Evil All Along

The Hero is searching for a very special treasure. Too bad he doesn't know his way around. He meets a very nice person who offers to help the hero find the treasure. But wait, wasn't the temple supposed to be toward the south? Then why are you walking north? And why won't his guide answer his questions? And oh drat, there's the Big Bad. That "guide" was his minion, and thus evil all along.

If the movie is constantly trying to deceive the audience like this, it can be harder for the audience to get to know the villain. Overuse of Foreshadowing of a character's true colors will also result in an Obvious Judas.

Compare False Friend (the hero's friend turns out to have never really cared about them and was merely using them for their own benefit), Big Bad Friend (the hero's friend turns out to be the main villain, but does care about their friendship), The Mole (a member of the hero team is really a minion of the villain infiltrating the group), Bitch in Sheep's Clothing (a Nice Guy turns out to really be a Jerkass), The Dog Was the Mastermind (the true identity of the main antagonist is the least likely suspect), The Killer in Me (the main character turns out to be the killer), Treacherous Advisor (the hero's mentor turns out to be the bad guy), Broken Pedestal (someone finds out that the hero they looked up to isn't nearly as heroic and noble as they thought they were), Love-Interest Traitor (the love interest turns out to be evil), Bait the Dog (where a bad guy does something nice, but only so they can then do something vile), Jumping Off the Slippery Slope (an already-shady character eventually commits an act that is unambiguously evil) and Temporary Party Member to Villain (a Guest-Star Party Member who turns out to be villainous). Contrast Good All Along, Big Bad Slippage and Subverted Suspicion Aesop.

See Hidden Evil for subtropes. Can overlap with Dead All Along if Kill and Replace is involved. Not to be confused with Face–Heel Turn, which is a legitimate good guy going evil. This is when the character was always bad and faking good, not a fall to the dark side.

As this is a major Plot Twist trope and a form of The Reveal, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.
Also, as a Morality Trope, all Real Life examples are off-limits.

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Example subpages:

• Video Games

Other examples:

Anime & Manga

• After God:
  • Obikawa turns to be the Snake IPO working together with Ahu'az. Waka figures it's strange they were ambushed on a route he suggested.
  • Alula wasn't known to be nice anyway, but she proves to have zero regard for Waka's soul or her general well-being and is only waiting for her to lose herself in the transformation. She's also pissed at Ahu'az killing Shion because she wanted to do it herself.
• Attack on Titan: The series zigzags this all over the place due to its Grey-and-Gray Morality.
  • Annie Leonhart, Reiner Braun, and Bertolt Hoover are revealed to be enemy spies sent to infiltrate the military and responsible for much of the bloodshed during the first half of the series. Then things become more complicated, with the revelation that while they are enemies....they are also complex, emotionally-damaged Tyke Bombs who express remorse over their actions and don't seem to have any choice but to carry out their mission.
  • The Military Police Brigade are infamously corrupt, but turn out to have a special Branch that operates out of the Capitol. This branch is the Secret Police charged with protecting the Government Conspiracy, primarily through torturing and murdering such dangerous individuals as weapons inventors, Bold Explorers, curious miners, teachers that question official versions of history, and powerful officials' mistresses. When the Survey Corps gets a little too close to the truth, they launch an extermination campaign against them by framing them for murdering civilians, smearing their already-poor reputation through propaganda, destroying their hideouts, arresting any of them that can be found, and sending out specialized units to kill them on sight, leading to a large civil war. This, however, ends up biting them in the collective ass, when the attacks clue the Survey Corps in that they're onto something, which eventually results in a great many of the nobility being overthrown.
• Bleach:
  • Aizen was initially introduced as one of the nicer Captains of Soul Society, and even questions the higher-ups decision to execute Rukia. He turns out to be The Man Behind the Man who started the whole conflict to begin with.
    "The Aizen you knew...never even existed."
  • And Ginjou, who, with the help of his accomplice Tsukishima's ability, manages to make it seem as though he and Tsukishima are enemies (because courtesy of Tsukishima's power, he actually believes they're arch-enemies), enabling him to get close to Ichigo and use him in his plan until it involves Tsukishima using his power on him again, reverting him to normal.
• Blue Dragon: Zola near the end of the series. Though it appears at first that it's just a simple Face–Heel Turn, the characters try to fool themselves into thinking that. Evidence in the last episodes proves otherwise.
• Claymore: The Organization creates Claymores to fight youma but is also secretly creating the youma by transforming humans. They're actually researchers from another continent where their nation is at war with a monstrous race. To develop a counter to their enemy, they've been experimenting on humans using samples of flesh from one of their defeated warriors.
• Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School: Chisa was forced into having a Face–Monster Turn after being brainwashed in Episode 9 of Side: Despair. She pretends to still be a Nice Girl so that nobody suspects her of being a Remnant of Despair, and manipulates the Future Foundation over the next several years. Chisa dies early on in Side: Future without ever getting her brainwashing undone, and the later revelation of her villainy drives more divisions into the group.
• Death Note: Although Light Yagami kept up the act of being a friend, or at least a decent co-worker, to L, Matsuda, and the rest of the task force, he is the mass murderer they've all been searching for. And although he would rather not kill off the task force, preferring instead to manipulate and deceive them, he will not hesitate to get rid of them if he feels that he needs to.
• Digimon:
  • In Digimon Adventure 02, Ken was the evil Digimon emperor all along. This is made glaringly obvious from his first appearance onwards.
  • In his first official appearance in Digimon Data Squad, Akihiro Kurata claimed to want to help Data Squad and his old friend Commander Sampson. He showed his true colors soon enough.
• Dragon Ball Super:
  • Frieza's apparent Good Counterpart from Universe 6, Frost, turns out to actually be the very same as Frieza, only less prideful and a Villain with Good Publicity. While Frieza simply wiped out the populations of planets and sold them to the highest bidder, Frost instigates wars so he can be seen as a "hero" by stopping them and buys the ruined planets on the cheap so he can fix them and sell them for profit.
  • Zamasu gets this treatment in the manga. While the anime left the question of whether or not he would have fallen into villainy even if Goku hadn't shaken up his views on gods and mortals ambiguous and showed him Slowly Slipping Into Evil, the manga, where Goku and Zamasu never even meet face-to-face in the present before Zamasu becomes Goku Black, makes it clear that Zamasu was always a monster and Bitch in Sheep's Clothing; his genocidal hatred of mortals was present from the start, and finding out about Goku's power and the Super Dragon Balls just gave him the opportunity to act.
  • In Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, Beerus seemed to be subject to Blue-and-Orange Morality due to his duties as God of Destruction being necessary, while in the anime, the Elder Kai outright states that Beerus' acts of destruction are pointless and petty. This is taken further when the anime adds several scenes of him wiping out entire races just for being unable to fulfill his appetite. While initially that could be dismissed as him needing to destroy something, the Universe Survival arc reveals that the Gods of Destruction aren't just supposed to destroy planets randomly; they're supposed to destroy evil people. All along, Beerus has been abusing his power by choosing to destroy good or neutral people for kicks, while letting evil people like Frieza's family run rampant through the cosmos and do as they please. This is rubbed in further when the Grand Priest notes that Universe 7's mortal rating is the second-lowest, meaning Beerus is quite possibly among the worst of the Gods of Destruction.
• Elemental Gelade: Rasati and Lillia's guardian. He broadcasts it from a mile away, but Rasati doesn't seem to notice.
• Future Diary: In Chapter 50, Akise claims that Yuno is the actual villain, and is planning to use Yukiteru to drive him to the brink of despair and kill him in order for her to become God. It seems that Akise was right and wrong at the same time. Yuno wants to kill him, but only so they can be together forever via an endless cycle of Peggy Sues. Maybe.
• Godzilla: The Planet Eater: Metphies' endgame is revealed when he manipulates the survivors loyal to him into forming a cult dedicated to Ghidorah, with the intent of summoning it to destroy Earth and wiping out humanity once and for all.
• Hellsing: Walter, Hellsing's butler and soldier, is revealed to be working for the Millennium Nazis.
• Naruto:
  • Kabuto Yakushi actually did manage to pull off the "helpful, harmless stranger" routine pretty well. From his personality, to his appearance, there's very little to tip you off to him being a threat. He was trained from childhood specifically for this, having worked as a spy on behalf of the Hidden Leaf Village from within all of the other major ninja villages.
  • Shinnō of Naruto Shippuden the Movie: Bonds spent fifteen years posing as a kind doctor, Cool Old Guy, and even a Parental Substitute to Amaru when in reality he's a callous, heartless Jerkass who was secretly using the nearby villagers' negative emotions to gather dark chakra for the Zero-Tails. Not only that, but it's revealed that he himself taught Orochimaru several of his trademark reincarnation techniques.
  • Sasuke Uchiha is revealed to have been this near the end of the series. Promptly after Kaguya is sealed away, and with Obito and Madara also defeated, he announced his plan to kill the Kages and seal away the Tailed Beasts, revealing that his supposed Heel–Face Turn was really just an Enemy Mine.
    • Somewhat diminished both by Sasuke having genuinely abandoned his original goals and changing sides (it's just that his new plans to do good come from the same fundamental difference in his and Naruto's personalities and he's still not on Naruto's side) and by this mainly being a surprise to the audience (and Sakura): Naruto wasn't that shocked and Sasuke had already made his future intentions known to a number of people present, none of whom said anything because they knew he'd fight it out with Naruto to decide which of their philosophies was superior and they'd given up on any long-term plan beyond "hope that gets settled this go-around".
• No Longer Allowed in Another World: Archbishop Elton presents himself as a Good Shepherd, but it's revealed that he's been organizing the kidnapping of child otherworlder and subjecting them to hellish conditions to mold them into his own personal superpowered army.
• One Piece:
  • Nami is a minor case of this: she was introduced as a thief who stole only from pirates, but after about three arcs of her being seen as a good person, the fact that she stole their ship and treasure still came as a surprise…but nowhere near as much of one as when she's revealed to be a member of another, much more ruthless pirate crew. What makes this a minor case is that while she had been planning on betraying them the whole time, by the time she finally did, she had already gone too far into Becoming the Mask, and clearly missed them. That's not the full story, of course…but it's enough for this trope.
  • Klahadore from the Syrup Village arc is introduced as a strict but good-natured butler to a sick and kind young rich girl. A short while later, it's revealed that he's Captain Kuro, a cruel and cunning pirate captain who had faked his death three years prior, and since then had been plotting to kill said rich girl and steal her fortune for a quiet retirement.
  • In the Jaya arc, Blackbeard encourages Luffy to continue to pursue his dreams after he is mocked by another pirate crew. This guy would go on to defeat Luffy's elder brother Ace and hand him over to the World Government. When his and Luffy's goals cross over in Impel Down, he gloats about this in his face, provoking a small fight.
  • In the Enies Lobby arc, it turns out that four of the main antagonists had been undercover as good guys for five years: the ventriloquist shipwright Rob Lucci, the flying shipwright Kaku, the dutiful secretary Kalifa, and the kindly bartender Blueno are all revealed to be government-sanctioned assassins.
  • From the Totto Land arc we have Pudding. Originally introduced as the White Sheep in Big Mom's family and Sanji's sweet, innocent fiancee. It later turns out that her entire personality is a lie and she's just as evil as her mother. Of course, that's more due to Big Mom's toxic family environment than any desire on Pudding's part...
  • From Big Mom's backstory in the same arc, the beloved Mother Carmel is not as holy and innocent as she seems. The kindly nun is just a front for child trafficking orphans and selling them off to the World Government. Had a young Linlin not eaten her, she would have ended up a Marine or a bodyguard for the Celestial Dragons.
  • Kanjuro reveals himself to be this in the Wano Arc, identifying himself as Kurozumi Kanjuro and being far more competent with his Devil Fruit powers than he initially showed.
• Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: In the last minutes of the final episode, we find out that Stocking is actually a demon.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL: Good heavens, Ray Shadows. At first, he seemed to be merely The Ditz, but eventually he revealed himself as a "Barian Guardian", a Token Heroic Orc and a decent guy who opposed the evil plans of the Barian Emperors, befriending Yuma and offering some crucial help. As it turned out, all of it was cruel deception. In truth, he’s really Vector, the evil Man Behind the Man from season 1, who’s easily the most cruel and sadistic member of the Barians (or any villain of the current series). He takes cruel pleasure in boasting about how thoroughly he fooled Yuma and his friends. Somewhat subverted with the later revelation that he actually was a good guy in his original life, but fell to corruption by way of Fake Memories from Don Thousand, leading to the maniac seen in the present day.
• Yui Kamio Lets Loose: The incompetent young monk has been conspiring with the Mushi the entire time.

Asian Animation

• In Season 7 episode 29 of Happy Heroes, the Supermen meet a woman named Jenny who is willing to be their mother (the Supermen don't have an actual mother, and their father Doctor H. isn't even biologically related to them). She has her evil side unveiled later in the episode, when she calls Big M. saying she's gained the Supermen's trust. After seeing how much the Supermen genuinely care about her, however, Jenny does a Heel–Face Turn.

Comic Books

• In one 2000 AD Space Western short story, a group of cowboys help protect some human townsfolk from alien raiders who's trying to kill them. After the cowboys killed the raiders and their leader confronts the dying boss of the raiders, the raider calls out the cowboys on what have they done as it is revealed that the raiders were hunting down the townsfolk as they're actually alien insects who disguise themselves as humans to eat other humans who come to their town. By the time the cowboys realizes the truth, the towns folks revealed their true forms and kills all of them.
• Batman:
  • In the first arc of Detective Comics (Rebirth) Jacob Kane (Batwoman's father) is revealed to be the leader of the Colony, the initial antagonists of the series. He had been planning for years for Kate to join the Colony one day, even adapting his expectations to her own independent vigilantism in the wake of her dismissal from the Army. Downplayed in that Jacob isn't portrayed as evil or even a villain, but a man blinded by his personal vendetta against terrorism who completely misread his own daughter's expectations and goals for her own life.
  • While generally subject to Multiple-Choice Past and left ambiguous, some incarnations of The Joker go with the idea that he was already a sinister criminal, if not outright Ax-Crazy, beforehand; his fateful chemical dip just made him worse.
• Crossed: In the "+100" series, some of the Crossed underwent behavioral conditioning to be able to infiltrate non-Crossed society, setting them up for betrayal and assimilation decades later.
• Deadpool has Shiklah. Gerry Duggan says he received complaints about how evil Shiklah sometimes acted to Deadpool, and how he was ruining their relationship. He states that he reminds people that Shiklah is a demon, and that she did try to kill Deadpool when she first met him— he was just spared by his Healing Factor. Editor Jordan White, via social media, also mentions that Shiklah has always been evil. He says Shiklah only seemed more sweet and innocent during The Gauntlet series because she was new to the modern world, thus more naive to how everything worked, thus she had an infant curiosity and excitement to things.
• A major twist comes in Invincible when the titular characternlearns that his Superman expy father Omni-Man belongs not to a race of benevolent aliens but a vicious war hungry one and was sent to Earth to conquer it.
• In The Mice Templar, Pilot the Tall reveals in Issue 6 that he's been in league with Captain Tosk and King Icarus all along, and he was only using Karic as a means for "redemption."^note He truly isn't seeking absolution. He only desires to prolong his life and to save himself from eternal damnation, even if it means putting innocent lives in danger.
• Dean of My Faith in Frankie was accidentally killed as a kid, so Frankie made her personal God Jeriven revive him (since Jeriven hadn't been around during the accident that led to Dean's death). However, Dean's secretly held a grudge against Frankie and Jeriven because he went to Hell when he died, and spent like a thousand years in torment (while on Earth he'd only been dead a few days). While Dean might have some reason to be pissed off about dying, no one ever stops to ask why a kid his age was sentenced to eternal damnation implying he was always a messed up asshole even before he died.
• Every time Mystique seems like she is going through a Heel–Face Turn, it will end like this. In one alternate future her name becomes the equivalent of Judas. Somehow she's just that good at faking it that people who know her full history still get taken in when she pretends to be reformed.
• In the New 52 version of Wonder Woman, the Cheetah was once Barbara Minerva, a scholar who helped Diana out in cases and whom Diana considered her first true friend in this world. When a mystical dagger turned Barbara into the deadly Cheetah, Diana tried to help her friend and break the curse. Diana is rocked to discover that Barbara had a long record as a thief and con artist who'd been using Diana to get her hands on various rare items. The Cheetah spirit had been meant to protect a tribe but Barbara's inner darkness turned it into a beast. Diana is stunned to realize Barbara was never her friend, never an innocent and (as Batman puts it), the Cheetah didn't corrupt her, Barbara corrupted the Cheetah.
• The Judas Contract: Terra pretended to be a member of the Teen Titans, but her goal the entire time was to take down the Titans because she hated how goody-goody they were.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): Geoffrey St. John was introduced as a loyal member of King Max's Secret Service and a rebel allied with the Freedom Fighters, and while a smug Jerkass, overall seemed to fall into Good is Not Nice more than anything else. Then comes issue 220, where after he and Sonic work together to retrieve a Chaos Emerald, he shoots Sonic In the Back, takes the Emerald, and delivers it straight to Ixis Naugus to restore his sanity. When he's tried for treason come issue 233, Geoffrey reveals this wasn't just a random Face–Heel Turn; he's in fact been Naugus' apprentice since the days of the Great War and has been working to make him King for years. That being said, Geoffrey was in fact a Well-Intentioned Extremist who genuinely believed that Naugus could do good and felt that he would make the Acorn Kingdom stronger and would prevent the deaths of many people. By the time he realized Naugus was nothing more than a power-hungry tyrant, it was too late for him to turn back.
• Star Wars: Invasion: Master Dray is introduced as a kooky but wise and well-meaning Jedi, but is revealed to actually be a Dark Jedi trying to lead Finn into the Dark Side and rule the galaxy after the Vong are dealt with.
• Superman:
  • In The Death of Superman (1961), Lex Luthor finds a cure for cancer and announces he regrets his evil deeds and will use his intellect for the good of mankind from now on. Afterward, Lex goes to extreme lengths to convince everyone he has turned over a new leaf and become Superman's friend until Superman falls into his trap and Lex reveals he never intended to change.
  • In The Death of Superman, there's the Cyborg Superman. When he first appeared, he seemed the most like the original Superman and even went so far as to stop an assassination on the President. Then came Superman (Vol. 2) #81 and a massive alien battleship appearing in Coast City. Both the Cyborg and Eradicator are there, the latter brushes off the former... and the former shows his true colors by blasting the latter and leaving him to die as the battleship obliterates Coast City.
  • In "The Earthwar Saga", Ontiir, the Science Police Commander for Weber's World, is suspected from attempting to sabotage peace talks but is cleared of charges. In "Those Emerald Eyes Are Shining" it is revealed he was working for the evil Dark Circle all along.
• Youngblood: Judgment Day: Sentinel was revealed to be the one who was responsible for the vast majority of heroes being so dark, violent, and borderline insane, having rewritten the world with Hermes' book to match his ideas of what superheroes were supposed to be like. To that end, he kills Riptide and frames Knightsabre to get the book back and resume his control.

Eastern Animation

• The main antagonist of Adventures of Captain Vrungel is a mysterious mob boss called Chief, who arranged for the Venus de Milo statue to be stolen and sent two of his goons to retrieve it from the protagonists by any means necessary while they're participating in a global regatta. Throughout the series, Chief is only shown either from a distance or with a close up of the lower half of his face, and this was to hide that he was actually the seemingly posh but normal Archibald Dandy, the Speaker of the Yacht Club, who organized the whole regatta in order to smuggle the statue around the national borders that would have been tightened after its theft.

Fan Works

• The Awful Truth About The Powerpuff Girls reveals that Professor Utonium and Ms Keane are not only evil, but they're secretly siblings. The Professor created the girls for revenge, not good. This is later subverted as it turns out the entire story is a film the characters are doing.
• The MLP fic Circus Days has Spike ditching The Mane Six, after realizing just how little the girls appreciate him, to join a troupe of kindly circus ponies... only to realize those kindly circus ponies are actually poachers looking to make our little dragon their latest victim. Luckily, the girls came back to show him they do care.
• Friendship Is Aura: Cerberus turns out to be much more intelligent than he let on, and has been scouting out Equestria for Lord Tartarus for ages.
• Hours 'Verse: The person assumed to be the Other Side's Tatsuya in As the Bells Toll turns out to be this, as he's actually Nyarlathotep impersonating him, with the goal of manipulating Minato.
• Kingdom Hearts 3: Final Stand:
  • Braig. Numerous side materials released by both Kristen Verne and YamiChaos27 take lengths to show that he was never a particularly nice person, sucked at not being a Jerkass to people, and was a Glory Hound who only joined the guard at Radiant Garden for the thrill of the fight and openly urged Ansem to become a warmongering conqueror just so he could have something to do. All in all, it's made clear that there was already something rotten inside Braig long before Xehanort ever came to Radiant Garden and recruited him, and even if Xehanort hadn't triggered his descent into villainy, he would have made the jump on his own sooner or later; in the final chapter of Re:Final Stand, Braig himself openly admits that's exactly what he would have done.
  • Kingdom Hearts 4: New Light: Pith's Love Interest, Briana. When she finally appears in person late in the fic, revealed to be the princess of Hazy Hamlet, she appears to be a Nice Girl through and through, to the extent that Patria, who freely admits to having trust issues, vouches for her kind and sweet nature. Then, when she's alone with Pith, she shoots him with a crossbow and is revealed to not only be the daughter of Braig, but the leader of the Sovereign Enforcers, who has been spying on Sora's family for years to avenge what they did to her father. To twist the knife even further, Briana tells Pith to his face that she was disgusted having to pretend to be in love with him and has been wanting to kill him from the minute they met.
• In Loved and Lost, an extended retelling of "A Canterlot Wedding", Prince Jewelius is initially portrayed as a humble Nice Guy who's the only one willing to listen to Twilight's concerns regarding "Princess Cadance". However, after he has helped Twilight in stopping Queen Chrysalis and her Changeling army, he takes over Equestria's throne by destroying the reputations of the princesses, Shining Armor, and Twilight's friends, driving them away from Equestria as hated pariahs as well as manipulating Twilight into losing all trust toward them. He later lures them back to Canterlot and privately tells them that out of seething jealousy toward his more adored aunt Celestia and cousin Cadance, he allied with the Changelings to take them down and helped Chrysalis steal Cadance's identity before sensing in Twilight an opportunity to take the throne all for himself.
• Played With in The Moon Cries in Reverse (Naruto): Naruto, Sakura and Shikamaru are repeatedly accused of this, especially after they decide to defect from Konoha during the Konoha Crush attempt. What their accusers refuse to acknowledge is that this apparent Face–Heel Turn came after the trio had been systematically abused for half a year. Even Jiraiya, who had previously warned Hiruzen that he was creating a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, turns around and insists the trio was "taking advantage of his trust" rather than admitting that his efforts to keep them loyal to Konoha came too little and too late.
• The Mountain and the Wolf: While no one who'd met him thought the Wolf was a good guy (a giant with Skeletons in the Coat Closet leading a horde of violent barbarians has that effect), they all thought of him as just a Psycho for Hire. When it turns out he was serious all along about bringing Chaos to Westeros, they're more shocked at learning his gods are real than the betrayal itself. It's not much of a betrayal to the readers who are well aware he's been Running Both Sides for a while.
• Bachiko and Meiko in Perfection Is Overrated, being the SUEs responsible for infiltrating Fuuka Academy, playing "matchmaker" for various characters, and posing as Mai's friends to monitor their progress.
• In the Pony POV Series:
  • Dark World, this is the case with the Nameless Passenger, who turns out to be the true Big Bad, Nightmare Eclipse/Paradox.
  • The reality retcon in the penultimate arc that the villains pull this on most of Equestria... Zecora being a prime example as in her corrupt state she reminds Apple Bloom how they know nothing about Zecora's past, and Zecora could be a murderer on the run for all Apple Bloom knows. Deconstructed in-universe by the CMC as they pick apart about how nonsensical that is with literally everything the ponies and friends have DONE since we've laid eyes on them.
• Power Chord: High School Musical: Luan seems to be a nice but shy girl who wants to just make it in life. It is later revealed, however, that she was the one behind the students' going crazy as revenge for how she was treated.
• Kindly Professor Oak in the Pokémon fanfic The Power That's Inside.
• Vaticus Finch in The Tainted Grimoire was not revealed as evil to Clan Gully until later.
• Whispered Tribulation: While the pro-hero Gold Rocket's predilections against quirkless people was public knowledge, he is eventually outed as a secret member of the Meta Liberation Army and has committed embezzlement, being sent to Tartarus for his crimes.

Films — Animation

• The Bad Guys (2022): Professor Marmalade is introduced as a beloved philanthropic guinea pig. When the titular Bad Guys are arrested during a heist, the leader, Mr. Wolf, appeals to him to take the gang under his mentorship and reform them, when in truth, Mr. Wolf is trying to get a shot at pulling off their heist a second time. Marmalade is later revealed to be the story's true antagonist; he never intended to reform the gang at all and was manipulating them to take the fall for his own heist. He even layers Eviler than Thou on top of it, going to lengths the Bad Guys never would — including stealing from charities and attempting murder.
• Numerous Disney movies seem to be very fond of this trope, revealing that an (un)expected character was actually the Big Bad the whole time, to the point that this twist can become predictable after a while. Examples include:
  • Disney Animated Canon:
    • The Ur-Example is in Pinocchio, where Stromboli appears to be kind at first, but then threatens to chop Pinocchio into firewood. Though it's a bit more of a downplayed example, because there were clearly hints that he wasn't all that pleasant, like with his temper outbursts.
    • Mr. Winky the barman from The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is brought on by Mr. Toad as his star witness in the stolen motor car case, with Toad hoping that Winky's corroboration of his story that it was a gang of weasels who really stole the car will clear his name - it turns out that Winky is actually the leader of the gang, and he betrays Toad by giving false testimony against him.
    • In-Universe example in Aladdin: While we know from the get-go that Jafar is Obviously Evil, the Sultan doesn't until Aladdin grabs and smashes his cobra staff, which he's been using to hypnotize the Sultan.
    • Tarzan boards a ship (which would allegedly take him and the crew back to England) to find Jane, her father and the rest being taken hostages by the ship's henchmen, leading to an intense escape sequence that ends with Tarzan getting captured as well. The reason for such a sudden attack? Why, it was set up by none other than Clayton! He knew Tarzan wouldn't quite like it when he found out they were going to capture his gorilla family, so he got the henchmen to jump on him ALL at once to try and successfully overwhelm him! Coupled with Betrayal by Inaction, considering Clayton reacts exactly like you would expect when Tarzan asks him for help (and maybe even worse).
    • In Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Rourke and the other mercenaries (everyone on the expedition but Milo) were quite open about being Only in It for the Money, but it’s still a shock to learn that this extends to stealing Atlantis’s only means of survival. Furthermore, Rourke had already stolen a key part of the Shephard’s Journal, planning on backstabbing Milo the moment he became inconvenient. Fortunately, a Downer Ending is averted when everyone but Rourke and Helga do a Heel–Face Turn.
    • Wreck-It Ralph has King Candy, the ruler of the Sugar Rush racing game, who was once known as Turbo, the star of the Turbo Time racing game. King Candy urges Ralph to keep Vanellope from winning a race by claiming that her participation would break the game, eventually leading to the game being shut down, but when she does race, Vanellope ends up glitching King Candy, exposing him as the same Turbo who abandoned his game and tried to take over another racing game, becoming a glitch in the latter and putting both games out of order for good.
    • Frozen: You'll be very surprised when you find out Prince Hans is the true villain of the movie, considering how he's first presented as a supporting character and a potential love interest for Anna. Hans is that rare Disney villain whose true nature casts a very dark pallor over all of the supposedly altruistic and benevolent deeds he had done prior to The Reveal, when it becomes apparent that he had been planning to murder our heroes and usurp the kingdom right from the start. "Love is an Open Door"? Hollow lies. His charitable deeds for the people while Anna is gone? Calculated to make his rise to power easier. His drive to keep Anna safe? A mask of concern, casually discarded when he realizes he can no longer use her: it's safe to let her die.
    • Big Hero 6: It's revealed upon the Dramatic Unmask of Yokai that he was already cooking up his Evil Plan when we were introduced to his seemingly-benevolent true face: that of Professor Callaghan.
    • Assistant Mayor Bellwether from Zootopia ends up being the sociopathic mastermind behind the plot to drug predators into turning savage in order to turn the prey species against the predator population of the city. She's a literal Wolf in Sheep's Clothing.
    • Frozen II: Elsa and Anna always thought of their grandfather King Runeard as a great king. Unfortunately, they learn he tricked the Northuldra and attacked them unprovoked out of fear, which left Anna heartbroken and Elsa completely furious, which she expresses to an ice memory of him.
  • Pixar:
    • Stinky Pete from Toy Story 2 seems nice enough at first but is so obsessed with staying in mint condition for exhibition in a museum that he'll stop at nothing to keep Woody from having second thoughts, even if it means manipulation and threats, and especially harbors resentment against space toys such as Buzz Lightyear.
    • Henry J. Waternoose III, the CEO of Monsters, Inc. who turns out to be willing to kidnap children with Randall to end the energy crisis.
    • Lotso from Toy Story 3 has a seemingly warm personality, but is revealed to run the daycare center out of the other toys' fear, and later on in the garbage dump leaves Andy's toys for dead after his life gets spared.
    • Coco has the famed singer Ernesto de la Cruz, who is revealed to be a murderous fraud who lacks real songwriting talent and had, in life, stolen the music of his friend, whom he had killed.
    • Incredibles 2: The villainous Screenslaver is eventually defeated, but it turns that the guy is just a mind-controlled Unwitting Pawn. The actual Screenslaver is Winston Deavor's sister, Evelyn, who has had a grudge against superheroes ever since her parents were killed when her father tried to call Gazerbeam to thwart a couple of robbers.
  • TV Films:
    • From the Pilot Movie of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, there's Warp Darkmatter, Buzz's supposedly-Dead Partner who is in fact The Dragon to Zurg and had been on his payroll since the academy. Buzz even tries to throw out a few Not Himself cliches, only for Warp to state that no, he’s always been evil.
    • In the Kim Possible movie So The Drama, the boy for whom Kim falls turns out to be working for Drakken. And a robot.
• In Heavy Metal 2000, Odin at first appears to be an ally helping Julie in beating Tyler to the well of immortality. After Tyler is killed, Odin reveals himself to be an Aracatian who was manipulating Julie so he could use the well of immortality for himself.
• In the first Hoodwinked! movie, it is revealed that Boingo the rabbit was the Bandit all along.
• In the first Ice Age, Diego presents himself as just another traveler, but is really The Mole, aiming to lead Manny, Sid, and the human baby into an ambush. Over the course of their travels, however, he finds himself Becoming the Mask, and ultimately makes a Heel–Face Turn, featuring as a full member of the crew during the sequels.
• The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part hangs a lampshade on the whole thing: Queen Watevra Wana'Bi has an entire song about how she's not a tyrannical dictator, the presents she's handing out are harmless, and how the good guys can totally trust her, totally. And as it turns out, she's being completely honest. It's Rex Dangervest, Emmet's super-cool mentor and galaxy-saving hero, who actually wants the entire universe destroyed.
• In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf - Mission Incredible: Adventures on the Dragon's Trail, the culprit of the Dragon's World's slow destruction is not Tyrano-Rex as one would expect, but Little Blue Dragon, who followed and helped the goats and wolves on the journey to reassemble the special key and return it to the Dragon's Den. Wolffy was actually right on the money when he suspected him of being a spy and doesn't realize it until this point.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon: Jirachi: Wish Maker, where Butler seems like a good guy but is actually a former scientist of Team Magma, one of the many bad guy teams, who intended to use (and abuse) Jirachi's power to clone himself a Groudon from a fossilized remnant he had obtained (similar to Mew and Mewtwo). However, his efforts go horribly wrong as instead of a real Groudon, he ends up creating a manifestation of pure evil that merely resembled Groudon, and the being's threat is more than enough for Butler to make a Heel–Face Turn. It also helps that despite his dark heart, he did have genuine love for his assistant, Diane, who opposed his efforts when the wickedness thereof took form.
  • And Domino from Pokémon: Mewtwo Returns, who seems like a good-natured ditzy teenage girl but is actually a mean, hyper-efficient Team Rocket operative who is working directly under Giovanni.
  • The special episode The Mastermind of Mirage Pokémon has the Mirage Master turn out to be Dr. Yung, the creator of the Mirage Pokémon system.
• Scooby-Doo Direct-to-Video Film Series:
  • Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island features this as well. Simone, Lena, and Jacques are the real antagonists, who must drain the life force from other humans at the harvest moon to preserve their immortality. The zombies on the island are the restless spirits of their victims, and were only trying to keep the gang from suffering the same fate.
  • Ben Ravencroft from Scooby-Doo! and the Witch's Ghost. He claimed that his ancestor, Sarah Ravencroft, was wrongfully accused of being a witch and that he is trying to find a journal that belonged to her so that he can clear her name. But then it turns out that Sarah really was a witch and the journal that Ben was looking for was actually a spellbook that he planned on using to bring Sarah back from the dead so that they can rule the world together...only to be shocked when he does so and Sarah reveals that she would rather destroy the world than rule it.
• The Swan Princess: In Royally Undercover, Count Antonio is eventually revealed to only be pretending to be affable, he caused the dam's destruction in the first place and that he intended to take all the money that was being raised to repair damages for himself.
• Turbo: Guy Gagne, the titular snail's racing hero, turns out to be a massive Jerkass who only cares about himself and his own Indy 500 victory.
• This is shown in The Wild Thornberrys as well. in the film, Bree and Sloan are revealed to be the poachers who kidnapped Eliza's cheetah friend, Talley, halfway into the movie. Eliza camps with them on her journey to find Talley and she wakes up in the middle of the night to look for them and as she's looking in their RV, she finds Talley and almost immediately, Bree and Sloan show up and reveal themselves as the poachers.
• Wonder Woman: Bloodlines: Surprising the few who are not familiar with the comics, businesswoman Veronica Cale is the puppet master of Villainy Inc.

Films — Live-Action

• Alien. Ash is revealed to be a robot, working for The Company to bring an alien back, at the expense of the other crew members if necessary.
• Aliens reveals that Carter Burke sent the message that caused the colonists to become hosts for the aliens, and was planning to have the rest of the crew impregnated with them too - including Newt, a ten year old child.
• In Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Jen Yu / Yu Jiaolong had pretty much everyone fooled and feeling sympathetic. After all, in this day and age, who doesn't feel sorry for an aristocrat's daughter who dreams of a warrior's life, being forced into an Arranged Marriage? Then the movie gets deeper, and reveals the lengths she's going to in order to pursue her dream, learning martial arts from the notorious thief Jade Fox using a cursed sword and becoming a cold-blooded killer. Still somewhat sympathetic, but not as much.
• Damien: Omen II: At the end, Ann Thorn is implied to have been on Satan's side when she "gives" her husband the sacred daggers. Ann Thorn dies immediately afterward, having outlived their usefulness.
  Ann Thorn: I've always belonged to him.
• The Dark Knight Trilogy:
  • Batman Begins: Not only is "Ducard" not a good guy, he's actually the real Big Bad, Ra's Al Ghul.
  • The Dark Knight Rises: Miranda Tate/Talia al Ghul. Not too surprising if you catch a certain Chekhov's Gun, but it's a blink-and-you-miss-it shot and easily overlooked.
• Dragonheart: Though it is initially assumed that Prince Einon being revived by a portion of Draco's heart to have turned him bad, he eventually reveals that he was evil before that, and in fact played Bowen for a fool to learn how to fight.
• Ferriman in Ghost Ship poses as a meek weather service pilot to lure the crew of the Arctic Warrior to the Graza. He proves himself useful throughout the film and even seemingly saves Epps from an insane Murphy, but it's all an act. He's actually working for Hell and started the massacre on the Graza. It's implied he's done this many times over, with the fresh bodies in the laundry room being from a previous crew he led into the trap.
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019): Emma Russell. Initially, she appears to be a well-meaning scientist who is forced against their will to aid Alan Jonah's Eco-Terrorist goals in forcibly releasing the Titans contained by Monarch. Then when she has a chance to leave Jonah's side, she instead picks up the detonator and frees Ghidorah from its icy prison herself, and from there it's revealed she's been The Mole inside Monarch aiding Jonah's forces for some time, having made a Face–Heel Turn during the recent years since the San Francisco incident.
• The Hole reveals that Liz locked all her friends down in the bunker and allowed Frankie to starve to death, and Mike to murder Geoff - all in an attempt to make Mike fall in love with her. After escaping the hole alone, she frames Martyn and kills him to make it look like a suicide.
• Hot Fuzz: Frank Butterman is revealed to be the mastermind behind the NWA, after being the jovial mentor to Sergeant Angel during his time in Sandford.
  • Subverted by Danny Butterman. After Nicholas raids the NWA's meeting, he is accosted by Danny, and stabbed with a knife. It turns out this was all a ploy to save Nicholas' life.
• Indiana Jones:
  • Used in Raiders of the Lost Ark, in which the guide at the beginning runs away with the treasure.
  • Indy's father may have smelled the Honey Trap, but Indy himself didn't in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Was anyone else surprised?
  • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Donovan and Elsa both turn out to be working for the Nazis.
  • In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Indy's friend turns out to have lied about being good near the end of the movie, though it's kind of obvious even before he admits it. He's shown having left a trail of beacons for the Soviets to follow.
• Jagged Edge follows a high-profile defense lawyer trying to prove the innocence of Jack Forrester, a man accused of murdering his wife. While she manages to win the case, she learns in the finale that Jack was in fact guilty the whole time.
• In the James Bond film Spectre, 007 and M, the head of MI6 and Bond's superior, learn that the titular Nebulous Evil Organization Bond fought over the years has secretly managed to penetrate the British spy agencies, and that Max Denbigh/C, the head of MI5 and M's rival, was the Mole in Charge and working for Big Bad Franz Oberhauser/Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
• Jurassic World: One of the notes in the Masrani Backdoor website has a note from Dr. Wu mentioning that a hybrid was left on Isla Sorna sometime prior to 2003. This, as it has no pupils, is implied to be the Spinosaurus featured in Jurassic Park III, meaning that Wu has been perfecting the Indominus rex for over a span of at least fourteen years.
• In Knives Out, Chris Evans' character Ransom is introduced as perhaps the worst of his banally evil family, but he appears to have something of a Heel–Face Turn following a "Reason You Suck" Speech from his grandfather. Alas, it turns out that his real reaction to this talking-to (and disinheritance) was to murder the guy.
• Played for Laughs in Looney Tunes: Back in Action: Bugs Bunny is shocked to see his co-star Elmer Fudd working for the villain. Elmer than reveals he's "secretly evil" - that shouldn't be too surprising for anyone who has seen any classic Looney Tunes-cartoon starring Elmer.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Obadiah Stane in Iron Man is first shown to be a mentor and friend to Tony Stark, warmly welcoming Stark back home from Afghanistan, but it's later on shown that he masterminded Stark's kidnapping and was also secretly selling Stark's weapons to terrorists.
  • On a large scale, in Captain America: The Winter Soldier we learn that SHIELD as an organization was Evil All Along, having been infiltrated by the Nazi organization HYDRA ever since SHIELD's creation at the end of WWII. Notable SHIELD operatives appearing in previous films who are revealed to be part of HYDRA include Rumlow/Crossbones and Hollins and the entire Strike Team.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 has Ego, who is first shown to be a kind and loving man, playing catch with Peter and sharing their love for 70s and 80s music, but he later reveals that he's responsible for the death of Peter's mother and wants his son to assist him in wiping out the galaxy and replacing it with extensions of himself, and has murdered thousands of his children when they failed to inherit his powers, stashing their bones in his caverns.
  • Spider-Man: Far From Home: Surprising few who are familiar with the storyline from Mysterio's debut in the comics, he's not the hero he presents himself as being at all. He's a bad guy playing the part of a hero to reap the perks.
  • Eternals: Subverted example. Ikaris, who was originally on the side of the good guys, is later revealed to have killed Ajak (the former leader of the Eternals) out of moral obligation to the Celestials when she balks at their original purpose, which leads Sprite (who is in love with him) to join his side. Neither characters are genuinely "evil" or malicious, but become antagonists because of their ideological schism.
  • Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: Many presumed Wanda would be on Strange's side in this film in the lead-up to its release, but she's actually revealed to be the villain in the first act, following her (mostly offscreen) corruption by the Darkhold as originally alluded to in the final scene of WandaVision.
• Masquerade (2021): Daniel is not the nice guy he initially seems, but the male thief who broke into Casey's home and murdered Sofia and her parents years earlier. It's left ambiguous whether Olivia was involved in his scheme to fence stolen artwork.
• Paul Blart: Mall Cop: SWAT Commander Kent was a Jerkass but he did seem to be trying to stop the terrorists in the mall, even teaming up with Paul to catch Veck. However, when Paul finally catches Veck, Kent pulls a gun on him and reveals himself to be true leader of the terrorists.
  Kent: Very impressive! Taking down an assailant without a gun. I hope you don't mind if I use one.
• Edwin from Predators seems for most of the movie to be fairly normal compared to the rest of the cast, in fact Royce points out that he doesn't seem to belong, but near the end he reveals himself to be a Serial Killer back home who wants to stay on the Yautja's hunting planet because he liked it better there.
• Primal Fear features two variations on this, at first it's revealed that Aaron has a split personality which would mean by proxy he would have committed the movie’s murder, but at the end it is revealed Aaron never existed and in fact the so called "other personality" was the real one all along thus making him a straight up murderer.
• Saw:
  • Saw II's biggest twist is that Amanda Young is not only John Kramer's protege, but has been with him throughout all of the movie. Saw III later shows that she was also involved in the first movie's game centered on Lawrence and Adam.
  • At the end of Saw IV, it turns out that Mark Hoffman, who was set up as a major ally of Rigg throughout the movie, is another Jigsaw apprentice.
  • Jigsaw has a variant in that the revealed character in question, while still technically "evil", is pursuing a relatively heroic cause. At the climax, combined with a Sequencing Deception, it's revealed that the protagonist Logan Nelson was a former Jigsaw apprentice and the perpetrator of the second Jigsaw killing spree, specifically to get revenge against Brad Halloran and his informants.
  • In the final game of Spiral that Zeke Banks is put through, William Schenk, the rookie detective who was assigned as his partner for the Spiral Killer's case, reveals himself as said killer, and attempts to offer him to become his accomplice.
• Scream: In all the films, the killers behind the Ghostface mask were introduced as someone close to Sidney or at least someone indifferent yet harmless to her, until The Reveal that they are anything but.
• Star Trek Into Darkness: Admiral Marcus gives off the impression that he's a Reasonable Authority Figure. He's actually an Insane Admiral who worked with and tortured former Evil Overlord Khan Noonien Singh. Marcus also wanted to sacrifice the crew of the Enterprise just so he could jump start a war with the Klingons.
  • Not the only example either. John Harrison, the terrorist that Admiral Marcus sent the Enterprise crew after, who seems like he's actually an okay guy being manipulated by Marcus just like the heroes? Turns out that he is Khan Noonien Singh. And he's out for revenge on the entire Federation for what Marcus did to him.
• Star Wars: In Revenge of the Sith, Chancellor Palpatine turns out to be Darth Sidious, the head of the Sith. And he's been playing both the Republic and the Separatists, along with the Jedi, for complete schmucks. This was hardly a surprise to the viewers, who had already seen Palpatine as the Emperor in Return of the Jedi
• The Wailing: Towards the end, Il-Gwang tells Jong-Goo that he made a mistake when identifying who is behind the curse of the village. He thought it was the Japanese hermit, when it was in fact the nameless woman in white who appeared to Jong-Goo at the start. However, the ending reveals that he was lying and 'he' was the secretly evil one.
• X2: X-Men United: Magneto, who, right after saving the mutants of the world, can't resist seizing the opportunity to use Stryker's technique against humanity.

Literature

By Author:

• Brandon Sanderson:
  • Warbreaker:
    • Played with, though not exactly subverted, as Denth the mercenary, who has been leading princess Vivenna in her quest to overthrow the government of T'Telir (under the pretense of following her orders), betrays her, murders her best friend, and tries to steal her Breath. She is surprised, but since he had been warning her the entire time that he could not be trusted, she felt kinda stupid, too. Best line: "Do you know what I hate most about being a mercenary, Princess? Fulfilling the stereotypes. Everyone assumes they can't trust you. The thing is, they really can't."
    • Bluefingers, the God King's benevolent, fatherly, somewhat timid chief scribe, is the Big Bad and Denth's employer. He's not terribly evil as Big Bads go- the book casts him as a Well-Intentioned Extremist and Word of God describes him as a good man who got carried away- but he's still the ultimate mastermind behind the threats facing the protagonists, and the kingdoms of Hallandren and Idris more generally.
• Starting with Windmills of the Gods, Sidney Sheldon became fond of this trope; between that and the ten novels that followed, seven of them involve at least one character who turns out to be this, serving as the Big Bad or the Big Bad's accomplice. The Doomsday Conspiracy and The Sky Is Falling have many characters who fall under this trope, though the former also has a Good All Along character to compensate. An eighth book, Tell Me Your Dreams, has the heroine turn out to have an alternate personality that's "stalking" her and gruesomely murdering men, making her a debatable case of this trope.

By Title:

• A Brother's Price has Kij Porter, who Ren considered a close friend.
• In Barber Black Sheep, Lord Harrington's trusted butler, Leslie Barry, turns out to be the one who blackmailed his daughter, framed his gardener for theft and tried to kill his maid while attempting to rob him blind.
• Robin Jarvis loves this trope. In his Deptford Mice trilogy and its prequels:
  • In The Crystal Prison, the ghost of Jupiter poses as a benevolent spirit of the fields named Nicodemus to gain the trust of Madame Akkikuyu and convince her to perform a ritual to release him from limbo. When she finds out the truth, she is Driven to Suicide to prevent him from coming back to life by taking over her body.
  • The Oaken Throne has Wendel Maculatum, a seemingly kind, ditzy stoat jester who turns out to have been the bloodthirsty priest of Hobb all along.
  • Similar to the above example, in Thomas there is a slow minded mouse called Dimlon who befriends the heroes. But it's later revealed that he's a murderous follower of the Scale whose real name is Dahrem Ruhar.
• In The Dinosaur Lords, Bogardius and Violette are presented as two of several leaders of benevolent sect called the Garden and become good friends to Melodía, helping her cope. Only later are they revealed as having been working for Raguel - who seeks to wipe out most of human population in the world - all along, and while Bogardius has a Heel Realization, Violette goes on to become a Mouth of Sauron for Raguel.
• In Dragon Bones, there is Bastilla, the slave, who turns out to have been working for the enemy all along. There's also Landislaw, but that's not as big a surprise, as his morality is portrayed as quite questionable from the beginning, and he never works together with the heroes.
• The Dresden Files: Martin in Changes turns out to be a Red Court infiltrator. Subverted in the end, as it turns out he performed a Heel–Face Turn long ago and his apparent betrayal of the heroes was actually part of a Batman Gambit to wipe out the entire freaking Red Court with their own curse. Only Harry knows the truth.
• ForceFlow, Tash's Internet-friend in Galaxy of Fear. Turns out he was the Big Bad all along and giving lots of people information about the Jedi in the hopes of luring them to touch his Essence Stealer, hoping one of them would be Force Sensitive so he could study their essence and what made it different.
• In steampunk novel Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper, Gideon Smith's government liason/handler is actually Jack the Ripper, who murders prostitutes as a release for a rough day at work before returning to his upper-crust family for supper.
• In Gone Girl, we spend the first half of the novel believing that Amy is an innocent victim in circumstances beyond her control. As it turns out, Amy is the Diabolical Mastermind behind the whole thing.
• In Jack Vance's The Gray Prince, the eponymous character was a childhood friend to heroine Schaine; and for most of the book she firmly keeps in mind that, whatever his present political views, he once saved her brother's life. And then it turns out he in fact hated their family to the point of deliberately allowing her brother to be horribly injured and only claimed credit for the deed later.
• Harry Potter:
  • Subverted. It appears that Snape was evil all along after he kills Dumbledore. But then it turns out that it was all part of Dumbledore's Gambit Roulette and Snape really was good...albeit a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
  • A more straight example: Peter Pettigrew, a.k.a. Ron's pet rat Scabbers, who turns out to be the one who betrayed Harry's parents to Voldemort and concealed himself in his Animagus form for 12 years, leaving his friend Sirius Black to receive the blame.
  • Professor Quirrell in the first book seemed to be just an ordinary, shy, teacher who wore a turban just because. Turns out, he's really a minion of Voldemort who wears a turban to hide the fact that Voldemort is on the back of his head.
  • There's also the matter of Mad-Eye Moody in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Even though it's not really Mad-Eye, but Ax-Crazy Barty Crouch Jr. impersonating him it's still an Evil All Along situation.
  • While "evil" might be a stretch, there are indications that Cornelius Fudge was never really a good guy to begin with, notably when Molly reveals that he's kept Arthur at his low-ranking, low-paying job for years because Fudge thinks Arthur "lacks proper wizarding pride."
  • In Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Dephini reveals herself as the true villain of the story by casually murdering an innocent Hogwarts student, and claiming to be the daughter of Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange.
• After being proven to be on the good guys' side by the end of the James Bond novel Nobody Lives for Ever, Sukie Tempesta returns in COLD, only to be revealed to be in cahoots with the book's Big Bad (alongside with her now criminal family), to the point of planning to actually marry him. The hows and whys relating to this revelation is swept aside by having her suddenly be insane.
• Left Behind: Nicolae Carpathia, though nobody but the Tribulation Force and those who have once been in Nicolae's close circle of friends really know just how evil Nicolae is under the public persona he projected up to the midpoint of the Tribulation. After he is indwelt by Satan, Nicolae's façade slowly cracks and the public gets to see the true person underneath. Strangely, though, Jesus berated Nicolae in his "The Reason You Suck" Speech, saying to him that You Could Have Used Your Powers for Good!, which became a point of contention for some readers.
• Alice in Sabine Durrant's Lie With Me turns out to be an even worse person than Jerkass Unreliable Narrator Paul. And that's saying a lot.
• Nineteen Eighty-Four: On his walks through a prole quarter, Winston discovers the little shop of Mr. Charrington, where he buys the diary in which he first notes down his hate of the Party. Winston forms a friendly acquaintance with Charrington and eventually rents a small room above his shop as a place to meet with Julia and share their true thoughts without fear of surveillance. Eventually Winston is arrested in this room, and realizes that Charrington is an agent of the thought-police; his shop and rentable room is a trap for thought criminals.
• No Gods for Drowning: Cecil Gillion seems to be a genuine friend to Lilac Antonis as well as trying to solve the murders that Lilac was commiting to try and bring back the gods to save the city-state of Valentine from drowning. It's revealed at the end that Cecil was playing her for a chance at godhood and is the reason that the gods left and the city is in danger in the first place.
• The Saga of Darren Shan:
  • Steve Leopard shows up after several years now as a vampaneeze hunter. Three books later, he reveals himself to be the Vampaneeze Lord himself.
  • Subverted with Kurda Smahlt who first appears to be The Mole for the vampaneeze but later turns out to have been trying to forge an alliance to spare the vampires from an upcoming war. The vampires don't find this out until after they've killed everyone.
• Throughout the Skulduggery Pleasant series, Erskine Ravel was shown to be a reserved and trustworthy member of the DeadMen, enough that when the time came, he was given over the role of Grand Mage of Ireland and took it upon himself to ensure the safety of both the human and magic communities that threatened to reveal themselves to the world, well, until it was revealed that he was secretly a member of the Children of Spiders and his true desire was to have sorcerers take over the world. After killing Ghadtly Bespoke and Anton Shudder to attempt to complete his goal, he gets what’s coming to him by Darquesse giving him constant pain for almost every hour of the day for his troubles and is sacrificed to the Accelerator to prevent the world from being destroyed.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Bold Jon is introduced as a heroic character who bravely slays the evil Hugh Hammer, only for later books to reveal he took part in the destruction of Tumbleton much like Hammer did. Then there's his appalling treatment of Lord and Lady Footly.
  • The Stormlight Archive:
    • King Taravangian is presented as a kindly, if somewhat scatterbrained, authority figure who is famous for sponsoring hospitals in his city-state. He's actually The Chessmaster behind at least one of the major conspiracies active in Roshar and his hospitals are a cover to allow him to study the prophetic statements people have sometimes started making immediately before death.
    • Sadeas is a lesser example. While he was always evil, he put on a good show of being a Well-Intentioned Extremist trying to protect the king and kingdom in his own way. Then he abandons his oldest friend and thousands of soldiers to die, all so he could be the king's sole adviser. In the second book, he admits to himself that he's going to kill the king himself when the time comes, all for his own personal power and bloodlust. Literal bloodlust, too—his primary motivation is that he only feels alive when killing people.
    • The late King Gavilar is initially presented as The Good King (at least by Alethi standards) who united the highprinces to build a kingdom after centuries of infighting and whose death triggered the Vengeance Pact between them against those responsible. As the series has progressed and more of his actions have been revealed it becomes clear that he was a glory-seeking tyrant actively seeking to trigger a new Desolation as part of a scheme to install himself as a new Shardvessel.
• In the final chapter of the final book in the Sundered Lands series, it's revealed that Percy is in fact Grinder Prickleback, the hedgehog who unintentionally blew up the world and is hellbent on seeking all six crowns so he can Take Over the World. He wastes no time betraying Trundle and Esmeralda once his true intentions are revealed.
• Zalasta in The Tamuli is revealed as the Big Bad after he has befriended 90% of the cast, and after he saved their lives in a pitched battle.
• Toy Academy: Bootleg, who initially seems like just another, innocent student, turns out to be the Big Bad of Book 1. He's responsible for stealing Commander Hedgehog's arms and plotting to take over the school.
• Universal Monsters: In the very end of book 2, it's revealed that the spirits from The Wolf Man (1941) had fused with real people — Deputy Chad Barnes and his mother Wilma Winokea — when they were released from the films. Said characters drive past the trio when the teens are heading out of town, giving them nasty looks and proving they're just as evil even when they aren't possessed. Joe and Captain Bob later theorize that their evil is what drew said spirits to them when they were released from the films. However, book 6 subverts it when Chad and Wilma return to help the teens, and Wilma even helps out in the final battle.
• Vampire Academy:
  • In Vampire Academy, it turns out Natalie was doing Victor Dashkov's dirty work the whole time.
  • In Blood Promise, Avery Lazar acted as a friend to Lissa and Adrian. Was revealed to be manipulating them for her own ends. She had no problem on driving Lissa to suicide.

Live-Action TV

• 24 has Nina Meyers in Day 1, Charles Logan in Day 5, and Tony Almeida (sort of, it kind of gets complicated) in Day 7, as well as Dana Walsh during Day 8.
  • Jack (somewhat) during his Rogue Agent period in Day 8 is debatable. He definitely undergoes a Face–Heel Turn during that point, though it's left unclear if he did so immediately after the double whammy of Renee's death and President Taylor's betrayal of him and his claims that he was just trying to expose the Russian conspiracy were outright lies, which if so would loosely follow this trope, or if he did genuinely mean to follow this out and only abandoned it for the notion of killing everyone involved after murdering Dana. There are some hints that lean toward the former, including a "I was perfectly fine settling with justice, but that was taken from me!," rant near the end of the series.
• Arrow:
  • In Season Four, John Diggle's supposedly dead younger brother Andy is revealed to be still alive, and a member of the terrorist organization H.I.V.E. Worse, evidence slowly mounts that he was a villain long before he was "recruited" into H.I.V.E. His arc explores whether or not he was always evil and if he can be redeemed. He demonstrates he is truly evil by betraying the group, directly leading to Laurel's murder by Damien Darhk. He even taunts John about it and threatens to kill the rest of his family before being gunned down by his enraged brother.
  • In Season Five, seeming ally Adrian Chase, the best known Vigilante in the comics, is revealed to actually be Prometheus — and what's more, his real name is Simon Morrison, and his entire arc is a deranged gambit to destroy Oliver. Vigilante is revealed early in the next season to be an unrelated character.
• Ash vs. Evil Dead: The end of season 1 reveals that Ruby Knowby, previously hinted to be a Jefe like Ash, is actually a Dark One, and the true Big Bad.
• Invoked in an episode of Bewitched. A chimp Samantha turns human lands a spot in an ad campaign for cologne and makes an immediate impression on Larry Tate and his client. Samantha, however, intends to take him back to his owner and suggests that, in order to get fired, he show his true colors, which he does by biting one of the crew behind the project among other things.
• The Boys (2019):
  • Stormfront's appearances during her first two episodes have her being snarky and affable, enough that Starlight and the audience find her likable. It's not until the end of the third episode, when she massacres a housing project full of black people and brutally kills Kenji after calling him a "yellow bastard", that it is shown us that she's a psychotic, superpowered racist.
  • Victoria Neuman positions herself a benevolent critic of Vought, until the finale where she's revealed to be the one causing heads to explode, including ones who were working against Vought.
• Charmed (1998)'s Christy Jenkins is rescued from years of being locked in a cave by demons. It turns out she's now working with them to corrupt her sister, so they can kill the Halliwells.
• Dead of Summer has Amy Hughes, who many people think is the stereotypical horror movie final girl until it's revealed in the penultimate episode that she was behind everything.
• Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency: At the start of Season 2, Suzie Boreton seems to be simply a beleaguered woman, with a son, boss, and husband that don't respect her, suffering from a leg injury after an accident and pulled into the show's weirdness unfairly. Then she gets the magic wand and it's revealed she was always a bit of a sociopathic and narcissistic jerkass, the accident was caused by her being high while carpooling and causing an accident that hurt the son of one of her friends (a thing for which she never apologized and is upset her friends don't care more about her), even turning her own son into a frog when he gets in her way and killing the family dog because he annoyed her.
• Doctor Who: In "Can You Hear Me?", at first, it appears that the blonde woman is sending a cry for help from the torture Zellin is inflicting. Then it turns out he's actually giving her the fears of humans which keeps her sane while imprisoned.
• Boyd Langdon in Dollhouse. Turns out he was secretly the Big Bad all along and running a ridiculously complex Evil Plan with Echo and co. at the center. And he seemed like such a nice guy. Although he wasn't completely evil. He was more of a Well-Intentioned Extremist in the end.
• The Flash (2014):
  • While Harrison Wells in Season One is obviously shady from the start, it's slowly revealed that not only is he the Reverse-Flash, he's actually Eobard Thawne and merely stole the real Wells' identity after murdering him and his wife.
  • Similarly, in Season Two, "Jay Garrick" from Earth-2 turns out to actually be Hunter Zolomon, better known as Zoom, and to have been manipulating the heroes all along by stealing the identity of the real Jay Garrick from Earth-3.
  • The first few episodes of the third season introduce Julian, Barry's co-worker who he doesn't get along with, and Alchemy, a mysterious masked person who's been giving people the powers they had in Flashpoint for unknown reasons. Viewers quickly guessed that they were the same person, to the point where the end of the seventh episode was seen as a Captain Obvious Reveal. Subverted when it turns out Julian had no idea, as he was being possessed by Savitar, the real Big Bad.
  • During the "Armageddon" five-parter, Despero claims to have tried to free his world from a tyrant ruling over it, only to be exiled. As it turns out, he was the tyrant, who had to flee his world after being overthrown, and his main reason for wanting to prevent Armageddon is so that he can take over Earth afterwards.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Played with by Mirri Mazz Duur. She hates the Dothraki, and used magic to cause the catatonia of Khal Drogo (whom she'd been poisoning) and the death of Daenerys's unborn son. Of course, this is a group that just wiped out her community to enslave them, but Daenerys had saved her life and the unborn kid was totally innocent. Although he was believed to be the subject of a prophecy that said he would conquer the world, making Mirri a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
  • Ramsay Snow/Bolton is a particularly horrific example of this trope. He is introduced by seemingly rescuing Theon from being tortured, claiming that he was an Ironborn agent sent by his sister, and appears to be Theon's saving grace. However, this was all just part of a twisted game, and Ramsey soon reveals himself as possibly the most evil and sadistic character in the entire show, and tortures Theon himself to the point that he becomes an empty shell of a man.
  • Roose Bolton and Walder Frey were rather unpleasant all along, but the Red Wedding cements them as completely irredeemable bastards.
  • It turns out Littlefinger and Lysa Arryn, not the Lannisters, were behind Jon Arryn's murder, and together essentially caused the whole fucking plot. Including but certainly not limited to the deaths of millions in the War of the Five Kings, the near-extinction and exile of House Stark, the fall of House Tully, the ascent of the despicable Houses Frey and Bolton, the burning of Winterfell, Littlefinger's meteoric rise (which is definitely a bad thing), and Joffrey's final victory and then horrific death..
• This and a few other related elements are The Reveal for season 1 of The Good Place. Michael, the seemingly benevolent architect of the heavenly neighborhood, is actually a demon (although they don't like the term), and the neighborhood is actually an Ironic Hell intended to force Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani and Jason to torment each other forever.
• Goosebumps (1995): Kareen Hawlings from "How I Got My Shrunken Head" convinces Mark that she, unlike her father, is on the good side. In reality, she’s almost as bad as he is.
• Ghosts (UK) we find out Thomas Thorne's cousin orchestrated his death by lying to him and Isabel that they don't love each other, destroying notes Thomas gave to Isabel, tricked him into fighting a duel and making sure he dies in it by deliberately misinforming him about how many paces he was supposed to take.
• Haven had William, who at first seemed to be a kind, mysterious stranger who helps Audrey recover her memories and get back to her friends. Then he turns out to be a cruel, remorseless man who enjoys giving people out of control powers to cause untold destruction.
• His Dark Materials: Mrs. Coulter goes from warm and friendly, then to cold, and finally to outright abusive. Then it's revealed she is actually the head of the Gobblers and knew where Roger was the whole time.
• Kamen Rider Outsiders: Zein is initially introduced as a Hero Antagonist Benevolent A.I. that seeks to bring a utopia free of human malice, giving the villain protagonists a good reason to oppose it. Later on, Zein's methods become more brutal and oppressive, to the point that not even redeemed villains are safe from its presence. Episode 4 finally confirms that it is just as malevolent as the Ark. It’s allies fail to realise this until it announces its plan to use a Deadly Game to create an army of players to die against the villains, tricking mankind into ensuring their own self-destruction.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: "Halbrand" turns out to be an identity assumed by Sauron himself. Poor Galadriel has an entire existential crisis when she finds out.
• In Lost it turns out that Henry Gale was really the backstabbing, manipulative leader of the Others...
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
    • Agent Garrett, an old friend of Coulson, is revealed to be The Clairvoyant, and Agent Ward is The Dragon to him. In "Ragtag", we learn that Garrett recruited Ward for HYDRA years before he became a Double Agent inside S.H.I.E.L.D.
    • Subverted in the episode "Face My Enemy", where Glenn Talbot is apparently revealed to be a HYDRA mole all along, but it's soon revealed that "Talbot" is actually HYDRA agent Bakshi using a hi-tech face mask.
  • Iron Fist: Harold Meachum wasn't exactly a nice guy to begin with, but one could mistake him for simply being extreme but well-meaning early in the season. He's eventually revealed to be a cold-blooded murderer and just as bad as the Hand he serves, having been screwing with Danny's life even before his resurrection.
  • Luke Cage: At first, Mariah seems like a Morality Pet to Cottonmouth early on, albeit one that was in the grey due to benefiting off his corrupt dealings. Ultimately she proves she's no better when she does increasingly awful things, which eventually accumulates in her murdering her cousin, framing his death on Luke Cage, and taking control over his criminal empire. Season 2 shows that she is even more ruthless than Cottonmouth ever could be, becoming Lex Luthor to Luke’s Superman role in Harlem, and she was kind of a Rich Bitch as a kid.
  • WandaVision: Episode 7 reveals that Agnes, really Agatha Harkness, was manipulating Wanda from the very beginning and setting up a number of conflicts across the series. She sings about this at length in "Agatha All Along."
• Mouse (2021): Ba-reum is a serial killer pretending to be a normal, decent guy. Played with later when he gets hit with Laser-Guided Amnesia, forgets his crimes, and is as shocked as everyone else when he learns the truth.
• Once Upon a Time, despite being a show where typically Rousseau Was Right and nearly every villain has a sympathetic origin, still has a few examples:
  • Cruella's backstory is that she was locked in her attic by her abusive mother, who was also a Black Widow. It turns out Cruella herself was the one murdering her stepfathers, and that she's been wicked ever since she was a child.
  • Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde appear in the sixth season, at first showing Jekyll as the good persona and Hyde as the evil one. But when the backstory comes around, we discover that Jekyll once murdered the woman he loved and framed Hyde for it.
• The Outer Limits (1995): In "Corner of the Eye", a group of aliens who look like demons befriend a priest, heal his cancer, and grant him a Healing Hands ability. They claim to want to help humanity and ask the priest to vouch for them when they eventually reveal themselves as their appearance would frighten humans. Eventually, the priest's friend finds out that the aliens are just as evil as they look. Everything they did for the priest was just to get him to trust them so that they could use him as a pawn in their plans to slowly take over the world.
• Raising Dion: Pat Rollins, who for the mayority of the series is presented as a lovable nerd, a Parental Substitute to Dion, and Dogged Nice Guy for Nicole, is eventually revealed to be The Crooked Man. He killed Dion's father and several other superpowered people.
• The Sarah Jane Adventures: Mr. Smith is exposed as this in the first season's finale. Although the heroes at first suspect a Computer Virus or something else has caused Mr. Smith to go through a Face–Heel Turn, it's revealed that Mr. Smith has always been this and was waiting for the chance to enact his Evil Plan. In a rather interesting play on this trope, Mr. Smith remains a part of the main cast after this episode and everything goes back to normal as a result of the heroes enforcing Amnesiac Villain Joins the Heroes on him.
• Sleepy Hollow: Henry Parrish the Sin-Eater, the heroes' supposed ally, is revealed in the first season finale to actually be Jeremy Crane, Ichabod and Katrina's supposedly dead son, who agreed to serve Moloch as the Horseman of War in exchange for escaping being Buried Alive and the chance of revenge on his parents for abandoning him. Everything else he did up to that point in the series was to earn the heroes' trust so he could betray them at the opportune moment.
• Star Trek: Discovery:
  • While he was hardly a paragon of virtue, Captain Gabriel Lorca eventually turns out to be native to the Mirror Universe, manipulating the events in order to get close to Burnham, to whom he's attracted to (he raised and then seduced Mirror!Burnham). His final goal is to use her and, possibly, the Discovery to stage a coup in the Terran Empire and become Emperor himself with Burnham at his side.
  • Lieutenant Ash Tyler turns out to be a Klingon Manchurian Agent named Voq, the same Voq, who was named as T'Kuvma's successor. He does get better, however, after the Voq personality is erased for good, leaving behind just Tyler with two sets of memories.
• Supergirl (2015): The episode "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" reveals in its twist ending that Eve Teschmacher has been working for Lex Luthor since before actually being introduced on the show, acting as his spy.
• Supernatural:
  • In "Croatoan", it turns out the reason Duane Tanner knew he didn't have The Virus was that he's possessed by a demon.
  • Ruby was the only demon who had so far actually helped the Winchesters, yet the season four finale showed us that she was working for Lucifer all along and she helped Sam specifically for him to kill Lilith, and so bring back Lucifer to the Earth.
  • In the episode "Repo Man". Back when they were hunting Lilith, Sam and Dean exorcised a demon out of a man named Jeffrey. Now in season seven, women were dying in the same way the demon killed them back then, so the brothers return to town. It turns out Jeffrey and the demon were working together and had a relationship.
  • In the finale of season eight, it turns out that the angel Metatron, who advised the brothers on the last trial to seal Hell and was guiding Castiel in another set of trials to seal off the now corrupt Heaven, was not as harmless as he appeared — he didn't warn the Winchesters that completing their trials would kill Sam, and the trials he was helping Castiel with were actually components of a spell to banish all angels from Heaven as petty revenge for being cast out himself.
  • The Season 4 finale reveals Zachariah was working to start the apocalypse. In fact most of the heavenly host is in on it, as they believe Utopia Justifies the Means.
  • The episode "Freaks and Geeks" has the reappearance of a hunter from an earlier episode named Victor, who is training a group of children to hunt after their families were killed by vampires in an attempt to ensure that the next generation of hunters doesn't have the problems of the current ones. It turns out that the monsters he was sending them after were actually scapegoats for murders that were committed by a single vampire had committed on his orders.
  • The Season 14 finale reveals that Lucifer and Amara were right all along — God/Chuck really is an utter sociopath who treats reality (especially the Winchesters' suffering) as his entertainment. When they realize this and refuse to keep following his script, he turns on them.
  • The first few episodes of Season 15 have the Winchesters being aided by a demon named Belphegor, who says he's just a Punch-Clock Villain who wants to help restore the stability of Hell after Chuck unleashed all its souls. In actuality, he's playing them in order to enact a plan where he can absorb all those spells and become a god.
  • In "Last Call", Lee Webb is the culprit for the murder of Angela Sullivan, having sacrificed her alongside countless others to the marid in exchange for health and wealth.
• Timeless: Lucy's mother Carol turns out to be a high-ranking Rittenhouse member. Also, Emma, who seemingly fled into the past and spent a decade hiding from Rittenhouse, is eventually revealed to be a Rittenhouse sleeper agent.
  • Played with via Timey-Wimey Ball when Wyatt suddenly finds out that his dead wife Jessica is now alive. He doesn't want to believe anything fishy, but she soon turns on the team and reveals herself to be Rittenhouse as well. However, the original Jessica he had known before joining the Time Team probably had nothing to do with Rittenhouse; it was only because Rittenhouse was targeting Wyatt that they went back in time and corrupted this alternate version of her in her childhood.
• Titans (2018): Rachel's biological mother Arella. Turns out she is in league with Trigon, her literally demonic lover.
• True Blood tends to do this a lot, especially with their Big Bad of the season. As it turned out, Rene Lenier was just hiding behind his nice exterior while being a bloodthirsty sexist murderer, and in a more extreme example, Maryann Forrester who turned out to be a freaking homicidal Maenad. Season three followed suit with the Faux Affably Evil King Russel Edgington who quickly turns into a genocidal maniac, and season four arguably averts it by giving its Big Bad Marnie a bit of a Face–Heel Turn. Or rather, it shows her Start of Darkness.
  • Played somewhat straight with Rev. Newlin (Jr.); although it was clear from the beginning on he was more than just another bigot, few viewers were expecting him to turn into a full-fledged villain who imprisons the protagonists and wants to burn another character to death. Given, no-one was expecting him to become a vampire!
• Van Helsing (2016): Midway through the first season, it becomes apparent there's a Serial Killer hiding among the protagonist group of survivors. It's ultimately revealed to be Sam, the deaf man who previously appeared to be a harmless Gentle Giant.
• Veronica Mars: It's revealed in the season two finale that Cassidy was the one who raped Veronica before the series began, and killed a bus full of his classmates in the season premiere. During the final confrontation he also blows up a plane with three people on board, does something abusive to Mac, and seems to enjoy tasing Veronica before trying to kill her.
• Vikings had Kjetill Flatnose who was set up as The Big Guy to Floki in the Iceland arc. In a chilling twist Kjetill turns out to be cannibalistic, psychopathic monster both figuratively and literary and one of the more frightening characters in the show.
• Warrior Nun: In the Season 1 finale, it's revealed that the angel Adriel, whom the Order believed to be the Big Good who sacrificed himself to begin the line of Warrior Nuns, was actually a Manipulative Bastard who began said line as tools of his own plans of conquest, and was sealed away for it. Also, the current team's mentor, Father Vincent, is a minion of Adriel's who has been stringing them along in order to engineer his master's release.
• Thomas Cromwell of Wolf Hall. During the first season, Cromwell is presented to the audience in a more heroic light than other works about him. He is shown as loyal, hardworking, caring, a good listener, and respectful even to his enemies. However, during the final episode, his corrupt nature that he's historically known for reveals itself, after he schemes to have Anna Boleyn beheaded. Lampshaded by King Henry VIII who calls him a viper.

Radio

• Several times in Dickensian parody Bleak Expectations, the person helping Pip Bin with his latest scheme, such as the engineer who Pip employed to build a sewage system under London, is blatantly his evil nemesis Mr Gently Benevolent (in that case planning to dig out the capital, float it across the Channel with hot air balloons and sell it to the French). Or is one of his Obviously Evil henchmen who are all members of the same family and have instantly recognisable names.

Web Animation

• This video by DarkMatter2525 seems to take this stance about Yahweh.
• In this GoAnimate video, Caillou befriends a "meme police" officer after being caught using discredited memes by her and they seem ready to set off to find fresher memes when they discover that all of their memes are outdated. Near the end of the video, however, out of nowhere the woman reveals herself to be a spy for Boris and Doris and gets Caillou (and Rosie, who broke her legs with a mallet) grounded.
• Red vs. Blue:
  • Felix is revealed to be this after spending Season 11 and the first half of Season 12 pretending to be a good guy. When he betrays the others, he goes on an angry rant declaring that pretending to be a good guy and that being the BGC's friend was sickening, and now they will suffer and die for forcing him to go through that.
  • The Chairman, who had previously been something of a Reasonable Authority Figure and a good counterpart to the Director but with a ruthless streak and hints of some ulterior motive, is officially outed as this at the end of Season 12. As it turns out, he's Control, the one who wants to take over Chorus for its rich supply of lost alien technology, and hired Felix and Locus to manipulate the course of the Civil War on Chorus behind the scenes until both the Rebels and Federal Army killed themselves, so that he can reap the benefits of the planet without suspicion from the UNSC.
• RWBY:
  • The nameless narrator of the first episode seems to be cynical and depressed, with a bitterly pessimistic view of the world's chances against the Creatures of Grimm. Then, in the volume 3 finale she is revealed to be the Big Bad Salem. All her talk about how humanity had no chance was a threat.
    Salem: It's true that a simple spark can ignite hope, breathe fire into the hearts of the weary. The ability to derive strength from hope is undoubtedly mankind's greatest attribute. Which is why I will focus all of my power... to snuff it out.
  • When Team RWBY and Jaune Arc end up trapped in the Ever After, the world from the fairy tale "The Girl Who Fell Through The World", during Volume 9 with Ruby and Jaune both in bad states of mental health after everything they have both been through in the series by that point, Team RWBY meet the Curious Cat from the story who helped it's main character Alyx return home. As they keep making Innocently Insensitive comments towards Ruby's situation, she keeps falling into despair for the majority of the volume and Jaune believes that the Cat helped Alyx sacrifice her brother Lewis in order to escape back to Remnant. During "Tea Amidst Terrible Trouble", Jaune turns out to be right not to trust the Cat since they are revealed to be more sinister than they initially appeared as those seemingly Innocently Insensitive comments were actually attempts to fill Ruby with despair so they could possess her to learn everything she knows and leave the Ever After. After Ruby's attempted suicide-by-ascension, the cat instead possesses Neopolitan and becomes the Arc Villain of Volume 9. When they find the cat again, they eventually reveal to the heroes that after Alyx decided to stay in the Ever After to fix her mistakes while Lewis returned, the Cat felt betrayed and killed her.
• Think Like A Coder: Hedge turns out to be this.
• TOME: The Netking named Rubirules seems friendly, (if not slightly egotistical,) but was actually the one leading the hackers, and was generally responsible for the events of the series.
• Tonin: Pai-Meio was just pretending to be good and helpful until Tonin defeated Vilano-san. He reveals his true colors once Vilano-san is seemingly killed and starts taking over the village the defeated villain used to rule.

Webcomics

• unOrdinary: Terrance is introduced as a weak student getting bullied before someone with the same powers as him is shown to be helping Spectre target, attack and abduct people. He's brought up as a suspect but his low tier means his powers wouldn't be strong enough for him to be the Spectre agent, before its revealed his tier is out of date and he's been a Spectre agent all along giving them information about students with powers they might be interested in forcibly "recruiting", abducting or depowering.

Web Original

• Clawing at Glass introduces the sweet, perky wing-sage Zada as Jondi's aide and a major source of emotional support in his life, constantly encouraging Jondi to cling onto the best parts of himself and even getting him to go on a field operation that ends with almost everyone there slaughtered by monsters. As it turns out, Zada orchestrated that event in league with the Big Bad Duumvirate the whole time, as part of her twisted fascination with the goodness inside Jondi—that she can't and never has been able to feel or understand.
• Balmur the elven sorcerer/cleric in Dark Dice was generally friendly and helpful with the other adventurers who saved him from slavers, even healing Gayle the warlock's wounds... until he attacked one of the others during their watch, revealing himself to be the shapeshifting recurring antagonist known as The Silent One.
• In The Gamer's Alliance, several seemingly heroic characters such as Cain, Desdemona, Mordecai and Vaetris end up having been evil all along during the Godslayer era.
• The sixth chapter of Help Not Wanted reveals that kind ogre Ogrell Syn'Gorrsh is in fact a cannibalistic Serial Killer who was Obfuscating Stupidity.
• Howto Hero discusses the possibility that a reformed villain might secretly be this.
• In Nan Quest, Henry, one of the first secondary characters that Nan meets and one of her two potential Love Interests, is actually a a vicious, Ax-Crazy killer called "The Pilgrim", who plans on sacrificing Nan in a desperate attempt to escape the hotel.
• In Noob, both the webseries and novel have the Noob guild manage to hire a replacement for Arthéon after he has to start attending Boarding School. Too good to be true for a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits that is dragging around the reputation of being the worst guild in a fictional MMORPG? Yes.
• In the final chapter of Smirvlak's Stone, not only is it revealed that Nickolas Corveel's protective brother, Gnekvizz, is secretly part of a cult and wants to destroy all life on earth, but he also murdered their parents.

Western Animation

• In the Adventure Time episode "The Enchiridion!", Finn saves a group of creatures who are trapped in a pool of lava, not realizing that they're actually Ax-Crazy monsters who love killing old ladies.
• Alpha Teens on Machines has an interesting example of this trope. In the first season, industrialist Mr. Lee seems to be the team's mentor. In the second season, The Reveal is that he's been a Corrupt Corporate Executive and a Mad Scientist all along. He uses DNA samples from the Alpha Teens to create the Mu-Team, an evil, superpowered group of Psycho Rangers.
• The Amazing World of Gumball: "The Vision" reveals that Alan, who has been depicted as a total Nice Guy, is secretly plotting to Take Over the World and create a dystopia where anyone who is unhappy for any reason will be sent to "happy camps" where they will be forcibly brainwashed into not feeling negative emotions.
• Amphibia: King Andrias is initially introduced as The Good King of Amphibia, acting as an ally to Anne and her friends and helping them in their quest to recharge the music box and get back home. But throughout the season, there are vague hints that there is more to his agenda than he is letting on. He finally reveals his true intentions in "True Colors", when he explains that his ancestors weren't peaceful explorers but actually conquerors; he plans to reclaim his glory by using the recharged music box to conquer all other dimensions, including Earth.
• Many episodes of Archer use this as a last minute reveal. In "Honeypot", there wasn't even a strategic advantage to the villains pretending to be good guys; they just genuinely liked Woodhouse and wanted to have some fun with him.
  Charles: Oh, we're a hit squad. Forgot to tell you.
• Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: When Buzz finds out his dead partner Warp Darkmatter working for Emperor Zurg, he goes through just about every sci-fi cliché (Brainwashed and Crazy, Evil Clone, Robot Double, etc.) to justify why his friend is working for the enemy. Warp insists he's been working for Zurg as long as he's known Buzz. By the end of the series, though, Warp seems to be a Friendly Enemy, at one point pretending not to get Zurg's messages and letting Buzz go.
• Castlevania (2017): The Judge appears to be a Reasonable Authority Figure. Until it turns out he murders anyone who violates his rules.
• Disenchantment: Bean's Missing Mom Dagmar turns out to not only be alive (kind of) but is apparently working with Cloyd and the Enchantress, using her family's trust in her to secure them the victory in the first season finale.
• Several of the characters encountered by the kids in Dungeons & Dragons (1983) turned out to be this, usually because they were Venger in disguise. (The very first episode had him posing as Merlin.)
• Throughout the duration of Ed, Edd n Eddy, Eddy periodically brings up his unseen older brother, usually building him up to be the coolest, toughest guy in Peach Creek. In Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show, we finally get to see him face-to-face... and it turns out that he's a sadistic Big Brother Bully who constantly abused Eddy before he went away, and Eddy lied about it in an attempt to gain admiration and social acceptance.
• Futurama plays this for laughs with Bender. Particularly in "The Lesser of Two Evils", in which Bender's Evil Twin Flexo has apparently stolen their valuable cargo - but was actually trying to inform them that Bender had stolen it.
• Gravity Falls: The Northwest Family have been this for over a century, which Pacifica learns the hard way. She may have been a jerk, but even she wasn't in on her father's villainous legacy.
• Green Eggs and Ham: "Evil" may be a stretch, but it turns out that Sam isn't as innocent as he lets on and broke Mr. Jenkins out of the zoo not to return him to his habitat, but to sell him to an evil animal collector.
• Jackie Chan Adventures: In "Into the Mouth of Evil", Jackie's colleague Jumba, his associate Portia, and dentist Dr. Weber wish to use the Sutras to dry up the Ganges river to collect the valuable artifacts at the bottom and get rich.
• In his first appearance on Kim Possible, Kim doesn't realize that Monkey Fist is a villain.
• The Legend of Korra: In season two, Varrick's true nature is revealed to be that of a Corrupt Corporate Executive, staging thefts of shipments in order to drive Future Industries into bankruptcy so he can buy a controlling interest and taking advantage of the Water Tribe Civil War to expand his business.
  • It's also later revealed that Korra's uncle was a member of the anti-authoritarian Red Lotus group who wanted to kidnap her as a child to brainwash her into their anarchist ways (kind of odd for a guy went out of his way to frame Korra's father out of his right to rule the Northern Water Tribe), but even they didn't plan on him fusing with the spirit of Chaos.
• Miraculous Ladybug:
  • "The Collector" reveals first that Gabriel Agreste is, as many fans predicted, actually Hawk Moth, and that his assistant Nathalie is aware of this and is helping him.
  • In her debut episode, "Volpina", Lila Rossi appeared to be simply a New Transfer Student telling all kinds of Celebrity Lies for attention, who only became outright nasty after Ladybug humiliated her by calling her out on her lies in front of Adrien (even though she was actively lying to him at the time). Come season five, it's revealed that "Lila Rossi" was simply an alternate identity to manipulate a second school (and a second mother), indicating that Lila (or Cerise, or whatever her real name is) was a terrible person even before she threw in with Hawk Moth.
• Cozy Glow in Season 8 of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic turns out to be the true Big Bad of the season.
• Ninjago: the meek and eccentric Dr. Saunders who debuted in the special episode "Day of the Departed" is actually a villain named Krux who is the main antagonist of Season 7 and has been waiting for his brother's return to enact a revenge plan on Ninjago.
  • And then there's Princess Harumi, who at first appeared to be a Love Interest for Lloyd and a major new supporting character. She is, in fact, The Quiet One, and the Big Bad for the season she appears in (as well as a Manipulative Bitch).
• Over the Garden Wall: Beatrice spends about half of the miniseries leading Wirt and Greg to "Adelaide of the Pasture, Good Woman of the Woods", implied to be a sort of Fairy Godmother who can send them home. The twist is that Adelaide is a Wicked Witch in service of the Beast, with Beatrice (who, to be fair, wasn't fully aware of Adelaide's true nature) working for her to break the curse on her family.
• Samurai Jack has this pulled with a mysterious swordswoman who teams up with Jack in an early episode. Turns out she's Aku in disguise the whole time. The twist actually marks a rare The Bad Guy Wins ending for the episode.
• It's a common practice for just about every Scooby-Doo show to have at least one episode where the costumed crook's true identity was a person who had earlier pretended to be an ally toward the Mystery, Inc. gang.
• Sheep in the Big City spoofed this in the season one finale "To Sheep, Perchance to Dream", where the episode's twist ending reveals that Sheep was the real villain all along and that he intended to use the show's narrator Ben Plotz in a narrator-powered ray gun. This is completely disregarded in the second season.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Brick Like Me", Homer retreats into a Lego-themed Happy Place to escape his fear of Lisa leaving him behind. The Lego! Comic Book Guy seems like a Helpful Hallucination... until Homer decides it's time to face reality.
    CBG: All you need to do is open the box back to your so-called reality. But I. Can't. Let. That. Happen. (rotates his Lego head to a menacing expression)
    Homer: Huh? You're the bad guy? I thought you were the rule-explainer-guy!
  • In the much earlier episode "Krusty Gets Busted", Sideshow Bob is a straight example of this trope when it turns out that he framed Krusty out of a malicious attempt at getting back at him for the times he mistreated him.
  • In "The Boys of Bummer", Bart meets up with retired baseball player Joe LaBoot, who appears to be sympathetic towards Bart's problem since he himself had failed at baseball in his youth as well. Unfortunately, as soon as he learns who Bart is, LaBoot reveals his true colors by cruelly driving him to tears.
    LaBoot: Bart? Are you Bart Simpson? The kid who dropped that easy fly ball? You stink like a Dutchman's throw-up! Talking to you is the biggest error of my life!
    (Crowd boos at Bart)
    LaBoot: Boo. Boo, indeed.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "New Leaf", it appeared that Mr. Krabs and Plankton had finally reconciled and were friends again. Krabs trusts him so much now that he gives him the Krabby Patty formula... but then it turns out that Plankton was faking it all along, saying that he finally won. Yet Krabs revealed that he had outfoxed him first.
• The Magic High Commission from Star vs. the Forces of Evil initially seem to be the flawed but heroic Big Goods... until it’s slowly revealed that they’re actually selfish, controlling, and short-sighted bigots who are responsible for (or exacerbated) many of the terrible things that happen over the course of the series, including Meteora’s descent into villainy and the Mewman kingdom’s discrimination against monsters. By the final season, they gleefully support the Big Bad in a coup against Eclipsa and even create new Solarian Warriors for her, not realizing that she’s not going to stop at just overthrowing Eclipsa and could potentially destroy the world.
• Star Wars:
  • The Clone Wars: In the Umbara arc, General Pong Krell seems to be a heroic, if jerkish Jedi at first. It turns out that he is secretly planning on becoming Dooku's new apprentice and is willing to sacrifice clones to sabotage the Republic war effort.
  • The Bad Batch: Crosshair is a variation of it, while he did turn against the squad and join the empire, it was at first assumed even In-Universe this was due to his inhibitor chip messing with his mind. Crosshair reveals later though he had his chip removed at an unspecified point and is still serving the empire willingly, stating that this is just who he is.
• Steven Universe: In "Room for Ruby", Navy, the Ruby Squad member that seemed the nicest and least malicious of the five, turns out to be a lying, manipulative sadist with a sugary personality. She fakes defecting to Earth and gets in the good graces with Steven and Peridot (while Lapis remains suspicious), all so she can steal back her ship, rescue her squadmates, rat the Crystal Gems' continued existence out to the Diamonds, and rub it in Steven's face. Steven did lie to her, trick her and space her, but while Steven did it out of necessity, Navy took a perverse pleasure in her actions.
• In Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters: Powerful businessman and the Flex Fighters' mentor and benefactor, Jonathan Rook, turns out to be the villainous Stretch Monster, and has been manipulating them and some of the show's other villains for his own ends. Near the end of season two, Malcolm Kane, Rook's seemingly unwitting right-hand man, is revealed to be Number One, the leader of the Tech Men, who has been undermining Rook by pretending to be loyal to him, all while hatching his own evil plan.
• Teen Titans (2003): Starfire's sister Blackfire seems to be a Cool Big Sis in her debut episode, but turns out to be a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who doesn't care about her younger sister.
• Pumyra in Thunder Cats 2011 was revealed to be The Mole who was working for Mumm-Ra the whole time. Unfortunately, the episode in which this revelation occurred was the last one produced.
• In Total Drama, season 2 had Justin and Courtney, who didn't seem all that devious in the previous season, as the season's main antagonists, and season 6 had Scarlett, who wasn't revealed to be a villain until the tenth episode.
• In Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race, Stephanie, who seemed to be nice in the first few episodes, was later shown to be a jerkass who'd constantly bully and abuse her partner, Ryan.
• In Totally Spies!, Terrance and Dean first seem like Dean was evil all along. Then Dean turned out to be good all along. The same goes for the episode in which Tim Scam was introduced. It also applies for a lot of "villains of the day".
• In Ultimate Spider-Man, Deadpool turns out to be this. (Or very least, Amoral All Along.) First introduced as a freelance hero who used to work for S.H.I.E.L.D.; he's later revealed to be an amoral mercenary who will work for the highest bidder.
• Throughout The Venture Brothers Dr. Jonas Venture Sr. was slowly revealed to be an Abusive Dad and habitual womanizer whose negligence and lack of morality led to things like a group of orphans being trapped under his compound for 30 years, but Season 7's "Morphic Trilogy" cemented his status as a villain when it was revealed that he blackmailed his friend the Blue Morpho into doing his dirty work (after possibly sleeping with his wife) and rebuilt him as a cyborg after his death, only to try to betray him again and steal his body after Jonas became a Brain in a Jar.
• In season 2 of Wakfu, Qilby appears to be a friendly mentor to Yugo. He's actually an insane Omnicidal Maniac scheming to claim the Eliacube so he can go back to draining entire worlds of their wakfu.
• In season 2 of Winx Club, the new teacher Avalon appears to be an evil impostor in the end.
• Young Justice (2010) opened its revival with a version of The Outsiders character Helga Jace seeming to be the Token Good Teammate of Baron Bedlam's operations and a Reluctant Mad Scientist, then willing to help the heroes to atone for her role in things. Come "Antisocial Pathologies", and it turns out that much like her comics and Black Lightning (2018) counterparts, she's insane, evil, and very much a willing Mad Scientist.

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