Good Will Hunting" reveal Tina Marek as this.
  • Whodunnit? (2013) is very similar to The Mole in this respect, as one of the guests in secretly the killer.
  • The Wild Wild West: West's old friend Sir Nigel Scott turns out to be the villain in "The Night of the Bleak Island".
  • The Wire:
    • During Season 2, the investigation into the Greek's syndicate is sabotaged at several points along the way by leaks from an FBI agent on his payroll.
    • Agent Fitzhugh's apology to Daniels suggests that the leaking agent isn't corrupt, but another product of the FBI emphasizing counter terrorism over everything else. The Greek is protected from investigation by the FBI in exchange for counter terrorism intel.
  • The X-Files has this trope all over the place, played with and from various points of view.
    • At the beginning, Mulder doesn't trust Scully. She's officially assigned to work with him, and everyone knows it's really to debunk his work. He thinks she might be connected with the conspirators, but she's honest and only submits her reports to their supervisors. Her loyalty soon belongs to Mulder completely, and he knows it.
    • It's hinted from time to time that Mulder and Scully's direct supervisor, AD Walter Skinner, might be dirty and collaborating with the shady conspirators. Nope, he's all right and one of Mulder and Scully's strongest allies.
    • From the conspirators' point of view, Mulder's Mysterious Informants are The Moles who rat them out, trying to ruin their cause.
      • Deep Throat is involved with them and claims that he wants to atone for his deeds; therefore, he helps Mulder in his quest for exposing the truth.
      • Mr. X is very pragmatic. He never makes it a secret that he does what's best for him. He works for the Cancer Man, and is informing Mulder behind his back.
      • Marita Covarrubias plays it on both sides. She helps Muldler and tells on him to the conspirators.
    • Scully's replacement for a brief amount of time in season 2, Alex Krycek. He's an FBI Agent assigned to work with Mulder when the X-Files division is shut down and Scully is sent back to teach at the FBI Academy. Mulder never fully trusts him, but it's a bit of a surprise when he is revealed to be telling on Mulder to the Arc Villain, the Cigarette-Smoking Man.
    • In season 5, Section Chief Blevins. He appeared in two episodes in season 1, and in one Myth Arc trilogy (WHAM Episodes par excellence), he is revealed as the dirty figure at the FBI who closely collaborates with The Omniscient Council of Vagueness.
    • In The Movie (The X-Files: Fight the Future), the Well-Manicured Man is revealed to be one. The conspiracy group are in fact Well Intentioned Extremists, and he gives Mulder vital information, as well as a vaccine to save Scully.
    • Agenta Fowley and Spender, a pair of Agents put on the X-Files cases in season 6. Spender was more unassuming, never caring and happy to be destroying the files and informing the conspirators. But his partner Diana Fowley presented herself as Mulder's ex-girlfriend who still likes him and who are Birds of a Feather, like minds that should support each other and similar B.S. Mulder, to his credit, said that Scully's scientific approach had saved him and kept him honest. She collaborates with the Cancer Man and has Mulder subjected to horrific disease and treatment/experiment. However, she ultimately helps Scully to save him.


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